TREE-Plug

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TREE-Plug

Firm

SIZE

1,000,000 +

BUDGET

$100M +

ALONG this shredded ground strewn with thorny vegetation, it seemed “natural” to set up a system comparable with the one that had given rise to this coast and this vegetation. The system, on the scale of the land and the dwelling, will allow the urban and housing development to be organized, repeating a process that draws together the individual parts and the whole.
Fractal geometry, an echo of a natural organization and a mathematical pattern, would be this system. It allows for scaling and multiple interpretations; its capacity to maximize the surface/volume relationship and the hierarchical tree structure allowing the effectiveness and the simplicity of connections between elements and supporting a correct distribution of the density.
The formal synthesis of that geometry, the tree, becomes the generic structure of the project. The repetition of the same elements, with variable dimensions and directions, first organizes the hierarchical network of connections and creates the “framework” parcels of the site; and then the network of internal communications and public, semi-private and private spaces.
The application of fractal geometry makes it possible to structure and to organize the project with all these variable scales. Its appropriateness to the place is in line with a wide-ranging desire to respect the natural character of the site. This desire is simply expressed; the horizontal development modifies the ground and destroys existing nature while the vertical one saves the ground and slips into existing nature. The fractal system rises upwards and becomes an inhabited tree. Many reasons justify the choice of verticality, views and light for all occupants (residences start at the 2nd floor), the release of the ground, the safeguarding of the green island and its reorganization, and easily recognizable places as a symbolic referral system for its occupants and as an inhabited place seen from the city opposite.
Binary Trees “Y”
This plan is based on a system of urban development similar to binary trees, “Y”, following a process of fractal multiplication. This natural process allows an optimization of the Surface/Volume relationship. These ramifications allow simple and effective connections between architectural elements, and a natural density distribution. Trees are an example of connected structures, groups of nodes between which links are created. Branches are the connecting elements or curves of a tree. A node is the point where the branches of a tree come together.
Binary trees: one branch splits into two. It could also be described as branches coming together into one. The road layout is designed like a fractal process, self-reproduction to the infinite, with variable dimensions and the rotating axis of the binary tree. Through this method we structure an urban ramification, composed from main, secondary and tertiary arteries, leaving in the surrounding space one free circulation.