Knot Galaxy: Space Exploration Center

To truly grasp inspiration is to create without boundaries, addressing urban and imaginative freedom, the Knot Galaxy: Space Exploration Center is more than a vessel for learning but a catalyst for discovery.

The relevance of site strategy draws inspiration from the scales of context, hence the range of micro to macro-scale components that make up a galaxy. The organization and identity of Washington D.C. and the community of Oxon Run are accounted for to establish the behavior of the project.

The findings of the research labs concluded the three factors that establish DC: history, politics, and integration. Tourism of historical landmarks and follies is apparent in the establishment of the city. Comprised of an axial organization dictated by avenues, traffic circles, follies, and wards the city’s identity resonates. In any city, economic and political play form the behavior of areas and what differentiates the resources and demographic makeup. The further away from the zones of the economic and politically invested space (DC Proper: National Mall) the more under-resourced.

The geometry of knots and their relationship to space, time, and matter are integral to the formation of a novel design. Experimenting with knots as a mode of space definers, branched off into their respective spatial conditions. This formed the typologies of gestural, suspended, supporting, orienting, containing, entrance, positioning, leaping, and traveling structure spaces.