Shadowboxer

Shadowboxer 1

by Jonathan Gregurick (MArch ’21)

Shadowboxer hides a fifth room in a seemingly four room building. Four identical boxes are conceived and are then rotated at slightly different angles, none of which exceed the ADA ramp slope angle. The boxes are arranged around a center void into four quadrants, each box representing one quadrant and one room. At the hinge point of each box, around the central void, circulatory cores are placed. Inside the room-boxes the floor is slanted at ramp slope, corresponding to the initial tilt of the box. However, one of the boxes contains a floor which splits it in two horizontal parts, so that this box has two rooms whereas the other three have only one. As one moves through this building, beginning at the top room of the split box, one must enter and exit through a corner circulatory core which has four steps down. The room-box one enters from these cores has a floor which slopes up at the ADA ramp slope angle but is not enough to account for the four steps down within the core. The result is a system which empirically takes the occupant down two and a half feet per core but brings that occupant up within each box a half foot on the upward sloping floor, possibly giving the illusion that one is rising throughout the progression. At the end of the system the occupant has arrived at an identical room (8 feet) directly below the first room in the first box. Perhaps this formal system would make the occupant feel as if they have arrived in the same room they began, creating the illusion of a hidden (shadow) room.