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Unraveling Belt Trusses
Manhattan, New York City, USA | Mixed Use Commercial High Rise, Fall 2013
The studio's focus is on the potential of new types of structural steel. The process involved studying a case study building (the Wyly Theatre, in my case), extracting its structural principle, and extrapolating our findings to a high rise, retail headquarters building in New York City.
The Wyly Theatre is a structural soup. The project uses the three main structural ingredients of its precedent: belt trusses, box trusses, and super braces. Formally, the belt truss is reinterpreted from a single closed loop to an unraveling loop, as a way to achieve verticality and to challenge the conventional applications of belt truss systems.
The building maintains the structural and programmatic relationship of the Wyly Theatre where dense, back of house spaces are stacked upon open, public voids. The alternation of highly structured, dense spaces cantilevering over open spaces is multiplied, split, and reoriented. The raveling belt truss creates a rigid structural body that is entirely self-supporting. Its wrapping form creates various voids between its promenade, where expansive event space program is inserted. Cable-net facades are strung across the void to create spaces which are highly transparent and visible to the public. Whereas the Wyly Theatre hides most of its structure within a coagulation of program, the raveling belt truss aims to multiply Wyly's spatial contrasts but while celebrating the structure that allows it to do so.
Michael Matthews, AIA
Contact: mikedavematt (at) gmail
Resume available upon request |
Michael Matthews Studio
Full Service Licensed Architecture Firm
Registered with American Institute of Architects
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