The Artificial Skin

Ever since the invention of robotic technology humans have had a tense relationship with the the machine-like form inherent to robots. Though we fully acknowledge the alien nature of these beings, we nonetheless attempt to anthropomorphize their existence, going to great aesthetic efforts to create the impression of human features - skin, eyes, mouths, and hands. The intricate, technical, harsh endoskeleton of the robot is wrapped in a silicone lie - a skin which does nothing and performs nothing beyond its mere aesthetic familiarity; a cloak to make that which is alien approachable.

This project addresses this phenomenon at the scale of the building. A highly performative, technical endoskeleton of steel, glass, and mechanized storage units is wrapped in a skin of brick, a material both familiar and vernacular to buildings in the area. However, here the brick is utilized in an unconventional manner. Fully acknowledging brick’s function as nothing more than an aesthetic skin, it is sinuously wrapped around the harsh steel skeleton to create a voluptuous, organic form, reminiscent of the robot’s functionless skin.

Thus the resultant building is a play of concealing and revealing; a dialogue between the fabric like wrap of the seamless, familiar brick and tectonic, mechanistic interior; a dichotomy between the familiarity of the traditional hand-built construction and the exciting new potential of robotic technologies explored at length within.