CONFLICT RESOLUTION INSTITUTE
Ames, IA

Conflict Resolution Institute calls for an architecture which resolves two dynamics. One dynamic is of the ground, landscape forces, the other dynamic are of the strings or bands of closure. The ground and the strings resolve their dynamics about resolute fluid walls.

The fluid wall component in the air usually seems to hold-up, hang, the strings in mid-dip as they move down to only rise back up. The rise and fall of the string defines the interior meeting spaces in size, form, and sound transmission requirements.

The fluid wall component of the ground holds back the landscape and supports the edge rise or fall of the strings enclosure. Occasionally the string peels inward to define an interior which makes a new scale of smaller required ground spaces.

The Conflict Resolution Institute was the ideal place to investigate this idea of space within the ground and part of a fluid wall system. The fluid wall component in the air described earlier focused on the exterior perceptual of the wall to the string. On the interior, the fluid wall is cut to create a frame between the strings or meeting spaces.  The notion of the cut extends infinitely as the joint lines through the site from the strings.

The fundamental notions of the string theory influenced the project. String theory reference to a space time continuum in relationship between mass and spin of particles is a direct analogy to the dynamics described here.