In this project dedicated to material reorganization and sustainability, a framework for regenerative design and material processes was conceptualized that recognizes the material of in three stages of development. Terracotta is removed from the building’s exterior, creating space for an intervention characterized by those same cladding units. They are rotated and stacked on the building’s interior, conceptualizing a much more expressive, ephemeral, and organic poche. The last stage, on the building’s exterior, quantifies a structural form which speaks most honestly and clearly to the ability of terracotta to be molded and casted into a sculptural form. The program for the building becomes a holistic response to the current pandemic, a phenomenon that has only further alienated our society into the virtual realm. The proposed Center for Civil Discourse, its construction and ownership formulated by three local debate and discourse organizations, reinforces and incentivizes the human and social love for informal interactions, providing space for public debates, large and small lectures, meetings, etc. At every corner, the project reinforces the hallmarks of sustainable and carbon-neutral design embedding it in the craft of design, molding, and assembly, eloquently expressed in this ephemeral state of architecture.
