STUDIO DICKEY

NESTING TECTONICS

Emerging from a research agenda that investigated the concept of digital craft through the study of the natural processes of bird nesting, this proposal for a New Orleans Bereavement Community Center seeks to draw from both notions in order to provide a place of retreat for a community which experienced extreme loss during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. The primal bird nest, with its relationship to natural cyclical process of becoming and disappearing, provides a place for development, comfort, and nurturing for new life. The Bereavement Center analogously is place where people can come for comfort and refuge during times of grieving. Formally the structure reminds the community of its function as it appears to be reaching and stretching skyward, potentially expressing how those within and are longing and reaching for those they have lost.

*Awarded the Ventulett Distinguished Chair Prize