arkitrave design portfolio

border station

The site is at the edge of Buffalo's Black Rock neighborhood and Squaw Island, a mostly vacant island with a railroad bridge to Canada. The project was an exploration of surveillance and border issues.

Beginning with a study of minimalist music, the idea of a fixed, linear border (the dotted line on a map) was reinterpreted to be a field condition. The site is defined by two grids, one oriented N-S and one oriented to the I-190.

The border projected on the surface of the site, which is a massive digital display. As people move about the site, the state of the border shifts to accommodate their movement, and the country they are in is determined by their security clearance rather than their physical location on either side of a line. As the sophisticated electronic equipment surveils and accepts them into the United States, the screens display a different image or color under their feet or car to indicate that they have crossed the border.

The structures on the site act as viewing apertures, imaging the entire site and inhabitants and projecting them in a distorted form on screens both above and below grade.

architecture projects