Forest Ring

Competition
November 2011

FOREST RING is an attempt to reconcile the deliberate geometry of architecture with the indifference of nature, understanding that the constructions and orders of humankind are inevitably dissolved by the natural scale. My intention is to examine our relationship with nature through a building whose geometries succumb to natural forces.

The project is delicately sited in a forest clearing to minimize disturbing existing trees while inscribing a perfect circle within it, thereby suggesting a latent order in the wildness of the forest. Clad with mirrored panels, the building itself is nearly invisible, its facade succumbing to the forest around it.
Upon crossing the threshold of the ring, the visitor finds himself in a strange space between forest and building, a clearing of metal grating punctuated by curious geometric planters. The galleries and classrooms can be seen through the metal grate floor in a labyrinthine lower level, reached by a spiral ramp that emphasizes the ring's perimeter. The boundary between indoors and out is easily and frequently transgressed as the visitor moves freely about voids and galleries and thresholds: architecture, mediated by nature, is no longer a container that shelters us from nature but a frame for our journey through it.

Here, we realize the false dichotomy between architecture and nature and learn to consider them as one.