SYNCHRONICITY 2008
NO HEAR, NO SEE
Designed for the competition and exhibition, What Would you do with the Breuer Building?, EarthSky Void is IwamotoScott’s proposal to save and transform Breuer’s Tower (his only built skyscraper), in Cleveland Ohio. While the county government planned to demolish Breuer’s buildings on the downtown site, Earth Sky Void proposes to recycle, reuse and incorporate all of the site’s existing structures.
A second tower is proposed alongside the Breuer tower, as he envisioned in his original masterplan . Ultimately, the project moves beyond the notion of ‘tower as object’ toward a more reciprocal relationship, wherein tower, urban fabric, earthwork and sky begin to synthesize through the strategic deployment of void space. Completing the new structure is a City Sky Room with roof terraces that offer views of the Cleveland skyline and Lake Erie beyond. EarthSky Void employs a structural skin developed as a gradient porous surface generated from the pattern of Breuer’s modular pre-cast façade. Cladding the Breuer tower’s south face is a transparent photovoltaic second skin.