NASA JET PROPULSION LAB, ROBOTIC STONEHENGE

Year: 2016

Location: Pasadena, CA

Team: Guvenc Ozel

ROBOTIC STONEHENGE:

A FUNCTIONAL MONUMENT TO INTENSE PRODUCTIVITY AND SIMULTANEOUS LEISURE

As a part of a research collaboration between UCLA CityLab on new modes of workspaces,  Ozel Office proposed a landscape feature for the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab Pasadena Campus. The outdoor scheme focuses on the interchangeable fluctuating relationship between work and leisure in a day. Digital media and extreme mobility reconstructs the relationship between what is considered to be labour and leisure. As work is no longer confined in the traditional business hours, a professional’s day is no longer segmented between work time and downtime. As going in and out of focus is constantly in flux through direct access to emails, spreadsheets, colleagues and social media, productivity becomes a moving target. In this new work context of extreme mobility, intense focus and inevitable time wasting, new environments need to provide a multiplicity of contexts simultaneously in order to create potential scenarios of intense activity and spontaneous recreation.

Operating within the context of cyclical productivity, the Robotic Stonehenge is a functional monument to work and leisure. Organized in a circular form subdivided into 4 distinct activities, a robotically actuated canopy allows for on­demand transforming modes of privacy and shade. As the distinct zones of isolated focus, hedonistic relaxation, public presentation and team collaboration is formally conjoined, the probability to achieve mental zones of productivity is enhanced.