Generic Specificity

Abstract

We no longer want to be generic. Instead, we strive for specificity. As a result specificity has become generic. As a cultural condition, this operates at all scales, from the city, to the building, to ourselves. In response this project proposes an architecture of generic specificity.

Generic specificity is a position that is both/and, at once versed in the efficiencies and familiarities of our generic environment and steeped in the delight and novelty embedded within the specific. While the generic scripts our interactions through their ubiquity, we know what it is and how to act around it, the specific leaves the door open instigating new engagements and marking a place within our memory. Choreographing a project that oscillates between these two poles allows architecture to occupy a refreshingly cool position.

Through an architectural technique of collage, a series of generic typologies are composed into a single building, a new innovation center for Chattanooga, Tennessee. The formal qualities of the exterior are echoed in five interior forms that produce moments of specificity within the generic open office. This both/and condition instigates a flicker between generic and specific conditions and in turn provokes an active engagement with both its users and context.