This video is not intended to trivialize the pursuit of participatory/moving architecture, rather to celebrate and entertain in light of commencement following 6 years time served at the College of Architecture.



New Strategies for Physical Space: Participatory Architecture
National Museum of the American Landscape
The National Mall, Washington, D.C.
Ben Jourdan Prof. Doug Jackson University of Nebraska -- Lincoln Spring 2008

In today's society we are accustomed to variety, choice and constant change. We are able to select consumer goods from a vast array of product variation, and the technology the world has become absorbed with is always changing and updating. This becomes problematic for unchanging architecture.

Architecture which does not keep in step with our changing society faces the threat of being relegated to background static, while we engage in our self created worlds through the internet, mobile phones and television. The creation of architecture which is more participatory or physically engaging provides a solution to this dilemma. By creating spaces that physically change and engage the user, architecture connects on a personal and experiential level, thus, ultimately addressing the constant change we have come to know as a society.

The vehicle for demonstrating this need for a participatory architecture lies in the design of a National Museum of the American Landscape, for the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) in Washington, D.C.

CLUI is an organization that specializes in land use across the United States and puts on exhibits intended to reintroduce people to the American landscape. CLUI has set up a network of American Land Museums across the U.S., and has created a land use database as the primary means for informing the public on the nation's land uses. This website in itself is a primary illustration of how we as a society have come to know and expect variety, and the ability to experience places without having actually visited them.

With this information in mind, the design of the museum seeks to create an engagement between the user of the museum, the content of the museum and the physical place of the national mall.

The museum is experienced primarily on the surface of the mall. Modules containing individual displays of land uses throughout the country are summoned up by the users from the ground through the use of a remote tour guide, allowing the user to actively change the physical space of the mall all while accessing or dismissing each unit depending on the content inside, or for spatial satisfaction.

In addition to the actual manipulation by the user of the modules, the units themselves are designed to be relocated to the American Land Museums and locations in the land use database to act as ambassadors of the National Museum of the American Landscape. Three of the 8'x12'x10' modules stack on a double low trailer for transportation to previously existing and new sites in the database, allowing the center to acquire new land use information, and constantly update over time.