How Motion Can Bring Us Together Through Architecture

Tilt Stage by Jacob Esocoff.

As the world operates now, humans come together within metropolitan spaces through inconvenient means--whether jammed like sardines in an elevator, a too-small apartment complex, or a crowded movie theater. Much of architecture guides our motion, and so when we pause to look around and examine the spaces we inhabit, we realize that our lives are often defined by the lack of movement.

But what if buildings were thought of as more than glorified cages?

Through the way it dictates how inhabitants operate within its structure, architecture may be able to bring us together a little more purposefully. Jacob Esocoff explores this idea in his monograph In Motion. As the title alludes, the book is a collection of five conceptualizations of buildings that sculpt social activity by re-thinking how motion is introduced and incouraged within their spaces.

With a background in dance and street performance, Esocoff imagines a new way of living, where architecture and the cities it constructs move with the fluidity and grace of a dancer

A Health Club That Works Out With You

Divided into ten single-occupancy tunnels, Esocoff’s version of a health club looks like a beehive designed by Picasso. A pedestrian moves through each meditation tunnel as dictated by its gradually-varying abstract coils.

The shapes are geometric openings in the structure…

…designed from the blueprint of Esocoff’s own patterned movements.

At the end of each tunnel, a user is guided back out onto the sidewalk, newly refreshed from motion-based meditation, through an opening in the structure’s facade. It’s like dancing your way to spiritual wellbeing.

Residence For Choreographers 

It must be incredibly boring for someone who makes a living filling empty spaces with gyrating bodies to live in flat spaces. Enter Tilt Stage. Designed to be an occupancy for choreographers, each building is arranged into ten towers outfitted for living, performing, and performance viewing needs.

Every tower is occupied by a sole choreographer whose living space makes up its top portion and whose designated performance area makes up the portion below.

The floors are tilted, and can further tilt according to a dancer’s needs. This makes it possible for people to live in structures better suited for their physical gifts, all while offering a haven for location-defined dance arrangements.

Storage With A Curator’s Touch

Out of sight, out of mind. The act of storage abuses this old truth, and in turn, makes us all less aware of the bonds we should keep with our possessions. The Storage Museum seeks to change all that.

Much like a museum does, this storage center stores objects in visually alluring ways so as to always remind us of the value of their existence.

Those who are strapped for space must also carry their objects up ramped floors--the noted weight serving as an internalization tool for users about to “part” with their items.

Subway Stations As Public Forums

Most subway platforms have public performers speckled across their real estate. But what if the whole station itself were a stage for the commuting masses?

Subway Theatre is a facade with two functions: to serve as a site that links to a real subway station, and as a disguised public performance space that’s revealed through architectural trickery.

The flat space’s floors can be raised or lowered with triangular apertures.

Once revealed, the new forum is designed to facilitate congregation of peoples. The human-arranged topography also provides splashes of dramatic lighting and seating accenture to round out its theatrical backbone.

Brothel With A New Angle

As taboo as they might be, even brothels serve as example of places that can use a splash of design help. As they stand, where patrons must walk in through a perpendicular arrangement such as a door, they’re spaces that require great determination to enter. Drift Brothel, through the expert use of oblique angles, semitransparent glass, ramped floors, and ever-taller enclosure walls, redesigns their point of entry. By doing so, it makes a visit to said establishment a more intimate affair.

Like with sexual freedom, there are no walls within its space, rather just suggestions of those walls. Patrons can drift in from the street without being fully aware that they’ve entered a new space. And are then free to drift through its oddly-shaped angles at their leisure.

Once inside the belly of the beast, an individual can seek refuge and intimacy within taller, more private, cells. From there, they’re free to leave just as they arrived; no doors involved.