#grottogalleries

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Grotto Galleries | ground floor plan

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Grotto Galleries | upper basement plan

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Grotto Galleries | lower basement plan

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Grotto Galleries | diagram of formal conception

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Grotto Galleries in Manitoga

grotto definition: A grotto (Italian grotta and French grotte) is any type of natural or artificial cave that is associated with modern, historic, or prehistoric use by humans. When it is not an artificial garden feature, a grotto is often a small cave near water and often flooded or liable to flood at high tide.

Tension between the inside and the outside

“Architecture occurs at the meeting of interior and exterior forces of use and space,” Robert Venturi says in the end of the 9th chapter of Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. This meeting point, this threshold between inside and outside is one of the main elements that drives the design of the Grotto Galleries.

The new pond, central point

Another driving force is in line with the attitude in which Russel Wright approached in designing Dragon Rock and Manitoga—the total design of the entire site, an artificial nature—thus, a significant design move around which gallery complex centers itself is the addition of a new pond upstream, a couple of feet above the “waterfall” before the quarry pond.

Parti, primitive geometries (part-to-whole), approach to topography

Besides creating a new pond entirely, the approach to the existing topography is that in which the ground around the building complex will be shaped to conform to the formal parti to which the design follows. In other words, this project is not shy about completely altering the topography around it.

Primitive geometries of a rectangular prism and various sizes of cones make up the main form of the building and indents onto the site. A rectangular prism (whole) contains the whole project, its boundaries in close relation with the proportions and location of the Russel Wright house. Within the prism are (part) clusters of cones, organized radially around the center point of the new pond. There are three clusters: clusters that make up the indents for the new circulation of water, clusters that make up the solid spaces of the galleries, and clusters that cut into the solid spaces. Some of the cones from the clusters extend beyond bounding box and begin to shape the topography around it. There are moments where the topography is altered so that existing trails could spill into the implied void of a cone, there are moments where the topography swallows the building in correspondence with the shape of the solid cone its swallows. A continuity between ground and figure is the main conversation that occurs in this project.