Virus 3000

Project Team: Brittany Drapac

Columbia University GSAPP: Advanced Studio / Alistair Gill + Veronika Schmid with Daniel Ruzeu

Date: Sept. 2010-Dec. 2010

Site: Veliefendi Racecourse, Istanbul, Turkey

Program: Hippodrome and entertainment center

Size: 26 million square feet, or 596 acres

Occupancy: 7,600 people

Year: 3000. A new liquid-viral species has evolved in Istanbul that mimics human form and can survive by feeding off the non-living. Buildings react to contaminates by replicating themselves, as the virus dissolves surface and structure. Yesterday’s waste is reconstructed at the Veliefendi Racetrack, growing in parallel with tonight’s viral movement. The virus morphs from liquid to human, and sensors expand from its body as filament-like tracking devices to search the city for valuable architectural nutrients. The virus then imprints each building--in the game, triggering a motion sensor to liquefy and begin feeding on the building’s specific attributes.

Since absorption must yield waste, the attributes react with viral movement to produce waste constructions. As the virus feeds throughout the night, it goes through a variety of actions that directly link to the growth patterns of its by-products. Mapping building coordinates: waste pollinates; sensor movement between buildings: waste stretches; phase changing: waste liquefies; imprinting and feeding: waste burrows into the ground; fending off competing strains: waste overlaps on itself. The intensity of the viral action, or level of energy used, directly relates to the scale of the waste growth, which is simultaneously affected as the buildings are infected.