Monika Berstis

-------------------------------------------------------------------
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
-------------------------------------------------------------------
  architecture | lamps | other | CV, etc. | contact
-------------------------------------------------------------------
  academic * professional
-------------------------------------------------------------------
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------

This theory-based studio explores what it is to design “a room for a night,” a space of transience. The site for this motel is a strip of land between a highway and its frontage road, currently visited only in passing by users of a city bike trail. At night the site dissolves into vacancy. The design for this motel romanticizes disconnectivity and drama, offerating little moderation between land and highway. Individual motel rooms float over the ground, shadowed by beds of gravel and stone underneath. A long structure houses the motel office, a cafe, laundromat, and parking along the access road, bracketing off the site with a hard border to a residential area on the other side. The dramatic quality of the space is amplified by cars’ headlights passing the isolated swath of land at high speeds. Individual rooms are lit by skylights or translucent walls, admitting only abstract images and light. The anonymity of interior space references a plane of thought and memory as opposed to physical location.

                                                             <  >
  UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN, 2004
  critic: Christine Mueller
  highway motel
-------------------------------------------------------------------

  ©2015