The Intermediate

Professor Laura Salazar
Syracuse University School of Architecture

Change. Instability. Nomad. Expat. Just getting settled and picking up to move again. Culture shock. Adaptation. Assimilation. The life of a constantly moving individual relies on embracing new environments. Through the nomadic unreliable pattern of moving home, instability becomes expectation. This ever-moving individual becomes an amalgamation of different cultures. Yet, the atrium plan is about centrality, grounding, centering the self, the family, the home, the street, the city. All other rooms are secondary to the sacred space of the atrium. The secondary rooms radiate around the atrium. Each room not only connects from one to the next, creating a sequence of experience, but also leads directly to the atrium. No matter which room one resides in, you are always called back to the atrium, to the pause, to the grounding of space and individual.