SEAPORT FILM STUDIO
Core II Studio
Harvard Graduate School of Design
Instructor: Elizabeth Christoforetti
This project is a film studio that occupies a graywater site in the Seaport District of Boston, and is based on precedent analysis of the Parthenon for its capacities as a giant “shed”, the likes of which are necessary for film productions that must have architecturally neutral spaces for the creation of sets and invented worlds.
The building co-opts the hierarchies implied by the peripteral plan of the Parthenon in order to place soundstages in the privileged temple center, and vehicular circulation and supporting human activity on the periphery. Spaces of human movement are organized in enfilade, allowing the activities involved in film production to become processional, and the living “frieze” of the new building, while trucks circulate above and below. An extruded and massively outsized crown molding profile wraps all vehicular circulation, acting as both an index of truck movement and a new, destabilized column capital for the building. This volume wraps but does not touch the core of soundstages, only meeting at strategic points of human and truck cargo dropoff in order to preserve the acoustic isolation of the soundstages. Columns start out cylindrical, but morph into cross forms at the level of human occupation, enabling a gridded delineation of space therein. The stylobate of the Parthenon is extended into a stepped forecourt that also raises part of the building above projected sea level rise, while a sunken water-facing soundstage embraces it.