Mega: An exploration about the human experience in the abnormally large

Abstract

During the experimental era of the 60s, the megastructure was not uncommon to see in ar-chitectural proposals of future cities. It can be explained as a speculative urban planning concept which imagines parts of or the whole urban fabric to be intertwined into one giant single structure. It was seen as a possible way to address challenges posed by urbanization and fast population growth and was, in other words, not purely fantasy, but believed to be critical to future cities. However, critics of the megastructures argue that their abnormous size and complexity not only makes them economically insubstantial, but also environmentally and socially unsustai-nable with a risk of generating isolated and homogenous societies. Large projects always have a tendency towards monotony, and the need for variety in human experience is often forgotten. This thesis positions itself around the hypothesis that looking at the world today, the human ex-perience has become more valuable, and aims to investigate the concept of a megastructure through a human scale perspective. Is it possible for humans to connect to something that massive? To do this, design explorations on different scales revolving around connections to matter, space and context have been curated. These explorations were then reworked through dif-ferent means of representation, to investigate how they can be represented with a sense of texture, weight, and tactility, capable of conveying meaning and emotion in a way that is both subtle and powerful, but also tell a story and engage with their users in a deeper and more meaningful way. The design proposal is a product of its own design process and resulted in a megastructure in co-existence with an existing structure, the Älvsborgsbridge, in Gothenburg. The structure is called “The Connector” and emphasizes connections to the elements, materiality, to other human beings, and to mother earth herself.