EUGENE TSSUI DESIGNS THE WORLD’S FIRST “QUANTUM LOOP” (MOBIUS STRIP) BUILDING FOR MOUNT SHASTA, CALIFORNIA, OVER-LOOKING THE 4 SQUARE ACRE PARKING AREA FOR THE 4 ACRE TELOS/INTERLANGUA TRUE ZERO ENERGY UNDERGROUND CONVENTION CENTER, SPRING HILL DRIVE, MOUNT SHASTA, CALIFORNIA, USA.
First discovered by German mathematician, Johann Benedict Listing in 1851, but not published, until August Ferdinand Mobius published it in 1858, the Listing/Mobius Strip is a mathematical conundrum, which creates a two-sided 3D form with only one side. It’s like a strip of paper twisted once and re-connected.
In built form, the building has a single surface where the front becomes the back, and the back becomes the front, making it impossible to divide the two. This would be the first ever existing architectural design and structure of a Listing/Mobius strip. One-third of the south portion of the structure is cantilevered from two, tree-like pylon support structures, that are rooted 20 feet into the ground for lateral support. This gives the structure it’s lightweight, soaring effect, further emphasized by its metallic reflectivity from the moving angles of the day-time sun. It shimmers and comes alive by the sun’s rays.
Made of wood, for minimum embedded energy expenditure, and sheathed in zinc galvanized sheet metal, for water and fire-proofing, standing three-stories high and 200 feet in length, this walkable structure is designed to create a “time warp” experience where walking from one end of the building to the other, the viewer walks from the inside to the outside and inside again without passing through any barriers.
The Listing/Mobius Strip structure is used as a car parking security viewing area for visitors after parking their cars and as an introductory orientation experience before entering the main underground convention center. The building is oriented exactly north/south on a magnetic compass.
This is a 2500 square foot security and office building that over-looks the parking area for safety. It’s on the extreme north side of the 8 acre site, separate from the underground convention center. But, it is also much more than that because it’s really designed to experience what it would be like to walk the surfaces of a Listing/Mobius Strip, traveling from a frontal surface to a posterior surface, and back again, without stopping. It’s a kind of space/time warp, in three dimensions. It’s never been done before. It’s a “Quantum Loop”. It sets the stage for experiencing the unknown, as people walk from the parking area, to the convention center. At the center of the structure is a partially underground office, cafeteria, lecture platform, and storage areas. A roof porch acts as a covered viewing area to survey the entire parked car lot as well as maintenance of the Listing/Mobius structure.
Planning approval applications will be submitted this month and 3D, color renderings, will follow shortly on Facebook.
Drawings hand-drawn by Eugene Tssui and digitized by Jay Davis
CONSIDER:
Whatever we take on, why not challenge yourself to go beyond the confines of definition, and develop it to the point of creating new characteristics and a new definition? Transform it to another level of comprehension! Why not do this in everything we study and develop? Entering into the realm of the unknown makes for a fascinating way of life. Isn’t this what we are all here for? Isn’t this the true nature of being human?
This is it! The culmination of 30 years of experimentation… It’s never been done and never been tried… It will turn the world of architecture upside-down: A building that becomes the earth; where the space is everything–not the body, and another building, that spans multiple dimensions in a space-time continuum. A re-definition of architecture, space, and structure. It’s the true return to the feminine, the invisible, the spirit, and not the physical body. It defies everything we ever believed architecture to be.
As time passes I grow more and more appalled at how so many of us, and so much of the world, continues to operate by lies and euphemism, and we dangerously neglect making any effort to seek the truth. We have become lazy and fearful and we no longer value our conscience. Many of our decisions are based on commonplace social conditioning and fears and we shutter to think and question for ourselves. Money, security, and image, become our over-riding motivation and we grow further and further from our deeper conscience, which, in the final analysis, is the only thing that truly gives ourselves meaning, heart-felt value, and contentment. We strive for a false image that evades our true personality and conscience, and whatever we create, is thus imbued with this same hypocrisy and falsehood. The result is superficial image-making that intrigues and hides its true destructiveness.
