LYNN, MA | UNDER CONSTRUCTION | ADAPTIVE REUSE
A headquarters for a condom company with a rich queer, art, and public health history is inserted into a former industrial dairy & creamery. Interiors are filtered and partitioned through a series of soft and perceptually malleable architectural surfaces in place of normative walls. Chain mail curtain, acoustic sheers, dichroic films, and mirrors abound, each operating on sight, sound, publicness, and privacy. The language of domestic space, full of textiles and inviting softness, is borrowed as an adaptive response to the contemporary office environment.
The project takes on the adaptive reuse of a 45,000 square foot former industrial dairy & creamery as a core part of the revitalization of the city of Lynn, Massachusetts. Given the existing opaque and windowless industrial building shell, the design focused on a two-fold strategy of apertures and scrims to introduce shafts of light into the dark cubic interior while softening, filtering, and moderating its effects according to the needs of each working space.
On the lower level assembly floor, punched openings at a range of sizes and heights allow for diverse shafts of light to penetrate the deep plan, providing a sense of exteriority. On the upper level office, these punched openings are filtered through a series of adjustable textile surfaces, facilitating both desires for domestic softness and a need for adaptability over time.
These strategies seek to playfully reconceptualize the construction and performance of the architectural wall, in alignment with the company’s attitude towards both material engineering and advocacy. Global Protection currently manufactures the world’s thinnest condom, infused with graphene for heat transfer and strength. The company also values playfulness in service of series ends; the company had its start as a safe sex campaign on the campus of Tufts University during the peak of the AIDS crisis (Jumbo the Elephant says: Wrap your Trunk!), which then grew into CondomWorld -- a novelty store often frequented by bachelorettes which had a serious mission: to make condoms playfully sexy in order to drive adoption and use. Today, Global Protection partners with cultural icons such as Tom of Finland, and public health partners such as state health agencies and Planned Parenthood.