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This team of four began with the idea of turning the island into a sinking ghost ship, with the theme- Ship of Fools.

Ultimately, the focus of the entry was to engage the smallpox hospital ruin with new programmatic elements in such a way as to recombine their identities (smallpox hospital as artifact and memorial, performance center as vision and spirit) to create a more intense experience than either one alone. The resulting attitude becomes one of adaptive reuse rather than of restoration.

The bifurcated needle, used to eradicate smallpox, is our formal base. The board features their historic research, an exploded diagram to display the program, and a rendering to express the spirit of their intentions, which was to create a vision of an enthralling, inspiring new place that would incorporate, not turn away from, the Island’s tumultuous past. The submission focuses on this vision, on a gesture, of what they thought was appropriate for the site: an innovative integration of current program needs with historical references.

This team chose to participate in the Southpoint competition because of the Island’s history as a site where experiments and research in both medicine and the penal system is just so loaded and contradictory. Their research focused on the history of the spread, treatment and science of infectious disease, smallpox in particular. They were really interested in pandemics i.e. H5N1.