Fake Buildings

New Portfolio Site!

2011-01-24T16:40:00.003-05:00

Hello hello!

Sorry for the long hiatus! Thesis has come and gone, which means my time at MIT has ended as well. I am now living in Berkeley, CA, attempting to recover from the past 3.5 years. Part of that process is a new website with my design and photography work. Check it out at:

www.bucksleeper.com

It is still being populated, so be sure to check back!
Buck

Fresh from the Maldives

2010-07-28T14:25:00.005-04:00

Immediately after arriving in the Maldives my laptop died with a quiet finality. As such, I was unable to post but spent the time instead writing and drawing in my notebook and exploring with my camera. I have just arrived in Paris after spending some time in Dubai, Italy, and briefly Switzerland, and will be here for several days before going to Amsterdam for a week to check out their long heritage of dykes and dams.

The Maldives was a total success- I managed to visit 6 islands in my attempt to discover the unseen economies that support its tourist industries, and scoured its shores for evidence of marine erosion and the many strategies to combat increased coastal vulnerability. Perhaps most fascinating is the discovery that nobody in the Maldives seems actually much concerned about the prospect of global warming. There are, for many people, more immediate concerns, such as increasing agricultural yields, curtailing political corruption, and attracting international investors. But in the long term, most Maldivians seem to have sufficient faith in the adaptability of the islands through the growth and deposition of coral. However, many islands have been developed to the point where they are no longer adaptable, either because they are entirely capped in concrete, or because the encroachment of boats and buildings have devastated the local reefs. Additionally, I was told several times by officials that the Maldives is actually trying to tone down the impending disaster rhetoric, as it has been scaring off potential developers.

A few pictures:

Goods are loaded into the upper warehouse of a store near the commercial

port in Male'. Nearby, fish and fruits and vegetables also arrive by boat from

local islands.

Concrete tetrapods (those shown here are a gift from Japan in 1988) protect
the coast while allowing waves to circulate through, thereby promoting cleaner
harbor waters and reducing displacement as wave action moves around the pods instead of
just against them.

The Maldives is essentially a closed system. All garbage is either reused, recycled,
or displaced to Thilafushi (a nearby reef) where it is pushed into the ocean to
form new land for industrial and manufacturing use.

Flood Gates

2010-06-25T07:16:00.006-04:00

The Bonnet Carre gates, viewed from below

A crane on rails is used to open and close individual sluices

A water meter reads as high as 25', three less than the storm surge during Katrina

Swimmers below Highway 10

Lake Pontchartrain

A communications station inside the Spillway

About 12 miles north of New Orleans, a portion of the upper bank of the Mississippi gives way to 350 crane operated sluice gates, forming the massive entry point of the Bonnet Carre Spillway. The spillway is effectively a 7600-acre channel shaped basin linking the river to Lake Pontchartrain, allowing flood waters to be bled off the Mississippi before they inundate the city downriver.

Since 1937, the sluices have been opened only nine times (not during Katrina), typically for a period of 30-60 days until the water levels have receded to safe conditions. Otherwise, the spillway is open for recreation and game habitat, with the understanding that it could be called into action at anytime. When we visited it earlier in the week, it was almost entirely uninhabited, with the exception of a few people fishing, a car load of kids swimming under highway 10 (which crosses the site on raised pylons) and an abandoned radio-controlled airplane club runway. Otherwise, the landscape is dotted with bulldozers, evidence of the common practice of borrowing fill from the spillway to shore up the city's levees or individual homes. The beauty of this arrangement is that as excavation expands the basin, the spillway becomes more effective, and the levee defenses of New Orleans are correspondingly improved.

The precedent it sets from an architectural point of view is pretty compelling: in an otherwise flat environment, the strategic excavation and deposition of ground material can have dual benefits. Depending on flood conditions, a the Bonnet Carre could then be used to collect sediment that could be dredged and repositioned as fill or fertilizer, thus creating a landscape-scaled machine for land production. In the Maldives, I imagine an island that has been pocketed with channels and pools open to the sea that could collect coral broken during the two annual monsoons. Once loaded onto barges, the material could be sold to area resorts looking to raise their own islands. In calmer parts of the year, these pools could be employed to raise fish, or collect freshwater. These landscapes would be fantastic, and might themselves constitute a new type of tourist destination piggybacked onto an expanding market of territorial expansion. Twice a year the island would be flooded and systematically dredged and sold. Hotels rooms would be twice the price.

Google Earth view of gates on North bank of Mississippi River

The 7600-acre Spillway, connecting the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain

Making It Right

2010-06-15T09:23:00.004-04:00

New Orleans' Industrial Canal which toppled its levees to flood
the Lower 9th Ward during Katrina. The levee, on the right, has since been replaced.

Thom Mayne's Float House. Built by students at UCLA and trucked onsite.

The Lower 9th Ward, partially reconstructed by Make It Right.

Reconstructed levee, viewed from inside the Lower 9th.

The Brad Pitt pet project "Make It Right" has been working diligently building homes in the flood ravaged Lower 9th Ward. The organization has several agendas, primarily to reconstruct a residential fabric, provide advocacy for local homeowners, and to design and build a series of single-family housing prototypes. That there are 30 constructed homes and 12 more coming on line in the next 6 months is evidence of their great success, but I wonder if they don't suffer from too many decision makers in the progress.

The general premise of the project was to invite a consortium of domestic and international architects, some quite well known (Shigaru Ban, Frank Gehry) to submit designs for a catalog, from which locals pick a design and tailor it to their specific preferences before construction. Such modifications considered include window placement, siding type and color, overall footprint, and layout. While intrinsically I value the participation of the home owner, I wonder if their involvement doesn't compromise other architectural agendas of the project relating to performance, form, and aesthetics. That's me speaking as an architect. From the perspective of the owner, I wonder if having a Frank Gehry around doesn't make your journey to homeownership that much more problematic, as particular ideas about programming and form which make them archtecturally interesting are not necessarily consisent with your own ambitions or lifestyle.

The real potential (and success so far) of this project is its position as an urban laboratory. As a collection of carefully crafted and considered projects, Make It Right can deploy envelopes, materials, and mechanical systems in an effort to produce a building that is perfectly tuned for Lousiana's heat, humidity, and flood danger. But if that's the case, let's stop looking at it within the context of social activism and simply allow the crisis of Katrina to be the subtext for its existense. I suppose I find the vernacular predilections of the region to be too restricting to the design process: Make It Right is certainly progressive, but it is restrained so far to variations on local construction techniques and types. The most avante garde of the built projects is Thom Mayne's Float House which he built in California with a team of students at UCLA. The Float House is built to act as a boat, rising up on its concrete and polystyrene deck on two steel pins in the event of another break in the levee. The primary flood aversion strategy of homes in the New Orleans region is to literally raise them above the worst-case-scenario level. I met a man in the French Quarter who's sister had rebuilt her house in New Orleans East sixteen feet off the ground. The Float House presents an interesting compromise: at three-feet above grade it can maintain a close connection to the social fabric of the community, but during an emergency switches modes passively to protect occupants and property.

Moving forward, the concept of a forming an institution dedicated to the production of prototypes could be applicable to the immediate problems of the Maldives. I can imagine a school or a series of workshops attached to a materials manufacturing plant to design and deploy prototypes to resorts and remote islands, quickly fine tuning designs before scaling up to a national relief effort. Many thanks again to Make It Right for showing me around their project in New Orleans.

Tall Wall

2010-06-09T10:50:00.002-04:00

Just a few quick pictures from the Lake Borgne Barrier on the Industrial Canal outside of New Orleans. More later.

In the French Quarter

2010-06-06T22:52:00.008-04:00

A few thoughts:

I spent my first full day in the oldest part of New Orleans, the French Quarter, and it has become increasingly clear that to get a better sense of the larger water management issues I'll have to wait until tomorrow when I pick up my car. In the French Quarter buildings are built directly on the street with occupied ground floors, evidence that the original settlement was built on higher ground to begin with. Areas that are prone to flooding (such as the Lower 9th Ward, New Orleans East, and St. Bernard Parish) developed later with the advent of A. Baldwin Wood's Screw Pump in 1913. This highly efficient device stabilized water levels throughout New Orleans, opening further land to building as well as reducing instances of Yellow Fever and Malaria. Though pumping technologies have been instrumental in the rapid expansion of the city, a complete dependence upon them renders it fatally vulnerable in the event of any sort of failure.

A very wet Bourbon Street.

Today's findings are largely anecdotal, but I have tried to track down primary source materials that back them up:

1) It's especially interesting what happens to land ownership during a crisis. In parts of Indonesia and the Maldives, the 2004 tsunami wiped out large parts of coastline from which residents were relocated, and in their absence, these areas were redeveloped into lucrative beachside resorts. In New Orleans, legislation from the Mayor's Office of Recovery and Development Administration establishes criteria for which a property can be seized, demolished, and sold if considered to be 'blight' or a 'public nuisance.' Such violations include chronic vacancy, failing to meet housing code, and unsanitary living conditions. This is a diffucult precedent considering Katrina and Rita destroyed 350,000 homes. With many homes left standing or being rebuilt by individual owners, the resulting sites are irregular but ubiquitous. This amorphous space could be the city's primary architectural task; rather than attempting to simply redesign the single family home, a systematic and scalable deployment of parts might define the next architectural paradigm for the city, even as it conforms to and celebrates existing fabric.
More on housing blight available in the ORDA code enforcement handbook.

2) Of course the big news here is no longer Katrina, but the Deep Water drilling platform which exploded on April 20th. Evidence of this massive catastrophe in the heart of New Orleans is subtle- a group of tourists wearing "spill baby spill" tshirts, and at Broussard's restaurant, the kitchen was out of the local fish entrees.

3) On June 3rd the White House demanded that BP finance much of a project to create large sand berms to top the oil from coming ashore, which BP has resited by claimin it is a hurricane relief project. By all estimates, the 50-100 miles would do both... Both the White House and the governor's office would be wise to leverage the conditions of this current crisis to protect the city from the next one. The project is estimated to cost $360 million.

Tomorrow I have three main events:

First, a visit to the Bonnet Carre Spillway, which is a 7600-acre basin to collect water in a surge event: excavated soil becomes the base material for expanding area levees. Win-win. When not in use (it has been activated 9 times since 1937) it acts as habitat and game reserve. Win again.

Next, a local resident suggested I drive St Claude Avenue to explore a cross section of the neighborhoods most affected (and still affected) by Katrina's flooding.

And finally, I have several appointments in tall buildings to take some pictures from their upper floors. Very classy.

There are a lot of these, but then again, I'm looking for them.

Last Resort: New Orleans Day 1

2010-06-06T19:32:00.005-04:00

(June 05, 2010)
And so begins the traveling component of Last Resort. The premise of this project is at first quite simple: locate coastal regions at risk from rising sea levels, investigating effects upon the urban landscape and the reaction as manifested through architecture and infrastructure. This is not a project about maintaining the status quo, but leverages a radical future landscape as the primary instigator for the exploration of new architecture types. With that in mind, I am equally interested in exploring emerging technologies in energy and building as well as the integration of economies to facilitate a more resilient mode of development.

A drainage canal in Kenner, Louisiana visible just before landing at the Louis Armstrong Airport.

The reclamation or defense of livable coastal territories has historically fallen into one of two categories: the “mega” (think the Aswan Damn, or the Thames Barrier) sponsored by the state; and the “micro” (typically individual houses), supported by individuals and proliferated through an open market. I will travel to five locations at significant risk to inundation: New Orleans, the Maldives, Dubai, the Netherlands, and San Francisco Bay. As I am writing, we have just reached our cruising altitude of 37000 feet enroute from San Francisco, where I am starting my journey, through to Chicago, and then New Orleans. That my research is contributing the problem at hand is not lost on me. I submit that my willingness to burn this much fossil fuel is not an affront to environmentalism, but indicative of a larger issue: ecological profiles are changing rapidly throughout the world, and even a complete (and unlikely) reversal of CO2 emissions might be too late.

Interstate 10, with New Orleans Skyline and Superdome visible center background

I know that sounds horribly cynical, but for the time being there is no better way to gather a wider image of what is at stake. Though coastal landscapes of the 22nd century might be radically different than they are today, with some foresight and a dash of creativity, they might be completely awesome, more attuned to their specific environments, and free from dependence of fossil fuels. Through the projection of a catastrophic condition, it is possible to produce prototypes for immediate implementation in areas already at risk.

With the generous support of the Schlossman Foundation and Kohn Penderson Fox's 2010 Traveling Fellowship, I will research and photograph a series of small scale projects, such as the Dutch Duravermeer floating houses outside of Rotterdam and the Make It Right houses in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward, as well as large scale infrastructures including a man-made island for 150,000 climate refugees in the Maldives or the 2-mile long surge barrier on Louisiana's Inner Harbor Navigation Channel.

Upon returning to MIT in the Fall of 2010 I will focus my research on the Maldives, synthesizing my findings into a proposal for an incremental intervention that will anticipate a territorial demise. And so Last Resort has hijacked Fake Buildings, which has been my design and photography blog throughout grad school. Check back for periodic updates. My schedule is as follows:

June 5-10: New Orleans
June 19: Get married (!)
July 1-14: the Maldives
July 14-17: Dubai
July 26-August 8: the Netherlands
August 8-26: San Francisco

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Inundated

2010-04-30T00:42:00.004-04:00

Just a teaser!

But, more to come as soon as the semester winds down. Right now I am finishing up my last studio (!) with Nader Tehrani, on the design of an architecture school in Melbourne. Next up: thesis! My thesis, entitled "Last Resort?! A Tour Guide to Crisis in the Maldives" will be a probe into several architectural typologies for a sinking nation, with a specific interest in resort architecture. I'll be going in July, for two weeks!

Sorry the second image isn't larger, but here's the text:

Last Resort is siutated in the Republic of the Maldives, a low-lying island nation in the Indian Ocean. At an average height of one meter, the Maldives is projected to be entirely inundated by the year 2100. The conflation of rising sea levels and a burgeoning population provokes architectural intervention at a national scale.

The primary design project of this thesis is an exploration of aquatic urban programs, focusing on the resort, to faciliate a response to crisis that is strategic in the short term and enduring in the future. Last Resort adopts impending catastrophe not as a mandate for future “solutions” but as an opportunity to radicalize current paradigms.

The Maldives, a small nation of 350,000 in the Indian Ocean is best known for its white sand beaches, but it is quickly becoming the poster child for global climate change. With an average height across 1200 islands at only 1 meter, it is positioned to become the first state toppled by environmental catastrophe.

In May of 2009, The New York Times reported Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed’s proposal to create a sovereign wealth fund with which he plans to buy land elsewhere and move the entire nation. However, to move the Maldives is to abandon their economic and cultural heritage: without the warm oceans and resort-laden islands that drive tourism and fishing, the country would be unrecognizable.

This thesis will investigate the specific conditions of Male’, the Maldives capital city-island, using it as a base condition from which to generate architectural interventions formulated upon the impending crisis of sea level change. Those conditions are not limited simply to “problem” of catastrophe, but extend to encompass the “culture” of climate change as well. Soneva Gilli, a local resort island, will serve as a site for smaller interventions.

That Male’ is a dense, multi-programmed urban environment makes it ideal for speculation on the effects of climate change; I submit that it might be approached as an urban laboratory. Male’s population of 103,000 people on 1.9 square kilometers results in a density twice that of Manhattan, and reveals already the current (and accelerating) crisis of housing and territory shortage. In 2004 the Maldives began an expansion three miles to the North, on the artificial island of Hulhumale. Created by dredging material from the bottom of the seabed, as was done at the Palm Island and World developments in Dubai, the Maldives hopes to create a new community on a relatively higher (2 meters) piece of land that will house 80,000 people; it is an inadequate replacement for Male’ in terms of capacity, and is insufficient in dealing with the longer issue of continuity of the state.

Furthermore, the Maldives primary economic sector, tourism, might be leveraged as the crucial link to the international community, bringing an influx of foreign capital and culture into the equation. Traditionally tourism in the Maldives, as in many resort towns, has seen super-elite hotels placed in the most remarkable territories while the indigenous population base is relegated to marginal lands and squalid conditions. In a future where territory is incredibly scarce, this is a relationship that bears reexamination.

STAGE ZERO

2009-12-10T15:55:00.006-05:00

Another semester down...almost. Yesterday was the final review for Mark Goulthorpe's Stage Zero studio, which involved designing sound stages and other program for Plymouth Rock Studios in Massachusetts. My project is below, along with its written "manifesto..."

December 2010: After only 4 months of construction, Plymouth Rock is nearing completion on Pod Zero, an experimental redeployment of traditional studio programs and a large scale digital fabrication prototype. Typically, film studio place each of its programs in a separate building, achieving a certain degree of autonomy and privacy but denying entirely the social and intellectual exchange that might occur between teams. As we have seen in the Gensler master plan, Sound Stages, post production, utilities, the central rock theater, and administration offices are proposed as a series of objects in the landscape. By creating small, isolated nodes, this traditional approach is redundant in terms of its mechanical and vehicular infrastructure, as well as an excess amount of envelope exposed to the difficult new england weather.

Pod Zero proposes linking the disparate stages of production: the shoot, the edit, and the premiere, into a single unitary and continuous building. Each of these buildings is conceived of as a series of structural bays running along the existing topography to minimize cut and fill and utilize the ground's thermal mass. Each bay is orchestrated parametrically through a generative components model which controls for figure, span, structural depth, roof and wall slope, orientation to prevailing winds, and aperture for view and solar gain, responding plastically to the requirements of the programs encased within.

By twisting the building sectionally, a variety of structural and spatial typologies are produced, morphing from shear wall, to pitched roof, to moment frame. The sloping surfaces produce the raked floors of the auditoriums, provide sheltered outdoor areas, and permit light and ventilation into the central court. The frames are manufactured in three or four components out of fiberglass in area nautical fab labs, limited in size by the 100x150 foot mills used by boat manufactures, They are airlifted or trucked into place as required. There are two primary types of connections between pieces: fixed to carry moment or pinned to the extent that they are structurally viable (no more than three hinges).

Each unique element is created from a mold of milled polyurethane foam or a through a reusable rubber formwork over a customized frame. Monolithically cast fiberglass floor plates rest on shelves integrated into the primary columns. Each element is designed with stairs, seating, and infrastructural plugs premilled into their form, shifting labor and time from man to machine. Operable ETFE pillows negotiate the non-planar geometry between bays, with interlayers for shading and thermal insulation when necessary. Each program has specific relationship to the parametric model. The sound stages require a clear span of up to 150 feet, and are almost entirely opaque to reduce solar gain because of their heavy heat load from internal lighting equipment. The roof is deployed to open to the north and west, capturing indirect light and ventilation. The sound stages are designed with an interior skin of rubberized acoustic gills, which, when opened between shots, can help quickly cool the space and reduce the need for artificial lighting. Each stage is served by a scene shop, which contains all ancillary programs, such as costumes, electronics, and storage. These spaces are open directly to the structure, but maintain their orientation towards the North for passive lighting. At the end of the building, the width narrows to accommodate a block of administrative and production suites. Connected underground to the primary sound stage, it is from here that each individual film is managed and produced. On the courtyard side, the structural bays rotate to define a series of private and shared office suites. On the forested side, the aperture contracts, blocking light and noise for a flexible galley of rendering rooms. Throughout the building, individual columns can be expanded locally to accommodate fire stairs and elevators. Throughout the complex, the hollow structure doubles as utility shafts and ventilation ducts.

Each building has at its middle a program related to the cultural production of film: a series of theaters for premiere events, a conference hall and gallery for guild conventions, and a public mediateque devoted to cinematic theory. The three buildings together form the Pod, which shares an underground loading dock, thus minimizing paved surfaces on site. Above this service area the ground flows through the central courtyard in a pixelated derivation of the existing topography; square fiberglass planting basins creating discrete outdoor platforms that collectively shape an amphitheater for 1000 people. This central space and its adjacent programs provides a social anchor for Pod Zero; mediating between the relative isolation required of the sound stages and collective creative potential of its tenants.

FLIP

2009-11-30T09:20:00.004-05:00

I'm in the process of finishing up my final project for a photography class this Fall with Anne Whiston Spirn. My project is called Flip, a brief photographic essay of the Fort Point neighborhood in Boston. Click through for the full story.

http://web.mit.edu/bsleeper/www/index.html

Ferryscape: Yokohama Passenger Terminal

2009-08-26T14:35:00.009-04:00

When and if you get to the fish market in Tokyo, your next stop should almost certainly be the International Passenger Terminal in Yokohama. Designed by Foreign Office Architects (completed in 2002) it is only a quick subway ride away. You really can't miss it once you get to Yokohama- it's the giant crazy looking pier out in the water. In the architect's own words:

"Our proposal for the project start by declaring the site as an open public space and proposes to have the roof of the building as an open plaza, continuous with the surface of Yamashita Park as well as Akaranega Park. The project is then generated from a circulation diagram that aspires to eliminate the linear structure characteristic of piers, and the directionality of the circulation." -FOA

We spent about an hour here, and I was pretty disappointed to find out that much of the surface is actually closed to public access. Most every steep or planted area is understandably fenced, but then so are the amphitheaters and the forward long-span event hall. What we could see was totally amazing, though maybe a bit flatter than I had expected. The biggest surprise though was in the long-span folded structures: look for yourself, but the folded steel beams look more like a veneer to me... but then maybe they are covering the real steel beams inside.

Overall, this is an incredible piece of architecture. The self-imposed constraint of a limited material palette has yielded some truly wild forms that are both spatially transformative programatically validated.

Something Fishy

2009-08-17T12:01:00.005-04:00

The following images are taken at the Tsukiji Fish Market, in Tokyo. For more on the specifics of the market, check it out here. I've been several times now, once in January and again this June, and I can't say enough about what a truly wild place it is. If you get there early enough in the morning, around 4:30, many of the 450 different types of fish are still alive, collectively taking their final breaths as they are sorted, clubbed, and chopped into submission. Given the sheer quantity of death in this place there is surprisingly little gore, or even stench.

Beneath the chaos of this place is an ordered and efficient infrastructure. I think. Tiny motorized carts zip back and forth, linking such major nodes as the ice makers, the incinerator, boats bringing fish in, trucks taking fish out, the tuna auction houses, the production floors... it just keeps going. This is a place to be mapped.

YIELD

2009-08-11T15:22:00.004-04:00

Hooray!!!

The first collection of my photography has arrived! At the end of every project I wrap up my work into a small paperback collection, but Yield is the first catalog that draws from many trips, locations, and years. Inside this hardcover are 158 color and black and white photographs, organized loosely by geographical location. Here is the description from the inside:

Yield is a catalog of photographic studies from 2006 through 2009. I present this work not as a photographer but as a young architect, using the medium of photography to speculate on light and shadow, the consequences of form, and the behavior of material. Ironically, it is a collection of textures, patterns, places, and situations that have emerged or endured without (for the most part) the presence of the architect. Once formalized, accidental design becomes strategic design.

Yield refers to a general collection or take, of work produced through iteration, reassessment, and over time. Yield also describes a general phenomenon: the recognition of architectural vernacular as a contextual give and take, the patination of surface by weathering and use, and the opportunities for spatial and programmatic flexibility through a crafted ambiguity.

Likewise this publication is loose, largely ambiguous, and subject to change.

Yield is available at LULU.com and can also be downloaded there for free as an eBook.

Naha City, Okinawa

2009-08-02T14:16:00.005-04:00

My fiancee (woo!) and I recently got back from three weeks in Japan. We started visiting my brother in Tokyo and worked our way down, slowly but surely, through Kyoto, Nara, Osaka, Okinawa, and finally, to a small island called Tokashiki. The following two pictures are from our first few hours in Naha, the main city on Okinawa where we stayed before finding our way out to the islands. It was hot as hell, there were boats, and we were tired. I don't have much else to say about this place other than islands are crazy places to live. Lots of boats, and everything is imported. One restaurant we went to eat was even serving live Maine labstah. Crazy.

Shanghai-Rise

2009-08-01T11:28:00.006-04:00

Well what do you know, I am back from my blogging hiatus and ready to show off some more stuff. Regarding the end of the semester all I can say is that... it ended. And is over. And now it's time to move on. While architectural design was a bit of a disaster this year I feel like I've really gotten a lot of opportunities to improve on and expand my photography portfolio. Major trips this year include Tokyo in January, Shanghai in March, and then Tokyo-Kyoto-Osaka-Okinawa in June. And LA, and Vermont, and New York.

The following set of photographs is from our trip to Shanghai with MIT professor Stanford Anderson. It is, at first blush, a series of facades from high-rise housing in and on the outskirts of the city. Beyond the sheer scale of these housing projects what I find most interesting is the amount that the tenants have influenced their exteriors. As architects we expect a certain ambiguity to our plans with the understanding that people occupy space in varying ways, but there is little done to the exterior of buildings to accommodate change. Here you can see all manner of balconies, greenhouses, AC units, awnings, and planters added... and some at dizzying heights. What is revealed are the failures of these buildings- when faced with poor ventilation, shading, and inadequate space, the inhabitants have taken matters into their own hands.

Chinese Food

2009-04-04T22:04:00.003-04:00

A quick post. My first thought rolling into Shanghai was, how on earth do all these people eat? This is the answer, a vast network of fields immediately outside the city. Urban agriculture is a new subject; one that I tend to think is pretty silly. I could be wrong. I dislike balance, however. I believe in producers and consumers, not a friendly balance of the two. Let the city be super dense, let the country be super natural. It is not the blending that interests me, but the moment of their intersection.

My future home...

2009-04-03T09:37:00.005-04:00

Not all of China is the hustle bustle. For part of our trip we were fortunate enough to get out to some of the local water towns, namely Suzhou where we came across this incredible garden. Dating back to the 16th century, this garden villa was probably occupied by a lord or noble and his wives and families. It is a sprawling mix of constructed gardens, pavilions, and courtyards. The interior and exterior spaces are arranged more or less in a checkerboard, creating interior spaces lit from four sides and small exterior rooms that weave an elaborate sequence of light and dark as you move through them. What was especially evident was the use of framed views, whether a formal moment such as bamboo through a window or completely unexpected, a moment captured in the confluence of many planes receding into space. Throughout one had the sense that this was not only a home, but an ecology. Thousands of plant and animal species thrive in this manicured garden, and it is romantic to imagine myself living among them. I would probably replace the bamboo with something more tasty, like a tomato, and the koi with rainbow trout. Peas for the climbing vines and switch the Japanese Maple with a few New England apple varieties. It would be delicious.

Media Float

2009-04-02T09:49:00.006-04:00

Click. I snapped this shot from the top of KPF's latest tower in Shanghai. For now it is the tallest building in the city, with a claim to have the world's highest observation deck at 492 meters. Expect this claim of top dog to change very quickly in the next few months, as several projects around the world top out (such as the Burj Dubai which claims a non-specific height of 700+ meters). After that, who knows, we may never again build a super tall building. Who would finance it? Maintain it? And why would you want to work on the 97th floor of anything? As hotels and observation decks they are nothing short of fantastic: the perspective they afford on our landscape and architecture alone may be worth the billion dollar price tags. As anything else they've just got to be a pain in the ass.

This particular image captures a TV boat on the Huangpu River. For scale, check out this thing relative to the buildings behind it. The displayed Luftansa ad is targeting the historic Bund waterfront, where thousands of tourists and locals crowd to view the expanding skyline of the city. Whether intended or not, it does a good job of targeting the almost equal number of visitors crowding into that skyline for a view of everything else.

Cartoon Bucks!

2009-04-01T08:32:00.004-04:00

Welcome back. I've been delinquent in my posting, but I've at least been busy making content! We just returned from 9 days in Shanghai, which you'll see more of in the coming days and weeks. One of my favorite products of the trip was this little guy, a new cartoon character I am exploring. He's a baby raccoon. I am starting a parallel blog to house just my comics, at http://cartoonbucks.blogspot.com

Keep your eyes on the road...

2009-02-23T14:05:00.002-05:00

People are always curious subjects for photography... not the least of which are those when driving. Driving is one of those great public moments where speed and sheer volume of other motorists can render you completely anonymous. A whole new type of behavior emerges that would be completely unacceptable in any other context. Do I generally give people the middle finger if cut off when walking down the street? Of course not, but put me in a car, try the same and see what happens. I'm going to keep on eye on people in cars, and see what I can catch. This photo here is just a warm up, caught on a nice day in Tokyo during January.

Forming Buildings

2009-02-21T15:02:00.003-05:00

As a way of beginning our studio project on Japanese housing, we've been looking at natural processes such as air and water and how they might inform architectural design. The following models and drawings explore four topics:

1) Can a building act like an airplane wing? Instead of each building sequentially blocking the next from breezes, what happens if we lift them off the landscape such that air can pass over and under. Flaps, like on a jet, can be opened and closed, varying the surface of the building and allowing greater quantity of intake.

2) Saudi Arabian garments are large and flowing- an apparent contradiction to a desert climate. A closer inspection reveals that the dress actually acts like a thermal chimney, drawing cooler air in through the bottom, across the body and out through the hood. (in addition to blocking the sun) As it turns out darker colors accelerate this phenomenon. Can this be expanded to the scale of a building? What if we live in a chimney?

3) Exhaust passing out the end of a rocket is squeezed through a nozzle of a specific geometry, thus streamlining its trajectory and increasing the efficiency and speed. Can this be implemented in buildings? Wind tunnel gardens and terraces? It could be interesting.

4) And finally, I am completely enamored with the terraced form of rice paddies- can we take this same form and make architecture from it? This one is less successful than the rest I think...

More to come, but in the end I think I am most interested in developing the second scheme, with the towers. Not only is the design of individual towers fascinating, but it presents an opportunity to design at an urban scale as well.

Scandelicious v2

2009-02-12T10:50:00.005-05:00

i use this stuff to make fake buildings.

Scandelicious

2009-02-11T16:08:00.009-05:00

items from my desk + fancy new scanner

Back From Tokyo

2009-01-31T19:56:00.005-05:00

I'm fresh off the plane from Tokyo, where I have been for two weeks during the kickoff of our spring 2009 studio at MIT. I have fallen asleep no fewer than fives times this afternoon: jetlag is a bitch.

A lot happened in Japan, and to sum it all up in one post would be unreasonable. The principal purpose for our trip over there was to check out our site, Tama New Town west of Tokyo. Tama was built after world war 2 as a way to very quickly house Japan's booming population. An elated group of young families moved into the hundreds of international style apartment buildings. There they enjoyed spacious condos (relative to Tokyo), rolling and manicured grounds, and an abundance of open space. Times were good.

40 years later those families have grown up, leaving only an aging parent population and no reason nor space for the return of the children. The apartment blocks are in need of critical maintainence, and none of them meet the standards for earthquake safety. The grounds are overgrown: the government doesn't have the money to keep them up and the residents don't have the autonomy.

As they Japanese often said, Tama is a problem. Over the next few months our team will be researching various proposals for how to address the future of housing an community... not just in Tama but for similar sites like this all over Japan. Stay tuned.

The following is a brief view of Tama. It seems bleak, but it was January and it was overcast. That said, a little sunshine won't solve the massive social and environmental problems this place has.

Frank Gehry at Princeton: Meeeoww

2009-01-13T15:27:00.007-05:00

The world has yet another Frank Gehry building- this time he graces us with his madness at Princeton University in New Jersey. To be honest, it looks a lot like MIT's Stata Center, but that's only because I saw ours first... it could easily have gone the other way. I won't say much about the building, other than I am pretty sure this is the wrong way to make one.

I have more to say about this one, and a whole bunch more pictures, too. Check back for an update.

The End of the World Will Look Pretty Cool

2009-01-07T13:01:00.007-05:00

It's a slow week, but these are just a few photos I liked from St Mark's in Venice. It's overshot, of course, but I like the reflections. Many people are under the impression that Venice is sinking- this is true to a degree but it is not the real problem. Development around the ancient city (both in terms of building and in shipping routes) has destroyed much of the wetlands that act as a sponge for storm surges coming off the Adriatic. Now the full surge comes straight into the canals, whereas before it would have been absorbed by many many miles of plants and soils. The other problem is that historically Venice has had only slow-boat traffic: modern speedboats create larger wakes that are very quickly eroding the foundations of the buildings.

This brings us back to St Marks flooding all the time, which it does because the piazza is linked directly to the sea, and is the lowest part in the entire city. It floods (almost) daily with the high tide.

Po-Mo in Rovereto

2009-01-02T13:53:00.009-05:00

I thought I'd share this building we came across last year in Rovereto, Italy: Mario Botta's Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Rovereto and Trento (or just MART). It's always strange to come across something this modern in Italy; the light drenched interior, steel and glass stands in contrast to the foot-thick walls and shuttered windows of nearly every other building. It's also curious to see that post-modernism is alive and well in Botta's architecture. From my (rough) calculations this is exactly the same size as the interior of the pantheon, from which the plan and oculus is derived.

Is this mode of architectural design still relevant? This 1:1 relationship seems like a bit of a copout to me, and leaves it difficult to evaluate the qualities of this space without noting its deficiencies relative to the original. Is it an effective urban space? Sure. Will it still be here in 2000 years? Unlikely.

The collection, however, is truly fantastic. One artists in particular, David Schnell, totally blew my mind. These paintings are 10 feet tall, and in neon colors that neither print nor screen can replicate faithfully. Try and see these in person if you can...

La Tomba Brion: Carlo Scarpa

2008-12-27T11:52:00.009-05:00

The Brion Family Tomb is almost certainly Carlo Scarpa's master work, as well as his final resting place. Scarpa worked on project for more than ten years, drawing plans at night and working with the craftsmen during the day.

On a trip with MIT in 2007 we were able to spend 5 days sketching, photographing and inhabiting the space, a luxury I don't expect to repeat. Scarpa's work is difficult to classify in the more standard architectural terms... modernism, brutalism, critical regionalism? I can't quite decide. Throughout all of Scarpa's work there is a commitment to craftsmanship and detail that is difficult to find or produce in contemporary architecture. His particular attention to the detailing of fasteners and mechanismisms is perhaps more evident in Brion than any other work: the following is a collection of a (very) small portion of these details from Brion. You should go yourself- it alone is worth the trip to Italy's northern Veneto region. Stay a while.

Images, from the top:
1)This constellation of cables carries the counterweight for a door that slides up and down on the other side of this wall. 2) Part of the #1, I think this transfers the cable through the wall. 3) A coil that provides tension for the cables in 4) which is part of a low fence to stop children from falling in the fish pond. 5) I don't know what this is... maybe it keeps the concrete corner from eroding? A pretty detail anyway. 6) A drain for water under the primary tomb.

Sottopassaggio: Venice

2008-12-26T14:44:00.007-05:00

{NIKON d80} {NIKKOR 18-200} {f4.2} {32mm} {iso200}

The sottopassaggio is an interesting architectural artifact I came across on a trip to Venice last year. Venice has its own language for the naming of urban places: instead of piazza they have the campo, instead of small streets named via or viale they have calle. But absolutely my favorite is the sottopassaggio, which means literally underpass, but is used in Venice to name the small (almost always deadend) alleyways that lead to residential clusters. Behind the bustling and overrun streets of Venice are hundreds of small courtyards that give access to the housing above the ground-level shops. Usually there are 5 or six doors and a collection of stairs, allowing for an extremely high density model of housing. This particular example is not a deadend, but more of a node condition. The entry to the left leads to a small bridge, and the arch in the center to a canaletto where you can arrive by boat. The light entering from the right is from a skylight stretching four stories up through the buildings overhead.

At its very essence it is a means by which solid urban infil can be perforated with a measure of community and identity. At some point I hope to expand on the idea of ultradensity with this model in mind.

White Out

2008-12-25T08:38:00.008-05:00

{NIKON d80} {NIKKOR 18-200} {f5.0} {65mm} {iso100}

{NIKON d80} {NIKKOR 18-200} {f5.6} {170mm} {iso100}

Merry Christmas! Up in Vermont we are digging out from nearly two feet of snow... a sight well worth the travel delays and slippery roads.

Enjoy the holiday and Merry Christmas!

Sweeping it under the green carpet

2008-12-24T11:48:00.005-05:00

{NIKON d80} {NIKKOR 18-200} {f5.6} {1/125} {22mm} {iso200}

This is another image from the summer project with Howeler + Yoon Architecture. The Big Dig is finally dug, and covered over with the Rose Kennedy Greenway. As pristine as these new parks may seem, they cannot quite contain the 15 billion dollars of infrastructure below, which emerges often and unexpectedly.

Carlo Scarpa's Tiles

2008-12-22T17:39:00.005-05:00

{NIKON d80} {f/3.8} {22mm} {iso1000}

This was shot at a tile factory in Venice, the same one used for Carlo Scarpa's mid-20th century architectural works. These larger sheets will be cut up into smaller squares, and the excess sheets are saved (there are thousands of shelves) and numbered. Because every batch is mixed by hand, it is impossible to match a tile perfectly, so the extra is kept on hand for filling future orders.

The second image shows these tiles in place at the Brion Family Tomb near Altivole, in the Veneto regi0n of Northern Italy.

Valpiana

2008-12-22T00:48:00.006-05:00

{NIKON d80} {f6.3} {1/125} {24mm} {iso250}

This is from our trip last summer to the Dolomites- uncanny how much it is like Vermont but with a bit more topography. This road eventually leads to the top of a small valley where there is a dairy and a bar- must come back here for drinks and stars.

Leftovers

2008-12-21T11:07:00.006-05:00

{NIKON d80} {f4.0} {1/60} {50mm} {iso200}

I don't get to update this as often as I'd like, not because of enough time but because of not enough finished work. I've decided to start posting more of my photography in the meantime...

This is a photo I took while working at Howeler + Yoon Architecture for an upcoming publication. A major part of the Big Dig in Boston involved building elevated highways as well as tunnels- this picture shows how the new space created by these highways is used to store extra or excess wall panels for the tunnels. I'm not sure if they are waiting to use them or simply made too many, but for now they sit on wooden blocks behind a chain link fence.

LONG SPAN #1

2008-12-20T20:34:00.003-05:00

Our final project for building technology was to design a long span roof.. Our project utilizes a three hinged steel arch that supports a series of gravity, wind, and prestressing cables. The use of cables allows for an extremely light roof plane, which is infilled with etfe pillows and operable windows. The project is sited in a stone quarry in morocco, such that the arches can anchor directly into the stone without needing a massive concrete foundation. This was a revelation to me: even though some structures might appear very light, chances are they have a vast amount of concrete under the ground to counteract the upload forces (up to 30psf) from the wind.

The form of the arch was determined using graphic statics: this results in a shape that is purely in compression under uniform load. In other words, it is a parabola, like the arch in st. louis or the towers of the sagrada familia in barcelona. A circular dome has internal forces that make its sides fail (like the terminal at charles de gaule) but a parabolic shape exterts force directly (axially) into the ground.

We had a really great review, too. In addition to our professor John Ochsendorf we were fortunate enough to meet with Ed Allen (who wrote our textbook) and Tim Eliason (who was the structural engineer for the pyramids at the lourve and the apple store cube in new york). Look at the top for the boards...

Studio Wrap Up 2

2008-12-13T16:03:00.006-05:00

Models!

This semester had a bunch of models along the way to the final design project. I'll include three images here. First, a close-up of an early model, made of homosote which is deliciously fuzzy. Next, a spread of many of the small 1:500 models that questioned massing and several sectional models that were more an examination of tectonics. Lastly, the presentation model for the final review. While the interior is largely incomplete the facade is effective at demonstrating my idea for an elevation that is porous when viewed from the front and opaque when view obliquely.

Digital Fabrication Final Project

2008-12-13T09:50:00.007-05:00

Just to give you a taste of some of my other classes this semester, I'll show you our final project from Larry Sass's digital fabrication course. The intent of this project is to negotiate between a fixed system of a set number of parts (the exoskeleton) and an internal parametric skin that can shift to take on any form. The trick then was to design a parametric clip to negotiate the difference between the two systems. I think the design of this could have been pushed much further, but for what amounted to a two-day project I'm pleased with how it turned out.

Studio Wrap Up Part 1

2008-12-06T16:12:00.010-05:00

Well, this has been a ridiculous semester. The total lack of posts should be testament to the total lack of time I have had, but instead it is more indicative of how unorganized and haphazard the last three months have been. But, things have finally come to a close and I think I have some good work to share...

This post deals with my final studio project, mentioned in the previous post. The final grocery store I designed fast forwards to the very near future, when all food is locally grown. For explanation I will post my project's "manifesto."

MANIFEST, YO:

The era of raisins from California and strawberries in February is coming to an end -- we have engaged our local ecosystems and production networks so that we continue to direct our food resources. Our ecoregion may define what we eat but we will define how we grow it and how we eat it.

A knowledge of food production is the mark of the citizen; an effort to expand upon the efficiency and variety of our food base is the mark of the entrepreneur. This grocery store of the future must be a conduit for the proliferation of local food. This grocery store of the future is a place of experimentation, education, and exchange. Three primary programmatic zones address these needs: a supermarket for purchasing raw and bulk materials, a barter market for local sales and trade, and an incubator zone for fledgling businesses.

Our past food model consisted of a small group of producers making many different types of goods for public consumption. The future of local food will consist of many agents each making a specific product which can then be traded for other goods and services. Regulation is improbable and product-to-product exchange is requisite for issues of practicality. Trade will eventually replace monetary exchange; barter will circumvent the FDA.

Architecture accommodates the physical exchange of goods: a product can no longer simply be trucked in the back and carried out the front. The grocery store of the future provides transportation infrastructure for a wide range of scales: a primary loading dock for the delivery of bulk goods, a light trucking parking level for over-sized vehicles for marketeers, a shorter level for personal cars, and public transportation through the integration of the World Trade Center T-Stop.

As a transitional measure, the grocery store serves as an agent for the sale of goods: exchange will be promoted in the barter market while a more traditional notion of food sales continues above in the bulk foods store. The barter market and bulk foods store are connected through a series of cores, which define programs with like-characteristics such as HOT, COLD, WET, DRY, +21, BACK OF HOUSE, SMELLY.

These cores provide the vertical circulation between floors, create continuous environmental zones, house all utilities, and maintain views through grated flooring.

The production and experimentation of food goods and services is key to avoiding gastronomical stagnation. With this in mind and in keeping with the heritage of producers in the Boston seaport, this grocery store of the future provides incubator space so that users without the means for mass production have the opportunity to contribute to the food base. These incubator spaces are long rentable zones with expandable walls and floors that can be hosed down. Across the hall are smaller, dry incubator zones where one can rent office and classroom space.

The sale of goods requires that the good be displayed, as inspection and comparison is vital to the act of selection. This building employs a facade where louvers expand to become the horizontal surfaces necessary for inhabitation, either as shelves, seating, or steps.

In addition to the use of the skin we allow for a central condition whereby vendors can set up large tables and displays. To realize the open plan the main structure for the building is formed by the cores themselves, first as a moment frame and then a large truss to carry the super market.

These buildings are placed frequently throughout a region, and while the programmatic elements are relatively consistent the exterior and materiality is subject to change. The exterior of this particular market is designed to navigate between the creation of a monumental edifice and naturally lit interior. A series of wooden fins wraps the exterior of the building, which when viewed on the oblique turns opaque. In addition to providing lateral stiffening to the facade they also create a height field on the exterior of the building, articulating the cores and providing them with varying levels of shade.

------
And now, the presentation:

Introducing this semester's main event:

2008-10-01T09:57:00.009-04:00

The primary project for the semester is NOT waytopia, rather it is the design of a mid-size grocery store. While the premise of designing for a realist utopia continues, we focus now specifically on the sale of food. The studio has been divided into three groups, each with a different site (though projects will be individually developed).

zMy site is the world trade center stop on the silver line in South Boston. The site is close to a number of things, such as the WTC and the new convention hall and the ICA, but other than that there really isn't much around.

On the periphery of the site there is a lot of local product and production, and this is what will be driving the architecture. The average dining table travels some 1500 miles; in an time where energy futures are uncertain it seems prudent that this project engage the debate of embodied energy in food. The issue in South Boston is not that there isn't local production, the issue is that there is no good conduit for its distribution.

I propose a solution that condenses the production, administration and sale of local products. The building will have several primary programs:

1) distribution center for local producers
2) incubator space for fledgling producers
3) administration offices
4) grocery store (primary, enclosed)
5) farmers market (secondary, open air)

waytopia

2008-09-17T09:23:00.000-04:00

As a quick project to start the year off, our studio was broken into teams of three to brainstorm on what the future of "shopping" will be, which is the theme for the entire semester. We began with the notion that as energy becomes more expensive, we will move from the worldwide manufacturing model to a more centralized typology of micro-industry. Basically, we're proposing a new type of utopian economy, which must bridge the gap between the socialist model (equal distribution of goods, government regulation, for the public good) and the capitalist (free market, individual initiative).

What we propose is a series of networks and nodes, which deal with these two paradigms respectively. The networks are divided by industry: energy, food production, commercial goods. When they come together, they form one super permacultural web. The nodes are envisioned as program-specific arcologies, where every aspect of a particular product/industry is collapsed into a single shell. We've expanded on the idea of the food production node, which includes not only farms and community greenhouses, but also classrooms, restaurants, processing facilities, internal barns, research gardens and a grocery store.

The form is... preliminary. The 'blobitecture' approach is if nothing else an attempt to not design the building, but rather give some sort of iconic image that identifies it in the landscape.

The first image shows how the whole presentation fits together, and then I've broken it out into the three boards for close up views. Thanks to S.A. and R.D. who were also on the team.

This was a pretty typical studio project... it holds some potential in the narrative but I've got to say, I am left completely unconvinced by the final form. This project will not move forward, thankfully, but now the entire semester stretches ahead to further explore the idea of shopping. For primary project in the studio we'll be dealing with the issue of grocery stores... how to radicalize it, reconceive it, critique it.

fits like a glove

2008-09-14T18:57:00.000-04:00

i'm taking a course with larry sass this semester called digital fabrication. the primary tool we will be using is the CNC router, and this first assignment is intended to get us familiar with it. here's my first effort. the process was as follows:

hand on scanner (just like the old days)
illustrator to trace
rhino to add tabs
autocad to send to the shop computer
ezcam to translate to the router

it's pretty unwieldy, but the results are, if nothing else, precise. it's sort of like those clay impressions you bring home for your mom after the first day of pre-school, which i guess was the point. it's also supposed to be our new 'signature' for the semester, so i take this as a plywood departure from the classic cave painting silhouettes that ancient artists would use to sign their work. (also, note the obvious relationship between this and the previous post. i'm not sure which came first.)

t shirts of procrastination

2008-09-14T11:50:00.000-04:00

the new semester has officially started, though I haven't done enough work yet to publish actual projects. instead I present my latest t-shirt concept / excuse not to do my work: anticipation shirts. like the shiny spot on your steering wheel or the hole in your shoe, these shirts presume to know your next move. it makes me want a 'twister' shirt.

first architecture review on tuesday, depending on how that goes the real posts will begin in earnest...

time-collapse

2008-07-08T23:35:00.000-04:00

This is a lot of things. it's neat, it's creepy, it's probably overdone, and it's completely interesting. First of all this is a whole lot of information from a single image- not only does it show the way I use my living room, but it also establishes scale and function and all that good stuff. Furthermore it acts as a cool piece of analysis for how well this (rather tight) space is set up. No Bucks in the middle of the image- could it be more efficient?

Expect more of these.

The Aalto Fold

2008-05-23T14:11:00.000-04:00

The Aalto Fold is the project that I previewed last week. It involves taking an irregular profile, based on the famous Aalto Vase, and projecting that profile to a point. Just like the original vase, the shape tapers to a point. This works well within the Rhino world, but if you tried to make this out of real paper there is nothing that would make it hold this shape (short of casting).

The task then was to take the profile and fold it, with the expectation that the ridge would cause it to maintain the profile throughout the object. This sort of worked. First of all, the goal is to make this out of a single sheet: make it a developable surface. The folds were made by taking the projected shape and cutting it in half with a plane. Once cut, one half is then mirrored over the cutting plane. The further the plane is allowed to deviate from perpendicular to the principal ray of the projection, the greater the eccentricity of the fold. The more eccentric, the closer to the original profile the physical model will be.

I tried two materials, with varying levels of success. First I used a thin wood veneer. Since the wood cannot handle a fold without splitting, I stitched the individual pieces together with string. To achieve a fare connection when it wraps back around I migrated the joints so they do not align. This approach got close, but was limited by the bending capacity of the wood, and lost a lot of fidelity in the slop of the stitching.

Attempt number two was more successful, but still wasn't as close as I would like. This time I used clear PVC. This material can be bent through a much tighter radius, and instead of the stitching, I used very small perforations. With the perforations the material deforms locally at the holes but the seam itself does not move.

Check it out!

the wooden veneer model:

the clear PVC model:

diagrams for the folds and the wooden veneer:

renderings for the wooden veneer: (note how unlike the real thing they are)

diagrams and renderings for the PVC: (note how much closer this rendering is!)

Caustics

2008-05-18T17:49:00.000-04:00

Today I have just a quick preview for next week's post. The image you see below is the end product of a Design Skills class investigation into sheet isometrics, basically looking at what happens if you fold an irregular conical projection through a series of oscillating planes... does it want to approach its original shape? More on that later, but first I wanted to show you this really sweet photo of the final polycarbonate model sitting in the sun.

According to the dictionary caustics are: The enveloping surface formed by light rays reflecting or refracting from a curved surface, especially one with spherical aberration.

According to me, it's the cool stuff light does when it refracts through crazy objects:

It's been a while... !

2008-05-12T20:45:00.000-04:00

So, the semester has finally come to a close! There are a few loose ends to tie up in other courses (as you will see later this week), but for now, I will post the final work from my studio project.

The program of the project is to take the Lechmere Station site that we have been working with and to introduce a new neighborhood YMCA.

YMCA + MBTA = YMTA

As I am prone to, I'll keep the description of my project rather short and let the images speak for themselves. The design initiated as an effort to engage the 'spectator,' both in terms of the pragmatic act of watching sports and the voyeuristic act of the passerby, and by doing so, reinforce a connection between the public and private, street and Y.

As you can see on the board displaying the project diagrams, I have split the building into three primary program functions, thus creating two wide cuts that expose their inner cross sections
. Then, I lift the 'street' up and through these gaps, bringing the pedestrian into visual contact with the inside of the YMCA, and connecting physically through lateral doors.

To further differentiate between public and private, I have defined the private tectonically as concrete columns and slabs, which bend in response to program, such as auditoriums or saunas. The construction moving through the YMCA is conceived of us a space frame with wooden treads. As you can see from the renderings, the treads deform from a stair, to a bleacher, to a platform, thus programming various functions.

That's the long and the short of it... beeyah!

Check out all these models! All for this one project, and I think there may even be more...

Tread and space frame tectonic:

Project Diagrams:

Building Plans:

Transverse Sections:

Longitudinal Sections:

Making the Knot

2008-03-30T20:49:00.000-04:00

The initial goal for this project was fairly straightforward: twist a closed spline such that it forms a knot (either mathematical or in projection) with 3 or more intersections. Once that task was complete, we were challenged to create a surface bound by this polyline, and then introduce some form of enclosure and ground plane generated from these same geometries.

Finally, we took this model and from it generated some slick renderings... in my case, with an emphasis on scaling through entourage and tiling of material. As you might see, my initial knot looks more than a little like the prop or screw of some large ship. Instead of introducing a ground plane, I sunk the (giant) screw in a lake, the likely artifact of some earlier age. For the enclosure, I've made building below the prop blade in the middle image and underwater (as seen in the top view)... maybe it's an institution for studying just where this thing came from? Finally, I made the google earth image to see what it takes to try to make a 'photographic' image.

Dendriform Mania

2008-03-14T21:02:00.000-04:00

The program for this site is to create a roof that covers a bus and train station.

"How many of these mushrooms do you actually want?"

This was the question posed to me during the review of this project. The reviewer's answer was 10. My answer was 15. What I actually made was 76.

Somewhere the 'design' of this project got totally derailed, and I focused instead on the tectonic problems. However, I'm especially proud of the 'procedural' aspect of this construction, where I move from Frank Lloyd Wright's dendriform column to a more amorphous shape that can accommodate various program types. These include a roof deck, stairs, locker rooms, and roof gardens. Take a look!

Lechmere Station: Question Congestion

2008-03-01T07:56:00.000-05:00

Here's a little map I made at the onset of our current studio project. The site we have been given is Lechmere Station in Cambridge, and this first entry is part of our site analysis. Here I have mapped the physical paths of three types of circulation: train, bus, and pedestrian. The red lines respond in both direction and spatial constraints of each mode. The thin lines are pedestrian movement, the heavy doubled lines are buses, and the single loop is the train. I've left them unlabeled on purpose. As they overlap, we see the deepening red as a marker of high congestion. Once the station is redesigned, I hope to redeploy this mapping technique such that we can compare existing and potential circulation on site.

In Locomotion

2008-02-15T08:30:00.001-05:00

So the assignment here was to go to Sullivan Station and find a design opportunity/constraint. After wandering around, I found the following vista down onto the tracks underneath I-93. As I walked to get a better vantage to take this shot, I followed the view through an expanded metal fence designed to keep people from climbing or throwing things over onto the tracks. When I stopped walking, however, the view disappeared- you can only see through when in motion!

To capture this effect, I took the photograph while walking, but strobed the flash quickly to expose the now blurred out fence. My hand appears in negative, bridging the overexposed fence and the vista beyond.

Final Photos

2008-02-09T11:30:00.000-05:00

As promised, here are the final photos of my models from last semester. The first four shots are courtesy of MIT's archive. The last was thoroughly therapeutic.

A slow week...

2008-01-10T12:20:00.000-05:00

We are on break for the month, so there isn't much to show in the way of work. As soon as the semester starts back up in February I should have some new content. Until then, here is a preview of some model photos that I should get next week from the MIT archivist. Above is part of my final Opera House model, which I'll explain in further detail when I get the better photographs...

Wood Asteroid

2008-01-08T13:59:00.000-05:00

Yet another design skills project... this time I bring you this beautiful wooden asteroid. The purpose of this project is two fold: one, create an object using stereotomy (or the cutting of solid objects) in Rhino and transfer it to reality, and two, to fabricate that object with the best craftsmanship possible. This project is pretty straightforward, and utilized the 'unroll' command in Rhino to capture each of the faces such that they could be printed and transfered to the 16th inch basswood for the final model.

Below you can see a side-by-side of the final wooden model and the final Rhino model. Click if you want to see it bigger!

A note about the object: it started as a rectangular solid, was cut by four "arbitrary" cutting planes, and then pierced by two intersecting projections to form apertures. One of these projections is parallel, the other is central.

Studio 1: Final Project

2008-01-03T12:02:00.001-05:00

Behold my final project for my first graduate studio. The program of the project is to create a new chapel and cultural center for MIT, and my material of choice is rammed earth. I have visualized the building as a screen between public and sacred spaces, creating a dense urban condition along the existing student center, and a series of outdoor rooms facing the quad where they take advantage of the southern solar gain. Suffice to say that the form and the aggregation of the rammed earth could have been pushed further, but I'm pretty pleased with how the general organization and feel of the project turned out.

plans and material assembly:

building sections:

figure ground diagrams:

Central Projection... or Bat Man?

2008-01-03T11:48:00.000-05:00

Below is a little project we did in design skills toward the end of the semester. The idea is to create an object of any form which when viewed from a specific point, appears as a grid of 9 rectangles. The actual faces of the object need not be in a grid, indeed, they need not even be planer. In the case of my project, each element consists of a ruled surface, or a face that negotiates between two non-parallel lines. From any perspective but the projection point, it appears quite abstract.

Shameless self promotion, and no cookie

2007-12-03T23:26:00.000-05:00

Not even an update on what I've been hard at work on: suffice to say it's something made from rammed earth and that it's giving me a run for my money. But, do check out my other half-finished website:

www.bucksleeper.com

...where you'll find plenty of my photography!

Circulation Plaza

2007-11-13T14:38:00.000-05:00

Project: Promenade
Class: Studio 1, Andrew Scott

Given three adjacent buildings, each with three floors and none of which line up with any other, how do you navigate vertically by way of stair, ramp, and elevator? Furthermore, how is this done without redundancy, and structured in such a way as to reinforce a common promenade?

To the point: I have divided the building's program into public and private use, thereby creating two promenades. The first is an extension of the ground; a series of plinths extruded to different lengths to form flats, stairs, ramps, and seats. The unit of configuration then rotates vertically to become a series of cantilevers attached to the three facades. Similarly, their position relative to one another create this same set of spatial conditions.critique:

commendations: liked the configurative method of arranging the promenade, could be readily applied to a variety of spatial situations. Clear use of isometric drawing technique.

missed opportunities: the ground floor especially has not been deployed rigorously enough, potential for parametric modeling use. Also, why not let the unit itself change parametrically, instead of just its position. Regarding the model: clear plastic is a terrible way to represent the upper circulation. (side note: almost killed myself cutting the plastic on the laser cutter. do not cut PVC on the laser cutter)

Exeter Library: Carrel Explosion

2007-11-13T11:49:00.000-05:00

Project: Exeter Library Analysis, Carrel Study
Class: Design Skills; Precedent Analysis

Preceded by a field trip to Exeter Library, our class was tasked with the detailed analysis of this late Louis Kahn work. Various building systems were examined, such as structure, organization of the facade, and infrastructure. I have chosen to examine the library's famous study carrels, seen here in photograph from the inside and outside. An analytical study was then performed to investigate the sequencing of the carrel's construction. What is imminently interesting about Kahn's design is the clear hierarchy of material use. Especially in the case of Exeter, one can imagine the brick core of the building as ruin, and the wood construction has been inserted to reclaim the edifice for some contemporary purpose. I find this idea of infill fascinating; look for more entries on this subject.

What the investigation reveals is that there may indeed be a clear order to the carrel construction: simply put, there is first an intermediate lintel placed in the rough opening, followed by the upper and lower panels to close off the building envelope. Next the carrel itself if inserted in three parts, and wooden trim maintains planarity with the interior wall.

critique:
commendation: accurate sequencing, good detail

missed opportunities: probably each component is more complicated than this: for example, the lintel itself may have been built in several stages, with structural and aesthetic phases built in a more complicated and interwoven sequence.

The Space Between

2007-11-13T11:33:00.000-05:00

Project: Navigating between regular and complex forms
Class: Design Skills

This project is part Rhino3D tutorial, part lesson in complex geometries. We were given a single file with a complex curved shape, and a 16-square grid, with the task to formulate a rigorous system that navigates the geometry of the two to form a third envelope. For my investigation, imagine if you will that the curve exerts a gravitational pull on the plane, such that attraction is inversely related to distance. The following image shows the results of crossing lines in different configurations and locations. The results are interesting, but their consistency belays the general banality of this scheme.

critique:

commendations: interesting concept, clear representation

missed opportunities: how does mirror line relate to geometry of either form? try using nodal gravitational wells. does the idea of gravity even relate to this geometrical investigation?

Getting up to speed

2007-11-13T11:28:00.000-05:00

This week on Fake Buildings: I finally display all the work I've been doing this semester. Two months of little sleep has yielded quite a bit in the manner of ethereal edifice, so it might take some time to upload everything. Stay tuned.