Andrew Houston: the complete graduate works

the complete graduate works

Andrew Houston

Masters of Architecture Masters of Urban Design

the complete graduate works

Andrew Houston

Š 2015 Andrew Houston All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

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Washington University in St. Louis SAM FOX SCHOOL OF DESIGN & VISUAL ARTS

the complete graduate works

Andrew Houston

Masters of Architecture Masters of Urban Design

Masters of Architecture

Masters of Urban Design

CONTENTS

SOUND STUDIOS

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CITY LEAVES

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TSUKIJI NEXT

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ORION

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THE GROVE

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NATURAL 66 INFRASTRUCTURE

MATERIAL ORGANIZATION

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SOUND STUDIOS / Adaptive Reuse

SOUND STUDIOS / Adaptive Reuse ST. LOUIS

Located in downtown St. Louis in the heart of the central business district, Sound Studios reimagines the possibilities of existing building stock. By removing the floorplates and creating a bracing system of tube steel, the entirety of the brick shell becomes both a responsive acoustic chamber for performance and an open public space. The glass volume provides the venue, but Sound Studios incorporates a fully functional musical complex in order to service the needs of travelling musicians who would otherwise quite possibly skip St. Louis while on tour. The complex includes a record store, bar, record label, recording studio, and temporary housing that sleeps eight.

Bands enjoy the luxury of staying in a hospitable environment where in addition to playing a show, they can potentially record an album and sell it on site. Meanwhile, the acoustics of the brick shell working in concert with the glass volume ensure an acoustic capability and flexibility that makes the performance impossible to duplicate outside of these walls. page 10

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CITY LEAVES / Public Space

CITY LEAVES / Public Space BARCELONA

Designing within the context of Plaça Ramón Berenguer means designing neither architecture not urban design, but something in between. The stone wall dates back to when Barcelona was first settled by Romans and is one of the few places it remains exposed. The only permanent program is a small hostel located underneath the plaza, which also houses public restrooms, and storage space for performers. The tower derives its architecture from the wall itself, as it reinterpretes the Roman arches into contemporary “leaves” of copper. These softly fold and become the wooden floorplates, which are also housed in the same steel structure, which itself

references the Catalan tradition of building human towers. The tower itself contains no program, but is always open to the public and provides views over the Roman wall, from Montjuic to the Mediterranean Sea. Although stairs spiral around the tower, there is also a hydraulically lifted platform in the center of the plan which meets each floorplate at a different location and also goes to the lower level. Underneath the plaza level, the space gets natural light through frosted glass punctures in the groundplane that also preserve the envelope and allow the hostel and restrooms to be conditioned. The freedom of program ensures that art exhibits and performances of any type will happen very frequently.

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TSUKIJI NEXT / Ecological Conservation

TSUKIJI NEXT / Ecological Conservation TOKYO Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish Market is moving.

As an enormously significant aspect of Japanese history and culture, the preparations and considerations of the move become enriched when coupled with a holistic vision of ecological conservation

for the entirety of Tokyo Bay. Using Tsukiji’s new site, Shijomae, as one of several nodes within a larger network of distribution and information centers offers a solution to cleaning the renewing the bay to its once sustainable past. As the world’s largest consumer of fish per capita, the Japanese understand that this central market plays a core role in their

diet and way of life. The strategy utilizes the new site as an international production and distribution center that focuses on local food production and a renewed sense of culture. By serving as a global leader in bay restoration, Tsukiji Next focuses on a social evolution that incorporates bringing the best of the past into the future through sustainable methods. page 34

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ORION / Finnish Film Archive and Media Center

ORION / Finnish Film Archive and Media Center HELSINKI The new Orion Finnish Film and Media Center requires a nuanced program, one able to accommodate the frequent changes of technology today. At over 5,000 m², the building contains digital information stands, periodicals, a small

cafe, an art gallery, permanent stacks, film preservation rooms, classrooms, child care, permanent offices and conference rooms and four studio apartements for visiting researchers and professors that includes a roof sauna. But the building’s heart is the three screening rooms, containing 150, 200, and 250 viewers respectively. The site is an

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empty block near the most important harbor in Helsinki. The building contributes to the current city fabric by hugging the edge of the block and participating in the commercial avenue while providing an activated public space. The market typology inspires the shed of the building, while the Finnish landscape inspires the stones, which the building pulls in from the sea. These stones organize the plaza and contain the screening rooms. page 44

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THE GROVE / Multi-Income Housing

THE GROVE / Multi-Income Housing ST. LOUIS

The housing situation in St. Louis requires a new typology. The Grove combines affordability with a variety of lifestyle options to enliven an up and coming neighborhood. Sustainable and social considerations drive the project to a 30 unit apartment complex of four unit types that range in price. The site parallels a busy six lane corridor that receives heavy high speed traffic. It also marks the end of the neighborhood of the Grove and is the end of the pedestrian driven area. The building creates a series of layers and thresholds that proceed from hard to soft, from the busy street to the interior of the neighborhood respectively. The steel mesh wall faces

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the street and is the edge of the circulation corridor. The concrete wall performs in multiple ways. It marks the threshold of private space, absorbs afternoon sun and distributes its heat throughout the night, and offers light into the units. The interior curtain wall provides views into the central courtyard for parents watching their children from their lower units, and expansive views to the Gateway Arch downtown for the higher units. The design reverses the model of highest priced and largest units on top of the building, placing larger units for families lower for visual access to the courtyard and neighbors. page 55

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NATURAL INFRASTRUCTURE / Living Levee Wall CHESTERFIELD, MISSOURI

NATURAL INFRASTRUCTURE / Living Levee Wall CHESTERFIELD, MISSOURI The Missouri river floodplain is currently slotted for development, primarily big box retail. This design challenges the current practice of building in ecologically unnatural areas, and gives the land back to the river. The proposal calls for

30 million ft² of new development on land that is currently almost exclusively reserved for agriculture. The project reenvisions the same program of commercial, residential, and industrial but preserves the agricultural land and allows farmers to continue their way of life, while also avoiding building in an ecologically vulnerable area.

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The design retreates from the river and anchors inot the bluff, using a natural infrastructure as over half of the protection from the potential flooding. This gives back all of the land to the river, which in concert with floodplains begins to relieve some of the pressure on the Mississippi River network. The new development takes a vertical position, and the new levee becomes a living wall in which the entirety is mixed use.

The wall becomes a linear city which peels out, doubles, and thickens as needed. By condensing the program into strips, the new living levee preserves over 400 acres of farmland. page 69

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Each zone of the interior contributes to the ecological well being of the whole, and utilizes its natural strength as part of the larger network. The ecological zones include hardwoods, recreational grasses, recreational waters, and marshes as well as the designated tranportation routes and access points along the perimeter. page 71

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MATERIAL ORGANIZATION / Spatial Analysis

MATERIAL ORGANIZATION / Spatial Analysis

Material organization is the process of examining space in a scaleless set of volumes based on an original individual module. As a replicable geometry the module grows to form a field, and can then rotate or change size to alter the future iterations of the field. As a way of making space, this type of organization demands fluid spatial recognition.

Deriving the module from the simplest of geometries, an isosceles triangle, provides high varieability and flexibility. The scored sheets of styrene fold into three dimensions to create triagular units. Four units combine back to back to become fully performative modules, which then integrate themselves into the larger field. page 79

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