AJ ELLIS
austin.james.ellis1@gmail.com
719-502-7060
TABLE OF CONTENTS Design Studios
Built Works OPLONTIS ANTIQUARIUM MSU - SOA COTE Competetion Entry Fall 2018 p.4-9
LA HOMELESS HOUSING MSU - SOA Morphosis Architects Spring 2019 p.12-17
SPIRITUAL SPACE IN DEEP TIME MSU - SOA Masters Thesis Fall 2019 p.20-27
WOVEN WILLOW STORY POLE MSU - Community Design Center 2018-19 p.10-11
COFFEE TABLE MSU-SOA Fall 2019
p.18-19
CARBON FIBRE WORKSHOP Atelier Mey + MSU - SOA Fall 2019 p.28-29
Antiquarium: Ancient Connection Through Contemporary Play 5th Year - Comprehensive Studio
Location: Torre Annunziata, Italy Program: Antiquarium, offices, artifact storage, conservation labs, promenade walkway, playground - soccer space
Integration of tourists, youth, and residents
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Panoramic views
PV Array Roof
Recycled Steel Structure
Bird Habitat
Youth Activity Organization
Torre Annunziata houses two sites of the Oplontis that are separated by vacant backlot space, which makes for an expedient tourist experience and obscures the sites that the residents have a newfound pride in. In an economy built on small service-industry businesses, Torre Annunziata is a built-up neighborhood lacking in social space and so the kids organize to play in the streets. The approach is to introduce an elevated walkway that connects the Oplonti for tourist access and organizes social spaces for the residents. To accomplish this, the Oplontis sites will be connected through this back lot where local vendors can serve from an added frontage off the street. The connection will offer soccer space in a safer and social environment, yet still independent of supervision. The promenade orients tourists to specifi c views of Torre Annunziata to inspire a meandering in its broader context and longer stay.
Ticketed Exhibit Spaces
Urban recreation through walking and play
Storm Water Mitigation
Villa A
Frescoes
Courthouse Villa B Alleyway Soccer Elementary School
1. EXISTING CONDITIONS Villa A
Unfold frescoes and statues into procession
1 2
3
Elevated Walkway
Connect through vacant corridor on site
Playscape
Shares space with the promenade
2. CATALYSTS
1
2
3
3. PROMENADE
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Design for Integration
The major program shift from a traditional antiquarium is that this design organizes the artifact program into a playscape program into a promenade circulation pattern. It is expanding the scope of the antiquarium program greatly, but to connect the two artifact sites. Weaving all three programs ultimately adds into the goal of extending the stay of tourists and creating this process of familiarization between tourists and residents. Integrating the play spaces into the artifact program allows for residents of Torre to be associated with these artifacts from a young age.
Antiquarium A
Program Overlap
*
Artifact Walks
Context Views
Playspaces
Open Promenade
Performace Diagram Context View
Context View
Ticket Office
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Fresco Walk
Fresco Walk
Context View
Fresco Walk
Ticket Office
Solar Energy
Ground Source Heat Pump
Playscape
Carbon sequestration
Rubberized play surface
Stamped concrete promenade ramp
Excavation Fill
Artifact Walk
Fly-Over
Solar protection of artifacts on the interior makes for increased wall surface area for Photovoltaic Array
Artifact Walks
Opportunities lie in the alleyways and vacant land for scenic vistas to open up to the broader context of Torre Annunziata to advertise for more tourist patronage beyond the Oplontis and further into the heart of Torre.
Antiquarium B
View into Villa B
Cool down the hardscape Bioswales Variable play mounds
A Plains + Mounds 7
Villa B Social Familiarization Play Space Gathering Space
Ecological Intensive Green Roof Rubberized Lawn Bird Habitat
Bioswales Detention Pond
Open Promenade
Open Promenade
The frescoes and statues from Villa A are arranged along the procession of the promenade. This arrangement reduces museum fatigue and makes use of the processional artifacts such as the frescoes.
Villa B being an acnicent site where commerce and trade took place, the jewelrey and pottery are viewed in a traditional exhibit space that functions as a scaffolding for the promenade and play space above.
SECTION - Antiquarium B - Exhibit Space 8
Stack Ventilation is effective in the vertical light wells that can release hot air passively ventilate
Playspaces
Open Promenade
View space reveals Villa B’s second floor that will be reconstructed over time. 9
Story Pole | Weaving Willow - Graduate Material Research 2018 - 5th year
National Endowment For The Arts Grant For Buffalo Connections Project on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation Concept: An interactive installation between Dakota + Nakota people and buffalo. The steel structure mimics the diamond willow pattern that is significant for story telling. The puck design is intended to collect buffalo fur and have painted designs of stories told. My Role: Generating prototypes of pole construction through Grasshopper and Rhino, then either milling them out of wood or 3d printed to test structure and touch experience. 1/10th Scale 3D Print
1216
Full Scale Prototype 7’-0” Tall
Welded Dynamic Joint
Full Scale Structural Prototype Bent 1” Steel Rod 5’-0” Tall
Observational Sketches 2017 - 4th year
1. Benedictine Retreat Center, Schuyler, NE, USA 2. Duomo of Santa Maria, Siena Italy
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2
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Homeless Housing + Community Center | Morphosis Architects 2019 - 5th year
Location: Venice, CA Concepts: This housing complex and community center are the new approach to integrating the homeless population with the local residents by creating semi-private space between all residents. In the public realm, the center coutyard combats the distance created by Pacific Ave by opening up between three different paths on the ground plane. Residential LW Units
1 BR + Work Space 2 BR + Work Space Studio Affordable and 1 BR Market Rate 2 BR 3 BR Addtl Program Lobby/Security/Mail Fitness Gym PlayUnit Stor-
SF 1000 1200 600 750 900 1200
50
qty 10 10 45 75 45 15
Total SF 10,000 12,000 27,000 56,250 40,500 18,000 1,000 5,000 5,000 200 13,250
User
Category
Homeless
Healthcare + Education
Locals
Community
Tourists
Commercial
Residents
Commercial and Services
Commercial Retail Coffee/Juice bar/Kitchen 650 Spaces
Parking
Public Community Working Gardens Public Plaza 10,000
Open Space
TOTAL SF: 403,700
9,000 5,000 124,000 10,000
To Gold’s Gym
ific
c Pa
Circulation for Public and Semi-Public Space
SF
Counseling + Healthcare for Homeless Residents 10,000 Community + Education Center 15,000 Administration + Security Offices 3,000 Co-Op Grocery + Market 10,000 Farm to Table-style Restaurant/Bar.Kitchen 15,000 Art Gallery (Sculpture Garden) 3,000
e Av DN
Bus Stop ai
M n St
Veteran’s Memorial
Venice Beach
w Vie
1418
Co
s
or
d rri
To Abbot Kinney Blvd
GROUND FLOOR
Family communities are organized in courtyards
Private
Semi-Private
Children Privacy Family Hearth
Family Community
Live-Work Units
LOADING BAY
Amenities for Residents
Gym
Courtyard
SUNSET AVE Ave Sunset
UP
Adult Privacy
Urban-Semi Public
Housing First Initiative
Lobby
Counseling + Healthcare
Barrier
LW Units
Community + Education
New User
Sculpture Garden Art Gallery Public Community Gardens
Shelter
CO-OP Market
UP
Coop Grocery Farm to Table-style Restaurant/Bar/Kitchen
Local
Coffee/ Juice Bar/ Kitchen Commercial Retail
Plaza
Brings visibilitity to
Veteran’s Memorial
Semi-Public
Scuplture Garden
CO-OP OutDoor Market
Pacific Ave
Retail
PACIFIC AVE
t Main S
Public
Introduce an intimacy
MAIN ST
Strategies for Affordable + carving out Market Rate Semi-Private space between units Services
Counseling + Healthcare for Homeless
UP
Restaurant Retail
Community and Education Center
Transparent Lobbies
Retail (below) Juice Bar
UP DN
Parking Ramp PARKING RAMP TO
Security
Lobby
THORNTON AVE
View Corridor to Ocean
15
PLAZA RENDERING
Southern Face of Units Conrete Structure Private Balconies Sculpture Garden
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Northern Face of Units Perforated Screen Entryway Openings
Fully Integrated AF/MR unit layouts
Studio Units (x45)
1BR Units (x75)
2BR Units (x45)
3BR Units (x15)
1BR Live-Work Units (x10)
2BR Live-Work Units (x10)
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MODEL - 1/16”= 1’-0”
1 Protected Playground for Residents 2 Plaza Opening 3 Resident Central Corridors
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1
2
3
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Coffee Table
2019 - Furniture Project Table Top: Walnut Legs: HSS 1-1/4” Base Plate: 1/2” Plate Steel
Deep Time as a Sacred Threshold
2019 - 5th year - Masters Thesis
The sacred is one’s relationship with the unknown, how they are orienting within their unknown and generate habitable order. The world having been settled and mapped by humans has depleted our traditional sense of unknown inhabitable territory that originally gave humans meaning and unity in life and sacred architecture a purpose of claiming land ownership. This state is defined as the Anthropocene, wherein humans became an active geologic force in the earth’s timeline. The millennial generation exhibits this in experiencing the sacred in the unknown and non-religious means rather than settled architecture and crafting an individual set of values and in turn finding a community to match those values. To parallel these shifts the architecture of sacred space provide for the acetic and hermetic spiritual experience as the communal experiences of sacred continually manifest in settled profane spaces. This can be done by building reciprocally with remote, mysterious, unique from the landscape rather than imposing meaning upon it. The new paradigm of architecture proposed is a nomadic sacred experience accentuated and orchestrated by architectural intervention- to allow one to relate to an unknown temporal space and highlight the opposing thresholds between naturally occurring fluid phenomena and the rigidity of the anthropocentric force and provide a means to understand the millennial generations relationship with the sacred.
Sacred Gatherings
Sacred Threshold
Nomadic Sacred Known
Unknown
Expansion Of Known Territory
Subcultural Communities
Individual Exploration
Temporal Threshold
Anthropocene
Profane Spaces
Nature Vistas (World Expanding) How does architecture adapt to this sacred experience?
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Holocene
Fully mapped and comprehendable world
Pre-history realm only recognized by geologists
Performative Diagram - Using Deep Time as a Sacred Theshold
Current model
Threshold Intellectual trace
Catastrophic Force
instantly displaces matter of
In situ Making visible
yielding Landscape
Remnants
Visited, but experienced profanely
Viscerally prepare the nomad to understand
Intervention Enhanced sense of place
Dialectic Diagram - Understanding the sequence of the installations 3. The essence is placed to precede the remnant its linked to avoid this complication.
1. Splitting reality into the intellectual trace and the viseral presence of each remnant. Anthropocene
Dawes Act
Oscillation
Mega Ripples
Redirection
Plunge Pool
Expansion
Expansion Bar
Confluence
Kolk Lakes
2. To create a space where the primary remnant exists is to obscure the experience of what is already there.
4. Each installation is to prime the experience of the of the user to properly mark the threshold of when they enter that remnant.
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Mega Scale Water Erosion
The ice age meltdown of the cordilleran ice sheet was a global event that has a local significance, this is a catastrophic event that exists outside of human history as it even occurred before humans had crossed the land bridge.
Spokane
Camas Prairie
12,000 BC
Camas Prairie
Ice Dam
Missoula
Portland
When the ice dam broke in Idaho broke, the water rushed through Washington and created the modern day scabland features as well as pooling up in Oregon before breaking out to the ocean through ther Columbia River Exit. The scale of this is hard to imagine as it has never happened before or after.
Hot Springs
Markle Pass Wills Creek Pass
Montana Ice Dam
Flathead reservation
Little Bitteroot Valley
Camas Prairie
Missoula
The water of Glacial Lake Missoula filled the basin and created a temporary bay or lake. The water was entering the basin faster than the south end could drain it. This 1000-foot-deep lake was a result of flooding that only lasted a year, although it is theorized that the lake could have formed hundreds of times.
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The waves to the north are largest, and the ones to the south are diminished in size, loses energy as it Mission moved south.
Valley
Glacial Lake Missoula Idaho
The ripples slowly formed underwater and then remained fossil features as the water drained.
Aerial Photo looking South from Wills Creek Pass
Duck Pond Pass
The floods carved out more than 50 cubic miles of earth from MT to the Pacific Ocean.
Big Creek Pass
The flow rate was at 500,000,000 Cubic Feet Per Second. There was more energy released in this flooding than 650 times the eruption of Mt. St Helens.
The lake was held in by an ice dam in the Idaho Panhandle. The lake was volumetrically larger than lakes Eerie and Ontario
N 0
Flathead River Miles
3
Four Site Thresholds Within Transect
Expansion Bar
Plunge Pool
Mega Ripples
Key
Graded Ranch Land
0
1000 2000
3000 4000
5000
6000
7000 Cow Paths
Site Transect
Highway
Entry/ Exit
Kolk Lakes
Compilation of Site Forces
Expansion Bars Plunge Pool
Wilks Gulch Road
Highway 289
Anthropocentric effects on site
Megaripples
Big Gulch Road
6 Person Parking
Highway 289
Furthest point from the roads
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1. Confluence
Visceral Site Forces
2. Expansion
3. Redirection
4. Oscillation
Crest
Erosion
Lee Side
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Current Direction
Avalanching Downhill
Eddy Deposition Stoss Side
Trough
Site Remnants
Materiality
SECTIONAL TRANSLATIONS
Sectional Translations
Section Cuts of Material Experiments
Sink Down
TIlt
Thicken
Subtraction
Rotate
Mass
State of Flux
Misalignment
Simultaneous Erosion and Deposition
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1D
1C 1B
1A
2D
1C -Confluence Threshold Exit
1A -Confluence Threshold Entrance
1B -Confluence Threshold Center
2A -Expansion Threshold Approach
2B -Expansion Threshold Entrance
2C -Expansion Threshold Center
3A -Redirection Threshold Approach
3B -Redirection Threshold Center
3C -Redirection Threshold Exit
4A -Oscillation Threshold Approach
4B -Oscillation Threshold Center
4C -Oscillation Threshold Exit
3E 2C North
2B
Key Drainage Paths
3D
Cow Paths
2A
Intervention sites
3C
Mega Ripple Ridges
3B
Demolished Ripples
3A
4D
4C 4A 4B
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1D -Confluence Threshold Exit
1E -Confluence Site Reveal
2D Expansion Site Reveal
3D -Plunge Pool from The Ripples Edge
3E -Redirection Site Reveal
4D -Oscillation Site Reveal
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Carbon Fibre Workshop
2019 - Atelier Mey
This workshop was a test in material expression and form generating through algorithms employed by grasshopper. The prompt was to work with scaffoldings for cells and columns. We used algorithms to define wrap paths for the resin pregnated carbon fibres around the scaffolding and to generate a stronger form foe this scaled-down structure of a pavilion. The paths generated in Rhino only helped trace a path, but the act of wrapping the fibres over one another generated a different overall form.
AJ ELLIS | BRITTON ANDREWS | C-2
AJ ELLIS | BRITTON ANDREWS | P-10 Wrap 1
6
6
15
12
20
18
24
Wrap 2 8
2 Wrap 1
12
24
Wrap 2
Wrap 3
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54 Wrap 4
Wrap 5
72 Wrap 6
Wrap 3 10
Wrap 4 12
Wrap 5
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Wrap 6 16
AJ ELLIS |
austin.james.ellis1@gmail.com
|
719-502-7060
| GRADUATE PORTFOLIO 2019