thesis portfolio
BEAU JOHNSON 236 westminster st, 203 providence, ri 02903 http://beaubjohnson.tumblr.com/ beaubjohnson@gmail.com
+/- space ink on paper (2), 2012
EDUCATION
HONORS
Rhode Island School of Design 2010 – 2013 Masters Degree of Architecture Honors
Honor Student Rhode Island School of Design 2010 - present (3.87 cumulative gpa)
Architectural Association 2012 AA Visiting School Visioning Architecture
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Iowa State University 2002 – 2007 Bachelor Degree of Landscape Architecture - ASLA Honor Award ISU College of Design Rome . Italy 2006 Urban Design Studio
WORK EXPERIENCE CR Studio 2011 Architectural Intern New York City, New York Foster + Partners 2010 – 2011 Architectural Assistant New York City, New York Foster + Partners 2007 – 2010 Architectural Assistant London, United Kingdom Genus Landscape Architects 2006 – 2007 Landscape Architectural Intern Des Moines, Iowa Design Workshop 2005 – 2006 Landscape Architectural Intern Lake Tahoe, California
Graduate Studies Grant Rhode Island School of Design 2012 - Drawing a Pedagogy Alumni Travel Award RISD Architecture Department 2011 . Honorable Mention - Design Principles: Labyrinth Student Award of Honor American Society of Landscape Architects 2007 . In recognition of outstanding academic scholarship and superior accomplishment in skills related to the art and technology of landscape architecture Merit Award American Society of Landscape Architects 2007 . Design ‘Not Constructed’ Iowa State University Tennis Complex Cardinal Key Honor Society 2006 . Honoring the top 2% of the Iowa State University student body and faculty Hanson Prize Finalist Architecture Studio Scholarship 2005 . *not able to present project due to an internship with Design Workshop Order of Omega National Greek Honor Society 2005 . Honoring the top 2% of the Greek Community of Iowa State University
TEACHING Rhode Island School of Design Architecture Department Architectural Projection 2012 - Chris Bardt Foundation Studies Spatial Dynamics 2011 – 2012 - Gareth Jones
//BETWEEN LINES// ‘3d still life’ Spring 2011 . Manual Representation – Carr House Architecture Department Biannual ‘forced labyrinth’ Spring 2011 . Design Principles – Woods Gerry
Architecture Department Design Principles - Student Coordinator 2011 – 2012 - Gabriel Feld
Foundation Studies Department Biannual ‘tetrahedron(s)’ Fall 2010 . Foundation Studies Spatial Dynamics – Woods Gerry
Architecture Department Manual Representation 2011 - Chris Bardt
LEADERSHIP
Boston Architectural College Summer Academy - studio leader 2012 Iowa State University College of Design Design Tech 2007 - Thomas Leslie
EXHIBITIONS / PUBLICATIONS Museum of Art Rhode Island School of Design Fall 2013 . ‘Drawing Ambiance’ Curatorial Assistant Boston Architectural College Summer Academy August 2012 . Co-Coordinator PROCESS ‘tetrahedron(s)’ Jan 2012 . Foundation Studies Spatial Dynamics – Woods Gerry Alumni Travel Award Grant ‘forced labyrinth’ Design Principles Summer 2011 . publication
Museum of Art Rhode Island School of Design Graduate Assistantship 2012 – 2013 . Prints, Drawings and Photography Department Co-Curator - Researcher Rhode Island School of Design Architecture Design Design/Build - Student Coordinator 2011 Foster + Partners Graduate Show 2008 . Co-Coordinator Iowa State University Student Society of Landscape Architecture 2002 – 2007 Member - Executive Council Design Council Representative Iowa State University College of Design Design Council Senate Member 2004 – 2005 Iowa State University Dance Marathon Executive Committee 2002 – 2006 . Philanthropic the Childrens Miracle Network
events for
‘field’ house ink on paper, 2011
PROJECTS ‘forced’ Labyrinth Design Principles Synthetic Urbanism Urban Design Principles Replacing nowhere Urban Eden Bauhaus Archive/Workshop China Academy of Arts Visioning Architecture Architectural Association
‘forced’ Labyrinth Design Principles The investigation began as a tactile examination of the clove hitch knot, which sought to comprehensively explore the relationships created between the medium used and the architectural tectonics of the construction. The clove hitch was abstracted
and refined to respond to paper construction, then aggregated in the x,y and z directions to formulate a spatial condition unique to its constructs and foundations. This spatial condition produced identical arrays of circulation in vertical and horizontal directions, which expanded and contracted throughout the passage.
1. development of the clove hitch into a paper aggregation 2. aggregated mass 3. mass/mass intigration 4. mass/mass intigration detail 5. spatial abstraction model 6. spatial conditions developing both vertical and horizontal directions of circulation 2.
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From this investigation, the conditions explored were to be manipulated, refined and adapted to respond to a new site condition and a dual programmatic inhabitation of an occupant and a visitor through a labyrinth narrative. The labyrinth is defined as a series of disorienting events along an otherwise straightforward, singular path. Through explorations in study models and measured drawings, the constructs of forced perspective provided an ability of manipulate the internal experience of the occupants as well as acutely respond to undulating topography of the constructed site. By continuously manipulating the orientation the spatial module, these conditions were able to achieve several strategic objectives.
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lab•y•rinth [lab-uh-rinth] 1. an intricate combination of paths or passages in which it is difficult to find one’s way. 2. a complicated or tortuous arrangement. 3. any confusingly intricate state of things or events; a bewildering complex. Dictionary.com, LLC. Copyright © 2011
1. spatial sketch models 2. forced perspective projection exploration 3. forced perspective plan/ section projection
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The length of the module could be modified due to the change in elevation while maintaining the identical spatial experience upon entering. The result was a reoccurring set of disorienting spatial experiences which provided no reflection of up, down, forwards or backwards.
1. 1/8 scale site model 2. 1/8 scale site model 3. section projection cross/longitudinal 4. charcoal experiential drawings
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The two storied labyrinth could contain both the occupant and the guest in the same footprint while never allowing the two to engage the same space and never duplicating the same spatial experience. While the views through the lower segment of the scheme maintained manipulated by the forced perspective of the space, the upper space consisting of the bedroom and dining area radiated views out onto the landscape.
1/2. 1/2 scale sectional model 3. sectional perspective projection
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By reversing the forced perspective and reorienting the module, the circulation of the concurrent occupants was inverted. This allowed the permanent occupant to move below grade to bath and rise above grade to access the external site. In the final scheme, these important moments of juncture occurred twice at the two major refractions in plan.
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The labyrinth succeeds in producing a series disorienting spatial events along a singular path, by manipulating the threedimensional spatial constructs through a two-dimensional frame.
1/2. 1/2 scale sectional model 3. sun study within 1/2 scale sectional model oil prints
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‘synthetic’ Urbanism Urban Design Principles The collective development of our urban strategy began through a physical isolation of specific nodes within the given context. From these points of activity, a hierarchical fabric of connective arrays wove the system into a network through which to facilitate the redundant modes of connectivity in today’s (and future) society. Our definition of a space evolved throughout the project, as we began to understand the scaleable qualities of our nodal system. Each fully framed area became an urban block; however, the strength of the project lied in the arenas shared by blocks. These shared moments allowed the blocks within our site parameters to conjoin and expand the user’s relationship to space and passage. By engaging the outermost limits of the site, the fabric extends beyond into the synthetically given context. The complexities of connectivity articulated our urban strategies mirror the modern desires of continuous connectivity.
tree Bosque farmers market
gallery eat
vehicular alley
theater
bus
sculpture garden
skate park
news stand
subway stop
commercial
bus
Pedestrian thoroughfare
amphitheater
drinking hole
bike coop
water feature
library
car
residential
dog park street Entertainment
SITE
Within the contemporary context of our society, connectivity is ever present. Redundant networks, both physical and digital, through smart phones, social media, efficient public transportation and dense urban fabrics, keep us in continuous contact with those near and far. Based on the current trajectory, our daily lives will continue to reflect these superfluous connections. Architecture must respond to this flexibility, not through exposed boxes, open plans, and generous floor heights, but by highly articulate spatial configurations which facilitate the contemporary society. Given the existing conditions (curated by our collective studio), the proposal required a calculated response to this distributed network, a highly contoured ground plane condition and a dynamic housing typology that would invigorate an ever moving society and occupant.
Concept
Connectivity
Site Response
Housing Typology
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1. site / massing model contoured site condition 3. site / massing model commercial base 3. site / massing model residential spiral mass 4. 1/16 scale study models 5. exploded axonometric massing
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The proposal rose to bring this distributed network into a third dimension, moving fluidly through all levels of the structure, providing redundant access points to the multi-level/function units. Grounded by a multi-level commercial base, public (and resident) access exists at both the top and bottom of the surrounding context. Vehicular access on the west, tertiary road maintains a primarily pedestrian facade along the primary north/ east and south facades. Although all levels are accessible through the two primary core structures, the circulation ramp circumnavigates the central courtyard in a continuous spiral through all residential levels. The repetitious displacement of this corridor/ramp, from the inside to the outside of the floorplate, facilitates programmatic access of specific internal spaces, within the multi-story units, to the surrounding context.
1/2. 1/16 scale diagrammatic circulation floorplate model 3. plans
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1. concept sketches 2. 1/4 scale study model
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Modern row house 800 sq ft
Level 3 - PLAY 230 sq ft
Level 2 - LIVE 270 sq ft
Level 1 - WORK 300 sq ft
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unit study model unit study model unit study model unit study model housing section
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level level light level
3 2 wall 1
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Replacing nowhere Urban Eden Utopia ‘nowhere’, from Greek ou “not” + topos “place” Created by virtue of overlapping utopian schemes, inscribed upon the urban fabric, excised in fits of new vision, the old 195 corridor rests, a noman’s-land in a war that became too expensive to fight by conventional means. In the city, in the perceptions of the city, it is not merely a gap, a void; it is an invisible void, difficult to see, barely worth remembering, immune to pauses other than those of machines for moving (to) other places. There is little cause to go to this emptyness; at best it can hope to be transgressed via streets cut through its thinnest points, places where, like a paper cut-out in profile, it narrows to oblivion before its borders are once again crossed, unmarked. Not that the void lacks for new plans, projected reappropriations, newals, redevelopment; models and drawings accumulate like scrip in the wishful coffers of academics, developers, planners and city officials. But these costly imaginations have little traction on the terrain vague where the great road used to course, and their contemporary irrelevance is compounded by the inaction of the citizens of Providence, made blind to the fields of potential at their disposal.
At the end of 195’s last history, traffic was choked off, and infrastructure gradually weeded out of the landscape. Rather than creating a vacuum into which life rushed, however, the careful excision of the highway simply erased the signs of the system which had originally restricted the space. The (re)moval of Route 195 was the procedure by which the city would be restored to health, but the interstate is the phantom limb that yet plagues the urban corpus. It is persistent not in its ache, but in its anesthesis. Relentlessly unavailable for fifty years, the land remains so in the cognition of the populous. In this moment, it needs to be reintroduced to its city. The conflict is thus reframed: not a high-stakes siege for hotly contested ground, but a series of asymmetrical sorties into the urban conscious. The familiar, vividly re-presented. The numbed senses reactivated, the memories re-minded. Nowhere re-placed, the absent made perceptible, the empty intensified and made availble for reactivation at the scale of the citizen. The site was always there. All of the material were ready. We revisted the old surfaces, reanimated them with lightness, with light and built a playground for the city. A realm of fields and passages of halls, courts, and stages and everything subject to the projections of fluid media and of the imagination. 1. Providence aerial [image by N.Moore]
replacing nowhere
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how does space
Perform? 1.
Through the integration of activity, texture; by the creation of values whose frictions stimulate cognition and give it traction in the sensory world. By identifying residual spaces within and between the layers of urban fabric; by appropriating those spaces, by making those moments available to the urban imagination. In episodes and sequences, across thresholds; in choreographies of urban life, with denouement and 2. crescendo. By enabling participation in, or escape from, context; with incisions into the known, cuts to new experiential territory. 1. 2. 3. 4.
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urban market revealing structure motif garden market?
cafe skate park
garden
market parking lot reading room
school greenhouse
bar
loud quiet
oh! fast calm
exposure
play
rest/pause Tranquility
active (sigh)
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Utopia (working definition) Utopian space is reflexive: it provokes its own activation via human interaction. It encompasses vast tonal range, can provoke experience, can catalyze experiments. It offers freedom, plains of silence or waves of noise. Its sole program is leisure, in the sense that leisure means opportunity. Our project is oriented towards staging that opportunity, developing connections between existing and potential urban fabrics, hollowing out experiential moments, eddies, to influence habitation, circulation and play.
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It is an attempt to narrow the ‘utopia’ of architecture to an essence of spatial, sensorial, and cognitive experience, and to leave open myriad opportunities for personal appropriation, adaptation and expression. 1. 2. 3. 4.
program diagram green facade urban depot hills of play
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1. cog·ni·tion [kog-nish-un] noun
spa·tial [spey-shuhl]
1. the act or process of knowing; perception. 2. the product of such a process; something thus known, perceived, etc.
1. of or pertaining to space. 2. existing or occurring in space; having extension in space.
Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved February 06, 2012, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/ browse/cognitive
The faculties of the mind, the root of the senses and the body. Encompassing experience, all that is known, communicated or surmised, expansively external and wholly internal. The human whole of the universe is cognitive - to people; the whole of the universe is only apparent through the mind. But not universally apparent- How to facilitate maximum cognitive transmission to the maximum spectrum of the population...
adjective
Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved February 06, 2012, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/ browse/spatial
The nature of the tools granted to architects. Densities in juxtaposition describe space by its contrast with matter. Space, often understood as empty, is in fact a relative term; the spatial is contextual and episodic, and extends with ragged edges. It acts across the senses, its modulating pressures imprinting their traces upon all its inhabitants, by whom it is reciprocally activated and reformed. In the built density of the city, what is the architectural manipulation of absence, of sparseness? How to make void into space?
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3. sen·so·ry [sen-suh-ree]
adjective
1. of or pertaining to the senses or sensation. 2. Physiology . noting a structure for conveying an impulse that results or tends to result in sensation, as a nerve. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved February 06, 2012, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/ browse/sensory
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The nature of our cognitive avenues, of our varied and individually precise frameworks for comprehension of the external. The links between our incomplete perception of the world and the totality of our psychic landscapes. If we are to champion the stimulation of all the senses--
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prairie road crossing plane forest terrain lanes activ(ity) green
The lateral bands of the master plan act as sutures to the city’s ruptured fabric, but they are substantial beyond their binding function--microcosmic worlds unto themselves. Oriented perpendicular to the primary east-west axis of the site, they borrow from the found assortment of existing streets, view-alleys, parking lots and vacant fields. They are assigned by program, but rather than prescriptions for action, these programs describe articulate topographies, ambient conditions, and the juxtaposition of relative densities. It is possible to traverse the park along or through just one of these bands, interrupting the brick and mortar urban experience with a moment of wind perfumed by pine sap, with a glimpse of saturated colors and with the sounds of those immersed in their leisure. Alternately, there is the long trajectory across the bands, a journey of alternating speeds and densities, of colors contrasting, of whispers and resonating 1. shouts. The terrain changes, and again, rises, then dips, gradually making its way to sea level. The view disappears into trees before opening onto rubber ground, onto street traffic, onto the audience of a film on the riverfront. 1. urban strategy sketch 2. model - tree allay 3. overall plan
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1. overall plan [image by B.Voshell]
2/3. 1/32 scale model Group proposal with Nicholas Moore and Burgess Voshell. Unless noted, all imagery shown is my own work.
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Bauhaus Archive/Workshop China Academy of Arts The campus for the China Academy of Arts, in Hangzhou, was designed by local Chinese architect and recent Pritzker Prize winner, Wang Shu, who conceived the campus within the traditional philosophies of the Chinese culture, specifically that of the garden and scholar. Wandering through the traditional garden, the scholar traverse a spontaneous path, in search of inspiration, abstraction and realization. Often through painting, the scholar boldly, yet with a delicate grace abstracts his reality, through landscape. These artifacts of his work are housed within pavilions, protected from the elements. However his work is conceived along the path, within the space between. The Bauhaus Archive rests as an pavilion within the garden of the China Academy of Art, open along the path of the scholars of this day.
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1. Traditional Chinese landscape painting ‘floating mountains’ 2. present Anji province, China 3. ink painting seeing Wang Shu’s CAA campus as a traditional chinese painting 4. sketch - China Academy of Art Hangzhuo, China
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1. Facade sketch 2. Yi Pu Yuan - Suzhou, China 3. Bauhaus campus Dessau, Germany 4. Campus plan - river flow around the sacred hill to proposed building site
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1. archive / workshop proposed
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library / offices
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Aligned opposite the archive for books (library) at the east entrance gate, the archive of objects (Bauhaus collection) arches its back in protection against the outside world and reaches out into the CAA garden to allow access. As a foreigner, it hovers just above the ground, objectifying its presence within the context, in contrast to its opposite which is firmly grounded upon stone. Positioned over the river where two rivers converge and the water from the mountain departs campus, the archive cradles the water as it passes out into the world.
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workshop
1. China Academy of Art campus plan 2. sketchs - plan/elevation 3. figure/groud south campus plan 3. workshop - external space 4. archive - internal space
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archives
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“By detours, access to secrets” - Chinese proverb 3.
A series of courtyards within, a series of pavilions connected by the path. 1. entry sketch 2. traditional courtyard Anji province, China 3. Monestary - Ningbo, China 4. ‘path’ concept sketch 5. plan
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As within the garden, the path through the archive is appropriated to the liberty of the scholar, to meander through in search of enlightenment. It allows for an exposure to elements of the external, within an ambiance of the internal. Along the path and sheltered within the strength of the earth, a series of five pavilions house the knowledge and creative inspiration of the archive. Four dedicated to the spirited evolution of the Bauhaus and central, a courtyard over the river focusing an abstract and direct engagement with the water, the Chinese painting and the context. All five houses of knowledge abstract the courtyard of illumination, protecting and resonating the past while inspiriting the future.
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courtyards of inspiration
Johannes Itten The Eavesdropper
El Lissitzky PROUN 24
Tan Dao-ming Chinese Landscape Painting
Gunta Stadler-Stรถlzl 5 Choirs
Herbert
Bayer Cinema
Courtyard Archive the chinese landscape painting. mountain. water. reflection. depth. vegetation. scale.
First Bauhaus Archive ‘expressionism and craft’ ‘rid the students of “all the deadwood of convention” unlearning. ‘a state of innocence beyond the corruption of culture’ a blank canvas for expression and abstraction
Second Bauhaus Archive De Stijl and Constructivism ‘materialism and mechanization of art and life’. ‘intersection of abstract forms in abstract space, inhabited by floating planes without mass and of varying degrees of transparency’.
Third Bauhaus Archive Bauhaus approach became extremely ‘objective’. deriving form from: - productive method - material constraint - programmatic necessity
Fourth Bauhaus Archive ‘socially responsive’ ‘emphasis on social rather than aesthetic considerations’ simple. demountable. inexpensive. working towards production and external influence.
ARCHITECTURE ADVERTISING WOOD/METAL T E X T I L E S
Powerful in their influence, the artifacts of the Bauhaus express the fragility of the hand and material. The presence of the rammed earth, entombing the collection, exudes a sublime power in its weight and scale yet displays its delicacy to the touch and within the protective concrete shell. Rendered for its speed of construction, economic availability and feasibility within the given context, concrete also exists as a foreign element, expressive of its context through its lifespan yet malleable in its inception. As with the courtyard, one must build the void in order to make the mass.
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1. formwork sequence model 2. concrete frame model 3. conceptual model - concrete shell holding rammed earth upon raw earth 4. 1/4 scale section model 5. Rammed earth - rural China
Compressed Earth
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of the Earth 3.
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Inside while outside, outside while inside. 1. 2. 3. 4.
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1/4 scale section model spatial sketch concept section sketch Tian Ye Ge Ningbo, China
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1. wall/roof section detail 2. Bauhaus campus (rotated) Dessau, Germany 3. section model - poured concrete, rammed earth 4. massing model
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Visioning Architecture Architectural Association Visioning Architecture - an intensive immersion into visualization techniques for architecture, where rich processes supplant mere production. We interweave film, hand drawing, audio, constructions, and digital drawing. Visioning Architecture is the only AA Visiting School that takes place in London. We take full advantage of the riches of the AA premises in Bedford Square WC1, and its central London setting just a stone’s through from the British Museum, Soho, St. Giles and the Thames River. The programme made its debut as new Unit 1 of the AA Summer School 2011. The sixteen participants achieved extraordinary collaborations, learning to see in new ways as they developed new ways to let drawing synthesize their experiences and communicate their ideas. Acting as archaeologists, forensic observers and oracles, we extract evidence from the city, of its people, stories and architecture. Using selected sites in Central London as catalyst, we discover and construct new realities of the city by weaving together visions of past, present and future. As the protagonist did in Christopher Nolans’ film Inception, we ‘create and perceive our world simultaneously’. http://visioning.aaschool.ac.uk/
The ‘trap doors’ of St.Giles A journey from the sky to the ground Hawksmoor had been driven by constellations, spirits and ghosts to design London’s seven churches around St Giles, a central borough. The patterns of the cosmos draw/dig the ground through years and decades, through the dark, forgotten layers of history. Today, bells ring, hidden in their stone nest, resonate a traumatic past. The Church of St Giles used to be a symbol of unity for a community of immigrants. That essence is now gone, existing today as individuals, layers, above and below. The bell tower, once a beacon of the borough, now a lowlying relic among the seemingly ever-present cloudy haze of the London sky. Going down, finding interactions. We approached this site by several points of view, looking under, above, trying to get a complete understanding of this area. This journey follows a path between sky and ground, digging into the earth toward the upper levels of the ground. Compression, dilatation; ground, sky; heaven, hell. Creating new stitches between fragments of space and time. Journey through geological stratus that illustrates our discoveries, explaining how constructions can be reinvented by combining specific futures. Opening an horizontal door and exposing the past, present and future of St Giles.
1. critique photo 2. AA poster 3. the ‘trap doors’ of St. Giles
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