Ben Garcia Selected Works 2020 - 2022
University of Michigan - Ann Arbor Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning B.S. Arch - 2023 begarcia@umich.edu
Contents
Communal Play Grounds Academic Project UG2 Studio | Christina Hansen Individual Work | Winter 2021
It’s a Small World
Academic Project UG3 Studio | Jacob Comerci Individual Work | Fall 2021
Behind the Scenes
Academic Project UG3 Studio | Jacob Comerci Individual Work | September 2021
Color City
Personal Project A2AC Alleyway Competition Group Work | June 2021
Mountain House
Academic Project UG1 Studio | Anca Trandafirescu Individual Work | Fall 2020
01
Communal Play Grounds: Ford Lake Boathouse
This boathouse is sited along Ford Lake in Ypsilanti, Michigan. A campus design curates an urban condition of public recreation, leisure, and spectatorship while maintaining a close formal integration of the site’s natural landscape. In plan, circulation and building forms follow a system of diagonals; accenting the triangular shoreline while privileging the flow of activity from land to water. The project convenes, both internally and with its landscape, at the northern tip of Ford Lake Park. In treating this project as a campus, the private enclosure of program is de-emphasized while outdoor circulation and visual relationships among activities become unifying agents.
Two separate sites were initially considered - Ford Lake Park in Ypsilanti and Bandemer Park in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This series of diagrams surveys environmental conditions of each site; focusing on aspects of vegetation, visual connection to the surrounding community, proximity to existent program, and noise pollution. A triangular corner of Ford Lake Park was ultimately selected for its vast amount of exposed, open land. This would allow for significantly less deforestation while structuring a deeper visual integration into the surrounding community.
Early Form Iterations
Precedent Drawings: Floating Kayak Club | Force4 Architects
Communal Play Grounds | Interior Perspective
Communal Play Grounds | Exterior Perspective
02
It’s a Small World:
Theatrical Landscapes Bridging Communities
The Newburgh-Beacon bridge spans the Hudson River connecting the cities of Newburgh and Beacon, New York. Despite their close proximity, the socioeconomic conditions and cultural fabric of the two communities differ greatly. This project challenges the bridge’s current position as a vessel exclusively for transportation, and transforms the river’s span into a shared urban-hub of cultural and recreational activity.
The bridge deck becomes a threadlike datum that connects a series of “urban nodes” populated with green space, performance venues, and various recreational programs to encourage communal gathering along the site. A careful consideration of sight lines, framed peripheral views, and the sequencing of intimate and grand scales all work together in curating a theatrical presentation of both architecture and the Hudson Valley landscape.
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While much of the program is solely accessible by foot, vehicular traffic remains uninterrupted throughout for those commuting along the local expressway system.
The deck is primarily a zone of mobility that moves the user through each cluster of program in procession-like order.
The entire bridge can be thoug but the delineation of scale and structures new spatial hierarch
Strategic visual framing fixates architectural or sc
ght of as a singular destination, program amongst its segments hies within the larger footprint.
the user’s attention on specific cenic landscapes.
03
Behind the Scenes: It’s a Small World
Cultural Mapping This mapping exercise investigates the cultural infrastructure embedded within Newburgh and Beacon — the two cities cited in the previous project. Mapping cultural patterns requires a qualitative understanding of the human experience, so our illustration rejects a top-down approach at mapping and presents data through an experiential lens. The cities of Newburgh and Beacon experienced a similarlytimed economic decline during the mid-twentieth century. A failed urban renewal project left much of Newburgh’s architecture and historically significant infrastructure demolished or in a state of disrepair — leaving a partial preservation of the East End Historic District as the community’s main cultural monument, today. Alternatively, revitalization efforts for Beacon introduced the Dia Beacon modern art museum — fueling the community’s transition into a current artistic hub. Through mapping these cities’ timelines of decline and economic response, this exercise highlights a story of preservation vs. revitalization; registering questions of access, funding, and their implications for race and class. Research, design, and preliminary modeling for this illustration were completed as group work with Elizabeth Owens, B.S. ‘23. Other pages in this section remain independent work.
Bridging Precedents
This phase of the design process engages two architectural precedents: Rolex Learning Center by SANAA Architects and Raymond Hood’s 1928 proposal for “Skyscraper Bridges.” This series of orthographic drawings details my investigation of these projects through their form, scale, and experiential character. Rolex Learning Center exists as a unique dialogue between building form and organic sculpture, while Raymond Hood’s proposal provides ideas about vertical space-making and large-scale construction.
Plan
Section
Rolex
Circular images found on ArchDaily
x Learning Center | SANAA Architects
Exploded Axonometric
Circular images found on ArchDaily
Skyscraper Bridges | Raymond Hood
Exploded Axonometric
Plan
Section
Merge
In this final stage of preliminary design, an array of formal strategies from both precedents have merged together, culminating in three new spatial configurations. Each of these merges assumes a different identity from their counterparts. Merge 1 foregrounds the urban condition created by ground planes and vertically stacked sequences.
Elevation
Axonometric
Plan
Axonometric Drawings
Merge 2 explores organic forms superimposed onto grid systems in three dimensions. In this merge, vertical systems of form mix with horizontal and vertical thresholds of light and program.
Plan
Elevation
Axonometric Drawings
Merge 3 experiments with the perception of singular forms from different vantage points, registering architecture’s salient relationship with sight lines and movement. The sequence of the user’s circulation around the space determines the chronology of their visual experience.
Plan
Elevation
04
Color City:
A2AC Alleyway
y Competition
The city of Ann Arbor glistens as a vibrant and colorful mix of artists, thinkers, and innovators from across the globe. Color City celebrates this town’s exuberant character by serving as a bright, attention-grabbing landscape that encourages visitors to gather, explore, and personally interact with their environment. This project’s spatial character is defined by three primary components: a field of vertical poles with attached panels; a calculated and immersive arrangement of color and light; and lastly, the self-guided user.
The entirety of this project was completed as group work with Demetrius Ford and Dominica Kusmierczyk. Active roles held in planning, modeling, and postproduction for each presented drawing
Rotated Panels
Color Arrangement
Gathering Spaces
The positioning of the poles fluctuates in density as you move through the space. This creates a variety of spatial conditions that offer distinct experiences and programs from one another. A denser collection of poles encourages intimacy — felt in the meandering of tight passageways when led by a continued interest to explore. Momentary openings create intermediate zones where visitors can pause, reflect, or briefly interact. An expansive central opening allows for the masses to convene and absorb the visual harmony of every color at once. Flexible panels allow visitors the chance to leave their own mark on the space. Individual panels can freely rotate 180 degrees around their respective poles while remaining rigid and motionless until activated by the next user. This interactive nature enables an endless possibility of spatial relationships and geometric variety. Color City is an art installation embracing the visual interest of harmony and affording its users a sense of agency in their space.
05
Mountain House:
Copy & Paste, Undo, Redo
This project is inspired by Atelier Bow-Wow’s Mountain House in Nevada City, California. “Copy & Paste” interrogates spatial logics of the original home. “Copy” is a sectional model that recreates a ten-foot section of the original house, and captures a linear sequencing of private and public spatial typologies crucial to Bow-Wow’s design. “Paste” is my design of an addition to the existing home. This exercise resulted in a centralized living room that rejects conventional, floor-to-ceiling spatial boundaries and deploys subtle geometric shifts, slight elevational changes, and visual connections across thresholds to establish new boundaries and micro territories. “Undo” breaks down the experiential character of the first two projects through a series of investigative models. Materiality, spatial density, and the coexistence of contrasting emotions become foregrounded in the design process of new spaces. “Redo” preserves certain ideologies of the previous exercises while translating Mountain House from the Californian desert to an Urban lot. From an outside perspective, this new house appears as a suspended monolithic structure with an exposed threshold at street level.
Circular photographs by Iwan Baan, 2008
Copy 1/4” = 1’-0” scale model
Paste 1/4” = 1’-0” scale model
Undo
Redo 1/8” = 1’-0” scale model
Thank you.