SELECTED DESIGN WORK
CARMEN CHAN
01 CROSSWORD Reimagining Production Space at Ohio Design San Francisco, California FALL 2019 ARCH 100C Instructor: F. Jason Campbell UC Berkeley Ohio Design is a fine furniture fabricator located in a historic Urban Mixed Use (UMU) building in the heart of the Mission District of San Francisco, a rapidly changing Production, Repair, Distribution (PDR) neighborhood. Although the Mission used to be primarily industrial, many businesses are capitalizing on the vagueness of UMU-PDR zoning requirements to house offices, apartments, shops, etc., and forcing much of the existing artisan workshops, fine fabricators, and warehouses to other parts of the Bay Area. This project proposes Ohio Design become Ohio Design + overgrowth space of neighboring businesses through the insertion of 6 volumes organized by Ohio Design’s workflow. Each volume, filled with program taken from the surrounding site, follows an independent logic for both program selection and volume wall assembly to suit their unique identities. Ohio Design then becomes: a) a new, fresh space that stimulates creativity for new methods of thinking through the movement of new people and ideas flowing in and out, and b) a self-contained network of programmatic and network intersections that speak as a microcosm of the changing neighborhood dynamics. Right: Final model built at 1/8” = 1’ This project was recognized at the 2020 College of Environmental Design CIRCUS.
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DEVELOPMENT Stage 1: TIME:SCALE SITE: Exploration of UMU-PDR through the production workflows of key archetypes of program in neighboring buildings Stage 2: TIME:SCALE BODY: Analysis of Ohio Design’s production workflow Stage 3: SORTING: Programmatic analysis and organization of proposed program
EXISTING SITE CONDITIONS + TIME:SCALE SITE Ohio Design is located at the intersection of Treat Ave and Mistral St, and nestled in a block of busier streets:19th St to the north, Harrison St to the east, and Folsom St to the west (top). The TIME:SCALE SITE drawing (right) diagrams the production workflows (across) of several key archetypes of the recent program and development introduced into existing UMU-PDR buildings primarily clustered along Harrison St, and the intersectional relationships growing between them (down). 3
ACROSS 1. 600 ALABAMA ST (1911, UMU-INDUSTRIAL) 2. 630 TREAT AVE (1920, UMU-INDUSTRIAL) 3. 2301 HARRISON ST (1993, UMU-LIVE/WORK CONDOMINIUMS) 5. 2225 FOLSOM ST ( 1946, PDR-1-G-INDUSTRIAL) 6. 650 ALABAMA ST (1914, UMU-INDUSTRIAL) 7. 2345 HARRISON ST (1920, UMU-MISCELLANEOUS) 9. 620 TREAT AVE (1920, UMU-MISCELLANEOUS)
DOWN 1. CONSUMER GOODS CYCLE 3. INCREASING NUMBER OF LIVE/WORK CONDOMINIUMS IN THE MISSIO 4. WORK/LIFE NETWORK 8. TRANSITION FROM SPACE OF WORK TO SPACE OF LEISURE
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ACROSS 2. WOOD 4. BREAK ROOM 5. METALS 6. UNLOADING 7. LOADING DOWN 1. OFFICE 2. MATERIALS STORAGE 3. ASSEMBLY AREA
TIME:SCALE BODY The TIME:SCALE BODY drawing (left) analyzes Ohio Design’s own production workflow from beginning (design) to end (shipping) broken into 6 key process and spatial zones: LOADING, OFFICE, STORAGE, BREAK, ASSEMBLY, and PRODUCTION. These zones serve as a sorting hat for the program to be introduced, and as a precedent for the ensuing 6 volumes to be inserted into Ohio Design (below).
ONE-STOP-SHOP MINI URBANITY All of these seemingly disparate programs offer logic and opportunities for a symbiotic communal workspace where every body has the chance to learn from one another (below left to right)... ...the ramp between the STORAGE and BREAK volumes forms a bridge between the two, facilitating the transition from production to consumer ...necessary AV conduit visibly runs from the ASSEMBLY to PRODUCTION volume connecting the photography studio and sound recording room ...the gantry crane, part of the original building but removed by tenants long ago, is reintroduced in the STORAGE volume as a means of facilitating goods in and out ...the floor opens up in the photography studio to a rolling backdrop embedded in the ASSEMBLY floor that assists in developing Ohio Design’s brand.
BASEMENT PLAN
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GROUND FLOOR PLAN
THIRD FLOOR PLAN
SECOND FLOOR PLAN
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Study models built at 1/16” = 1’ show evolution of form, program, and materials (right). Overall and detail views of final model built at 1/8” = 1’ Models employ acrylic, museum board, chipboard, mesh, and plywood to represent the vast array of assemblies unique to programs throughout the building (below).
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02 THEATER OF TRANSIENCE Phenomena of Fuzzy Architecture San Francisco, California SPRING 2020 ARCH 100D Instructor: Eleanor Pries UC Berkeley Everyday, Fog forms his thick body from the sky and the sea to journey through the low hills of Marin down to the Theater of Transience at 44th and Santiago. The Theater of Transience is both a theater of performance, and a theater for fog where the program is constantly in flux with the moving, changing nature of Fog. Fog’s thick, obscuring presence and insatiable hunger swallows all in his path into a blurry, changing semblance - those swallowed wearing new ebbing disguises different from how they presented before. Located atop a long-disused municipal sunken water cistern, the Theater of Transience is an exploration into the phenomena of fuzzy architecture derived from critically relating vastly different scales and systems of watery architecture from site to the greater water supply system of the San Francisco Bay Area. It takes inspiration from the disguises worn by reticent water utilities intended to protect and camouflage, the ornamental facades that shroud the ordinariness of the housing typology in the Sunset, and the layers of visible and invisible utilities, systems, and tactile sensations around. Right: Site surroundings facade study
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LAYERED CONDITIONS + GHOSTLY DISGUISES The cistern’s location is a watery anomaly: within reach of the ocean but hidden from view; accessible from the street but embedded in a seemingly vacant lot; encased full with water but surrounded by a blanket of sand. These study models of the site’s relationship to the ocean and of the site are various readings of parsed layers of the visible and invisible utilities, systems, and tactile bodies encompassing the site (including sewer lines, lot logic, and sand density). Strip away the unique sherbet-colors, ornamental false fronts, and voids and projections of the urban-suburban Sunset and all the houses are now distilled into the same house following identical proportional and utilitarian goals of mass suburban development. Digital superimpositions of each permutation atop each other presents evident stable zones where there are few adjustments from house to house while the ambiguous and mutable voided and projected zones where variation is high become evident when each permutation is physically layered. Using Douglas Darden’s method of superimposition to critically relate these site and facade studies to the street, city, and greater systems of watery architecture, a series of conceptual plans and sections create precedence for fuzzy architecture manifested in the Theater of Transience. 13
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Towers of neblinero mesh collect Fog
FUZZY ARCHITECTURE IS...
Facade variation in layering of glass materials
...the gradation of temporariness to permanence. The people and movement of the performances are the most temporary, lasting fleeting minutes to a few hours. Fog is in the middle of the spectrum, coming everyday but also inevitably leaving everyday. And the building itself as lasting permanence. ...mutable experiences. Layering refractive, reflective, and translucent mediums (such as steel, glass, and mesh) produces continuously shifting, unstable, and ghostly encounters and experiences where no identical encounters and performances are within the realm of possibility.
Screen roofs form drippy interior experience
...the blurred boundaries between stability and instability. Instability: Mesh towers of differing heights soar from the ground to the sky to collect Fog before his exit. Stability: The collected water will eventually be regenerated as fog once again. Instability: The changing conditions of how each space is used.
Site superimposition studies
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Fog pump generator in cistern
Stability: The existing.
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03 SOMA URBAN INSTITUTE “SPLIT” San Francisco, California SPRING 2019 ARCH 100B Instructor: Keith Plymale UC Berkeley Located at the intersection of 3rd and Bryant St in San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood, the Urban Institute is part gallery, workspace, office, meeting and lecture venue, and permanent exhibition space for the historic WPA model of 1930s San Francisco. San Andreas. The San Francisco Bay. Highways. Market Street. The building takes precedence from the defining splits and divides in the surrounding natural and man-made geography that have not only been essential to the City’s enduring prosperity since the Gold Rush, but also that it must now maneuver around with great caution in order to survive into the future. These splits are manifested in the building horizontally through split levels, and vertically with a large glazed crevasse down the middle to foster a visual relationship among the varying disciplines. Right: Exterior rendering of the Urban Institute
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SPLIT: WPA MODEL
SPLIT: GEOGRAPHY
SPLIT: CONSTRUCTION
PROCESS MODELS
Permanently exhibited in the Urban Institute is the recently rediscovered WPA-era 1:100 scale model of every building in San Francisco. Its 38’x42’ size is split into158 interlocking pieces with 6,000+ removable blocks.
San Francisco is shaped by its split geography: the San Andreas Fault severs it from the mainland, the sealanes its livelihood depends on splinter into many directions out the Bay, highways segregate class, and Market Street fractures SOMA from the rest of San Francisco.
The main circulation core emphasizes the split down the center, while glass walls form acoustic separations and develop visual relationships among the different programs and visitors to the Urban Institute.
Multiple iterations of 1/8” scale study models analyzing existing site surroundings, formal conditions, and facade development. These models test different materials (ranging from foam, Bristol board, chipboard, and plywood) against different methods of production.
Image credit: David Rumsey maps 21
CONCEPTUAL FACADE DEVELOPMENT The warm, ceramic lattice louvers generate exterior visual continuity and add sculptural character to the shifting volumes and program of the building. In addition, the louvers simultaneously increase the building’s overall energy performance through daylighting and shading at a particularly sunny intersection, according to sun angle calculations, in San Francisco. The offset levels form a terrace on the top floor, revealing views of the surrounding SOMA neighborhood. Oversized operable doors and windows throughout maintain a naturally ventilated, versatile, and comfortable space for the people working in the offices, and for patrons visiting the Urban Institute.
TRANSVERSE SECTION
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04 N. BERKELEY TRANSIT HUB “COLLISION” Berkeley, California FALL 2018 ARCH 100A Instructor: Joris Komen UC Berkeley The North Berkeley Transit Hub serves as a central and convenient social condensing community center adjacent to the North Berkeley BART center with a large variety of programming including an expansive open-air lobby, a transit hub, cafe, art gallery, children’s care center, community storage, reading room, flex community gathering space. The North Berkeley Transit Hub is the result of a new concept of space formation derived from a series of intensive foamcore material studies. It formally explores the spatial remnants of impact and collision, the formal characteristics that come as a consequence of rupture, and light as a means for informing displacement. Right: Final Bristol model built at 1/4” = 1’ This project was nominated to the 2019 College of Environmental Design Student Exhibition.
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STUDY: CONTINUITY AT INTERSECTION This initial study dives into a moment of vertical intersection found in Carme Pinó’s Caixaforum Zaragoza. That intersection was recreated from one continuous sheet of foamcore layered and folded onto itself. The material qualities of foamcore gradually loosened the original orthogonal intersection into one with masses that shift and weave at slight angles that challenge its rigid precedent. The foamcore’s idealized form was then translated into a Bristol model, where it continued to morph in minute ways. Orange accentuates key moments of slippage and provides visual continuity for the formal stepping language present throughout. Section cuts taken on each side of the Bristol model shows the emergence of new solid masses created from the method of construction.
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DEVELOPMENT: COLLISION AT INTERSECTION The massing for the new, contemporary Transit Hub was developed through several formal iterations that considered the required program, furthering interest in the material qualities of foamcore, and site geography and traffic at the North Berkeley BART station. Foamcore retains the impression of impact and collision long after the rupturing event. These ruptures manifest in plan and section where the disjointedness among levels make maintaining vertical continuity important to establishing a relationship among the different masses. Openings are located in moments that emphasize displacement, where each level’s original contour after it has intersected with the ones above and below.
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LONGITUDINAL SECTION
TRANSVERSE SECTIONS
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Foamcore and Bristol study models built at 1/16” = 1’ experiment with material and spatial consequences of collision (right). Overall and detail views of final Bristol model built at 1/4” = 1’ Removable top demonstrates spatial quality of major community gathering space the third floor (below).
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05 CONSTRUCTION SPRING 2019 ARCH 160 Instructors: Dana Buntrock and David Jaehning UC Berkeley The following three projects are explorations into the strengths and limitations of the three most common building construction materials (wood, steel, and concrete) and their respective construction methods using common wood and metal shop tools and machines. Each project sought to minimize costs and waste, use responsibly sourced materials efficiently and effectively, maximize function and utility after the fact, and produce usually striking pieces. Each of these projects were highly collaborative and coordinated group efforts, from brainstorming solutions, to beginning concept sketches, to taking turns cutting material and assembling the final product version in shop. Each project encapsulates our collective and individual personalities, expressions, and visions for the materials involved.
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WOOD Partners: Cara Kim, Bryce Pallera, and Emma Ryan A 12’ tower composed of six 2’ modules constructed from three sheets of 3/4” white birch plywood that physically tracks an upward spiraling triangle. Each module interlocks with the preceding module via a series of lap joints on the inside bracing of each triangle. The cantilever, in addition to the triangles, introduce a horizontal element to the height-driven tower.
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STEEL Partners: Cara Kim, Emma Ryan, and Jingyi Wo A steel and wood stair striving to maintain the delicate balance between horizontality and verticality, thick and thin, cold and warm, steel and wood. It was constructed using a combination of 1/8”-1/2” steel tubing and bars, and 1/2” white birch plywood. The complementary red-tone wood finish and black satin steel finish draws attention to the rhythm created by the harmony of different materials and thicknesses.
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CONCRETE Partners: Cara Kim, Joshua Jordan, and Bryce Pallera The hyperbolic paraboloid form was chosen as a foil to the heavy concrete material. The raw edges challenge the symmetry and uniformity of leaves found in nature. It was constructed using two concrete mixtures with 2� wire reinforcement over a plastered chipboard waffle formwork. The different textures are similar to a leaf in nature: the shiny top side has imprints of found native leaves while the bottom side has impressions of the woven fabric used in the formwork. 34