CALEB BIRCH EHLY Selected Architectural work From the University of Pennsylvania and Professional Collaborations
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Table of Content
pg.04 pg.16 pg.24 pg.34 pg.44 pg.54
Projects Articulated Sequences Robotics Research Withdrawn Figures Embossed Geometry Saline Dreams Reliefs and Monoliths
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Articulated Sequences
Studio 701_Ferda Kolatan Urban Fabric Project
Collaboration with Joonsung Lee
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Articulated Sequences
As the Han developed through the centuries, its fluctuation of usage, space, and growth has rendered it almost unknown. This project seeks to reestablish the processional qualities that were once present as one would enter through a passageway, to an open courtyard, through another passageway, and again into an open courtyard. As our project develops in, around and under the existing, it takes on conditions through a buildup of details, both in the small and large scale. Articulation, color, and geometry fuse together through undulating sculpted metal inlays taking over and reconstructing the threshold conditions between courtyards.
Volume and space become synonymous with detail and articulation, developing a formal approach that accepts the resolution found within the historic culture and hybridizes it with contemporary techniques using geometry, material, and texture. In doing so the project begins rendering new hybrid relationships and aesthetic qualities that dive deep into the cultural aspects of Istanbul, both in the day to day use, along with the introduction of a contemporary gallery. These functions, both in their tensions and similarities play a part in establishing a new role and identity to the Han’s image culture, recalibrating the points of attention and attraction.
Title Underbelly Location Istanbul, Turkey Medium Digital Render Year 2019 Articulated Sequences
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Through a pedagogical focus of the studio, we looked at the ideas of dichotomies, and how we as architects build within a historic context. The major conceptual framework looks at the dialogue between image and object. From an initiating exercise of image making[above] and object making[right], the use of dichotomies to generate hybrid conTitle Image Oddkin Location Istanbul, Turkey Medium Digital Composition of Modeled Part / Render Year 2019
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Articulated Sequences
ditions, which through the studio we label as Oddkin, a term coined by Donna Haraway. This Oddkin, or kinship between different architectural, cultural, and historical Elements, starts the beginning of this project and the way it is presented, always through its image nature, and located in its object relationships.
Title Rocaille Oddkin Location Istanbul, Turkey Medium Digital Render Year 2019
Articulated Sequences
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The programmatic and formal aspects of the project find themselves embedded in the underground deteriorated infrastructure. This notion couples the urbanity of the project as an infrastructural element, but also through its secondary program of gallery.
Title Infrastructure Object Location Istanbul, Turkey Medium Digital Render Year 2019
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Articulated Sequences
Articulated Sequences
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The embedded objects serve as first a reestablishing of a sequence to the center of the Han by recalibrating the deteriorated conditions of entry. This project hopes to develop a new understanding of the tranquil context of the series of courtyards.
Title Sequence Chunks Location Istanbul, Turkey Medium Composite Drawing Year 2019
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Articulated Sequences
Title Detail,Detail, and Details Location Istanbul, Turkey Medium Digital Render Year 2019 Articulated Sequences
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Title Models Location Istanbul, Turkey Medium Physical Model; Resin, Pla, Metal cast, Powder Print, Silver Leaf, Acrylic, and Concrete Year 2019 12
Articulated Sequences
Title Site Section Location Istanbul, Turkey Medium Digital Render Year 2019 Articulated Sequences
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Articulated Sequences
Articulated Sequences
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Fellowship in Robotics Research
Research Fellowship 2020: PENN PRAXIS Advisor: Andrew Saunders Collaborators: Yujie Li Benjamin Hergert
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Ruled Surface and Robotics Research
The major initiatives of the PennPraxis Research Fellowship was to develop methods, both technical and pedagogically of working with ruled surfaces and robotic fabrication to develop prototype models for a ceiling installation. This research was initialized by Andrew Saunders whom it was developed under to further be developed within the MSD_RAS (Robotics and Autonomous Systems) program
an Penn as the inaugural studio course. Through the mannered use of now ubiquitous robotic fabrication of hot wire cutting, the sought to further the implications of the ruled surface, both as mass and articulation. By developing methods and tools to construct articulated surfaces both as a construction and design, the outcome yielded both complex visual and rigorous geometrical objects .
Title Ceiling Installation Prototype Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Digital Render of Prototype Year 2020 Ruled Surface and Robotics Research
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Title Analytical Models Analysis of Sculptures of Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Drawing Year 2020
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Ruled Surface and Robotics Research
Title Ceiling Installation Prototype RCP Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Digital Render of Prototype Year 2020 Ruled Surface and Robotics Research
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Through the use of ruled surface geometry and Naum Gabo sculptural reference, these prototypes begin to develop a rigorous geometrical logic, able to produce complex and compelling surface definition. Definition at the sale of a cut module, and at the scale of surface relief.
Title Tectonic Prototype Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Digital Render of Prototype Year 2020
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Ruled Surface and Robotics Research
Ruled Surface and Robotics Research
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Withdrawn Figures
Studio 501_Ben Krone University of Pennsylvania Museum Extension of Archive Space
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Withdrawn Figures
An archive for objects must first confront its own reality as an object. This project firstly looks to deal with ways of form-making through scalar modes of working through, and with the material. Secondly, through notions of disjointed relief, at the scale of the surface, and at the scale of building. As one first encounters the architecture, they are left to their own devices, they must probe to find entry, if one
does not, they only encounter the monolithic. Once engaged and within, the filtering of light and mass push one from space to space, archive to archive, letting one’s curiosities unravel and regain spatial awareness. Material deceives and indulges the user; the archive is a registration, formally, and programmatically. As an object of both harboring and exhibition, it must simultaneously perform and withdraw.
Title Man Meets Rock Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Digital Render Year 2017 Withdrawn Figures
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Title Assorted Digital Analogs Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Digital Year 2017
A catalog of digital study models, used as a means to generate formal, material and organization strategies. These studies follow through a rigorous dialogue between the physical emergence of formal relationships, with hope to create new typological forms that engender a new subject relationship though the “new” materiality. The images on the next page are a series
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Withdrawn Figures
of analog models used to generate through physical means the studies mentioned above. Through a process of two materials reciprocating and molding to each other, begins the physical understanding of how two forms can wrap, bulge and mesh together. Creating new ambiguous parts, interstitial space, and discrete separations.
Title Assorted Physical Analogs Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Physical Models, Size Varies Year 2017 Withdrawn Figures
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Title Section Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Composite Drawing Year 2017
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Withdrawn Figures
The submerged and grounded objects act firstly as withdrawn archive space that stores and houses museum artifacts, while fully destabilizing the current condition of the ground. Through methods of relief, and void, geometric figures are established. Title Peaky Peaky Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Digital Render Year 2017
Withdrawn Figures
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Title Plan Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Composite Drawing Year 2017
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Withdrawn Figures
Title Archive Spaces Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Digital Render Year 2017 Withdrawn Figures
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Embossed Geometry
Studio 602_Kutan Ayata Museum of Urban Wilderness
Collaboration with Patrick Danahy
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Embossed Geometry
The condition of nature is put into question as we address the idea of Urban wilderness. Within this project, the regimes of the nonhuman and the ritualistic relationship between flora and its insect counterparts are the point of the initial investigation. By designing conditions forflora species to aid in the condition of architec-
ture, the project engenders new nonhuman relationships through the role of aesthetic confrontation. The Lab acts as a resource and tool for exploration but also as a platform to provide knowledge and museum-like experiences through a system of changing ecological environments and atmospheres.
Title Urban Infill Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Collage Render Year 2019 Embossed Geometry
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Through a series of exercises developing slab, stair and column relationships, a tension between a new typology and formal language begins to formulate. As these three architectural elements delaminate from their initial meaning or use, they bring on new qualities and sensibility As these
Title Catalog Of Spatial Conditions Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Digital Models Year 2019 36
Embossed Geometry
elements develop and take on new architectural qualities they reformulate and merge into a single encrusted object within object nestled together within a base, that hold nonhuman flora chambers which are wrapped by a casing imprinted by abstracted flora.
The program develops around the curation, harvest, and the ecological conditions that arise from these non-human processes. Through the renewed interests of urban wilderness, the project drives new aesthetic qualities that in turn reformulate the perception and interests of architectural form through human and nonhuman interactions. The images to the right start as an investigation of these qualities and ideas of possible new species of flora.
Title Botany Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Plant Matter, Render, and collage Year 2019 Embossed Geometry
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Embossed Geometry
Title Man Finds Art Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Physical Model :PLA,Resin, Plastic Components, Rockite Casts, Vegetation Year 2019
The interior is articulated by controlled growth paths that allow the flora to take on new means of masking and obscuring. A lush open ecosystem remains manicured as the architectures embossed growth paths direct and maintain articulation. While remaining somewhat wild and untamed as the flora and its nonhuman counterparts generate a peculiar aesthetic tension within the museum.
Embossed Geometry
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The Embedded programmatic figure break edges of the mass and creates seas that generate thresholds while the embossed inlay of mesh, flora, and facade pieces further blur and break down the seams initially created, allowing for new nonhuman programmatic space.
Title Figural Inlay Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Digital Render Year 2019 40
Embossed Geometry
Enclosure Detail
Secondary Facade Detail
Title Figural Inlay Detail Section
Window Detail
Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Construction Drawing Year 2019 Embossed Geometry
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Saline Dreams
Studio 702_Jason Payne Saline Dreams Collaboration with Joonsung Lee
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Saline Dreams
This project takes on the Polygon t_1-2a found within the Southern tip of the dry lake bed of Owens Lake, California. Through the use of frames, close readings between modes of representation, notions of non-body experience, and the use of architectural infrastructural elements to build up a thickened aesthetic effect, we hope to challenge and adjust how one registers notions of “architecture” and “landscape”. These principles allow this project to generate conditions that take advantage of our new reality of a mixed bag of experience
and representation, those being the common use of aerial photography found within Google maps and other such interfaces, and in effect produce non-place experience and ambiance. Building and infrastructural systems present themselves both through the normative usage of elements familiar to the site of Owens Lake, and the slightly new, through a refolding of the commonplace to normalize the existing that is nothing but “normal”, while other times to curate and force esoteric conditions.
Title t_1-2a Location Owens Lake, California Medium Digital Render, Collage
Survey,
Year 2020 Saline Dreams
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Title t_1-2a Location Owens Lake, California Medium Digital Render, Survey, Collage Year 2020
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Saline Dreams
Owens Lake -a dry saline lake bed- created through the diverged aqueduct to fuel the city of LA, stands as one of the foremost contaminates and air pollutes in North America. Due to fine sand and earth particulates being picked up by northern winds, the lake bed has gone under a series of phased construction of “polygons”, contained areas of control, where a series of Best Available Control Measures(B.A.C.M) help control the
dust and air pollution. This project simultaneously takes on the task of designing and configuring a building object to house equipment and as a control point, while also developing new tactics of dust control through the lens of aerial images. Producing new aesthetic effects and specifically geometric conditions within the polygons developing new readings of boundaries and content.
Title B.A.C.M _ Sprinkler_04 Location Owens Lake, California Medium Digital Render, Survey, Collage Year 2020
Saline Dreams
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The building object fixes within the Polygon proper, acting as both warehouses for tools of construction and earth forming, as well as a control point for the southernmost point of the site dealing with water dispersal and dust mitigation.
Title Warehouse / Control Point Location Owens Lake, California Medium Digital Render, Survey, Collage Year 2020
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Saline Dreams
Saline Dreams
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Through the transition through modes of architectural representation th project take on new resolutions both scalar and aesthetically. The goal develop and architecture that challenges the way once engages with that which is designed.
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CULVERT OVERFLOW
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Location Owens Lake, California
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Saline Dreams
Title B.A.C.M Prototypes Location Owens Lake, California Medium Digital Render, Survey, Collage Year 2020 Saline Dreams
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Saline Dreams
Saline Dreams
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Reliefs and Monoliths
Studio 502_ Andrew Saunders Branch Library Extension With Outreach Program
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Reliefs and Monoliths
The use of profile as a method for articulation allows for a deep reading of surface, and ideas present in continuity and articulation. Through an investigation and mining of architectural tropes, the procurement of profiles synonymous with context and site allows for specificity in addressing context. Through this methodology, the interrogation of form and aesthetics develops. The collaboration of non-human agents in this
project acts as a financial means to generate capital for the branch library while also engaging a multitude of architectural investigation, firstly of contrast of high relief defining areas of interest to goats, such as peaks ad crevices. Along with specifically material nutrition and its relationship to the building as it becomes encrusted and aged in a whimsical state that engenders estranged conditions of rurality.
Monolithic Masses developed through relief techniques generated through contextual materiality and object definition in relationship to ground/site and non-human agents, goats.
Title Monolith, Monolith Below, Monolith Above Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Digital Render and Collage Year 2018 Reliefs and Monoliths
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Title Relief Analysis Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Drawing Year 2018
Through means of relief, this project begins to reconfigure and understand context not as series of relations but as a catalog of architectural tropes and content. These pieces are further defamiliarized by their “misuse” as scaled objects, sometimes used as
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Reliefs and Monoliths
impressions, objects themselves or just as figments of there geometrical profiles. The technique of relief is used to understand thresholds between park, library, and goat farm.
Title Site Plan Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Digital Composition of Modeled Part / Render Year 2018 Reliefs and Monoliths
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The goat farm acts as an agent of familiarization not only to the library but also to the city context, bringing up interesting questions of rurality within the city, void of pastiche or fluffy ideas of urban farming. It takes on an architectural role of weathering and sculpting earth and material, it also attaches itself to the community through monetary investment.
Title Goat Totem Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Digital Render Year 2018
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Reliefs and Monoliths
Reliefs and Monoliths
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Title Cut Rock Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Medium Physical Model,PLA, Concrete, Paper, Paint Year 2018 60
Reliefs and Monoliths
Reliefs and Monoliths
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