care /ker/ noun 1. the provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance, and protection of someone or something. 2. serious attention or consideration applied to doing something correctly or to avoid damage or risk. verb 1. feel concern or interest; attach importance to something. 2. look after and provide for the needs of.
Throughout my time in architecture school I have grown a particular interest in understanding how the notion of care can be defined through the built environment. This selection of works has shaped my perception of how the role of design can impact a living organism, a human being, a community and a global network. Through the process of design, from research to detailing systems, I wish to further enrich this concious questioning with the intent to serve the greater good.
Can architecture
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
allow you to belong to something greater ? enhance your solitary and social well-being? co-exist and morph with time and its environment? innovate by efficiently assembling parts? be a neutral ground for human rights? become a circular self-sufficient set of systems? augment the potential of learning? expose societal flaws to change an individuals habits? foster positive interactions with law enforcement? support exisiting networks of economies and childcare?
care, as defined by Camille Brustlein
catalog of care 1.
Centrifugal Field
2.
Connected, Disconnected
3.
Metamorphosis
4.
Nameless Theater
5.
Interstitial Territories
6.
Culinary Campus
7.
Surreal Library
8.
Contained Circulation
9.
Anatomy of Oppression and Violence
10.
Landscape of Care
1. Centrifugal Field Semester: Spring 2020 Professor: Lindy Roy Location: Tomkins Cove, NY The quarry is an artifact of extreme force: geological forces played out over huge lengths of time and explosive forces happening in short periods of time. This project amplifies these forces to design a retreat where each space can be understood as the product of a unifying force: a centrifugal force that emanates from the lowest point in the quarry. Models and animations were used as a medium to understand how matter behaves as it is spun from a center point. It morphs at the moment of impact with the surface and spreads onto
the rock face. Each point of impact becomes a location for the retreat to take place. Each dwelling is directional relative to the center of rotation of the centrifugal force. This retreat allows one to feel remote in a single dwelling, whilst being undeniably part of a greater whole as each space is the product of the same force. Although the force these spaces come from is invisible, the architecture and the people derived from the invisible allow it to become part of the visible realm as their behavior is relative to the forces applied to the quarry.
ISOLATED IN SPACE
UNIFIED BY FORCE
FABRIC OF SPACE
BINARY SYSTEM
TRAJECTORY OF MASS
ORBIT TO COLLISION
TRAJECTORY
GRAVITATIONAL WAVES
CENTRIFUGAL FORCE SIMULATION
LOCATION POINTS OF DWELLINGS ON THE QUARRY’S SURFACE
RETREAT DWELLING
2. Connected, Disconnected Semester: Fall 2019 Professor: Benjamin Cadena Location: Bronx, NY Collaborator: Ian Wach As the boundary between work and home disappears, issues with loneliness and physical/ social isolation are rising. In an increasingly digitally connected environment, people can escape from their surroundings via their phones which amplifies this sense of distance from the physical. Our primary focus was to create a new type of live/work unit which addresses contemporary modes of individual production and the omnipresence of digitally-connected life in urban America. We started by looking at some of the ways in which advances in communication technology have impacted our lives. This allowed us to tackle issues that we feel are neglected in housing and should be addressed in terms of how technology has changed the way we live, especially how
the meaning of public and private space has been transformed in the Information Age. Our overarching strategy was to design a building that connects people to one another physically as well as encourages occasional disconnection from the digital environment. The building in its form and program becomes a curtain of choice. The choice ranges from being connected to signal, interupted or fully disconnected from signal. The cross laminated timber structure allows for the signal to be extremely powerful. Copper wire mesh curtains can be drawn to be partially or fully disconnected. Within the unit, protruding alcoves with embedded signal interupting mesh allow for a moment of respite.
SINGLE LOADED CORRIDOR
UNIT
SOCIAL CORRUGATION
BUILDING
CURTAIN OF CHOICE
CITY
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
INTERRUPTED
CONNECTED
DISCONNECTED
WAKE-UP
PRODUCE CONTENT
MEDITATE
8.00AM
12.00PM
4.00PM
AN INFLUENCER’S DAY: SIGNAL INTERRUPTIONS
1 BEDROOM UNIT LIVING SPACE
LEVEL 6
6 PLAN
SHARED AMENITIES
3. Metamorphosis Semester: Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020 Professor: Bika Rebek, Joseph Brennan, Phillip Crupi, Josh Jordan This series of explorations seek to test out how material, form and program can morph into new realities as they naturally respond to their changing environment. They each focus and obsess on a very specific narrative they set out: material adherence, natural forces and time.
TETRAHEDRON TILE SCALE, SURFACE, SCREEN, STRUCTURE
EQUILATERAL TRIANGLE
DIVIDE
TRUNCATE
SUB DIVIDE
CENTER POINTS
ORIGIN
VELCRO A&B
VELCRO A
VELCRO B
SOLO HOUSE - OFFICE KGDVS
NATURE > ARCHITECTURE NATURAL DECAY SIMULATION: MOSS, LEMON, BAKING SODA, SHAVING CREAM
PHYSICAL DAMAGE
MOSS, BAKING SODA
BAKING SODA
1 BUILDING : 3 LIVES RENDERING PROJECT DEVELOPED THROUGH INITIAL ATMOSPHERICAL SKETCHES COLLABORATORS: ALINA ABOUELENIN, CHARLOTTE YU
A FAMILY’S HOLIDAY HOME
A DUSTY ABAN
NDONED CABIN
A SECLUDE
ED MOTEL
4. Nameless Theatre Semester: Fall 2019 Professor: Sarrah Kahn Location: Brooklyn, NY Collaborators: Alina Abouelenin, Sarah Zamler, Shuang Bi A sustainable theatre in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where 2 cubes, 2 programs, 2 stuctural types, collide and come together to activate the waterfront. - A blackbox theatre cantilevering over a public plaza sandwiched between a waffle slab structure with a curtain wall facade - A 550 seat auditorium under a truss structured roof, surrounded by a terracotta rainscreen facade
LEVEL 1 PART PLAN UNDER WAFFLE SLAB
STRUCTURE SYSTEMS TRUSS ROOF SYSTEM 7’ DEEP 70’ SPAN
STEEL STRUCTURE LEVELS 1,2 & 3 W14 X 100 COLUMNS W24 X 55 GIRDERS W16 X 50
CONCRETE SHEAR WALLS & CORES
WAFFLE SLAB SLAB: 6” DEEP CONCRETE BEAMS: 20’ DEEP GRID: 2,5’ CONCRETE COLUMNS: 18” TOTAL WEIGHT 15% LIGHTER
FOUNDATIONS
TERRACOTTA CLADDING
“NAMELESS” THEATER TRANSMITTER PARK G R EE N P O I N T , B R O O K LY N NEW YORK
SUSTAINABILITY STRATEGIES ENERGY - BIOSOLAR GREEN ROOF SOLAR HEAT GAIN - TERRACOTTA CLADDING WATER - RAIN WATER COLLECTION/FILTRATION FLOOD - BUILDING ELEVATED 4’, BIOSWALE WELLBEING - INTERIOR GREEN WALLS, PUBLIC PARK
5. Interstitial Territories Semester: Spring 2021 Professor: Galia Solomonoff Location: International Waters This project aims to serve as a headquarter for the NGO Amnesty International, where refugees from around the world can temporarily stay before the Amnesty teams advocate and negotiate with countries to find them a permanent home. By upcycling commercial ships that are being left to rot on beaches in India and Bangladesh mainly, this headquarter proposes to occupy an interstitial territory on international waters as a neutral temporary home for refugees and Amnesty workers. These ships can travel to the urgency depending on the need and then station at sea. Whatever the size of the ships, they can come together by connecting to an inflatable central platform. This allows for the base to grow and expand. The platform is made up of different pools, contrubuting to the boats production
of resources: fresh water, grey & black water filtration, fuel and food. The existing naves are adapted to house learning, meeting, presentation, negotiation and performance spaces within a hydroponic farming system. Above deck, accommodation spaces can be “plugged in” to the adapted water pipes. These temporary homes are arranged around a plumbing core with 2 bathrooms, with privatized spaces on either side. It allows for 12 people to share a living space and 24 people to share a patio space. This project questions dignity at the scale of mankind, a population and a single human being. It questions methodologies and processes where participatory design could thrive. Human rights are not a given and this fight needs to be supported by the built environment.
SHIPS CONNECT TO INF
FLATABLE PLATFORMS
INTERSTITIAL TERRITORIES TRAVELLING TO REFUGEES AROUND THE GLOBE
WATER CLOSED LOOP SYSTEM
MEETINGS, FARMING, LEARNING
ACCOMMODATION PERSONALIZED OVER TIME
6. Culinary Campus Semester: Spring 2020 Professor: Scott Demel, Emory Lee, Ariella Maron, Michael King Location: Brooklyn, NY Collaborators: Alina Abouelenin, Begum Karaoglu, Liza Tedeschi, Maru Perez This culinary campus aims to create new circular economies, ecologies and consumption patterns at the scale of the campus and the scale of each individual building. Food is a cultural and social attractor. This campus becomes an attraction in the surrounding area. Farming, waste and water systems being exposed, this encourages the culinary experience to be educational for visitors. Concerns of mobility, water and energy all shape the greater site plan. The “Fish & Chips” building embodies the strategies applied to the site. The campus is composed of a school, labs, dorms, ratail, greenhouses and outdoor agricultural
spaces. It is set up to develop in phases as the existing soil is highly contaminated. A process of bioremediation is first implemented to clean up the ground. Organic matter is collected from the neighborhood and from the campus itself to feed into the anaerobic digestors to produce electricty for the campus. Along with the solar arrays on all roofs, this allows the campus to be self sufficient. Rain and storm water runoff is collected and filtered through hydrodynamic seperators on site and then stored above ground.
RESILIENT STRATEGIES
CAMPUS PLAN
MOBILE FARMING
NO FLOOD SCENARIO
FLOOD SCENARIO
PNEUMATIC FARMING
7. Surreal Library Semester: Spring 2019 Professor: Jose Araguez Location: Sara D. Roosevelt Park, NY The driving concept of this project is the idea that unconventional spaces can lend themselves to new sensorial experiences. In turn this allows for better creative learning whilst fostering an environment where curiosity is encouraged, on a site where the demographic is so sparse. The building is constructed as folded plates, which creates room spaces as they stack. Each fold angle is specific to a program. The floor and ceiling of a floor plate or a room stacked on another differ. This library essentially offers two different kinds of spaces: open spaces and pods. This differentiation allows for different activities to happen: conventional and unconventional,
where the latter is always unexpected as the circulation through the building happens through the conventional spaces. The use of translucent concrete enhances the set of unconventional experiences and allows for greenery to grow on the inside. The library aims to bring back to its diverse community through its educational agricultural programs. The circulation on the periphery of the building is independent to the library lobby and can be accessed 24/7. This circulation makes accessible a number of pods with various community spaces within them.
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
LEVEL 5 PLAN
B-B SECTION
OPEN SPACE
POD SPACE
READING AREA STACKS ON WHEELS
CAFE / STACKS / READING
DESK AREA DEPLOYABE TABLES
INFORMAL LOUNGE & SEATING AREAS
OFFICE STORAGE & DESKS
AUDITORIUM INFORMAL SEATING MODULAR AUDITORIUM
LIBRARY ENTRANCE
LIT PUBLIC CIRCULATION
SINGLE FLOOR PLATE MODEL
8. Contained Circulation Semester: Fall 2018 Professor: Stephanie Lin Location: Nomad, NY This project seeks to reorganize trash and expose what is conventionally concealed, creating a spatial language that can be adapted to a variety of states. Ultimately allowing each design to collect and contain trash to then give it another productive use. The three design interventions take up the space of specific territories in relation to tourist trash around the Nomad neighborhood in Manhattan. The territory of a dumpster, the one of trash cans on the sidewalk and finally the one of a hotel lobby. Through these design proposals, trash disposal dictates the space in regards to how one circulates within or
around it. The elastic surface system, containing the trash, bulges out when trash fills up the space. Thus, obstructing circulation when trash disposal increases. This allows for a social impact to come into play, where the moral of trash being produced in a day impacts ones circulation through the the public realm of the street or a lobby. Different sized openings are integrated within the design of the elastic facade, to allow for a user friendly understanding of the organization of trash by size. These openings allow for the trash to be directly disposed in its dedicated size compartment.
ANIMATION STILLS
SIZE BASED TRASH SORTING
SEATING SEPERATE FROM DISPOSAL PIT
TRASH PIT IN HOTEL LOBBY
ORGANIC MATTER OVER TIME
FLEXIBLE FACADE MEETS STAIR
FACADE INTERRUPTS CIRCULATION AS THE CONTAINER FILLS UP
9. Anatomy of Oppression and Violence Semester: Spring 2021 Professor: Laura Kurgan Collaborator: Al-Tariq Shabazz The built environment has been a constant character in the story of violence against black bodies here in the US. The idea of space and who has access to it, in what manner and at what times is at the center of this story as well. The most persistent space that African Americans have demanded to be a part of is the ideological landscape of American Democracy. These ideological battles however, manifest themselves in the material world in spaces that have been perceived as the singular dominion of white people. Wherever we look the built environment is there. Often, we have seen the built environment used as a tool against the African-American and other marginalized communities. The two elements at play here are the built environment and the police. First the slave catcher, then the overseer, and finally the police officer, have always been charged with
the responsibility of limiting the free movement of black people in America. They have been charged with protecting property and space and the result of this intense interaction is often death. The events surrounding the murder of George Floyd resemble many other murders of unarmed black men, boys, women and girls by the police. The setting is often similar and the perpetrator is constant. The story of George Floyd is not unique, however the response of the masses has caused the world to take a closer look at the relationship of the police and state violence against black people. We are well aware of the social and economic conditions that require the police to occupy communities of color and abuse its residents. We will explore what are the elements of the built environment that heighten the possibility of negative interaction between the police and people of color.
We contend that the spatial violence of defensive architecture, CPTED measures (crime prevention through environmental design), along with historical racist land use controls such as racial covenants, and urban renewal projects such as highways, while not directly responsible for the death of George Floyd set the proverbial stage for his death. George Floyd lived and died in a place that was sterile and hostile to members of his community. In 1996 a report was prepared for the Bancroft Neighborhood Association evaluating CPTED’s possible effectiveness in there community. Interestingly enough the report found that “many residents cited the intersection of Chicago Avenue and East 38th Street as an area they would feel uncomfortable being in at night. Yet the actual number of reported robberies that
occurred in this area was quite low. Therefore efforts to combat vandalism and create more of an appearance of informal surveillance might be an effective means of reducing residents’ fears about these areas.” Also in this report its authors states “The most effective areas for the Bancroft Neighborhood Association to consider implementing the physical change aspect of CPTED would be the commercial areas in and around the neighborhood. CPTED techniques should be implemented at the intersection of 38th and Chicago and at the Bloomington Avenue strip mall. A survey of residents has indicated that these are the areas that residents feel are most unsafe. Because there is little evidence to suggest that CPTED has an impact on crime rates, it should not be expected that the crime rate itself will drop significantly in these areas.” - project excerpt
10. Landscape of Care Semester: Fall 2020 Professor: Bryony Roberts Location: Flushing, NY This project aims to provide a network of support to the existing informal systems of care on this site in Flushing, Queens. It aims to define how designing for care, with care and to care can materialize in design. This unfolds by respecting the place, the people, the local ecology, the local economies. In turn, using the minimum amount of resources and preserving the existing, rather than imposing something completely new and foreign to their environment. At the scale of the site, a new topography is introduced to house the informalities of Flushing. These movements of land create pockets of space, pockets of play, spaces of worship, spaces
for vendors to appropriate as their own. To create a sense of familiarity, the site plan is a play of mirroring and moving parts that are existing and local to the site to offer more housing, retail space and a childcare center. The topography between buildings acts as a connective tissue that becomes sub streets and sub plazas. At the scale of the childcare center, the movements of land carve out parts of the building or spill into the interior and become foam upholstered mounds. Programmatic spaces aren’t formally separated which allows for opportunities of overlap between activities to foster new ways of playing and learning.
EXISTING LAND & BUILDINGS
PRESERVING RESOURCES
ORGAN
ORGAN
HOME a
HOME b
INFORMAL FABRIC OF FLUSHING, QUEENS
MASTER PLAN STRATEGY
GROUND FLOOR CH
HILD CARE CENTER
CHILD CARE: FOSTERING INFORMAL PLAY
SITE: SUPPORTING EXISINTG INFORMAL NETWORKS
GROUND FLOOR PART PLAN
ELEVATED TERRACE
UPHOLSTERED MOUND - LANDSCAPE TOPOGRAPHY
INTERIOR COURTYARD
catalog of care 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Centrifugal Field Interdependence Connected, Disconnected Well-being Metamorphosis Adaptability Nameless fteater Efficiency Interstitial Territories Dignity Culinary Campus Self-sufficient Surreal Library Resource Contained Circulation Respect Anatomy of Oppression and Violence Innoncence Landscape of Care Community
Camille Brustlein Selected works 2018-2021 Master of Architecture Columbia GSAPP