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Point Ruston Tacoma, WA B.Arch Thesis Project For my B.Arch thesis, I chose a highly contaminated site in my hometown. It was the former site of an ASARCO smelter which left a criminally high level of lead, copper, arsenic, and other toxins in the slag soil after the EPA fines bankrupted the company. I proposed a research and remediation facility located among an elevated artificial landscape. The contaminated soil would be excavated and treated so no more of the toxins would leech into the water, and the new landscape would support bioremediation fields and eventually sustainable agriculture. I was awarded a Best in Show prize for this project.
Left: a conceptual sculpture about the relationship of the landscapes / a material exploration for my plaster site models. Center: a model of the excavation and agricultural machinery. Right: a model of one of the buildings on the site: the R&D facility.
Chimney Observation Deck Training and Barracks
Furnace Public Atrium Historic Fire Station
Kaohsiung Port Terminal Kaohsiung, Taiwan Student Competition This project was a competition for a passenger ship terminal and cultural hub in the Kaohsiung Port District, a burgeoning, energetic redeveloped area of Taiwan’s second-largest city. A small team of four designed this entry during a summer term.
The port terminal was conceived of as a threshold between the chaotic, vibrant city and the self-contained systems of the passenger ships that it would be servicing. Our design mediated between these opposing formal languages: the dense urban fabric and the discrete “machine for living� at sea, unraveling into the city.
Fire Station No. 451 Boston, Mass. Student Work This fire station in the dystopian world of Fahrenheit 451 includes a publicly-accessible observation tower which signifies the citizen-on-citizen surveillance that powers the authoritarian government, as well as a furnace where citizens may deposit their contraband and a tall chimney which broadcasts their compliance. Its facade pattern is designed to obscure its scale and intimidate.
Theorem Winery Calistoga, CA with Richard Beard
This site was formerly a chicken farm run by a pair of lesbians in the 1930s, which bestowed the sitewith historical significance and posed some challenges to our clients’ desire to turn it into their home and a working winery. For instance, we had to keep the chicken coop largely intact. We master-planned the winery and designed a house and guest house, which have been built. Top: South entrance of the main house Left: Main house, guest house and chicken coop colonnade
Orchard House Sebastopol, CA with Cary Bernstein
The vernacular architecture of California’s wine country is utilitarian: broad natural redwood boards and corrugated metal abound, obscuring the succulent nectar within. For this project, a renovation of a modest existing house, we played up the industrial references with subtle variations in wood siding and a standing seam metal roof that disintegrates to the north and south into trellises, shading the outdoor living spaces.
Top: The east view of the house Left: The living and dining rooms, drenched in light from a large, north-facing dormer window. Bottom: Dormer window detail
Luce Tempo Luogo Milan, IT at DGT Architects For this installation for Toshiba at the Milano Fuori Salone, DGT created a series of experiences that serve as meditations on light, water, and time. You are led down a narrow corridor by a stripe of light. You see a historical building mirrored in a placid reflecting pool. Upon entering, you are surrounded by quiet artificial rain. The LED lighting strobes in such a way that the rain appears to reverse direction, hover in midair, and reverse again. I was a member of the small design team and was personally responsible for producing presentation and technical drawings.
Renault Showroom Paris, FR at DGT Architects For Renault’s display at the 2012 Paris Motor Show, we proposed an artificial topography within the space, with rotating hilltops for the new models and an amphitheater in the center. The lighting was suspended to mirror the artificial hills. Though I was an intern, I contributed to design development through prototyping, visualization and documentation.
Jam Jars Coding & Electronics
I’ve loved playing music since before I could read. There’s a tiny thrill of discovery and magic in every note. Once I was capable of playing with others, I found new joys in the raw power of synchronization and the push-pull of improvisation.
I began coding musical instruments with the intention of empowering nonmusicians to experience some of that joy of exploration and contribution to a harmonious whole: feelings I’ve felt unable to fully express in words.
I created these simple touch- and motion-controlled instruments housed in mason jars, to be played individually or together. Each contains a microcontroller which sends data over bluetooth to a software instrument.
Drone Synthesizer
Arpeggiator
Sample Trigger
Granular Synthesizer
When this contoller is touched, it sends accelerometer data to a software synthesizer I wrote.
The pads on this controller correspond to notes on a polyphonic scale, and engage an arpeggiator to play repeating rhythms of the depressed notes.
Each of the metal hands on this controller triggers a different audio file to play, from latin percussion to UFO sounds to a Rick Ross grunt.
In a future version, motiontracking will modulate the tempo of the patterns and/or scale being played.
below: curious users tease cosmic sounds out of the drone synth prototype.
This jar also controls a synthesizer with accelerometer data, but the synthesizer is a granular synth, which creates sound by looping short segments of an audio file. The accelerometer controls where the segment is sampled from, its length, and playback speed, which modulates its pitch.
It’s capable of soothing drones, shuddering bass and screeching drones depending on the user’s movement.
1060 Furniture Design & Fabrication
When I moved into my new apartment, I told myself that I would make all the new furniture I needed. This small dining set (the apartment is quite small) are the first of this effort. I modeled them digitally from rough sketches, prototyped several versions at a small scale with a laser cutter, then CNCcut the revised designs in birch plywood and finished them with a clear polyurethane sealant.
Crystal Corner Oakland, CA Design & Fabrication
A small shop specializing in crystals, homewares and indoor plants contracted me to design and build these custom display shelves. The design was digitally modeled based on sketches from an initial design meeting with the client and then fabricated on site from hardwood planks by myself and an assistant.
“Perf Like a Pirate” Conference San Francisco, CA My partner and I were hired to decorate and do event design for a pirate-themed HTML5 conference at Google’s San Francisco Office. My primary contribution was this pirate ship podium which I designed and built as a centerpiece to the conference from stained wood lath strips steam-bent around a CNC-cut plywood frame.
Above: The event’s organizer welcoming Googlers to the 2nd Annual Perf Like a Pirate Conference Left: Assembling the plywood skeleton and wrapping it with various widths of salvaged wood lath. Right: a grown man wearing a pirate hat