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self-rearranging plaza U.C. Berkeley, Spring 2017 Second-year option studio Critic: Mark Anderson Location: San Francisco, CA Program: Revival of Embarcadero Plaza.
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A plaza next to San Francisco’s Embarcadero Freeway would be revitalized by providing it with its own source of mechanized motion. Drawing unconventional inspiration from the vast spatial footprint of the local region's historical aerospace research, and from a series of modular pedestrian bridges observed on a class trip to Mexico
City, an intervention populating the plaza with rotating structures would allow both pedestrian and automotive movement to coexist at different points in time. The structures shift in response to changing activity patterns throughout each workday, producing contracting and expanding spaces between their moving parts
to alternately serve as either human-scale passageways or areas open to rapid transversal. Above: Traffic analysis of roads around the site, and an image of the project's final model.
Above: Sections through the moving plaza showing how its spatial configurations can change. Left: Axonometric view showing juxtaposed spatial traffic routing configurations from multiple time periods (commuting, mid-day and evening). 4
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precedent analysis One reference point for a repetitive system of modules was observed during the studio's visit to Mexico City, where a considerable number of pedestrian bridges ran across the city's major circular highway in a pattern of serial occurrence which enhanced their urban presence. Right: collage cataloging different observed designs of pedestrian bridge modules, indicating each location along the freeway where an instance of a particular module appeared.
module design Below: Selected example plans. The flexibility of the modules accommodates provisional programs such as pop-up retail and temporary housing.
Upper level
Lower level
Right: diagram of different rotational configurations of a building module inspired by the dynamically shifting reference ground lines of early naval architectural drawings. 5
Below right: Sectional view.
formal development
Programmatic goal
Negative space
Module size and configuration
The process of designing a space intended to change forms required experimenting with new design criteria for managing the potential complexity of the moving parts involved. An iterative process of testing multiple different sizes and quantities of moving form was conducted in order to investigate their optimal size and distribution across several hypothesized states of spatial reconfiguration in response to the site's varying programmatic needs.
Winding pedestrian corridors Weekends, weekday lunch hour. Straight high-speed travel lanes Weekday commutes. Outdoor room Holidays, special occasions.
Standalone towers in open plaza Off-peak activity times.
Examples of the impact on traffic flow caused by two different temporal and programmatic configurations of the moving elements.
Auto circulation and parking
Full pedestrian use
Full auto circulation
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autonomous suburbia U.C. Berkeley Spring 2019 MArch thesis studio Critics: Kyle Steinfeld and Nicholas de Monchaux Location: Tampa, FL Program: Speculative exploration of how suburbia could be transformed by automated vehicles.
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A speculative cautionary investigation sought to anticipate the most exploitative potential scenario for how the future development of automated vehicle technologies could risk repeating the historical planning mistakes of 20th-century American suburbs. A network of moving inhabitable rooms blurring distinctions between
vehicles and buildings would further perpetuate the disconnected spatial characteristics already introduced by existing forms of automotive transportation in contemporary times, creating a new condition in which the experience of traveling between buildings would become interchangeable with the experience of traveling between multiple floors within the same building.
Above: Diagram of automatic routing between moving rooms. Right: Illustrated vignettes depicting varied personalized interior configurations possible within the system of standardized mobile rooms.
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research & implementation
Precedent analysis of portable buildings used on oil fields and movie sets, illustrating how they integrate HVAC and plumbing systems.
Comparison of existing regulations for vehicle dimensions (red) and residential rooms (green).
An analysis of how such a system could work involved evaluating the capabilities of existing electric vehicles and garages. The result was a scenario in which homes would adapt to accommodate mobile rooms as spatial extensions, in a growing system which could further expand. Combined
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Above: Diagram of a system for a mobile room to dock to an existing garage, with connections for electricity, water and HVAC.
Opposite top: Plans showing pods visiting a residence in response to varying events.
Below: Timeline showing how the types of pods docked to a house could vary throughout a week. W
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Opposite lower: Section of pods docked at different points in time over the course of a workday commute to form a continuous perceived interior. Sa
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Holiday season preparations.
Remote storage of other people's belongings.
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On-demand rec room.
Depart Return
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adoption timeline
Initial stages of anticipated future technological development (hypothesized to begin around the year 2035) might appear superficially similar to existing suburban landscapes, but functionally the pods would begin to operate as a fluid extension of interior home life. Their introduction would be enabled by the transformation of the garage into an infrastructural system for receiving and charging arriving automated pods. By the time of the envisioned 2040 scenario, pods will have entirely taken over the space of the driveways and even the road itself. Yards could be paved over and portions of existing homes demolished to make room for additional pods to connect to each household, often leaving only the house’s monumental “great room” as an artifact of a previous historical idea of home. Eventually, a tipping point would be reached after which outdoor spaces could clearly appear to be designed for the navigational convenience of automated machines rather than people, where signs of human presence would still be externally visible in the landscape at all.
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Above: Initial functional prototype of chamber constructed to test its system prior to the design process.
Heat map of root growth created by superimposing automatic time-lapse photographs from a camera mounted within the initial chamber.
Left: Diagram showing the final chamber design.
expanding growth chamber Internship Terreform ONE 2016 Critics: Maria Aiolova and Mitchell Joachim Team: Matthew Mitchell and Mat Sokol
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As part of an experiment with growing ficus tree roots for use as a living building material, a design was needed for the aeroponic chamber within which the roots were grown which would communicate their growth process to visitors and the general public.
The chamber’s expanding design offers a visible external representation of biological processes which would otherwise remain invisible, while serving as a broader example of how an adaptive architectural structure might operate.
My contributions to the project included conceiving of the design concept of an expanding enclosure, participating in designing and prototyping the enclosure's expanding envelope, researching misting systems and root growth behavior, creating an automated electronic system to photograph root growth, and contributing to the chamber's operations manual.
development process
Diagram of misting system created for a manual describing the initial test chamber's operation.
Diagram conceptualizing a new design for a chamber envelope expanding in response to tree root growth.
Final design outcome.
subsystem design iteration
Sketches of baffle operation
Testing of fans to direct mist
Prototyping of expanding baffle mechanisms. 40
Before
After
robotic furniture Personal 2015 Product prototype for a technology startup.
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An experiment to create an internet-connected robotic storage cabinet. Inserted objects are photographed and stored on internal conveyor belts to be digitally tagged, searched for, and eventually summoned for retrieval from a smartphone app. Automated warehouse technology is translated to a domestic scale.
Developed as an result of my ongoing curiosity about the impending merger between the Internet and physical spaces, this product would help its busy urban customers save both time and space. Beyond its roles as a technical experiment and a venture with commercial potential, it was also envisioned as an effort to improve urban housing conditions.
Above left: Illustration of the product's functionality. Above: Diagram portraying how robotic furniture could increase the space available in a small urban apartment by making previously under-utilized areas, such the upper portions of walls and ceilings, easily accessible for storage.
project development Right: Process sketches. Below: Process of prototyping subsystems of my functional prototype.
Prototyping the conveyor belt.
Support bracket designs.
Testing object sensors.
Assembling sub-systems
Section inside the prototype. A shoebox-sized cabinet was created to test the functionality of future products built at the larger scale of furniture. 44
networked portals Independent design project 2020 Urban Confluence Silicon Valley Collaborator: Imani Haupt Location: San Jose, California Program: Creation of a landmark urban intervention.
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An entry in a design competition to propose a symbolic successor to the city's former landmark 1881 electrically illuminated "light tower" sought to continue the legacy of the tower's optimistic historical aim of illuminating its entire surrounding city through the construction of a network of symbolic portals framing downtown San Jose's street grid. In
a reference to the city's role in the growth of the contemporary technology industry, intersections between the visual tunnels generated by the design's portals produce dramatic aggregates of forms evocative of the complexity of the Internet itself.
Above: Diagram illustrating the design's symbolic connections to distant locations within the city. Right: Exterior renderings showing the project's relationships with a variety of urban contexts.
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N Above: Renderings. Below: section facing south.
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Above: Upper-level site plan view. Right: Sectional views facing east.
Section across river.
Section along west riverbank.
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