Portfolio 2016

Mary Chenoe Hart

M.Arch I Application hands that see

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Contents

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Inhabitable Wall Eero Saarinen’s Suitcase Hands That See Salad Tong Study Fast + Slow Food Market Abstract Landscape study Peabody Information Center Dance Partners Museum of Scenic Routes Robotic Furniture Drawings

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Inhabitable Wall Barnard College, Spring 2009.

Architectural Representation: Perception Critic: Madeline Schwartzman

An installation designed to render the streetfacing masonry walls of Columbia University’s Lerner Hall as open as the glass walls facing its own campus, through the addition of a transparent appendage which students and members of the general public may simultaneously inhabit.

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Analysis

Where is the wall?

Lerner Hall’s masonry facade runs along Broadway, separating street activity from its internal student spaces.

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Where architect Bernard Tschumi once cited the 1968 student uprisings as a progressive influence, his facade perpetuates normative campus fortifications against the Other.

Mapping light and views on campus.

Analytical models abstracting the wall’s operation.

Who does the wall keep out?

How much can they see?

What if the wall was open?

Security access restrictions (student or employee identification is required to enter the building) directly filter people.

Glass portions of the facade face the comparatively controlled outdoor environment of the university campus. Lerner operates as a selective filter of light and views.

Studies transposing a glass facade into the masonry street facade, and imagining the potential intersections created by greater transparency.

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Could we communicate through the wall?

Precedent: Aquarium as a selective filter allowing views without requiring contact.

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Could the wall be inhabited?

Final model (top) and development studies.

Inhabiting the wall.

Illustration of the procession for entering the installation from inside Lerner.

Section cut.

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Eero Saarinen’s Suitcase Barnard College, Fall 2010.

Arch. Representation: Abstraction Critic: Madeline Schwartzman

An assignment to research the design approach of my chosen architect, Eero Saarinen, and then create a conceptual suitcase to embody the outcome of my findings. My resulting suitcase fragmments and transforms in correspondence with each of the diverse stylistic approaches found within his career.

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Understanding Eero Saarinen Modern but not functionalist. Emotional design gestures that coexisted with intense time and motion research. Utopian by way of faith in corporate America. His worldview has always polarized critics and historians...

Function Formal Expression

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“...today a good part of the architectural profession, liberated by the computer (or unleashed by it), may well regard Eero’s more spectacular shapes as heroically conceived and inadequately appreciated...”

- Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen

“To true believers in the (Modernist) canon, Saarinen was something of a traitor. … The TWA terminal was a particularly flagrant violation of the Modern rule that form should express structure.”

- Herbert Muschamp

Source: Pelkonen, Eeva-Liisa. Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future. p.13

Source: Muschamp, Herbert. “When the Cathedral Turned Black” in Hearts of the city: the selected writings of Herbert Muschamp. p.64

Career achievements / Story of betrayal Saarinen’s projects can actually be categorized into three different approaches, ranging from pure function to uninhibited expression. He explored all three strategies simultaneously throughout his career, rendering any singular summation of his work inaccurate.

Increasing Formal Expresssion MIT Chapel, 1955

Orthogonal modern utility

Concealed internal expression

TWA Terminal, 1962

Abstraction

IBM Rochester, 1958

External expression

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Case Study: Miller House Mapping

Programmatic model Emotional topography

Architect’s original plan

Map of functional and emotional progammatic elements in the plan.

Functional topography

In an exemplary instance of Saarinen’s contradictory ideas, his Miller House juxtaposes high-energy areas of family activity with simultaneous functional demands and the organization of its ninesquare grid.

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A three-dimensional study model allowed for the two aspects of the house’s split personality to be investigated in isolation from each other or

explored as an integrated whole.

The programmatic topographies were projected onto the form of the suitcase .

Suitcase

Manifest as suitcase

Hybrid of function and internal expression

The stages of the opening sequence of the suitcase correspond with Saarinen’s career stages as an architect attempting increasing levels of expressiveness in his designs.

Open emotional expression

Removal reveals a handle

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Hands That See Barnard College, Spring 2009.

Architectural Representation: Perception Critic: Madeline Schwartzman

The touch sensors found on the human hand are capable of perceiving objects as small as 13 nanometers in height, a far higher resolution than our dominant visual sense. A prosthetic device was created to raise awareness of the under-appreciated sense by converting it into a visual signal.

The movement of the hand is translated through a system of pulleys to manipulate shutters in front of the wearer’s eyes, providing an amplified visual representation of what the hand perceives.

Source: Lisa Skedung et al., “Feeling Small: Exploring the Tactile Perception Limits,� Nature, September 12th 2013.

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Can our senses be compared?

Touch Can only sense where you touch, but perceive that environment in high detail.

Vision Less detailed perception of wider surroundings beyond the body’s reach.

Conclusion: The hand must use movement to perceive its surroundings.

Learning more about the movement of the hand...

...by immobilizing it.

Immobilize through tension.

Hand joint and movement study.

Immobilize through compression.

Performance exploring how a moving hand might be able to “see” its changing surroundings.

Experimenting with the construction of hybrid wearable structures made of both rigid and flexible elements.

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Connecting the senses Evaluating strategies for mechanically connecting my senses. Should the structure of the device be solid, or flexible to follow the movement of my body?

Developing a device to capture and record hand movement.

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Salad Tong Study Summer 2007, Cornell University Summer College.

Introduction to Architecture.

Critics: Henry Richardson and Vincent Mulcahy.

An overlooked everyday tool was analyzed in order to uncover its formal and spatial attributes. A conceptual vessel was constructed to contain both the object and its newly-revealed parti.

My analysis began with observation, initially by sketching from life and ultimately in the form of measured drawings.

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Analysis

Tracing the movement of the tool throughout its operation.

What types of changing spaces does this operation create?

Translating the forces and masses into physical study models.

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The compressed becomes the compressor.

An external force compresses the handle of the tongs.

The force is transferred via a mechanical linkage...

...which in turn enables the front of the tongs to compress another external object.

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NN UU FF

HHEE AALL TTHH YY SS LLOO W W

TT SS FFAA

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Fast + Slow Food Market Barnard College, Fall 2010.

Design I. Critic: Joeb Moore.

A new green market intended to improve the availability of healthy food in East Harlem responds to the local popularity of fast food restaraunts and bodegas by imitating their visual language and branding.

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20% 15% 10%

10%

“Why does Harlem have twice the obesity rate of my neighborhood?”

15% 20%

Source: New York City Deparment of Health and Mental Hygiene, “My Community’s Health: Data and Statistics.”

Branding Analysis Fast and slow food brands project divergent imagery. Traditional fast food conceptually associates with fun, while foods in both the healthy and fast-casual market segments associate with slow.

Slower foods Fast Food

Natural colors Detailed shapes Delicate lines

Calm, refined, contemplative.

Designed to channel sophistication.

Response Is it possible to reconcile fast food’s advantage in the Darwinian game of economic survival with our society’s moral imperative to provide healthy food to those who need it most?

If fast = fun, and slow = healthy, then can fast + slow = healthy + fun ?

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Bright colors Bold, thick shapes Curved lines

Designed to grab attention.

New marketing strategy Re-present healthy food under more accessible fast and fun branding.

Current fast food perception

Current healthy food perception

New healthy food perception

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Performative transformation

Could healthy food's image be reinvented by placing activities associated with fast and slow food into novel relationships with each other?

Dining + play area

Salad bar + adjacent slide

Normative condition

Dialectic

Normative condition

Fast

Slow

Fun

Healthy

Index of selected potential interactions which could be enabled by programmatic overlaps.

Fast and slow, sited

116th St. Fast, commercial.

115th St. Slower, residential.

Existing fast and slow uses are already present nearby.

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“Fast” and “fun” programs such as take-out are placed near the north commercial end of the site.

Slower programs such as dining reside by residential 115th street.

Final design

Wrapping fast and fun around healthy and slow.

Fast and slow programs manifest into two distinct spatial zones. A sculptural public facade contains zones for play and shopping, while the orthogonal dining room blends in with its residential neighbors. As with the program, these forms are most often found mixing together.

The programs mesh together in mid-block, encouraging interaction.

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Residential Neighborhood

Commercial Area

Plan and cross-sections showing how the design adapts to its site.

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Abstract Landscape Study Fall 2012, Yale School of Architecture.

First-Year Graduate Studio. Critic: Sunil Bald

A formal exercise to reinterpret an assigned architectural precedent on an abstract sloping site. I found that my precedent, the ancient Scottish city of Skara Brae, appeared to exhibit uncanny similarities to ideas found in contemporary architecture where it employed a free-form topography of earthworks and natural plant growth to blur the boundaries between its exterior and interior. I subsequently attempted to update its forms to employ a more recent tectonic approach to construction.

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From stereotomic to tectonic construction Attempting to directly mimic the ancient earthwork structure through cumulative applications of tape.

Experimenting with tape to construct a rigid but flexible structure.

Hybrid structure. Wire supports the tape, allowing increased freedom for form-making.

Tape strips are individually painted to highlight their expanded tectonic role.

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The organic formal possibilities evoked by the original earthwork are realized and expanded upon through the use of a contemporary skin.

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Section imagining how the new ruin might be inhabited.

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Prehistory Information Center Fall 2012, Yale School of Architecture.

First-Year Graduate Studio. Critic: Sunil Bald

An expansion of Yale’s Peabody natural history museum becomes an opportunity for the institution to examine its own past. After hearing staff members describe the outdated nature of some of the museum’s current exhibits, including anatomically inaccurate dinosaur sculptures constructed by a Hollywood prop maker and artifacts from diverse Native American tribes grouped together within a single generalized display, I sought to explore the possibility of preserving those exhibits as a critical record of the museum’s own past preconceptions and biases. As the accuracy and scientific value of such artifacts declines over time, they gain increasing potential to be interpreted through subjective cultural and social criteria. They require a new exhibition setting operating in the mode of an art museum rather than a science museum.

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Comparing curatorial approaches

Gallery scale

Exhibit scale

Science Museum Content assumed to hold educational value is presented as the objective truth. Gallery layouts create linear narratives. Exhibits utilize extensive text descriptions and didactic framing devices such as backdrops.

Art Museum Culturally-constructed materials from other times and places are presented subjectively. The presence of the display case and text is minimized in order to encourage a personal interpretation of its contents.

Open exhibit plans act as a neutral field.

Subjective Science Museum?

Multiple conflicting historical representations of the scientific truth are juxtaposed against each other, and connected to corresponding contextual information, through the technique of montage.

Design result Exhibits are placed in a continuous procession of niches, surrounding a neutral center from which they may be objectively evaluated. A film screen enables artifacts to be compared with their representations in media in addition to with each other. Spaces with exterior views may utilize the picturesque surrounding hillside as a further continuation of their visual sequence, setting artificial models within accurate or distorted views of the real outdoors.

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Above: Interior view showing an artifact being simultaneously observed in relation to contemporary media, natural history, and ancient cultural mythology.

Right: plan and section.

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The least accurate artifacts could be reduced to outdoor follies, recalling the spectacle of the gardens at the Crystal Palace. Deliberately exposed to natural light and the elements, they will gain further dignity as they fade with time.

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Dance Partners Fall 2012, Yale School of Architecture.

First-Year Graduate Studio. Critic: Sunil Bald

A new type of dance theater aims to perpetuate its own financial existence by strategically sharing its building with revenue-generating retail and office programs. Their presence in turn attracts potential new audience members who might not otherwise become acquainted with the theater.

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Mapping economic adaptation

Retail High-rise development Public realm

Original form

After commercial expansion

Project site High Line The market currently on the site is thriving in the presence of the High Line. How could its current symbiotic condition inform the design of the new theater?

Research precedent Grand Central Station Evaded the fate of its crosstown counterpart Penn Station by encouraging commercial development to coexist with the historic mission of serving the public good still engraved on its walls.

Symbolic adaptation Grand Central’s signage now employs the same visual language as that of its own commercial tenants, creating confusing overlaps with its original identity as a monumental institution.

Shared message, different visual forms

= Commercial symbol

Shared visual form

= Public message

Initial analysis developed in collaboration with Kirk Henderson.

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Monumental public symbol

Commercial message

Roof Public park connecting to the High Line

Levels 2-3 Commercial offices Theater balcony (Level 2)

Recombination strategies The assigned theater program is augmented with revenue-generating elements. A flexible public space at the street level can be used as a market during daytime hours and host receptions for the theater in the evening. The upper floors contain office space leased out to commercial tenants, and the basement contains a large retail location. Stairways connect to the adjacent High Line through a rooftop extension of its park area.

Ground level Multi-use space Coffee shop Theater

A path for each audience Public Office workers Theater patrons

Basement Theater backstage & storage Large retail

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9AM

12PM

Section illustrating how this mixed-use building serves multiple audiences at different times of the day.

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3PM

6PM

9PM

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Museum of Scenic Routes Barnard College, Spring 2011.

Design II. Critic: Irina Verona

A museum about Manhattan’s street grid located within Chinatown is designed to reconcile local and universal interpretations of the city.

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Fast and scenic transportation Considering the relationship between travel speed and urban scale.

Mapping the sensory intensity of different transportation modes.

Standardized and local urban narratives.

Bus tours Large companies ferry crowds of passengers along preset routes between landmarks, generating a standardized collective perception of the city.

Walking tours Organized by individuals and small businesses to explore specific neighborhoods at a slower human scale. Catering to niche interests, they create a diverse web of alternate narratives.

ONBOARD CITYSIGHTS GRAY LINE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING STATUE OF LIBERTY

LGBT HISTORY

HAMILTON V.S. BURR

HIP-HOP TOUR

TIMES SQUARE ROCKEFELLER CENTER W.T.C. SITE

CIVIL WAR ERA

GRAVEYARDS

EXTREME CHOCOLATE

GREENWICH VILLAGE CHINATOWN UNITED NATIONS CHRYSLER BLDG

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ASIAN VEGETERIAN FOOD

LITERARY HAUNTS OF HARLEM

9/11 TOUR

AYN RAND TOUR

LABOR HISTORY

JEWISH GANGSTERS OF THE L.E.S

Still from an analytical animation produced in collaboration with Beatrix Carroll.

Chinatown’s local story This neighborhood’s culture resists another type of master narrative – Manhattan’s street grid. Locals hawk seafood on the sidewalks, cover historic buildings in Chinese characters, and share their roads with forklifts. The result is a unique predestrian environment.

Chinatown evolves Past

Present

Future?

Buildings constructed on lots defined by the Manhattan grid.

Current residents build additions on top of pre-existing buildings.

The grid and its subsequent layers of modification could become inseparably intertwined.

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Coexisting pathways Chinatown’s culture could not be further opposed to the requirements of my assigned program; an archive preserving maps of the 1811 Commissioner’s Plan for the Manhattan street grid. My proposal seeks to retain a space for local community life within the context of the institutional archive.

TRAVELby BYbook BOOK Travel

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Travel by foot

TRAVEL BY FOOT

Library stacks follows the street grid to form a glass wrapper. Monumental public spaces occupy voids within the orthogonal grid in a decentralized network of nodes and pathways. The open nature of the atrium and the diversity of its programming promotes mutual awareness among disparate groups of users.

Travel by eye

Travel by tour

TRAVEL BY TOUR

TRAVEL BY TOUR

1 LEVEL :NALP

Selected plans.

2 LEVEL :NAL

SKCATS SKCATS

NEHCTIK

GNIWEIV MOOR

Level 1 ground floor

Level 3

3 LEVEL :NALP

SKCATS SKCATS

NEHCTIK

NEHCTIK

GNIWEIV MOOR

Level 5

GNIWEIV MOOR

Level 7 rooftop

Section showing the building’s relationship to its context.

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Robotic Furniture 2015, personal.

Product prototype for a new technology startup.

An experiment to create an internet-connected robotic storage cabinet. Inserted objects are photographed and stored on internal conveyor belts so that they may be digitally tagged, searched for, and eventually summoned for retrieval from a smartphone app. Automated warehouse technology is translated to a domestic scale.

Developed out of my own personal curiosity about the future possibilities enabled by 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 technological experiment and a venture with commerical potential, it was envisioned as an attempt to improve housing conditions in response to the growth of global urbanism.

Illustration of 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.

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Project development In six months I conducted market research, developed my first functional prototype, and presented it in meetings with three investors. The prototype was able to successfully load objects and transmit information about them to the database of a locally-hosted web application.

My next step in development will be to improve the reliability of this design so that beta testers can begin using it inside their homes.

Prototyping the conveyor belt.

Hand-cranked

Motorized Illustration created to describe the product idea during market research surveys.

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Designing support brackets.

Section inside the prototype. A shoebox-sized cabinet is sufficient to test the functionality of future products built at the larger scale of furniture.

Testing of individual subsystems.

Testing the object detection light sensors.

Object loading test for the conveyor belt.

First footage produced by the camera. Photographed objects were identified with up to 70% accuracy in tests using third-party image recognition software.

Testing the gantry used to move items between belts.

Assembling the complete system.

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Prototype

Top view Gantry for moving between belts.

Gantry drive gear and track 60

End-stop

Fixed 8� conveyor belt.

Bottom view Camera module

Electronic components: Breadboard with motor controller connected to an Arduino Yun. Gantry guide rails

Gantry drive motor

Conveyor belt drive motor 61

Travel Drawings Efforts to perceive and interpret my surrounding world. All drawings produced on-site.

Richards Medical Center. Personal. 2007.

Nanstein Castle. Personal, 2008.

Villa Savoye. Parsons School of Design, Drawing in Paris, Summer 2010.

Instructor: Madeline Schwartzman

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Savannah, Georgia.

Personal, 2009.

Chaco Canyon.

Personal, 2011.

Versailles. Parsons School of Design, Drawing in Paris, Summer 2010.

Instructor: Madeline Schwartzman

Cรกdiz, Spain. Personal, 2008.

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Exploration of sliced matter.

Personal, 2008.

Study of tetrahedral packing geometry.

Yale School of Architecture, Visualization II. Fall 2012.

Instructors: Sunil Bald and Kent Bloomer.

Art & Analysis

Opposite page: Final cumulative drawing.

Yale School of Architecture, Formal Analysis.

Fall 2012.

Instructor: Peter Eisenman.

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