Christopher A. Haack
Portfolio :: Fall 2011 - Spring 2013
Christopher A. Haack chaack@tulane.edu 760.716.9979
Selected Work Spring 2013 1 :: Visitors Center 7:: Precedent Analysis
Fall 2012
9:: Museum of the City 15:: Urban Analysis :: The French Quarter 17:: Urban Analysis :: The City
Spring 2012 19:: Feret Street Fete 23::Object Gallery 25:: Exquisite Object
Fall 2011 27:: Site as Dwelling / Dwelling as Site 31:: Painting Analysis 33:: Architeckton
Deanery Garden & Clubhouse Spring 2013 :: 2nd Year :: Proffesor Scott Ruff
Deanery Garden and Clubhouse came about as the synthesis of a precedent analysis of Maison Bordeaux by Rem Koolhaas, and a need for a visitor’s center on Sir Edwin Lutyens, Deanery Garden. The visitor’s center exists as an extension of the house. It sits on the axis of one ofthe pedestrian entrances into Deanery Garden. Like Maison Bordeaux, the structure is concieved of as three seperate houses. The top volume contains reception, information stations and a lounge and bar combination. The ground level is non-existent save for the lift shaft that connects to the basement floor which contains the gallery, bathroom and other service functions.
perspective
By floating above the site there is minimal disturbance to the garden itself, while still existing as a conspicously contemporary object within the context of a an Edwardian estate. The ramp into the bottom level allows visitors to measure themselves against the landscape and recieve the inverse experience of the numerous grand stairscases which exist on the site.
opposite: exterior rendering
facade
Deanery Garden & Clubhouse Spring 2013 :: 2nd Year :: Scott Ruff
top plan
ground plan
basement plan
section :: A
section :: B
composite site plan
section :: A
section :: B
circulation
box manipulation
Views
Lounge
relaxation
reception
floating
info bar
canopy
free
bar garden
bucolic
site
carefree
hedge
circulation
chambered concealed
service vs. served
radiant
gallery
reflective
bathrooms
folLies
resplendent
storage
office
seperate houses
Precedent Analysis Spring 2013 :: 2nd Year :: Scott Ruff
As a key component of creating the subsequent visitors center was the study of a historially significant precedent. The precedent studied was Rem Koolhaas’s Maison Bordeaux, a private residence in Bordeaux, France. The house was designed for a parapallegic client and his family. The building itself employs several diagramatic elements which were represented in both 2 and 3 dimensional formats. These ideas of spatial and tectonic organization were then employed in the visitors’s center project as a way of better understaning the language which may inform design.
seperate houses
Bordeaux House :: Seperate Houses
public vs. private
views Bordeaux House :: Panoramic vs Connective Views
Bordeaux House :: Public vs Private
service vs. served
Bordeaux House :: Service vs Serve
structure
voids
public vs. private
structure
voids
public vs. private
Museum of the City Fall 2012 :: 2nd Year :: Proffesor Cordula Roser-Gray
Taking the ideas we had found in the analysis of the French Quarter, we constucted a museum of the city. The inspiration behind the museum was to highlight the relationship between the incredibly exposed and public street facade, and the private and secluded condition of the center of the block. The museum itself focuses around projecting views. Upon entry the visitor sees the back courtyard area, a space typically left visually inaccessable. As the visitor moves upstairs they proccess to a balcony overlooking the street they just traveled. Views are also present of the front courtyard once the circulation is completed.
back
Tectonically the building deals with subtracted strips from solid block forms which provide light into the interior of the building. At the front of the structure there is a mechanical gate which slides to cover the auditorium in the daytime and slides closed at night to keep the front courtyard safe until the morning.
opposite: front facade
side
Museum of the City
Fall 2012 :: 2nd Year :: Cordula Roser-Gray
top plan
ground plan
section :: A
section :: B
section :: C
wall of light
wall of the city
wall of the surveyor
wall of books
entranceway
hallway
Urban Analysis :: The Neighborhood Spring 2013 :: 2nd Year :: Cordula Roser-Gray
After moving from the scale of the entire city, we moved to the scale of the neighborhood. In specific I explored the French Quarter. This research included studying the history of the Quarter, the topography and the other elements which make the neighborhood unique. This study was translated into diagrams which described these elements in depth.
public vs private
zoning
street facade
roadways
Urban Analysis :: The City Spring 2013 :: 2nd Year :: Cordula Roser-Gray
We began the year with an analysis of New Orleans. We studied all the individual elements which exist within the city. From that research we produced diagrams which represented those findings in an instructive way. The emphasis of the project was to find the diagramtic ideads which are recurring and important to the city to help inform future design work.
neighborhoods
roadways
building age
crime rates
Feret Street Fete Spring 2012 :: 1st Year :: Proffesor Thaddeus Zarse
The Feret Street Fete developed the ideas in the exquisite object project into a fully functioning gallery space on Feret Street in New Orlean’s Uptown neighborhood. The Fete takes advantage of a large site to provide a full gallery space, coupled with office, auditorium and service function. A winding staircase column allows visitors to measure the procession through the floors while providing a dynamic relief to the monolithic form of the building.
Small, punched windows provide specific views while adding lightness to the thick wood-clad form. The building is topped with a large cafe area with views of Feret Street, a anvenue whose comerical and social viabiltity was galvanized with post-Katrina development.
opposite: southeast corner
west elevation
east elevation
Feret Street Fete
Spring 2012 :: 1st Year :: Proffesor Thaddeus Zarse
bottom floor plan
1st floor plan
2nd floor plan
section :: A
section :: B
section :: C
Object Gallery
Spring 2012 :: 1st Year :: Proffesor Thaddeus Zarse The Object Gallery project looked to the tectonic and spatial characteristics discovered in the Exquisite Object project and saught to apply them to a gallery space. Ideas which help define the gallery space include ideas of monumentality, juxtaposition between thickness and thin, solid and void as well as a ratcheting motion which defines the circulation. The experience begins in a small and compressed entrance which releases in a volumonous gallery space containing suspended volumes seemingly subtracted from the walls. The visitor continues the proccesion to the end where a staircase is revealed in a wall segment the allows passage to a mezzanie level. The mezzanie allows passage over the entrance area which contains a cafe and seating and allows for a reflection on the circulation the occupant just completed.
interior render
gallery render
section :: A,B,C
plan
section :: D
Exquisite Object
Spring 2012 :: 1st Year :: Proffesor Thaddeus Zarse The Exquisite Object project looked to an a kinect household device (in this case a pipe clamp) for inspiration to create a gallery space holding three select famous works of art. The initial stage was diagraming out the object in the form of a digital dyptych. Following that, a model was made to essentially hold the object itself generating a form from negative space. Finally plans and sections were drawn and the gallery was formed based on the kinect ideas of ratcheting and horizontal shift.
digital dyptych
21”
_SECTION 10
19.5”
_SECTION 9
19” 18” 17.25” 16.75” 15.5” 14.5”
_SECTION _SECTION _SECTION _SECTION _SECTION _SECTION
13”
_SECTION 2
3”
_SECTION 1
8 7 6 5 4 3
serial sections
model photo :: 1
model photo :: 2
Site as Dwelling / Dwelling as Site Fall 2011 :: 1st Year :: Proffesor Tiffany Lin
Site as Dwelling / Dwelling as Site was the first exploration into the realtionship between building and its relationship to the site it exists on. Both elements were crafted to have a dialouge with each other and both inform and/or contradict one another. The site is a long plot of sloping land in between a river at the bottom, and a roadway at the top. The house sits on the end of a promenade in between two graceful curvilinear hills. The path down is obscured by trees on the first hill with the exception of two small views down to the house. The path continues through cornfields until the visitor reaches the house. The top story acts as a viewing box for the river and land beyond. This is in addition to cantilevering over a small creek to a private swimming pool on the opposite hillside. The bottom floor contains a dance studio and is embeded within the hillside allowing one to complete the circulation to the banks of the river.
opposite: southeast
back
side
Site as Dwelling / Dwelling as Site Fall 2011 :: 1st Year :: Proffesor Tiffany Lin
plans and diagrams
longitudinal section
latitudinal section
Painting Analysis
Fall 2011 :: 1st Year :: Proffesor Tiffany Lin The painting analysis project was the first introduction to the ideas of finding the diagramtic elements present within any given composition. The composition studied for this project was Van Doesburg’s “Study of a Cow”. The painting contained numerous ideas abouts repition and meter. Be it through lines if geometrically primitive shapes, the painting exhibits the very formal and reductionist approach of the De Stijl moement. In this case a photo realistic painting of a cow was reduced down to its most basic composition until it reached the intellectually rich painting that was then rebuilt and investigated through models and diagrams
model photo 1
model photo 2
service vs. served
public vs. private
views
service vs. served
Architekton
Fall 2011 :: 1st Year :: Proffesor Marcella del Signore The first project ever completed in architecture school, the Architekton was a study in the most basic formal and tectonic principles that exist in architecture. The project began as a study of planes, sticks and poche as elements present in architecture . From there there was a synthesis of all three elemnts into what would become the architekton. The architekton, more than just a synthesis of three elements was formed by a study of a verb which helped shape the building. The verb choosen was “channel” paired with a secondary word being “platforms.” The structure contains four distinct “floors” with three elements that connect each individual “floor”. Within each floor element there are bits of subtracted forms which create the shape of each individual piece. Not only does each “floor” have a channel cut into it, but the connection between acts as a channel which keeps the whole structure together.
model photo 2
exploded axon
east elevation
west elevation
CONTACT 760.716.9979 chaack@tulane.edu