Wallabout Studios Brooklyn, NY Spring 2019 Charles Culbertson
Three Scales
This series of three scale studies do not have a direct connection, but ultimately led to an understanding of the context of the site and its relationship to the program. The goal of these studies was to develop a knowledge so that when making design decisions that directly apply to all scales they correlated as closely as possible. In order to understand these different scales, many forms of investigation had to be tested, including site visits, photography, and model studies.
City
Neighborhood
Unit
City This investigation sought to understand what makes good affordable housing in a city through architecture alone. In comparing New York City’s poorly designed affordable housing to Vienna’s, it became clear that the most important aspect is the architects understanding of the spatial qualities and how they relate to the city and neighborhood. Vienna not only maximizes public space and quality of lighting, but creates public rooms through the organization of their buildings. Each space varies to the neighborhoods needs. In NYC, architects seem to pay no attention to materiality and how that will effect the spacial qualities. Also there is a lack of the proper organization of buildings to best make the neighborhood feel safe.
Vienna, Austria
NYC, New York
Neighborhood
In visiting the site, we were able to understand the scale of neighboring buildings, opportunities for views, flow of people and cars, shadows, and reoccurring materials in the neighborhood. To not get distracted from the excitement of New York, we created an assignment for ourselves: a video capturing the aspects of the site and city through a one point perspective view.
Unit The questions of maximizing light, space, and views, are what ultimately led to the organization, form, and materiality of the unit. In comparing a single and double height unit with the same volume, the double was much more successful in bringing light into the unit and creating a variety of living spaces. A simple study of a curve interacting with a flat plane to guide movement and maximize space and light sparked the core conceptual question that applied to all scales of this project.
Facade Study
This study was an attempt to not only break up the repetition of repeating units, but the repetition of resident’s daily experiences. Varying in transparency and scale of apertures, this facade balances privacy and visibility for the residents.
Master Plan
The master plan was organized based off of the opinions and questions that developed after investigating the three scales. Through the simple linear organization of the residential buildings the waterfront is framed and makes clear what spaces are public and private. However, the transparency of the facade and shifting of masses through curves is meant to ease that transition between the two.
25’
Materiality The material choices of this building derived from the questions of lightness, transparency, customization, and affordability. The glass-fiber-reinforced concrete skin accumulates majority of the building cost, but this was in response to the lack of investment in affordable housing in NYC. Also, this can be afforded because the chain link fence captures the desired transparency, while being low cost.
Wall to Floor Detail
Ground Detail
Roof Detail
Case Study Barcelona’s Museum of Contemporary Art was not only an inspiration to include a skate park, but a study of how the elements of creative expression, public gathering, and architecture connect.
MACBA - Barcelona