Portfolio 2012-2017 (Select Projects) by Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2017 Connor Gravelle

Intro & Table of Contents

ABOUT THE COVER Having spent four years at SCI-Arc, it seems that my small body of work has become somewhat productively unruly. Though some themes permeate the larger structure of the work, collecting everything under one banner (let alone four) is sometimes difficult. For this reason, I have resisted the temptation to lift any single project to the status of covering a book. Instead, all covers (seen in each in its miniature to the left) come from one enlarged image taken over a year ago in a field outside of my hometown. What this image means to me aesthetically more than compensates for its non-linear entanglement with the projects inside these books. In its most basal sense, it is a photograph taken of the edge between a cornfield and the sky on a late summer’s day. The balmy summer’s sun in New England blinded the camera with its intensity. At low exposure, the camera approached the leafs at the ends of the cornstalks in an ultimately vulnerable condition, unable to encapsulate the truth of what it was tasked to capture. With a flick of my wrist, the camera found itself completely unable to compre-

hend what stood before it. Light failed to register on the machine’s sensor in a way to which you might ascribe any fidelity. A brief obsession with the Japanese author Yukio Mishima this year left me with this quote from his 1968 book, Sun and Steel:

at Mishima’s reality and its definitions, the camera’s strained lens breaks the identity of what stands before it. More than cornstalk or sky, this image is the last instance of time for an entire reality. It is the border at which nouns become insufficient to transcribe what is perceived.

A weltanschauung of sorts, it resonates with a great deal of the work in these books in regards to the mutual cadence that each poses towards hardline truths. The atmosphere, the cornstalk and the building all stand to defy the qualities we presume for them. More than merely encapsulating something novel, their true power emerges in the moment we stand back from the spectacle and see again exactly what we saw before. To see the cornstalk anew is to liberate its identify to the extent This image, too, is a certain kind of death. It is the death that we accept its capability of ontological transgresof a word — the death of a “cornstalk”. It is the final point sion without entrapping it to our subjective demands. at which the nomination of what we see eludes us, Rather, from where we stand, a world lifted from us for leaving nameless what we desperately seek to idenonly a second to be delivered back slightly askew offers tify. Where the atmosphere’s outer boundary scraped a realignment of external reality so fundamental and yet at the edge of what he breathed to puncture and peel so belonging that we too find ourselves changed. “The upper atmosphere where there is no oxygen is surrounded with death… No movement, no sound, no memories… In this stillness was a beauty beyond words: No more body or spirit, pen or sword, male or female… I saw a giant circle coiled around the earth, a ring that resolved all contradictions, a ring vaster than death, more fragrant than any scent I have ever known.”

About Me

ABOUT ME

ACADEMICS

Hello! My name is Connor Gravelle, and I am currently a candidate for an undergraduate degree here at SCI-Arc, approaching thesis as I enter my final year here.

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3.96 GPA at SCI-Arc

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Instruction in the German language at Goethe Institut Boston (2008-2011)

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4.1 Graduating GPA from Newburyport Public High School in Newburyport, Massachusetts in 2012

This is my portfolio. Between its covers, you will find an amassing of what I think about as per my work in visual, architectural, designed and documented forms. Its organization has been curated to follow a genealogical order, which is described in further detail on the next page. I have a particular interest in resolving new ideas about the perspectives which are cast on architecture. Both the development of the field towards its current form in historical retrospective and the possibility of future tangents into new paradigms for our built world as a whole fascinate me. I believe that architecture holds the keen possibility to influence us, as the human race, on a profound level. It is perhaps the art which encapsulates us the most within its grasps, and, in those regards, its powers should be appropriated in order to further our understanding of the human condition as manifested in our designed reality.

AWARDS AND RECOGNITIONS ––

Specially selected to represent SCI-Arc to prospective students on both tours and students panels

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Chosen to display work at SCI-Arc’s annual Spring Show of student work for 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016

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Chosen to participate among three students as SCI-Arc’s representation to the 2016 Julius Shulman Emerging Talent Award’s competition, organized by the LA Business Council

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2012 winner of Scholastic Art Award in the Architecture category as well as subsequent Prismacolor Scholarship for design of “Mexican Border Memorial”

CONTACT INFORMATION Address (LA) 411 South Main Street Unit 318 Los Angeles, California 90013 United States of America Address (MA) 5 Milk Street Newburyport, Massachusetts 01950 United States of America Phone

+1 978 918 2575

Email connor_gravelle@sciarc.edu connor.gravelle@gmail.com (personal)

Table of Contents

Lima Museum of Art ��12 [We] are LA ��189 Canonical Images in Fashion and Architecture ��194 Synopsis ��12 Pertaining Quotes ��194 The Core �� 17 Skin ��194 Scales of Institutional Experience ��25 Architecture and Freedom ��25 Nelson Atkins Museum Precedent Study ��206 Subtle Deviations between Architectural Elements ��30 El Rosario Market Redevelopment ��220 About Subtlety ��30 The Situation in El Rosario ��220 Where Subtlety Places Us ��39 Engagements of the Façade ��220 Pondering the Lima Exposition Hall ��39 Contextualities ��220 Learning from Grammar ��39 Urban Wallpaper �� 225 Paseo Penasco House ��50 Lower 4th Street Masterplan �� 252 Synopsis �� 252 Odd Blocks �� 78 Site Ecology as Building Parameter �� 252 SP Chinatown Depot Redevelopment ��102 Los Angeles Mall Office Tower ��266 Synopsis ��102 The Education of a Neighborhood ��266 Project Scheme ��102 Preservation and Cultural Identity �� 270 About Chinatown ��102 Urban Dichotomies �� 270 Chinatown’s History ��120 Learning to Walk Again �� 270 Berkeley Museum of Art ��128 Rancho San Juan Rehabilitation Center �� 278 Elevations and the Politics of the Art Museum Synopsis �� 278 as a Contemporary Medium for Architecture �� 132 A New Federal Penitentiary No. 1 �� 278 Circulatory Strategies ��136 Tilting the Unité Model �� 278 About the Façade ��140 Organization ��143 Circulatory Vignettes �� 157 BAM Design Development ��160 SCI-Fa �� 170 Synopsis �� 170 Thoughts on Program �� 170 Thoughts on Institution �� 170 The Fourth Wall as Societal Device �� 176 The Fourth Wall in Architecture �� 176 F***, the Spline �� 179 A Mechanized Pool for Fashion ��183 Los Angeles, or Epileptic Shock ��183 Escape is Futile: LA Live™ ��189 Beginnings and Ends in Architecture ��189

LIMA MUSEUM OF ART Thesis Studio Spring 2017, Michael Young with AT Melissa Shin Awarded Blythe and Thom Mayne Best Undergraduate Thesis Prize Synopsis Our cultural moment might be described as one of intense self-reflection. Concerns of what it means to belong and what exactly an identity is have recently, more so than ever, foregrounded themselves as questions paramount to, if not at times even more bombastic than, the very definition of such terms in a given situation. Consequently, this problematizes the architectural practice as a transcriptive discipline for identifying, materializing and, most importantly, defining the ideological conditions of given contexts, cultures and programs.

original structure of its west façade and moves the amputated face 40 meters towards curbside. The leftover negative space of this operation provides the working room for the new contemporary art wing to infill the space between the original structure and its severed streetside face. The Screen and the Fake Materiality From the exterior, this elevational relationship is further challenged by the intermittent construction of a glass skin wrapping between the existing and new wings of the building. Fritted with an

In particular terms, this extension to an existing art museum takes to task preservation for its immediate engagement with identity. Thus, questions of institution, context and even the literal tectonic manifestation of a building become crucial in understanding how a building might in itself establish the possibility of productively estranging what we take for granted. This opens a working ground on which the architectural formation of the

ficked thoroughfare as well as a subway entrance by gently, slightly pulling patrons, passersby, metro riders, delivery trucks and flaneurs alike below the masses of both structures through a crevice between the ground and the perceptual weight (something ostensibly of stone with a certain heaviness) of the museum extension. This circulatory flattening of the presumed hierarchy between museum lobby, public concourse and delivery dock challenges the institutional parameters of the architecture from its very moment of entry. The Core From here, visitor circulation branches off and ascends to a lobby space at grade with the street, pinched between a fragment of the original structure’s façade, the metal-as-stone cladding and an interstitial space, framed in glass, between the two which houses a café. Program becomes performance as the circulatory pathways of the build leverage their architectural intensity (as opposed to a more pragmatically blank space such as an office or gallery) to focus the experience of traversing the building. The Storage

mere image of the original building, the misregistration of this surface from its literal material referent below problematizes the orthographic elevation for which the project brief places such implication in favor of an oblique.

project is constantly defined by its efficacy to unsettle (though not persistently to resist or to undermine) presumed tropes, values and institutional underpinnings. The Façade This process begins first in the demands of a competition brief that places heavy cultural worth in the elevations of the existing Neoclassical structure onsite. Rather than conforming below grade or retreatingly offer a building which disappears, the project literally exercises the

Likewise, a perforated metal cladding around the volume of the extension mimics traditional architectural materiality in its faux travertine patterns, further enlivening this sometimes-graphic, sometimes-spatial depth. Whatever sense of depth offered in the filigree ornament of the original building offered is both highlighted and contested in the visually uncertain contradiction between the absolute flatness yet experiential dimensionality of the screen and cladding.

These subtle shifts in the relationships between floorplates and walls provide spaces of “betweenness” through which several stairways and elevators slip between levels to provide different rates of passage between the building. The primary visitor route of these becomes a central core, inhabiting the interstitial space of the section between the lobby and the galleries, itself bisecting the conservation and storage areas of the museum as it bridges between the ground and second floors. Moments of interstitiality create inhabitation in the sectional gray space typically reserved for institutional program, storage or mechanical space.

Moving into the building, the museum consumes the site’s demand for a pedestrian underpass across a heavily traf-

As one passes through this space, the museum as a curatorial and collecting space is opened up, framing the experience of the art viewer not merely as one of passivity but as one of a kind of active transience (the art not on exhibition nevertheless becomes in a way public but

Lima Museum of Art

Thesis Studio

The Entrance

Lima Museum of Art

Thesis Studio

Axonometric

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

New Wholes

Subtleness

Irrelevance

Composition

Collage

Mere Parts

Lamination

Bent Leaned Rotated (“Boxes Galore”)

Architectures (Left to Right): Heydar Aliyev Center, Zaha Hadid Architects, 2012 Ordos 100, multiple authors, 2012 Chicago Federal Center, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1960-1974 Neue Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, James Stirling, 1977-1984

Displaced

Artworks (Left to Right): Orange Crush, Marylin Minter, 2009 Untitled, Ryan McGinley, 2007 My Bed, Tracey Emin, 1999 Red Relief, Ellsworth Kelly, 2009 Untitled, Kardashian Collage, Shana Sadeghi-Ray, ~2015

Shaved

the spatial positioning of its enclosure in relation to the pathway of circulation infers a kind of reverse performance on the part of visitors in a kind of institutional voyeurism). Opportunities for transparency engage new axial relationships with the surrounding park and its various structures while enframing the context of the experience of vertically moving through the museum. The Center Where the original building provided a direct, axial Beaux-Arts scheme centered around a courtyard, the rearrangement of the museum spaces in this project creates a charged and ideologically less certain choreography. Where one wing’s courtyard fetishizes centrality and the subject’s subordination to a panoptic condition of architecture, the other willfully enforces a constant state of peripheralization. The core of the new building is something unable to be experienced all at once, something that at times faces the visitor with abstraction and at other

times with intense literality (such as in the storage spaces) but involved in a constancy of otherness.

(Above) Diagram demarcating the barriers of subtlety between objects, attempting to establish a working space

The Regard of Oldness

(Right) Interior rendering of space between public circulation and institutional storage

This does not infer a constant subordination of the existing architecture or promote a fetishistic hierarchy between old and new, but instead proposes that the careful consideration of one might inform the capacity of the other to engage the cultural conversation at hand. For instance, the repetition of enfilade gallery spaces in the existing building repeats across the top level and makes impetus for skylights. Providing a wide, open space both performs the curatorial expectations of the exhibition spaces and engages the architectural ambition to establish (in this case through these skylights) a productively conversive and uneasy posture between old and new. It is this very formal repetition of the poché inferred in the enfilade through which one pops into the galleries from below. Lima Museum of Art

Thesis Studio

A constancy of interruption between spaces reminds one in each moment of an imminent “otherness”. Not always the primary focus of a space, there remains throughout the building slippages of space, both literally and figuratively that challenge the assumed boundary conditions between programmatic, material and formal conditions. These posit a state of belonging between old and new, and within the new itself, that is not necessarily binaristic. Architecture begins to blend in for the sake of standing out.

tive quality of architecture the contemporary cultural field as a method only for establishing value but for questioning it through tightly choreographed interventions, subtle adjacencies and their consequent conversational possibilities. The Core

The circulation “core” does only a few things, but ponders an execution of such things in terms of extreme exactitude. Where sectional variability between the entrance, storage and exhibition spaces of the museum reveals only slight dimenIn these terms, the project probes archisional differences when regarded against tecture as a method for producing alterthe overall size of the museum itself, native means of belonging beyond an these very minor differences in level outdated dichotomy between traditional pose extreme problems for the articulavernacular and building as something we tion architectural elements with such might call “object-gift” to the city. Settling finite requirements as stairs and ramps, into its situation in a gesture of perhaps whether those issues be the result of unsettled belonging, it establishes a building codes, ergonomics or otherwise series of conversations which reframe its aesthetic considerations. This represents context, both literally in terms of a neigha moment of strange efficacy in terms of borhood and a park and more figuratively generic architectural elements around in terms of a culture and a value system. the possibility of an immediate adjacency These concerns highlight the performaConnor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

between basal architectural prerogatives (such as circulation or code-conformation) and the very problem of conceiving (and realizing) an architecture. A series of alignments and level considerations become the primary drivers of the core’s articulation. While these may be banal in the overall summation of an architectural work, their manifestation is directly tied both to the experience of a building and the general set of possible influences for its very generation. A stair or a ramp have within themselves an entire accompaniment of geometries governing rise, run, angles, permissible head heights and widths. These values are in some sense more than enough in their combining to produce a believable building, but moreover in their confabulation they acquire the ability to produce an architecture. If a confabulation is the “disturbance of memory, defined as the production of fabricated, distorted or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world,

without the conscious intention to deceive” (Wikipedia), then the arbitration of these architectural standards (the widths, heights, spacings and rises-over-runs) must be the most ubiquitous confabulation imaginable. They are a confabulation whose character is completely unavoidable for the fact that architecture has no baseline concept of reality against which to attest a deviation. The first instantiation of any building is blankness, the utter absence of constructed material, and yet the architectural process could be thought of as standing to compensate that void. Moving outside, as the subtly shifted bars which define the interior project out into the park, their slight misalignments begin to consume the disorganization or the park and justify the immense variety of local conditions throughout the block. This aren’t okay when misaligned if there’s a clear, orthogonal system, against which everything must answer for itself constantly. But, if that system embraces the variability of everything, 17

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Rc_A.01 Rc_A.02 Rc_A.03 Rc_B.01 Rc_A.04 Rc_A.05 Rc_A.08 Cr.10 Sp_A.03 Sp_A.02 Cr.08 Cr.09 Ov_A.01 Sp_A.01 Sp_A.04 Sp_B.04 Sp_B.05

Main Entrance Foyer Concourse to Subway Main Lobby Ramp Main Lobby Landing Main Lobby Exhibition Space Ticketing and Elevator Bank Ticketing Booth Aft Lobby Lobby Public WC Foyer Lobby Women's WC Lobby Men's WC Ticketing Hallway 1 Ticketing Hallway 2 Ticketing Offices Coat Check Lobby Staff WC Power Unit Power Control Room

Lima Museum of Art

397 m2 338 m2 215 m2 323 m2 106 m2 57 m2 165 m2 14 m2 23 m2 21 m2 18 m2 8 m2 20 m2 53 m2 12 m2 51 m2 24 m2

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Cr.06 Ov_C.01 Ov_C.02 Sp_B.02 Sp_B.03 Cr.01 Ov_B.01 Rc_A.06 Rc_C.01 Sp_A.05 Cr.02 Cr.12 Ov_C.05 Sp_A.07 Sp_A.08 Re_A.01 Re_A.06 Re_A.05

Lobby Administrative Access Hallway 62 m2 Lobby Storage Room 1 7 m2 Lobby Storage Room 2 7 m2 Deliveries / Loading Dock 334 m2 Equiptment Room 48 m2 Ground Floor Freight Elevtor Lobby 45 m2 Woodshop 63 m2 Education Foyer 250 m2 Main Café Space and Bar 202 m2 Café Kitchen 33 m2 Existing Stairwell North 51 m2 Café WC Access Hallway 48 m2 Library Storage Room 11 m2 Café Men's WC 22 m2 Café Women's WC 22 m2 Library 364 m2 Library Reading Room 55 m2 Library Book Depository 25 m2

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

Cr.14 Re_A.07 Cr.13 Rc_A.07 Cr.15 Ed_A.01 Ed_B.04 Ed_B.01 Cr.16 Sp_A.09 Ed_B.05 Ed_B.02 Cr.17 Sp_A.10 Ed_B.06 Ed_B.03 Cr.18 Sp_A.11

Library Office Foyer Library Office Library Transitional Space Courtyard Education Main Hallway Lecture Hall (373 seats) Medium Classroom 1 Small Classroom 1 Education Classroom WC Foyer 1 Classroom WC 1 Medium Classroom 2 Small Classroom 2 Education Classroom WC Foyer 2 Classroom WC 2 Medium Classroom 3 Small Classroom 3 Education Classroom WC Foyer 3 Classroom WC 3

Thesis Studio

7 m2 16 m2 19 m2 577 m2 238 m2 423 m2 75 m2 53 m2 6 m2 13 m2 68 m2 46 m2 6 m2 13 m2 83 m2 61 m2 6 m2 13 m2

55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

Ed_B.07 Ed_C.03 Cr.03 Ed_B.08 Cr.19 Sp_A.13 Sp_A.12 Ed_C.02 Ed_C.01

Large Classroom Educational Storage Existing Stairwell South Education Breakout Space Education WC Foyer Education Women's WC Education Men's WC Education Offices Auxiliary Education Offices Main

127 m2 21 m2 74 m2 136 m2 11 m2 19 m2 18 m2 36 m2 56 m2

Plans (-0,5, +1 and 2)

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Ov_C.06 Rc_A.09 Cr.23 Rc_A.10 Rc_A.11 Ov_A.04 Ov_A.03 Ov_A.02 Ov_C.07 Ov_C.08 Ov_A.06 Ov_A.07 Ov_A.08 Ov_A.05 Ov_A.09 Ov_A.10 Ov_A.11 Ov_A.12

Collection Storage Vault Storage Foyer Administration West Access Ramp Administration Lobby West Administration Lobby East Administration Workspace South Administration Workspace North Administration Foyer Museography Storage Room Museography Storage Office Small Office 1 Small Office 2 Small Office 3 Conference Room Large Office 1 Large Office 2 Large Office 3 Large Office 4

Connor Gravelle

844 m2 191 m2 63 m2 157 m2 233 m2 238 m2 108 m2 96 m2 105 m2 14 m2 11 m2 11 m2 10 m2 36 m2 18 m2 18 m2 18 m2 16 m2

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Sp_A.14 Sp_A.15 Ov_C.09 Cr.22 Sp_A.17 Sp_A.16 Cr.24 Cr.20 Ov_B.02 Ov_B.04 Cr.25 Ov_B.05 Cr.26 Ov_B.06 Ov_C.11 Ov_B.03 Cr.27 Ov_C.11

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Administration Kitchen 25 m2 Administration Private WC 7 m2 Administration Storage 47 m2 Administration East Access Hallway 19 m2 Administration Lobby Women's WC 28 m2 Administration Lobby Men's WC 28 m2 Conservation Area Access Hallway 34 m2 Conservation Freight Elevator Lobby 35 m2 Conservation Workshop 1 231 m2 Conservation Office 1 34 m2 Conservation Transitional Space 29 m2 Conservation Office 2 25 m2 Conservation Workshop 2 Foyer 10 m2 Conservation Office 3 24 m2 Conservation Storage Room 2 7 m2 Conservation Workshop 2 113 m2 East Egress Breakout Space 61 m2 Conservation Storage Room 1 16 m2

Portfolio 2012-2015

Ex_E.01 Ex_E.02 Ex_E.03 Ex_E.04 Cr.28 Sp_A.20 Sp_A.19 Ov_C.12 Ex_B.05 Ex_A.05 Ex_A.01 Ex_A.04 Ex_C.01 Ex_C.02 Ex_A.02 Ex_D.01 Ex_D.02 Ex_D.03

Contemporary Art Hall South Contemporary Art Hall East Contemporary Art Hall West Contemporary Art Hall North Gallery WC Foyer Gallery Women's WC Gallery Men's WC Cont. Gallery Storage Room Video Projection Room Auxiliary Special Collection Room Textiles Room Silverworks Gallery South Hall Exhibition Space 1 South Hall Exhibition Space 2 Prado Room Modern Art Hall South Modern Art Hall Modern Art Hall North

908 m2 617 m2 687 m2 1025 m2 6 m2 22 m2 26 m2 17 m2 80 m2 99 m2 228 m2 331 m2 73 m2 40 m2 113 m2 139 m2 148 m2 139 m2

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Ex_B.01 Ex_B.03 Ex_C.03 Ex_C.04 Ex_B.04 Ex_A.03 Ov_C.14 Ov_C.13 Ex_C.05 Ov_C.15 Ex_D.04

Colonial and Precolumbian Art Republican Art North Hall Exhibition Space 1 North Hall Exhibition Space 2 Photography Drawing Gallery Drawing Gallery Storage Room 2 Drawing Gallery Storage Room 1 Auxiliary Exhibition Space Textiles Room Storage Room Modern Art Foyer

295 m2 251 m2 74 m2 40 m2 113 m2 354 m2 18 m2 18 m2 33 m2 18 m2 185 m2

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41 Lima Museum of Art

Thesis Studio 48

Plan Details 47

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Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Lima Museum of Art

Thesis Studio

Render: Circuation and Storage

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Render: Galleries and Circulation

Roof Gallery-accessible patio Skylights

Long-Span Roof Underside Structure 130cm-depth structural truss

Upper Level Galleries Core

Vierendeel System Upper Supports 100cm x 60cm W-Sections primary 80cm x 50cm W-Sections secondary Faรงade Cladding Perforated Panels 264cm standard width 624.3cm standard (but variable) height

Middle Level Administration Collection storage Conservation workshops

Vierendeel System Main Crossing Members 60cm x 30cm W-Sections primary horizontally 40cm x 20cm W-Sections secondary horizontally 50cm x 30cm W-Sections vertically

Faรงade Cladding Metal Support Structure 45cm x 20cm W-Sections vertically 47.6cm x 23.8cm W-Sections horizontally 10cm x 7.5cm C-Channel sliding connections 12.5cm strut panel connectors

Lobby Hung Glass Ceiling 526.5cm x 273.4cm standard glazed panels 7.5cm tube steel connection frame 5cm diameter hanging members

Glass Screen Support Structure 15cm x 5cm vertical clip struts 10cm x 3cm horizontal tube steel members 15cm x 5cm faรงade connectors

Glass Screen Fritted Glass Panels 350cm standard width 900cm standard (but variable) height

Vierendeel System Vertical Supports 100cm x 60cm W-Sections

Ground Level Entrance concourse Education facilities Auditorium Deliveries

Lima Museum of Art

Thesis Studio

Exploded Axonometric of Structure

Subtle

Subtlety

Awkward

~1600 C.E. (mid-16c. as a surname), sotil, "penetrating; ingenious; refined" (of the mind); "sophisticated, intricate, abstruse" (of arguments)

~1600 C.E., sotilte, "skill, ingenuity," from Old French sotilte "skillfulness, cunning" (Modern French subtilité),

~mid. 1500s C.E., "in the wrong direction," from awk, "back-handed", + adverbial suffix weard.

Imported from Old French sotil, soutil, subtil "adept, adroit; cunning, wise; detailed; well-crafted" Originally Latin subtilis "fine, thin, delicate, finely woven;" figuratively "precise, exact, accurate," in taste or judgment, "fine, keen," of style, "plain, simple, direct," from sub "under" + -tilis, from tela "web, net, warp of a fabric".

First attested in late 14th century as "cleverness, shrewdness; trickery, guile, craftiness," also "thinness, slenderness, smallness; rarity"

Overall Disposition

Minutia, Detail

Endgame

Means

Meaning "clumsy" first recorded 1520s → Awk From Old Norse ofugr /ofigr / afigr, “turned backwards”, from which also come Danish avet, “backwards”, and Swedish avig, “turned backwards”

Subject-Object Relations

Nonsuperlative Statement

Value Judgement

Nonhierarchical Adjacency

Social Transgression

Scales of Institutional Experience There should be two nearly distinct yet intertwined circulatory systems. The main system is a series of roughly 4-meter wide ramps which wind down through the galleries, bisecting the storage space and administrative areas as they trudge down through the tertiary core (a lightwell, of sorts) of the building. Somewhat intertwined yet in more intimate spaces, 2-meter stairs offer short cuts between spaces, bridging the further removed programmatic areas, such as education to administration. One set of spaces offers the “public” experience of the institution as a singular, communal place in all its ‘placyness’, while the second provides for more solipsistic, individuated experiences by virtue of its more intimate scale and more expedient circulatory routes. The contemporary art

museum is architecturally a space expected to deliver somewhat paradoxically on these distinct levels of experience. Where circulation can come to underline this capacity of architecture Architecture and Freedom We expect certain standards of our democratic instructions, such as universal treatment standards and bureaucratic transparency. Such exulting expectations of public institutions have in a way become aestheticized into a series of rather representational maneuvers, extending all the way into architecture. A prognosis of contemporary design in the public realm reveals a ubiquitous, yet unspoken, cadaver of material, organizational and infrastructural tendencies that proclaim the democratic values of our buildings. Far from truly denoting the internalized veneration of democracy that a building’s occupants might stand for, these are often a top-level gloss that

Portfolio 2012-2015

Subtlety in space

Subtlety in angle

Cognate with German äbich, and Gothic ibuks, “turned back”; Akin to Sanskrit अपाच् (apāc), “turned away”

Object-Object Relations

then the disorder of the park itself becomes an asset.

Connor Gravelle

Originally Latin subtilitatem (nominative subtilitas) "fineness; simplicity, slenderness," noun of quality from subtilis "fine, thin, delicate" (see subtle).

Photos: Ruedi Walti, BBC, Hiroshi Sugimoto Etymologies: Etymonline, Wiktionary

merely performs its support for liberatory politics. That bureaucratic office buildings in China, Russia, the United States and Germany might all look rather similar only proves the fallacy that we can indicate the progressiveness of a society in stone, metal and glass.

(Above) Diagram of the differences between subtlety and awkwardness, both of which deal in terms of particular slight differences between things

temporary architecture runs into which is successfully avoided in these examples is a misalignment between expressed While it may seem contradictory, this is not to undermine the innumerable invest- political intent and the actuality of a building’s situation. ments made by certain architectural movements in the name of progressive A glass façade’s ability to express transarchitecture, particularly the Modernparency makes only pathetic ripples ists. A great many Modern buildings in its wake if the institution behind its do indeed (or rather did indeed in their curtain wall is the American governprospective times) successfully align the ment’s National Security Agency. Until materiality and organizational qualities actual political change can take place, of their architecture with political trends. the architectural intent of this element is This eloquent complexity can be found in merely ironic and consequentially unsucModernism’s dual capacity to represent cessful. This contextuality is precisely the in nearly identical maneuvers at once the reason why a fairly elected Italian city transparency and freedom of Neimeyer’s council can adequately perform its exwork in Brasilia and Terragni’s work for pected democratic functions in a building the Italian Fascists. The problem conthe origins of which hail from the wartime

Faรงade Cladding Perforated Panels 264cm standard width 624.3cm standard (but variable) height

Faรงade Cladding Metal Support Structure 45cm x 20cm W-Sections vertically 47.6cm x 23.8cm W-Sections horizontally 10cm x 7.5cm C-Channel sliding connections 12.5cm strut panel connectors

Long-Span Roof Undersid 130cm-depth structural trus

Vie Ver 100 26

Lima Museum of Art

Thesis Studio

Structure Axonometric (Details)

Vierendeel Sy Upper Suppor

Vierendeel System Upper Supports 100cm x 60cm W-Sections primary 80cm x 50cm W-Sections secondary

Middle Level Administration Collection storage Conservation workshops Roof Gallery-accessible patio Skylights

Vierendeel System Main Crossing Members 60cm x 30cm W-Sections primary horizontally 40cm x 20cm W-Sections secondary horizontally 50cm x 30cm W-Sections vertically

Glass Screen Support Structure 15cm x 5cm vertical clip 10cm x 3cm horizontal 15cm x 5cm faรงade con

de Structure ss

ystem rts

Upper Level Galleries Core

Lobby Hung Glass Ceiling 526.5cm x 273.4cm standard glazed panels 7.5cm tube steel connection frame 5cm diameter hanging members

Glass Screen Fritted Glass Panels 350cm standard width 900cm standard (but va

Vierendeel System Vertical Supports 100cm x 60cm W-Sections

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Ground Level Entrance concourse

Lima Museum of Art

Thesis Studio

Model Photographs

Fascist construction campaign. It is the reason for which one might have a picnic at the Nuremburg Rally Grounds without indulging in the politics of the Nazi Party. A building is only as valuable as its political underpinnings, or rather the extent to which its continued inhabitation repudiates those foundations (such as in the case of the Rally Grounds or the civic buildings of Mussolini’s Italy). We must at once hold steadfast the trial by which architecture is kept to a strict moral code and allow for the slippage of this code to the extent that we might question the presumed expectations this forces us to enact on an architecture. Why do we continue to create building which so thoroughly fail to represent the progressive values of our age? Conversely, why do we expect architecture to free us? This is surely too tall an order and identifies the ultimate irony that proclaimed the downfall of High Modernism. If the sheer starkness of the difference between the Barbican’s tumultuous

exaltation into architectural stardom and nearby Robin Hood Garden’s dilapidation alongside London’s docklands does not elucidate the point clearly enough, we must look harder to realize that architecture is ultimately subservient to the respective capabilities of its financers to provide for the proper services, maintenance and larger democratic ideals by which it thrives or in the lack of which it ruinates.

majority of the last half century resisting, undermining and perverting in the name of producing a truly new architecture. This precipice has, time and time again, proven reticent to be crossed. Ostensibly radical architecture has focused almost solely on the foreground of human perception, at once ignoring the subtleties of the periphery and overwhelmingly failing to undertake the task of addressing political, economic and social concerns.

Subtle Deviations between Architectural Elements

About Subtlety

Presumption frames everything in the field of one’s experience. In the same way, each architectural element comes alongside a series of expected functions, aesthetics and positions relative to the other systems which define a building. These ingrained complacencies of circumstance dictate a great deal of how we perceive the built environment, a stalemate status quo against which “radical” architecture has spent the

Perhaps the thesis isn’t so much about overall subtlety, but an approach which takes each architectural element into account on its own scale. What would be the subtle manipulations of the standard architectural elements (a floor, a wall or a column) which would gently push them far enough beyond the typical boundaries of normative perception but within the borders of reconcilability as their own distinct elements? E.g. one needs to recognize something as a column prior

Lima Museum of Art

Thesis Studio

(Below) West elevation showing the relationship between the glass screen, the removed façade and the fake stone panels behind (Right) Oblique axonometric drawing showing the organizational shifts between different architectural elements that produce ambiguity in the building’s organization

West Elevation

Vierendeel Truss Supports

Original East Faรงade

Secondary Egress

Core and Skylights

Adminsitration Shortcut Gallery Egress

New Faรงade

Original Faรงade, Repositioned

Skewed Building Layers

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Axonometric of Internal Shifts

Architectural End Matching

Eight-Piece Sunburst Matching

4 Book Matching

Panel End Matching

Box Matching

1_1

1_2

1_3

2_1

2_2

2_3

Herringbone (V-Book) Matching

Continuous End Matching

Lima Museum of Art

Thesis Studio

Stone Material Studies

Slip Matching

1_4

2_4

1_5

2_5

Connor Gravelle

Random Matching

1_6

Reverse (End Grain) Box Matching

Parquet Matching

Reverse Diamond Matching

Swing Matching

2_6

Portfolio 2012-2015

Section: Vertical Compression of Institutional Space

Lima Museum of Art

Thesis Studio

Section: Vertical Hierarchy of Spaces

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Connor Gravelle

Rc_A.02 Ov_C.06 Ex_E.02 Ex_E.01 Ex_D.04 Ex_C.01

Concourse to Subway Main Lobby Ramp Collection Storage Vault Contemporary Art Hall East Contemporary Art Hall South Modern Art Foyer South Hall Exhibition Space 1

Portfolio 2012-2015

338 m2 844 m2 617 m2 908 m2 185 m2 73 m2

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Ex_C.02 Ex_B.03 Ed_A.01 Ed_C.03 Ed_B.07 Ov_B.02 Sp_B.0

South Hall Exhibition Space 2 Republican Art Lecture Hall Educational Storage Large Classroom Conservation Workshop 1 Loading Dock

40 m2 251 m2 423 m2 21 m2 127 m2 231 m2 143 m2

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Lima Museum of Art

Thesis Studio

Model Photograph: Galleries

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Model Photograph: Glass Screen

7 3

1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Section: Vertical Procession

Rc_A.03 Rc_A.09 Ov_C.06 Ex_E.04 Ex_E.01 Rc_A.10 Ov_C.07 Ov_C.08

Concourse to Subway Main Lobby Landing Storage Foyer Collection Storage Vault Contemporary Art Hall North Contemporary Art Hall South Administration Lobby West Museography Storage Room Museography Storage Office

215 m2 191 m2 844 m2 1025 m2 908 m2 157 m2 105 m2 14 m2

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3 11 2

1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Section: Contrasting Centers

Lima Museum of Art

Thesis Studio

Rc_A.02 Cr.15 Ex_E.03 Ex_E.02 Ex_B.04 Ov_C.121 Ex_B.02

Concourse to Subway Main Lobby Ramp Education Main Hallway Contemporary Art Hall West Contemporary Art Hall East Photography Contemporary Art Gallery Storage Colonial Art

- m2 338 m2 238 m2 687 m2 617 m2 113 m2 17 m2 149 m2

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Sections

Ex_D.02 Ex_B.03 Sp_B.03 Cr.23 Ov_C.10 Cr.24 Rc_A.11

Modern Art Hall Republican Art Equiptment Room Administration Access Ramp Conservation Storage Room 1 Conservation Area Access Hallway Administration Lobby East

148 m2 251 m2 48 m2 63 m2 16 m2 34 m2 233 m2

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to one’s recognition that it is a strange, unfamiliar or otherwise distinct column.

object. Part-to-part relationships taper to precarious tangencies rather than clear resolutions so that the reading of the obSpeaking economically, to what extent ject itself is constantly held at a distance, does this undermine or substantiate the just beyond immediacy but within a value claim for expensive design? Politiblurry margin of error for ossifying one’s cal stances would presume that luxurious understanding of the object. design is unsavory, but to what extent do expense and luxury as uncommon Pondering the Lima Exposition Hall characteristic to an architecture deviate What is it? The current exposition hall it from the norm? Where is the border that houses the Lima Museum of Art is a between a normative, but expensive, standard, rather generic late nineteenth building by Annabelle Selldorf and one century structure. It’s architecture is is both abnormal and expensive, such one positioned midway between sheer as the more innovative sides of Zaha industrial efficiency and late neoclassiHadid’s work? cal ornamentation, as evidenced in the Where Subtlety Places Us strange coexistence of its rigid (yet heavily ornamented) iron column structural We often think of architecture as paragrid alongside a series of more tradidoxically lodged between immediate and tional gallery spaces secured between hinesight states of perception, creating the columns by permanent yet mostly totalizing environments and yet obfuscatsuperfluous, in terms of structural capaced to the pedestrian act providing inhabity, dividing walls. This condition proitable space. Always either battle cry or duces an odd relationship in the existing whisper, architecture seldom ‘just barely’ structure between underlying structural positions itself within the world. This unstrategies and more architecturally conexplored territory could be described as sidered spaces. These two languages are a subtle posture towards existence. While not quite indifferent from one another yet clearly demarcated identities are producretain a certain kind of ambivalence. Iron tive in their distinguishability, subtlety columns puncture dramatically through allows the simultaneous existence of two spaces typically reserved for a higher conditions within immediate self-adjadegree of spatial independence, such cency to the extent that they engage a as circulatory hallways and entrance delicate contrapposto without flattening lobbies. For the most part, columns fail or laminating into a new whole. to align to walls not in an act of sheer Rejecting forthright coherence, this tenambivalence but remain uncomfortably sion between dichotomy and sameness nearby, as if set to a grid accidentally allows architecture to stage conversions placed in slight disposition. More aptly between things about identity and com- described as siblings than mere neighparative value. This methodology under- bors, the two systems function as if they mines the simplicity of mere binary juxta- were Spanish and Italian, retaining a cerpositions to acknowledge the complexity tain degree of mutual intelligibility while and ambiguity in conditions of subtle pronouncing distinct characteristics difference, arguably more attuned to our that are, in themselves, defined by their contemporary perceptions of identity. As almost-but-not-quite perfect adjacency. early explorations employ slight adjustWhere is it? This mutual condition of ments on a grid to problematize condistrangely contingent ambivalence is in no tions of joinery and coincidence between way unfamiliar to Lima, a city startled beparts, the subsequent prerogative of this tween a series of seemingly oppositional thesis shifts focus towards an interforces. Such dichotomies as mountains rogation of new readings found in the and sea, wealth and poverty or Preresultant subtleties of the forms through Columbian and Colonial are the innate abstractions inherent to the process of foundations of cultural identity for the representation, such as lighting exposure city, predisposing its urbanity to become and blurriness. a cacophony of qualities, much akin to These new almost-wholes obfuscate sin- various other Latin American cities. Ungular reading to refute the demand that like its counterparts, Lima’s urbanistic they assemble into cathartic objects — history produces a variety of adjacency that is, they refuse to provide the viewer between different eras that runs horizonthe traditionally clear or uncluttered tally, rather than along the vertical axis. comprehension in how they perceive the While a place of considerable wealth and

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

influence, Pre-Columbian settlements throughout the valleys currently woven with Lima’s sprawling suburbs primarily relied on irrigation systems to feed wide swaths of crops, focusing urban development less on clustered places of inhabitation than on singular religious sites to unite people located somewhat sparsely across farmlands. The city that became the Lima one currently understands was established among, not above, this situation in 1535. Because the city came to contend for space horizontally, rather than through the more typical process of vertical overlay witnessed in Mexico City or Paris, Lima retains a certain degree of heterogeneous sprawl. Ancient sites, both those celebrated culturally and neglected, dot the city’s landscape and intertwine between more recent architectural interventions. Many of the original Pre-Incan waterways were either filled in or forgotten historically to become geological ghosts in a forgotten lineage of seemingly prehistoric conception. What does it want to be? You’re unsure what space you’re in… so what? How does this spatial experience correspond the contemporary art gallery in a way that undermines the less progressive tendencies of the commercial art endeavor

in a gallery context? Learning from Grammar Grammar absolves language from the burden of structure, leaving it instead to address purely the production of mean-

ing. That is, a grammatical set of inflections defines for the speaker the precise intention of every word in a sentence. A particular examination of the nominal declensions of the Indo-European variety exemplifies this point: Ich sehe den Mann. Der Mann sieht mich. Above, the German language specifically annotates the declension of the noun “den Mann” (“the man”) as to be object of the sentence by changing its definite article from “der”, which denotes the nominative, or subject, of the sentence, to “den”, marking the accusative, or object. Thus, the sentence subtly differentiates the meanings of “I see than man” from “the man sees me” using, among other things, acute inflections of the grammatical syntax and vocabulary to deliver a point to be understood. Consider the Latin sentences for “I see the girl” and “the girl sees me”: Ego puellam video. Puella me videt. Inflecting the noun itself, Latin annotates the girl’s position as either direct object or subject through an inflectional morphing of the very noun itself. Nonetheless,

the root word retains its legibility as “girl”. We might say that “girl”, in an abstractly distant sense, linguistically stands ready to take on its meaning. It is a kind of empty signifier awaiting its delegated

Lima Museum of Art

Thesis Studio

Render: East Faรงade from Park

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

(animation) vimeo.com/ 215492926 42

Lima Museum of Art

Thesis Studio

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

position within the semiotic context of a sentence. This pattern of inflectional morphologies permeates all languages, be they Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan or Semitic. Their significance relies on the simultaneous recognization of basic abstract units (“girl”) and complex morphological alterations (“puella” to “puellam”). Far from foreign to the production of cultural meaning in architecture, art and This quality resounds rather akin to the semiotic implications of both architectural elements (doors, windows, thresholds) and their derived spaces. The arousal of the architectural diagram and projective space alike over the past few decades only further elude this point. Descriptive geometry is its own kind of grammar, a conceptually subterranean structure to which the justification of a space is beholden. Precisely for this reason, a grammatical understanding of architecture’s creation benefits the discourse of the profession by loosening the perhaps selfish will towards intuitively and by advocating for the establishment a framework of abstract bases (think “girl”) from which more complex and appropriate spaces can be derived. Each of these qualities inherently equip architecture with a political stance by which to address the challenges of design and building in the early to mid 21st century. Addressing the first condition, we must accept that we have arrived at this period of architectural discourse in the wake of a violent acceleration in design. The skyrocketing success of a minority of practitioners in the second half of the 20th century fueled a fantasy of the “starchitect”, specifically rooted in the notion that he was one who had reached the apotheosis of his work. The pronouns of this exclamation are italicized to contest the patriarchal tendencies that this incredulous behavior lauded. With a handful of exceptions, the rise of the starchitect’s intuitive and individualistic approach to design, the notion that only he could deliver a project of such caliber and expertise, benefitted merely a class of privileged male architects who represented overwhelmingly the at times oppressive majorities of their respective nationalities. Their projects found themselves equally at home under oppressive regimes across vast swaths of humanity and in the high fashion boutiques that

service the elite few with unaffordable, albeit well designed, luxury commodities.

premise that those who understand the language ought to hold the tools for deriving the meaning of the sentence. A Starchitecture is parallel to the will of stance towards grammar for architecture enforcing one’s vision onto others. The sees the developments of the past few branding of architecture by firms’ recogdecades as less of a language and more nizable brand identities and myopic preof a barbaric shouting match between rogatives has lead the field unknowingly unfamiliar adversaries. Unfortunately, into the esoteric grumbling of irrelevance. architecture has foregone the semiotic Though these characteristics specifically commonalities of previous eras’ styles for indict neither intuitively nor artistry in de- a cacophony individual expression. sign as the perpetrators of these trends, it The communities of design expression casts them as willing accomplices to the that we find in turn-of-the-century Chicriminals. There is therefore a political cago or postwar Japanese metabolism necessity to move away from the “finding are indicative of collaborative practices one’s voice” model of architectural pracestablishing grammars of their own. tice towards a more abstract, universal These syntactical playbooks are thus theology, if we might call it that, of design introduced as items of cultural producthat stresses nuanced intention and tion for which a common understanding restrained evocation on the part of the among both architects and the public designer. Subtly is the design language of can be established. This is their primary humility, and a grammar of architecture is

the method by which this is calibrated. These injunctions against architecture seek the foundation of a new architectural project aligned with the universalist attitudes once exulted by the industry’s foremost figures. An inclination towards a grammatical understanding of the construction of space is the first step in the proposition of this framework. It is a provocation to democratize the conception of space into a process-based series of morphological permutations on basic elements (as any grammar does to its constituent parts) so that neither the basal unit nor its derived offspring wander too far from familiar comprehension.

mode of communication. It is therefore absolutely parallel to an architecture affronted by its own impotence that it work steadfastly to reform its mode of expression. The grammatical understanding of basic forms and their repetitively ruled abstractions posits less of a formal answer to this dilemma than a provocation towards one. It is at once the call for an architecture that seeks to matter rather than to express, an architecture that exudes nuance rather than singularity and an architecture that emerges in lieu of cultural production rather than individual recognition.

Both “puella” and “puellam” function to deliver their meanings to the reader or listener, yet both respect the basic

Lima Museum of Art

Thesis Studio

400%

300%

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Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Halftone Studies

Lima Museum of Art

Thesis Studio

Model Photograph: Faรงade Articulation

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Model Photograph: Circulation to Gallery

PASEO PENASCO HOUSE 4A Studio Fall 2015, Ramiro Diaz-Granados This project was specially selected to be featured in SCI-Arc’s Spring Show 2016. Our relationship with the architecture of the home has often been one of selfafirmation. Man becomes master of his domain, his property, his home. It is with more than a mere etymological bond that entangles architecture (the “domus”) domesticity. Domesticity is an explicit problem of Architecture. It’s about time that architecture decenter, destabilize and decouple the numbly comfortable proximity between our expectations of a space and its realization through materi-

independent, experience-driven positions perspective dissolves into two in another. within the world. Where we thought we found an edge, we move only slightly to reveal that it is actuThis is therefore a problem of displacally a smooth transition along two faces. ing the centrality of a space and our anticipations for it. This is about creatIn doing so, this project posits that the ing a space for living that protracts the line between form and shape is not tenimmediacy of what we expect. Edges, sile and crisp but swerving and blurred. corners and cusps draw back just as they The legibility of any “proper” shape is capture our attention to invert the affinity thoroughly withheld to the extent that in legibility between a form and its conwe never manage to assemble a singular tours. While a clear, geometric foundation reading. Clearly defined bars entangle provides a framework for us to nurture with one another such that we are incaan understanding of what we encounter, pable of enumerating exactly how many the rules of the game quickly unravel at bars there are. On the interior, rectangular voids slice through deep poché to emerge as figural profiles. The encounter between the subject and the house becomes a cinematic experience. One is provoked to reorient oneself, to crosscheck constantly a fluid understanding of the house’s nature, and thus also of the nature of its modes of inhabitation and its content. In the place of social center like the fireplace or the living room, one instead finds circulation.

The home becomes a realm of withheld expectations, a space which continually al, form and content. This is an argument the very moment we presume they have displaces itself at the very moment we for an architecture which prolongs the exhausted their explanatory potential – believe we have come truly to perceive it. sensorial exposure between the subject a wall torts into a ceiling and then into These methods recast the typified roles and a space, which draws out our coma floor, a rectangular opening on one of a house and thus liberate its inhabitprehension of what’s before us in order side of a partition squirms around into ants from the overwrought narrative that to suspend the complacencies we have a figural yet ambiguous slice along the domesticity asserts on the home. We come to expect of a home. More than the other. The typical repertoire of architecexplore a space of uprooted expectations, mere quest for an unfamiliar building, this tural elements defy obedience in order to uneasy forms and non-conventional proexcavates the possibility of a space that confront the form-function connotations gramming in the hopes that we producchallenges domesticity and the presump- we have confined them to. tively disorient ourselves, that when we tions, malices and addictions that come Every moment of this house is calibrated do come to realize what our home might along with it. to its ability at performing these tasks. A be, we see anew its resistance to be deWe sometimes presume that a house winding driveway cuts slowly between an fined, its refusal to be dogmatized. exists to attend to us. We subordinate the artificial ground and an existing topograarchitecture to a certain kind of serviphy, prolonging the full perception of the tude to our latent cultural expectations. building’s tilted bars and supple tangen- (Above) Conceptual process of geometry joinery between intersected bars Foyers are for collecting the many shoes cies. The individual perspective is conwe’ve bought for our family, bay windows stantly made incapable of gathering the (Right) Rendering of building on site are for gazing across the lawn onto our totality of what we encounter. Even once showing the dialectic of the groundplane, colleagues, who by chance inhabit an we do manage to confront the it, a series where the surrounding site represents identical but differently painted version of tightly choreographed moves fracture untouched nature, the natural growth of our dream. We are Behr Premium Plus our capacity to understand the house curated in the slots portrays a fake nature #M270-3 Cream Custard, they are Benja- in its whole from any one angle. The of sorts, and piles of chrome spheres min Moore Opal Essence 680 – no more, alignment of windows across masses, complete the triad with total artificiality. no less. Perhaps, a house might aspire the conic stitching of their intersections not be the backdrop to our homely fanta- and unexpected seam languages these sies but to engage us as people, subjects produce all obscure concrete readings. capable to thinking as they establish What appears to be two bars from one

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Large Scale Physical Chunk Model

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Elevations

Paseo Penasco House

4A Studio

Large Scale Physical Chunk Model Details

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Drawing Key Guest Bedroom 1 Central Foyer Hallway Central Foyer Landing Parking

1 2 3 4

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1 2 3 4

Paseo Penasco House

4A Studio

Sections

Drawing Key Kitchen Central Foyer Parking Entrance Footpath Entrance

6 2

Drawing Key 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Main Plan

Central Foyer Dining Room Kitchen Pantry Den Den Full Bath Guest Bedroom 1 Guest Bath Guest Bedroom 2 Master Bedroom Master Bath

613 ft2 225 ft2 157 ft2 50 ft2 403 ft2 65 ft2 481 ft2 25 ft2 439 ft2 608 ft2 47 ft2 3113 ft2

Paseo Penasco House

4A Studio

Slitscan of Center Staircase

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Paseo Penasco House

4A Studio

Center Void Construction Geometry

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Cener Void Model Photos

Paseo Penasco House

4A Studio

Abstract Core Physical Model

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Paseo Penasco House

4A Studio

Structural Strategies

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Paseo Penasco House

4A Studio

Center Stair

Primary Ring Structure 7”X7” Steel Tube members Tertiary Supports 6.5”x2” W-Section members Ceiling Covering Corian Skin Primary Support Laterally spanning Unistrut P2000 channels Corian Skin Secondary Support Longitudinally spanning Unistrut P2000 channels Corian Skin Primary Support Laterally spanning Unistrut P2000 channels Vertical Secondary Support to Upper Support Connectors Corian Panel to Secondary Support Connectors Laterally spanning Unistrut P2000 channels Hung Corian Panels

Interior Wall Covering Interior Partitions 8” Standard Stud Walls

Skin slits 3/16” tubes or milled indentations aligned at 1” on center Skin panels 8”metal panels

Aperture Strategy Skin slits gather around apertures, arbitrating the reading of the conic geometries in the surface treatment around apertures. While other areas of the skin have a more subtle reflection, the slits accentuate the curvature of the massing around the apertures.

Primary Ring Structure 7”x7” Steel Tube Members Primary Corss Bracing 7”x10” Steel Tube Members Skin Panelization Major divisions subdivide along edges to produce new figuralities along the envelope, sometimes seaming between corners and folds to unite the mass while at other times dividing it or accentuating interior apertures.

Connor Gravelle

Tertiary Vertical Structure 6.5”x2” W-Section Members

Portfolio 2012-2015

Exploded Chunk

Paseo Penasco House

4A Studio

3D Printed Center Void and Staircase

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Paseo Penasco House

4A Studio

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Paseo Penasco House

4A Studio

Aperture Construction Geometry

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

ODD BLOCKS 4A Studio Fall 2015, Ramiro Diaz-Granados This project explored a seriesof possible bar aggregations as the platform for further development into an architectural project. Initial explorations dealt specifically with the issue of the center. How might abstract aggregations of geometric primitives begin to speak to the architectural ramifications of displaced or misregistered centers? Given the eventual typological goal of the project to be a single family home, how could inferences into the center begin to offer programmatic or formal manipulations on our understanding of centerhood which might speak to the political and social ramifications of altering the default condition of how we arrange our homes? For each object, a ground plane was also developed which furthered the concepts at hand in the massing. Throughout the series, a theme of awkwardness and misfitting came forward as a means by which the formal legibility of the bar typology could be read against the static nature of a ground. Filleted edges and strange alignments prompted questions of legibility. Does one see three intersected bars which avoid one another or four bent bars that entangle? Explorations of multiple centers began to entice a displacement of the center. Rather than a singular void, the multiple involution of the massing onto itself allows a distinctly difficult reading of the overall form. Filigree adjustments in filletting and massing allow further difficulties in immediate reading to be introduced. These techniques combined to produce a kind of lexicon of formal maneuvers which could be introduced in the process of refining aggregatory systems. How does one differentiate one particular iteration as more ideal than another when the terms of engagement are as abstract as pure geometry? Such questions became pivotal in the development of a personal position on centerhood, as the geometric result gradually merged with the theoretical hypothesis throughout the maturation of the process.

Deformation continues to propagate

Odd Blocks

New, less axial org

4A Studio

Object 1, Plan Diagrams

ganization emerges

Slight estrangement of highly standard organization

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Horiztonal striation of masses along normative groundplane

Masses set slightly askew, deforming ground with them

Reorientation of masses provides void space

Conic interventions recalibrate void space

Odd Blocks

4A Studio

Object 1, Section Diagrams

Odd Blocks

4A Studio

Object 1, Axonometric Diagrams

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Odd Blocks

4A Studio

Object 1, Model Photos

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Object 2, Model Photos

Masses organize into coincident intersections, center of volume emerges

Masses rotate in three-dimensional space, breaking clear interpretation of center

Masses blend on roofplane through extension of adjacent surfaces, promoting a new organizational reading

Surface articulation further breaks down heirarchy, leaving system precariously close to multiple readings

Odd Blocks

4A Studio

Object 2, Plan Diagrams

Intersected masses with bipolar centers

Groundplane deformation reorients systems

Further deformations force reactions on massesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; orientations

Masses estrange from groundplane condition, each retains partial autonomy

Conics question heirarchy of overall mass profile and ground relationship

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Object 2, Secion Diagrams

Odd Blocks

4A Studio

Object 3, Axonometric Diagram

Masses rest atop normative ground plane

Sectionally distorted ground plane reorients objectsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; bouyancy, negaitve space forms from discrepency between objects and ground

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Object 3, Section Diagrams

Overlapped masses

Odd Blocks

Strong and r interior

4A Studio

Object 3, Plan Diagrams

recognizable r figure

Conics articulate interior, reconfiguring heirarchy but leaving exterior legible

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Odd Blocks

4A Studio

Object 3, Model Photos

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Dual systems aggregate around shared center

Center as void

Conics defer reading of center, question massing heirarchy

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Object 4, Plan Diagrams

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Odd Blocks

4A Studio

Object 4, Model Photos

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

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SP CHINATOWN DEPOT REDEVELOPMENT 5A Vertical Studio Fall 2016, Elena Manferdini Synopsis Chinatown in Los Angeles is an uncertain ground. Its history is one simultaneously composed of displacement and development. It therefore stands that in order to approach the creation of anything new in Chinatown, one must first comprehend the myriad forms which preceded. This project sought the creation of a large, 600+ unit, residential development in the heart of Chinatown, between two sites spanning a major thoroughfare. The

very creation of it, and part of its creation is the instantiation of an architecture capable of annunciating these historical understandings. To create this history is to engage in a form of cultural filtering that necessarily takes on as its responsibility the curation of an identity. It thus becomes a key prerogative of this project that the architecture become capable of receiving the various pasts of Chinatown, curating their presentation and, in their projection forward, posing critical questions that engage the process of history-making such that

Plinth-Ground Operations

Indifference

Ground as truth Object as fiction

Ground as fiction Object as truth

Ambiguous Ground

Mono-Hierarchical

Dually Refuted

Otherness

Ground-Ground Operations

Absolute

When does the ground itself become a plinth?

careful study the relationships among plinth, ground and building allowed a thoughtful curation of what it might mean to establish a new ground on such a contested site. This new ground, itself an engagement of the strange privatepublic infrastructure so pervasive in the large developments of late capitalist Los Angeles, allowed a series of contemplations on belonging and civil space in the American West. Project Scheme This endeavor in turn begs the contemplation of historical meaning in the context of Chinatown’s development both from retroactive and progressive perspectives. That is to say, part of understanding Chinatown’s history is the

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Moveable Mass

Maleable Ground

New Authenticities

Performative

Conceptual

the resultant building stand as a cultural bookmark in the conception of a place’s identity. About Chinatown Old Chinatown is dead. A 1926 ballot measure assured its flattening below the then newly proposed Union Station.

SP Chinatown Depot Redevelopment

5A Vertical Studio

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Render: Posture along College Street

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Static

Of the Earth

Plinth emerges from ground

Plinth recedes into ground

≈

Ground as origin

Ground as receptor

Plinth lifts, second ground delaminates

Second ground laminates to plinth

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Ground as invalidated

Ground as holder

SP Chinatown Depot Redevelopment

5A Vertical Studio

Ground Relationships

Wobbly

Sunken

Plinth deforms ground bidirectionally

Plinth rests into ground

≈

Ground as uncertainty

Ground as pliant

Second ground bifurcates ≈ Noncathartic Ground

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

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SP Chinatown Depot Redevelopment

5A Vertical Studio

Figural Plinth Studies

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

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SP Chinatown Depot Redevelopment

5A Vertical Studio

Elevation

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

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SP Chinatown Depot Redevelopment

5A Vertical Studio

Plans

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

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SP Chinatown Depot Redevelopment

5A Vertical Studio

Plan Details

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

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Apartments Held above plinths and circulatory columns

144 Starter Apartments 81 Studios 81 Deluxe Studios 239 1-Bedrooms 51 Large 1-Bedrooms 33 Bedrooms 629 units total

Plinths and Circulatory Columns Provide parking, commerical space and vertical access to apartments

Raised Ground Circilation across street, up to Metro, Sports-related amenities for public such as basketball and tennis court

Public Ground Level Pool, lecture space, commerical areas, restaurant

116

SP Chinatown Depot Redevelopment

5A Vertical Studio

Exploded Axonometric of Elements

Amid a series of possible alternative sites, the Los Angeles Times successfully stirred public resentment of the city’s Chinese-American population towards the eventual citing of the development along Alameda Street, declaring that the new station would “forever do away with Chinatown and its environs”.

district that called it home, Calle de los Negros was a space of demographic displacement.

This does not mean that these people were allowed to inhabit the street without disturbance. Quite the opposite, Old Chinatown was the scene of America’s most deadly mass lynching, in which a This is not to indicate that Old Chinacrowd of some 500 white men viscerally town was by any means a site of truth murdered 18 Chinese workers. Although or viture. What emerged from the early conditions improved between the 1870s Pueblo’s “Calle de los Negros” [“Street of (when Chinese immigrants began to the Dark Ones”] — initially inhabited by settle along Calle de los Negros) and the a collection of Pre-Columbian families 1920s, the neighborhood always stood for living within the administrative bounds the marginalization of a population within of the ramshackle settlement — was a the city core such that its vital labor space that transcended multiple genera- potential in other parts of the city could tions to continuously house the marginal- be leveraged alongside the containment ized populations of young Los Angeles. of its population within a confined urban From the confined indigeneous groups setting. of North America to stigmatized Chinese laborers and those drawn to the red light

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117

Chinatown’s History Following the 1926 ballot measure, Chinatown was subsequently located slightly north in its current location. Alternative sites, such as one across the river in Boyle Heights, proved unsuccessful against the perceived benefit of disbanding the local Chinese population. A secondary effect of the measure was to evade the construction of a series of elevated railways. It is therefore impossible to extricate Chinatown’s displacement from the creation of what would become the cultural ethos of Los Angeles towards suburban sprawl and automotive fetishization. Chinatown then was an urban statement

120

that propagated racism and population de-densification. Chinatown today is an urban canvas that might either come to stand for gentrification — undoubtedly at the expense of the children of those displaced in 1926 — or for a new understanding of what it means to have placehood in contemporary Los Angeles, depending on the course of its current actions. (Above) Possible sectional exploits from ground gestures (Right) Axonometric of complete site showing relationship with park, street and metro station

SP Chinatown Depot Redevelopment

5A Vertical Studio

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SP Chinatown Depot Redevelopment

5A Vertical Studio

Model Photograph: Chunk Model

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Model Photograph (Detail)

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SP Chinatown Depot Redevelopment

5A Vertical Studio

Parking Plinth Constructive Geometries

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SP Chinatown Depot Redevelopment

5A Vertical Studio

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Portfolio 2012-2015

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BERKELEY MUSEUM OF ART 3B Studio Spring 2015, David Freeland With Johan Wijesinghe This project fundamentally questions the immediate legibility of a piece of architecture through subtle manipulations in formal organization, surface treatment and circulation. To these ends, it takes up the contemporary project of the art museum as a platform to question the project of iconicity, reducing the legibility of the work of architecture itself beyond the immediate ability of perception. By withholding reading rather than privileging it, the project becomes impossible to understand through one human vantage, geometrical orientation or specific depth. This invites certain tactility to the subject hood one experiences when encountering the building. Those who gaze across the façade are practically required to adjust their position towards the building in order to gain a more complete comprehension of its geometry. Unable to be perceived in a singular vision, the multiplicity of readings produced by the façade initiates a deep questioning of geometry. An intentional set of choreographed overlaps between the building’s seven “objects” employ shifting material definitions and incongruent geometrical principles alongside architectural tropes such as a shadow or corner to provoke an uncertainty about what one perceives. While one surface may have a diagonal hatching, rendered in deep slices along its run, an adjacent surface might have another orientation while matching the slice direction. This dichotomy between surface identification and what we have come to expect from architecture (in terms of the façade, ground and roof) combine less than conjunctly in order to estrange the individual from their egocentric perspective onto the building. Explicated on the interior, this takes host in an intertwined procession of spaces that at times celebrates the difference between objects and at others obfuscates such understandings. (Right) Details from elevations (Next Page) Roof plan

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Berkeley Museum of Art

3B Studio

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

129

Men's WC

Lockers 199 Women's WC

Gallery 00

Cleaning Room 424

Marketing 303

Office 1 192

Office 4 127

Office 3 153

Gallery 02 + 23'

Gallery 17 + 23'

+ 0' Gallery 01

+ 23'

Gallery 03 + 23'

Gallery 04 + 23' Gallery 15 + 23'

+ 0'

Mechanical Visitor WC 2

UP DN

UP UP

Gallery 06 + 15'

Gallery 11 Gallery 05

+ 17'

+ 15'

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Berkeley Museum of Art

3B Studio

Plan of Galleries

Elevations and the Politics of the Art Museum as a Contemporary Medium for Architecture After a decade of high profile competitions for art museums which, for the most part, have amounted to little other than esoteric spectacles, it is time to take the art museum to its task as the staging ground for architectural intervention, exploration and permutation. Taking the typology as a platform, this project questions the legibility of the object, denying a clear reading part to whole relationships. This is achieved through subtle manipulations in formal organization, surface treatment and circulation.

confuse the legibility of a single entity. In response to the highly spectacle-driven business that museum architecture has become, this invalidates the “money shot” as a method for curating phenomenology in architecture. This political move is intended to invigorate visitors and other constituents of the site (students and passersby, in particular) to move around the structure in order to pull apart the experiential trickery unfolding before them.

Along the building’s elevations, a series of tectonic bands (see Façade Detail)

Bands cross between objects on a system curated specifically to question the distinction between formal and “graphic”

132

Berkeley Museum of Art

(when seen from a distance) differentiations in the surface. What might appear in one view as one object is in fact two, or what might appear as two distinct faces is in reality a graphically divided single swatch. Because the bands were indeed tectonic and not purely graphical, their response to changing conditions of light throughout the day further intensifies the multiplicity of readings possible. An animation was employed to explore this property in greater depth.

3B Studio

Elevation along Bancroft

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Portfolio 2012-2015

Elevation along Durant

133

Circulatory Strategies Circulation is a continuous sequence of intertwined gallery spaces, Sectional enfilades, and particular thresholds that negotiates the differences between objects and at other moments obfuscates their relationship. These thresholds and lines begins to carry through as circulation, taking host as intertwined processions of gallery spaces, sectional enfilades, that at times celebrates the fragmented difference between objects and at others obfuscates their relationship.

Lockers 199

Office 5 Office 6 225 283

Sec. Office 222

Office 7 219

Gallery 02 1682

Gallery 01 1350

(Right Top) Plan of upper gallery level. Circulatory pathways begin to breakdown distinction of objects as read from the exterior. Vertical lightwells provide opportunities for circulation as well as natural illumination.

Gallery 03 1318

Gallery 09 3619

Visitor WC 2

Gallery 08 (Tiered) 992

(Right Bottom) Plan of ground concourse. A public “alley” of courtyard space weaves through the building, connecting public spaces like the shops, lecture hall, library and café. These remain open and accessible while three stairs offer varied entrances into the ticketed areas of the galleries above.

Gallery 12 993

Gallery 07 1016 Gallery 10 1243

(Next Page) Axonometric of circulatory pathways. A public concourse cuts through the building and between the objects to provide access up into galleries. From there, stairs also provide the main entrance into the lobby from the parking garage, as well as opportunities to exit the building onto a series of curated terraces.

Lobby

Admin

Learning Center

Shop

Theater

Cafe

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Berkeley Museum of Art

3B Studio

Plans +2 and +0

OBJECT 5 OBJECT 3 Level 1: Level 2: Level 3:

Lobby Galleries Artists’ Studios

Level 1: Lobby Level 2: Galleries Level 3-4: Artists’ Studios

AFT ENTRANCE

OBJECT 1 Level 1: Theater Level 2/3: Galleries

OBJECT 7 Administration

OBJECT 2 Level -1: Loading Dock Level 1: Media Lounge Level 2-4: Galleries

OBJECT 4 Level 1: Shop Level 2/3: Galleries OBJECT 2 Level 1: Café Level 2/3: Galleries

MAIN ENTRANCE

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Portfolio 2012-2015

Circulation and Vertical Cores

137

About the Façade The volumes which are unable to be perceived in a singular vantage point create a multiplicity of readings. Legibility of the object is further complicated by the façade, with lines that are amplified by varied shade and shadow that both bind the objects together and introduce new distinctions. How do you interweave the form and demands of conventional architectural systems of a museum (floor plates, stairs,

walls to hang art) of a museum into a decentralized object. How do we keep something separate by nature(of the shells), coherent and whole, with demands of convention floor plates, stairs, walls to hang art, and procession, while simultaneously adapting a the language and intention of fluid but distinct spaces?

Fiber-Reinforced Panels FRP panels of standard 4’ by 8’ dimension

Horizontal bracketing along horizontal members

Seams allow FRP panels to abutt structure while being tied to L brackets in the horizontal direction and T brakcets in the vertical direction

Vertical fin attachments to every other vertical member

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3B Studio

Façade Detail

Floorplates Generic connections between floorplates and façade employ balloon framing logic to structuralize floorplates when available. Formal interests direct towards articulated interior voids rather than superficial disjointing between envelope and inhabital planes.

45” dropped ceiling cavity for total 4’ flooplate depth Generic 6” poured concrete decking

Standard 18” by 6” i-beams along floorplate

Structural Frame

Constant 14” void runs along envelope, standardizing connections between FRP panels and interior structure. Bidirectional members fill in space to support both exterior clading and interior elements.

Mitered conditions arbitrate adjacencies along FRP panels and structure

Thin seam language leverages tectonic reading towards a legibility of the bands cut into the FRP panels, concealing expressions of inner structure and jointing

Secondary Horizontal Members 8’ Increment, 6” by 8” Profile

Primary Horizontal Members 16’ Increment, 6” by 18” Profile

Secondary Vertical Members 4’ Increment, 6” by 8” Profile Primary Vertical Members 12’ Increment, 12” by 14” Profile

Assembled Façade

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Structure Detail

1” Seaming

141

LEVEL +1

LEVEL +2

LEVEL +3

Galleries and Administration

Auxiliary Galleries, Admin, Lower Artist Studios and Art Storage

Upper Artist Studios

ARTIST STUDIO 05 855 ft2 LIGHTWELLS

ARTIST STUDIO 03 789 ft2

GALLERY 03 3030 ft2

Gallery spaces and artist studios gather in large chunks around the courtyard. A circulatory corridor cuts through (and sometimes blends) into these, winding to-and-fro about the level, sometimes connecting to the exterior geometry and sometimes cutting across to create bridges over the courtyards. Lightwells project down from the roof to naturally illuminate three central spaces.

GALLERY 09 1526 ft2

EQUIPTMENT 2 559 ft2

O. N.

GALLERY 16 1260 ft2

GALLERY 11 1096 ft2

GALLERY 06 1690 ft2

ARTIST STUDIO 08 854 ft2

GALLERY 05 2423 ft2 W.

VISITOR WC 3 325 ft2

VISITOR WC 3 318 ft2

S. ARTIST STUDIO 02 732 ft2

GALLERY 17 1409 ft2

GALLERY 18 1791 ft2

K. GALLERY 13 1434 ft2

ARTIST STUDIO 04 834 ft2

COMMUNITY ROOM 962 ft2

VERTICAL CIRCULATION

UPPER LEVELS

ART STORAGE 1 1492 ft2

ARTIST STUDIO 09 900 ft2 Y.

ARTIST STUDIO 10 592 ft2 ARTIST STUDIO 01 968 ft2 STAFF WC 4 414 ft2

GALLERY 14 690 ft2

GALLERY 12 933 ft2 GALLERY 08 1806 ft2

GALLERY 02 4512 ft2

GALLERY 19 1531 ft2 GALLERY 04 2382 ft2 CORRIDORS

GALLERY 01 3924 ft2

Organization The museum composed of seven volumes that roll and shuffle down the hillside from Bancroft (the University in the North) to Durant (The dormitories in the South).

GROUND FLOOR Large spaces of public outreach gather around two courtyards. Other public programs not directly related to the infrastructure of the museum (café, bar and shop) cluster around, accessing intimate outdoor areas and main circulatory pathways. G.

Main Rooms Artists Maintenance Administration Storage Facilities

The volumes choreograph a meandering path between the seven asymmetrical carved conically developed masses. The volumes fold, shear, over-hang, and overlap each other, producing interstitial courtyards syncopated by light wells.

C. A. B.

TICKETING 1996 ft2

H. WKSP. 2 983 ft2

MEDIA LOUNGE 1917 ft2

WORKSHOP 1 1241 ft2

J. SHOP 1368 ft2

COATS 706 ft2

WC 1 246 ft2

LEAERNING CENTER 2347 ft2

Program takes a more horizontal approach, respecting the authority of the floorplate in the contemporary art gallery. Subsidiary galleries and public spaces (courtyards, shops and a café) align along the bottom level above a parking garage and loading dock. Moving up, staff spaces and the main galleries fill the next two levels. Artist spaces nestle above along the roofline.

CAFÉ / BAR 1879 ft2

THEATER / SUPPORT SPACES 3162 ft2

GROUND Public groundplane pulls visitors either into forward / aft courtyards or subtly diverts those crossing the site diagonally up the hill to the other ends of the Berkeley campus. Ground manipulations and landscaping create back-and-forth ciruclation which engages the building from a multiplicity of scales and vantages. Public $ (Ticket-Purchasing) Private (Institutional) Public Private (Artists in Residence)

(Left) Rendering of main entrance

SCULPTURE GARDEN 3164 ft2

TOWER 7

(Following Spreads) Diagrams and sections

TOWER 6 TOWER 5 Aft Courtyard

Freight

TOWER 4 Forward Courtyard

Campus Entry

GARDENS / LANDSCAPING 6035 ft2

TOWER 3 CAFÉ 1879 ft2 TOWER 1

TOWER 2

LABEL KEY

AMIPTHEATER / MULTIUSE AREA 5093 ft2

Dorms Entry

Parking

A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. I. J.

Media Lab ........................ 573 Artists’ Library .................. 584 Marketing ......................... 347 Cleaning Room ................. 541 Locker Room .................... 285 Equiptment Room 1 ......... 502 Computer Room ............... 257 Pre Ticket Sales ................ 374 Kitchen and Freezer ......... 700 Staff WC 1 ....................... 115

ft2 ft2 ft2 ft2 ft2 ft2 ft2 ft2 ft2 ft2

K. L. M. N.

Gallery 07 ........................ 2117 ft2 Gallery 13 ........................ 1434 ft2 Staff WC 2 ....................... 106 ft2 Office 4 ............................ 207 ft2 Office 5 ............................ 208 ft2 Office 6 ............................ 208 ft2 O. Office 1 ............................ 196 ft2 Office 2 ............................ 206 ft2 Office 3 ............................ 240 ft2 P. Office 7 ............................ 165 ft2 Office 8 ............................ 270 ft2 Office 9 ............................ 288 ft2

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Distribution of Program

Q. R. S. T. U. V. W.

Artist Studio 12 ............... 737 ft2 Art Storage 2 .................... 1519 ft2 Artist Studio 15 ............... 474 ft2 Material Storage ............... 249 ft2 Meeting Room .................. 334 ft2 Staff WC 3 ....................... 170 ft2 Office 10 ........................... 231 ft2 Office 11 ........................... 224 ft2 Kitchen ............................ 205 ft2 X. Director’s Office ................ 397 ft2 Secretary’s Office ............. 198 ft2 Office 12 .......................... 291 ft2 Y. Artist Artist Artist Z. Artist Artist

Studio Studio Studio Studio Studio

11 13 14 06 07

............... 733 ............... 925 ............... 603 ............... 556 ............... 823

ft2 ft2 ft2 ft2 ft2

143

Floorplate space trims between forms to unite inhabitable areas. Conical distortions in plan skew the corner relationship, producing spatial slippage.

Perpendicularily set wall frames running in opposite directions align into a corner. Floorplate thickness necessitates a four-foot offset between.

Conical distortions along surface edges redefines the previously two-dimensional intersection of the forms into a dynamic, three-dimensional torque.

144

Berkeley Museum of Art

3B Studio

Conical Strategies

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Model Photo of Conical Intersection

145

+55'

+45'

+23'

+9'

+0'

-14'

146

Berkeley Museum of Art

3B Studio

Section down Slope

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

147

148

Berkeley Museum of Art

3B Studio

Photos of Modeled Lightwell

Conical distortions begin to question the inherent relationship between vertical surfaces of form and horizontal spaces of inhabitation.

Void form punches through volume of object to outline lightwell.

Stairs cut back-and-forth along edges of void envelope, twisting into and out of of the void itself.

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Portfolio 2012-2015

Lightwell Strategies

149

(animation) vimeo.com/ 126487089

152

Berkeley Museum of Art

3B Studio

Oblique Section across Courtyard

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

153

154

Berkeley Museum of Art

3B Studio

Massing Models

Circulatory Vignettes Circulatory spaces became a primary interest in this project because of the way they orient and focus the human perception. In regards to both the architectural experience and the perceptions of individual people to others within the museum, the circulatory pathways were specifically curated to employ the formal assets of architecture to experiential ends. Deepened and distorted spaces

between otherwise regular floorplates established vantages from which the circulation posits visitors to experience others in the museum. These spaces flatten, elongate and skew the typical perceptual abilities of the human eye to estrange those within them. This is with the hopes that it entices people to reconceptualize how they experience architecture, the world and thus their selves.

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Circulation and Spatial Disorientation

157

BAM DESIGN DEVELOPMENT Design Development Fall 2015, Pavel Getov and Scott Uriu With Thomas Ferrer, Adrian Wong and Jinwen Yu The objectives of this class centered around continuing architectural processes from the previous semesters studio projects, running a conceptual proposal of an art museum in Berkeley, California, through a natural set of refinements though design development (DD). At the core of the classâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; visual repertoire was the construction of a single â&#x20AC;&#x153;mega drawingâ&#x20AC;? which encapsulated not only many smaller drawings but an overall aesthetic conglomeration. At the same time, a notebook set was gathered to simulate the typical planning procedures that would accompany the submission of a prospective design to the relevant permitting authorities. This coincided along with a series of lectures from various offices around Los Angeles, including representatives from Gehry Partners, detailing the normal regulatory parameters surrounding items such as ADA, egress and cost estimation, among others. More than a mere repository for drawings, the notebook set became a new way to conceptualize the presentation of the project within the rigid legal framework that surrounds architecture. Though the design was rather speculative at conception, this development process acted as a rigorous exercise in the execution of progressive architecture within the confines of the normative contemporary sphere of building.

160

BAM Design Development

Design Development

1 : 4 Mega Drawing Samples

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Mega Drawing

161

162

BAM Design Development

Design Development

Mega Drawing Detail

Steel Structure Structural grid sandwhiched between Gypsum board interior walls and exterior paneling

Exterior Courtyard Paneling Poured concrete panels conceal geometry and provide tame interior expression

Ring Members Tube steel members run along edges of masses to connect larger sections of primary and secondary structure Primary Members W-sections running vertically through structural void between interior and exterior paneling Secondary Members W-sections running horizontally and at perpendiculars to primary members Dialgonal Bracing Bracing connects between primary and secondary members Floorplates Standardized steel sheet decking with poured concrete, underlaid by standard steel substructure

Direction 1 Panels Panels angled at ~60° from ground. Direction 2 Panels Panels angled at ~240° from ground (~ –120°) Direction 3 Panels Panels angled at ~45° from ground. Panel Seams Seams express themselves tectonically, but combination with slotting produces graphic effect Base Panels Panels of all directions extend onto the bases, topped eitherwith circulation, landscaping or outdoor gathering spaces, such as the outdoor auditorium

Skin System 1 ~60° slots

Skin System 2 ~240° slots

Ring Members 20” x 20” steel tubes Primary Members 14” W-sections Secondary Members 10” W-sections Core 1

Structural Strategy Each object stands structurally independent, leaning on one another. Cores in two objects provide vertical circulation.

Interior Courtyard 6” x 5’ x 10’ precast concrete panels Core 2

Circulatory Surfaces 6” poured concrete panels

Skin System 3 ~45° slots Basement Retailing Wall 12” poured concrete

Connor Gravelle

Basement Columns 2’ diameter concrete columns Foundations (Caissons below) 5’ x 5’ poured concrete members Foundation Beam Structure 3’ x 3’ concrete beams below

Skin Composition Slots tilted in multiple directions, sometimes aligning along physical seams and other times producing purely graphic seams through tectonic articulation.

Portfolio 2012-2015

Overall Structural Strategies

163

Primary Steel 20” rolled steel members run along edges of masses Secondary Steel Direction 1 16” W-section members running along primary direction of surfaces Secondary Steel Direction 2 14” W-section members running along secondary direction of surfaces

Structural Joint

Secondary Steel Member L Brackets Bracket Bolting Primary Steel Member

Generic 6” Poured Concrete over Metal Decking Hung Ceiling Connectors

Primary Structure Secondary Structure Floorplate Edges

Vertical Clips Façade Panels Façade Clips

164

BAM Design Development

Design Development

Façade Structures

Return Vents Supply Vents

Air Handling Units Several locations house multiple air handling units, each of which separately serves each object

OBJECT 7

3260 sqft

2582 sqft

Type B Factor: 100 Load: 32

Type B Factor: 100 Load: 25

Level 1-2: Galleries

OBJECT 5

Level 3-4: Studios

Level 2: Galleries

2037 sqft

2192 sqft

Type E Factor: 35 Load: 58

Type E Factor: 15 Load: 146

Level 2-4: Galleries 3892 sqft Type A3 Factor: 15 Load: 259

OBJECT 3

Level 4: Studios

Level 3: Studios

Level 2: Galleries

2490 sqft

2456 sqft

3555 sqft

Type E Factor: 35 Load: 69

Type E Factor: 15 Load: 237

Type E Factor: 35 Load: 71

OBJECT 6

OBJECT 4

Level 2: Galleries

Level 3: Galleries

2421 sqft

1816 sqft

Type A3 Factor: 15 Load: 161

Type A3 Factor: 15 Load: 121

MAIN ENTRANCE

AFT ENTRANCE

OBJECT 2

Level 2: Galleries

Level 3: Galleries

2394 sqft

2300 sqft

Type A3 Factor: 15 Load: 159

Type A3 Factor: 15 Load: 153

ADA / Accessible Path of Travel

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

OBJECT 1

Level 3: Galleries

Level 2: Galleries

5618 sqft

5120 sqft

Type A3 Factor: 15 Load: 374

Type A3 Factor: 15 Load: 341

Egress / Circulation

(Above) HVAC, (Below) Egress and ADA

165

166

BAM Design Development

Design Development

Mega Drawing Excerpts

Pre Cast Concrete panel Interlockng Joint Primary Steel

Water Sealent Rain gutter

End Mullion

Low-E Coated Glass

Poured in Place Concrete

Air Gap

Steel Rebar

Interior Glass Mullion Clip-On Fin

Precast Concrete Pan Interlocking Joint

Topping Slab

Silicone Seal

Structural Slab

Secondary Seal

Metal Decking

Primary Seal Moisture Barrier

Drop Ceiling

Steel Stud Blocking

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Portfolio 2012-2015

3D Details

167

Group 8

Design Development

Group 8

Gravelle, Connor Ferrer, Thomas Wong, C.W. Adrian Yu, J.W. Iris

No.

Design Development

Gravelle, Connor Ferrer, Thomas Wong, C.W. Adrian Yu, J.W. Iris

Revisions:

Date

Description

No.

Notes: Do not scale from this drawing

Date

Description

Notes: Do not scale from this drawing

Lockers 199

Office 5 Office 6 225 283

Sec. Office 222

Office 7 219

Gallery 02 1682

Gallery 01 1350

Berkeley Emerging Art Foundation (BEAF)

Gallery 03 1318

Gallery 09 3619

Berkeley Museum of Art (BAM) and the Pacific Film Archive

Visitor WC 2

Connor Gravelle Thomas Ferrer Adrian C.W. Wong Jinwen (Iris) Yu

Gallery 08 (Tiered) 992

Gallery 12 993

Gallery 07 1016 Gallery 10 1243

Berkeley Museum of Art (BAM) and Pacific Film Archive

Berkeley Emerging Art Foundation (BEAF)

001-A-001

001-A-010

DESIGN DEV. JW, CG 07 DEC 2015 PROPOSED SITE PLAN

Status: Drawn: Date: Title:

Checked: CG Scale: 1/64”:1’ @ SIZE SCALE @ SIZE

All Rights Reserved These drawing, concepts, designs and ideas are the property of G+FWY. They may not be copied, reproduced, disclosed to others or used in connection with any work other than the specified project for which they are prepared, in whole or in part, without the prior written authorization of G+FWY.

they are prepared, in whole or in part, without the prior written authorization of G+FWY.

Group 8

Design Development

Group 8

DESIGN DEV. Checked: CG Scale: JW 1/32”:1’ @ SIZE SCALE @ SIZE 07 DEC 2015 PROPOSED GROUND FLOOR PLAN

Status: Drawn: Date: Title:

Design Development

Group 8

Design Development

Gravelle, Connor Ferrer, Thomas Wong, C.W. Adrian Yu, J.W. Iris

Revisions:

No.

Date

Description

No.

Notes: Do not scale from this drawing

Date

Description

No.

Notes: Do not scale from this drawing

Date

Description

Notes: Do not scale from this drawing

Men's WC

Lockers 199 Women's WC

Gallery 00

Cleaning Room 424

Office 4 127

+55'

Marketing 303

Office 1 192

Office 3 153

Gallery 02 + 23'

Gallery 17 + 23'

+45'

+ 0' Gallery 01

+ 23'

Gallery 03 + 23'

+23'

Gallery 04 + 23' Gallery 15 + 23'

+ 0'

Mechanical Visitor WC 2

+9' UP DN UP

+0' UP UP

Gallery 06 + 15'

-14'

Gallery 11 Gallery 05

+ 17'

+ 15'

Berkeley Museum of Art (BAM) and Pacific Film Archive

Berkeley Emerging Art Foundation (BEAF)

001-A-011

001-A-101

001-A-102

DESIGN DEV. Checked: CG Scale: JW 1/32”:1’ @ SIZE SCALE @ SIZE 07 DEC 2015 PROPOSED TYPICAL UPPER FLOOR PLAN

Status: Drawn: Date: Title:

Group 8

Design Development

Group 8

Date

Description

Skin System 2 ~240° slots

Group 8

Revisions: No.

Design Development

Gravelle, Connor Ferrer, Thomas Wong, C.W. Adrian Yu, J.W. Iris

Skin System 1 ~60° slots

Revisions:

Date

Description

Interior Courtyard 6” x 5’ x 10’ precast concrete panels

Design Development

Gravelle, Connor Ferrer, Thomas Wong, C.W. Adrian Yu, J.W. Iris

Ring Members 20” x 20” steel tubes Primary Members 14” W-sections Secondary Members 10” W-sections

Structural Strategy Each object stands structurally independent, leaning on one another. Cores in two objects provide vertical circulation.

Core 1 Notes: Do not scale from this drawing

DESIGN DEV. Checked: CG Scale: JW, CG 1/32”:1’ @ SIZE SCALE @ SIZE 07 DEC 2015 PROPOSED LONGITUDINAL SECTION

Status: Drawn: Date: Title:

Gravelle, Connor Ferrer, Thomas Wong, C.W. Adrian Yu, J.W. Iris

No.

DESIGN DEV. Checked: CG Scale: CG, JW 1/32”:1’ @ SIZE SCALE @ SIZE 07 DEC 2015 PROPOSED TRANSVERSE SECTION (OBLIQUE)

Status: Drawn: Date: Title:

Revisions: No.

Notes: Do not scale from this drawing

Date

Description

Notes: Do not scale from this drawing

Core 2

Circulatory Surfaces 6” poured concrete panels

PROPOSED ELEVATION ALONG BANCROFT STREET Scale: 1/32”:1’ @ SIZE, SCALE @ SIZE

Berkeley Museum of Art (BAM) and Pacific Film Archive

Berkeley Emerging Art Foundation (BEAF)

Skin System 3 ~45° slots Basement Retailing Wall 12” poured concrete

001-A-201 DESIGN DEV. Checked: CG Scale: CG 1/32”:1’ @ SIZE SCALE @ SIZE 07 DEC 2015 PROPOSED PRIMARY ELEVATIONS

Status: Drawn: Date: Title:

Group 8

Basement Columns 2’ diameter concrete columns Foundations (Caissons below) 5’ x 5’ poured concrete members Foundation Beam Structure 3’ x 3’ concrete beams below ground floor decks above

Berkeley Museum of Art (BAM) and Pacific Film Archive

Berkeley Emerging Art Foundation (BEAF)

Berkeley Museum of Art (BAM) and Pacific Film Archive

Berkeley Emerging Art Foundation (BEAF)

001-A-301

001-A-302

DESIGN DEV. Checked: Scale: CG 1/32”:1’ @ SIZE SCALE @ SIZE 07 DEC 2015 SKIN PANELING

Status: Drawn: Date: Title:

PROPOSED ELEVATION ALONG DURANT STREET Scale: 1/32”:1’ @ SIZE, SCALE @ SIZE

Skin Composition Slots tilted in multiple directions, sometimes aligning along physical seams and other times producing purely graphic seams through tectonic articulation.

Design Development

Group 8

Gravelle, Connor Ferrer, Thomas Wong, C.W. Adrian Yu, J.W. Iris

DESIGN DEV. Checked: Scale: CG 1/32”:1’ @ SIZE SCALE @ SIZE 07 DEC 2015 METAL STRUCTURING

Status: Drawn: Date: Title:

Design Development

Group 8

Gravelle, Connor Ferrer, Thomas Wong, C.W. Adrian Yu, J.W. Iris

Design Development

Gravelle, Connor Ferrer, Thomas Wong, C.W. Adrian Yu, J.W. Iris Steel Structure Structural grid sandwhiched between Gypsum board interior walls and exterior paneling

Revisions: No.

Date

Revisions: Description

Notes: Do not scale from this drawing

No.

Pre-cast Concrete Panels

Date

Revisions: Description

Exterior Courtyard Paneling Poured concrete panels conceal geometry and provide tame interior expression

Generic connections between floorplates and façade employ balloon framing logic to structuralize floorplates when available. Formal interests direct towards articulated interior voids rather than superficial disjointing between envelope and inhabital planes.

Scilicone Seal

Secondary Members W-sections running horizontally and at perpendiculars to primary members

4”x6” Studs

Dialgonal Bracing Bracing connects between primary and secondary members

Description

Floorplates Standardized steel sheet decking with poured concrete, underlaid by standard steel substructure

Gypsum Board Generic 6” poured concrete decking

Date

Notes: Do not scale from this drawing

Primary Members W-sections running vertically through structural void between interior and exterior paneling

W18 Steel 45” dropped ceiling cavity for total 4’ flooplate depth

No.

Ring Members Tube steel members run along edges of masses to connect larger sections of primary and secondary structure

Notes: Do not scale from this drawing

4”x6” Studs

Floorplates

Moisture Barrier Batt insulation Moisture Barrier

Standard 18” by 6” i-beams along floorplate

Fiber-Reinforced Panels

Structural Frame

Gypsum Board

Direction 1 Panels Panels angled at ~60° from ground.

Mitered conditions arbitrate adjacencies along FRP panels and structure

Direction 2 Panels Panels angled at ~240° from ground (~ –120°)

FRP panels of standard 4’ by 8’ dimension

Direction 3 Panels Panels angled at ~45° from ground. Panel Seams Seams express themselves tectonically, but combination with slotting produces graphic effect Base Panels Panels of all directions extend onto the bases, topped eitherwith circulation, landscaping or outdoor gathering spaces, such as the outdoor auditorium

Horizontal bracketing along horizontal members

Thin seam language leverages tectonic reading towards a legibility of the bands cut into the FRP panels, concealing expressions of inner structure and jointing

Secondary Horizontal Members 8’ Increment, 6” by 8” Profile

Primary Horizontal Members 16’ Increment, 6” by 18” Profile

Seams allow FRP panels to abutt structure while being tied to L brackets in the horizontal direction and T brakcets in the vertical direction

Vertical fin attachments to every other vertical member

Secondary Vertical Members 4’ Increment, 6” by 8” Profile Primary Vertical Members 12’ Increment, 12” by 14” Profile

Assembled Façade

1” Seaming

Berkeley Museum of Art (BAM) and Pacific Film Archive

Berkeley Emerging Art Foundation (BEAF)

001-A-303

001-A-304

001-A-401

Status: Drawn: Date: Title:

DESIGN DEV. Checked: CG Scale: CG 1/32”:1’ @ SIZE SCALE @ SIZE 07 DEC 2015 FAÇADE DETAIL

168

BAM Design Development

Status: Drawn: Date: Title:

DESIGN DEV. Checked: Scale: AW 1/32”:1’ @ SIZE SCALE @ SIZE 07 DEC 2015 SKIN PANEL DETAIL

Status: Drawn: Date: Title:

Design Development

DESIGN DEV. Checked: Scale: CG 1/32”:1’ @ SIZE SCALE @ SIZE 07 DEC 2015 EXPLODED STRUCTURE DRAWING

Notebook Set

Group 8

Design Development

Group 8

Gravelle, Connor Ferrer, Thomas Wong, C.W. Adrian Yu, J.W. Iris

No.

Design Development

Group 8

Gravelle, Connor Ferrer, Thomas Wong, C.W. Adrian Yu, J.W. Iris

Revisions: Description

No.

Design Development

Gravelle, Connor Ferrer, Thomas Wong, C.W. Adrian Yu, J.W. Iris

Revisions:

Date

Revisions:

Date

Description

No.

Date

Description

Secondary Steel Member L Brackets Bracket Bolting Primary Steel Member

Primary Steel

Notes: Do not scale from this drawing

Secondary Steel Dual Glazing

Notes: Do not scale from this drawing

FRP Panels Gypsum Wall PFR Panels

Generic 6” Poured Concrete over Metal Decking Structural Joint

Hung Ceiling Connectors

Metal Edge Angle HVAC Supply HVAC Return C-Channels

Precast Concrete Pan Interlocking Joint

Primary Structure Secondary Structure

Metal Decking Gypsum Ceiling W-18 Floor Structure

Floorplate Edges Retaining Wall

Structure Joinery

Drainage Mat WPM Protection Board

Topping Slab

Silicone Seal

Vertical Clips Façade Panels Façade Clips

Structural Slab

Secondary Seal

Metal Decking

Primary Seal Moisture Barrier

Drop Ceiling

Steel Stud Blocking

Structural Joint

Berkeley Museum of Art (BAM) and Pacific Film Archive

Berkeley Emerging Art Foundation (BEAF)

001-A-402

001-A-501

001-A-502

DESIGN DEV. Checked: Scale: CG 1/32”:1’ @ SIZE SCALE @ SIZE 07 DEC 2015 ASSORTED SKIN DETAILS

Status: Drawn: Date: Title:

Exploded Façade

Group 8

Design Development

Revisions: Date

Description

OBJECT 3

Level 4: Studios

Level 3: Studios

Level 2: Galleries

2490 sqft

2456 sqft

3555 sqft

Type E Factor: 35 Load: 71

Type E Factor: 35 Load: 69

Type E Factor: 15 Load: 237

Group 8

OBJECT 5

Level 3-4: Studios

Level 2: Galleries

2037 sqft

2192 sqft

Type E Factor: 35 Load: 58

Type E Factor: 15 Load: 146

Pre Cast Concrete panel Interlockng Joint

OBJECT 1

Level 3: Galleries

Level 2: Galleries

5618 sqft

5120 sqft

Type A3 Factor: 15 Load: 374

Type A3 Factor: 15 Load: 341

Design Development

Group 8

Design Development

Gravelle, Connor Ferrer, Thomas Wong, C.W. Adrian Yu, J.W. Iris

Revisions:

No.

AFT ENTRANCE

Notes: Do not scale from this drawing

DESIGN DEV. Checked: Scale: TF 1/32”:1’ @ SIZE SCALE @ SIZE 07 DEC 2015 DETAIL: INTERNAL FLOORPLATE TO SKIN

Status: Drawn: Date: Title:

Gravelle, Connor Ferrer, Thomas Wong, C.W. Adrian Yu, J.W. Iris

No.

DESIGN DEV. Checked: Scale: JW 1/32”:1’ @ SIZE SCALE @ SIZE 07 DEC 2015 BUILDING CHUNK

Status: Drawn: Date: Title:

Date

Description

No.

Date

Description

Return Vents

OBJECT 7

Level 3-4: Offices

Level 1-2: Galleries

3260 sqft

2582 sqft

Type B Factor: 100 Load: 32

Type B Factor: 100 Load: 25

Supply Vents Notes: Do not scale from this drawing

Notes: Do not scale from this drawing

Primary Steel

Water Sealent

OBJECT 6

Rain gutter

End Mullion

Level 2-4: Galleries 3892 sqft

Low-E Coated Glass

Poured in Place Concrete

Type A3 Factor: 15 Load: 259

Air Gap

Steel Rebar

Interior Glass Mullion Clip-On Fin OBJECT 4

OBJECT 4

Level 2: Galleries

Level 3: Galleries

2421 sqft

1816 sqft

Type A3 Factor: 15 Load: 161

Type A3 Factor: 15 Load: 121

Berkeley Museum of Art (BAM) and Pacific Film Archive

Berkeley Emerging Art Foundation (BEAF)

Egress / Circulation

001-A-503 MAIN ENTRANCE

DESIGN DEV. Checked: Scale: TF 1/32”:1’ @ SIZE SCALE @ SIZE 07 DEC 2015 DETAIL: GLAZING TO SKIN

Status: Drawn: Date: Title:

Berkeley Museum of Art (BAM) and Pacific Film Archive

ADA / Accessible Path of Travel

Berkeley Emerging Art Foundation (BEAF) OBJECT 2

OBJECT 2

Level 2: Galleries

Level 3: Galleries

2394 sqft

2300 sqft

Type A3 Factor: 15 Load: 159

Type A3 Factor: 15 Load: 153

001-A-601

Berkeley Museum of Art (BAM) and Pacific Film Archive

Berkeley Emerging Art Foundation (BEAF) 001-A-602

DESIGN DEV. Checked: CG Scale: AW 1/32”:1’ @ SIZE SCALE @ SIZE 07 DEC 2015 PROPOSED ADA AND EGRESS DIAGRAM

Status: Drawn: Date: Title:

Air Handling Units Several locations house multiple air handling units, each of which separately serves each object

Status: Drawn: Date: Title:

DESIGN DEV. Checked: Scale: CG 1/32”:1’ @ SIZE SCALE @ SIZE 07 DEC 2015 HVAC DIAGRAM

Shell and Façade

Exterior Façade Paneling

Group 8

Precast Concrete Panels Rolled Ring Steel Members (14”x14”) Primary Steel Direction 1 (14”x10”) Primary Steel Direction 2 (14”x10”) Secondary Members (14”x7”) Glass Panels

Design Development

Fiber-reinforced panels (FRP), broken down in modules of roughly 5 by 8 feet, attached to underlying steel structure.

Gravelle, Connor Ferrer, Thomas Wong, C.W. Adrian Yu, J.W. Iris

These are to be painted white and milled with as crisp edges as possible, enticing sharp shadows.

Revisions: Date

Description

Notes: Do not scale from this drawing

Precast Concrete Panels

Structural Steel

Cores

$ 30995700 $ 3313800 $ 1027650 $ 1499100 $ 2649600 $ 839865

Cores Floor Finishes Gypsum Fire Sprinklers HVAC

15577 Ft2 71815 Ft2 123175 Ft2 71815 Ft2 71815 Ft2

$ 120 / Ft2 $ 50 / Ft2 $ 2.5 / Ft2 $ 5 / Ft2 $ 40 / Ft2

$ 1869240 $ 3590750 $ 307938 $ 359075 $ 2872600

Group 8

Design Development

Gravelle, Connor Ferrer, Thomas Wong, C.W. Adrian Yu, J.W. Iris

Interior Concrete Slabs Interior Partition Walls Floorplate Steel (W-24) Basement Retaining Wall Parking Garage Asphalt Concrete Foundation Foundation Columns Foundation Beams

Interior Courtyard Façade

71815 Ft2 6781 Ft2 21191 Ft 9318 Ft2 46326 Ft 15384 Ft 12691 Ft3 61464 Ft3

Subtotal

Transitions occur in seams between objects.

Revisions: No.

Date

Description

Notes: Do not scale from this drawing

Additional Architectural Elements

Stark cast-in-place concrete panels line the interior courtyard, providing a space of articulation which is minimal and without the exuberance of the outer envelope.

Polished concrete with minimal but still noticeable reflectivity creates deep spaces with subtle, blurred reflections that place the visitor between two bare, abstract planes of experience when within the galleries. Comparable to Sanaa’s 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa, this austere approach should constantly hold in juxtaposition to itself the boldness of the sky, constantly referenced by the various cores’ skylights and open courtyard.

$ 75 / Ft2 $300 / Ft $ 150 / Ft $ 150 / Ft $ 150 / Ft $ 65 / Ft2

Interior Cores and Finishes No.

Image courtesy Snøhetta

Flooring and Ceilings

413276 Ft2 11046 Ft 6851 Ft 9994 Ft 17664 Ft 12921 Ft2

$ 120 / Ft2 $ 30 / Ft2 $ 100 / Ft $ 180 / Ft2 $ 4 / Ft $ 200 / Ft $ 100 / Ft3 $ 100 / Ft3

$ 8617800 $ 203430 $ 2119100 $ 1677240 $ 185304 $ 3076800 $ 1269100 $ 6146400 $ 67878652

Overheads

Image courtesy Architectural Record Foundation Beams and Columns

Foundation and Retaining Walls

Parking Asphalt

Architect’s Overhead MEP Overhead Structural Overhead

15% 1% 3%

$ 10181798 $ 678787 $ 2036360

Contingencies Estimating Contingency Construction Contingency Total

5% 10%

$ 3393933 $ 6787865 $ 90957394

Image courtsey Sanaa

HVAC

Berkeley Museum of Art (BAM) and Pacific Film Archive

Filigree Detailing

Berkeley Emerging Art Foundation (BEAF)

Fine metal elements should have a hard, sturdy but elegant feeling, accentuating the space as if lines in space.

001-A-701

001-A-801

Cast iron railings in lieu of Victor Horta’s Hôtel Tassel and details around the stairs (backed by a reflective layer of dark glass) should make a screen of sorts which follows circulation throughout the building.

Status: Drawn: Date: Title:

Hôtel Tassel image courtesy Prestel Publishing, glass image courtsey FinePoint

Connor Gravelle

DESIGN DEV. Checked: CG Scale: CG 1/32”:1’ @ SIZE SCALE @ SIZE 07 DEC 2015 MATERIAL REFERENCE PALATE

Portfolio 2012-2015

Status: Drawn: Date: Title:

DESIGN DEV. Checked: Scale: CG 1/32”:1’ @ SIZE SCALE @ SIZE 07 DEC 2015 COST ANALYSIS AND ESTIMATE

169

SCI-FA 2B Studio Spring 2014, Heather Flood This project was specially selected to be featured in SCI-Arc’s Spring Show 2014. Synopsis SCI-Fa (The Southern California Institute of Fashion) is an exploration in programmatic and formal ambiguity of space. This formal production applies a logic of transformational conics in order to eschew primitive geometries to the ends of producing simultaneities of program and formal rarifications of space which suppose an entirely unconventional architecture both outwardly experiential and esoteric to the medium of Architecture.

established on the grounds of its own labor, the individual meaningless and the collective but a mere tool in this aesthetic machinery. What becomes ironic about such institutions, generally speaking, seems to be their often reclusive nature, as if to boast solely within granted circles their accomplishments of material and craft. Why shouldn’t such a factory be in your face? What withholds an institution like SCI-Fa to the state of secondary or tertiary status in a vibrancy to the likes of Downtown Los Angeles?

Thus, the institution’s interactions with the public sphere, both theatrical and Of specific importance to the project are revealing in nature, are of the utmost its representational qualities, especially importance for demonstrative value in its in relation to the formal agendas at hand. architecture. Its architecture should read: Regarding the bent form of the building, this is not a place of observation, rather the conventions of typical plans and sec- a directly confrontational experiment tions were invalidated as meek in their of empirical phenomenology. Melding explicative possibilities for the inherently perfectly with the clear delineation of three-dimensional nature in the spatial “middle spaces” (those medium-sized instantiations of bending. This fundamen- areas of interstitial importance, the tally shifted the project’s presentation to organization of the program outlined in rely both on an animation and a series the project’s brief ought to engage and to of peelings or slicings (entitled “Scoop stimulate the barrier between the public Drawings”) of the building’s components and the institution (the exo and the eso, (skin, massing et cetera) as more adthat is to say) both from outside-in and equate methods for the description of its within-out. assets in terms formal, programmatic and Also inherent to this observation is the representative. unique structure of power invested Thoughts on Program elsewhere in the provided spaces. Of noteworthiness is the second largest As briefed, SCI-Fa longs to be a sweatallocation of area, divided between the shop of production value, stuffed mostly building’s facilities and the institution’s with compartments accessed indiadministration. This combined mass rectly from distant corners of a primarily is still to be deemed more spatially medium-space-filled building shrouded important in the reading of the brief’s in privacy. Clearly, sheer adherence to the interpreted agendas than straightforprovided programmatic distributions will ward instruction, vested half-heartedly be ineffectual in procuring unique interin fleeting seminar rooms and secluded sections of space and constituencies. studio plots. Thus, a hierarchical relationParticularly of interest, given the diverse ship is established wherein a metaphorisite and nearby orgy of demographics, cally panoptic distribution of importance it seems strange that an educational oversees the highly controlled (and thus institution would allot spaces overonly secondarily conditioned) spaces of whelmingly geared towards production, traditional “education”. Again, the pownearly altogether forgoing more tradierhouse of production overtakes this tional roles of education. It is clear that positioning, as if to engage a mutated the prerogative of the institution is not beast, the purpose of which borders situated within the momentary incidents between the refinements procured by of academia, but rather centered on the a disciplined body of pupils below an necessitated production of fashion mate- overseeing administrative caste and the rials and the like. The facility is effectively let-wild machinery of production.

170

SCI-Fa

How might this architecture, and in particular its programmatic distributions and spatial accordances, enable this loosely defined pedagogy to foster in a method conducive to the interaction between this subculture and a larger context (Los Angeles, herself). In so doing, spaces otherwise perceived as afterthoughts or prerequisites might take prominence in facilitating such interactions. Id est, the institution’s shop or auditorium might be recast as crucial political arenas throughout which a diagrammatic goal of inte-

radicalism, which, quite paradoxically, it seeks to interject into a larger context. Thus, it is as if a cognitive membrane of glass exists to separate an institution from its surroundings. Whatever the purpose of that institution might be, it might appear that this disconnection has severed critically unexploited links which could foster between those exo and those eso to these alternative definitions of otherwise complacent notions so intrinsic to an avant-garde practice. The result of these tendencies manifests

Thus, the institution’s interactions with the public sphere, both theatrical and revealing in nature, are of the utmost importance for demonstrative value in its architecture. gration and discourse carries itself out, both captive and parasitic to the institutional framework which has spawned. Thoughts on Institution The strange thing about polemic intuitions, once realized in architecture as built things, seems to be their resistance towards syndication in their perspective environments. That is to say, it prevails that the integration of the institution is perceived as counterintuitive to its core

2B Studio

itself several perplexingly convoluted circumstances: Truly innovative approaches to the practices respective to these institutions are rendered temporarily null in their eras. Appreciation is acquired ex post facto as a kind of post-rationalization by the larger community. While the immediacy of the avant-garde does in fact leave beneficial scars on the functions of whichever discipline in question, it rarely becomes

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172

SCI-Fa

2B Studio

Transformation Diagram

Of specific importance to the project are its representational qualities, especially in relation to the formal agendas at hand. Regarding the bent form of the building, the conventions of plans and sections were invalidated as meek in their explicative possibilities for the inherently three-dimensional nature in the spatial instantiations of bending. 173

174

SCI-Fa

2B Studio

Transformation Process

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

175

acknowledged by the greater society until it is either extinct or festering on its deathbed. What might occur if leading thinkers in avant-garde practices were to engage society? Obviously, this cannot be enforced in any authoritarian manner onto personal agendas, but, instead, architecture may offer us a method by which to shift the performances both of such practices and prospective members of societal constituencies to the ends that their brief scraping one another would produce magnificent intersections.

name only long after its dissipation, The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies evades the common New Yorker (a being so thirsty for unsettlement) to this day, and SCI-Arc remains unbeknownced even to those living beside it, to name a few situations inherent to the discipline of architecture. These circumstances must implode, rendering in their wake the complete disruption of previously held ideals about the agency and impotence of the avant-garde. Though largely untested, the results or perspective failure of such an action is far too great a posThe actualized objectives of these institusibility of which to continue a distasteful tions suffer such significantly lengthened avoidance. realizations within a culture that neither their creators nor their intended audiThe Fourth Wall as Societal Device ences are able to partake in the spoils of The Fourth Wall is a term pertaining to progression. Thus, Ikea is the effectual the theory of theater, constituting not gravestone of a once beloved Bauhaus. in material but in perception the final Beleaguered bachelors and strapped enclosing “wall” of a stage set which students alike were punished by history metaphysically divides the performances to endure a semicentury before innovaoccurring with the audience spectating. tive spatializations of Modernist design In more traditional roles, this division is reached their grasps within reason. Of not to be engaged. The theater-goers sit course among other circumstances, part before their spectacle in complete comof this is must be attributed to stagnant pliance, idly engrossing themselves in time and prolonged distancing between only the representation of an event. This innovators and their audiences. Obvioushas come under considerable challenge ly, many factors contribute to this snailin more contemporary works, whereby paced progression, and few of these can the wall itself is rendered variously null, be addressed by architecture. Still, the enabling the fluid interaction between spatial division between those pushaudience and actor. Not always with ing forward the intensification of culture consequence to the reiterated producand their constituencies as manifest by tion before them, this at the purest state architecture can be reduced not only to a encapsulates a constituent engagement negligible level but perhaps can even be with results dramatic in their repurcisions promoted and appropriated. for understanding and experience alike. Both those within and outside institutions It seems that much of contemporary life, seem to be completely ignorant of each no less of that in a city, rests behind a other’s existence or importance. While fourth wall. Especially in regards to arsome have posted this as both an inherchitecture, much is left behind our grasp, ent elitism of the avant-garde and an a mere representation of intentions and ignorance of the masses, it is the distinct actions. Our persistence (and, thus, relihypothesis that in at least some circumance) in the Fourth Wall is unequivocal stances a purely architectural inefficiency to all else. We cling to its protection from may be of responsibility to the symptom. the realities, effectively ammounting to How might it be if these two groups were a schism between our sensorial contact to be compressed within one atmowith the world itself sui generis and its sphere? Their entanglement, rendered as ramifications towards our lives. the dissolution of divisitory space could, in effect, render each obsolete by mutual Thus, it appears, much of the instituingestion. An enlightened citizenry could tional and societal frameworks we have established seek to sustain this buffer engulf the ostracized radicals just as these societal separatists might return to between the rawness of contemporary a world forever changed by their esoteric existence and the comfort prerequesite to a sustainable life. We wretch in fear as contemplations. these boundaries crumble in rare occaUnfortunately, architecture to this point sions. Take, for example, a crash of an has to these ends remained rather unairliner. We look to this object as a whole, helpful. Bauhaus became a household

a sort of container for people – passengers. Few engage this as a mechanized system, instead relying wholy on the perception of its geometric essence as one body. In the event of a crash, we are often times presented with a failure of the object to sustain the singular form we expect of it. We see its entrails spewn about as if to signify before us that our creation has failed. Once the skin of the beast is lifted from its framing, we find ourselves disgusted by the estrangement pronowned. An assembledge of heterogeneous parts, it repels our notions of truth and verity to see the actuality that is the machine, a loosly composed set of bolts and panels.

176

2B Studio

SCI-Fa

We might look at the Lockerbie bombing, in a brief detour, to illustrate this point. After the bombing of Pan American Flight 103 over the small Scottish village, a media extravaganza presented the populace with a face-to-face depiction of tragedy. In regards to airline travel, the fourth wall, in its division of the passenger from the ramifications of both political wills related to the subject and the delicate structural systems of a Boeing 747 during flight, was utterly decimated. Surreal images of a ruined cockpit strewn about a bucolic field in the rural enclave, especially with the cause of the crash taken into consideration, irrevocably altered the relationship between the passenger and the machine. To see an image of the jetliner before the crash is to reengage the territorialized notions we had attained in the immediate foreground to the disaster. These are forever shattered by the presentation of images after the matter, and it may be said that we can never truly gaze onto the condition of the object before the event without irresistibly allowing our minds to venture onto the tragedy of which we have been informed by the reciprocal interchange of information they share. That, of course, was an example with rather morbid associations. Rather, the Fourth Wall might function in society in a strata of roles and circumstances. Critically speaking, its existence buffers the life of the individual from the myriad of complications presented by the outside world. The theatergoer, in this function, is in many instances in need of the division between the representational aspects of the performance and the perception occurring in his or her psyche. When this is removed, a new relationship is trans-

figured by the space between the stage and the seating. Obvious ramifications of grand importance rest in the presence or avoidance of this tactic within theatrical theory. In most other circumstances, the Fourth Wall’s persistence causes riffs in the understandings between constituencies of society. Specifically to a political end, these allot for much of the estrangement we face in a Postindustrial legacy. Our clothing, furniture, our buildings and any other manufactured good rest firmly behind a differentiation of metaphysical separation. Often, it seems, the dilution of this barrier results in consequences either disturbing or disruptional. The Fourth Wall in Architecture In the case of architecture, its function inherent as a container of program, constituencies and functions thereof bounds the capacity of most structures to the roles of uniform boxes. Even with formal experimentation, the Fourth Wall is hard broken even by the most radical of strategies. A cliché has thus formed around the solution to this problem, centered around a knee-jerk reaction of complete spatial implosion. It is rather inneffectual in many circumstances to demolish all walls. Instead, a myraid of other spatial strategies and media can be uptaken in the progression towards integrated space. Particularly in the sense of institutional architecture, it seems pervasive that a Fourth Wall exists between those exoand esoteric to the organization. This division is perhaps most often manifest in the form of a wall, but otherwise its forms can be seen in various architectural tropes. Recently, much has been made in the real of connecting those outside the institution to those within, but, under closer examination, it is possible to deduce that these relationships are superficial at best. Furthermore, they often involve the interplay of constituencies in a linear manner. That is to say, either those from within experience those outside or vise versa, but rarely does the situation present itself that a complete orgy of interaction occurs. Such an event might be labeled preemptively as counterproductive to the ends of an institution, but it can also be interpreted that the explicit function of such an organization is to create this kind of interaction. Thus, it effectively

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

Study Models

177

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178

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2B Studio

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Academia

Dress becomes Product at Store

Dress is Begun

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Often, the case is that our realities are highly curated by our statuses within the complex structures of society. This predetermined interaction establishes a narrow framework that functions quite actively to remain fairly static. Within this, a backlogged cycle seems to have occurred by many accounts in which those who have climbed the ranks resist the ascension of contemporaries below. Without the necessity to explicate this in further detail, it is clear that its ranks pertain to those of the fashion industry in particular.

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Inte

Especially in the case of a fashion school, it is integral that those inside experientially partake in the interactions of those outside, and that, conversely, those outside are changed fundamentally in their perspective by those within. Obviously, this cannot be predicted to the point that one consequence is available. In some cases, the events might even end poorly by a traditional sense of success. Events such as the flood of homeless into the Seattle Public Library come to mind, but are these really that bad?

rnal Prod uctio n

to P rodu ct

avoids the trope of being cut off from the outside world.

reference, they might find before them an entirely reshuffled perception of reality. F***, the Spline

Therefore, with a site as ontologically compromised in such a diverse fashion as that at the corner of Olympic and Main, it is paramount to the success of any institution there that architecture arbitrate the contemporaneously choreographed and unimpaired interaction among the subsets of society. Even within the institution, an obvious hierarchy is bound to form. This has, in other cases, been the demise of a truly radical establishment, a fermented sign of complacency and presumption. In a place like

Connor Gravelle

Especially in the case of a fashion school, it seems integral that those inside experientially partake in the interactions of those outside, and that, conversely, those outside are changed fundamentally in their perspective by those within. Los Angeles, who can ever say what is above or below anything else? The hierarchies otherwise established the guard the ramparts of our social structures have utterly fallen within this city, at least as far as explicated by the physical world. Portfolio 2012-2015

What if an architecture profoundly changed the manner by which these various groups of people, both those internal and external to the institution, interacted with one another? Were they to be removed from their typical frames of

This design is arrived to by the effective bending of space. Whereas typically Cartesian geometries preclude the three-dimensional transoformation of their domains, the action of being has been employed to the ends of creating a space of pulled and distorted proportions. Still, it remains ever valient that those within this capsule are cognizant of their surroundings. The ghosts of a Cartesian past are pervasive throughout both interior and exterior moments across the scheme. Such is the overarching use of the grid, a persistent reference which begs those within its grasp to read the transformative logic of its application. This is achieved through a conic/circular dimension which is controposed to the otherwise orthagonal reliance of the building. Of particular interest is the emergence of complex spatial relationships with a series of typical geometries. We have become so complacent with our technological surfaces and morphologies that

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Education Bar Studios Seminar Rooms

Urban Lobby

Store Lounge

Libraries Computer Lab Offices

Auditoria Sewing Room Cafe Dying Room

Street

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Production Spiral

Media Core Printmaking Lab

Toy Room

Runway

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Circulation Diagram

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Libraries to Urban Lobby

Sewing Farm Tiered Toy Room

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to Rooftop

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Circulation Detail: Production Spiral

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we often forget the nacent abilities of primitive geometries. While a spline can only engage the fairly recent discourse of form through a reference to complexity and surface, the culmination of primtitive geometries which we set our eyes so often upon in buildings throughout the history of architecture prove their capacity to more effectively attain contemporary discourses. Passing through these spaces, an inhabitant of the environment is placed in constant relation both to him or her self and to his or her piers. Ipso facto, a dialogue of perceptions is established. Vantages provided by the undulations in the stairs’ trajectories or the interior’s bends, among other things, present new perspectives onto inhabitation through an abstraction of the borders of program. The visual and the spatial intertwine to procure a sort of blurred reality in which the user is to heighten an engagement of the architecture through the conscious intensification or nullification of the senses. Auditory and visual references are eschewed at unexpected points, allotting a experience utterly reliant upon the recognition of the subject to his implications within it. It is his, her or their acknowledgement of their experience which validates this space. Never does the building become obtrusive, as it works at deep levels to relay in each breath agency to the spectator. The aforementioned Cartesian systems, juxtapositions between complex and primitive geometries and decisive choices in placements of irregular spaces allow a fluid existence of space wherein references against what the typical user is accoustomed to offer opportunities for defamiliarization. A Mechanized Pool for Fashion In Koolhaas’ “The Story of the Pool”, we find a derelict avant-garde, cast from its disconcerting motherland adrift to a Land whose image exceeds its own reality. Inasmuch as this transformation is through the foreseeable future tangential to other mass emigrations from Europe during its time of diaspora to the New World, its architectural foundations lie in the mechanization of this metamorphosis (or rather, in the Constructivist Pool’s case, stasis) facilitated by the pool and its human literalism. This is to say that both the pool and its swimmers are mutually ineffectual. Likewise, the arrival of an institution for high fashion in Downtown Los Angeles might produce a series of

Connor Gravelle

programmatic interactions unexpected and both repulsive yet productive for each party involved. We see in the migration a radicalism inherent to the world of fashion as removed from the social realities and economic contemporaneity as were the Constructivists in the fledgling Soviet Union. This Constituency, encapsulated

his object to the ends that our perception of reality is inexorably estranged from any frame of reference. A transient landscape crumples beneath our feet the erudition of all certainty and conclusion, a waypoint in the quest towards an impermanent state of urban liquidity.

utmost complacency and unwise joviality taken for granted their definitions, we experience a city who refutes the very existence of a trope. That is to say, no one part is allotted the subsistence required to compel a singular reading. A mishmashed tangle of parts reads before us, Spectators, a string of non sequitur arguThis blurred urbanity serves to free us ments against rationality. By doing this, from the choking complacency otherwise we ourselves are in effect empowered

We see in the migration a radicalism inherent to the world of fashion as removed from the social realities and economic contemporaneity… This Constituency, encapsulated within the object of their institution, are to arrive into the greatest dichotomy of metropolitan America… within the object of their institution, are to arrive into the greatest dichotomy of metropolitan America, a slice of urbanity in an otherwise suburban wasteland, a riffing drag of Congestion between the weavings of a bucolic superficiality. What it once knew, the welcome of Paris or the citadel of New York, are sure to be demolished. Realistically speaking, DTLA is unlikely to integrate well a conventional (or complacent) ideal of the interaction between the typical institution of haute couture and its constituencies, be they financial, creative or laboral. It is in this rejection of the conventional that SCI-Fa must sustain itself, and, in this essence, its architecture might manifest itself into a spatial sequence which seeks to dynamically displace all those involved. Los Angeles, or Epileptic Shock Los Angeles presents before us a temporal disconnect between the subject and

Portfolio 2012-2015

ridden across our lives. In effect, such a complete ostracization from the typical is achieved through the eradication of the normative perspective. Like the films so famously composed by Hollywood, Los Angeles has effectively become a compiled set of shots. As we pass across the city, this ludicrous reversal of roles flips the stale humanism so pervasive in other places. The continuity of the human eye having been substituted by something more akin to an induced epileptic shock, we discover a place constituted by misfit puzzle pieces or a whole from mutilated parts – specificity by complete unspecification. Primarily, this tactic explicates itself through the juxtaposition of Angeleno constituencies in a manner completely unique from any other form of urban composition. It is by the very fact that boutiques and homeless exist within meters of one another that we begin to lust the irrationality of LA.

as the actors in this deranged production. Both at once those on the stage and those before it, we foremost see performed a surreal entanglement of human wills and urban serendipities. The mere existence of the Fourth Wall is inconsequent at a theater where one can say with neither certainty nor authority who is the actor and who the witness. Where do we stand within this irreconcilable interplay of constituencies? Without much remorse, Los Angeles has fatefully removed the linear narrative to this problem of perception, founding superordinate to its imposition a world of theatrical transitions. Inasmuch as this approach foregoes the prescription of a generic definition for the city, it enables an infinite possibility of existences to propagate. This is the exponentially confusing LA we must learn to foster, a rampant urbanity which preemptively eludes all the

Whereas other cities have with both the

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(animation) vimeo.com/ 92414158 In addition to drawings, renderings and other conventional representations, an animation was produced to detail the experiential procession attained by the buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s circulatory systems. In particular, the staircase was explored as a productive means by which to explicate distinctly posthuman encounters between individuals, constituencies and various media within the building. This was by no means a purely presentational game, but rather a tool by which to guage the

experiential characteristics of the stairs and forms which assembled to conduct the flow of the buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s spaces. Nor does the animation deal only with rendered images of experience. A series of diagrams supplant the visuals as demonstrations of the formal intentions behind the spaces. Likewise, a calibrated soundtrack and series of vignettes portray the building as conducive to more than purely optical sensations.

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Regulating Geometry of Stairs (Right)

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Scoop Drawing: Vertical Core

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Interior Renderings

numbed complacency of quotidian life. Escape is Futile: LA Live™ As DTLA gentrifies, the oppressive invasion of new commerce can be felt weighing on nearly every square inch of the otherwise pure ground. Although some reluctance comes at labeling it either good or evil, it can certainly be said that one of the most imminent factors in the experiential forces involved within this change can be felt in the Fashion District, where the constant presence of LA Live seems to clutter the air with a thickened sense of disdain. As if constantly within reminder, the flicker of this phallic monument to consumption can be seen at the most unexpected times, glimmering between the buildings at the most advantageous moments in Los Angeles’ gridded wasteland of urbanity. One cannot help but to feel as if he has been observed, judged and subsequently overtaken by the sheer theatricality with which LA Live perches itself in the neighborhood. Allies and street corners which would in any other situation be of the most mundane nature become battlegrounds for a display of purely hierarchical glory on the part of the Ritz Carlton. This seems to be the unfortunate partition of gentrification reserved for the most putrid corner of the New Downtown, a gleaming symbol of both equal parts commercialism and façadism. As aforementioned, it cannot be purely ironic bathos that the building most resembles perhaps the most contentious piece of male anatomy, long accused itself of having imposed its presence in various places unwelcome. It feels very much as if this development, wallpapered by glitz of Coca-Cola, has become an urban Bastille, forever the ultimate representation of the rampantly overt capitalization of the distraught American urbanism. As is such, it can be purposed that the citizens of Los Angeles gather and ‘brick by brick’ (or sheet of glass by sheet of glass, in any case) disassemble this oppressive symbol of architectural subordination. After all, the destruction of the Bastille, it being important to note that a mere seven prisoners were freed in its liberation, is inherently an architectural spectacle by the people of a begrudgingly and long-accepted hierarchy. In many ways, architecture can come to represent something, irrespec-

Connor Gravelle

tive of the wills of architect, client or community. This brings the only acceptable conclusion: LA Live is a parasitic imposition by larger commercial initiates which effectively renders itself an enemy of the urban subset of Our Los Angeles. What can be done to cure such an ailment? Perhaps, the best action (having accepted the futile nature of any plan to dismantle the complex democratically) is to counter it with better architecture. If we come to the logical conclusion about the project’s representational consequences, then it stands by inverse logic that other architecture could work to reverse its effects. What, in the place of LA Live could help to impose a better urbanity on DTLA? Could, in fact, there be such a scenario as Architecture and Revolution? Beginnings and Ends in Architecture Contemporary architecture seems to have a complete fetishism with a dissolution between interior and exterior. Ambiguous spaces abound, and those currently at the helm seem pervasively to recommend such gradients. This is well within reason, but is there no value left to

Portfolio 2012-2015

the dramatic juxtaposition between that directly confronts us with reality by way which is inside and that which is outside? of total estrangement (“there is outside, here is inside”) and something more fluid Perhaps, a most successful architecture (“Where am I? Where are We”?). might take on an interplay between these states. Humanistically speaking, the phe- This can become particularly troubling nomenological experience ascertained when faced with such a heterogeneous from such an endeavor might produce environment as Los Angeles. What is the effects which would make those involved agency of a both a juxtaposition and an even more cogniscent of their positions integration in a landscape where nothing within the power of architecture. For exreally exists? That is to say, everything ample, when someone enters a building, in LA is in a state of complete disarray. they are subconsciously subscribing to Though the condition aforementioned is a world. This goes to conclude that they no catastrophic presistence, necessarare actively partaking in an experience ily, it causes an interesting predicament which exists both external to and intewhen it comes to the flow of space. grated within an extant reality. Their acTo break from a city’s fabric, there has to tions taken within such a space would, by be an established order against which logical consequence, have then to both first to work. The Guggenheim defies the establish and contest their relationship to gridded logic of orthagonal Manhattan the prior reality. At beast, this metamorfor a more organic presentation of reality. phosis of the individual might produce Likewise yet opposite, many works of an entirely novel perception of what once contemporary Parametricism purport was and what might be. Reality is by the completely to become extensions of rebest accounts such a fluid experience, alities already extant, deeply tied to both so haphazardly shaped by the mundane cultural and logical coherencies to the complacencies and parameters of our ends that the building almost vanishes. lives. [We] are LA An architecture must grasp this, presentLos Angeles holds a monopoly on the ing us with both versions: that which 189

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Scoop Drawing: Runway

The sheer urbanity of the city has presumed the potential for serendipitous human interaction, instead forging a vortex of complications, entanglements and overlaps. In these ephemeral crossings, the citizenry of the city coincide, their lives scraping one another in the most minuscule of strokes. To amplify this scar is to heighten their awareness of the transient nature which they cohabitate. 191

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infinitely variable situations of humankind. Woven into its fate-set tapestry is a simple mechanism which denies the possible creation of new scenarios. Blankly put, nothing new can emerge. Every variable has been fulfilled; every possible interaction has already been satisfied. We are therefore bound to an endless encore, a chain of repeat performances to the ends only that the monster prevails. The actors are unimportant, minor expendables under the shade of

the theatricality. Canonical Images in Fashion and Architecture Fashion has an inherently representational agenda, a trait too often ignored by both those within and outside the field. Such a facet of its dichotomy parallels conditions of architecture. To expose through serendipity these dichotomies is to critically engage fashion and architecture alike as fascinations of contemporary culture through material manifestations.

Alphabetical organizations arbitrate these juxtapositions, establishing at times new comparisons and at others reinforcing existing understandings. Dior’s New Look vs. Audrey Hepburn

“The building envelope is possibly the oldest and most primitive architectural Punks vs. Corporate Businessmen element. It materializes the separation of the inside and the outside, natural and 1950’s Housewife vs. Bra-Burning artificial and it demarcates private propCase Studyvs. Skid Row erty and land ownership (one of the most primitive political acts). When it becomes James Dean vs. Drag Queens at Stonea façade, the envelope operates also as wall a representational device in addition to Jacqueline Kennedy Idealic vs. Jacqueline its crucial environmental and territorial Kennedy Mourning roles.” (77) Twiggy vs. Tinker v. Des Moines

Bridget Bardot vs. Pamela Anderson Haute Couture vs. Everday Marilyn Monroe vs. Herself Woodstock vs. Army Tribe (via Riefenstahl) Fashion vs. Western Fashion Authoritarian Uniformity vs. Rejective Individuality (Nuremburg vs. Punks) Pertaining Quotes “I just use fashion… to talk about politics.” – Vivienne Westwood. “Give me time, and I’ll give you a revolution.” – Alexander McQueen. “I don’t want art for a few…” – William Morris. “Fashion is not just about trends. It’s about political history.” – Daphne Guinness. “Clothes are but a symbol of something hid deep beneath.” – Virginia Woolf Skin The following is a series of excerpts from 194

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Alejandro Zaera Polo’s “The Politics of the Envelope: A Political Critique of Materialism”; highlighted text below each quote explicates its relationship to the issues at hand:

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Especially in the context of Downtown Los Angeles, a disparaging set of economic and political factors have facilitated dramatic dynamics between social strata. In the same stretch of sidewalk, some of society’s most affluent walk beside some of their most (socioeconomically) downtrodden counterparts. Unfortunately, while urban planning may have allowed for (or at least functions complacently with) this estranged human operative, architecture has been less forthcoming in allowing such overlaps. Traditionally, it has merely fortified the horrid divisions of a society all-too-willing to forget the discrepancies it creates at full joviality among its ranks. Perhaps, this could be rectified by an architecture that fosters adjacencies. “The envelope exceeds the surface by incorporating a much wider set of attachments within the issues of construction and representation that converge in the design of the physical limit of a building. It includes the crust of space affected by the physical construction of the surface, by the scale and dimension of the space contained, by its permeability to daylight

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Portfolio 2012-2015

Scoop Drawing: Sectional Bifurcation

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Model Faรงade Detail

Corporate Conformity vs. Punk Individualism

Midcentury Domestication vs. Bra-Burning

Marilyn Monroe vs. Herself

Nonwestern Ideals of Beauty vs. Western Canonizations Thereof

Rebellious Self Expression vs. Mass Dogmatization

Connor Gravelle

Portfolio 2012-2015

In its dogmatic intake of trends, fashion introduces a series of dichotomies which speak to larger conditions of its socioeconomic contexts. Left as the media aftermath of its own existence – that is to say, in the form of newspapers, blogs, videos et cetera – this can be explicated as a set of didactic images. Across the façade, these are mapped to letters which themselves correspond to larger quotes. The randomization of this correspondence produces serendipitous adjacencies of these images. By selectively filtering light, this both produces a meaningful and affective quality of the building. From within, the effects of the light in terms of shadow and texture entice charged environments, while the macro legibility of the panels instigates discourse. From outside, a connection with urbanity is fostered.

On Fashion’s Dichotomies

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The set of the Viktor & Rolf show Saturday afternoon in the Tuileries looked like the inside of a white-tiled bathroom at some

The elaborate sets favored by Marc Jacobs, Mr. Ghesquière’s predecessor as artistic director of Louis Vuitton, were nowhere to be

This is why events unnerve me, They find it all, a different story, Notice whom for wheels are turning, Oh, I'll break them down,

Two popular color trends brightening this drawn-out winter are sapphire blue, which popped up last fall and came into full flower

On the evidence of the fall collections that wrapped last week, you might suppose that fashion had decided to return the favor, offer-

Architecture, soft or rigid, was an overarching theme for fall, as an influential handful of designers experimented with lines and

For many in the crowd, it was the return of the prodigal son after his sudden and bitter departure from Balenciaga and its parent

Minutes after the Chanel fall 2014 show ended at the Grand Palais on Tuesday morning, many in attendance converged on the set — a faux

The most surprising thing about the new Dries Van Noten exhibition, which runs through Aug. 31 at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs here,

Mr. Van Noten, 55, has been designing his namesake label since 1986. He has 28 years of collections to draw upon, even more if you count

“First of all, packing the clothes was already quite something,” he said. “Quite often there were people on my creative

But what is as notable about the show is how much of it is not by Dries Van Noten. There are garments by fellow designers who have

Arranged by loose themes, the show charts the vertiginous twistings of Mr. Van Noten’s imagination, and the way he absorbs and digests source