HYBRID
Scale
Studio with Ten Arquitectos
SUMMER 2014
Studio with Morphosis
SUMMER 2014
Studio with Makers of Barcelona
SUMMER 2015
Lectures from our Summer Speaker Series: Kai-Uwe Bergmann Bjarke Ingels Group
Ung-Joo Scott Lee Morphosis Architects
Cover design adapted from rendering by Chris Clements
A scale suggests a point of reference to understand the space of a situation, the constraints of a circumstance, or the limits of a context. Scales can be dynamic and multi-dimensional. They establish an extent, a magnitude, a size. As architects, we seek to exploit many balances to yield the speculative tensions between the figural and the literal; between past and future histories; between opposing dialectics. We consider the multiple meanings of measure, from the literal to the poetic. The rhythm or cadence of a structural logic imparts a sense of scale to an overall construct. The module of a material logic renders a unit of measure on a surface. The insertion of a building logic can amplify the fine and coarse grains of a city fabric. A textured surface marked by the passage of time makes present the scales of inhabitation within its folds. The slow filtering of light reveals a memory of the making process. The perceptual impact of a place is extended via phenomenological and figural extensions of the ideas. This circumstance is bigger or smaller than it seems. The senses of scale establish a point from which spatial understanding can emerge.
Summer Institute for Architecture 2014-2015
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The 2014 and 2015 Summer Institute for Architecture studios and speaker series speculate on the interrelated notions of hybrid scale and articulations. Through intensive design studios and workshops, students rigorously interrogated the multiple ways to test these ideas. How can we find the layers of complexity in the seemingly simple juxtaposition of opposites? What happens we start our design investigation from the joint or seam and expand to the scale of the building? Scale with its articulations allows us to consider the fabric of a city and how these can suggest the grain of a detail. Critical discussions of the theme played out between all levels of students, distinguished guest i http://www.eamesoffice.com/education/powers-of-ten-2/
critics, faculty, and guest speakers. The Summer Institute for Architecture has always been and remains a unique experience. It offers the promise of an architectural academic experience, rich in intensity and unparalleled to conventional practice. The SIA presents students with the opportunity to expand their understanding of broader ethical, social, cultural, technological, and historical issues via focused study of an architectural situation. The 2014 and 2015 SIA continued to build on the tradition and legacy of the Summer Institute for Architecture at CUA. We were honored to host award-winning architects Ung-Joo Scott Lee, Morphosis and Andrea Steele, TEN Arquitectos as our 2014 studio guest critics, and to collaborate with the Makers of Barcelona in the international component of the 2015 summer studio. Their collective presence in the design studio and at our school raised the intensity and caliber of discussion, engaging students in the critical process of design thinking. This journal brings together the work of the students, the guest critic, and the speakers to present a snapshot of an incredible experience. I am certain you will see the intensity, energy, and enthusiasm on the part of all the participants clearly evidenced in the range of work presented in this publication. As you share in the reflections on the complex landscapes of practice, theory and building, consider this: “We hear about scale every day, whether it be supertankers, stars burning thousands of light years away, the study of microscopic viruses, or global warming. Understanding scale, or as the Charles and Ray Eames said, ‘the effect of adding another zero,’ has the poweri to make us better scholars and better citizens.” Julie Ju-Youn Kim, RA AIA Director Summer Institute for Architecture
LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR
In combining the 2014 and 2015 Summer Institute journal we used the theme “Hybrid Scale” to create one cohesive piece. Working with diverging themes and ideas we were able to connect and create one essence throughout the journal by creating differences in image sizes and placement of text. The full summer experience at the School of Architecture and Planning at the Catholic University of America during the past two years was our main goal. Understanding the space and feel of the journal we designed a layout that emphasized the ideas from the two main summer studios: “Hybrid Scale” and “Articulations.” We found it important to keep the layout simple and clean, while working in varying images and text sizes. Spaced between the three studio classes, studio with Ten Arquitectos, studio with Morphosis, and studio with Makers of Barcelona, are two lectures that were held during the 2014 summer session, Kai-Uwe Bergmann, partner at BIG Architects, and Ung-Joo Scott Lee, principal at Morphosis Architects.
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The senses of scale establish a point from which spatial understanding can emerge. This is what Sara and I took from the student’s works produced in the summer studios here at CUArch during the past two years and are displaying for you to see. We hope you enjoy the work showcased and feel inspired to become a part of what is done at the School of Architecture and Planning at the Catholic University of America. Ariadne Cerritelli + Sara Gordon - Journal Design Ariadne Cerritelli - Journal Editor
LETTER FROM THE EDITORS
Studio with Ten Arquitectos
SUMMER 2014
12
ANDREA STEELE, TEN; MATTHEW GEISS, CUA; JULIE JU-YOUN KIM, CUA
Chris Clements Marie Hunnell Ben Heung Reem Sheikh William Kirmsse
Kai-Uwe Bergmann
SUMMER 2014
74
SUMMER 2015
90
SUMMER 2014
112
SUMMER 2014
128
Partner at BIG Architects Summer Institute for Architecture Lecture Series
Studio with Makers of Barcelona ERIC JENKINS, CUA; JANET BLOOMBERG, KUBE
Miguel Novillo Amilcar Ferrufino Alexandra Paintsil Lorie Lonchamp
Philip Obioha
Nguyen Nguyen Begona Blasco Mike Egnor Vincent Mazzella Elizabeth Bezilla
Ung-Joo Scott Lee Principal at Morphosis Architects Summer Institute for Architecture Lecture Series
Summer Institute for Architecture 2014-2015
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Studio with Morphosis
UNG-JOO SCOTT LEE, MORPHOSIS; MATTHEW GEISS, CUA; JULIE JU-YOUN KIM, CUA
Chris Clements Marie Hunnell Ben Heung Reem Sheikh William Kirmsse
TABLE OF CONTENTS
East River Plaza Apartment Complex El Barrio
Tower 1 Typical Plan
East River Plaza Apartment Complex El Barrio
Tower 1
gym
Tower 1 Atypical Plan
Lower Courtyard
1”=8’-0”
Lower Lobby
Tower 2
Floor 4
1”=16’-0”
Tower 3
Tower 1
Community Garden
Bar
Tower 1 Typical Plan Residential Library
mail Room
Upper Courtyard
tower 2
Upper Main Lobby
William Kirmsse
Tower 1
gym
Tower 1 Atypical Plan
Lower Courtyard
1”=8’-0”
Summer Institute for Architecture 2014-2015
10 Lower Lobby
Tower 2
Floor 4
1”=16’-0”
Tower 3
Tower 1
Community Garden
Bar
Residential Library
mail Room
Upper Courtyard
tower 2
Upper Main Lobby
William Kirmsse
‘3D Cities - Opportunities for a New Public Realm’ 3D Cities: Could this be a blueprint for the ultimate sustainable city? But what are the challenges for retaining cohesive communities if cities are reconfigured into horizontal layers? As cities reach ever increasing heights, multilevel access between buildings is becoming an inevitability. Does this concept fragment and threaten the critical mass that makes cities work? How can architects be central in, and benefit from, addressing this issue directly? Neighborhood: El Barrio, also known as East Harlem, encompasses the northeastern Manhattan area from 96th Street to 139th Street, between the East River and Fifth Avenue – a community known for a strong Puerto Rican cultural identity but is also a diverse community including: Mexican, Caribbean, West African, Middle-Eastern, Chinese, and many others.
Studio with Ten Arquitectos
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Site: In 2010, a large scale development was constructed along the FDR drive, between 116th and 119th Streets within the heart of El Barrio. This big box center, comprised of two levels of retail and parking, created an impenetrable mass of 90’ high walls that disrupted the urban fabric of this small scale residential neighborhood, severing the physical and visual connections to the East River and offering only blank facades at the ends of these intimate cobblestone streets.
HYBRID SCALE - Project: This location, between the East River and El Barrio, affords unique opportunities to address two very contrasting conditions. At once, the project is firmly rooted within the context of low density townhouses and small scale manufacturing and retail buildings. Yet, along the East River, this project will be seen as part of a much larger scale of past and present waterfront developments – to create a dialogue with the increasingly vertical skyline of NYC as a whole. The agenda for the studio is to analyze this dual urban condition and create an architectural design that both responds to the past development in order to integrate this site back into the neighborhood, at the same time, address the larger issue of how cities can grow, now and in the future. The proposals should seek to transform the existing site into a dense and vibrant, residential development with a strong community and cultural component. Program: El Barrio, like many neighborhoods within New York City, lacks affordable housing, communitybased retail, small business and entrepreneurial resources and accessibility to a safe, public outdoor space. The Studio is should only use this as a starting point and is encouraged to identify other programs that will help to re-activate this site and the surrounding street life.
STUDIO WITH TEN ARQUITECTOS ANDREA STEELE, TEN; MATTHEW GEISS, CUA; JULIE JU-YOUN KIM, CUA
Studio with Ten Arquitectos 16
Studio with Ten Arquitectos 18
Studio with Ten Arquitectos 20
East Harem, also know as Spanish Harlem, or El Barrio, is a culturally diverse neighborhood located on the northeastern side of Manhattan island. While home to a number of cultural groups, it is most know for its strong Puerto Rican presence, and this cultural identity permeates the neighborhood. While vibrant, East Harlem is also relatively poor, and suffers from crime and lack of opportunity. The primary goal of this project was to make use of the area on top of the shopping center structure, in such a way as to bring value not only to the property owners, but to the community at large. As one important feature lacking in El Barrior is a large public gathering space, the need for a plaza suitable for events was seen to be the highest priority. In this design, inspired by hill towns of Spain and Italy, the centerpiece is a large plaza situated on top of the highest section (115ft) of the building/ parking structure, marked from a distance by a 40 story tower. The main plaza seeks to produces a enclosed space, but with hints of the openness beyond and is edged by opportunities to enjoy the elevated view.
Studio with Ten Arquitectos
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The top can be reached internally by elevators, or externally by means of a ramp that winds around the western flamk of the building, that features varied programming along its length. A smaller secondary plaza at the 70ft level is a hub for small retail. The method for achieving this is mainly additive, and much of the underlaying building can remain untouched.
Streetwalk Sketch
CHRIS CLEMENTS
Studio with Ten Arquitectos
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At the top level of the ramp, visitors are invited to pause and make the most of the view. Cafes are situated on the “roofs� of the buildings that line the edge of the structure.
First Phase Sketch
On the first phase of the ramp, we are below the height of the surrounding buildings. Retail is placed along the edge, as well as an opportunity to enter the larger retail structure. We are given on a view of note, an opportunity to look down 117th stree.
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The second phase of the ramp begins to extend above the heights of nearby buildings. An undulating grass strip runs back along the ramp on to the existing structure, forming a thin space where people can rest and look to the north. Beneath the ramp, shallow buildings continue the rhythm of the urban fabric. Second Phase Sketch
Third Phase Sketch
Studio with Ten Arquitectos 28
Section Sketches
Site Plan Sketch
Hill Towns use unique pathways to blend vertical ascent into horizontal circulation. Through a series of interventions we create a “Hill Town” on top of the existing structure, connected to the community fabric below
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Through a series of interventions we create a “Hill Town” on top of the existing structure connected to the community fabric below
Rooftop of existing building
Studio with Ten Arquitectos
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I focused on studying specific programs that catered to the pedestrian and vehicular experiences and how they could appear with the method of carving and insertion.
D SCALE|EL BARRIO
N
M.ARCH III
AL
RIAN
6TH
STR
EET
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ON
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PE
D
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11
IAN
AC
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EL R
TIV
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EXISTING GARAGE
AY
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OLD O HWAY
STRONG VEHICULAR ACTIVITY
116TH ST. ELEVATION
PLEASANT AVE
EXISTING GARAGE
E
ENCE
OF D &
PEDESTRIAN CIRCULATION
Series of terraced planes leading up to the destination with program embedded within the procession
PLEASANT AVE
VEHICULAR CIRCULATI
MARIE HUNNELL PROGRAM FOR BOTH PEDESTRIAN AND VEHICLE
TOURIST PEDESTRIAN ACTIVITY
GOALS:
116TH ST. ELEVATION ENTRANCE TO EL 11 6TH 116TH ST. ELEVATION BARRIO OFF FDR STR STR EE EE SERIES OF PLANES CARVING INSERTION T T EXISTING GARAGE STR STR CREATE ANTHRESHOLD O ON G BETWEENCOSTCO ELGBARRIO SERVICES PE CREATE PAEDTHRESHOLD DE PLEASANT AVE EXISTING GARAGE FDR AND THE FDR HIGHWAY STR BETWEEN ELESBARRIO TRI I AN AN MOSTLY UNUSED PLEASANT AVE EXISTING GARAGE AND THE FDR HIGHWAY AC AC TIV TIV ITY FDR CATER TO BOTH THE ITY EXISTING EXISTING STRONG STRONG PEDESTRIAN AND GARAGE CATER TO BOTH THE GARAGE 6 VEHICULAR LANE HIGHWAY VEHICULAR VEHICULAR EXPERIENCE PEDESTRIAN AND ACTIVITY CIRCULATION ACTIVITY PEDESTRIAN VEHICULAR CIRCULATION VEHICULAR EXPERIENCE NO PEDESTRIAN PEDESTRIAN CIRCULATION VEHICULAR CIRCULATION ACTIVITY TAKE ADVANTAGE OF TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE UNDERUTILIZED THE UNDERUTILIZED GARAGE AT 116TH & GARAGE AT 116TH & FDR PLEASANT AVE FDR PROGRAM FOR BOTH PEDESTRIAN FDR PLEASANT AVE 116TH ST. ELEVATION 116TH ST. ELEVATION AND VEHICLE
GOALS:
FD R
FD R
6TH
GOALS:
PROGRAM FOR BOTH PEDESTRIAN AND VEHICLE
CREATE A THRESHOLD BETWEEN EL BARRIO AND THE FDR HIGHWAY
APPROACH:
LIGHT PLEASANT AVEEXISTING GARAGE APPROACH: VISUAL CONNECTIVITY
PLEASANT AVE
CATER TO BOTH THE PEDESTRIAN AND VEHICULAR EXPERIENCE
FDR
VISUAL ATTRACTOR
OPEN SPACE
PEDESTRIAN CIRCULATION
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE UNDERUTILIZED GARAGE AT 116TH & FDR
FDR GARAGE EXISTING
VEHICULAR CIRCULATION PEDESTRIAN CIRCULATION
VEHICULAR CIRCULATION
ENCLOSE SPACE
DEFINE SPACE
PLEASANT AVE
FLEXIBLE SPACE:
SERIES OF PLANES
PLEASANTFOR AVEBOTH PEDESTRIAN PROGRAM AND VEHICLE
FDR PROGRAM FOR BOTH PEDESTRIAN AND VEHICLE
SERIES OFCARVING PLANES
FDR
CARVING INSERTION
INSERTION
SPACE THAT CAN HOST MULTIPLE PROGRAMS
APPROACH:
PARKING WEEKDAYS
FARMERS MARKET WEEKENDS
STABLE SPACE:
NES
CARVING INSERTION SERIES OF PLANES LIGHT CARVING LIGHT SPACE THAT CONSISTENTLY HOSTS ONE PROGRAM
INSERTION
VISUAL CONNECTIVITY
VISUAL CONNECTIVITY LIBRARY
OPEN SPACE VISUAL ATTRACTOR
OPEN SPACE
DEFINE SPACE 34
FLEXIBLE SPACE:
VISUAL ATTRACTOR ENCLOSE ENCLOSE SPACE SPACE DEFINE SPACE
FLEXIBLE SPACE:
Studio with Ten Arquitectos
SPACE THAT CAN HOST MULTIPLE PROGRAMS SPACE THAT CAN HOST MULTIPLE PROGRAMS
LIGHT
PARKING WEEKDAYS
VISUAL CONNECTIVITY
N SPACE
FARMERS MARKET WEEKENDS
PARKING WEEKDAYS
FARMERS MARKET WEEKENDS
VISUAL CONNECTIVITY
OPEN SPACE
VISUAL ATTRACTOR
ENCLOSE VISUAL ATTRACTOR
Series of planes/ carve through planes for light and terraces/ insertionSPACE of program between planes
DEFINE SPACE
STABLE SPACE: FLEXIBLE SPACE:
DEFINE SPACE
STABLE SPACE: SPACE THAT CONSISTENTLY HOSTS ONE PROGRAM
SPACE THAT CONSISTENTLY HOSTS ONE PROGRAM
ENCLOSE SPACE
FDR
FDR
& PLAZA
CARVED
5 MARKET
INSERTION
CARVED
FLEXIBLE
INSERTION
STABLE
OVERLOOK TOWARD EL BARRIO CAFE
ATER
CARVED INSERTION
4 LIBRARY & PLAZA
RESTAURANT
OFFICE SPACE
TAKE OUT RESTAURANT
CARVED
FLEXIBLE PAVILION
INSERTION
STABLE
CAFE
RETAIL
RETAIL
PROGRAM: -0”
GRAMS: 1/8” = 1’-0”
POSSIBLE PROGRAM: 1/8” = 1’-0” POSSIBLE PROGRAMS: 1/8” = 1’-0” PARKING
RIVE IN MOVIE THEATER RECEPTION AREA
OVERLOOK TOWARD WATERFRONT
LIBRARY
SMALL SCALE THEATER
RECEPTION AREA RIVERSIDE DINING
CONCESSION DINING BOOK&FAIR RESTAURANT PARKING
PARKING Carving for light and terraces to start ascent
PERFORMANCE PLATFORM PARKING
PARKING
PARKING
FARMERS MARKET
PLEASANT AVE
EXISTING GARAGE
Pedestrian Circulation PEDESTRIAN CIRCULATION
PLEASANT AVE
Pleasant Avenue
VEHICULAR CIRCULATION
Vehicular Circulation
ProgramBOTH for both Pedestrian and Vehicle PROGRAM FOR PEDESTRIAN AND VEHICLE
36
Studio with Ten Arquitectos
CARVING
FDR
INSERTION
Bring the pedestrian and vehicular traffic from 116th upward toward the destination. Program provides transition from the two modes of arrival
FDR
VED
FLEXIBLE
FLEXIBLE
RTION
STABLE
STABLE
5 MARKET
CARVED
INSERTION
LOOK WARD ARRIO
CAFE
OFFICE SPACE
TAKE OUT RESTAURANT
CAFE
CARVED
FLEXIBLE PAVILION
INSERTION
STABLE
FLEXIBLE
RETAIL
4 LIBRARY &
CARVED
RESTAURANT
STABLE
INSERTION
POSSIBLE PROGRAM: 1/8” = 1’-0” POSSIBLE PROGRAMS: 1/8” = 1’-0” OVERLOOK TOWARD WATERFRONT
LIBRARY
SMALL SCALE THEATER
PARKING
OVERLOOK TOWARD WATERFRONT PARKING
LIBRARY RECEPTION AREA RIVERSIDE DINING
RESTAURANT
PERFORMANCE PLATFORM ARKING
PARKING
FARMERS MARKET
LIBRARY
BOOK FAIR RESTAURANT
PARKING
RESTAURANT
PARKING PARKING
Flexible versus Stable spaces
OVERLOO
1 THEATER
5 M 2 RETAIL & PLAZA
SECTION NEAR 116TH ST 1/16” = 1’-0”
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Section near 116th ST
SEC
1/16” =
3 CARVED SPACE & GARDEN
5 MARKET
SECTION NEAR 117TH ST 1/16” = 1’-0”
Section near 117th ST
4 LIBRARY & RESTAURANT
1 THEATER
CARVED INSERTION
POSSIBLE PROGRAMS: 1/8” = 1’-0”
DRIVE IN MOVIE THEATER CONCESSION & DINING
PARKING
Studio with Ten Arquitectos
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Possible Program Section
PE PL
4
FLEXIBLE STABLE
POSSIB
SMALL SCALE THEATER RECEPTION AREA
DINING
G
PERFORMANCE PLATFORM PARKING
Possible Program Section
4 LIBRARY & RESTAURANT
CARVED INSERTION
POSSIBLE PROGRAMS: 1/8” = 1’-0” OVERLOOK TOWARD WATERFRONT
PARKING
LIBRARY
A
BOOK FAIR RESTAURANT
PARKING PARKING
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Possible Program Section
RFRONT
FLEXIBLE STABLE
PARKING
OVERLOOK TOWARD WATERFRONT
LIBRARY RIVERSIDE DINING
FARMERS MARKET
Possible Program Section
RESTAURANT
PARKING
I focused on studying the idea of physical and figurative lifting though elevating the area to distinguish the place among its surroundings creating a procession towards a higher destination above the Shopping Mall that overlooks the river.
Studio with Ten Arquitectos
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-Lifting up to create a sense of place and identity -Lifting up the place out of the shadows of the faceless black side of the big mall building -Lifting the area out of the underutilized “dead� corner of the neighborhood -Creating a community, a node, a hub. I first looked at different strategies to implement concept and programming goals by carving through the building, creating a path that waves through buildings as a hilltop town, and through the use of cascades, a series of progressive platforms.
Scheme Tiers Sketch
BENJAMIN HEUNG
Studio with Ten Arquitectos 46
Concept Sketch I
Site Concept Sketch
Studio with Ten Arquitectos 48
Concept Sketch II
Concept Sketch III
Studio with Ten Arquitectos
50
Scheme Tiers Concept Sketch I
Scheme Tiers Concept Sketch II
Studio with Ten Arquitectos 52
Scheme Tiers Underlay
Scheme Tiers
Studio with Ten Arquitectos 54
Section Perspective
Studio with Ten Arquitectos
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I worked on designing a fluid space that gave access to retail and living units while giving views back to the neighborhood. I utilized the parking building to turn it to residential and retail on the first floor and relocated the vehicles circulation to 188th St. The main pedestrian path would be on 117th St. I created insertions of circulation connecting the two buildings together extending the floors and terraces toward the street inserting retail plazas along the path.
E1
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MA IN
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Pat h
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Ex
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Proposal
FD
RD
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Ple asa nt Av e
th
Site Analysis
Site Analysis
REEM SHEIKH
Studio with Ten Arquitectos
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First Phase Concept Site Sktech
First Phase Concept Street View Sketch
Veh i
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Proposal
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Ple asa nt Av e
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Vertical Circulations
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Existing Con Proposed Co
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Proposed Condition
farmers market
playground
FDR Drive
amphitheater
water fountains
community gardens
sculpture garden
60 FDR Drive
Pleasant Ave
Section-4
4
Studio with Ten Arquitectos
farmers market
playground
FDR Drive
Pleasant Ave
amphitheater
water fountains
farmers market
playground
FDR Drive sculpture garden
Different Processions
community gardens
water fountains
Pleasant Ave
amphitheater
Section-4 sculpture garden
community gardens
FDR Drive
4
Pleasant Ave
Section-4
Section I
roposed Condition
ction-4
62
FDR Drive
4
Studio with Ten Arquitectos
Pleasant Ave
Section II
Section III
FDR Drive
3
2 1
Pleasant Ave
FDR Drive
Pleasant Ave
Section IV
The work I decided to look into was a ferry terminal design, bridges connecting to the other side of FDR, and an East River Plaza apartment complex “El Barrio.” The spaces I am trying to create here are spaces that activate views, using the parallel lines of the existing 117th and 118th while meshing them with the parallel lines of the water’s edge which I extended in order to give more space. By doing this I am combing the city back to the water’s edge, literally, through the bridging and figuratively in the combination pulling lines from each to come to this design.
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I designed a terraced roof that allows the sun to shine through into the ferry terminal creating a good amount of natural sunlight. However, the terraced design is created this way to incorporate the rhythm of El Barrio’s network of housing at different heights which I also incorporated in designing different level towers for the apartment complex.
Ferry Terminal Concept Sktech
WILLIAM KIRMSSE
Studio with Ten Arquitectos
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First Phase Concept Section Sketch
First Phase Concept Section Sektch Close Up
Studio with Ten Arquitectos 68
Tower 3 Typical Plan
Tower 3 Typical Plan
Tower 2 Typical Layout 1”=16’-0”
70
Studio with Ten Arquitectos
Tower 2 Typical Layout Tower 2 Upper Plan
First Phase Concept Sketch I
1”=8’-0”
1”=16’-0” Tower 2 Lower Plan
First Phase Concept Sketch II
Tower 2 Typical Layout 1”=16’-0”
Tower 2 Upper Plan
Tower 1 Section Tower II Typical Floor Plan
1”=8’-0”
Tower 2 Section
Tower 2 Lower P
Tower 1 Section
Tower 2 Section
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Tower I Section
1”=32’-0”
Tower II Section
Tower 3 Section
Tower III Section
June 11, 2014, 5:30pm at the District Architecture Center, Washington DC, Kai-Uwe Bergmann. Let me provide you a behind the scenes tour of BIG’s process. We have been in the United States for nearly four years now, since the end of 2010. We have been able to bring some of the thinking that has been born over the past few years in Europe, Copenhagen specifically, and introduce some of the ideas and thinking process to the United States. I am going to start with a couple of projects that I hope will expand your definition of what architecture is and what architects do. About a year and a half ago, you all know that Super Storm Sandy hit New York City and the entire Northeast seaboard and a blacked out Lower Manhattan was pretty much the aftermath. I lived in the dark part; it was kind of like a new neighborhood was created all of a sudden. You have all heard of SOHO and Tribeca, well suddenly there was SOPO: South of Power, and I lived in that darkness for about two weeks, and our office is located in that area too. We were very much affected personally by it and have thus tried to figure out how we, as architects, come to work on solutions so that it does not happen again. When you look at the topography of Manhattan, what flooded, interestingly enough, was everything that was filled up over the past four centuries by successive generations. The areas of infill in turn became the flooded areas.
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Our solution to prevent another flooding like Sandy produced is to build a preventative infrastructure, a protective wall that is so much more than just a wall. Think of the High Line where you have a former infrastructure – an abandoned railway and now you place a park on top of it- a social program on top. We call this social infrastructure. If you can consider, similar to the way the High Line is a hybrid of activities, we are imagining the same for the BIG U. The BIG U basically is a protective berm that doubles as a social space that incorporates lots of different activities, so that the people of New York are protected against floods or sea surges, and actually is an park and open space amenity for the 99.9% of the time when it is not preventing flooding. When you look at the BIG U, it stretches from West 57th Street all the way to East 40th Street and you have all these sort of neighborhoods: you have Chelsea, you have
Tribeca, you have Lower Manhattan, you have Lower East Side. There are natural pinch points along the areas that flood that are just there because of the natural topography of the land. We have used these pinch points to create a protection system that functions very much like the hull of a ship where you have segments- when one segment floods it does not bring down the entire ship. Likewise the 10 miles of continuous protection are subdivided into compartments so that when one area is breached the entire city does not flood. Imagine a prevention system made up of these compartments or what we call Resiliency Districts. These Resiliency Districts each have social programs that are unique to that neighborhood. It is a little bit like Robert Moses’ big idea thinking with Jane Jacobs’ social sensitivity; we are creating Moses and Jacobs’stepchild. Think how these ideas for Resiliency Districts could really populate the entire East Coast, or in our case, the island of Manhattan. What does that wall mean? Well the wall, itself, needs to prevent a hundred year flood, or at least very least protect against it. That means that the wall is seven to eight feet tall and that is a pretty huge barrier. So, instead of a wall that acts as a pure barrier, we are looking at a way of making it into something that people can sit on, something that people could have events on, among so many other uses. You can see that there are a lot of different ways that the wall can function as it wraps around 10 miles of Manhattan. Instead of having a New York in SOPO, the BIG U wraps all the way around and protects the city. The BIG U was conceived out of a competition that was run by HUD, the Housing of Urban Development Department; they have been allocated to invest over a billion dollars into resiliency efforts in the Sandy affected regions. Six teams were selected as winners of the competition out of a 144 teams, and now these ideas that we have been working on for about nine months are starting to get seed funding so that we can try to create one of these Resiliency Districts. We are going to start with the Lower East Side and over the next three to five years, one of these Resiliency Districts will actually be there with the berm, with the activities, and with the park that the people of the Lower East Side can enjoy.
Battery Park Berm, Aerial Portrait, Image by BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group
BJARKE INGELS GROUP KAI-UWE BERGMANN, PARTNER
We are very proud and honored to be working on such an important project for our new home in New York City. This is our office in New York. We work in little groups; I am sure many of you do this in school and in your professional lives and I would like to now show you several other projects based on the ideas outlined above that pertain to Social Infrastructure.
SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE: COPENHAGEN HARBOUR BATH
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Our first project, Copenhagen Harbour Bath is a tiny little project. This is also an example of how you can actually start your practice, or start your thinking; it does not need to be a 10 mile protective berm for Manhattan, it can be a very small idea that has much bigger ambitions. This is Copenhagen Harbour, which was very similar to New York. Copenhagen has historically been all about trade and commerce so the entire water front was full of piers, factories, and soot and no one wanted to live on the water; people moved away from the water because it smelled so bad. Here you can sort of see what it looked like just 30-40 years ago with the factories, warehouses, and ships. You did not have anyone living near the water. Then in the 1980’s grassroot groups pushed those industries to the periphery of the city and transformed the harbor industrial sites into a string of parks. They spent fifteen years cleaning the water through passive means with algae so that it was clean enough to swim in. They spent 200,000 EUR, about $275,000, to build this wooden platform which had a series of different pools and baths. It is extremely successful; you have kids there from when it opens up in June all the way through the beginning of October. This former industrial harbourfront is now called “Copencabana”. It is also interesting from a real estate perspective. A $275,000 investment increased the property value of all of the surrounding apartments by 50%. So, overnight, because people suddenly said, “We live in ‘Copencabana’, real estate agents started using the distance as an amenity to their properties; it is also the same thing with the High Line. If any of you were in New York 15-20 years ago people did not live by the High Line because it was a nasty place; now everybody wants to live by the High Line. So, roughly speaking, a $250 million investment actually has created $2 billion worth of tax revenue. I think it is important for architects to
consider these kinds of ramifications and consider, “…whatever I do here may have benefitial effects of things happening elsewhere”. You can start small and have rather large positive consequences of impact.
DANISH MARITIME MUSEUM Another project that we just finished about a year ago is the Danish Maritime Museum in Helsingør, a city just about an hour north of Copenhagen. The Museum is near Hamlets Castle, one of the only UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Denmark. Now, when you receive a designation of UNESCO, it basically states that you must preserve the castle for generations to come which means any of the adjacent properties are highly regulated. This is an image of what that port area looked like just 50 years ago when it was one of Denmark’s main ship building ports. At the time when the port was the heart of industry for Helsingør, no one really thought much about UNESCO. When the shipbuilding went to Korea and other places around the world, the city lost its soul, its heart. The city thus decided to transform the former industrial harbor into a cultural heart of the city. At first they built a theater but then decided to build the Danish Maritime Museum. They made a brief, or a tender, and they said, “We are going to take the water out of a former dry dock and we are going to throw the museum in and seal it over with a roof.” Then UNESCO confirmed the structure was not allowed to pop up out of the ground because it would detract from the Helsingor Castle that is just adjacent to it. So we had to create a museum that would be identifiable by being invisble - that is a pretty tough tender to do. Rather than to fill the void, we decided it would make more sense to dig a little further and place the Museum like a donut around the dry dock. The walls of the dry dock had to be extensively and thoroughly repaired. The dry dock thus sits preserved in our concept like a fossil of the industrial past of Helsingør with galleries looping all the way around. You have these criss crossing bridges that connect the different galleries. Notice the benches as well as seats that surround the edge of the drydock. They function also as dots and dashes, that would otherwise in Morse code state, “Danish Maritime Museum”. You enter into the Museum going down the zigzag bridge and the
Danish Maritime Museum, Image by Luca Santiago Mora
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8 House, Image By Jens Lindhe
actual dry dock is always accessible to everyone in the city, anyone that wants to go down there. They have performances and they also have, of course, a theater inside the museum. This is the stair that takes you back to the top. The café has the dry dock’s concrete walls moving into the café. The exhibits, themselves, are really about the whole Maritime tradition of the early wooden ships to now the super sized cargo containers ships; it is a really nice exhibition and I would really encourage you guys to head over to Copenhagen and see it.
HEDONISTIC SUSTAINABILITY This brings me to an idea that we call Hedonistic Sustainability. That, literally means sustainability does not have to hurt; it is not about taking cold showers to preserve energy or not taking long flights to reduce our carbon footprint. Nor is it about small windows to reduce heat gain or thick walls of insulation. We feel that we can create a better quality of life that people would like to be certain of by becoming extremely efficient in how we use our natural resources. It is really about what we call energy loops, and the idea here is that the byproduct of one cycle feeds into another. For instance, take the frozen food section in a supermarket. Through the continual use of refrigeration, you create a byproduct of heat. In every supermarket today, I am sure that they take that heat from the frozen food aisle and they just redirect it to the outside air. How ridiculous that we spend so much energy on just one cycle and discarding the very byproduct that is desirable in another cycle. What if you had apartment buildings above supermarket and you took the byproduct heat through refrigeration to create heated bathroom floors in every unit, or what if you put a swimming pool on top and you had a heated swimming pool in the darkest winter. Suddenly the discarded byproducts are actually doing something good. That is what we are looking for, to intelligently design our buildings, our cities, to take advantage of these loops. How do we do this? Well, the following project demonstrates this. The woman depicted here, you could say, has the crappiest job in the world; it is to deal with our waste. She is the director of the Copenhagen waste energy plant. So, all of the people’s refuse in Copenhagen comes to her plant and gets
processed and converted into electricity and heat. She – the director - asked architects to participate in creating a new building, and asked that the building become a gift to the city. Now I do not know about you guys, but regarding energy plants… I have never heard the word “architecture”, “gift”, or“city” ever used when describing an energy plant. We architects very seldom move into this kind of program. But, take a look, engineers who typically design power plants basically build boring boxes with smoke stacks and when you look they are sometimes very close to residential neighborhoods and make no attempt at being good neighbors. No wonder the residents do not want to live next to these, they are monstrous! What we were asked to do, as architects, was to find a way to take something that is necessary, an energy plant, place it in the city, and then transform NIMBY’s into YIMBY’s, people who would say yes that is what I want in my backyard. You take a country like Denmark, 5.5 million people, 54% of their waste gets burned into energy, 42% gets recycled, and 4% goes in landfill. Let’s take America, 1% gets recycled and 99% goes into landfill on average across this country. Now, when we won this competition I got a phone call from the Pentagon in Washington D.C. to congratulate us on winning this project. It makes no sense that you would send American soldiers to fight for oil when you are taking that same energy source, trash, and are burying it in landfills in every city across America. Most trash, if you consider it, is plastic/styrofoam, and that is oil. You can discover ways to find these double loops/triple loops to use the energy. Here is the energy plant right in the heart of the city and the Queen of Denmark lives right there so she sees this and it will look good. With 3 kilograms of trash you can burn a light bulb for four hours or heat, through steam heat, for five hours. One ton of trash is the same as one and two thirds barrels of oil. The question is what can we do? This building that we are designing is, literally, going to be the biggest building in the history of Denmark; it is also going to be one of the tallest. This is the current waste energy plant, it is sixty years old and is past due its expiration date. What is interesting is that they have surrounded it with all
these kind of sports – wakeboarding, go-karting, sailing- so we thought that we should combine our power plant with more activities. In essence we love snow, all of us love snow, and in Denmark it snows three to four months of the year and we have mountains of trash, so we are placing a ski slope on top of this energy plant so you will be able to come and ski down. Denmark is one of the flattest countries in Europe so we are creating our own mountains - we call this white trash ;-) So, in winter you will be able to ski in real snow and in the summer time, a synthetic mat of recycled synthetic plastic that covers the mountain and acts like snow to skis. You can snowboard or ski on the mat and then when the snow comes, the mat serves as an insulator, so it keeps the snow there for a longer time.
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We won the competition and it is now under construction. We are mocking up the facade planters because we are going to recreate the tree line of a mountain so you can, at some point, ski in between trees. Instead of having a single column of smoke coming out, we are going to produce smoke rings so that every time there is one ton of carbon burned in this facility, the chimney sends out a smoke ring so everyone can see it. When you come to Copenhagen in 2018, you will be able to ski down this power plant and see the puff of smoke rings every so often. The idea here, is when it is just a continuous smoke trail you have no idea of actually how much the facility is using or what is happening. Humans are very habitual beings, so we work with information. If we can see and calculate how many tons of carbon are being processed in this plant and when we start to see a bunch of smoke rings puffing out then maybe we will actually reduce our own use, our own consumption, to have an effect on the way that this facility is being used. Now I would like to talk about transportation systems. We were approached by AUDI, the car manufacturer. AUDI sees architects creating visions of the future with smiley, happy people riding bicycles and non of our futuristic renderings show any cars. They were like, “You architects are going to put us out of business if you do not put cars in your renderings!” They asked for our help in exploring the idea of driver-less cars.
Most cities current idea of dealing with the traffic problem is just adding lanes. In Los Angeles people are always moving in and out of the city. We felt that driverless technology allows us to rethink cities and city planning. The basic tenant of a driverless car, is that the car uses GPS information to navigate and does not require a driver. The physical distance between the cars, because of the GPS sensors, is significantly reduced. If you look at the distance between normal traffic, it is much larger because everyone factors in human error and basic bad driving skills. If you consider that the advancements of driverless technologies have already existed in subways; then you’ll realize we have had driverless subways for years, there is a lot of places where there are no more people driving or controlling subways, including Copenhagen. You have also had cruise control in airplanes for decades. People do not mind, they are sitting in the airplane and they do not even think about it. So the idea that cars are becoming more and more automated that they are really taking on more and more of that thinking allows us to think about how cities are constructed and built. This is a city, Barcelona, built entirely by foot. In the next slide, you’ll see the same city, but now with the horse and carriage, the boulevard shows up and the city gains a new courtyard geometry. This is followed by cities designed for public transportation under the Soviets system where you have the Moscow subway creating garden cities all around the metro stations. There were large public housing blocks, but then you would also, at the same time, have a ton of public space. And this is LA, built entirely on the automobile after the automobile was invented. When you take that section of Highway 10 and 405 and you scale it to the Medieval section of center of Copenhagen. It is just mind-boggling how much space we give to transporting people in two different directions. Speed requires certain distances to actually do something, to react. We have handed over the design of our cities to the Department of Transportation and to transportation engineers, because they tell us where they need the cars to go and then we fill in the blanks with housing and everything else.
The question is, if we did not have to deal with traffic the way it is now, what could be a new paradigm and how could cities evolve? A hundred years ago you were traveling through London by horse and carriage at 16 km/hr; today, if you try to get around London you are still traveling the same distance at the same speed of 16 km/hr. So, it is not as if what we have done has actually solved anything, it has basically maintained everything as it was. Here you have a very perfect example of driverless cars and the amount of space you need. With driverless cars you are allowed to have twelve cars, in the same space occupied by four cars today. Today 15% of cities are paved and used for getting people from one place to the other. We could, if we wanted, do the same thing, same amount of people in five per cent of that space. That allows us 10% for population growth. This newly allocated area could be used to create the ability to finance a new type of street, a new type of technology. Today, when you come to a cross section, you have unwritten rules of the road of how to deal with a cross section. What if you sat in a car, you told a car where to go, and like swarms of fish, it would just drive off and it would take the easiest, shortest way from point A to point B. So, it is the idea that swarms of fish could actually act as an organizing principle. It already is to a degree, when you consider New York. You do not drive, you sit in the back of a yellow cab and you tell someone where to go. You do not think of anything else from that point on until you are at your destination. So, someone else, a computer, in this case a cab driver, is thinking about what are the traffic conditions in the tunnels, where there might be a parade that has closed certain streets, what is Time Square like, and all of that stuff is happening in his/her head, not your own. AUDI liked this, they were ecstatic, so they gave us even more money and they said we would like to see what you would do with this. So, two years ago we designed what you can call Smart Street. This is an LED lit street with intelligence; it picks up every drivers GPS in real time. The car is driving, shown by the little arrows that are moving, and as soon as a dynamic force is moving close to the car the car will veer off at real time. If there is an obstruction in front of the car, the car will stop and then it will move again once that obstruction is no longer there. This is only to
say that imagine, instead of having all 12 roads into LA used as driver lines, we could allocate some for driverless technology and change their movement going in or out of town. It would deal with the same amount of traffic but in a much more efficient, much more intelligent, way. This, again, is another way you, as architects, can work with systematic types of things that occur and influence the way that we build and live.
EXTREME PUBLIC PARTICIPATION Another way to work as an architect, is what we call extreme public participation: that we, as architects, do not have all the answers and that you, basically, need to interact with others to produce a piece of meaningful work. The BIG U is a great example of this, of engaging with the local community. Before the BIG U we did so in Copenhagen. There was a time when the government was saying, “Build rails, everyone is going to ride trains. Build these light rails, it is going to be lovely!” The rails worked and they were great, but at the same time take a look at how much room they took up, and look at how large swaths of the city were entirely cut off from another by rail lines. At some point in the ‘70s, they ripped the rails up again and what was left were these scars running through the city. This is where lots of crime and drug sales are happening. The city realized they had to do something to encourage positive change in these scars of urban planning. They had a competition for one kilometer long swath of this left-over rail space and dedicated it to a future park. BIG came up with an idea to create a red square, a black market, and a green park. 60 different nationalities live in this neighborhood, north of the city center, and our former Copenhagen office was just around the corner, as well, so it really was our backyard. Instead of having an Ethiopian immigrant sitting on a Danish bench, or having a Bosnian immigrant reading a book under a Danish lamp, we decided, to ask each community for all of their best fountains, benches, swings, and then create a big long, one kilometer, curated space where all of these objects could interact.
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Image by Mike Magnussen
We advertised in the various magazines and on the radio to engage the public and we received about 1,000 objects suggested by the very people living around the park. We chose 108 of them and placed them in the different parts of that one kilometer. When you come to Copenhagen now and go to this park, you see all of these different benches and board games from different parts of the world. Even the landscaping is outsourced from different parts of the world. For instance there are palm trees from China that can grow in a Scandinavian climate. Some objects did not make it; like this swing from Estonia. The city’s insurance team for Copenhagen Municipality took one look at that swing said, “I do not think so.” But, other swings, like this one from Baghdad now sit in Copenhagen. This is a children’s slide from Chernobyl – the real one was still too radioactive so we had to rebuild it in Copenhagen. This is a real sign from the Red Square in Moscow which now hangs in Copenhagen, and here are bollards from Ghana that are now in Copenhagen. It is so wonderful to do a cultural analysis of how people sit on benches. This is a bench that you find in Mexico and Spain; all of the Southern Mediterranean countries have love seats where two people can look each other in the eyes and tell how much they love each other. This is a bench from Brussels, where no one is looking at each other; it is like the seat of the EU where no one talks to each other. This is a slide from Japan. We brought over some Japanese crafts people to rebuild and is now sitting in Copenhagen, and from the United States, a nice donut sign that is advertising something you cannot actually buy in Copenhagen. This is a dentist sign from Qatar, and these are the folks that have made the recommendations of the different pieces; they feel an incredible connection to the objects and they are going to take care of that park because it is in their back yard. That is another way that you can design through community, or design through participation of people. I am showing you a lot of projects in Europe, how does this translate to North America, closer to home? Here is a project in Vancouver. That is the Granville Bridge that takes you across to the peninsula that the city sits upon. The client picked up this property really cheap and he was so ecstatic that we were going to build a high
rise and asked us to do some zoning analysis. We found out you need setbacks for sidewalks a hundred foot setback from the approach ramp, and that no shadows can be cast onto this park. He bought this large parcel and he could only build on a little triangular piece that made up less than 1/5th of the entire site, no wonder it was so cheap! So, most folks would stop right there and say an extruded triangle does not really make a lot of sense. But we asked the city to allow us to build out the top of the building and make it a more substantial building. The city said if you can make it work structurally, you can utilize this variance. We did, we actually ended up creating 15% more units at the top of the building, which are the most valuable units for the client. He owned two concrete mixing plants, so they could easily calculate how much more rebar and concrete was required; it was a 20% mark up, in terms of the structural costs to do these cantilevers, so right away he could see that it would pencil out. This is the entrance into Vancouver where our building looks as if it is sweeping aside like a curtain welcoming you to the city and it has a lot of different silhouettes wherever you are looking at it in the city. We spent a year and a half going through a URLURP process, a kind of rezoning to make sure that the height and the look of the building was acceptable. On the street side, we will build low lying office spaces that can go all the to the underside of the roadways and then we will carve little courtyards into these office wedges. We activate the underside of the overpass by creating life underneath it. You can actually imagine having an Octoberfest beer garden there, maybe watching midsummer movies on the weekends, or having a car show. It was important to try to program the space underneath because so many cities in North America have similar overpasses which function as “no-man’s land” and nothing happens under there. This building will start construction in the fall of 2014 and it is very emblematic of the Flat Iron Building in New York. So, instead of the Flat Iron we have the Fat Iron in Vancouver.
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VIA at West 57th Street, Image by Wade Zimmerman
KAI-UWE BERGMANN
HYBRID STRUCTURES This brings me to the whole reason that BIG came to New York, which is the West 57th Project. This is a project that we started four years ago in Copenhagen. The developer, Douglas Durst, stated after we had created the concept that if we want to work on it and build it, we better open an office here in the United States. Six months into the project we came to start the office in New York. It is 720 apartments on top of a retail base. It is located between West 57th and West 58th overlooking the Hudson River. It is between a McKim, Mead & White energy plant from the 1930’s and a trash distribution center; but this whole area is going through a lot of changes so it will be interesting to see how this project impacts all of that. But the idea is, just as Central Park functions upon the city scale as a place of repose, we see the courtyard in our project also acting as that place of repose for the project. It is a little bit like taking the sky scraper, which is the main typology in Manhattan and marrying it to the courtyard, which is the main typology in Copenhagen, which is our two homes, and creating a court scraper. Creating, really, a new hybrid as Julie mentioned in the beginning as hybrid structures - the idea that you take the qualities of two different things and mash them together and you create an entirely new species of buildings. So, here you have the site and it is like taking a Copenhagen Courtyard, but then being really smart about it and raising the courtyard to the second level so you have a full podium. The whole idea and the shape of this building is driven by providing as many views to the water from the adjacent building behind it because that was also built and owned by our client. We pulled up the courtyard on the one side so that the sun can come and provide sun and solar radiation into the courtyard and while still preserving all the views. We have one lobby with two elevator cores and then a double loaded corridor as you go down the long lengths of the building. It is under construction, if you go up to New York right now it is going to be up to the eighth level and we are hoping to top out to the peak by December. This is a picture taken about a month ago when it was just up to the fourth level, and here is a little video to give you a feeling of what it looks like. Thank you very much.
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VIA at West 57th Street, Image by BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group and Glessner Group
This course is an intensive, five-day sketch analysis course focused on Barcelona’s designed environment. The objective is for students to engage in Barcelona’s architecture, urban design and, in general, cultural production through observation and reflection primarily through freehand analytical sketching. Rather than a general review of architecture in BCN which would be impossible in one week, we will take lessons from the studio and look at BCN through a particular lens.
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Instructional Methods: The methodology of this course is based on the overriding idea that through freehand drawing (the act and the drawing itself), designers can develop a greater understanding and awareness of the designed environment. Designers can do this by engaging in varied and/or specific freehand analytical drawings to understand the designed world’s multifaceted nature. A drawing and its theme are a type of “lens” through which designers can discover hidden patterns that inform their own processes.
STUDIO WITH MAKERS OF BARCELONA ERIC JENKINS, CUA; JANET BLOOMBERG, KUBE
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Images by Eric Jenkins, Amilcar Ferrufino, and Miguel Novillo
Entry Canopy, Image by Roland Halbe
MORPHOSIS ARCHITECTS UNG -JOO SCOTT LEE, PRINCIPAL
June 17, 2014, 5:30pm at the Gensler’s Washington Conference Space, Washington DC, Ung-Joo Scott Lee. Tonight I will present three projects spanning different scales and programs. The first two are projects for Cornell University, one located in Ithaca and the second located in Roosevelt Island. The third project is a smaller-scaled, interior project located in Manhattan’s west side.
CIS – GATES HALL Four years ago, we kicked-off a project through a series of interviews with a select number of computer and information scientists who were going to be the user group for this particular building. We had some very interesting discussions and during our meetings we learned about some of the on-going research at the institution, which was fascinating. An example of this is the research by Dr. Noah Snavely’s work. His work mines the database of publically accessible images, and his application then identifies and catalogs these images, some of which are buildings, and reconstructs a 3-D model of the actual building. Sort of a reverse engineering through public images. Another research attempts to assign a probability of whether you are being deceitful in an email. The application identifies the language of what and how a piece of text is written and depending on this analysis, it provides feedback on a probability of deceitfulness. These are small examples of the level and depth of the research that is going on in Ithaca, and through these conversations, we have began to receive cues on how the physical environment could support these scientists.
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A parallel discussion taking place as we developed the building was the physical location of the building, and the relationship of the building to the rest of the campus. For those unfamiliar with the Cornell campus, it is one of the most beautiful campuses in the United States, located in upstate New York, at the top of a hill. It is a very traditional campus in the sense that there are distinct and identifiable quads, each quad associated with a different school, to which you apply for admission. There is an engineering quad, an Arts quad, a Human Ecology quad, an Agriculture quad, etc. In this particular instance, the engineering
quad is located just to the west of our building site. Similar to a few other institutions, Cornell is running out of space in the existing quads, and the fear is that buildings would begin infilling the open space, which is the campus’ most important spaces. As a result, part of the strategic master plan, performed before we began, identified certain parcels of spaces, centrally located to the campus that could be claimed without occupying any of the quad spaces. Our site location was previously an existing open surface parking lot, located just north of the baseball field. The field, itself, will eventually be moved to the open space over in a new quad. Until then, our building provides frontrow seats to the baseball games but will eventually demark the north end of a future engineering quad. The new building, then, is located at the center point of three main connections: the existing engineering quad to the west, the future quad to the south, and the existing Hotel School. Because the Campus Hotel School is located along the north axis of the site, the building’s west end is the first experience of the campus for many guests and visitors. The building remains low, totaling 100,000 square feet in four floors, avoiding a tower typology where the user experience is often entering a core, going to your floor, doing work, and then reversing the progress. The building maintains a larger floor plate, prioritizing horizontal movement in lieu of vertical movement, presenting opportunities to pass through offices, studios, and ongoing activities. One of the most important new spaces is the west plaza, which opens up to the baseball field, re-defines the new corner, and is marked by the cantilevered Main Lounge canopy with an amber under-belly. If you have been to Ithaca before, hopefully it wasn’t during the winter time because it is absolutely brutal. If you are there any other season, it is a wonderful and beautiful place to be. We understood this so we purposely injected a color to this entry, to disconnect one coming in from the outside. The building program is a combination of office spaces, classrooms, meeting rooms and studio space and, depending on the floor, office spaces are either located on the outer edge of the floor or towards the inner portion of the plan. The studios are not wet labs, but rather computer workstation spaces where different work groups get together
Atrium Model, Image by Morphosis Architects
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in an open environment. A grand set of stairs mediates the steep grade difference between the corner of the site and the southern point of the site. In order to avoid a full basement, a cellar halflevel is tucked in so as to allow for some day light penetration. That is where the main lecture room is located underneath the open public plaza. During our meetings with the user groups, we discussed the literal-ness of an open floor. We discussed the culture of transparency, and the physical consequences of their spaces and their own work, study, and learning cultures. As architects, we often take those types of open studio spaces for granted because we have grown-up in that type of environment, both academically and professionally. You then begin to realize that this level of shared and democratic work place is actually very different and foreign to other disciplines. In the case of Gates Hall, there were still very conservative views of what an academic setting should be and that the open-ness was not welcome. This is a project which takes their culture farther out and in the second project I will present, it takes this a little bit further. That degree of connected and shared space begins outside of the building, at the outdoor plaza flanked by a lounge and conference rooms which then spills into the interior atrium space. The connection between the outdoor plaza to the interior is really shown with this diagram here, which is the condition of a very identifiable belly, a cover that floats two-stories up in the space. Here is the plaza level down below, again mediating the two grade differences. The entry to the building is defined by the form of the cover and the plaza. The entry then extends to the interior face of the atrium, where it is articulated and connected to the exterior through it is the materiality. The construction photo shows the corner of the plaza, viewed as one is coming out of Statler Hotel. You walk under the covered canopy supported overhead by a truss spanning between two columns. After completing the open plaza, there was a request to treat the corner so as to prevent one from driving on it. In lieu of a vehicular bollard, we created a series of light fixtures that performed like a bollard. There is a large foundation under each of the fixtures, and on the opposite end there are a series of lights. As one walks through these light fixtures, you are underneath this big
open space with views back to the engineering quad and, if you are higher up in the building, a great view of Cayuga Lake. As you continue down to the opposite end towards the grand stairs, we have the Main Lounge above the last piece of cantilever to the south, which again frames the Ithaca view. A glass floor in the Main Lounge allows for visibility both in and out. You can only see a bit of a foot walking around there and the lit floor demarks the activity in the building. There is a considerable Main Lounge cantilever and it is built as a truss at the very westerly edge of the building. Behind it is a system of unitized, hung glazing units. The beginnings of putting a stainless steel clad in front of the glass and a series of bracket support holding the stainless steel A final landscaped zone in the west will grow a bit more green on that end. And then, walking all the way down looking back towards the building. This is the belly that gets pulled into the atrium inside is a four-story space. This is a guardrail that becomes a hand rail that becomes a bike ramp; it is continuous and follows the length of the plaza all the way down the grand stairs and the precast Gates Hall signage piece. I think one of the most successful thing about this open plaza, and trust me there were endless conversations about this, was the color. The amber, and note that Cornell’s color is not amber, is directly connected with the fact that the winter months there are absolutely grey. I spent four years there and I can say first hand; so having the opportunity to energize the corner through vibrancy was really important. Some of the more dramatic views of the under belly is when it is lit at night with the light from the plaza. Around the atrium is where social, collaborative and meeting spaces are located so there is constant movement around it. A series of conference rooms line the atrium space and the very top terminates on a sky light that is fairly modest in its size but it is very effective in getting borrowed light into the atrium. The image of the physical model, shown sectionally, shows the amber under belly. The tone is then brought into the building interior. Looking towards the baseball field, the south facing spaces are filled with light, but protected from the direct exposure through the stainless steel covering.
The Lecture Hall is the largest meeting space in the building and although the campus has a stock of hall- type spaces, there was a real need to have a Lecture Hall inside this building. There was very low space to be able to fit the Lecture Hall within the final elevation of the plaza. We had to find ways to tuck in all the utilities above the finished ceiling. The ceiling-scape was a very simple idea of a fold to break the flat surfaces to decrease sound rebound and the jagged surfaces allowed for placement of lighting. Ironically, with all the technology that is accessible and authored by this group, they still insisted on the chalkboard. There is a doubleglazed wall at the back of the Lecture Hall to mitigate any outside noise.
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As an office, we have been exploring transparency and reflection of metal mesh and stainless steel facades for a while and in this particular project we were trying to differentiate this by articulating the makeup of the panels a bit more than usual. There was big heavy lifting upfront on trying to optimize the number and family of panels. We knew in order to keep faรงade cost manageable we had to have a limited number of variation on all four sides of the building. The initial 3D models explored what kind of patterns were viable and what kind of behavior you would get in and out of it. A very early mockup was done in Kansas City, and at that time we were primarily trying to look at the details of the panel fold. In the stainless steel areas, we were interested in looking at the glass reflectivity because of the illusion of a double panel, and depth created by it so, as you can see here, there is very high reflectivity on this piece of glass. Also, we had to convince the user that the panels would not obstruct the views out when you are in the building, because it is one thing to have a panel orthogonal to you but as soon as you start bending it, then it creates a different level of transparency. And, more importantly, was the connecting detail and braking method to support the stainless steel panel. We were looking at this a couple of different ways with an YKK system and they happen to have, as my many do, a typical louver connection that was thermally broken and tested. So, it was a semi-customized version of what they had and then we custom cut the panel pieces to attach to the connections. A model was also done to review clashes to ensure the bands panel were not conflicting with each adjacent piece. There is a strict serial and number coding to the exterior
faรงade. As you can see in these photographs, it is a winter day in Ithaca and the start of locating all the tabs followed by the penalization. It actually takes an amazing amount of staging space because you do need to codify all of these things and you need a lay-down area, and, actually, this theme will also occur in another project that I am going to show you a bit later. A few close up details, at the very end where the stainless steel terminates. The images of the project under construction shows the base water proofing, eventually clad with the stainless steel. This was the piece that comes into the atrium spaces that you saw earlier as clad and all metal on the inside. This is an elevation from the baseball field, and this is the view looking from the exhibiting engineering quad. I am going to briefly show a few of the interior spaces. A very simple planning move we did whenever we could and wherever space allowed was a zigzag pocket of the circulation spaces. From these spaces, special nooks fort tables and seating occur allowing a purposeful use of the corridor while also allowing for more daylighting. As one progresses through the corridor we wanted to expose the viewer into these spaces so the angling would very much help us with that, and then within of the theme of us meeting with all of these Ph.D. students and we took a great tour looking at the particular work that they did. Although they are computer scientists they have amazing graphics and imagery and they have more idea that are really cool. We were inspired by that and all of their wall paper came from their research now; what we had to do was we took the base information from them and we abstracted it because it would be there for years they move so fast that what you put up today will be outdated anyways so we went through a level of abstraction and it is all composed throughout the corridors and, as you can see, we worked with the lettering and had it all match. We were also talking internally about at how wonderful it would be to let people go to town and let them sketch. We used to see things from equations all the way to little notes on peoples windows and partitions and then to stuff like this that kind of appears randomly and I do not know what this means, I thought it was incredibly poetic and cool, until someone told me that this was from the Legend of Zelda, a video game, so it took some of the beauty out but the engagement of the user to the building and wanting to change it to us is very interesting and I think that the concept is
going to come back to us in some way, fashion, or form later on. So that was project one.
CNY – CORNELL TECH During the time we were working and building Gates Hall in Ithaca, Cornell was responding to a request for proposal from the city of New York. During the time of the Bloomberg Administration, the city came to the realization that the economic viability of the city depends on an economy beyond Wall Street. As a way to encourage a more diverse city and economy, they began looking at other growth industries to be able to do that. In fact, Wall Street is no longer in Wall Street anymore, and serves more as a symbol of finance rather than the location of the industry. The city of New York planned on donating a site to a chosen school for the development of a new Tech campus with many schools answering the call. Stanford and Cornell University where the final schools, with Cornell winning the RFP after a negotiation phase with the city of New York. SOM produced the master plan and is currently developing the overall planning for the project located in Roosevelt Island. I have worked in New York City now for the past fourteen years of my life and I have to admit, I had not been in Roosevelt Island before. It is a small island and because the Island has a very slim form factor, one always has an amazing view either of Queens or Manhattan. The master plan really attempts to leverage the edges more than anything else. There is an existing hospital that is being decommissioned. Goldwater Bridge Hospital had been previously scheduled to move before the RFP took place. It is about a twelve-acre site, and home to Louis Kahn’s Four Freedoms Park at the south end where it was recently built. The Cornell site begins just south of the Queensboro Bridge and tennis court bubble. One of the big differences between this project relative to the Gates Hall Project is that New York City has the land ownership with a lease to Cornell University. Cornell then assumes the responsibility of developing the site; however, Cornell is only responsible to building and operating one building which is our project, the First Academic Building. The other buildings in Phase one are all done in partnership with third party developers. Weiss Manfredi is working on the Corporate Co-Location
Building, Handel Architects is currently designing the Residential Building, and a future hotel whose developer is still being finalized. It is a new type of campus planning and development that is becoming more widespread as the cost and ownership of institutional buildings and their operation and management is turned to other developers. In addition to the different design and development teams that required extensive coordination, there is also a very aggressive goal towards energy performance. The goal for this project was to get a net-zero building in the site Therefore, the building siting and positioning became considerable design elements and important for the overall building performance. We literally started from top down, to understand the building’s solar exposure and photo-voltaic positioning. Here is a project in Italy that is one of the largest photo-voltaic arrays in the world. PV panels are decreasing in cost but not necessarily increasing in efficiency. Therefore, the PV surface area required is not decreasing, unless there is a radically new different technology soon. Providing ample surface area in a desolate field is a lot different than placing them in an urban setting where you have high buildings, all designed differently, housing different types of program during different times of the day. Programmatically, one of our early challenges was working with an undefined program. We did not know how many classrooms there would be nor the type of work spaces required. The food services program was also very undefined. Not only was the program for our building not defined, but neither was the program for the overall campus. The planning of the buildings then became more of a planning strategy, more performance than prescription, and it was about what we knew (i.e. PV surfaces) and what the best planning method was for the unknown. The treatment of the PV surface becomes critical on this approach, since it became the first defined piece of the overall building planning. The PV surface developed into a large surface nicknamed the lily pad, that is not only necessary, the symbolic urban piece. The building was then allowed to be planned underneath this large PV. Initially, we were making certain broad assumptions on how the school would operate, including the understanding that
the buildings on the campus would share certain height relationships. By sharing some of these relationships, there was a possibility to make a much wider and extended piece of PV canopy over the entire central campus area. This scheme then, is featuring the public space under a photo-voltaic trellis structure, and creating a covered central plaza area. As you fast forward through the development of the campus, once the developer relationships are locked and the building siting takes place, our initial assumptions of shared height relationship was lost and a single datum line of the canopy was now disconnected. This is a site section with our building with the articulated top and this is the other building with their PB on top. The PB on the other building is still feeding our building because we need the surface area. The entire PB was elevated higher up then the mechanical floor but really what we tried to remain was the disconnection of the PB separate from the connection to the building as much as we could. Our last iteration of the PV canopy quickly, this is the last iteration of the PB extent and then the portion here where the articulation of the PB tries to stretch outside of the actual building itself is shown in this model. This is an expressed grand stair that comes out, it has got some viewing corridor looking at Queens, you are looking down towards the faze on an an exterior green roof, and you are looking at the trellis above. There are the movements where we tried to get the sweat of the PB out of the shape of the body and articulate the PB differently from the building. This is, not the latest version, but one of the latest versions of the overall campus.
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Now I do not want to tie this lecture into a net zero building lecture but there are certainly more things beyond the PB that gets us to an energy neutral building. But I would say that also one of the more important ones as we began looking at it was really that unlike our Ithaca building, the solid to glazing ratio was extremely important. We had to have a fairly compact, what we described as a refrigerator, minimize infiltration and really had to have a portion of the building that is really solid. The key for us was a sixty forty split; it was sixty percent solid to forty percent glazing because the engineering made sense and you it made a huge net effect on the systems down the line to get to the net zero. That is the general program strategy to get to the net zero.
The other piece of this, as I was mentioning before, the flux of the program and unlike the previous project at the Ithaca campus where the user came with a very defined program, for this project they gave us this as their programming (Connective Media/ Healthier Life/ Built environment) and said that they were not sure but they think that the curriculum was like this. It is designed around not these art quads; it is not about the art school or the engineering school but it is about hubs of research so connective media is one, healthier life is one, and building environment is one. These things can change if there is some new research and connective media drops. From that point of view it was programmatically a very difficult piece to define and as a summery to the conclusion of this along with knowing that this building, like the Ithaca building is a completely grad level school only for masters and primarily for PhDs research. There are no undergraduates in this campus. As we know the work and the nature of PhD work is quite different from undergrad. The tendency for undergrad work there is a scholar and they are teaching in these classroom type spaces that have to have a certain proportion that has to have a certain number of seats. In this instance that is actually fairly minimum, represented by this yellow bar here, and the stuff that you guys have back here that is more like a studio environment is represented by the blue. So the building really comes down to be represented by the blue. Then it became about the aspect of organization of the building relative to circulation and then the program and the flexibility of the offices we just imagined these things being plug-ins to a mother ship. The red is a very long three hundred foot galleria, which I will show you in plan. The galleria is a primary horizontal circulation through the building and then there is a stair five, which I showed you that is the vertical circulation that becomes part of an atrium space. So very quickly walking through some of the major spaces here. Limited number of classrooms, and again because they were kind of secondary they were all put into the lower basement floor. By the way, while we were in the end of schematic design, there is a huge issue around sanding in New York City these days and the aspect of resiliency and there became all new flood plain levels in the very early onset of the project and it was actually very great that it happened at that time of the project because if
Stair Five - Model, Image by Morphosis Architects
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it happened any later there would need to have been dramatic layers to the thing. There is a huge requirement now to elevate all of the mission critical stuff and make basements as small as possible because of sanding, which is a very big issue. As you can see the basement level of the building is actually fairly modest and that is because we tried to pull everything up. All of the essentials from a mechanical point of view is the facility stuff and the pumps that have to be down there, everything else is up on the roof. And, then of the more major public spaces in the basement was a lecture hall, it is an interior lecture hall so you are coming in from the top and then making your way down to the basement level, but there is a relationship between the entrance of the lecture hall you can see a fully glazed end of the lecture hall. As you are coming in you can literally see the river beyond the lecture hall. The ground floor was a combination of a few different public spaces. There is a café area, this is the area that is the most publically accessible, again the lecture hall, the last two classrooms at this level, and then we tucked in the master studio here. There are a lot of discussions and motions about when you enter a campus of what is the symbolic nature of how you enter a campus and I know a lot of discussions about that because this is the primary entry, the subway stop is right to that page level where a lot of people are coming out and accessing the campus from there, the future hotel is here and do you want the campus to be symbolically flat by the hotel and what does that mean for the identity of the campus. We purposely located one of the more active master studios down on the great floor because we wanted to make sure that there was a perception and notion that there was a school there and using the program as a piece to identify that program. This is as you are coming in there is a very long piece here that extends out and that is the demark of the public space. Beyond there is that atrium space that connects back to the stair five. And then the floor above then become fairly generic and there is a relationship between this open galleria space and that stair five opening that is aligned with fifty seventh street in New York, in Manhattan, so you are sort of looking out looking at the terminal end of fifty seventh street. Then as you are coming up, if you are sort of watching this from here on looking south, again, there is a three hundred foot open space galleria. To the left is a circulation space and to the right is a series of PhD Studios and then in the middle there are a series of
floating open huddle spaces where people can use as they want. And then the final nature of the quality of this thing. We organized this thing as some place where like sowing machines that goes endless but ultimately the layout is going to change depending on how the instruction takes place. I have to say that in the context of general building performance and energy, dealing with a building that has identifiable and clear limitations of here is a classroom and here is an office we can turn on the light we can turn it off, it is very easy to do that. It is harder to do it in this open place where you have this one research that is working at two am and then there is nobody else and how do you deal with that kind of thing. It is a much different kind of condition and when we were looking at some sensitivity studies at the impact of certain user functions towards the use of the building they were actually huge. So, limiting the amount of energy consuming spaces like that has a huge ramification on the building, which equals taking out a certain number of PBs from the roof, which costs a certain amount. The biggest nightmare I think for us all is, and this is a picture I had to take and don’t tell them, art their current facility at Google’s headquarters in New York they are using all the lights at eight o’clock at night with nobody there. All the light are on thirty foot candles at everybody desk computer stations on and how do you deal with this kind of thing, right it is a tricky thing. One of the things that we are currently working on, this is a study that we are doing is what we called converging and smart building technology and we now realize that everybody has a security badge, a card to get into the building, probably every interface that you have sitting on your desk, every device, has an IP address, so we are mapping the IP address of all your devices to your security card so that when you leave the building you have to swipe your card. Your card swipe identifies that you are no longer at your work station so we will turn all power off at your work station, so your phone will be turned off, your electrical will be turned off and we will have different power if you need your device to be on all night long so we will have to make that distinguishment but it is the ability that now there are ways to take a much finer grain in term of controlling how you want to use your energy that was the key thing to work through on her. So, although it sounds a bit counter intuitive the broader conclusion of that is that if you are smart in levering that kind of IT technology in
a building in many ways you can consume more because you are actually becoming more efficient when you are not using the building. Nobody wants to equate a net zero building into a building that is dark and that is not lit and everybody is not doing anything, that is an idea as opposed to using those smart card readers, controls to certain classrooms through your schedule and your calendar and how to integrate all of those things.
37th Street is the entry into the Restaurant and the opposite end on the 38th Street is a Lounge. Connecting those two ends is a Bar area, as well as a wood box with a glass frontage that encases an officially-sized basketball free throw area, located between the lounge and the bar area. This has proved to be the social point of the entire restaurant, and it’s great to see it packed with all kinds of people trying to make a free-throw.
And then the last piece and I just wanted to show this because it was fun, it is a much broader partnership because so many things were undefined through the process, between everyone. Here is an IT participant in Ithaca and he is in a robot, this thing actually moves around and he talks and we interface him and it is actually very effective. The meetings are actually much greater because you have all of this technology but they are only great when they can help you do things spontaneously. Anything that you need to have a thirty-minute prep time is not great technology but anything that you can do spontaneously and you can support that to me is something that is very sensible.
Similar to the rest of the City, Hell’s Kitchen is has now been gentrified, and critical mass is soon coming. However, Tenth Avenue at this area remains the pathway into Lincoln Tunnel (and therefore massive grid locks) so in fact, a lot of the viewing experience of the storefront will be from people driving through rather than people walking by. As a result, the storefront is connected to this vehicular experience, through a series of vertical baffles installed immediately behind the storefront window. Once viewed from different angles, the separate baffles form a continuous billboard viewed from end-to-end. Portions of this frontage are very tall, reaching about 25’-0” in height. The billboard is sided, so the image and views are different whether one is approaching from the north or the side.
ARK RESTAURANT The third and last project is very different from the previous two, a much smaller-scaled project, but still connected to the previous projects through some of its concepts and techniques. It is 10,000 SF interior project located on the west side of New York City for a client who owns several food & beverage operations. It’s a business venture between the Basketball Hall-of-Fame Walt Frazier, also known as Clyde, and the Restaurant Owner. For those not familiar with Clyde, he is one of the greatest New York Knicks basketball players and part of the last team that won the NBA Championship for the City. He is now a basketball commentator for the Knicks and he has an incredibly large persona, a very colorful gentleman, best known for his colorful wardrobe, alligator shoes, orange socks and hats. The restaurant is located in Hell’s Kitchen, on Tenth Avenue and spans the entire block between 37th and 38th Street. Because of the length of the block, the sidewalk grade varies dramatically with the 37th Street elevation being the highest point, and descending down to 38th Street. The
Behind the storefront billboard, a continuous large mural spans the entire north-south length of the restaurant. It’s composed of different images of Clyde taken from original black-and-white negative photos and it’s back-lit throughout. Similar to the storefront mural, a metal panel ceiling provides a continuous interior canopy through the entire length of the space. Since the restaurant occupies the ground floor of an existing residential tower, there were a series of as-built conditions inherited of the ceiling space that the design needed to address. For example, the kitchen exhaust ductwork, as well as the parking garage exhausts were all routed through the ceiling of our space and exhausted toward the Tenth Avenue side. The designed toward a very pragmatic need to cover all the utility while creating an architectural space below it, tying the entire length of the space together. Similar to the panelization logic at Gates Hall, these metal panels began with a geometrical, surface-driven logic, dipping and rising according to the level of cavity space above it.
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Baffle Graphics, Image by Morphosis Architects
Liner Graphics, Image by Morphosis Architects
In order to reduce the manufacturing waste, panel shapes were designed to provide maximum yield from five-by-ten aluminum sheets. In addition to the manufacturing optimization, we also spent considerable time working on a folding optimization since the number of folds affected shape and packing complexity driving the cost of the ceiling. A guide map of each folded geometry was then created for the installation of the panels, and each panel received a unique I.D. Elements of how each of the units stacked, how it packed and unpacked were extremely important elements of this study because of the limited area to unpack the panels. A 3-D model used to identify collusions as well as identifying the fold tolerances were key to constructability. Once the panels were in the field, the focus was on placing the panels in their correct mapped locations, and not resolving conflicts. Finally, we were also obsessed with Clyde’s incredibly large wardrobe, which was certainly not optimized. We raided his closet and spent several days looking and sorting through his clothes, boots, belts, etc. A series of high-resolution photos were taken, and each aluminum panel received a graphic of this photo and the back was painted with a liquid coat. As the geometry of each panel was folded, the red can be seen prominently from the lounge. The colors transition from blue all the way to extreme red, with different color intensities at the restaurant, bar and lounge.
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A series of in-field mockups were made for lighting tests to confirm the best lighting solution, including an up lighting test which was the finalized solution. We needed to light up at the canopy, and anything on floor mounted would not be possible because of shadowing. With our lighting designers, we were able to identify an LED “puck,� hung from an aircraft cable, which had a very wide throw. This allowed for an up light without any shadows, fairly uniformly throughout the entire surface. Unlike the previous two other projects, this was a design-build project fast-tracked from start to end. We ran this job with the contractor and we worked daily with him on the constructions details, working on the field and directly connected to the entire building process. For this reason, I put this particular project last. There is all of
this stuff and we use technology quite a bit with high computing work, but very often at the end of the day it is about the hand and the fact that somebody is there and somebody is measuring, somebody is putting this stuff together, somebody is shipping this, somebody is packing this and it is the basic notion that through it all at the end the architect is the person who connects the details and has to know how to build it. It is not enough to create a geometry and forms and for us we are not really interested in that as much as we are in creating a form and space and at the same time thinking of how we can build that and how we can get close and how can we associate to that endeavor as closely as we can. So I would say for anyone who has an opportunity that seems small, it may be a tiny fraction but the amount of things that we learned through this from materiality to the detailing through acoustical renderings, we learned so much and we have to take that, within the context of Catholic University and the studio we had this afternoon for all the young architects I think that is extremely important to keep in mind which is your hands. Do not get too lost, it is easy these days to 3D print stuff and get away with renderings and what have you but keep this craft and the hand in mind anytime that you are working this and you are getting into the next endeavor because it is terribly exciting. Thank you very much.
Bar Ceiling Canopy, Image by Roland Halbe
COMBINATORIAL FORM: The production of organizational systems, capable of maximizing differentiation, commensurate with the complexity of 21st century programmatic demands and situational contingencies. Part 1: The development of complex interrogative organizations maximizing spatial differentiation; your organization will begin with four prescribed subsystems: • Line: Solid (thick / medium / thin): x, y • Line: thick (void) / medium / thin: z • Surface • Object: z variable
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“Morphogenetic strategies for design are not truly evolutionary unless they incorporate iterations of physical modeling, nor can we develop systems that utilize emergence without the inclusion of the self organizing material effects of form finding and the industrial logic of production. Emergence requires that the recognition of buildings not as singular and fixed bodies, but as complex energy and material systems that have a life span, and exist as a part of the environment of other buildings, and as an iteration of a long series that proceeds by evolutionary development towards an intelligent ecosystem” Emergence and Design Group Architectural Design, Vol. 74, No. 3. P. 7
Site: Ratio of 10(x) x 10(y) x 3(z) Frame (abstract) Intensification • Subsystems interaction / connection (production of new material) • Qualities: Dark/Light • Qualities: Open/Closed • Qualities: High/Low • Qualities: Degree of intensity (sparse/dense) Try to consider that you are working not on diagrams of the “thing,” but on the thing itself. Part 2: Repeat of Part 1 with adjustment of subsystem elements (to be discussed) and expanding physiognomic and performance capabilities.
STUDIO WITH MORPHOSIS UNG-JOO SCOTT LEE, MORPHOSIS; MATTHEW GEISS, CUA; JULIE JU-YOUN KIM, CUA
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Summer Institute for Architecture Journal School of Architecture and Planning The Catholic University of America
Dean: Randall Ott, AIA Director: Julie Ju-Youn Kim, RA AIA Volume 10 Editor: Ariadne Cerritelli Journal Design: Ariadne Cerritelli+ Sara Gordon
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