Caitlin E Wood portfolio

Caitlin Elizabeth Wood 100 Brockton Lane, Oak Ridge, TN 37830 (865) 742 - 4207 | caitlinewood@gmail.com

u n i v e r s i t y o f t e n n e s s e e , b. a r c h 2 0 1 2

architecture

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drawing

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photography

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a r c h i t e c t u re design exploration program

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johns hopkins university library archive

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leap office building

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urban plaza scheme

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harlem youth development center

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kit of parts

uf school of architecture addition

design exploration program gainesville, florida.

The Design Exploration Program at the University of Florida is a pre-college design preview I applied to and was accepted into after my junior year of high school. The shown projects were the highlights of the group and solo work we did over the 3 weeks of the course, dealing with architectural techniques and beginning to develop critical thinking skills.

The Flager College addition was a group effort to assess the urban conditions in St. Augustine, FL while putting program that would drawn people as well as students into the area. Regulating lines, hierarchy of placement and massing are key topics of the exercise. The Kit of Parts project was the longest project of the program, consisting of a narrative of two distinct inhabitants sharing a living space. Transparency, privacy and lighting reflect the individual personalities respectively. The University of Florida School of Architecture is a similar addition project, but relevant physical and visual context became more important. For example, the building was designed off intersection lines from 45 and 30 degrees, creating an ellipse, not a circle in the center. My individual solution created a courtyard space with low additional studios and workshops to respect the views of the senior studios in the existing building.

flagler college urban development

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concept sketch

archive interior

johns hopkins university library archive arch 272, matt hall baltimore, maryland

This second year design project dealt primarily with a campus context and visual connection views to existing and historic elements on the primary student entry quad. The design became linear and the intersecting planes speak to the concept of redirection of pedestrian and user traffic flow.

The orientation of each piece of program is directed towards either the direction of student traffic or a similar program seen from the interior. The overall height restriction on campus, no building being higher than the first library, called for a partial underground library addition with a dug out reading courtyard. There are strips of skylights connecting this sunken area to another courtyard above, again with seating for reading or studying.

basswood model, s u b t e r ra n e a n l i b ra r y

The archive are the top three masses, contributing to the viewing corridor using slices of windows and skylights in one and varying degrees of transparency vs. translucency in the other. The student resource center is on the entry ground floor and is a research area. The primary stair situated along the primary axis goes down to the library, the secondary stair to go up is to the right of the resource center.

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front elevation

concept sketches

leap office building arch 471, integrations. paul mccall knoxville, tennessee

Integrations is the semester to combine design principles and structural integrity and more realistic building systems than other design projects. Our project was for a headquarters for fictional firm LEAP (Landscape, Engineering, Architecture, Planning) with a restaurant on the ground level.

Initially my personal goal for the design was primarily to pull people in from the street into the plaza and begin to see the technologies and priorities of the company on display in the lobby and office spaces that could be seen from the center atrium area. The design emphasizes cooperation, flexibility and unification of the different aspects of design within the firm through use of a central atrium that visually connects the actual office space and reorients a user from the street upward to the firm. The restaurant is then accessed only by the street side.

entry plaza

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material systems

The communication between the design and the community is expressed through the atrium lobby space adjacent to the entry plaza. The more public spaces, for visiting clients for example, have a prioritizes natural light source.

There is a second, more private plaza space hidden from the street for employee parking and loading dock area.

The more public circulation of the workplaces are along a more translucent curtain wall to allow natural light, but still keep the less appealing view of the parking lot limited.

The featured sections below start to communicate the idea of the vertical sun shades and five foot balconies to reduce the solar heat gain from the street facade. A passive cooling system also employees the atrium area with operable clerestory windows. A material awareness is shown by using the terra cotta panels and wrapping from exterior to interior to showcase to visitors and potential clients how modern ceiling systems can be exposed. Part of the display of products the company produces could include the green balcony space outside private offices to show the utilization of the vertical solar shades on the street facade. The disciplines of the firm are separated like studios to work on the same projects together, but are visually and potentially acoustically connected through the central atrium space.

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ground floor plan

e n t r y, g r e e n b a l c o n i e s a n d a t r i u m s e c t i o n s t u d y

detail wall section

jagiellonian library

rynek glowny

jubilat

wawel wisla

st. michael’s wisla

block housing

concept sketches

hilton

urban plaza scheme arch 472, semester abroad. michal palej krakow, poland

This studio was during my semester abroad in Krakow, Poland. My class was part of a 21 year old direct exchange with their School of Urban Design at the Krakow University of Technology.

This project was part of a revitalization of an area across the Wisula River from the city center of Krakow. The project assumes the completion of a community performing arts center being built at the north end of the site. My design intent became to create an axis for the community and bordering neighborhood by connecting the two existing structures on north and south end of the site.

aerial massing

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deniki development project.

poster design

constructed perspectives

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This detailed plaza ground floor plan expresses certain how the entry sequences from the community center, the river and the neighborhood work. The design utilizes elements of a successful urban plaza, making it an activated space that people wanted to be in. The program of the buildings included, in the primary axis, retail on the bottom floor and residences above. The floor plates are broken up by core circulation to serve the residents and keep the retail space separate.

The graphic design poster was a part of our final presentation in Krakow. The ‘logo’ image on the opposite page abstracts the contributing regulating lines that grew into axes and the wavy lines represent the paving patterns of the plaza itself.

The waves get tighter for entries into the urban plaza. The intersecting angled lines represent certain view corridors to the surrounding areas of the city, including the Wawel castle and Wisula River. The regulating lines inform how the pieces are shaped, including a flared edge for encouraging or discouraging people’s paths through the plaza and various buildings.

ground floors, plaza

verbal concept concept

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k m

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lco

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interior copper cladding

verbal concept concept

copper reveal, from 125th st

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lco

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harlem site plan

concept

harlem youth development center arch 490, research. katherine ambroziak new york, new york

In the early design phases, after researching the effects of the panopticon design in culture, I was thinking about the people who would use the All Stars Project youth development center, primarily the youth and the professionals (actors and business people) and wanted to give both hierarchy and a sense of comfort and community identity. I wanted to show how hierarchies can be established in society as well as physical space leading to biases, assumptions or even empathy.

I chose a site in Harlem because of the unique intersection of the cultural corridor and a community road with views to downtown Manhattan. The concept diagrams speak to the different street faces by having two orienting directions on the interior. One system parallels MLK to provide a cultural corridor entrance that is more formal and direct to the formal theater to fit into context of the entertainment venues already on that street. The perpendicular entrance orientation from Malcolm X because a secondary axis, more of a community facade, entering on axis with the hierarchical theater threshold.

wood, copper model

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g r o u n d f l o o r, e n t r y a n d t h e a t e r

This design is able to reach kids that are culturally, emotionally and experientially underdeveloped by establishing a safe zone for youth to grow and interact with adults who take them seriously. This design takes into account issues of comfort, communication, and identity through several expression walls and the relationships between types of performance spaces, and creating a spatial hierarchy of the interactions between all the kinds of users of this All Stars Project center. It is a place for youth to belong and feel comfortable enough to perform, develop skills, and become integrated into today’s professional society, becoming more than just a performance building. section aa 3/32” = 1’-0”

The light copper color on the floor plan indicates the performance spaces, a formal theater and an informal seating area in the lobby. The interior perspective and next picture shows a copper facade to serve as the threshold into the formal theater space. The last picture shows the same copper cladding as a reveal, connecting the street face to the formal function of the interior and the history of the site. malcolm x elevation 3/32” = 1’-0”

section bb 3/32” = 1’-0”

This project, along with others from the studio, and our voiuces as narrators were featured in an exhibit for the All Stars Project in New York City.

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approach from 124th and malcolm x; community entry, massing

e x t e r i o r, f r o m 1 2 4 t h s t

interior lobby; informal performance steps, atrium, copper cladding facade of formal theater

interior lobby

front elevation, section

d ra w i n g freehand drawing classes

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sketches

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watercolor

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freehand drawing class knoxville, tennessee

This class in first year focused on compositional study of found objects. These are two series and process sketches to decide the position of each object. The glasses were ultimately arranged having one arm parallel to the boundary edge of the paper to create a linear directionality.

The window on the opposite page is from an observation drawing excerise of one of the oldest buildings on the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville origianl campus.

The shoe/egg/ paper drawing was a study of composition and activation of a 2D surface. The objects became more dynamic as the heel pierces the paper and egg rolls down it.

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freehand drawing class krakow, poland

These freehand drawings are from a drawing class I took while in Poland; once a week we drew object models for about three quarters of the semester. Then we began to explore how the model shapes could be used to create more architectural space for the remaining weeks. We started simply, but I soon saw my desire to sketch becoming more frequent and my actual skills improving.

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vicenza

cloth hall

s t m a r y’s c a t h e d ra l

sketches - travels abroad itlay, poland

verona I spent about 9 days in Italy during my semester abroad, and it was one of my favorite trips of my time overseas. We had a rushed schedule in order to fit to many major locations and sites into our trip, but I still got to thoroughly enjoy every stop we made. I include some sketches from a few of my favorite places; a monastery in Padua, Villa Rotunda by Palladio in Vicenza, and a social courtyard fountain in Verona. Italy was gorgeous and had ample design inspiration, visually as well as experientially.

padua

One important part of studying abroad is becoming submerged into the local culture of the place you call home. I really got some good opportunities to explore Krakow over the four months I lived there. These sketches are all from the city center, where I spent the majority of my free time in the city. The city downtown center was the most fun to eat, walk around, and experience the night life. I liked to watch people in the huge medieval square, the largest of that time period in Europe. Its historic, but caters and adapts to other urban needs of today such as festivals and lots of shopping, making Krakow a vibrant place to be.

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These various watercolors were done in sketchbooks during school. The standing figure to the right was actually included in my architecture application portfolio. It was done by using a stick dipped in ink to yield an abstract read of a peer model for an art class. I like to do watercolors as observation and design tools, as with the two bottom images on this page. They are views of a 5th year design of a community center and garden.

mies

watercolor knoxville, tennessee personal design

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p h o t o g ra p h y architectural photography

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travels abroad

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c o n t ra s t

architectural photography 35mm film, self processed

To begin the architectural photography class in my last year of school, I learned how to manually use film, process the negatives, and enlarge prints in the darkroom. It is a very careful hobby, but now I love the look and feel of these black and white manually developed prints. Series themes include a point of view study, light and shadow study, and a framing study. Composition was also studied extensively, in combination with these primary themes. I also learned techniques of dodging, burning, and filtering using a typical enlarger and darkroom. These images, taken in Knoxville and Norris, Tennessee, are part of my final photography portfolio.

s u n s p h e r e , w o r l d ’s f a i r p a r k , k n o x v i l l e t n

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g ra n d s t a i r t h r o u g h w i n d o w

second floor entry

architectural photography digital film, photo essay

stair and reflection towards campus

art & architecture building, utk

To conclude this photography class, we switched to digital cameras, I used my Nikon D5000 single reflex lens camera. The final project was a photo essay of the Art and Architecture building, so treated like a series, I tried to describe the space but in a way that allows someone who is not familiar with the building to understand what we, the users, prioritize or see the most. Reflections, light, atrium and exposed systems are what I would explain most in depth to someone visiting the building for the first time, to compliment the design intent of a street face experience.

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zakopane

holocaust memorial

travels abroad poland

In the spring of 2011, while studying abroad in Krakow, Poland, I got to explore many parts of the country and expand my understanding the rich medieval history as well as the tragic Nazi involvement and concentration camps. The cultural experience was very interesting, including a history class we took that toured the architectural history of Krakow itself. Cloth Hall was a primary trading complex of the city and area in its hey day, and the castle has been added to over many decades of chancing royalty before the capital of Poland was moved to Warsaw.

The next picture is a Jewish Holocaust memorial with the names of cities in Hebrew around the foundation of a destroyed gas chamber. The mountain view is in Zakopane, Poland, a winter vacation destination of the country.

I enjoyed exploring and documenting these things we learned about through exploration of a different culture.

cloth hall

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casa battlo

duomo

parthenon

travels abroad spain, italy, greece

This series of black and white photographs is my commentary of very poplar architectural destinations I visited in Europe, but I wanted to show them from atypical perspectives to begin to see them more as what they physical are rather than what we have learned and heard from other people and their opinions about them. They are arranged in the order I visited them; Casa Battlo in Barcelona, the Dumo in Florence, and the Parthenon in Athens. All of these places were spaces I have always wanted to visit, and I found it very beautiful that a detail view of these buildings almost distorts the subject to a less recognizable version that lets a viewer’s imagination take a role in the images.

The larger image on the opposite page is the reconstructed Barcelona Pavilion by Mies van der Rohe. I spent the good part of a day there, experiencing every corner that I have studied so much. It demonstrates how it is one of my favorite places; the reflection on the right half is me.

barcelona pavilion

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Caitlin Elizabeth Wood 100 Brockton Lane, Oak Ridge, TN 37830 (865) 742 - 4207 | caitlinewood@gmail.com

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