Graduate Portfolio by Dalton Baker

DALTON BAKER Columbia GSAPP Portfolio 2020

TABLE OF CONTENTS

This portfolio is the collection of work I created while completing my masters degree at the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation at Columbia University. Thank you to my family, friends and professors for the incredible support over these past three years.

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THE 2020 OLYMPIC VILLAGE CO-OP OYSTER AQUACULTURE THE NEW MEAT MARKET UNIVERSAL HOUSING IN THE BRONX THE DUMBO PUBLIC LIBRARY AND SHELTER EAST RIVER SWIMMING POOL SPRINTS 1-3

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1. CAN THE SECOND LIFE OF OLYMPIC STADIUMS HELP SUPPORT A DECLINING POPULATION? 2. CAN COASTAL ARCHITECTURE ADAPT TO CLIMATE CHANGE? 3. CAN NEW FORMS OF MEAT PRODUCTION HELP CREATE A SUSTAINBLE MEAT INDUSTRY? 4. CAN HOUSING BE EQUITABLE FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES? 6. CAN A LIBRARY ACT AS A TRANSITIONAL SHELTER AND PROVIDE JOB SECURITY FOR HOMELESS YOUTH? 7. CAN ARCHITECTURE SHIFT TO CREATE UNLIMITED OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE USER?

THE 2020 OLYMPIC VILLAGE Columbia University GSAPP, 2020 Tokyo, Japan My research began looking at the decrease in population in Japan and the spectrum of factors that has led to this development. One of the most key issues is the career culture of Japan. This culture creates polarising behaviour both leading to isolated adults. I looked at two different sides of this spectrum Hikikomori where adults have become hermits that disengage from any physical connection or relationship with others and Karoshi which is death by overwork where people are so focused on their career that do not give themselves time to have a family. Further even if they do have families they do not have the time to properly take care of their children. These neglected children eventually end up in foster care. In Japan stigma around foster care makes it difficult for these orphans or abandoned children to ever find a family. WhiIe I continued my research in the career driven culture of Japan I also began exploring the 2020 summer olympics in Tokyo. Every four years countries spend billions of dollars on stadiums, housing and supporting infrastructure. Japan has spent over 20 billion dollars on these upcoming olympics alone. However, after the games many of these buildings fall into disrepair or are torn down because they are not used again. This is because the stadiums are too large to host local or smaller events or the activity the stadium was built for is not played regularly after the olympics. In some cases a secondary intervention can bring in new life to these building and the surrounding community. Combining these two explorations I used the idea of a secondary intervention into the olympics site to support a cultural shift that would encourage people to have families and support however that family looks. This includes adopted families and working parents.

My final intervention is a grid of housing and supportive infrastructure that intersects with each arena on the olympic site to create one large Olympic village.

Developing the intervention in section I focused first on the main stadium. I took out bleachers on the third floor to allow for a new interpretation of programming facing the central field. I filled the stadium with a variety of rooms that could support apartment and dorm style living areas for people of all ages to mix and engage with each other. These apartments shift between co op style living and more private family housing. By including local vendors and businesses the stadium would become new commercial center after the Olympics. The field acts as a temporary park space that could have a mobile block system to fill the arena while events are not happening and ensure that the stadium remains an active space throughout the building after the olympics. Looking into the housing itself as it moves from the stadium I designed two ground planes. The first floor of each housing block would be one for the young families, daycares and orphanages. This allows for a potential new way to look at supporting infrastructure. For instance grandparents being able to watch the children on their blocks while the parents are at work. Or, having orphanages intermixed with family housing so that these children are not isolated from other youth or parental figures. Furthermore, classrooms within the grid ensure that each child in the village is getting the education they need while encouraging people to take breaks and engage with each other around the site.The real ground floor acts as an open axis for people moving from the street to the stadium. This way the housing blocks remain private for the occupants while the arenas stay open and active across the site. Identity became an important role in designing the massing housing. I took the initial idea of a courtyard building that remained on the grid but each block has its own unique profile. This profile makes it possible for a variety of boarding, classroom, daycare and living spaces as well as allowing each home to have its own personality that supports the positive changing culture around working parents, orphans and generational inclusion.

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CO-OP OYSTER AQUACULTURE Columbia University GSAPP, 2019 Partner: Jacob Gulinson Grand Isle, Louisiana Oyster Aquacutlture is a co-op based floating network of living and researching spaces for Barrier Island rehabilitation, the aquaculture of oysters and the commercial fishing industry. This system is built in two parts, temporary barge shaped classrooms, work spaces and floating oyster rings and a long term housing node which grows up from the water to provide shelter and communal space for both fishermen, their families and scientists. The roofs of both the temporary barges and the housing nodes become a secondary access path to provide plenty of space for the residents to move around and engage with the site. This network further provides a new first line of defense for the Louisiana coast that redistributes along the coastal path, responding to the changing needs over time for housing, oyster aquaculture and ecological labs at the location of each Barrier Island. Each satallite facility would work to bolster breakwater systems while supporting the local fishermen.However understanding the future of climate change, this system works on different scales of temporarily, eventually leaving a healthy ecology and a new breakwater habitat before the network retreats closer to land.

As a government funded farming co-op, this network provides a new system of oyster farming using advanced methods of growing, harvesting and selling oysters in order to help fishermen who are directly impacted by climate change and man made infrastructure along the Mississippi River basin.

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THE NEW MEAT MARKET Columbia University GSAPP, 2019 Newburgh, New York The future of a sustainable meat industry starts in the laboratory. The new meat market is where research, production and consumption happen in one place and the kitchen is the bridge that links them together. The meat industryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s contribution to deforestation, greenhouse gases and antibiotic resistant bacteria makes finding alternatives a necessity. New industries from Impossible Meats to Memphis Meats have created new opportunities that could change the landscape of the meat industry. This meat market focuses on creating a new typology where the laboratory, the production and the consumption of cultured meat could happen in one place. For lab grown meat identity becomes one of the largest hurdles for this new type of meat. The kitchen therefore becomes a crucial player in navigating this new system of meat growing and distribution.

By bringing the kitchen to the forefront of the restaurant chefs in partnership with scientists can began to shift the culture of lab grown meat for the consumer and promote a sustainable meat industry.

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UNIVERSAL HOUSING IN THE BRONX Columbia University GSAPP, 2018 Bronx, New York Partner: Gauri Bahuguna The goal of this semester-long project was to design a new apartment complex in the Bronx that puts accessibility and equity at the center of our design. This focus started in the private apartments of the residents and then built into the surrounding community. My partner Gauri Bahuguna and I used sun studies to find a form that would allow for the most natural light in every apartment while simultaneously designing an interior that pushes past the minimum ADA requirements by making specific gestures to aid someone with disabilities in their day to day life of their private apartment. This includes designing for the relationship of the resident and a caretaker as well. Each apartment was designed with a back facing wet wall that aligned the kitchen and the bathroom leaving the apartment open for the occupant to add their own interior spaces. The interior architecture helps guide programming through tactile floor tiles and considering spatial opportunities like a wall divider becoming a fold out desk or a counter that opens up for a wheelchair to slide underneath. The first level of our buildings was designed around providing community based integration that included a library, food market and cafe as well as a gym.

These gestures looked at someone who is blind, someone who is hard of hearing or deaf and someone who uses a wheelchair or needs the assistance of an aid. After creating a catalogue of these gestures we were able to build an apartment around them to ensure the needs of someone with disabilities was the first priority of their living space.

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THE DUMBO PUBLIC LIBRARY AND SHELTER Columbia University GSAPP, 2018 Dumbo, New York The goal of this semester-long project was to design a branch of the New York Public Library; however, the challenge of this design was that we had to choose a specific type of illiteracy for the library to center around. I chose social illiteracy and designed my library to focus on homeless youth by integrating a transitional youth shelter and supporting programming within the library. This project was a continuation of the thesis work I did while pursuing my undergraduate degree working with homeless youth in Baltimore, MD and the team based research I did for a publiction with the Queer Students of Architecture, Planning and Preservation looking at queer homeless youth in New York City. Programming and the transition from the interior to the exterior became a crucial exploration for me. The various models I created helped me to look at how a shell structure could begin to interweave itself and define interior spaces and voids. Furthermore, how the furniture and bookshelves could be redesigned for the space to continue the notion of openness and transparency of the overall project.

From my research with QSAPP creating spaces of equality and inclusion was also important to my design. Looking at how bedrooms, bathrooms and showers could be spaces of inclusion and safety for LGBTQ youth was crucial to designing a space that would be a home or a safe haven to all people regardless of sexuality or gender identity. Furthermore, looking at spaces that could be run or managed by the youth that lived there so that the library felt like their own.

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EAST RIVER SWIMMING POOL Columbia University GSAPP, 2017 East River, New York Looking at the waterfront I noticed how many activities were confined to the land along the East River. Besides the running and walking path along edge there was an inherent border between land and water and no real activity that encouraged people tovcross that line and experience the water. The programming of my pier focuses on getting people into the river by creating a mixed-use circular pool for swimming, kayaking and paddleboarding. This pool would use a border of local freshwater plants to filter the water from the river in order to make it clean enough for swimming. I looked at cranes as a truss system with an infinite amount of combinations. I designed four trusses across the pool that would rest on the surface of the water and divide the pool into an infinite amount of programs for the user. Furthermore each cube that makes up the truss system has been designed to support the prggramming in specific layouts of the trusses. I designed six different module cubes that could adapt to the movement of the truss as the trusses themselves facilitate the activity in the pool or in the river. These cubes include flexible seating, pop up shelves and counters for art shows and market days, kayak storage, rope walls, slides and diving platforms.

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PROJECT SOL Columbia University GSAPP, 2017 14th St, New York For the new subway station along 14th st I looked at shifting platforms that created a path with a variety of viewpoints within the structure. I was inspired to play with the idea of â&#x20AC;&#x153;lightnessâ&#x20AC;? while digging into the ground for the entryway. I focused on the verticality of entering an underground subway station by creating a forest of shifting vertical members within the entrance that penetrated the space above. I created a staggered canopy above ground that would lead the commuter up to the entrance through a series of ramps and green roofs then down through the trunks of the structure. To connect back to the idea of lightness I design each vertical member to be held in tension by the canopy and the platforms that guided the commuter down into the station. By hanging the whole structure and floating the platforms above the floor of the subway I could push this idea of lightness and getting lost among the vertical members. The roofs would allow vegitation to grow down into the station while the vertical members are covered with a perforated shell to supprt this growth and pull the water down past the primary entrance above ground.

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PROJECT DUA Columbia University GSAPP, 2017 14th St, New York

Project DUA uses the idea of scaffolding to provide a series of opporunites for personal enagggement along the corner of 14th St and 9th Ave that would shift in a twenty four hour period. Using the grid as the driving force in my design I studied photo cubes to figure out the logic behind an operable hinge that would allow modules to create new forms out of one larger cube. I began making my own cubes and hinges that would unravel and change depending on the way the parts were folded. However, by making the cubes inhabitable for my final iteration the push and pull of the planes that were made from opening and closing of the scaffolding provided a space for two types of interaction; one more extroverted and open that takes on the corner and invites interaction and exploration and the second closed and retreated back from the corner to encourage self relection and self isolation.

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PROJECT SWIFT Columbia University GSAPP, 2017 Morningside Park Our first assignment at GSAPP was to create an object that could be dropped off a ledge and fall to the ground in more than eight seconds. Further the object had to weigh at least one pound. I designed my flying object to have wings that could be wound so the flapping of the wings would hold the object in the air as it glides down.

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THE ACANTHUS REVIVAL Columbia University GSAPP, 2020

The acanthus leaf is a motif that has been used throughout history. While it can be seen in Anicient Egypt, the Renaissance and even the Victorian Era, it isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seen in contemporary times. My design revives the acanthus leaf as a modern day tile that grows across a surface representing the style of the William Morris block prints and the repetition of the leaf on an Egyptian capital. The tile has five variations including the flower of the acanthus plant that create a variety of opportunities for the user to design their own pattern.

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RESIDENCE P

BEDROOM

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BEDROOM VEGETATION TERRACE

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KITCHEN

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EXO MOD Columbia University GSAPP, 2020 Partner: Jack Lynch Our module system uses the idea of a co-op to create apartments that had shared communal green spaces. Our system uses a 10x10 square and a series of panels that would start to carve out rooms in the overall grid. We used the idea of a panel and post system to allow for development and change over time maing it possible for multi generational families to live in one apartment. Each apartement has a double height volume to allow for occupants to add a second floor as the need for more bedrooms came up. This system allowed us to create a spectrum of different pieces from full room sets to individual panels to small planter attachments that could be added over time. This system also considers how nature can play into each module giving us different opportunities to look at how planters and green spaces can be used in each apartment and to create shared green spaces around the circulation. Further, we looked at how modules could open up to become two of three modules rather than be contained into one 10x10 box. For instance a bedroom that opens up into the office module with a folding desk to allow for more open floor space in the two modules. Or the entry way with its sliding glass panels becomes an extension of the outside to the two planter modules in front of them. As we built up these apartments we also considered how the apartments themselves could break down the 40x40x20. We came up with the idea that apartments above or below could rent out or take on quadrants of shared apartments if the space was unused.

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UPSTATE LAKE HOUSE Columbia University GSAPP, 2019 Partners: Jack Lynch and Jacob Gulinson This upstate lake house was deisgned around the boulders found on the shoreline. The entryway leads to the open kitchen and living room towards the front of the house while the bedrooms follow around to a private hallway on the other side. A dock wraps around the house bringing the residents closer to the water. The glass shell encloses the spaces in natural light but operable glass panes allow for natural ventilation.

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BI Columbia University GSAPP, 2020

My objective was to design a table made from one continuous surface that is supported by two bases â&#x20AC;&#x153;cut outâ&#x20AC;? from the surface and extruded or folded down to create each leg. Then using Karamba, I applied gravity and live loads onto the table and extruded the legs in order to optimize the width of each leg, the fillet between the leg and the table and placement in the boundary of the surface of the table. In my design there were seven parameters. The first four parameters have to do with the placement of the two legs across a given surface. The dimension of the surface was made from standard dinner table dimensions. Two points were added on the surface and then the x and y coordinate of each were then able to vary for each iteration. Second a circle was made from each point and the radius of each became their own parameter. This meant that the placement and width of each leg could vary allowing for interesting combinations of thick and thin legs. Finally the last parameter was the size of the fillet between the table surface and the legs. This allows variety in structure as well as a usable table surface. I used a smaller dimension than the table for the x and y values to ensure the legs could be successfully filleted to the surface of the table. I had to test the maximum size of the fillet and radius of the legs then find a value that would allow for variability but still create successful results.

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THE GREENPOINT THEATER Columbia University GSAPP, 2020 Partners: Peter Stol, Danli Wang, Alex Wong Our group was tasked with the goal of designing a new theater and park extension on the river’s edge of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. We designed a theater who’s architecture represented the very performances happening inside. We did this by creating two large cantilevers that opened up like a curtain and became two entrances for the building. The performance spaces were then placed on the second floor to allow for the first floor to become an open breezeway for passive cooling as well as a central hub for community gatherings, shared workspaces, a cafe and a place for retail. To allow for the unveiling of the architecture, similar to the unfolding of a plot in a dance or play, the large trusses that support the cantilevers are disguised by vertical terracotta panels on the exterior that create shading and begin to show in specific moments the performance of the building’s structure. From the inside, large glass panels allow the visitor to see this structure completely revealed as the final scene. The more subtle nuances of the plot are acted out as the visitor moves through the baffled ceiling that calls to the exterior cladding system, the way-finding and brass interior that plays with the light during a nighttime show and the metal that is used on the third floor to create an intimate moment in the heart of Greenpoint.

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THE AUTONOMOUS CITY Columbia University GSAPP, 2018 Newark, New Jersey Partners: Karen Choi, Emily Tobin and Yoonwan Kang The newest neighorbood development in Newark looks towards the future of autonomous vehicles by being the first testing ground for AV in the city open to the public. The buildings in the neighborhood themselves create a variety of test roads that are zoned for each stage of testing. Further the roads for vehicles are narrowed to allow for the development of bike lanes, pedestrian walkways and extensions of storefront property. The addition of the newly developed waterfront brings pedestrians through this test ground to park spaces to ensure the neighborhood stays fully active. The buildings themselves will be a mix use of partnerships with local schools, businesses and housing to continue the development of sustainable technology.

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