design portfolio rodney bell
[3]
After training for just over two years with a flight instructor, I fulfilled a lifetime goal of completed the written, oral, and practical exams required to obtain a Private Pilot’s License.
2003
I attended Bainbridge College in Bainbridge, Georgia , in order to complete the core curriculurm before beginning my degree. While here, I received deans both years. honors
2004-2006
// r. bell_architecture portfolio
2007-2008
architecture internship
2006-2011
After studying for two years at Bainbridge College, I moved to Georgia Marietta, to begin my architecture degree at PolytechSouthern nic State University.
1st yeah competition
earned pilots license
<1985[born]
bainbridge college
from graduated I Cairo High School in with Georgia Cairo, College and TechniSeals cal Preperatory
southern polytechnitc
graduated high school
2004
After my first year at Southern Polytechinc, I began an internship at Whole Town Solutions, an award-winning New Urbanist design firm in Roswell, Georgia. Daily duties included CAD Drafting and project research and presentation.
I was awarded First Place in the First Year Design Competition for the design of a campus community center to be located on the Southern campus. Polytechnic
2007
lighting competition
3rd year competition
2010
2008
4th year competition
2nd year competition
Jeremy Smith, Jereme were I and Smith, awarded second place for our design for a stool in the Third Year Competition. Design
Kyle Hoard and I were awarded First Place and Student Choice for our lamp design. Jury members included faculty members and lighting design consultants.
graduate_architecture
2009
I was awarded Second Place for my design for a transit hub along the Beltline in the Inman Park neighborhood. This was a seminal project for my education as it allowed me to think independently about the possibilities within architecture.
[residential lowrise]
inman park transit hub
ivan allen high-rise
I was awarded First Place in the Fourth Year the for Competition design of a Mixed Use Highrise within the Ivan Allen Development in Atlanta. downtown
community n e x u s
2007
t h e s i s research
various projects
l rodney alan bel
I have long desired the ability to leave a legacy of improvement with the work that I accomplish in my lifetime. It is within this ethical and social framework that I carry out design work. In approaching each design problem, I ask myself two questions: how does this solution address contemporary issues and how is this solution improving the physical and social environments of those that will occupy and use it.
[4]
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// r. bell_architecture portfolio
[bangladesh condominium tower] spring semester_fourth year_
// website_ http://issuu.com/designandcognition
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// r. bell_architecture portfolio
minium tower] [bangladesh condo
Faced with a challenging set of urban, cultural, and schedule constraints, the project premise demanded that we design a residential tower with at least six units. The allowable square-footage for the proposal were small considering the lot-size and Floor-to-Area-Ratios. Furthermore, each unit needed three bedrooms and live-in servents quarters. Reflecting the modernized city that Dhaka has become, I sought to make a broad gestrural stroke of dynamicism. The initial massing reflects two intersecting masses and the contortions and residual space leftover. This challenging morphology lent a unique residential space that challenges existing spatial layouts. The scheme provides for passive cooling through the unit as is standard for this region.
// website_ http://issuu.com/designandcognition
[8]
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// r. bell_architecture portfolio
minium tower] [bangladesh condo
// website_ http://issuu.com/designandcognition
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// r. bell_architecture portfolio
[inman
park
transit
hub]
spring semester_third year_
// website_ http://issuu.com/designandcognition
[12]
_ p r o j e c t
b r i e f
This project seeks to synthesize many complex issues both local to the site and systematic to its societal context. The site, located along the Beltline in Inman Park, Atlanta, Georgia was plagued by several contradictions. While preservation efforts on the west side of the site attempt to preserve the historic Fourth Ward district, gentrification along the east side of the site renders the actual site a middle ground, or third space between the two. As such, I approached this condtion as an opportunity to articulate a space that is neutral to both conditions, allowing both communities to cultivate the site through urban farming and market spaces. Furthermore, the situation is exacerbated by a rampant homeless population which cannot be simply displaced. Providing habitation spaces and farming plots to this third and othered community renders them active members to this new spatiality.
<model explorations> [13]
// r. bell_architecture portfolio
hub] [inman park transit
// website_ http://issuu.com/designandcognition
[14]
The spatial scheme and relationships emerged out of rigorous iterative sectional analysis and study. These section studies operated on the scale range from the site down to construction detailing. The primary objective of these explorations was generating new social relationships between the three social groups listed in the project brief. The project program consisted of a transit hub and community spaces. The transitI hub acts as the heart of the project with community spaces (market spaces + educational spaces--phase 2). In addition to the community spaces, there is a community flex space that is programmatically and socially neutral to which community members can purpose and use to the need of the moment. This radically useless space is an emerging trend in my work. In this flexible-use space, members can actively use the space as it remains ambiguous while still accepting a wide range of uses.
[section 01_community flex space] [section 02_transit hub] [15]
// r. bell_architecture portfolio
hub] [inman park transit
trees-atlanta co-op kudzu research fields park + grass area regenerative vegetation elevated wetlands native wildflowers garden plots [homeless] garden plots [residents] preserved kudzu slope
A common denominator that unites these three social groups is ecology. Upon this fragmented upper ground plane are urban farms for both reseidents and the homeless population, regenerative forests, kudzu research, and wetlands. All of these different uses regenerate ecologies that have been elimenated by neo-liberal urban development practices. Furthermore, these various ecological uses are infused into the program, as opposed to allocating them throughout the site. As seen in the section details, the ecological activities and uses become apart of using theses spaces. Going beyond repairing and regenerating social relationships, these efforts imply a reconstituting the relationships between the environment and man.
// website_ http://issuu.com/designandcognition
[16]
These representations depict the spatial complexities that define this exploration. The main transit terminal is situated and programmed such that the circulation from ticketing to boarding platforms is infused into the more public programs of markets, community flex-space, and urban farming, and artificial wetlands. As the Beltline becomes more prominent and utilized, this project will involve larger groups and demographics and peoples into its socially-responsible operations. Furthermore, on a local level, the fragmented ground plane rises to the level of Freedom Parkway, a community and social divider for this area. Cutting through the highway and providing speed regulating landscaping and pedestrian crossings, this divide is restitched so that Inman Park and the Old Fouth Ward can become more continuous to each other. Additionally, circulation patterns from Highlands Road are connected down to the Beltline through ramps and walkways.
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// r. bell_architecture portfolio
hub] [inman park transit
// website_ http://issuu.com/designandcognition
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// r. bell_architecture portfolio
[ mixed use high rise_ivan allen plaza ] fall semester_fourth year
// website_ http://issuu.com/designandcognition
[20]
[project brief]
Beginning with the initial program of mixed-use high rise, I sought to redefine this out-of-date, yet symbolic, typology. Typically the high rise is reserved for high-end residential and office uses. However, after analyzing the issues with the site--a spectacle of architecture that serves an other-demographic--it seemed obvious that this typology must be pressed further to address more contemporary issues (issues that transcended mere profitability). Although such an idea is radical and counter-intuitive to contemporary development practice, it seems unavoidable when visiting the site and seeing the disparity that exists across Ivan Allen Boulevard--to the south, lavish tourist attractions and high-end residential; to the north, homeless shelters and a thriving squatter population on-site. Additionally, spaces of high-consumerism tend to conceal realities such as infrastructures, social disparities, and historical narratives. Therefore, utilizing the sites history and social condition, I developed a scheme that exposes these realities and generated radically new social relationships that re-imagine this typology as a vessel of social responsibility.
[21]
// r. bell_architecture portfolio
[mixed use highrise_ivan allen
[process]
boulevard]
// website_ http://issuu.com/designandcognition
[22]
[sectional analysis]
Sectional and planimetric analysis worked towards the common conceptual goals of interrogating the proto-typical and autonomous post-modern box. Infusing this programmatic autonomy with public functions and going even further to collapse programs onto each other, I intended to generate interaction rather than dictating it. As such, low-income housing in the three smaller sections collapses almost literally onto the office and high-end residential zones creating a public break in the morphology. This public common space between the office and residential parts of the main towers is open air and programmatically open-ended (a tongue-in-cheek nod to the W-Hotelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s private terrace across the street). Circulation throughout the building generates interaction as even the insides of the building are broken apart to allow floor-to-floor interaction. A new public plan has been instituted beginning at williams street to the east of the site and unfolding westward with commercial spaces below and park and plaza public spaces above. This unfolding space creeps under the main towers as well, opening their ground floors to the public (official lobbiees are located one floor above). Oddly juxtoposed against Pemberton Place across the street, a public health clinic (subsidized by rental premiums) provides much needed healthcare to the thriving homeless population in the area, adding to the cadre of other support groups such as The Atlanta Union Mission. Structurally, the building operates on a substantial steel superstructue allowing for the open and broken floor plates.
[23]
// r. bell_architecture portfolio
[mixed use highrise_ivan allen boulevard]
// website_ http://issuu.com/designandcognition
[24]
[upper public plaza_v. south]
[view northwest_williams st.]
floorplate] [office
[view south from williams st. exit]
Exhibited here is the actual experience of these spatial explorations. These renderings depict how the autonomy of the proto-typical highrise is both radically challenged and architecturally interrogated. At once public plazas impede upon office space (with necessary separation), floor-to-floor alienation is disrupted, public health is juxtoposed against spectacle tourism, and the high-rise morphology becomes the result of site forces rather than imposing itself onto a site. Historical sitelines dictate building parti, long-concealed creeks are exposed as artificial marshlands, public infrrastructure violates the pristine glass towerr. This typology is no longer a false bastion of stability but is now fluent with its social, physical, and historical context, disrupting the autonomy of Portman-ian planning with structural continuity.
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// r. bell_architecture portfolio
[lower public plaza_view north]
[mixed use highrise_ivan allen boulevard]
// website_ http://issuu.com/designandcognition
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// r. bell_architecture portfolio
[hybrid-scapes_northside drive, atl. ] fall semester_fifth year
// website_ http://issuu.com/designandcognition
[28]
This project emerged from several very complex and interrelated issues. The primary issue was how landscape and architecture can develop a synthetic relationship and the emergent continuity from such a thought process. Breaking this issue down further, I sought to resolve the idea of sustainability and its associated ambiguity in contemporary practice. We were tasked to begin the investigation by identifying a monster, or main issue plaguing the site--moreover, contemporary practice. After visiting the site, exploring its socio-spatial dimensions through physical models and conceptual drawing, I centered my investigation on the idea of neo-liberal development practice. More specifically, it was the way in which decisions are made from the financial institution based upon a given developmentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; potential for capital gain, or profit. These decisions, as witnessed adjacent to the site in Vine City, can have devastating consequences. This advancing development front acquires properties, puts profitable (but not contextually beneficial) developments in place. As adjacent properties either rot away or leech onto the developments, property values decline clearing the way for the them to be purchased and converted to more profitable use. Therefore, I tasked myself with re-thinking development practice as a grassroots endeavor that both involves and functions to support the communities that it affects.
[initial concepts]
[29]
// r. bell_architecture portfolio
Initial efforts involved dealing with the on-site landfill that was recently taken off the national registry of polluted sites. Plasma arc gasification offers considerable promise for an several reasons. Firstly gasification chambers convert nearly all materials both hazardous and regular municipal waste to municipal gas. Therefore, the emergent development can fund itself and operate outside of the neo-liberal development complex. The resale of excess natural gas back to the City of Atlanta funds further operations and expansion. I sought to fragment the site in a linear manner--counter-intuitive to typical development patterns--which provides a spatial defense to its later conversion to capitalistic use. I allowed these fragments to bridge the disenfranchised neighborhoods of Vine City and English Avenue. This increases their connectivity to the city grid. Because these neighborhoods were so segregated from the city proper, they have decayed and suffered from crime and social neglect.
[hybrid-scapes_457 northside drive, atlanta, ga]
// website_ http://issuu.com/designandcognition
[30]
[ s p a t i a l explorations]
Continuing themes from previous explorations, these spatial studies were focused on creating generative interaction among subjects, programs, and social issues. Therefore, rather than normatively blocking out program on a site, the program here is fragmented in a linear way such that it can become heterogeneous across the site. The programs include artificial wetlands (to provide recycled clean water to urban gardens in the public spaces), parking, composting operations (to recycle waste into useful soil for urban farming operations), public park spaces, and public units that can be occupied for community needs such as urban farms, habitation, artistic expression, et cetera. After gasification operations have ceased, the piers are to be converted to market spaces, educational spaces, commercial spaces (subsidized by micro-loans in order to ensure local businesses serve local needs, and low-income housing. Current notions of private property are not necessarily amenable to this exploration. Therefore, implied here is a new social paradigm whereby property is community-owned and serves community needs. These units that are located along movement paths and can be occupied in a public manner. Occupation implies adverse ownership, a concept that has shown successful precedent in Islamic urban societies (Crisis in the Built Environment: The Case of the Muslim City) and U.S. court precedent (Halsey vs. Humble Oil and Refining Co, 1933; Ramapo Mfg vs. Mape, 1915; Marengo Cave Co. vs. Ross, 1937). Additionally, a community congress shall be instituted to act as a front for these marginalized and segregated communities.
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// r. bell_architecture portfolio
[hybrid-scapes_457 northside drive, atlanta, ga]
// website_ http://issuu.com/designandcognition
[32]
[commercial/residential pier] [marketspace pier]
With such rigid linearity associated within this new fragmented spatial strategy, contending with lateral movement (north to south) becomes a somewhat of a challenge. This section study depicts the movement from pier to pier and the social agency involved. City grids tend to be ontologically and spatially rigid. For this reason, citizens merely move along and within these movement structures. However, movement along these piers utilizes deployable connections (actuated by several men). This allows the local citizen the agency to alter his or her movement structures to suit the needs of its use. Furthermore, this sectional study begins to imagine how these fragmented linear structures speak with each other spatially and how they can be used. Although usage, per Tschumi, is rather ambiguous and always in a state of ontological becoming, the architecture that is created can suggest use in a radically ambiguous way. As such, citizens have the agency to use these spaces as they see fit.
[residential/commercial]
[33]
[movement pier]
// r. bell_architecture portfolio
[park spaces]
[hybrid-scapes_457 northside drive, atlanta, ga]
[movement pier]
[movement pier]
// website_ http://issuu.com/designandcognition
[34]
The plans below begin to suggest the potentiality and possibility that these unitized linear pathways afford. Furthermore, the plans depict at a finite scale the heterogeneity and generative capability of such a spatial strategy. Shown in the green are the movement structures, which, as can be seen on the site plan tie into the existing downtown and Vine City/English Avenue Grid. This connectivity is meaningless unless program is superimposed. Therefore, to secure these structures of movement on the global scale, they are not programmed to receive finite programs. Rather, they are structured for movement with units for occupation and use alongside. As such, citizens may occupy and use the units such that the use works towards the needs of the community and “neither harms nor causes harm” to its neighbors. This concept extracted from Akbars Crisis in the Built Environment: The Case for the Muslim City, requires and affords new social relationships that operate outside of capitalistic structures of social relations. These more meaningful relationships will insist upon a new society based on community need and continuity.
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// r. bell_architecture portfolio
[section 03_ownershhip policy]
The intent of this structure of ownership is to encourage local social relationships on the whereby citizens, in order to take possession of a unit, must make public notice to the neighboring occupants and act in accordance to them, only deferring to the Atlanta Community Congress in the event that dispute cannot be locally resolved. This type of ‘bottom-up’ orientation of property management and use is cited in medieval Islamic cities. Particularly the organization of Possessive form of ownership, as outlined by Jamel Akbar in Crisis in the Built Environment: The Case of the Muslim City, presents a form of ownership that forges responsibility among neighbors to possess commons property. In this example, one party (the community [God—in the Islamic example]) owns the actual property and another party (citizens) use and control the properties. The owner’s presence is felt through regulations that govern these local negotiations. However, the owning party stays out of the negotiations for the most part. Decisions are left to neighboring units to negotiate amongst themselves.
[hybrid-scapes_457 northside
[ownership contract_extract]
Users may, for example, use these units of property to any means that neither causes harm nor reciprocates it to one’s neighbors and the community. However, the user/ controller may not alienate the property as it is not his or hers to alienate. Its owner is explicitly the community. Furthermore, the use of one proprietary unit may not alter its neighbors (both immediate and beyond).
// website_ http://issuu.com/designandcognition
drive, atlanta, ga]
_Adverse Possession In a concerted effort operate independently of normative development practices which emphasize an exploitation of space for individual gain, ownership policies of such units as vending units, marketplace units, gardening units, single occupancy residency units, et cetera shall henceforth be referred to as adverse possession. As explained in [section 01], this system of ownership is based upon the premise that one acquires possession of certain units through the use and meaningful cultivation of said units towards the larger needs of the community. Utilizing the units in such a way, the owner—the communities (via the Atlanta Community Congress)—shall legally ignore its use for a certain interval of time rendering the unit in the possession of those cultivating it. In the event that cultivation operates counter-intuitively to the values set forth in the introduction (either harming one’s neighbor(s) or causing harm to one’s neighbor(s), unit possessors will be acted upon and evicted from use. Additionally, this possession occurs specifically at a point that the possessor begins cultivating the site to his or her intended use. This is corroborated by neighboring unit possessors and presented as a public communication of intent to the Atlanta Community Congress.
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// r. bell_architecture portfolio
[ v a r i o u s
w o r k s ] first --fifth year_
// website_ http://issuu.com/designandcognition
[38]
[stool
design]
The design competition called for each entry to adhere to specific size and weight restrictions. Within these our design team decided to focus on a simple and elegant solution that improves the human posture while sitting. We utilized the space within for fluorescently-lit magazine storage. 2008
[urban residence] The programmatic premis for this project was an urban residence to be located just south of the Marietta Square. This solution addresses urban edge by presenting interactive facades to both prominent streets on adjacent to the site while providing inner spaces of respite from urban activity. 2007
[architecture museum] This architecture museum to be located just off of Little Five Points in Atlanta, Georgia responded to its context through low overall height and privacy treatments to its neighbors. Furthermore, the public spaces extend through the site to add a civic presense to this neighborhood. 2008
[light fixture design] My partner and I were tasked to design a light within specific height and weight restrictions and inspired by a work of architecture. We chose Toyo Itoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Serpentine Pavilion for its existing sensitivity and particular lighting strategy. Subtly representing these qualities, we develop this scheme. 2010
[sub-urban residence] I began the design of this suburban residence by investigating the history of the house as an architecture typology. Recognizing the privatization and alienation of this space through the contemporary suburban example, I developed a less alienated scheme that interacts within the house and with its context. 2010
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[ v a r i o u s
// r. bell_architecture portfolio
w o r k s ]
[construction detail studies]
[hvac systems application]
[electrical systems application]
[construction documentation]
// website_ http://issuu.com/designandcognition
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[ t h e s i s
r e s e a r c h ] fall semester_fifth year_
// website_ http://issuu.com/designandcognition
[42]
[the generation of intersubjectivity through movement and perception] [43]
// r. bell_architecture portfolio
[thesis research_synopsis] This investigation is primarily centered on analyzing and responding to the way that movement and use is pre-programmed in the neo-liberal non-places of contemporary urban space. Initial research focused on understanding movement on the neurological and ontological level. Jaques Derrida and Merleau Ponty provide great insight to both the pragmatics of movement and its ontological dimensions. Both thinkers have discussed its problematization in capitalistic space. Architecturally, these issues were explored through the lenses of the Situationists texts and those arguments asserted by Tschumi. After understanding how movement (and thus the generation of inter-subjectivity), I developed a method of design that would prevent such over-rationalization of movement and use. This method was based upon a global structure (the city grid) that is locally mutated, giving this hypermodern subject the agency to engage his or her environment within these armatures. These local permutations to a global structure provide the necessary trialectic to a dialectic of rational planning versus entropy (both methods of design that have proven detrimental to the aims of this investigation. Therefore, the research culminated with an understanding of both global structures (through space syntax analysis) and local structures (through rigorous sensual study of the site) and how to design an interface between the two.
// website_ http://issuu.com/designandcognition
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