Don Chen 8 Projects, Columbia GSAPP M.Arch 2019

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PROJECTS

DON

CHEN

Architecture is inquiry, expression, resolution, and action.

Eight projects explore eight instances of architecture as— A house as a vehicle for activated learning. A home as an endless room. A museum as an expression of streetlife. A memorial as a resurrection of artifact. A terminal as a self-propagating continuum.

A library as an isolated collector and social producer. A city as a domestic learning network. A never built structure as a utopian vision for the future.

Master of Architecture, 2019 Columbia University GSAPP

Contact don.chen@columbia.edu

Index 7

House for Homeschooling Advanced Studio VI

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Living Brackets Core Studio III

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Museum as Urban Village Advanced Studio V

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Memorial to Banned Books Core Studio I

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Non-Terminating Terminal Core Studio I

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Library as Courtyard Core Studio II

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Knowledge City Advanced Studio IV

117

Never Built Paris

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01

House

for

Homeschooling

A house for homeschooling reimagines domestic life and its architecture as a vehicle for education, to activate learning in the home.

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9 The contemporary house has become an automated product of modern standardization, economy, and pragmatism. In parallel, childhood learning has long proved resistant to radical change, becoming sanitized and automatic.

A house for homeschooling reimagines domestic life and its architecture, as a vehicle for education, to activate learning in the home.

The clients are a single retired grandparent and her 4 pre-kindergarten age grandchildren, looking for an alternative to the automated and sanitized notions of childhood learning, towards a homeschooling curriculum rooted in the Montessori ideals of practical life learning, through exploration, activities, and relating to nature.

Montessori classrooms typically have three areas which have been reinterpreted within the house. A sensorial area

Fall 2019 Advanced Studio VI Critic Jing Liu TA Kevin Lamyuktseung

where children learn to engage the environment through smell, touch, and hearing permeates the house—in the climbing wall, courtyard mound, slide, and a roof to walk on.

Children learn domestic living and ecology in the practical life area. A sunken kitchen provides a window to the earth, and pipes to the cistern. The floor becomes an area to eat and sleep, and gather. From the kitchen, the children gaze out into their edible plant garden.

A language and math area is typically a quiet area for focused activities. Behind a curtain, children access a quiet semi-private space where they can play as a band, listen to a bedtime story, or build a fort, with access to their sleeping areas above.

Rather than four walls and a ceiling, a House for Homeschooling pushes children to always turn a corner, to enrich their self-guided learning.

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11 Pony Garden: A Case Study Pony Garden was imagined as a “luxurious garden for a pony, inhabitable for a human.” In the conceptual framework of Atelier Bow-Wow, the owner is made a freeloader and the pony her master, and the role of production—the caring for the pony by the human—is seen as a constant negotiation of the status of human as freeloader.

This precedent model explores the architectural devices used in defining a distinctive space for a pony versus a space for a human, and attempts to blur their boundaries. In shortening the second floor, the pony’s stable is better ventilated and the pony is given more headspace. In removing the division between the loggia and the paddock and raising the floor of the owner’s space, the pony is allotted a more direct route of entry to its stable.

Pony Garden, Atelier Bow-Wow, 2008

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13 Additionally, the plan attempts to clearly demarcate the boundaries of constructed human space in opposition to the pastoral space of the pony.

From this research, themes taken into a House for Homeschooling are the ideas of thresholds, the juxtaposing of environments of different inhabitants, and space in relation to the body.

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A roof to play and run on A slide to return home after a long day’s climb A sandmound to play in, and learn about the soil A place to sleep, count swans, and listen to the trickle of water

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5 An edible garden, fed by a rainbell and cistern, to plant cabbage, and collect greens for dinner 6 A window to the earth to learn about ecology and the water system

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Grandma’s bedroom Semi-private nook Secret entrance Sunken kitchen Climbing wall Edible garden Herb garden Sandmound

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Outdoor tub Cistern Picnic area Hammock Footbath Mudpool Campfire Slide

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Site plan

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02

Living

Brackets

A pre-fabricated system of concrete “brackets� presents a domestic condition between an entirely open plan and the cellular spaces prescribed by modern micro-unit apartments.

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A Bracket Dictionary Top - cooking, resting, dining, gathering Middle -washing, playing, putting Bottom - camping, planting

31 Spatial zones are defined but not divided, and flow is encouraged between zones and within zones. A field of brackets blankets the site, functioning differently based on its spatial context: on the ground floor, wet wall brackets sink into the ground and appear as planters and public seating.

Within the building, the same wet wall brackets provide plumbing throughout. Resting brackets cradle head space, enclosing beds and sofas in the building, and serving as gathering areas of respite on the exterior ground level.

Units aggregate around particular shared spatial and amenity needs. Because space is defined but not circumscribed, the aggregated units form porous zones that fit each inhabitants’ needs. Taken together, these zones form a micro-urban condition: a continuity of unbound space, defined for living, working, creating and playing.

Fall 2017 Core Studio III Critic Jinhee Park Partner Christine Giorgio

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Prototypical Plans

1 Gardeners’ unit brackets extend a shared social patio

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2 Young couples’ unit brackets extend visual connections across the courtyard garden

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3 Bachelors’ unit brackets extend living space across units

3 Writers’ unit brackets invite co-working and collaboration

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East-West Section

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03 Museum as Urban Village A museum and artist live-work residence, informed by the culture of Harlem in its expression of life on the street.

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47 Museum as urban village reframes the contemporary museum, informed by the culture of Harlem in its expression of life on the street, through the creation of informal public spaces and ambiguous program zones that articulate the urban edge of Harlem’s Manhattanville Factory District.

Harlem’s cultural legacy began in 1917 by way of the Harlem Renaissance, and its streets—throughout the decades—have been a stage for self-expression: in dance, fashion, music, and activism. At the same time, as Harlem continues to rapidly gentrify, its changing identity echoes burgeoning issues plaguing the artistic community.

In the past two decades, New York has experienced a surge in the information and media-tech sectors, with companies taking up more office space than ever before, snatching up the industrial lofts artists

Fall 2018 Advanced Studio V Critics Christopher Leong, Dominic Leong TA Gabriel Burkett

have long favored. Harlem’s Manhattanville Factory District more specifically, aims to reach 1 million square feet in mixeduse development by 2019.

The consequent 32% increase in rent in communities most associated with art and creativity has created an “artistic diaspora,” where artists now live further from work spaces, exhibition spaces, and the collaborators on which their work relies. Harlem’s art spaces are especially at risk, as established Lower East Side and Chelsea galleries move in, looking to save a dollar.

So the question becomes: how does a museum preserve the cultural legacy of Harlem and retain Harlem-based artists while addressing the housing deficit and disappearing public spaces?

An Ecology of Harlem’s Cultural Spaces

Informal

Interior Cultural Spaces

Sugar Hill Childrens’ Museum

Formal

Childs Memorial Temple Church

Mart 125

the Cotton Club

the Apollo Theater

Schomberg Center

St. Nick’s Pub

the Lenox Lounge

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49 Exterior Cultural Spaces

Informal

Harlem Days

La Marquetta

Basketball Courts Outdoor Sermons

Formal

the Stoop

Marcus Garvey Park

Street Vendors

Parades and Marches

Proto-Institution I

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51 Architecture as Methodology A Pavilion for Andrea Zittel Andrea’s Zittel’s practice encompasses spaces, objects, and modes of living, exploring questions such as how to live, and what gives life meaning.

Zittel’s art, as a response to her environment and daily routines also manifests in a shared reconfiguration of the ground plane. From her planar pavilions to her sunken furniture—all make reference to her homebase in the flat California high desert.

Taking inspiration from pieces like A-Z carpet furniture and A-Z pit bed, this proto-institution imagines and situates Zittel’s daily rituals on the ground. Living, working, and exhibition spaces each occupy a narrow slab. Excavations into each slab provide circulation through a series of occupiable grounds, which emerge as roofs to provide shade to the interstitial outdoors spaces between.

Proto-Institution II

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53 Architecture as Methodology A Pavilion for Carol Bove Carol Bove’s assemblages combine found and made elements, incorporating domestic, industrial, and natural objects to conjure an affective narrative that evades confinement to one singular history.

Rather than communicating personal experience, Bove’s focuses on the curated but improvisational displays of her compositions.

This pavilion adheres to Bove’s idea of non-purposive free space and aligns with her intentions to “make room” for other artists. Bove’s art objects take a backseat to the mechanism of viewing art and the choreography of her art in space.

Along with Bove’s own work, gallery elevators bring visitors to her curated collaborations with others—at the same time visually framing her own work.

Proto-Institution III

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55 A hybrid evolution of the previous proto-institutions, in reconfiguring the proto-institution as a hyper-efficient core, the facility is compacted to a minimum volume to sculpt the public spaces around it.

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HARLEM ROW HOUSE

MUSEUM AND ARTIST LIVE-WORK

URBAN GESTURE

Massing Studies Top left - aperture Bottom left - edge Top - sculpt

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Plan Ground Floor

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Market Playground Office Dressing Rooms

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Amphitheater Seminar Cafe Bookstore

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9 Community Compost 10 Sculpture Garden 11 Temporary Exhibitions 12 Permanent Exhibitions

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Sculpture Galleries Blackbox Theater Archives Loading

Plan Mezzanine

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1 Artist-in-residence lofts 2 Long-term artist housing

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Haitian Art Fair Sharing between buildings, accommodating 45 visitors

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Children’s Creative Workshop Sharing between units, accommodating 10 children

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Harlem Arts Alliance Meeting Sharing within units, accommodating 8 members

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04 Memorial to Banned Books A lost and found memorializing in each of its vaulted spaces, an exemplary banned book from 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st century America.

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71 The proposed lost and found space is a memorial to banned books. In the 18th century Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders was taken out of circulation via the US Federal Anti-Obscenity Act citing filthy inappropriate material. In the 19th century Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe was banned in the confederate states for it’s anti-slavery content. Ulysses

by James Joyce was banned in the early 20th century for sexual content. More recently, Operation Dark Heart by Anthony Shaffer was banned over concerns for national security but has since come back to circulation in a heavily redacted version.

Though banned for different reasons, these books reflect on the changing cultural milieu and social norms of their time—they embody the seeds of radical thought and have acted as catalysts for change.

Fall 2016 Core Studio I Critic Tei Carpenter

Structurally, the form of the memorial evolved from the idea of the book as a small object with great social implications.

The underground setting also reinforces the cultural grey space each banned book has occupied—with their widely known presence but remaining largely inaccessible before the age of the internet. The arches represent the idea of small to large while the ruptures of the ground condition force a consideration and acknowledgement of the presence of the memorial, making the hidden visible, and reiterating the greater social implications of the unseen.

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Non-Terminating

Terminal

A terminal as an intermediary space that disrupts fixed flows of circulation with a self-propagating, multi-directional, and multi-scalar path.

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79 The Non-Terminating Terminal proposes a reinterpretation of conventional ferry terminal typology. Typically, the ferry terminal serves as a standalone and closed gateway mediating between fixed flows of circulation.

Take the Battery Park Ferry terminal for example—a pedestrian begins his path on a promenade, walks a linear path until he arrives at the ferry terminal.

The terminal here is an intermediary space between land travel and water travel. Once on the ferry, the pedestrian follows a similarly rigid path to his destination. The NTT retains the most fundamental element of a terminal—as connective tissue between water and land—but disrupts typical terminal circulation with a fluid and multi-directional path. With the ferry terminal now a destination rather than a gateway, increased routes of water-based transportation become necessary and propagates a new network of circulation paths that self-perpetuate and never terminate.

Fall 2016 Core Studio I Critic Tei Carpenter

In stark comparison to Manhattan’s west edge and the Hudson River where ferry stops and piers abound, the eastern edge and the East River remains highly underpopulated. Situating the NTT within the East River responds to this asymmetry, activates the water as new ground for civic programs, and proposes an alternative mode of travel from Manhattan to Brooklyn in light of the closure of L-trains for Hurricane Sandy repair.

During low tide, the first floor floats on water and is accessed by piers, much like the typical ferry terminal which grasps onto the coast and has a certain and singular point of access. But during storm surges and high tide, the first floor is submerged and the terminal becomes a suspended island where access is ambiguous and the experience of space becomes solitary.

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Library

as

Courtyard

A library seeking to reconcile the social with the solitary, to address the needs for isolated study within the context of social communal space.

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85 A Library for the Social and the Solitary “A living thing can be healthy, strong, and fruitful only when bounded by a horizon” (Nietzsche, 1876).

A courtyard can at once inspire quiet contemplation, and conversely, fuel social interaction. It exists in the domestic scale (Breuer’s Hooper House) and in the scale of the civic (Labrouste’s Biblioteque Nationale de France). But at its essence, a courtyard is defined by its boundaries. In extending courtyard to library, its operation is multi-scalar and multidimensional. Its presence is seen vertically, tracing the progression of datums; it is seen in the oblique, delineating circulation paths between datums; and it is seen cellularly, demarcating the boundaries of solitary reading space.

This page - British Museum Reading Room Opposite - Seinajoki City Library, JKMM, 2013

With Library as Courtyard, I address the necessary acknowledgement of library as bounding space for both the social and the solitary. Library projects such as Sydney Smirke’s British Museum Reading Room and JKMM’s Seinajoki City Library begin with large centralized social reading terraces that structure a pinwheeling of stacks, multimedia spaces, and individual reading spaces around it.

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87 Library as Courtyard proposes the inverse: a decentralized center by way of courtyard, with an activation of the perimeter, that reconciles the social with the solitary through double programming.

A social circulatory route becomes the communal area and exists as a physical and visual connector. A parallel space below undercuts the continuous social circulation with support services and hidden reading terraces, accessible through a vertical path located at the spine. Double programming allows for the interaction of likeminded users, allowing the act of reading singly in (under) the company of others.

In light of the digital revolution and the increasing ease of access to information, modern libraries have evolved from repositories of knowledge to an “open platform” for a variety of social and civic plug-ins (Mattern, 2014).

This foregrounding of social infrastructure—whether for increased community engagement or spontaneous interactions—intends to address the needs of society at large, but loses sight of a community: those who frequent the library not only for play, but for quiet and isolated study. With encroaching gentrification and imminent hyper-density, a library at Albee Square must reconcile the social with the solitary, to address the needs for isolated study within the context of social communal space.

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Spring 2017 Core Studio II Critic Mimi Hoang

Three Scales of Courtyards 1 Social Courtyard 2 Solitary Courtyard 3 Outdoor Couryard

LIBRARY AS COURTYARD

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Concept Models

Plan GF Community floor community-lending library, cafe, and reception

PLAN 1F Lobby SCALE 1/8” = 1’

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PLAN 2F Solitary

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Plan 2F Solitary Floor fragmented isolated study spaces, rare book library, information commons, and non-circulating stacks

PLAN 3F Social SCALE 1/8” = 1’

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Plan 3F Social Floor porosity between gallery, event, and lounge spaces, group study, children’s area, librarian and staff desks

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Knowledge

City

A network of 8 vocational schools, in combination with transitional homes, as an alternative to juvenile delinquent centers in New York’s South Bronx.

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Queens Detention Complex Capacity 212 adult males

Manhattan Detention Complex Capacity 898 adult males

Horizons Juvenile Center Capacity 124 youth Brooklyn House of Detention Capacity 815 adult males

Rikers Decentralization

99 New York is currently one of only two states to prosecute children 16 and older as adults if they’re accused of a crime, relegating them to the Rikers Island prison complex, a notoriously brutal lockup.

By 2019, under new legislation, the city will no longer prosecute 16- and 17-year olds as adult criminals. Concurrently, phase one of Mayor De Blasio’s Rikers decentralization plan will see the transportation of 200 16- and 17-year old offenders to the Horizons Juvenile Detention Center, before moving into the forthcoming Bronx Detention Center. The typology of the juvenile detention center is still one of a fortress with high security and strict enclosures, despite housing predominantly minor crime youth offenders.

This project proposes a network of 8 vocational schools, in combination with transitional homes, as an alternative to juvenile delinquent centers, dispersed across South Bronx’s crime-ridden Precinct 40.

Spring 2018 Advanced Studio V Critic Nahyun Hwang PartnerJoanne Chen

Case Study I - The Island School

Laundry Services

English Classes

Social Workers

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Immigration Advice

Seasonal Gifting

Clothing Donations

23:00 Wait for Vacancy 21:00 Shelter Full 9:00 Leave Shelter

10:00 Dogwalking

18:00 Legal Services 14:30 Valet Duties

14:30 Lunch Break

11:00 Bathroom

17:30 Food Bank

14:30 Laundry 16:30 Goodwill

19:30 Bathroom

101 Extending Notions of Home to the Sphere of Education The Island School spans Pre-K to eighth grade and includes PS188, a Girl’s Prep Charter School, and PS94, a special needs school. Nearly half of the students here are homeless, and in response, the Island School has had to grapple with the very idea of what a school should be.

Today, the building is open six days a week; it has five social workers, English classes for parents, and free laundry facilities. Lawyers come in once a month to help with issues like immigration. And during the winter holiday season, every child gets a present. The Island School’s array of support services for its homeless student population brings to light a greater urgency for similar services across New York, where a third of all students are estimated to be homeless.

Top - Island School’s social amenities Bottom - A “Day in the Life” of a homeless student without access to the Island School’s amenities.

Case Study II - The CIEP Schools

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Small School B + 2D + F

Medium School A + B + 2C + 2D + F

Large School A+B+C+D+E+F

A - Library

B - Water Tower

C - Student Housing

D - Multipurpose Hall

E - Athletic Facilities

F - Medical Center

103 Kit of Parts: CIEP’s SchoolSpecific Customizations The CIEP school, conceived

by Lionel Brizola, the state governor of Rio de Janeiro in the 1980s with Oscar Niemeyer, aimed to provide every community—from a wealthy suburb to a favela—first-class architecture, and ensure that every student has acess to the same educational opportunities. Several of the schools are distributed to neighborhoods where the children previously had no school to go to. The schools go beyond meeting educational needs to take care of the children’s living needs, such as providing daily showers, monthly health checkups, and dormitories for children who need to commute from afar. A total of 508 CIEPs were built across Rio, reimagining the school as a distributed system, integrated into the urban fabric, by attending to both educational and living needs.

Rio De Janeiro Total built - 508 Blueprinted unbuilt - 500

Conceptual Site Collage

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Vocational School Network

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1 Visitor and Orientation Center

2 Hostel and Supermarket

3 Creative Art Workshop

4 Media Lab

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5 Edible Schoolyard

6 Gym and Urgent Care Clinic

7 Air Quality Research Center

8 Fabrication Shop

Vocational School 2 - Hostel and Supermarket 108

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Ground Floor Plan 1 Supermarket 2 Laundromat 3 Hostel Entrance 4 Coffee Bar 5 Market Stand 6 Butcher Shop 7 Restrooms 8 Back of House 9 Lecture Hall

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Second Floor Plan 1 Hostel Lobby 2 Living Quarters 3 Restrooms 4 Classrooms 5 Kitchen

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Vocational School 2 - Hostel and Supermarket 110

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Vocational School 5 - Edible Schoolyard

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Greenhouse Amphitheater Dining Hall Classrooms Living Quarters Kitchen Hoop House

8 Chicken Coop 9 Gazebo 10 Planters 11 Cistern 12 Market Stands 13 Compost

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113 The edible schoolyard at the United We Stand community garden, provides urban agricultural training for the youth.

Education and living space is dispersed across the community garden, retaining the current walkways and trees. Single bedrooms are arranged radially around shared programming: a learning kitchen, classrooms, and a small auditorium. Community farms, gardens, and playgrounds are interwoven into the enclosed spaces, allowing multiple access points and to encourage wandering and exploration.

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Never

Built

Paris

A model and collages of Paul Maymont’s visionary Etude Extension (1962), created for Never Built Paris, a continuation on the publication and exhibition Never Built New York.

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119 Technological innovation led avant-garde architects of the 60s to look beyond historical precedents in the field of architecture.

Paper architects proposed radical interventions intended not to be built, but to start a dialogue that would challenge the civic imagination.

This logic influenced Maymont’s megastructure proposals, following Paris’ rapid development—a symptom of the city’s economic prosperity at the tie. Each structure was developed as a Metabolistic citytower that would grow over time to form a network, connected by its own complex transportation system.

The highly rational system created two co-existing datums—historic Paris below, with an entirely separate self-sustaining city above.

Fall 2019 Never Built Paris Critics Greg Goldin, Sam Lubell Team Cynthia Wang, Elizabeth Daddazio

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