Sean Suter

In Aqua Sanitas

A New Queen Lane Pumphouse

Sean Suter

Advisor: Rachel Schade 2020

Site Description

Bus Sta on

At the con uence of the Schuylkill River & Wissahickon Creek, of Ridge Avenue & Kelly Drive, of the Schuykill River Bicycle Trail and the Wissahickon Park Trailhead, sits the chosen site. Currently hiding its resources via light industrial and self-storage facilities, but with human, natural, and municipal energy owing to and through it, its potential required an uncovering, not invention.

The choice was made to remove most existing program and totally reconsider this potential.

Program Abstract In the most practical sense, a Pumping Station pumps raw water from natural sources to a ltration station off-site.

In the most practical sense, a Pumping Station pumps raw water from natural sources to a ltration station off-site.

The current Queen Lane Pumping Station system shown above also included a “Flocculation” stage, mixing solidattracting chemicals into the raw water to ease the ltration process after it is pumped to that facility, so this was also included in the proposed program.

The main thrust of the proposed program was more of an idealistic one. The role of the Pumping Station, a built facility as humanity’s connection to the natural resources that allows it to exist, was one with great poetic potential. The river and creek ow seemingly eternal, and alongside it, with similar tenacity, ows bicyclists, joggers, roads and highways. This parallel mimicry is one typically only seen in religious and spiritual architecture, with spaces and forms expressing the values of that belief system. What I saw as the main mission of the program was to uncover and amplify this secular sacredness, as well as giving this essential part of civic infrastructure the pedestal its value has earned. Most importantly, these elements were to be expressed with intuitiveness and clarity to visitors of all education and general interest levels via path positioning, elemental planning, and form.

Overall, this building was intended to be one that was reaching for ambitiously connective themes, as well as being “conversational,” interested in being understood.

Primary Precedent Belmont Pumping Station

“Although its classical references reserve some content-exclusivity to the speci cally educated, it is overall a straightforwardly social building, celebrating and engaging with the universal value of drinking water alongside its users.�

- Excerpt from Statement of Theoretical Purpose (Final Presentation)

Direct Precedents Spatial Precedents

In the most effective culturally binding buildings and architectural works, a pattern of space-making seemed to emerge. A very deliberate area of space the visitor was designed for the visitor to stand on or within, and another speci c space was expressively set aside beyond any visitors reach. Whether above the elemental ocean, above one’s head in a towering gothic vault, or the top half of a seemingly perfect sphere, these spaces gave the visitor an idea that their presence was only part of a larger equation. My nickname for this “other” space was “the meaningful invisible”, and it was a useful term in my form-making process. If my work was to be, at its, about the beauty of water ow and human ow, than the work must craft valuable intermingling spaces that collect water, or collect people.

Path Precedents

If this work was to be true to the source of its value, it could not rely on stationary-reliant expressions. As water and humans ows through this site, the site must learn from successful path precedents.

These two precedents carefully balanced the visitor path and an intermingled point of value. Although the Danish Pavilion’s in nite energy unveiled a mechanism for empowering a cultural locus at its center, most important was Twisted Valley, a Spanish bridge that utilized natural local forms above a historic canal to connect two neighborhoods in a connective formal language.

Process Drawings

Design Review January 18, 2020

Design Review January 18, 2020

Design Review January 18, 2020 Wissahickon Watershed

Schuylkill Watershed

(Upriver from Queen Lane)

(Upriver from Queen Lane)

Baxter Reservoir

Queen Lane Reservoir

Belmont Reservoir

River Paths to Plumbing Paths

Technical Review March 16, 2020

Technical Review March 16, 2020

As formed concrete was chosen as the main material in order to give formal expression the highest exibility, needed for the water-directing sculptural structures, steel reinforcement and cabling was sought as the most tting structural strategy. The main Pump House roof had its precedent in Eero Saarinen’s Dulles International Airport, using pre-cast curved panels threaded with steel cables and smoothed with a topping slab, hung between beams that sat upon a series of reinforced concrete columns. The “funnel” at the east end of the Pump House consisted of a thicker formed base with thinner upper sections also threaded with reinforcement. This form is a clear gesture of reaching towards its source river, of collecting and directing the rain that feeds the river, and via shelter making possible the human reception of these resources.

High, stepped retaining walls carve an on-site choreographed re-creation of the Schuylkill and Wissahickon con uence, the culmination of which is traced by a trail-connected pedestrian and cyclist bridge. mimicking each other’s ow.

Final Review May 30, 2020 Statement of Theoretical Purpose The process of this building design was both shaped and kept to the following theory: the story and content-rich reservoir of architectural creativity should speak clearly to its users via building design of a deep and universally binding subject matter, while still acting as a worthwhile functional building. The term “speak” is a speci c one, as I mean to imply a differing role than what I see as the widely alienating modern design premises of prescriptive thinking: that “architecture solve problems” and “architecture answers questions.”

While ethical in general intent, this “service” system of design thinking seems generally ignorant to the meta-effect of the built world it proposes. If a building’s reason to exist is to solve a problem or answer a question, and its design success is judged on its connection or aid to those goals, what is its value if to a member of surrounding majority that will most often not be directly engaged by that building’s use and likely does not speak the indirect language of the building’s design? How do we as architects in a democratic landscape expect our buildings to make a larger positive effect on a world experience if the larger public engagement with them hinges on one’s pre-existing coincidental interest in that building’s use or, even more limiting, a specialized and typically class-dependent uency in built design interpretation? This ultimately sets up an even more perverse relationship between architectural value and societal progress, where the more solutions are improved and better answers are found, the more practically and theoretically disposable current architecture becomes. This is not a condition viewable when judging on a “new building to new building” basis, but architecture’s extremely reduced relationship and perceived value to the general public should stand as a product of this well-intended but externally-alienating process.

My theory is that as humans are social animals in a very broad sense, it follows that a world dramatically altered by humans must re ect that social nature for it to be a healthy one in which to dwell. Ambitious architecture should reach for ambitious themes and goals, but with an eye for a wider connection to those literally forced to “share the same block”. A building that clearly and transparently converses with the outside world betrays the true fuel for a building’s value: its perceived value by those who both use and dwell beside it. A building’s unavaoidable weaknesses will be more likely improved upon and a building’s value appreciate over time if the surrounding community feels personally engaged by that “built world entity”, not just its research-targeted operation, but the legible design itself. Just as old churches and schools are gutted and remade into of ces and apartments: the architect, client, and aesthetic community has long moved on, but a new, unconnected party felt rooted in the presence and engagement of this building or saw untapped investment value, took steps to modify, evolve, and extend this built work’s value beyond a function-based lifespan. My theory is that a healthy contribution to the built world must not only be authentic to its internal reason for being, but must, for the sake of maximizing its own worth and its effect on the world it nds itself within, “speak” its reason for being in clear and broad ways.

This theory was born from the most important precedent for my building’s design, the Belmont Pumping Station. By no means a masterwork in a conventional sense, it speaks its identity and emotion with clarity via classical-inspired but uniquely function-based ornamentation. A soberly-formatted lushness of decor grants classical notes to the educated, along with professional authenticity to the layperson. Fishscale details, conspicuous rain downspout diversions, and an entrance portal that opens to the Schuylkill River places the building’s heart squarely on its sleeve, with the years of construction emblazoned above the entrance marking, especially for its initial spectators, a victorious statement over prior years of unreliable water systems. Although its classical references reserve some content-exclusivity to the speci cally educated, it is overall a straightforwardly social building, celebrating and engaging with the universal value of drinking water alongside its users. It’s interior function and equipment has dramatically evolved with technological progress, but its conversational aspiration and statement are still today emotive and legible. Its value has been extended by its community far beyond less-directly-expressive counterparts, as its aspirations now not only speak its content richly but its speci c character is long-rooted in its local culture, a culture it helped make and was then made by, a two-way conversation over more than a century.

This type of conversational relationship was one existent in function, though perhaps not in intent, in prior eras, such as Gothic, Baroque and Mannerist. The class-exclusive legibility of these past languages was simply a consequence of the social inequity of the surrounding times, but its mechanism was an ultimately essential exchange: an architectural conversation as a human bond between world and user. Although the Greek, Roman, and Gothic symbols of these more performative expressive design methods were only fully digestible to a specially educated few, cultural osmosis, contextual clues as well as obvious symbolism allowed most users to “read” and individually exchange with a building’s values. This transmission of valuespeci c meaning could be digested by its users and neighbors as a statement about those that built it, and if a part of their place of residence, a deeper statement of shared identity. This “over ow effect” is a testament to the bounty of conversational content that once did and still does exist in the human act of creating a built world. If anything, the language was in many ways successful in spite of its own exclusivity.

Final Review May 30, 2020 Statement of Theoretical Purpose The captured conversational subject matter of these eras were, however, ripe for eventual revolution. Ornament and “impractical” architectural meaning were indeed crimes when those that were designing the ornaments were criminals against those that lived among around and within their buildings. These built language elements earned their association with hypocritical elitism, and therefore earned their fall from cultural representation. As modernism sought to make accessible and theoretically ethical architectural design, it revealed that buildings could be humane to live within, more economic to build, more ef cient and rely less on specialized labor to construct. Shaking off the class-trappings of prior era’s ornamentation mediums, it has made great progress on a livable built world within a certain framing of “living”.

But its own weaknesses also came home to roost, so internally focused and tunnel-visioned, its peers did not comprehend the transition from a world of human works to unengaging totems of goal-oriented process and unspoken aspiration. With speci c problem-framing methods and a lack of motivation to clearly communicate these process ethics, modernist solutions were often obtusely executed, off-putting to the very users they were designed to better, and resisted cultural rootedness, often leading to abandonment. In order to truly land the value of a design with the public it desires to exist among, buildings must speak as human-caused things to the humans that live in and around them, authentically and with clarity, via not only form and function but with humanity, and taking the charge from modernism, must not sacri ce the legibility inclusion of participants based on class or privilege. If it truly believes in the importance of its content, it must be motivated to be understood.

The Vitruvian hut is a “solution” to a shelter “problem”; a building is an interjection. Conversations that effect value are part of the life blood of a society. If Architecture’s meager conversational role is to speak in an insularly-focused language to themselves, their clients, the choir, and no one else in particular, one could make the argument that this is not a conversational role at all. Just as the lack of a vote votes with the majority, abdication of an interested conversational role sanctions the product that results from that non-participation, even at the fringes of its effect.

This Pumphouse employs graceful form alongside and towards the natural resources it depends upon. It cuts theatrical pathways to reveal and empower the inherent beauty of the ow of water into and through and beyond society, as well as the parallel societal movement that ow makes possible, tracing these ows with the ows of human movement. It’s “reason” is both deeply rooted and plainly apparent. It is ambitious design interested in being understood.

Final Review May 30, 2020

Final Review May 30, 2020

Final Review May 30, 2020

Final Review May 30, 2020

Final Review May 30, 2020

View From Wissahickon Trailhead

View of Pump House from Pedestrian Path

View of Picnic Area, Concrete Decay Garden & Visitor Parking

Final Review May 30, 2020

View of Main Bridge

Interior View

Final Review May 30, 2020

Feedback, Obersvations & Re ections Advisor Feedback Rachel Schade and I approach building design very differently, her being much more grounded, and myself aiming for more conceptual goals. However, the leeway for exploration and targeted support for my project ambitions resulted in a very successful process. Instead of being architecturally insular, my conceptual ambitions were tested against an intellectual generalist, and for that reason I believe they gained an intuitive character they might have not otherwise possessed. Most speci cally, she was able to both guide and boost my capability in the charcoal medium, granting not only materials and beginner tips but the encouragement that pushed me to what I believe to be a very successful Final Review aesthetic. Any needs I had that her own knowledge did not serve were compensated by a utilized network of speci cally talented individuals. Quite honestly, I have nothing but positive feedback for this process.

Jury Feedback (Design Review) The feedback that most stood out from this review was a starkness and lack of speci c character to the environment I was creating. It seemed that the lofty goals my conceptual information were setting were not being met by my design. Materials were also seen as a lacking facet.

Positive Response: Via suggested reading (speci cally David E. Nye’s “American Technological Sublime”), I believe I was better able work in the 19th century civic spirit seen in the Belmont Pump House into my process, leading me towards the triumphant Pump House roof form that became the main attraction of my project.

Negative Response: I ended up ceding materiality to form by selecting formed concrete, which could have been improved upon given more stages of design.

Jury Feedback (Technical Review) The most direct feedback from this review was an aesthetic one: the project’s visuals were not speaking the language I obviously wanted them to speak.

Positive Response: I committed fully to the digital/charcoal composite as a way to increase the human emotional element.

Negative Response: This black and white aesthetic may have been overly forgiving to gaps in real-world environment creation.

Inital Expectations My initial expectations for this project was to not only design something authentic to my still-forming beliefs about the worth of architecture in the world, but hopefully discover a grounded creative process that would help me produce uniquely individual design in the future.

Discoveries The need for my own communicated theory came out of necessity, as my foundational reasoning for the design did not seem to live comfortably in any present-at-hand avenue of thinking. These beliefs about design are what I hope to carry forward in the next stages of my career.

The importance of hand-sketching with a comfortable medium became apparent. Although I am in many ways still a beginner with charcoal, the minimally atmospheric tones and seemingly endless blackness depths provided a fruitful visual stage where my half-ideas could reliably move towards a wholeness. As reliable creative value is the gig, the worth of this discovery cannot be understated.