Emau Vega
Design Explorations
Emau Vega Design Explorations
The body of work here is a collection of projects of varying scales and types. It represents my explorations in design that look at the relationships between form, space, tectonics, aesthetics, complexity, and detail.
Contents
Studio Design Urban Factory Fractured Box Dancing Void Ruled Volumes Hub City House in Two Parts Building Project
02 - 22 24 - 30 32 - 42 44 - 58 60 -70 72 - 84 86 - 90
Research + Fabrication Bi-Polar Crafted Panels Pelvis ColorFlow Striated Simplicity Patternism
94 - 100 102 - 106 108 - 112 114 - 118 120 - 124 126 - 130
Studio Design
01 Urban Factory 1111: Advanced Design Studio Spring 2015 Type: Urban Factory Critic: Greg Lynn + Nathan Hume Individual Work Exhibits + Publication: Retrospecta Nomination, Constructs Fall 2015 Awards + Honors: The H.I. Feldman Prize Nomination
This project explores the factory typology to create a new model for manufacturing. It merges the factory assembly process, retail, and an enhanced visitor experience. In rethinking the factory typology, the concept for the factory can be seen as a factory as a full Service Station. The factory thus becomes not only a place for the assembly of new motorbikes, but a place to service, repair, customize, and train. The architecture of the building is conceived as a way to interweave the two distinct programmatic functions; 1) the factory and the worker, 2) the service center and visitor. The architecture originates with the idea of the inhabitable poche as a means to allow two different functions to coexist. The project takes the typically flat, continuous, and unobstructed factory floor and embeds the service center within. The thickening of the floor package allows the service center and visitors to experience the factory in an orchestrated manner without interfering with the daily operations. The project seeks not to reveal the entire assembly process, but rather make the experience of catching glimpses of the process while moving in and out of the embedded volumes.
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02 Fractured Box YSOA Core Studio, Fall 2012 Location: Science Hill New Haven, CT Type: Small Museum Extension Critic: Brennan Buck Individual Work Exhibits + Publication: Thresholds: Year-End Exhibition of Student Work 05.18.2013 - 07.27.2013
Fractured Box is an intervention on Science Hill at the Yale University campus to serve as an extension of the Peabody Museum of Natural Science. The building acts as a threshold to mediate and activate the underutilized space between the grassy field of the hill and formal courtyard. The project can be understood as a simple Modernist box, eroded and fractured to create a visually engaging threshold that channels people through. The language of the “Box” allows the project to coexist without disturbing the formality and language of the courtyard it faces, while the “Fracture” responds to the unruly nature of the field it engages. Like a jewel on top of a hill, the project’s fractured facade will entice the curious passerby to walk through and into information exhibits within for the Peabody Museum nearby.
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03 Dancing Void YSOA Core Studio, Fall 2012 Location: New York City, NY, USA Type: Dance Performance Critic: Brennan Buck Individual Work
Dancing Void is a proposal for a dance performance center in New York City adjacent to the High Line. The building serves as a new connection from the ground to the High Line, and it allows the public and daily users of the building to engage in a series of visual connections within a central organizing void. These visual connections essentially cause a subversion of the idea of the “performer,” as the users of the building are on stage for the public within the void and the void becomes a stage of curious tourists or bystanders to the daily user. In order to achieve the visual connections, dance rehearsal studios and other program are organized around the central figural void of the building. The language of the void is one of movement which suggest a dancing nature of the form which takes inspiration from the daily use of the building’s function.
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04 Ruled Volumes YSOA Advanced Studio, Fall 2014 Location: New Haven, CT, USA Type: Music Collection Museum Critic: John Patkau + Tim Newton Individual Work
This project investigates the capabilities of ruled surfaces to generate a series of “ruled volumes” to house Yale’s Collection of Musical Instruments. The project sits at the heart of Yale’s School of Music quadrant to redefine and enhance it’s current state. The project first addresses the site’s problematic layout of buildings of varying scales, types, and functions causing an underutilization of the area. With a new master plan, the project seeks to increase the density of the site, create a stronger connection to the rest of Yale’s campus, and place the instrument collection in dialog with Sterling Memorial Library. Using straight steel members as the primary element in the generation of the structures resulted in a feasible and structural scheme that achieves high complexity of forms from a single element. Rather than having a large singular structure, the project is conceived as a series of smaller structures clustered together as they spread across the site. This clustering is meant to break down the overall scale of the project to a scale that engages the pedestrian by encouraging the meandering of students and visitors on the site as they move through, around, and under the ruled surface volumes.
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05 Hub City YSOA Core Studio, Spring 2014 Location: Boston, MA, USA Type: Urbanism, Olympic Village Critic: Jennifer Leung Team: Emau Vega + Michael Miller Exhibits + Publication: Retrospecta Nomination
Hub City proposes a weaving of urban fabric and networks across several scales of local and interneighborhood connectivity with subway, light rail, bike, pedestrian, car, and water taxi. When these networks interconnect, the intersections become opportunities for the celebration of urban life and space as the interconnections fuel housing and responsive development on the site. The architectural form proposes a combination of bar, plinth, courtyard, tower, and landscape typologies which merge and diverge at corners to create multiple datums to establish new ground conditions. Each datum becomes a layer of infrastructure that builds up to create an ‘architectural hill’ of many networks. These layers culminate with a roof park which provides a continuous surface for public leisure and becomes a piece of the larger Boston park network. The courtyard rhythm oscillates and inverts, becoming interior atrium spaces for events and cultural programs as density increases towards Hub City’s cultural corridor, which connects the Boston Convention Center and several large entertainment and recreation programs along its central axis. This creates a new neighborhood which becomes a symbolic ‘architectural hill’ among the cluster of Boston psycogeographic hill-neighborhoods; playing within and re-imagining the micro and macro identity conceptions of urban and geographic Boston.
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06 House in Two Parts YSOA Core Studio, Spring 2013 Location: 32 Lilac St. New Haven, CT, USA Type: Residential Prototype Critic: Joeb Moore, Amy Lelyveld Team B: Emau Vega, Elena Baranes, Hiba Bhatty, Zach Huelsing, Ross McClellan, Philip Nakamura, Mahdi Sabbagh Primary Tasks: Elevations, Graphics
Our proposal addresses the challenge of designing an affordable home in one of the city’s many abandoned “sliver lots,” long and narrow lots, due to the city’s restricting building codes for such lots. The design conceptually posits a three story house in front and a two story house in back stitched together by the staircase in order to maximize square footage and create generous living spaces, thus resulting in a House in Two Parts. By using a split-level configuration and pulling the first floor slab away from the front wall, we were able to achieve a three-story house in front while maintaining a height that is within building code height restrictions. This sectional strategy liberates the basement, creating an intimate bonus den space that receives natural light from above. At the ground level, the elevated kitchen space enjoys visual access both to the street in front and the yard behind the house. The house opens to an enclosed backyard that functions as an extension of the living room. On the upper floor, we have minimized circulation space and organized storage and bathrooms in an order that would yield a spacious master bedroom in the front overlooking the street and two smaller bedrooms in the back of the house.
-Team B
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07 Building Project YSOA Core Curriculum, Summer 2013 Location: 118 Greenwood St. New Haven, CT, USA Type: Residential Team: YSOA class of 2015 Construction Phase of Winning Concept Team A: Alissa Chastain, JohnThaddeus Keeley, Mark Peterson, Ben Smith, Amy Su, Zach Veach
“Since 1967, the Yale School of Architecture has offered its first-year students the unique chance to design and build a structure as part of their graduate education. Unique among architecture schools, this program is mandatory for all members of the class. The Building Project results in a single-family house in an economically depressed neighborhood.” -YSOA
This year’s winning proposal for the building project is located on 118 Greenwood Street. As a class, we were part of the construction phase of the winning team’s house. Involvement on this project included: prefabrication, foundation, framing to the first and second floor and partial contribution to the design of the “hearth” of the house. More information and images can be found at: http://ysoa.architecture.yale.edu/sites/BuildingProject/bp13/
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Research + Fabrication
08 Bi-Polar Texas A&M Fabrication Elective, Spring 2011 Location: College Station, TX Type: Fabrication Installation Critic: Gabriel Esquivel Team: Emau Vega, Adrian Cortez, Aubrie Damron, Dale Fenton, Matt Miller Primary Tasks: Interior wall design, fabrication, photography, lighting, documentation Exhibits + Publication: Fresh Punches Exhibition at Land of Tomorrow Gallery, Louisville, Kentucky (09.21.12 -11.02.12) Fresh Punches: Experimental Architecture Exhibition Catalogue
Bi-Polar began as a performative wall system that reacted differently to exterior and interior spaces. We realized we had to confront the fact that we had two different surface logics, so rather than trying to blend these conditions, we decided to emphasize the difference indicating two current design directions. This resulted in two polar opposite geometries with opposite personalities that strongly defined exteriority and interiority. Bi-Polar can then be explained more effectively in three systems working together: (1) The tessellated parametric logic performative exterior, (2) the loose free-flowing sensual interior, and (3) the in-between performative bladder system that mediates between the two extremes. Bi-Polar is a project like many others emerging from the discussion of performance and sensation through an architectural skin. While there are projects addressing similar discussions, Bi-Polar embraces an emphasis on the distinction between two competing directions. Just like bipolar disorder, this prototype is argued in two different moods, different personalities, you can psychotically switch from one to the other. One personality, the exterior side, is about performance whose surface logic is resolved parametrically, as a rain water collecting instrument that takes the water into bladders integrated between the two skins. These bladders also serve as heating and cooling devices producing light and temperature affects. The other personality, the interior surface, is emotionally designed and more interested in matters of sensation whose surface logic is created by a sensual pleated skin, resembling silk and/or leather, producing nuances and affordances that become ornament, pattern and furniture. 94
09 Crafted Panels YSOA Technology/Practice Elective, Fall 2013 Type: Experimentation Critic: Kevin Rotheroe Individual Work Exhibits + Publication: Retrospecta Nomination
The project explores material formation methods that integrate analog modeling techniques with digital tool manipulations to produce an output of forms that achieve a high level of intricacy. The level of intricacy is developed without becoming overly complex and is achieved through the interaction between material properties and deformations by various tools (analog and digital) translating into a series of digital and physical prototypes. The project becomes an exploration to achieve an alternative material forming method to existing 3D modeling techniques (ie. parametric, algorithmic, agent-based, and 3D sculpting methods) to generate intricate forms while responding to the material properties of the physical object created. A series of panel prototypes are produced from several manipulated and deformed image scans of an initial basswood hand carved panel. Beginning with the hand carved panel allows the designer to have full authorship of the design while intuitively reacting to the material properties of the panel. The digital image scans and 3D sculpting software are used to develop the new genres of forms with added layers of intricacy and detail.
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10 Pelvis YSOA Core Visualization Elective, Spring 2013 Type: Fabrication Critic: Ben Pell Team: Emau Vega + Dionysus Cho
Pelvis explores the re-imaging of the brick module into a non-standard form. It can be seen as the contemporary brick that interlocks and made possible through use of CNC solutions. The Pelvis is inspired by the stacking of human vertebrae. Biological systems employ efficient packing geometries, and the Pelvis takes advantage of this. Not only does it interlock as a vertical “spinal� stack, but as a linear wall array or a wall stack. A scaled down version of the pelvis was created as a cast to create various iterations to suggest the possibility for the module to be streamlined in the industry. Video of casting process: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5BCsmNQuiQ Video courtesy of Dionysus Cho Get your very own mini Pelvis module at: www.shapeways.com
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11 ColorFlow YSOA Design/Visualization Elective, Fall 2012 Type: Experimentation Critic: Mark F. Gage Team: Emau Vega, Allen Plasencia Exhibits + Publication: Retrospecta Nomination
ColorFlow explores innovative methods for generating and manipulating new genres of form for potential use in architecture. The project’s investigation negotiates aperture in architecture through hyper-articulated surfaces and color as a way to accentuate and articulate openings. RealFlow, which is an advanced simulation software for fluid and body dynamics that allows high control and visualization of the behavior of fluids and rigid bodies, was the tool used to explore the generation of new hyper-articulated forms. The software also allows the dynamics of the fluids to be mapped onto the forms in a color gradient to show intensity of movement. Capturing and encoding this data on the surface of the final product was the primary intent for the integration of color within the project. The secondary intent of color was to produce a visual effect or pattern that would accentuate the opening. Due to physical limitations, the prototypes adopt the second idea of color and gradiate from a high resolution rippled surface to a lower resolution geometry.
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12 Striated Simplicity YSOA Design/Visualization Elective, Spring 2015 Type: Furniture Design Critic: Timothy Newton Individual Work Exhibits + Publication: Retrospecta Nomination
The concept for this chair lies in a duality between two elements: 1) A monolithic, solid, heavy mass as the seat, and 2) a simple, lightweight frame to support the heavy mass. Both elements are developed with simple gestures to create the forms and keep the number of components to a minimum. The idea of a single line to represent the gestures is captured in the design of both the seat and the frame. The seat is made out of two components, the rib and wedge pieces, laminated to achieve a monolithic, striated piece that accentuates the line as it tapers from the front of the seat to the top of the back. The frame is conceived as a single, closed line that bends to meet the seat at 3 points to support it.
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13 Patternism YSOA Design/Visualization Elective, Spring 2015 Type: Drawing Critic: Brennan Buck Individual Work
This set of drawings focuses on drawing representation and how computation can aid and adapt traditional drawing techniques to achieve digital drawings that capture a number of effects. More specifically, the drawings aim to blur a distinction between drawing and image. They address ideas of pixilation and stroke through parametrically created density of lines. These drawings create an ambiguity between spatial depth and flatness, texture and figuration, and materiality and ephemeralness. The idea behind the two final drawings lies in one drawing heightening spatial depth while the other heightens the ephemeral nature of the geometry.
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Emau Vega emau.vega1@gmail.com