GE RAR DO DÍAZ
THICK +thin thin Palm Springs Modern Archive and Exhibit Case Study: Donald Judd studio 411 critic Stephen Leet fall 2011
Figural Programs Consideration of two programs, one open and radiant, the other hermetic and with security concerns, drives the form of the project. The opaque mass of the archive is placed around the perimeter, leaving a meandering courtyard for the display of artifacts. This configuration creates shared walls between the archive and exhibition, offering the opportunity to display the archive as exhibition itself. The opacity of the archives mitigates the desert climate and leaves the building as a solid mass with openings only for entry and the careful framing of the mountains to the east and the immediate landscape.
EXHIBITION ARCHIVE SUPPORT
thick/thin The program is divided into two categories. "Thick" is hermetic, requiring environmental and public security. "Thin" is less complex: open and luminous.
FLAT FILES MODELS
EXHIBITION
BOOKS MECH OFFICES TOILETS
archive needs
defining the perimeter
The "thick" program is further broken down by analyzing the needs of the archive, staff, and supporting spaces.
"Thick" elements are placed around the perimeter of the rectangular site and connected by a secure corridor, leaving the interior as exhibition space. Bookshelves line the corridor, creating a linear organizational system.
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entry gallery office reading room archive patio mech.
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The project's exterior adopts a hyper-scaled snake skin texture and takes on a luminous blue quality as contrast to the rough, pale landscape. A 1� = 8’ scale model produces this effect by layering transclucent color and a black and white gradient behind a laser cut pattern of tesselated circles. It is imagined this effect could be realized at full scale with a rain screen of glass spheres or graphic tiles.
Carving The gallery space is convceived as carved out of the mass of the buildable volume. Converselt, it can also be thought of as a solid, reaching outwards towards the extent of the site to provide views through the archive to the landscape beyond.
At several locations, walls can slide out of view, exposing the contents of the archive and providing a view through archive storage to the landscape beyond.
The gallery’s changing ceiling heights and shifting plan create a rich variety of spaces for the display of artifacs. Intimate spaces lead to large double height galleries in game of mass and void.
The archive/exhibit looks west to the San Jacinto Mountains. From the site to the top of the mountain is the steepest elevation changes in North America.
Thick + Thin studio 411 critic Stephen Leet spring 2011
Through the carving of an abstract wall section, three dimensionally complex apertures create a variety of light qualities - directional, diffuse, direct - and shadows along the surrounding walls.
Rather than literally being carved out of a volume, the wall's apertures begin first as additive pieces of foam that fold and reach around and model the bending that light will be forced through. Pouring plaster over the positive molds creates the final product.
1 Cabinet of Curiosities studio 112 critic Igor Marjanovic fall 2008 The Wellston Loop is a once affluent neighborhood in St. Louis, now in a state of disrepair. In an effort to explore the memory of the area's transformation, this projects reappropriates the Rennaisance Wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities, to construct a narative of the neighborhood through collection and display of artifacts found on site.
site archealogy The lot was divided into several plots and surveyed by groups of three. We documented found objects that to be displayed and selected one object for a sectional study. The resulting drawings served as a point of departure for the design of the pavillion that would serve as a theatre of memory for the site's history.
Intro to 3D Design studio 112 critic Igor Marjanovic fall 2008
This project seeks to understand the formal logic of a pattern identified through a photographic study. The subject of observations is a scrap of card-board which has beed deformed after being diposed of on an empty lot in the Wellston Loop, a once affluent neighborhood of St. Louis now in derelict. The card-boards imperfections create implicit diagonal geometries which are interpreted in a 24" x 36" drawing. The resulting observations will serve as the guiding principle in a series of three dimensional constructions.
small The first expression takes the shape of a table top relief using only sheets of basswood to articulate the relationship bewteen a field of hoizontal datums and diagonal ruptures. These collisions peel, fold, and bifurcate each other creating a rich variety of spacial conditions.
Disruption Emergence Overlap Transition Fold Marking Patterning Closure Figure Ground
Medium A second construction continues investigating the card-board deformations at a local scale using 2" x 1" lumber. Evoking the implicit geometries of previous studies, this asseblage utilizes a two diagonal datums to deform a field of horizontal elements, creating a continuous surface that lifts and transitions from one end to the other. The model's joints are free of any external fasteners or glue, using only hidden dowel joints to stay in place.
Torus House: An analogue study of a digital process studio 311 critic Gia Daskalakis fall 2010
The Torus house by Preston Scott Cohen is organized around a center stair well that rises through the main studio space. This space takes the shape of a torus defined by a line of deformation which bends and twists the horizontal planes around the stairwell. This study takes sections along the line of deformation to analyze the resulting geometries.
analytique
Orthagonal sections through the central space begin to reveal the toroidal shape around the central stair but are not perpendicular to the deformation curve which travels across the building in three dimensions
To understand the sectional conditions along the curve, the warped grid is extrapolated from the axon and translated into 2D information. By overlapingthe lines of local conditions, we can see the sectional variety that is created by Cohen's line of deformation. This information was compiled and layered into an acrylic model which allowes viewerd to see the complexity of these geometries in a comparitive lens.
Live Work Show studio 311 critic Gia Daskalakis fall 2011
This 2 week design exercise combines gallery, studio, and living spaces for two artists in a narrow lot of central St. Louis. The project is organized around a programmatic approach that seeks a uniqe expression for each space based on the most effective arrangements for living working and showing. Rather than combining LIVE WORK + SHOW programs into a undifferentiated mass this proposal emphasizes privacy in a tower for living spaces and exposure of production and exhibition on the public ground floor.
public The gallery has an open elevation to maximize streetfront exposure of art and production and tapers towards the more private spaces deeped in the building.
private Living spaces above take a the form of dynamic platforms along a diagona stair in contrast to the flexibility of the ground floor. These platforms use sectional varietion to demarcate spaces which are flexible to be programmed by residents.
Computational Craft: Building an American Pokeweed studio 421 critic Ken Tracy spring 2011
This project is the culmination of a primer course in digital fabrications focusing on translation of computer models to a variety of outputs. The final project utilizes a tectonic precedent - wristwatch links - as a strategy for the fabrication of a formal precedent - an american pokeweed. This synthesis was modeled digitally and partially built.
Formal Precedent The tapering, twisting form of an American Pokeweed guided a contoured surface model.
Tectonic Precedent The links of a typical wristwatch the assembly strategy for the fabrication of the surface
Unique folded paper units negotiate the doubly curved surface in
Carondelet Park Topography Study studio 311 critic Gia Daskalakis fall 2011
Carondelet Park Aquatic Center studio 311 critic Gia Daskalakis fall 2010
CUT+CONNECT
LIFT
Sited along an artifical pond, this project makes use of cutting, folding, and other relief making techniques to create a surface which emerges from the landscape and modulates to create enclosure for the pool area, an water front pool deck, and connective paths around and over the site. The main pool area occupies most of the space under the shell, while more private spaces such as changing rooms and saunas are imbeded into the earth. Over these rooms, a fitness center shares the expansive space under the roof.
FILL
Soap Bottle Analysis studio 321 critic Sungo Kim fall 2010
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wire study studio 112 critic Igor Marjanovic fall 2008
This brief study employs a triangulated pyramid as a unit for the construction of a wire armature. Rather than use a reagular equlateral shape to aggregate a deliberate composition, this study uses a skewed and elongated pyramid as a self organizing structure. Placed adjacent to its long sides, the pieces make a surface like edge of short faces which rotates irregularly around a shifting center with the radius of the unit.
Soap Bottle Analysis studio 311 critic Ian Fraser fall 2008
Consideration of two programs, one open and radiant, the other hermetic and with security concerns, drives the form of the project. The opaque mass of the archive is placed around the perimeter, leaving a meandering courtyard for the display of artifacts. This configuration creates shared walls between the archive and exhibition, offering the opportunity to display the archive as exhibition itself. The opacity of the archives mitigates the desert climate and leaves the building as a solid mass with openings only for entry and the careful framing of the mountains to the east and the immediate landscape.
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working
reading/seeing
By elevating the workspaces, the library engages visitors as they walk through the door, creating a dynamic lobby with an urban character.
By elevating reading spaces onto bleacher-like terraces, the library engages the city through visual connection. The inhabitants of the library partake in a performative act, reminding passers-by of the vitality of the city.
Branch Library Reconsidered
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The concept for this small library branch emerges from questioning the role of small community libraries and their contributions to the city’s public space. The ubiquity of the internet has made books only a part of the function of libraries, creating new possibilities for library design beyond the effectiveness of book circulation and search. This neighborhood library is a place not only to read but also to see, be seen, work, and play. The proposal takes the reading and computer spaces as an opportunity to encourage interactions between people both within and outside the library. By providing dynamic workspaces, the design hopes to create a lively environment for community members to use internet workstations, read, or work, all while experienceing the presence of those around them.
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1 The ground level contains the entry foyer and workspaces. 2 The childrens area hangs overlooking the workspaces 3 The last two levels are the main stacks and a reading area overlooking Delmar Boulevard, one of the most trafficed streets in Saint Louis.
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Pan Am Building studio Case Studies in modern architecture critic Elysse Newman fall 2010
A case study In the shortcomings of modernism
Post war New York City was marked by explosive growth as the city became one of the most important cultural, economic, and political centers of the world. The Pan Am Building was among the most ambitious of the speculative real estate developments of the period; it was the largest office building in the world at the time of its completion. The design consultants Walter Gropius and Pietro Belluschi, were relegated to styling the building's facade, and were not able to mitigate the relentless commercial ambitions of its planners and developers. Their profit maximizing formulas left a building whose scale and bulky proportions spanned the entirety of 4th Avenue, blocking views and destroying the urban fabric. The building is both one of the most financially succesful and publicly criticized projects in NYC and a symbol of the tragic loss of Modernism's social capacity to the greed of private interest.
Delmar Loop Theater studio 312 critic Zeuler Lima fall 2010
fitting in / standing out This studio places its focus on producing urban interventions that are sensitive to the specific fabric of Delmar Avenue in St. Louis, a street popular for its variety of small shops and restaurants. This project manages to "fit in" by establishing physical relationships to neighboring buildings and reinforcing the street perimeter while "standing out" by expressing the mass of the main programmatic element: a small black box theatre. The theater is conceived of as a heavy volume suspended in an light crystalline bar.
retail theater support
Sustainably Luminous An ethereal quality is achieved through the layering of a channel glass rain-screen over a solid wall with ribbon windows at clerestory and adult height level. This creates a light, softly glazed effect while also providing room for a significant amount of insulation and blocking radiant energy.
flashing channel glass rain-screen supporting angle air/vapor barrier
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1 Studio; can be used for theater support or as stand-alone dance studio
2 Retail 3 Cafe by day, theatre foyer/ event space by night.
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lobby / service
garden
theater
Case Study: Donald Judd studio 211 critic Igor Marjanovic fall 2009 Our built environement enhances, focuses, causes, and emphasizes our perception of phenomena whether by chance or intent. This project looks to measure this phenomena in the Donald Jude Sculpture at Laumier Sculpture Park. Measurements were taken of the shadows that occur inside of the Judd cubes. These Shadows were drawn with the sculpture in axon and then extracted, showing how the shadows portions begin to define their the space inside of the cubes. These drawing were then spatialized to further emphasize the volumetric quality of the shadows produced within the sculpture for three times of day.
Shaw Nature Reserve Wetland Observato studio 211 critic Liane Hancock fall 2009
Wetland ecosystems provide a vast array of ecological functions that were unknown only a few decades ago including water purification, flood protection, land stabilization and aquifer maintenance. They are ever important as we look for sustainable solutions to the problems of globalization and climate change. This projects assumes a perfomative geometry to create a didactic display of the wetlands natural filtration process for visitors to experience with immediacy. By actively engaging people and embodying the functions of the ecosystem, the building hopes to raise awareness of the importance of wetland preservation.
The roof's saw tooth design funnels rain water into the building and through the center of the building. A linear display allows visitors to experience how plants purify water, and along with rocks helps slow water flow and prevent erosion.
Drawings
studio 211 critic Bob Hansman spring 2009
Personal Work spring 2014