GIDEON FINCK LANDSCAPE PORTFOLIO ARCHITECTURE 2019
CONTENTS 1 STUDIO PROJECTS 2 BUILT AND IN PROGRESS 3 PRINTS AND INSTALLATIONS 4 RESEARCH
UN MONUMENTAL 2018 GRADUATE STUDIO PLAZA UNKNOWN KNOWNS 2017 GRADUATE STUDIO TERRITORY BOSTON RESERVED 2016 GRADUATE STUDIO URBAN DESIGN APPROACHING GRANDEUR 2016 GRADUATE STUDIO PARK SEASHELVES 2015 GRADUATE STUDIO PLAZA
RESIDENTIAL GARDEN CONCEPTS 2019 PROFESSIONAL GARDEN WESSUKKAH 2009 UNDERGRADUATE STUDIO ARCHITECTURE
PLASTICITY 2011 UNDERGRADUATE THESIS INSTALLATION PRINTS 2009-2014 ART
RESILIENCE ACCELERATORS 2018–2019 PROFESSIONAL BOOKS UNTRAMMELED BY DESIGN 2017 ACADEMIC BOOK THE HIDDEN LIFE OF THE DEAD SEA 2018 ACADEMIC VIDEO SEASIDE PARK 2017 PROFESSIONAL CASE STUDY
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STUDIO UN MONUMENTAL 2018 GRADUATE STUDIO PLAZA UNKNOWN KNOWNS 2017 GRADUATE STUDIO TERRITORY BOSTON RESERVED 2016 GRADUATE STUDIO URBAN DESIGN APPROACHING GRANDEUR 2016 GRADUATE STUDIO PARK SEASHELVES 2015 GRADUATE STUDIO PLAZA
UN MONUMENTAL
Harvard GSD | Broadway Shuffle II: Performance/Space Instructor: Gary Hilderbrand
This project proposes a new design for Lincoln Square, at the intersection of Broadway and Columbus Avenues in Manhattan, adjacent to the Lincoln Center Arts Campus. The title of the projects refers to the “monumentality” of Lincoln Center. Awesome by design, the campus is essentially self-referential, and intentionally divorced from its surroundings. Its threshold, the Josie Robertson Plaza, is both literally and figuratively elevated above the hoi polloi of the city. The design of the Josie Robertson Plaza reinforces the campus’s spatial singularity. With a spectacular fountain at its center, the plaza connects all of the performing arts to each other with its paving: radial bursts of stone that tether each hall to the plaza’s center. In response, this project proposes a new plaza adjacent to the arts campus that, like the Josie Robertson Plaza, is characterized by stone, water, light and trees. Unlike in Josie Robertson, however, these materials are deployed not as static objects, but as diffuse densities and peripheries of trees, pavers, water vapor and light. While each of these elements shape emergent centers on the ground, they all work within a continuous geometric field inspired by the radial and gridded geometries of Lincoln Center and its surroundings. Spatial experience, sensory phenomena, and the textures of the air and ground change with time, weather and season, creating an effect of boundlessness, ephemerality, and an atmosphere of spectacle—qualities that could define Lincoln Square as a flexible public space well-suited to the unique character of its neighborhood.
Allice Tulley Hall (Juliard School)
David Geffen Hall (NY Philharmonic)
Josie Robertson Plaza
Metropolitan Opera House
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Plan diagram showing interrelated paving patterns, locations for trees, fixtures for mist jets, and lights, as well as underlying geometric fields.
The distributional densities of each element create dispersed centers. Some are comprised of fixed elements like paving and trees, while others are formed by ephemeral densities of mist and light.
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Model of the Lincoln Square plaza, with the original Josie Robertson Plaza. Plexiglass and museum board.
Detail plan showing tree canopy, paving, lights and vapor jets, and the entrance to Lincoln Center from Columbus Ave.
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Process studies for paving, joints, and planting.
Perspectives south on Broadway (top) and east from Lincoln Center (bottom).
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4� PEDESTAL CONCRETE SLAB, 2% AGGREGATE DRAIN
DEAD LOAD
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Section-perspective looking north, with pedestal paving, jets, light fixtures, and water reservoir under Columbus Ave.
IMPOSED LOAD
DYNAMIC LOAD
ALTERNATE STRUCTURE
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UNKNOWN KNOWNS Harvard GSD | 4th Core Studio Coordinator: Pierre Belanger Instructor: Rosetta Elkin
The GSD’s Territorial Ecologies studio focuses broadly on futures for the Guantanamo Bay military base, under the pretext that climate change, global resource depletion and human migration all have significant bearing on the territorial realignment of seemingly fixed military infrastructure. Unknown Knowns is a collaborative project that critiques the US Department of Defense’s “Base Realignment and Closure” process (BRAC), the framework by which the DOD evaluates security risks and determines whether or not one of its bases should be shuttered, downsized or redesigned. My work focuses on USDB Leavenworth, a maximum security military prison in Leavenworth, Kansas that has been proposed as a potential site for the relocation of Guantanamo prisoners. The City of Leavenworth’s urban economy depends on incarceration and military industries, while the surrounding region is mostly agricultural. The future stability of Leavenworth and Northeastern Kansas is deceptively fragile, as several of the city’s prison and military facilities are susceptible to flooding from the Missouri River, and because regional agriculture is increasingly vulnerable to drought. Such environmental risks are categorically ignored by the DOD during BRAC assessments. This project suggests that if the DOD did consider environmental risk, a BRAC process could lead to a new design for USDB and Fort Leavenworth that is sensitive to the ecological dynamics of the region and the interconnectedness of Leavenworth’s environmental, social and economic stability. This project was done in collaboration with classmates Jiawen Chen and Greta Ruedisueli, and is highly informed by the work of other students in the Territorial Ecologies studio.
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There are 4 other incarceration facilities within 10 miles of USDB Leavenworth.
In order to accomodate a transfer of detainees from Gitmo, Kansas politicians have argued that USDB would require a 1-mile security buffer zone. This buffer would presumably encroach on private farmland, a military hunting ground, and the Missouri River itself.
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Base realignment in response to ecological risk would require rearranging military facilities on site, and acquiring nearby farmland. Barbed fences, dense, thorny plants, lighting and landform could all be considered “security features� in the new buffer zone.
The materials of security in an ecologically transitional Kansas: Osage Orange, Western Wheatgrass, and single- and double-barbed wire.
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The materials of security, including barbed wire as well as plants, soil and water, continue to play important roles in shaping the landscape of Eastern Kansas.
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The local economy in Leavenworth depends on agriculture as well as military and incarceration industries—sectors that are vulnerable to ecological risk.
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26 Unknown Knowns culminated in an exhibition. It design scenarios for 4 DOD sites in the continental US: USDB Leavenworth, a reforested ex-military
base in South Carolina, a storage site for military waste in New Mexic, and an airstrip in Florida for military evacuations from the Carribean
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BOSTON RESERVED Harvard GSD | 3rd Core Studio Coordinator: Sergio Lopez-Piniero Instructor: Susannah Drake
This project proposes an urban development strategy for a 120-acre brownfield site in South Boston, adjacent to the Reserved Channel. The studio curriculum emphasized rapid, iterative prototyping to develop landform, program and building typologies. These studies would culminate in a single proposal for a new residential neighborhood. Boston Reserved proposes a cut-and-fill strategy that would remove the channel’s hard edge in one post-industrial area while filling a nearby area of channel more attractive for residential development. In both areas, the project uses large, moving concrete infrastructural elements that guide the phasing of the project, alternately functioning as stormbreaks, revetments, road foundations, and armatures for a network of open spaces. This project was made in collaboration with classmate Anne Chen.
Small 6’
Attenuation
Large 60’, Open
Marsh condition, Salt barrier
Revetment
Street planting Furniture Landforming
Form
Accretion
Highway
Large 60’,Closed
Street Foundation
New grid
Arterial Local
Greenway, wet
Interior
Existing street grid
BLDG Foundation Courtyard
Large 60, 25’ gaps 30
Drainage, Recreation, Circulation
Diagram of infrastructural devices and their phased application.
block typologies
Study models that test sediment accretion, land removal, land-formation and foundation infrastructures.
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Phasing diagrams A: Cut
Section A: Cut
Section B: Fill
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Sequence diagram and resulting sections for “Cut” and “Fill” areas.
Phasing diagrams B: Fill
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Detail from plan of “Fill� area in the southwestern channel.
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“APPROACHING GRANDEUR” Harvard GSD | 2nd Core Studio Coordinator: Anita Berrizbeitia Instructor: Jill Desimini
Franklin Park, the last and largest in Boston’s Emerald Necklace, has survived years of deferred maintenance and a series of spatial interventions that undermine the intentions of its design. This second semester studio project studies the park in its current state, and proposes a new design for a valley in its northeastern area. The proposed redesign would replace a fenced zoo and aging football stadium that detract from the park’s spatial coherence. This design reinterprets the existing programs of the stadium and zoo—outdoor recreation and environmental education—in ways that enhance (rather than inhibit) the expansiveness and grandeur that characterized Franklin Park’s original design. In this proposal, the valley is regraded and planted to incorporate interlocking lawns and meadows, organized around two surface ponds and visible from paths along the surrounding glacial hills. Along the edge of the site, terraced plazas and a widened sidewalk house recreational programs and improve access from adjacent neighborhoods.
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Franklin Park, with proposed redesign of it’s northern section.
Elevations of the new design at 3 scales.
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View across a new pond, toward a meadow.
Model of new grading, pond, and circulation.
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SEASHELVES Harvard GSD | 1st Core Studio Coordinator: Gary Hilderbrand Instructor: Luis Callejas
This first semester project imagines a new urban plaza on a coastal site in Boston’s Seaport District. The project investigates the challenges of designing for the intertidal zone. It explores how tidal movement can determine how people experience place. In this proposal, rectangular concrete forms of varied heights are arrayed throughout the intertidal zone. As the tide fluctuates, formal patterns emerge and are submerged, registering the the tide vertically. A network of ramps, lawns and gardens are superimposed onto the field of concrete. Depending on the time of day, they are rendered more or less accessible by the tide. To navigate the space, a visitor must choose between the gentler system of paths and gardens, or the more challenging, less prescriptive field of blocks.
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Plan diagrams distinguishing between materials and planting in response to tidal fluctuations.
Details from presentation model.
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Plans at 3 scales.
Collages with scale figures and model.
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BUILT AND IN PROGRESS RESIDENTIAL GARDEN CONCEPTS 2019 PROFESSIONAL GARDEN WESSUKKAH 2009 UNDERGRADUATE STUDIO ARCHITECTURE
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Design sketches for a townhouse roof garden in Manhattan, currently in development. With Cecilia Huber.
Conceptual plans and sections for townhouse roofgarden, with planting, pergola, water feature and shower
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Conceptual sketches for a backyard garden in Manhattan, currently in development. With Cecilia Huber.
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WES SUKKAH
Wesleyan University | Undergraduate Studio Instructor: Elijah Huge
In the spring of 2009, 15 undergraduate students in Wesleyan University’s North Studio were commissioned by the school’s Jewish community to design and build a sukkah, a temporary, ritual dwelling that is erected annually in celebration of fall harvest festival, Sukkot. The studio responded with WesSukkah, a structure that refers to Talmudic building code as well as client specifications. The project aims to reclaim the sukkah as a collection of specific architectural and social conditions rather than archetypal form. In deference to rabbinic regulation, its design is guided by values of permeability and transience, based on the requirement that a sukkah must allow rain and starlight to permeate its skin, and on pervasive celestial imagery in rabbinic and biblical literature. To satisfy the needs of the client, WesSukkah negotiates seemingly contradictory roles as a place for quiet contemplation and social gathering, at once a symbol of inclusiveness and an icon of the Jewish Community’s presence and values on campus. 54
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Study models and program-diagram based on strict rabbinic code and the demands of the client.
Structurally, the Sukkah meets the Rabbinic standards of materiality (organic cladding, no woven materials) and permeability (can see the stars through it).
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WesSukkah, constructed on site.
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PRINTS AND INSTALLATIONS PLASTICITY 2011 UNDERGRADUATE THESIS INSTALLATION PRINTS 2009-2014 ART
PLASTICITY
Wesleyan University | Undergraduate Architecture Thesis Advisor: Elijah Huge
This 2-semester undergraduate thesis challenges the limitations of traditional contour modeling. Study models and drawings from the first half of the year experiment with ways of designing and representing topography, using repetition, uniformity, predictability and randomness as methods in conceiving contained forms. Work from the second half of the year focuses on materiality and scale as applied to the contour model. The study culminates in Plasticity, a site-specific sculptural installation in a distinctive gallery setting. Constructed primarily from contoured sheets of bubble wrap, and partially suspended from the gallery ceiling, Plasticity questions the relationship between model and topography, architecture and site, naturalness and artificiality. Its design responds to the architectural conditions of the gallery interior, including the subtle movement of natural light throughout the day.
Installation plan, with movement of people and natural light. Prototype studies of material tectonics, and response to natural and artificial light.
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Installation of Plasticity with light, morning and afternoon.
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Topographic studies for Plasticity.
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PRINTS
Selection, Professional and Academic
These are a selection of digital, letterpress and woodblock prints made at Bowne Printers, a letterpress shop in New York City where I worked for 4 years, and from GSD and Wesleyan courses. I have an abiding interest in typography, and print history. As a Resident Printer at Bowne, I managed a vast collection of 19th and 20th century printing equipment, including dozens of presses, hundreds of commercial engravings, and over 1200 fonts of lead and wood movable type. During the years that I worked there, my colleague Ali Osborn and I printed hundreds of custom print jobs, taught dozens of workshops, gave tours and talks to university classes and professional design teams, started an internship program, and made huge strides in organizing, researching and cataloging the collection of type and equipment. This work has informed my interests as a designer, and has influenced my work since then. 68
Beatrice Ward, “This is a Printing Office.� A poem traditionally printed as a right-of-passage by letterpress printers.
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Tiny books. “Six Poems From Cold Mountain,” translated by Gary Snyder, Japanese-style binding and original woodblock illustration. Chapter 29 of the Tao Te Ching, printed on pages of a world atlas rescued from recycling.
Details from three poetry broadsides. “The Puzzle” by Sanai, “Autobiography 1950” and “Six Poems for Tamar,” both by Yehuda Amichai.
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Layers of text from “The Land of Little Rain” by Mary Austin, printed on free-floating mylar and etched in a plexiglass model of the Sonoran Desert.
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RESEARCH RESILIENCE ACCELERATORS 2018–2019 PROFESSIONAL BOOKS UNTRAMMELED BY DESIGN 2017 ACADEMIC BOOK THE HIDDEN LIFE OF THE DEAD SEA 2018 ACADEMIC VIDEO SEASIDE PARK 2017 PROFESSIONAL CASE STUDY
RESILIENCE ACCELERATORS
Columbia Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes | Professional | 2018–2019
As a Research Scholar at the Columbia University Center For Resilient Cities and Landscapes, I helped lead collaborative research projects and planning workshops designed to aid cities around the world as they develop long-term climate adaptation strategies. The workshops, known as “Resilience Accelerators,” brought together municipal officials, designers, planners, and subject matter experts in an effort to identify and address potential obstacles to nascent projects critical to cities’ adaptation strategies, such as transportation projects, green infrastructure plans, or urban development plans. They were accompanied by original case study research, schematic design proposals, and cirricula for studios and seminars in Columbia GSAPP’s Urban Design and Urban Planning departments. I specifically contributed research on Resilient Transportation planning for a light-rail project in The Hague, which was accompanied by an Urban Planning seminar; green infrastructure planning in Can Tho, Vietnam, which was accompanied by an Urban Design studio; case study research for an urban development strategy in Los Angeles; and design considerations for a living seawall project in South Florida.
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Publications with research and workshop findings from the Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes. With 100 Resilient Cities
Spreads from CRCL publications: interconnected risk in Can Tho (top) and Resilient Transportation case studies (bottom)
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UNTRAMMELED BY DESIGN Harvard GSD | Penny White Project | 2017 Advisor: Sonja Duempelmann
Untrammeled by Design is a series of 12 conversations with professional land managers, policymakers, researchers and advocates about the US National Wilderness Preservation System. This project, which was funded by the Harvard GSD’s Penny White Project Fund, follows research on the history of wilderness activism in 19th-20th century America, and explores the challenges of managing federal wilderness areas according to law, precedent and policy across federal land management agencies. Most interviews were conducted in and around wilderness areas in northern Minnesota and Western Montana. They are compiled in a book with five thematic chapters—Wilderness Character, Visitor Use, Ecological Management and Fire—as well as backgrounds on wilderness history and the specific places where interview subjects work. This project led to subsequent research in the fall of 2017 about the contemporary international “Rewilding” movement, and the development of a speculative course curriculum for a seminar that scrutinizes Re-wilding within the historical and theoretical context of Nature Conservation movements in the US and abroad.
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Instead of presenting the 12 interviews in order, the book is edited into chapters based on themes that threaded through all the conversations. Each topic represents an ongoing and spirited dialogue within the community of wilderness professionals.
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Pages from the syllabus for a seminar on pleistocene rewilding and its contextual relationship to other, more familiar theories and practices of environmental conservation.
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THE HIDDEN LIFE OF THE DEAD SEA Harvard GSD | Mapping + Geographic Representation Course instructor: Bobby Pietrusko With Marisa Villarreal
These are stills from a 2-minute animation, illustrating the connections between water management, tourism and mineral extraction industries in the Dead Sea and Jordan River Valley. It tells the story of how astonishingly quickly the Dead Sea is shrinking (the surface level falls over 1 meter per year), and how the Sea’s retreat is causing sinkholes to proliferate along its western coast. This process is a result of water diversion upstream, where virtually every major Jordan River tributary has been dammed, and potash extraction in the southern part of the Dead Sea itself, where salts are extracted from shallow, man made evaporation ponds. To make the video, my partner and I created original data sets from newspaper articles and scientific journals. We also used GIS software to analyze satellite imagery from Landsat and Google Earth. The project involved extensive use of ArcMap and Adobe After Effects.
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Stills from the Hidden Life of the Dead Sea video
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SEASIDE PARK Reed Hilderbrand | Summer 2017
As a summer intern in Reed Hilderbrand’s New Haven office, I researched the history of Seaside Park in Bridgeport, CT, to prepare the office for a potential design project. Seaside was F.L. Olmsted’s first project outside of New York City, and stands out for its waterfront site on the Long Island Sound. The design features a promenade, which tops a seawall and connects the mainland to a nearby island and lighthouse. This work was done with my fellow intern Anne Chen, as well as designers in the Reed Hilderbrand New Haven office. 90
The Long Island Sound with geological regions and transportation networks.
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Seaside Park timeline.
Coastal Work, flood patterns, edge conditions and canopy in South-End, Bridgeport.
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