FULL PORTFOLIO
www.tvb-design.com I am an architect, designer and digital media enthusiast currently based in Belgium. In 2011 I graduated with honors as Master of Science in Engineering: Architecture from the KU Leuven with a research project focused on the use of social media and social visualization as a medium to facilitate open collaboration between distributed designers. This portfolio forms a selection of projects made both during and after my studies. For a more complete and interactive version of this portfolio, please visit my website at www.tvb-design.com
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. All images by Thomas Van Bouwel unless otherwise specified
VMSW Housing
social housing in Hemiksen
Sep 2012 - Okt 2012 • The goal of this competition was to design 19 social housing units in Hemiksen, Antwerp. Our design consists of a series of rowhouses with living spaces and gardens facing the qualitative south-western side of the site. Although the houses were designed to be as compact as possible to reduce the cost of building and energy consumption, the living area is visually expanded with big windows on both sides and a garden that opens up to an adjacent common green space. The zoning plan required our houses to have a pitched roof. By placing the roof ridge of each unit diagonally, the resulting origami-like roofscape creates a unique and cohesive identity for the block as a whole
competition entry designed in collaboration with Logist B. and Molemans D.
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100 Mile House
competition in Vancouver
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Render by Logist B.
Apr 2012 • Having to design a house comprised only of building materials found within a 100 mile radius of Vancouver, we proposed to reuse various waste-materials from vancouver’s industry and harbour, such as old shipping containers, wooden skits, wrapping plastics, amongst others. All necessary parts are placed in a shipping container and brought to the site by truck. Here they are unloaded, and the container itself is secured in an upright position on the site to serve as the structural core of the house. The main structural beams of the house are transfixed through pre-cut holes in the container, and transfer the load from the floor and the facade to the container. This construction principle allows for a house with a minimal footprint, affecting the site as little as possible and at the same time allows much flexibility towards the design of both plan and facade.
competition entry designed in collaboration with Logist B., Vandepoel E. and Heidi S.
Design competition NY
installation under the High Line
Dec 2011 - Jan 2012 • The project brief for this competition asked for an exhibition space to be created in a dark forgotten space underneath Manhattan’s famous High Line bridge. We proposed to fill this space with translucent boxes, on which the exhibition is printed, and encourage passers-by to take home a box. The boxes can be used for a variety of purposes such as a lamp, storage space, a coffee table, a collector’s object, etc. The wall of boxes will slowly be deconstructed by the visitors, constantly changing the configuration of the space and allowing people to actively rediscover the space it once concealed. (received special mention)
competition entry designed in collaboration with Logist B., Molemans D., Stroobants H., Vandenpoel E. and Willemse T.
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Studio Interior ‘Data and the city’
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Dec 2010 • ‘Data and the city’ is a design for an info-space near ‘het Eilandje’ in Antwerp. A large media floor visualizes certain topics (crime, income, immigration, etc.) on a scale of the city of Antwerp, so visitors can get a better image of the impact and distribution of this topic in the city. An adjacant exhibition provides additional information. The concept for the interior design builds upon the 40×40 cm grid that is created by the LED-tiles of the media-floor. We apply this grid to the rest of the interior and deform it in an organic way to create the furniture and form a topography that guides the people through the exhibition.
De Hoorn refurbishment of a historic brewery
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Feb 2010 - May 2010 • The refurbishment of brewery ‘De Hoorn’, the birthplace of Stella Artois, posed a challenge since a part of the building was protected as a monument. Radically conserving the building to conserve its history in its entirety was not an option since some new functions (an auditorium) demanded some restructuring to create the required space. The simple solution would be to demolish the part of the building that wasn’t national heritage and build a new structure next to the old one, but this would erase part of the building’s history. Since the building’s partial destruction in 1944, the building has evolved and mutated to adapt to the needs of its new time and context. We propose to continue this evolution by adding ‘mutations’ to the building that adapt it to its new functions and context. These mutations add a new historical layer to the building and expand its rich history.
renders by Coppens S.
Museum Oostende + sculpture park
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Sep 2009 - Dec 2009 • This museum is located in the eastern dunes of Oostende, far from most other cultural hotspots. To attract more tourists the museum also doubles as a central growing point for a large sculpture park, that is gradually created in the dunes around it. The museum thus becomes the central information point in a new cultural hub for Oostende. The museum itself was conceived as a block of program sliced in four pieces by the park’s main circulation axes. The results is a museum that is actively interwoven with the sculpture park around it.
Masterplan
residential area Anderlecht
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Sep 2008 - Dec 2008 • The masterplan for this residential area is centered around a branch of the river Zenne. By guiding the car-acces along the sides of the site, the area around the river is turned into a car-free public space. The left side contains lowdensity residences with private gardens, the right has high density apartments with communal spaces.
DNA-Typology
apartments Anderlecht
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Feb 2009 - May 2009 • Instead of making simple apartments stacked on top of each other, this DNA-typology divides the different functions of each apartment on top of each other in separate rooms. This way all apartments get a front door on the ground floor. If we twist this configuration, each apartment gets views from all sides and different altitudes. This typology is one of 8 typologies designed for the masterplan in Anderlecht. (previous page)
Transferium Bodart
+ city park
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Feb 2008 - May 2008 • A transferium was to be built at the Bodart site, a busy infrastructural knot in Leuven that divides its surrounding neighbourhoods. Instead of increasing this division with extra infrastructure, this design reconnects the fragmented green areas around the crossroads by tying them together with pedestrian and biker roads that directly connect circulation hotspots from around the site. The transferium is lowered under the level of the park, to minimise view and sound disturbance in the park. A large pavilion next to the park & ride contains a concert hall and cafeteria for travellers, tourists and locals. Several smaller pavilions with rentable work spaces are spread out through the park. Through differences in location and orientation, each of these have unique qualities for a variety of possible uses.
Heverlee House
private family residence
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Feb 2007- May 2007 • This house is designed for an retired couple with two married children who visit occasionally. The house consists of two elements. The first one is a modern open living space with gardens and windows on both sides. This open area contains all the living areas for the couple. A set of indoor curtains give the couple the possibility to create their own level of privacy within the open space. The floor containing the rooms for the children and their spouses spans across the middle of this open space.
Archibrain.org
thesis research
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Sep 2010 - Sep 2011 • My thesis, entitled “A social platform for open collaborative design”, researched the possibilities of open collaborative architectural design on the web. To this end a propotype website was created: archibrain.org. This website allows a network of people to collaborate on a design by openly sharing and adapting each other’s ideas. The main feature of this site is the ‘project-tree’: these visualisations organise the different proposals, ideas, CAD-files and discussions of a collaborative design in an interactive display that encapsulates the evolution of the collaborative design. Proposals are represented as interlinked orbs. Small bubbles around the orbs show the comments posted on the proposal. Various modifiers allow you to visualise the ratings, the most recent comments and the authorship of comments and proposals. The website is now offline, but a recreation of the project-tree interface can be found on: www.tvb-design.com/archibrain promotor: prof. Andrew Vande Moere
Data-visualizations
thesis research
July 2011 • These visualizations were created as part of the evaluation study of my thesis. They were coded with Processing and use data from the ‘project-trees’ (view previous page) to make graphs that aid in the analysis of the collaborative design process on archibrain.org.
left: visualisation of the relation between the n° comments and the average rating a design proposal receives. right: A timeline visualization displaying all user activity on a project tree.
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Interactive media
visualizations with processing
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Nov 2011 • left: An interactive logo implemented with Processing.js and the HTML5 canvas element. Scrolling over the logo with the cursor triggers a physics simulation that makes the spheres bounce around. View here: www.tvb-design.com/interactive-logo
Dec 2011 • top: Thought-cloud depicting positive and negative civic opinions on the 2012 Olympics, created for the 2011 visualizing.org marathon in London. (received honerable mention) View here: www.tvb-design.com/visualizing-olympics
CryEngine2 real-time visualisation
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May 2009 • These are some screenshots inside the videogame engine cryengine 2. This game engine was used to create a real-time architectural walkthrough for the ‘apartments Anderlecht’ project. The game allowed us to virtually ‘visit’ the typologies in a realistic 3D environment.
Google Earth 3D modelling
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Jul 2010 - Aug 2011 • These models were made with Google Sketchup and are all visible in the 3D layer of Google Earth.
left: Lerkeveld, Heverlee top: Brusselse Poort, Mechelen middle: Edificio Monte Verde, Belo
Horizonte, Brazil bottom-left: familiekerk, Schiplaken bottom-right: Boortmeerbeek center
Studio Furniture lamp & desk
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Apr 2010 - May 2010 • For this studio we had to design and detail a lamp and an office desk. The lamp design is based on the structural principal of a tensegrity: a construction with compression bars and tension wires where no two bars touch each other. Here the bars are replaced by double-sided LED-tubes. Because no two tubes touch each other, the lamp appears to be levitating in the air. The office desk has a slim curved workspace supported by three table legs that seem to drip out of it’s surface. The table has a workspace fit for three employees. Its organic form is ergonomically shaped to optimize the surface usage.
Installations Mario & Pac Man wall-art
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Jul 2010 • Super Mario Cola Wall - Lerkeveld, Heverlee From concept to finish, this 1.80m tall sculpture of Super Mario took nearly a year to finish. Most of this time went into collecting the 284 Coca Cola cans that make up the sculpture. These cans form the pixels that make up this instantly recognizable 8-bit video-game icon. Oct 2010 • Pac Man Staircase This wall-art of pac-man runs along the staircase of my former residence, tying the three floors together.
Paintings acrylic on paper
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Jul 2008 - Aug 2008 • Although I have no real training or experience in drawing and painting, I have attempted it a couple of times. These paintings I did in 2008 are all based off pictures I randomly found through specific Google searches.
left: Google search frightened top: Google search blue eyes right: Google search laughter
Paintings
stencils on wall & canvas
Aug 2009 - Dec 2011 •
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far left: Beethoven w. Ipod top-left: Bob Dylan top-right: Le Corbusier (glows in the dark) bottom-left: Sean Connery as James Bond bottom-right: The Dude
Curriculum Vitae PERSONAL INFORMATION
Name: Thomas Rudolf Cezar Van Bouwel Date of birth: 12/11/1988 Nationalities: Belgian, Brazilian Location: Salvialaan 12 3191 Boortmeerbeek Belgium Phone: +32498/161819 E-mail: van.bouwel.thomas@gmail.com Website: www.tvb-design.com
EDUCATION 2009-2011 Master Engineer-Architecture, specialization Architectural design (cum laude) KU Leuven thesis: “A social platform for collaborative open design” promotor: Andrew Vande Moere 2006-2009 Bachelor Engineer-Architecture (cum laude) KU Leuven 2000-2006 High School education: ASO, Science-Mathematics (8 hours) Koninklijk Atheneum Keerbergen
Publications 07.2012
Van Bouwel T.; Vande Moere, A. ; Boeykens, S.; ArchiBrain: A Conceptual Platform for the Visualization of Collaborative Design, 16th International Conference on Information Visualisation (IV 2012), p.396-402, 2012
07.2011
Van Bouwel T.; Vande Moere, A. ; Boeykens, S.; A Social Platform for Collaborative Open Design, CAADFutures edition:14, Liège, 4-8 July 2011
PREVIOUS WORK EXPERIENCE 04.2012 - 10.2012
Architect at Organisation for Permanent Modernity, Boston, USA & Brussels, BE
08.2010
Summer internship at Guerilla office architects, Leuven
07.2007
Summer job at Carrefour, Zemst
07.2006
Summer job at Carrefour, Zemst
OTHER EDUCATION 2012.10
Workshops on digital fabrication (lasercutting, CNC-milling, 3D printing), Imal
2011.11.03
TOEFL IBT Test (score:112/120)
2011 Credits in Engineering: - Modernity and the Architecture of the City - Project Development and Management KU Leuven 22.10.2008
Additional training: Green roofs and roof gardens Syntra prov. Antwerpen en Vlaams-Brabant
OTHER EXPERIENCE 30.01.2012
received honerable mention in the ‘Under the Railroad’ design competition in New York, hosted by anonymousD.com
08.12.2011 received honerable mention at visualising.org data visualization marathon in London 05.07.2011
organized and hosted a workshop on online collaborative design (as part of thesis research)
2009-2010
member of Promo-team for the student association Existenz
LANGUAGE SKILLS Dutch (mother tongue) Portuguese (mother tongue) English (academic, 112/120 TOEFL IBT) French (basic)
DESIGN SKILLS Architectural visualization, modelmaking and layout skills: view portfolio
IT SKILLS CAAD Sketchup (good) AutoCAD (good) ArchiCAD (basic) Graphic Design Adobe Photoshop (good) Adobe InDesign (good) Adobe Illustrator (basic) Visualization Kerkythea renderer (basic) CryEngine 2 Sandbox 2 (basic) Webdesign Drupal CMS (good) Processing (good) Processing.js (basic) HTML, CSS (good) Java (basic) Office Microsoft Word, Powerpoint & Excell (basic) Google Documents (good) Open Office (basic)