Isaac Howell
Selected Works
Isaac Howell Selected Works
University of California, Berkeley: 2013 B.A., Political Eonomics
University of Michigan: 2016 Master of Architecture
Taxidermy in a Dressing Room with Annelise Heeringa + Jayne Choi
Studio Work
An Island for 27 Subjects
Graduate Studio VII: Thesis Instructors: McLain Clutter + Andrew Moddrell In the interior, he brings together remote locales and memories of the past . . . every single thing in this system becomes an encyclopedia of all knowledge of the epoch, the landscape, the industry, and the owner from which it comes. -Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project
The interior, as Walter Benjamin argues in The Arcades Project, defines the urban subject through an encyclopedic collection of objects. Aggregated together, these interiors create buildings that symbolize their own specific meanings.1 The city, as a collection of these buildings, implies a collective subjectivity that all interiors and individuals reside within. This creates different subjectivities of the city (society) and the interior (individual), and the [mental and physical] boundaries between them that are produced. The urban interior, therefore, is a space of identity politics where the subject is framed and defined against the backdrop of society.2 Rather than being constrained by the interior, this thesis relishes in the possibility of an ‘object-urbanism’ that creates individual subjectivities of the interior within an urban design. The depiction of urban interiors in recent paintings investigate the relationship between the urban subject and city.3 Through techniques of perspectival construction and formal composition, these visual relationships were spatially studied. To understand this, a method of analysis was created where the subjective interior can determined scalar and formal relationships of the exterior, opening up new possibilities of both interior and urban architecture. The proposal is the speculative application of these techniques on the site of Roosevelt Island, itself an ‘urban interior.’ These interior-exterior and building-object relationships were investigated, tested, and manipulated. The result is an architecture where buildings, objects, interiors and exteriors are re-shuffled and re-organized; an urbanism for the inscription of imaginative subjectivities.
1 Leon Krier, The Architecture of Community, 2009: 29. 2 Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: The Politics of the Performative, 1997: 21. 3 see Gustave Caillebotte,Young Man at His Window, 1875.
Thesis Exhibition RGB Gallery, Taubman College
The paintings that were studied of urban interiors each show a distinct relationship between exterior and interior objects. After spatial analyses, physical (not pictured) and digital models were produced. The building forms which that were created as a result of reconstructing these interiors were then appropiated on to Roosevelt Island, New York City.
Henri Matisse Interior With Goldfish 1914
Madelon Vriesendorp Flagrant Delit 1975
Edward Hopper Room in Brooklyn 1932
Gustave Caillebotte, Young Man At His Window 1875
Each object-building contains two interiors, and their arrangement was to construct and collect views of specific buildings on Manhattan, and reciprocally, to itself. The result is an urban plan that appears jumbled but, in fact, is highly curated.
Thesis
Thesis
Similarly, the poche of these buildings curate the collection of objects within it. As a result, there is a blurred distinction between the interior architecture and the objects themselves.
Oppositely, the site contains urban objects of the human scale: park benches, mailboxes, bus stops, subway turnstiles, etc, in gradients of intensities. This mimics the density Manhattan, but rather as an object-urbanism.
Axonometric Interior Views
Thesis Axonometric Exterior Views
Models: City Rendered as a Field of Objects Scale 1:200
Thesis
Exterior Views: Collections of Urban Artifacts
Thesis Interior Views: Curating the Field of Objects
Hi [Density] / Lo [Rise]
SECTION A-A
Graduate Core Studio V: Comprehensive / Housing Instructor: Julia McMorrough w/ Kallie Sternburgh + Suxian Sun Mat-building can be said to epitomise the anonymous collective; where the functions come to enrich the fabric, and the individual gains new freedoms of action through a new and shuffled order, based on interconnection, closeknit patterns of association, and possibilities for growth, diminution, and change. -Alison Smithson, How to Recognise and Read Mat-Building
Designing high-density / low-rise housing provides a unique set issues: How can the site be logically organized? What should the unit varieties be? How can individuality be introduced? And, can it not be a mat-building? We explored different possibilities to these answers in our proposal for a housing project in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In this project, we considered the characteristics of private and public space, individuality of aesthetic, and form as pattern. The project features three housing “cubes” consisting of various unit types. Within each cube, living patterns are sub-organized into a 12’ x 12’ grid. Each domestic program is assigned both a vaulted interior form and an external fenestration. This allows for a variety of aggregation opportunities while maintaining an inherent logic to organization, allowing for flexibility in both program and appearance.
FORM
FENESTRATION PATTERN
12’
ROOM TYPE
KITCHEN
KITCHEN
BATHROOM
BATHROOM
’ 12
’
12
KITCHEN
BATHROOM
DINING
DINING
LIVING
LIVING
DINING
Content CONTENT TO FORM
Form
ENTRY
LIVING
Form as Pattern ENTRY
FORM AS LIVING PATTERN ENTRY
FORM AS LIVING PATTERN FORM AS LIVING PATTERN
BEDROOM
BEDROOM BEDROOM
ROOF TERRACE
ROOF TERRACE ROOF TERRACE
TERRACE ENTRY
TERRACE ENTRY TERRACE ENTRY
LIVING
LIVING LIVING
DOUBLE HEIGHT LIVING
DOUBLE HEIGHT LIVING DOUBLE HEIGHT LIVING
DINING
DINING DINING
Hi / Lo CUBE 1
CUBE 2
3 BD (2 STORY)
1 BD
CUBE 3
1 BD
2 STUDIOS
1 BD 2 BD
2 BD
2 BD
2 BD
FORM AGGREGATION
Form Aggregation
LOOR 1
Bedroom
FLOOR 1 2 Bedroom
FLOOR 2 3 Bedroom + 1 Bedroom
FLOOR 2 1 Bedroom + 1 Bedroom
Hi / Lo
FLOOR 3 2 Bedroom
Hi / Lo
Plans Cube 2
Plans Cube 3
Hi / Lo
Unit Model + Site Model
Hi / Lo
Il Rhombi: An Opera An Opera (In)Complete
Graduate Studio VI: Propositions Instructor: John McMorrough I want to tell you a story about a poor little rich man. He had money and possessions, a faithful wife who kissed his business cares from his brow. and a brood of children that any of his workers might envy. His friends loved him because whatever he touched prospered. But today things are quite, quite different. It happened like this. -Adolf Loos, Poor Little Rich Man
Ever since the German opera composer Richard Wagner proposed the idea of the total work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk), architects have been enthralled by the idea. From Loos to Lloyd Wright, Corbusier to Koolhaas, the work of architects have extended far beyond buildings themselves. The ambition of the studio was to design at a variety of scales (building, furnishings, and objects) to test ideas of materials and assemblage, and extend the ideal of design totality. The task was to make a design opera/work entitled Der Traum der Gesamtkustwerk (the Deam of the Total Work of Art), based upon the short story The Poor Little Rich Man by Adolf Loos. The work was to implicated a logic of completeness (and incompletion) in the space between the real and the fake, control and happenstance.The field of production included diagrams, drawings, models, sets, images, furniture, videos, and scripts…starting with, and culminating in, the design of a “dream house.”
Left: Step 1, Design a “Dream House” Right: Step 2, Complete Geometry
sitting
Step 3: Furniture (Set)
sitting
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
.
standing
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
.
standing
Il Rhombi: An Opera Ashtray
Plates
Pillows
Slippers
Cutlery
Carpet Step 4: Little Elemetns
Step 4: Opera (In)Complete Film Stills
A Loss Disguised as a Win Ludocapitalism as Urbanism of Detroit
Graduate Core Studio IV: Networks Instructor: Jen Maigret In its frantic search for more profitable investments, capital will begin to live its life in a new context: no longer in the factors and spaces of extraction and production, but on the floor of the stock market casino, jostling for more intense profitability. But it won’t be as one industry competing with another, nor even productive technologies against another in the same link of manufacturing, but rather in the form of speculation itself: specters of value, as Derrida might put it, are vying against each other in a vast, worldwide, disembodied phantasmagoria. -Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or,The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
The first gas-powered automobile and mechanical slot machine were both invented in 1889. Since that year, the city of Detroit, Michigan was built on a bet of capitalistic speculation and automobile production. 90 years later and all but abandoned by this industry and facing bankruptcy, Detroit turned to the most modern form of capital production: casino gambling. Labeling it as “urban recreation” in the zoning ordinance, casinos now contribute over 30% of the total tax revenue. Casinos are the embodiment this new era of ‘ludocapitalism.’ There are no longer laborers nor a manufactured good. Only profits are produced, which are kept in constant movement to create further profits. One strategy in particular to produce this phenomenological environment is the multi-line slot machine. By placing multiple, simultaneous bets, the player has a greater perceived chance of a win. When one line ‘wins,’ the machine celebrates a victory, stimulating a desire for continued gaming. However, the machine fails to acknowledge the total loss incurred. By maximizing exposure to these losses disguised as wins, the casino has become an alternate reality of a complete tonal experience. This project explores the architectural implications and possibilities of the multi-line gaming space, and its application in built form in Detroit.Working in section, the design is intended to be a spatial correlation to the methods of slot machine designs; creating spaces of intensified exposure to the abstractions of capital and gaming within.
diagram: Patent US 6270410 B1 Remote-Controlled Slot Machine
9th Century: First recorded use of Playing Cards, Tang Dynasty, China
529: Roman Emporer Justinian issues 'Corpus Juris Civilis', bans gambling in all public and private houses
1500 B.C.E.: Betting cattle on chariot racing becomes the most popular activity in India, Vedic period
3000 B.C.E.: First six-sided die recorded, Mesopotamia
0
1732: Pope Clement XII permits the establishment of a Roman lottery
1726: The Netherlands establishes the first national lottery 800
1783: Treaty of Paris, British cede Fort Detroit and surrounding territory to the United States
1760: France surrenders Fort Detroit to the British
1701: Fort Detroit first settled by Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac
1670: French missionaries first arrive to the site of Detroit
1621: Étienne Brûlé paddels up the St. Mary's River and enters Lake Superior
21,019 1887: First mechanical, coin-dispensing slot machine invented by Charles Fey, San Francisco, California 1888: Globe Tobacco builds a factory near downtown Detroit 1889: Hammond Building completed, first steel-framed skyscraper in Detroit
1869: Gambling is frist legalized in the U.S. State of Nevada
1837: Michigan becomes a State
1500
1832: First legal gambling house opens in United States, New Orleans, Louisiana
1665: First horse racetrack built in North America on Long Island
1660: King Charles II of Englang allows gambling by all
1520: King Francis I of France signs a bill legalizing lotteries in Paris, Lyons, Strasbourg, Bordeaux, and Lille
1444: The city of L'Éduce runs a lottery to raise funds to repair the city's walls and fortifications, France This is the earliest recorded lottery in which participants pay for a chance to win. Grand prize is 300 florins
1000 1800
I it, M
Packard Chrysler
Ford Motor Company Lincoln Motor Company Motorcar Company Chevrolet Buick General Motors Rapid Motor Vehicle Company Cadillac 1954: Northland Center shopping mall opens, Southfield
1,568,662
1943: Detroit Race Riots
1943: Peak WWII production, one B-24 bomber/hour at Ford’s Willow Run plant
1933: Horse racing betting is legalized in New Hampshire, Ohio, West Virginia, California, and Michigan
993,678
1947: Clark County, Nevada, approves 352 gambling licenses 1948: gambling legalized in Puerto Rico
etro of D
1934: Horse racing betting is legalized in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Po tion pula
1920
1934: Puerto Rico institutes a lottery
285,704
1929: Ambassador Bridge completed, linking Detroit and Windsor, Ontario
1900 1,623,452
1940 1,849,568
465,766
1946: Total amount spent on legal gambling in the United States: $500 million
1968: Bally invents first multiline payout slot machine
1967: Detroit Race Riots
1963: Bally invents the first electromechanical slot machine
1977: Renaissance Center opens
1974: Total amount spent on legal gambling in the United States: $17.3 billion 2013: Wyoming legalizes state lottery
2012: Ohio legalizes casino gambling 2013: New York legalizes commercial casinos
$1,435,064,984
$1,402,740,796
$1,355,974,378
o Detr it casinos om s fr ue n ve $1,370,316,981
2000
2010: Casino approved in Maine referendum
Re
2007: MGM Grand Detroit opens larger casino 2008: Alabama legalizes video bingo halls
$1,173,174,718
951,270
2005: Harrah’s, Inc. acquires Ceasar’s Entertainment, Inc. for $9 billion 2005: MGM-Mirage buys Mandalay Resort Group for $7.9 billion 2007: Kansas and Maryland legalizes casinos
2004: Pennsylvania and Oklahoma legalize casino gambling
1,203,368
2008: Arkansas legalizes state lottery
2003: Tennessee legalize state lottery
2002: North Dakota and South Carolina legalize state lotteries
$539,639,134
1,027,964
2000: MGM Grand buys Mirage Resorts for $6.4 billion
1998: California allows for the establishment of Indian casinos 1999: Tribal casinos begin operating slot machines in Washington 1999: MotorCity, Greektown, and MGM Grand Casinos open, Detroit
1996: Michigan Casino Gambling Act passes, 51.5%-48.5% Michigan Gaming & Control Board created
1990: Riverboat gambling allowed in Illinois 1991: Tribal casinos begin operating in Wisconsin 1992: Racetrack casinos legalized in Rhode Island 1992: Georgia legalizes state lottery 1993: first tribal casinos open in Arizona, Idaho, and Oregon 1993: Riverboat casinos allowed in Mississippi, Indiana, and Missouri 1993: 92 million people visit casinos in the United States 1994: Racetrack casinos legalized in Delaware, Iowa, Lousiana, and West Virginia 1994: Ceasar’s Casino opens, Windsor, Ontario 1995: New Mexico legalizes state lottery 1995: Colorado legalizes tribal casinos 1991: Texas legalizes state lottery
1980
1990: Louisiana and Maine legalizes state lotteries
1986: South Dakota legalize state lottery
1985: Iowa, Missouri, and Montana legalize state lotteries
1986: first tribal casino opens in Connecticut 1987: gambling legalized in Deadwood, South Dakota 1987: U.S. Supreme Court legalizes tribal casinos in California vs. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians 1987: Kansas and Virginia legalize state lotteries 1988: Detroit voters reject casinos, 62%-38% 1988: South Dakota votes to allow slot, video, and other gambling machines in the state 1988: Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota, and Wisconsin legalizes state lotteries 1988: Federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act 1989: Idaho legalizes state lottery 1989: Casinos legalized in Iowa
1984: Oregon and West Virginia legalize state lotteries
1982: Washington, Colorado, and Washington, D.C. legalize state lotteries
1979: Seminole Tribe opens fist Indian casino, Florida
1976: First video slot machine
1976: Casino gambling legalized in Atlantic City, New Jersey
1973: Coleman Young elected mayor
1,514,063
1980: Arizona legalizes state lottery
1976: Vermont legalizes state lottery
1974: Illinois, Maine, and Rhode Island legalizes state lottery
1972: Maryland legalizes state lottery 1973: Delaware and Ohio legalizes state lotteries
1971: New York legalizes off-track betting, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut legalize state lotteries 1971: Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut legalize state lotteries
1970: New Jersey legalizes state lottery
1967: New York legalizes state lottery
1964: New Hampshire legalizes state lottery
1960 1,670,144
713,777
files for bankruptcy
files for bankruptcy
2004: Total revenue from slot machines in the Untied States: $25 billion
2004: Total amount spent on legal gambling in the United States: $78 billion
tonal studies: perception of winning machine scale, building scale, urban scale
A Loss Disguised as a Win
When Foucault defines Panopticism, either he specifically sees it as an optical or luminous arrangement that characterizes prison, or he views views it abstractly as a machine that not only affects visible matter in general but also in general passes through every articulable function. So the abstract formula of Panopticism is no longer ‘to see without being seen’ but to impose a particular conduct on a particular human multiplicity. -Gilles Deleuze, Foucault
section study: a space that intensifies exposure to disguised losses, encouraging a continuous production of gaming or, the participation of any other program that may occur
A Loss Disguised as a Win
Case Study: Prada Tokyo Arch 417: Construction Instructors: Jen Maigret + Claudia Wigger
Diagram of Structural + Facade Systems
Case Study: Prada Tokyo
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
1: aluminium diagonal post-and-rail facade 2: two-paned rhomboid window, glazed 3: silicone waterproof seal 4: aluminium guide track 5: welded sheet-steel supporting section 6: calcium silicate fire-resistant cladding 7: aluminium diagonal post-and-rail facade 8: two-paned rhomboid window, glazed 9: stainless steel sliding track
10: stainless steel outer pane fastener 11: aluminium fastener clamp 12: silicone joint strip 13: silicone compression strip 14: aluminium smoke extraction flap 15: calcium silicate fire resistant cladding 16: W10 x 33 steel I-section structural facade member
Professional Work
Second City!
Or, How Improv Made Chicago Funny (and Vice Versa) 2014 Research on the City Grant
for studioAPT Professors John McMorrough and Julia McMorrough with Caitlin Sylvain Cities are funny things, both equation and caprice, they are testaments to, and limit cases of, “big plans,” and nowhere more so than Chicago...Like all cities, Chicago is a combination of circumstantial facts (the quantities and dispositions of its urban form) and a projective imagination (how it is seen and understood)...Whether reversing the flow of the Chicago River in 1900, or raising the mean level of the city by physically lifting buildings six feet in the 1850s, Chicago’s answer to the question of what the city is, has always been, in a manner of speaking, funny (both peculiar and amusing). -John McMorrough
Worked as a member of the research and production team for studioAPT, the professional office of Professors John McMorrough and Julia McMorrough, on the 2014 Taubman College Research on the City Grant, titled Second City! Chicago’s Funny Urbanism. For the project, Caitlin and I were responsible for conducting research, design strategies, site visits, the production of material for a book, two films, and an exhibition. Project Brief: Looking at the relationship between improvisational comedy and the city of Chicago, two questions were first asked: How did Chicago’s improv comedy become such a large industry, and what connections are there between improv, design, and urbanism? Our initial investigations yielded overwhelming results. The question then became not what connections are there, but how can we make sense of them, and how can they be communicated? The result was the organization of our research into a book, which follows the format of a specific type of longform improv (a Harold). By juxtaposing relationships between improv and Chicago in different ‘beats’ and ‘scenes,’ the reader will be able to begin to make connections between the material discussed. The resulting exhibition was in two parts: An Urban Improv Study Center, which is a proposed new type of institution for collaborative work in and of the city, and a City-Stage, presenting a space for people to engage in improvisational games. By using Second City and improv as a way to understand Chicago, we thought of a city as not a problem to be solved, but as an evolving set of scenes to produce an ever-changing (and sometimes funny) solution.
Book: Urban Research as Longform Improvisation (i.e., a Harold)
Second City! Exhibition: City Stage
+ Urban Improv Study Center
Film: Chicago Theater
6. First Game
Finding the Game
5. First Beat, Third Scene
Group Mind
4. First Beat, Second Scene
Abstract Where
3. First Beat, First Scene
2. Monologue
1. Initiation
12. Evaluation
Workshop for Improvisational Urbanism
11. Third Beat
Film: Base Reality
10. Second Game
Yes, And
9. Second Beat, Third Scene
In the Moment
8. Second Beat, Second Scene
Object Work
7. Second Beat, First Scene
Second City!
Greening the Grounds @ Jane + Finch competition entry: Islands and Piers in a Sea of Green (and Browns and Greys)
Models work from Michael Maltzan Architecture As an intern at Michael Maltzan Architecture, I was responsible for working several project teams to assist with model-making, producing renderings, compiling material specifications, and preparing drawings for publication. Shown here is documentation of a 3/32� site model, which I worked extensively on, for an institutional master plan.
Thanks!
Contact e: ilhowell [at] umich [dot] edu t: (562) 472 8702 a: 4439 1/2 Willow Brook Ave Los Angeles California 90029