Isaac Howland Architecture & Design Portfolio 2023

ABOUT ME

Emerging AEC professional with residential, commmercial and mixed-use project experience across all project phases. Currently pursuing architectural licensure and aspiring to innovative models of practicing architecture, placemaking and socially responsible real estate development.

EDUCATION

Syracuse University Master of Architecture

School of Architecture Syracuse, NY

2021

Temple University Bachelor of Science in Architecture

School of Architecture Philadelphia, PA

2017

GEM University Fellow Syracuse University

2020-2021

Honorable Mention Britton Memorial Awards Thesis Prize Competition

2021 Syracuse University

DIGSAU Designer I

2021 - 2023 Architectural design from concept to CD & CA phases of notable building projects in Philadelphia metro area.

sekou cooke STUDIO Architectural Designer

2019 - 2020 Design development on 12,000sf adaptive reuse project. Digital & physical modeling. 3D rendering for presentation & fundraising.

AMP Architecture Jr. Architectural Designer

2017 - 2019

Drafting & preparation of drawing sets for NYC DOB submission. Construction Administration and measurement site visits.

HIP HOP HEADQUARTERS ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………4

sekou cooke STUDIO | 2019-21 | Design Development / Visualization

GFS CONNECTOR ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………8

DIGSAU | 2021 | Design Development / Construction Documentats

CHALLENGE PROGRAM FURNITURE STUDIO …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………14

DIGSAU | 2022 | Concept Design / Construction Administration

YARDS BREWERY IMPROVEMENTS …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………18

DIGSAU | 2021 | Concept Design / Bidding Documents

IRA DAVIS TOWER RENOVATION ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………26

DIGSAU | 2022 | Concept Design / Feasibility Study

BUNGEE BENCH ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………30

TEMPLE UNIVERSITY | 2016 | Professor: Clifton Fordham

MEMORIAL PARK RENOVATION …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………32

DIGSAU | 2022 | Landscape Design

HIP HOP URBANIST RECONSTRUCTIONS ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………34

SYRACUSE University | 2021 | Thesis Advisor: Brian Lonsway

HIP HOP HEADQUARTERS

The Hip Hop HQ converts an abandoned dairy warehouse and training ground for graffiti artists into a multi-use, culturally rich hub facilitating youth entrepreneurship, career development and social growth for youth centered around the pillars of Hip Hop culture. The 12,000SF program includes residential, offices, classrooms, a business incubator, a print studio, a recording studio, and indoor and outdoor event spaces.

ProjectExperience: DDlevelExisting/Demofloorplans,Elevations,Sections,3DRhinoModeling,&Renderings.

GROUND FLOOR PLAN

PERSPECTIVES

BUILDING ELEVATIONS

GFS CONNECTOR

DIGSAU / 2021-2022 / Philadelphia, PA

The GFS connector is a 37,000 square foot new construction project consolidating campus wide visual arts education and dining facilities, and providing accessible paths between two existing 20th century structures.

FINISH FLOOR PLANS

ProjectExperience: DD-CDFinishPlans,InteriorElevations&Details,Sections,RevitModeling,&LumionRenderings.

ENLARGED RESTROOM PLANS, RCP & ELEVATIONS

ENLARGED CLASSROOM PLANS, RCP & ELEVATIONS

FINISH FLOOR TRANSITION DETAILS

TRENCHDRAIN CONTROLPANEL

TIMBERSCULPTURE

ENDWALL FENESTRATION

SignagePerspective

CHALLENGE PROGRAM FURNITURE STUDIO

DIGSAU / 2022 / WILMINGTON, DE

This project yields 14,000 square feet of wood working and metal fabrication shops, a furniture show room and expanded office spaces. The project triples the footprint of their existing facility by arranging the program into a 3 bar parti, 2 of which utilize heavy timber framing. My tasks on the project came during CA phase with the issuance of several sketches for options of finishing and fenestration methods, as well as replacement of long-lead time products, as specified in the basis of design. Simultaneously, I drove the initial design iteration of the building’s sculptural signage component.

ProjectExperience:

SignageDesignIteration,ConstructionAdminSketchesViaBluebeam,Rhino,&Enscape.

Rectangular - Vertical

Aligned Seams - Concealed Beam

Triangular - Timber Offset

Aligned Seams - Revealed Beam

Rectangular - Rafter Aligned

Staggered Seams - Concealed Beam

Light Wall

Staggered Seams - Revealed Beam

SIGNAGE DESIGN ITERATION

FINALIZED SIGNAGE DESIGN

**design intent collaboratively documented by colleagues** Initial Revision Path Revisited Design Intent

Yards Brewery’s Spring Garden tasting room and brewing facility opened in 2o16 to much success. However, as the pandemic threw a wrench in dining operations across 2020-2021, their demand for all-season outdoor dining spaces became evident. In addition - they wanted to provide new openings along the fifth street facade from their private banquet hall as well as an ADA restroom.

BIDDING SET FLOORPLANS

FLOORPLANS

ENLARGED PLANS & INTERIOR ELEVATIONS

YARDS BREWERY - INTERIOR FIT OUT DIGSAU / 2022 / Malvern, PA

After evaluating the cost-benefit of the outdoor patio and event space improvements to at their existing Philadelphia location, our project team’s focus shifted to conceptualize and evaluate an interior fit out at a suburban sattelite location. The 12,000 square foot conceptual planning included a small scale brew-house, distillery, speakeasy, tasting room, game room in addition to back of house and exterior patio spaces.

ProjectExperience: CommercialFitOut,SpacePlanning,RevitModeling,Lumion&EnscapeRendering.

Primary Entry Egress Points

Production Restrooms Retail

Back of House

Front of House Outdoor Seating

INTERIOR PERSPECTIVES ENLARGED FLOORPLANS

CANOPY MATERAL STUDIES

EnlargedPlan-GameRoom

ExteriorCanopy-MetalSoffitOption

ExteriorCanopy-WoodSoffitOption

ExteriorCanopy-MetalScreenOption

ExteriorCanopy-WoodSlatOption

GameRoomInterior

HiddenSpeakeasy

EnlargedPlan-Speakeasy

GamesPatio

FACADE MURAL DESIGN

ExteriorPerspective

SitePlan

IRA DAVIS TOWER FEASIBILITY STUDY

DIGSAU / 2022 / Philadelphia, PA

The Ira Davis Storage Building is situated along an important gap in Nicetown’s commercial corridor atop an under-utilized assemblage of lots in comprising a roughly 1.5 acre site. The scope of this project was to determine the most feasible scenarios of building bulk, height, floor area, phasing, & zoning/building code compliance for +/- 50,000SF of adaptive re-use and new construction artisan and creative office spaces. vv

ProjectExperience: BuildingMassingIteration,ConceptPlanProduction,Programming,RevitModeling.

0ExistingConditions

1A-By Right TowerAddition

2Phases

1B-ParallelTowers DemolishExgWarehouse w/HeightVariance

2Phases

2A-L-ShapedTower AccomodateBoxTruckLoading w/HeightVariance

2Phases

2B-L-ShapedTower(No w/HeightVariance

2Phases

3-ParallelLong/ShortTowers AccomodateBoxTruckLoading w/HeightVariance

2Phases

4A-L-ShapedTower w/HeightVariance DemolishExgWarehouse

1Phase

4B-Donut-ShapedTower w/HeightVariance DemolishExgWarehouse

2Phases

BUNGEE BENCH

PHOTOS W/ ONE YEAR OF USAGE

ProjectExperience: FurnitureDesign,RhinoModeling,CNCMilling,

Top View

Front View

Bolt & Bungee Weave Details

Side Profile

Exploded

A half semester long furniture making project where students were to create a chair with readily available materials and hardware. The design utilizes a tensile structural assembly with bungee cord, hence the name, being strung into two CNC-milled plywood profiles and secured with half-inch thick threaded rod, washers and end-nuts. The design was prototyped using medium density fiberboard before the profiles were refined and bungee cord spacing re-configured. The chair can seat an adult weighing up to 220 pounds.

MEMORIAL PARK RENOVATION

DIGSAU / 2022 / Philadelphia, PA

ThePhiladelphiaStarsNegroLeagueBaseballteamwascommemoratedwithparkthatopened in the late 2000s, which relatively quickly fell into disrepair, and suffered a recent vehicular fatality on site. This project aims to re-energize the pocket park with new bleacher-esque seating zones which shield the site from the vehicular noise and exposure, while refocusing passerby’s attention on the existing monument as well as several new physical and multimedia public art pieces.

ProjectExperience:

DesignResearch,LandscapeDesign,SectionDiagramming,Rhino/RevitModeling,EnscapeRendering.

PublicGatheringPerspective

ApproachPerpsectives

HIP HOP URBANIST RECONSTRUCTIONS SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY / 2021 / Graduate Thesis (Honorable Mention)

This thesis posits Hip Hop as a liberatory spatial practice in critique of predetermined spatial, socioeconomic and political constructs of containment that have limited the agency of its actors and constituents to the realms of commoditized music and aesthetics, rather than envisioning new institutions of advocacy, spatial typologies, and reconsidered patterns of development that followed other cultural movements and contributed to their propagation in western architectural canon and solidification in society and the constructed environment.

The design prototyping outputs of this thesis are composed as ‘thought essays’ which ideate potential responses to the wicked problems and life works of reversing spatially rooted disinvestment and criminalization inflicted on communities of color. They seek to intervene in sites determined by Lyrical Exercise, using hip-hop sampling methodology from Don’t Sweat the Technique and responding to the calls of Manifesto Sampling. These design responses do not seek to provide a definitive solution but to provoke radical reconsiderations of the approach of these complex problems intertwined between the built environment, black identity and governance.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES

LYRICAL EXERCISE

Method 1 seeks to utilize hip hop music’s lyrics as a primary source of post-occupancy reporting on the urban conditions experienced in many minority communities and henceforth, originators and subsequent practitioners of hip hop culture. Citing lyrics which reference specific places or spatial typologies allows for extracting scales and sites within which to intervene. This method has generated 1 specific condition and 2 typologies that represent relevant sites of inquiry.

DON’T SWEAT THE TECHNIQUE

Method 2 aims to catalog and analyze the artifacts, tools and techniques of each the 4 pillars of hip hop culture. In order to generate an operational language for implementing architecture as the emergent fifth pillar, the tools and technologies adapted and reappropriated from the everyday and readymade objects begins to situate the importance of their relevance to spatial imagination and potentials in the built environment.

MANIFESTO SAMPLING

Method 3 seeks to generate an evaluative framework by looking at contemporary manifestos and literature regarding the subject matters of hip hop architecture and black identity in the built environment. This method aims to document the goals of these relevant organizers and organizations to connect with the audiences of this thesis and gauge their satisfaction on any outcomes of this project. These manifestos make clear an agenda to create a generative logic for architectural program in service to local organizations and communities.

HIPHOPURBANISTRECONSTRUCTIONS

ANTI-CARCERAL CORNER

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY / 2021 / Any Hood, USA

This rapid design prototype resulting from the lyrical exercise design research method, re-envisions the corner as a site of justice for its wrongly-incarcerated occupants, encouraging the productive misuses of public space for loitering, marijuana growing and acts of pedestrian street performance. The text that follows evaluates the prototype in respect to points from the BlackSpace manifesto.

REFUSAL...

Of zoning

Of anti-loitering rules.

Of the disciplining gaze of governance.

Of pseudo-scientific criminomics

The public right of way is fully reclaimed and reappropriated for the purpose of furthering other manifestations. Prohibitive ordinances are recognized as a planning tool that have limited the socioeconomic potentialities of spaces in minority neighborhoods.

LIBERATION...

from the nexus of surveillance and over policing from collateral damage of gun violence from restrictions on “highest and best use” from the “carceral continuum”

AMPLIFY BLACK JOY with public performance with pedestrian speech acts by staying too long

By embracing a fugitive aesthetic

RECKON WITH THE PAST TO BUILD FUTURE

The stigma of illegal substances (drugs) in minority communities, as well as their sale and use as portrayed by hip hop artists has a distinct relationship to the accelerated dilapidation and designed over-policing of minority neighborhoods. The 1980s crack-cocaine era and coinciding “war on drugs” devastated these communities by rupturing and disintegrating countless households by way of the carceral continuum (see: prison-industrial-complex).

The corner represents a site of capture where arrests and sentencing practices for minor possession charges are brought about in disproportionate numbers by pervasive policing, and racial profiling. This process discretely creeps into the future through contemporary practices of surveillance and crime statistics.

CULTIVATE WEALTH

Whereby the possession and sale of drugs was previously grounds for arrest and incarceration, numerous startups and venture capitalists are flocking to industrialize and profit from the growth and sale of cannabis and it’s related products. Communities of color that bore the brunt of the sentencing for these former “crimes” fail to see this influx of investment nor a retroactive application of justice for being originators in the distribution and cultural relevance of this schedule 1 narcotic turned “medicine”. The anti-carceral corner simultaneously solidifies and re-envisions the growth and sale of marijuana as an act of collective economics, urban agriculture and wealth cultivation, as it always has been in spheres of urban minorities and hip hop artists.

HIPHOPURBANISTRECONSTRUCTIONS SANBORN SAMPLING PROCESS

Sanborn sampling is a form of historical research that can take place in a majority of urban sites in the United States. Sanborn Fire Insurance maps are detailed maps of twentieth century urban America that function as a fossil record of the historical built environment. These maps of the Brooklyn city blocks bounded by Myrtle, Marcy, Nostrand and Flushing avenues depict the pre-slum-clearance urban fabric on the site where Marcy Houses was constructed in 1949.

Many Hip Hop DJs and producers’ sonic recompositions are often preceded by what is known as “crate-digging.” or conducting a deep-dive through historical archives of vinyl records seeking complementary sonic snippets to be used as samples or elements of a remix. The prototyping process of Sanborn sampling seeks to emulate crate-digging in the built envrionment and to collage past and present condition to hypothesize a potential future spatial condition. In this way it resonates with Wilkins’ call for Hip Hop space tobepalimpsesticbyadaptingorbearingtraces of a previous form.

Design prototyping evolved from a reinterpretation of the site’s historical building footprints by using them as additive and subtractive inputs for the design and re-programming of open space in the Marcy Houses.

“Hip hop architecture is palimpsestic in the fact that it is engaged in reclaiming the subject from the object. Consistent with the foundations of hip hop’s flow, layering, and rupture, the palimpsestic nature of hip hop architecture reorganizes and rewrites the “[v]isible boundaries [of architecture], such as walls or enclosures in general,”1

1 Wilkins, Craig L. “(W)Rapped Space: The Architecture of Hip Hop.” Journal of Architectural Education 54, no. 1 (September 2000): 11.

HIPHOPURBANISTRECONSTRUCTIONS

SITE SELECTION | NYCHA IN BROOKLYN, NY - COMMUNITY DISTRICT 3

Brooklyn has 98 developments with 58,669 apartments making it the most populous borough of public housing residents in New York City. Many of these residents went on to become hip hop cultural figures whose rap lyrics can function as post-occupancy reporting and qualitative means of sourcing sites to intervene.

NYCHA IN BROOKLYN RAP LYRICS

1 NYC Housing Authority. “NYCHA Fact Sheet 2019,”

This is Bed-Stuy eighty-two Ninth floor, three tiny rooms, one view Bucktown, ROOSEVELT HOUSES Their green grass is green; our green grass is brown

-Yasiin Bey, LifeinMarvelousTimes, 2009

“I’m from MARCY HOUSES where the boys die by the thousands”

-Jay-Z, Marcy Me

LAFAYETTE GARDENS MARCY-GREENE A & B

TOMPKINS HOUSES

“I’m from MARCY HOUSES where the boys die by the thousands” -Jay-Z, MarcyMe.2017

SUMNER HOUSES ROOSEVELT & II

STUYVESANT GARDENS

BREVOORT HOUSES

LAFAYETTE GARDENS

TOMPKINS HOUSES

BREVOORT HOUSES

SUMNER HOUSES

Area

Marcy Plot 1 + 675,295 S.F. Unused Buildable Area

Marcy Plot 2 = 1,075,910SF OFOPPORTUNITY PARK AVENUE

WHAT MIGHT OCCUR IN 1,000,000SFOFBLACK SPACE?

The depiction of minority communities as “blighted” and fit for removal became the justification for the wholesale destruction of many neighborhoods’ distinct urban fabric as well as the physical symbol of the family unit and notion of home. The super-blocks that replaced these neighborhoods was a monolithic gesture which has come to collectively identify black and lower income people and render the contained condition known as an ‘island of poverty.’

Ifyoulookcloselyyou’llnotice

Thatthepatternonthissoft

broadclothshirt

Ismadeof

Workingman’sblood

Andprayingfolk’stears

AerialAxonometric-VerticalFarmingOrientation

“The windows on the Ave look like sad eyes They fix their sharp gaze on you when you pass by And if you dare to stand, you can see ’em cry You can watch ’em scowl, feel ’em prowl While they’re steady sizing every inch about you Fast math measuring what you amount to”

Jay-Z refers to Marcy Projects as a talent incubator “where they ball and breed rhyme stars” (Where I’m From, 1997). In the past, the only avenues of escaping that environment have been: “SPORTS, DRUGS, ENTERTAINMENT” (Camron, 2000) - with each of these so-called ‘hustles’ coming to represent stereotypes and reinforce a negative feedback loop of downward socioeconomic trajectory when intersecting with one another in such close proximity to the others and a robust police presence.

HIPHOPURBANISTRECONSTRUCTIONS

ADAPTIVE REMIXED USE

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY / 2021 / BROOKLYN, NY

The mid to late 1920s saw the increased popularity of ‘garden city’ urban plans seeking to reduce overcrowding by implementing vast green spaces in suburban and urban developments. This tendency coupled with the Corbusian towers in the park scheme produced the presiding model for postwar UnitedStatespublichousing. In hindsight, these massive open spaces left the sites massively underbuilt by modern status quo of maximizing profitability of property through by-right or purchased zoning bulk.

This portion of quantitative research seeks to ground this project within the reality of twenty-first neoliberal urban development. While this status quo of building is acknowledged as typically reinforcing of existing socioeconomic inequities, this thesis aims to reappropriate the remainders of this so called ‘fast math’ towards culturally oriented and socioeconomically restorative means for the in-situ residents of the Marcy Houses.

The only public programs put on this site were basketball courts, fenced-off lawns, park benches and concrete paths. For the residents of NYCHA - a basketball court that was the only tool immediately at their disposal to develop skills to have a better career or life outlook.

Ifyoulookcloser,you’llnoticethat

Thispatternresembles

Tenementrowhouses,projecthighrises

Cellblocktiers

Discontinuedstretchesofelevatedtraintracks

Slaveshipgullies,acresoftombstones1

1 Mos Def / Yasiin Bey, A Soldier’s Dream (2006)

IfIwasn’tintherapgame I’dprobablyhaveakey,knee-deepinthecrackgame

Becausethestreetsisashortstop

Eitheryou’reslingin’crackrockoryougotawickedjumpshot2

2 Notorious BIG, Things Done Changed (1994)

Wherethedrugsczarsevolve,andthugsareatodds...

Butmosttimesfindthemselveslockedupbehindbars,... I’mfromwheretheyballandbreedrhymestars

I’mfromMarcy,son,justthoughtI’dremindy’all3

3 Jay-Z, Where I’m From (1997)

- Yasiin Bey, Life in Marvelous Times, 2009

She’syelling,“Selling’sasin,”well, soistellingyoungmen Thatsellingisasin

ifyoudon’toffernewwaystowin

Andre 3000, Sixteen by Rick Ross (2012).

BROWNSTONE STREET FURNITURE

Utilizing the Brooklyn brownstone facade and porch as a language of street furniture and pop-up venues allows for intermittent public vendors, communal gathering and eventual reconstruction of neighborhood social fabric that begins to erode the ‘island of poverty’ condition that currently presides.

MANIFESTATIONS:

Skill-Building-Kiosks

Pop-Up Commercial

Residential / Public Amenity

SKILL-SCAPE

If playing NBA basketball doesn’t pan out, the next closest team one can join is a gang. The only skill to develop is “hustling” (earning capital “by any means necessary”) to change one’s circumstances. Drugs - the next most profitable and socially networked activity behind sports - were only the medium by which to forge a path out of the environment where no other choice resides. If you didn’t like basketball, and couldn’t get a job “by any means necessary,” the alternative routes to try to change your circumstance were very limited if not non-existant.

Theinventionof hiphopculturestandsasanoutgrowthfrom or refusal of those routes out, frequently referring to them as forerunners in the flight from inherited circumstance. How can these spatial moments become conducive to building new informal economies and learning new skills? Maybe it’s a film editing kiosk or a public DJ booth where you just put on some headphones and can practice DJ-ing. A skill-building playscape in support of crafting skills to supplement the typical “rags to riches” escape routes have been in place in this site.

TECHNIQUE TOWERS

Using the formal techniques of the DJ to literally inform building upwards aims to culturally reappropriate and resuscitate the ‘towers in a park’ concept as an inevitability of the contemporary capitalist techniques of banking air and as-of-right development. They stand as an actualization of the black notion of “Movin’ on Up to a deluxe apartment in the sky” while simultaneously embodying Jay-Z’s “vision of the hood consistent with the utopianism of Marcus Garvey’s UNIA of 1920s Harlem.”

MANIFESTATIONS: CULTIVATE WEALTH COMMODITY CONTRADICTION ENVIRONMENT

1 DuBois, Ja’net. The Jeffersons Theme Song, 1975.

2 Lawrence Chua, “Life in Marvelous Times: Hip-hop, Housing, and Utopia,”

IDENTI-FACADE

The original structures of the Marcy Houses will be procedurally gutted as residents proceed to “move-on-up” and be converted to a mix of market-rate and affordable apartment units. The reconstructed facade panels will be representative of the residents who occupy the unit as a way to satisfy both the customization-inclined middle class and more importantly offer the long absent luxury of choice to NYCHA inbound residents while differentiating the family unit and individual from the monolithic identity of the super-block.

MANIFESTATIONS:

AMPLIFY BLACK JOY PROTECT & STRENGTHEN CULTURE PERSONAL /COMMUNAL EVOLUTION

AerialPerspectives

High Frequency

Scratch A

Scratch B

AerialAxonometric-UrbanFabric