Portfolio_Jason Danforth

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PROFESSIONAL

CONTEXTS Context is a prerequisite for the production of meaning. By positing the existence of a perceptible identity against the otherness of its surroundings, context creates an understanding that simultaneously engages the autonomous, the subjective, and the intertwined. This agonistic, figure-ground relationship drives the projects collected here in myriad ways: the context of site and brief; the context of history and discourse; even the context of limited experience, where each of the projects preceding a work, their experiments, successes and failures, exerts an outsized and immediate influence on the following effort. There is also, for me, the context of entering into Architecture following a decade of entrepreneurial experience in Event Production, where the contexts of client, budget, location, and event type coalesce in the creation of an attendee experience, itself an immersive environment for the enjoyment of spectacle.

STUDIO

While the focus on context, primarily the daily occurrence of lived experience, is borne out of my professional background and influences many of the projects collected here, there are countless other connections, and in the presentation of my work I have aimed to resist the temptation of reducing intensely experimental years into the pretense of a retroactive agenda. Rather than aspire to the development of a personal style, I begin each project by embracing my naivetÊ. I am, after all, not yet an architect, and in keeping with this openness, I have attempted to let the context of the physical document, the CMYK inks, page sizes, binding, and formatting, exert an influence on the interpretation of my work. Ostensibly, this portfolio is ordered according to a narrative of personal background, prominent studio work, shorter yet noteworthy projects, and finally professional experience. Without undoing the logic of this sequence, the document’s format encourages the reader to draw their own associations: perhaps the context of complexity will link technical building systems with exercises in computation, while my professional background may relate the design of a theater to a concept for the sculpted voids of a housing development.

Ultimately, if meaning is contextual, then it is my hope that the converse also holds, and that the contexts provided herein prove meaningful.

ELECTIVE

04-13

contexts |

project: THE U.S. PRO ROCK CLIMBING TOUR clients: THE NORTH FACE, EASTERN MOUNTAIN SPORTS, OTHERS owners: JASON DANFORTH AND PETE WARD dates: 2004 - 2013

EVENT PRODUCTION

EX NIHILO ACCESSIBILITY AUTHENTICITY SPECTACLE SUCCESS FAILURE

events

EXPERIENTIAL DESIGN Event Production is pop-up Architecture: working with clients, artists, municipalities, sub-contractors, and collaborators to create a space of shared experience. At NE2C Productions I was both designer and project manager for urban interventions that transformed parks, warehouses, and parking garages all over the country.

Previous: National Championship, Central Park NYC, 2011 Above: National Championships, Baltimore MD, 2010

events

EMBODIED MOVEMENT The design of a climbing wall provides the geometric foundation for thousands of movements. It is a piece of performative sculpture that is simultaneously the stage and central visual element of the event. Additionally, the wall is the most complicated piece of equipment involved on site, and each design incorporates strict logistical considerations related to transportation, erection, variability, and manufacturing.

Above: National Championships, Salt Lake City UT, 2009

Above: RJD2 performing at The Nor’easter Sports and Music Festival, Burlington VT, 2011

F. 15

TURNED ON contexts | PAR ADOXICAL EFFICIENCIES COMPLICITY BÜROLANDSCHAFT PHILIPPE R AHM BERNARD TSCHUMI REM KOOLHAAS

studio: ADVANCED V critic: MARC TSURUMAKI program: OFFICE BUILDING date: FALL 2015

Featured in The Atlantic’s City Lab: “Rendering Visions of a More Diverse World” Winner of GSAPP’s 2016 Visualization Award for innovative use of computing media

office

CLIMATE AND CONTROL This project is a hyper-rational exercise in the limits of efficiency: how far can the benefits of a single operation be exploited before the cost to adjacent systems becomes prohibitive?

What if the resultant conflicts became a source of productive friction?

The double entendre of the title “Turned On” refers to both the mechanical investigations of the project, as well as a broader interest in the potential of sensuality to overcome received ideas of functionality. While the central efficiency of the project concerns environmental conditioning, the program of office building was selected as a premise to explore Modernism’s taylorist relationship between the production of a climate and the production of the subject. The choice of a mid-town Manhattan site places the project in an intimate relationship with the Empire State Building, and begs the question of whether an experiential, climatic architecture can overcome the heroics of 20th century rationality.

office

THE MACHINE

The driving environmental concept of the project is to challenge notions of thermal comfort by allowing the conditions of spaces within the building to fluctuate according to the seasons and the time of day. By radically partitioning program spaces into combinations of a 13’x13’x13’ voxel, exterior spaces function as climatic buffers, and the existing conditions of heat and light (present in any tall building) are captured for efficient use.

In order to best capitalize on these newly variegated conditions, a wide range of programs are placed within the building according to an evolutionary algorithm which scores activities according to climatic desires. This computational intelligence not only ensures the most efficient building, it concretizes a platonic, mathematical logic as the foundation of the design.

Left: General Diagram of Heat and Light Conditions Center: Programmatic Rankings According to Desired Climates Right: Mapping Existing Conditions Within Building Mass

office

AN ARCHITECTURAL PARADOX A paradox emerges between the algorithmic objectivity of the partitioning and the bodily experience of the resultant thermal burolandschaft: while the proliferation of walls creates a Tati-esque absurdity, each room the inhabitant enters contains a unique micro-climate of light, heat, humidity and noise. Further variation is produced as one moves vertically through the building, as warmth increases with height and in inverse-proportion to the quantity of partitions. A meditation on the general and the specific emerges as the sensual arises out of the rational.

Above: Comparison of Algorithmic Output, Spatial Expression, and Climatic Experience

Above: Mapping Climatic Conditions, 19th Floor

Above: Floorplan, 19th Floor

office

CONFLICT A second contradiction emerges from the complexity of air handling requirements created by the excessive partitioning: the sheer magnitude of ducts and diffusers necessary to ventilate the lower floors suggests an untraditional solution, yet if the partitions themselves form the ducts, a smaller quantity of supervents can serve to move enormous quantities of air the short distance from mechanical rooms to the start of partitioned zones.

The resultant system introduces rolling deformations into the floor and ceiling slabs, creating a seemingly irrational landscape of pleasurable spatiality, as playful and experiential as the algorithm is calculating and inhumane.

System 1 System 2

Top: Strategy 1 - Radical Partitioning Bottom: Strategy 2 - HVAC Intervention

OFFICE

RELEASE Despite the efficacy of the partitions in trapping and utilizing the thermal energy produced by the building’s mechanicals, electronics, and inhabitants, heat still rises through conduction, collecting at the upper reaches of the building, and encouraging a release from the totalizing systems of the project’s own creation. On the top floors, partitions are minimized to a single boundary between center and periphery, and the cubicles of the lower floors open into an office landscape rolling across the length of the building. It is here that the project both engages and overcomes the strictures of efficiency, yielding a novel architecture that collapses the distance between the conceptual, the physical, and the experiential.

F. 14

INVERSIONS

studio: CORE III_partner studio, all work produced with Manuel Cordero critic: MARIO GOODEN program: HOUSING date: FALL 2014

contexts | STATES OF EXCEPTION PRESENCE AND ABSENCE SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE STEVEN HOLL BERNARD TSCHUMI MICHAEL HEIZER

housing

VOIDS Voids, created by the exclusionary actions of a dominant value system, are not vacuous non-entities, but highly pressurized territories defined by opportunity and unpredictability.

Ostensibly an island in a sea of traffic and infrastructure, the Bronx site for this project exists as an urban void, dispossessed by the privileging of transit in a commuter culture. Yet this explicit disregard creates a unique confluence of urban environment and programmatic possibility.

Right: Mapping of Transit Data vs. Property Value vs. Perceived Opportunity

housing

VALUES

Light, sound, traffic, hard asphalt, flowing water, pollution, sunshine and all manner of externalities contribute to an intensity of place hard to imagine outside of the inner city. Rather than attempt to deny these conditions, the project incorporates a series of programmatic voids that focus, and even intensify, the experience of the site. By asserting the value of the void, these spaces foster new forms of interaction and a re-insertion of subjectivity in the metropolis.

Above: Mapping Site Externalities

housing

OPERATIONS The programmatic voids relate to specific site conditions, eroding the building mass through numerous formal operations. The sound of traffic from the adjacent highway, bridge, and train are reflected and refocused at the project perimeter, while sight lines relating to pedestrian thoroughfares carve passageways through to the site interior, and vertical chasms collect sun and track the seasonal changes in azimuth, creating an experience of place connected to the passage of a universal time.

Above: Void / Site Externality Operations

housing

DIVERSIFICATION The placement of voids throughout the building fosters widely varying interior conditions, creating a disparate ecology of domestic experience which counteracts the stifling uniformity of units found in housing blocks of similar scale.

Above: Structural Plan and Floor Plan

housing

EVENTS Light, sound, and urban elements are concentrated by thickened concrete walls which replace the center-less cacophony of the site with a territory of calibrated experience. The walls frame new programs such as sound parks and light rooms, while also forming the central tectonic of the project.

Above Top: Sound Ref lection Calculation Diagram Above Bottom: Building Section with Thickened Walls

housing

CONNECTIONS The thickened walls also carry the building’s structure, mechanicals, and storage, thereby directly shaping the interior spaces of the housing units. This linkage creates opportunities for dynamic zones of domestic heterogeneity.

By operating across scales, the walls connect site, building, and unit to the logic of the void, proclaiming that an absence of value does not preclude the value of absence.

Above: Example Units Responding to Thickened Walls

Above: Porosity Found in Motion, the project viewed from the Major Deegan Expressway

S.16

THE FLOWERS ARE NICE, BUT THEY CAN'T ANSWER THE QUESTIONS FOR US...

CONSTRUCTED HISTORIES SIGNIFICATION LEGIBILTY GREEN LINES WALID R AAD MICHEL FOUCAULT

studio: ADVANCED VI critic: MARK WAISUTA program: NA date: SPRING 2016

contexts |

history

MANAGEMENT + PRODUCTION This project looks at how history is produced and managed in Beirut, Lebanon. As context, the first phase of work undertook a series of comparative case studies: the territorializing and decontextualizing strategies of UNESCO’s emphasis on “universal value” over local history; how World Heritage Site status can be leveraged by governments during war time as a means of establishing legitimacy and strengthening ties to Western powers; the formation of the neo-liberal real estate development powerhouse SOLIDERE, which demolished over 80% of downtown Beirut AFTER the civil war; and lastly, the work of Walid Raad, which questions the presumed authority of the archive through the explicit production and manipulation of historical material.

history

HETEROTOPIA The central historical subject for Raad, as is the case for most Beirutis, is Lebanon’s civil war, which is also precisely what is ignored

by UNESCO and erased by SOLIDERE. The war, which ravaged Lebanon for 15 years, was a litany of brutality, urban warfare, religious factionalism, war crimes, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. The lack of resolution following the conflict, the eventual failure of the State, and the rise of Hezbollah all contribute to the impossibility of Lebanese identity, precluding agency in the process of historical signification.

In the center of the war, in the geographic middle of the city, is the Green Line. An abandoned scar of demarcation, the Green Line was the most dangerous, damaged part of the city, lined by snipers and continually damaged as part of Beirut’s 15 years of routinized violence. And yet, this very fact of abandonment and fracturing lead to the organic creation of a lush, verdant, uniquely Beiruti, heterotopic space. The plants along the Green Line form a self-signifying system, expressing the raw historical data of the war through a highly specific lexicon of vegetation.

history

INDEX

The research on which the project is predicated is an understanding of the vocabulary of this system: creating a direct, indexical link between the factions fighting in the war, the weapons used, the damage created, and the resultant plant life. While the damage of war is its own kind of signification, what this project interrogates is the translation of the universal into the specific, the movement from the background condition of ruin to the highly articulated expression of plant life: the tall grasses amongst the rubble, the large roots of deciduous trees spreading through a crater.

history

ARTICULATION The main thrust of the project is the articulation of historical meaning, establishing evidentiary moments in the built fabric of Beirut, and fostering the growth of specific plants as an indexical system. Given these goals, the built intervention asserts itself as a brute fact, adhering to a strict set of rules for its implementation that allows for as little subjective interpretation as possible. In being placed over, under, or in front of the signifying plant, the intervention does three things: 1. it marks the site, creating difference and information; 2. it acts as a recognizable system, creating legibility across disparate conditions; and 3. it protects and encourages the growth of the plant, which is the signifying system, without competing with it.

By following this autonomous logic, the intervention assumes layers of articulation: multiple heights and depths, degrees of opacity, areas of coverage, and orientation are all considered in the creation of micro-climates that support the plant life. Through these actions, the project becomes like the serial art works of Sol LeWitt and Daniel Buren: a homogenizing device that, through its repetitive implementation, serves as a transparent monument, a visual tool for observing the history of contemporary Beirut.

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HISTORY

PAIRING Plants are paired with specific articulations of the intervention to form the signifying system: small flowered wall climbers like Clematis Flammula are closely covered by transparent glass that traps humidity close to the wall, while a taller, sturdier, tinted glass casts shade over building rubble for the larger, bushy groundcover such as Ephedra Campylopado. The growing conditions are as varied as Beirut’s building typologies and the weapons used against them, and the future growth of the plants will eventually damage the factual evidence which enacted the process of signification, adding further provocation to the act of historical production.

Alyssum Condensatum

Polypodium Cambricum

Glaucium Arabicum

Blechnum Spicant

Pennisetum Setaceum

Ephedra Campylopoda

Bromus Arvensis

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Hedera Helix

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history

FRAGMENTS Through the interventions it becomes possible to read the city as a register of the violently fragmented history of Beirut. In particular, the sidedness or directionality that was created by the Green Line highlights the East/ West axis of the fighting, creating an urban experience of crossing where one suddenly realizes that they are in the middle, that the interventions behind them were not noticeable until confronted by those in front.

HISTORY

AGENCY AND ACTION Amidst all of the challenges faced by the contemporary Beiruti subject, questions of sovereignty, political stability, the failure of the state, religious factionalism, unchecked neo-liberalism, the unresolved history of the war, terrorism and new conflicts, this project attempts to serve as a reminder that history is a process of constructed signification, that the raw data of Beirut’s recent past is still available for reinterpretation, and that the forces of Hezbollah and SOLIDERE are not totalizing.

Through the representation of the Green Line as a self-signifying system, the project inverts the typically banal relationship between vegetated surfaces and leisure, establishing a system of representation that serves as reminder that history is multiplicitous, and that things can be other than they are. Ultimately, the project is hopeful, but it is more suggestion than solution. The flowers are nice, but they can’t answer the questions for us…

F. 15

MEANS AND ENDS contexts | HUMAN SMUGGLING MIGR ATION CRITICAL CARTOGR APHY GIORGIO AGAMBEN HANNAH ARENDT BRUNO LATOUR

course : ECHOING BORDERS critics: NORA AKAWI + KOLOWRATNIK subject: HUMAN RIGHTS VS. NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY date: FALL 2015

Presented at the international conference “Dismantling the Human Smuggler Narrative” Florence, Italy, 2016 Winner of the William Kinne Fellows Traveling Prize

SMUGGLING

DRAWING THINGS TOGETHER Writers such as Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben have posited the refugee as the central figure of our time, a resurgent notion against the backdrop of the current refugee crisis facing Europe. And yet, even as the displacement of the refugee serves as an embodiment of global pressures, it is the smuggler that is the vector, the invisible line of force which allows the movement to occur.

As both a research paper and cartographic exercise, this project seeks to problematize the image of the smuggler as a singular, monolithic figure by identifying the many roles and individuals which comprise the sprawling web of smuggling networks. Operating under the model of Bruno Latour, this project is an attempt to “draw things together,� and represent the complex cultural, economic, and territorial figure(s) of the smuggler and their relationship to the current migration crisis spanning the Middle East and Europe.

Previous page: Iterative Borders Right: Components of Final Mapping

Above: Mapping the Cultural/Political/Territorial Relationships of Smugglers

S. 16

contexts |

course: ENCODED MATTER critic: EZIO BLASETTI topic: MODELING COMPLEXITY // PYTHON date: SPRING 2016

SPRINGSPRANGSPRUNG INDETER MINACY ADAPTATION L-SYSTEMS CECIL BALMOND DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER

rules

ITERATION SPRINGSPRANGSPRUNG takes inspiration from the indeterminate, yet rules-based growth patterns in plant life. By establishing straightforward processes, the algorithm is able to adapt to a variety of environmental factors, as well as its own expanding geometry, creating successive layers of complexity that yield a whole greater than the sum of its parts. The name of the project references plant growth in springtime, the mechanical springs of clockwork, and the unpredictable results of Kinect release, evidenced by the colonizing effect emerging out of higher iterations.

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F. 13

KIT OF PARTS contexts | PERPETUITY REINTERPRETATION SERIALITY CONSUMERISM TAMIYA TOY MODELS

40% 60%

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course: ADR I critic: JOSH UHL subject: REPRESENTATION date: FALL 2014

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case study

ASSEMBLY REQUIRED The project is a polemical study of the High Line. The park, a built work over a mile long, is reinterpreted as a sparse kit of parts governed by a changing ratio of vegetal vs. mineral ground cover. Represented as both a time-based drawing and a snap-together children’s toy, I sought to capture what Ricardo Scofidio called the “perpetually unfinished” nature of the High Line, while also commenting on the commercialization of the project and its impact on the Chelsea neighborhood.

S. 15

course: TECH V_partner studio, all work produced with Alex Rosenthal, Harrison Nesbitt, Brendan Vogt, Joem Sanez critic: KEVIN LICHTEN subject: ARCHITECTURAL SYSTEMS date: SPRING 2015

THRESHOLDS

contexts | EFFICIENCY REVITALIZATION DIFFERENCE BECOMING AWARE ALBERT K AHN JOSEF ALBERS

manufacturing

CONTRASTS This project takes the program of a light industrial loft building for “artisanal manufacturing” as the opportunity to instigate a transition in an area of the Bronx clearly impacted by deteriorating industrial sprawl. At a moment in time when technology has democratized light manufacturing, the project takes the concept of a “threshold” as a moment of liminal awareness, where a sense of difference becomes meaningful on simultaneous levels. In much the same way as Josef Albers Homage to the Square served as a pedagogical tool for confronting the viewer’s perceptual ability, the many thresholds within this project (the historic shift from past to future models of manufacturing, the bodily journey from street to lobby to loft, or from workspace to corridor to exterior, and the personal climb from economic depression to self-actualization), serve as opportunities to challenge and invigorate visitors through the experience of space.

Above: Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square, distorted into the parti of the project

manufacturing

AN OPEN MONUMENTALITY

Tectonically, the building assumes an heroic posture, immediately differentiating itself from the industrial desuetude surrounding it. Two proudly expressed cores, bridged by a monumental truss, allow the floor plates of the building to hang, column free, above the site. This creates an unbroken plinth at ground level, connecting the street to the first floor exhibition space which showcases the work of the artisan tenants.

Above: Building sections, with tenant spaces highlighted

manufacturing

FLEXIBLE EFFICIENCY The master truss is incorporated into a singular tenant space on the seventh floor, and connects to the steel girders of the lower floors through a series of tension rods and clevises. The major structural assemblies can all be prefabricated off-site, and each rod spans only a single floor, minimizing the impact of the structure on space planning and allowing flexible partitioning that can accommodate entrepreneurial businesses of widely varying sizes.

Top: Master Truss Details Bottom: Tension Rods and Connections to Girders

manufacturing

INTERSTICE

The environmental parti of the building is conceptualized as a continuous, insulated tenant space, surrounded by a semi-conditioned corridor that thermally fluctuates with the seasons, and encourages a variation in usage patterns as the north side provides shade in the summer, whereas the south face collects warming winter sun. In addition to lowering heating and cooling costs, these differential zones act as an interstitial space between interior and exterior, encouraging bodily awareness as tenants move through the building.

Top: Typical Floor Plan Bottom: Typical RCP

manufacturing

REDEFINITION Treating the corridor as an inhabitable double-skin façade creates a level of efficiency that allows the project to challenge energy codes, greatly increasing the amount of vision glass in the envelope, while noticeably out-performing baseline requirements. Additionally, the use of clear glass on the exterior façade, and polarized, translucent “panelite” for the interior partition creates a pronounced phenomenological threshold as tenants transition from the inward focused workspaces to the horizon-oriented corridors.

Right: Building section showing corridor condition at roof, typ. f loor, and ground level Above: Facade details at exterior and interior envelopes

S. 15

THE NEW NEW DEAL THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY URBAN INFR ASTRUCTURE MONUMENTALITY CEDRIC PRICE PIER VITORIO AURELLI ROBERT MOSES Featured in the 2016 Rotterdam International Architecture Biennale

studio: ADV IV_partner studio, all work produced with Harrison Nesbitt critic: NAHYUN HWANG program: INFRASTRUCTURAL INTERVENTION date: SPRING 2015

contexts |

infrastructure

AGENCY REVITALIZED Engaging both the rising influence of a neo-liberal Knowledge Economy, and the deleterious effects of aging infrastructure, this project attempts to recognize the facts of late capitalism while nonetheless reorienting the City towards the nostalgic vision of the New Deal, of a strong public sector and an equitably prosperous, modern metropolis.

Within this context, infrastructure exists as a site of latent spatial and informational opportunities.

Through public-private partnerships between the city and extra-territorialized corporate entities, the proposal calls for the occupation of bridges, highways, waste water treatment facilities and power plants with industrial scale research facilities. Through these interventions, Architecture itself is able to recapture agency in an age of globalization, image, and excess, while repositioning Monumentality as a new basis for the production of meaning in the metropolis.

Above: Upper East River Infrastructure Typology

infrastructure

POINTS AND LINES Architecturally adopting the formal strategy of a “point�, the Highway research center, is organized in cooperation with Google, and occupies unused space within a massive Bronx highway interchange. Offering new insights into the analog behavior of city inhabitants, human activity on the roadway and within passing vehicles is collected from observation towers and viewing decks, providing the tech giant with a new platform from which to participate in the lives of residents.

Above: Highway Intervention Site Plan

infrastructure

TRANSITION

Capitalizing on the relative isolation of the site from nearby buildings and the limited footprint of the architectural intervention, the ground level of the site is activated as a semi-wild nature preserve for bird species that have been displaced from nearby fields and marshlands. The highway overpasses provide a ubiquity of nesting opportunities, and at-grade roadways limit human access to specified, unobtrusive locations.

Above: Highway Intervention Axonometric

INFRASTRUCTURE

SCALES OF EXPERIENCE A sense of difference across architectural and infrastructural scales is created through the construction of this intervention. The dense forest of the underpass is contrasted with the expansiveness of views from the towers, and the extruded forms serve as beacons in the night for a new intertwining of infrastructure, economy, and tectonic iconography.

Views, Clockwise from Top Right: Horizon from Observation Deck, Monument of Light, Urban Wilderness

infrastructure

EDGE CONDITION Adopting the formal definition of a “line� the Power Plant intervention serves as a boundary condition, providing protection for power and water treatment facilities during storm surges, while re-purposing destitute land as an opportunity for DuPont to test pollution resistant seeds.

A large public berm cuts through the industrial periphery of Astoria, introducing a new public greenbelt that allows viewing of the agricultural activity within, but one that also clearly delineates the space of economic production for the otherwise globally integrated company.

Above: Power Plant Intervention Site Plan

infrastructure

LIMINAL INHABITATION

While the site is given over to power generation and agricultural testing, the berm itself houses over one million square feet of laboratory space, housing, storage and administrative facilities. By incorporating these programs into the architecture of the boundary itself, the intervention heightens the effect of delimitation between residential and industrial, fostering a new sense of monumentality that is both sharply defined and endless.

Above: Power Plant Intervention Axonometric

INFRASTRUCTURE

SPATIAL DEFINITION The singular intervention of the boundary creates a wide variety of experiential encounters, and contributes to the creation of a new type of urban territory. Approaching from Astoria, the berm is a jarringly verdant intervention with no easily grasped start or end. The inward facing architecture of the berm is divided into four programmatic layers: storage and parking, research, residential, and park. Lastly, the disorienting contrast of power plant and farm land highlights the extremes foisted upon the City in this late-capitalist moment.

Clockwise from Top Right: Boundary Architecture, Urban Limit, Capitalist Schism

infrastructure

SIGNIFICATION Situated as an autonomous, highly visible presence on an island between Manhattan and Queens, the Waste Water Treatment research center embodies the formal concept of volume, extruding upwards into a monumental circular ring which produces allusions to both the reuse of water and the rejuvenation of the City.

Operating as a headquarters for Johnson and Johnson, the intervention takes advantage of the information latent within human biological waste for medical research and product testing, creating a bodily linkage between the scale of the resident and the scale of the economy.

Above: Waste Water Treatment Intervention Site Plan

infrastructure

NEW TERRITORIES

Research facilities are housed within the large, tilted mass with access to the various stages of waste treatment provided in sampling stations, situated within a sprawling public field raised above the settling tanks of the existing waste water treatment plant. Previously inaccessible space is made public as a serene landscape that adds to recreational uses preexisting on Randall’s Island.

Above: Waste Water Treatment Intervention Axonometric

INFRASTRUCTURE

ICONOGRAPHY The assertive, tilting form of the intervention dominates the sparsely populated terrain of the island, providing an easterly reference point in the iconography of New York City architecture.

Approached from the Arcadian field capping the waste water tanks, the monumental ring heroically extends into sky, while the infrastructural underside of the plant assumes an austere quietude of almost religious significance.

Views, Clockwise from Top Right: Arcadian Plateau, Quiet Monumentality, The Return of Iconographic Infrastructure

S. 14

FOUND IN THE CROWD SHARED EXPERIENCE REFLECTION MEMORY JORGE LUIS BORGES WALTER BENJAMIN JOHN HEJDUK

studio: CORE II critic: KARLA ROTHSTEIN program: THEATER date: SPRING 2014

contexts |

theater

THE AGENCY OF MEMORY The history of Brooklyn embodies a chaotic set of dialectics which defy convenient definition.

In response, this project offers opportunities to intertwine resident experiences through an event space which both concentrates and diffuses meaningful moments in the life of the community.

Above: Mapping Ref lectivity

Above: Mirrored Space Model Right: Photograph of Model

theater

ACTIVATED MATERIALITY Growing out of a series of abstract model making exercises, the project began by establishing material conditions capable of serving as a quantifiable foundation for the desired experiential effects. These relationships were then mapped through drawings, photography, and parametric software as explorations of latent spatial opportunities.

Above: Programmatic Diagram

theater

EXPERIENTIAL TERRITORIES

Programmatically, the project exists at the intersection of the sacred and the profane, creating an experiential overlap: weddings, funerals, celebrations, performances and community meetings blend into a simultaneity of sight and sound, projecting shared moments outwards into the community. Spatially, an environment of reflective ribbons magnifies auditory and visual stimulus throughout the theater. New relationships are formed as unexpected visitors are engaged, and the resultant interconnectedness invites residents to bridge the differences of a divided community.

Above: Event / Experience Typological Conditions

Above: The Surrounding City, Ref lected in the Folded Facade

Above: Weaving Space in the Main Auditorium

F. 13

ANCHORS OR ADAPTATION?

studio: CORE I critic: JANETTE KIM program: PUBLIC POOL date: FALL 2014

contexts | LONG TER M SUSTAINABILITY AGENCY LIVING MACHINES PHILIPPE R AHM STEWART BR AND ANTFAR M

pool

CONTINGENCY Reconciling the societal need for public housing with NYCHA’s inability to afford infrastructural repairs, the pool is positioned as the central element of an on-site water treatment and plumbing utility capable of prolonging the viability of the site. Contrariwise, this project acknowledges that NYCHA’s eventual failure to maintain the property is beyond the scope of Architecture, and that the project must pursue broader flexibility if it is to remain vital in uncertain future scenarios.

Above: Constant Climate, Adaptable Program

pool

ADAPTATION By engaging the volatile conditions of the site (gentrification, policy failure, poverty), the project foregrounds adaptability by utilizing its water to create climate-defined spaces capable of programmatic adjustment. Ultimately, this project posits that an adaptable architecture must be allowed to outlive our intentions, to take on unexpected, even undesirable new programs.

Above: Floor plans and corresponding climates

Above: Climactic zones adapting to various programs over time

S. 15

COMPUTATION

project: EXTRACURRICULAR STUDY client: NA goal: EXPLORATION + SKILL BUILDING date: ONGOING

contexts | HAPPY ACCIDENTS MATERIAL SYSTEMS RECOVERING ORNAMENTATION THE POETICS OF UNCERTAINTY NERI OXMAN PERRY HALL THE VERY MANY

computation

(IN)FORMALISM The work presented here is an ongoing experiment that uses rules-based systems to extend my creative process beyond tropes of personal style. Contrary to the popular criticism of “parametricism� as formally driven, I see computation as unique within digital design for its lack of reliance on artist agency. In almost dialectical contrast to optimization, I prefer to use code as a means to explore the peripheries of productive accidents.

S. 14

Photograph courtesy of KPF Associates

KOHN PEDERSEN FOX ROSS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN CONSTRUCTION ADMINISTR ATION NEW CONSTRUCTION / RENOVATION

office: KOHN PEDERSEN FOX project manager: PHILLIP WHITE, JERRI SMITH program: EDUCATION date: SUMMER 2014

project info |

kpf

THE VERY BIG

In the Summer of 2014 I undertook an internship in the New York offices of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, where I worked on the Construction Administration phase of an expansion on the Ross School of Business. A complex project which combined renovation and over-cladding of existing buildings as well as new construction, I worked on the analysis of multiple faรงade systems, including glass curtain walls, terracotta rainscreens, and a sculptural brise soleil.

Previous: Photograph courtesy of KPF Above: Revit Model produced by KPF, drawing by Jason Danforth

kpf

THE VERY SMALL In addition to working on larger scale issues such as glass modules and overall faรงade patterning, I developed numerous details which fine-tuned weather proofing, structural connections, and the integration of mechanical systems.

S. 15

Rendering courtesy of SHoP Architects

SH O P ARCHITECTS

office: SHoP ARCHITECTS project manager: AYUMI SUGIYAMA program: MUSEUM date: SUMMER 2015

project info | SITE SANTA FE CONTEMPOR ARY ART CENTER DESIGN DEVELOPMENT PAR AMETRIC FACADE

SH o P

THE SCRIPT In 2015 I interned at SHoP Architects, working primarily on the scripting of an intensely parametric faรงade for a cultural project. As the central architectural move in the project, the screen is a curtain of folded aluminum carved away by a negative mass, as if by geologic forces.

The resulting faรงade is stunning in its geometric complexity and spatial in its overhanging depth and occupiable courtyards. From a computation perspective, the script generating the project was the most ambitious I have ever worked on, outputting over 2,500 unique panels to fabrication-ready specifications.

Previous: Rendering courtesy of SHoP Architects Above: Grasshopper definition of facade, majority written by Jason Danforth

SH o P

PATTERN

NORTH WALL CLADDING ornamental panels_40% perf (all shaded areas) --- 2,775 sf ornamental panels _15% perf/”solid” (white areas) --- 1,881 sf backing panels_prow (dark grey) --- 2,456 sf backing panels_typ (light grey) --- 0 sf backing panels_removed (white) - 1,706 sf fins - 2,161 sf interior courtyard

north wall cladding

EAST WALL CLADDING ornamental panels_40% perf (all shaded areas) --- 5,830 sf ornamental panels _15% perf/”solid” (white areas) --- 2,769 sf backing panels_prow (dark grey) --- 3,258 sf backing panels_typ (light grey) --- 1,425 sf backing panels_removed (white) - 2,477 sf fins - 4,565 sf interior courtyard

east wall cladding

SOUTH WALL CLADDING ornamental panels_40% perf (all shaded areas) --- 1,407 sf ornamental panels _15% perf/”solid” (white areas) --- 1,398 sf backing panels_prow (dark grey) --- 902 sf backing panels_typ (light grey) --- 510 sf backing panels_removed (white) --- 1,370 sf fins - 1,376 sf interior courtyard

south wall cladding

interior courtyard

Above: Facade pattern studies and material take-off estimates

Conceptualized as a site specific, elevational relationship to Navajo textiles , the overall pattern of the façade produces a rhythmic differentiation between its North, East and South sides. The slope of each “facet” in the carving mass drives the tightness of the weave, elongating or compressing the diamonds, and creating widely variegated polygons at the “creases.” Varying levels of perforation respond to interior programmatic relationships, and allow for the removal of interior layers to optimize material usage.

interior courtyard

SH o P

STRUCTURE Structurally, the faรงade is a unitized system.

I was involved in the design of the structural system and worked to develop cross-bracing, component connections, and a hook and fist connection that resolved issues of installation, support, wind loading, and unit depth.

Top: Axonometric Diagram of Facade Unit Bottom: Detail of Structural Connection

Rendering courtesy of SHoP Architects