Architectural Engineering Portfolio
Jett Demol
MSc Architectural Engineering
MAA Advanced Architecture
PG 3D Printing Architecture
Unintended Urbanism
AN EXPLORATION OF A NEW URBANITY.
WITH A GROWING POPULATION AND AN RAPID GROWTH OF URBAN AREAS THERE IS A NEED TO UTILISE THE SPACES THAT WERE PREVIOUSLY LOOKED OVER FOR LIVING PURPOSES.
BUT HOW CAN WE FILL UP THESE SPACES? HOW WOULD THESE SPACES WORK? WHAT INFLUENCES THE ORGANISATION OF THEM?
USING A RESPONSIVE GEOMETRY SUCH AS A HEXAGRID COULD BE A POSSIBLE SOLUTION.
Chalmers Tekniska Högskola Architecture and Urban Space Design studio.
Sprouting from initial agent-mapping of the area, an urban project for the Lindholmen area in Göteborg wad developped. The fusion of geometry and data allowed the exploration of topics such as resilience, long-term adaptability, urban layering, ...
Individual project.
Zone 5. Housing. Apartments, co-living
Zone 7.
High activity, working area. Companies, offices, open daytime spaces, common groundfloors, connections
Zone 3. Public spaces, functions and services. Markets, sports, shops, communal centers, religious spaces, education, student life, theaters
Zone 6.
Transition area with mutliple “urban layers”. MultiLayered volumes, transportation, co-working, small companies
Zone 4.
Program diversity, combination zones 3 & 5. MultiProgram buildings or clusters
Zone 2. Small, human scaled, urban interventions. Kiosks, benches, bycicle parking
Zone 1.
No strong interventions allowed. Human impact should be unnoticeable. Water, parks, greenery, historically valued land
Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Université Libre de Bruxelles Advanced Design Studio
The current Etterbeek train station is not meeting the travellers needs. Situated in the middle of multiple university campuses, an office area and residential neighborhoods, the station is an important transport node for Brussels. Surrounded by major ongoing projects, the already growing number of daily users has taken its toll on the mundane station. The goal of the project is to transform the station into a transmodal hub, fit for the scale of the site. All whilst dealing with on-site heritage and a large height difference between the tracks and the surrounding streets.
First semester masterplan created in group. Selected drawings are all personal creations.
Scale: 1/200
Brussels faculty of Engineering (VUB + ULB + External) 1stPlace-WinningProposal
As a part of the ECHO multidisciplinary team composed of engineering, architecture and business students from 3 different universities we won the collaborative design competition. We successfully submitted a bid to redesign and refurbish the Proximus Towers, properly addressing the architectural, technical, administrative and financial prescriptions of a real-life call for tender during a 3-day design exercise
The proposal was succesfully presented to a jury of academics, real-estate professionals, the CEO of Belgium’s largest telecom company (the client) and the Brussels minister of urban works and the built environment.
Competition team ECHO: Jett Demol (Eng. Arch), Ciska Gielis (Eng. Arch), Gabrielle Kawa (Eng; Arch), Léopold Sepulchre (Eng. Arch), Tom Van Den Schilden (Civ. Eng), Hannes Overmeire (Arch) & Evelien prinsen (MBA)
Circular Structural Design
Explorative review of designing load-bearing structures with reclaimed structural elements
While circularity and sustainability are fighting their way into every aspect of our daily life, the building industry is not an exception. On the contrary, as a major contibutor to global warming the industry needs to take responsability and start reducing its environmental impact. Changing a highly competitive and profit-driven industry is proving to be quite difficult as changes in building practices are hard to implement. Moreover, an aging building stock that dates back to an era where climate concerns were not on the agenda, combined with a rapid urbanization of the population is resulting in an urgent need to adress both obsolete building and brand new state-of-the-art designs. At the intersection of these two pivotal moments in a buildings lifetime we find the building materials. On the one hand, a stock of materials is treatening to turn into waste while on the other hand, resources are needed to produce new ones.
Co-Supervision:
IAAC - Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia Metabolic Roofs - Design Studio
The decline of honey bees is emblematic of a broader decline of wildlife around the world, and has an inextricable link to the current climate crisis. Through this project, our aim is for urban centers to serve as a sanctuary for pollinators and propagate biodiversity. Under the Farm Labour act of 1975, beekeeping was forbidden in all Spanish cities, an attempt by the then Francoist regime to “modernise” Spain, This law was recently repealed, as even in dense cities, honey bees can contribute to the support of healthy ecosystems and maintain agricultural productivity.
https://www.iaacblog.com/programs/apitheosis/
IAAC - Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia Computational Design I
For the Computational Design I course, students were asked to model an optimized high-rise building that has a responsive parametric skin that reacts to the local environment. We chose to design our building on a site located in the vicinity of the Torré Glories, at Carrer de Tangèr 90. The site was enclosed by buildings on 3 sides and a street on the fourth side, forcing the design to take the immediate neighbours into account.
https://www.iaacblog.com/programs/tanger-90/
high solar exposure
low solar exposure
A + B : perimeter scales down under high solar exposure
C : depth increases under high solar exposure
d : angle/panels close up under high exposure
IAAC - Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia Self Sufficient Buildings - Design Studio
From a dissected hairdryer, a new energy device had to be designed and built. This device was then later attached to the pipes of the school sprinkler system where it performed it’s energy phenomenon. The uni-directional heated airflow of the dryer was used to research it’s interaction with a secondary medium. Wax crayons where suspended on rotating arms and would pass through the airflow until they started melting. Upon melting the droplets of hot wax were received on the contrast sensor and created a visual scroll of data.
Wind
project def.: the energy that sets the boundaries of the space that the user inhabits
From a disassembled hairdryer, one can learn about its inherent energy, more specifically a unidirectional flow of heated air. The way this flow interacts with a medium is a direct portrayal of when obstacles meet a dynamic airflow…
This cabin translates that phenomenon into an architectural expression. Located in the Basque country, near the Spanish-French border, the Costa de Zanbuio is an area of large green mountain ridges descending into the Cantabrian sea. The cliffs at the intersection of the ridges and the sea provide an area of turbulence where the wind can roam freely without any obstructions other than the land itself.
The spatial experience on the inside of the cabin is, at any given moment, dependent on the external wind conditions such as direction, speed, and frequency,... Other than these recordable data, used in the design to orient the 18 m2 structure atop the cliff, the inherent unpredictability and disturbing nature of the wind are experience defining elements to which the user is exposed. It has a mind of its own, and the cabin’s state is different depending on the period of the year, day of the month or even minute of the hour.
The light nylon boundary of the static structure is shaped to create different volumes depending on the wind direction. While this boundary is being set by the wind, it is the user that crosses it. The lightweight nature of the boundary allows the user to push back against it even when the boundary itself pushes back into the space, seemingly restricting the available space.
This is the ongoing dialogue between the visitor and the wind…
Raimund Krenmueller
Elena Petruzzi
Marta Navarro
Phase 2: Cabin Rhino, Adobe
Zack Eisenberg
467
3275
3° 950 2500
Sierra Jaizquivel 01° 51' 05'' W 43° 22' 35'' N
1060
30 m
3000 1000
855 3275
YVI 2021-2022
2020
room A room B room C 12,1 m/s 11,4 m/s 10,8 m/s
Team 8 A B C D E F A B C D E F
22°
12,8 m/s 10,1 m/s 8,8 m/s 4,8 m/s 1,2 m/s
55 m 65 m 25 m
1250 1250 1250 1250 1250 8132 11°
2424
60 m SE NW Cantabrian Sea
IAAC - Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia Environmental Data Driven Parametric Buildings
Various exercises are strung together, each focussing on different tools and energy consumptions, resulting in the understanding of multiple data-driven design strategies
NET ZERO Building workshop: https://www.iaacblog.com/programs/net-zero-building-workshop/
Optimization to minimize solar exposure on the building volume.
IAAC - Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia Digital Woodcraft
From an early exploration into Glulam, the project shifted towards researching novel ways of using dowel-lamination to curve timber. By eliminating glue, the active bending within the prototyped components became a key design-driver. Whilst designing a small public tower with the researched technique, data was being analysed as the springback of the wood was being narrowed down to a range that allowed us to work with it. The result was a 1/4 prototype, of a section of the tower, made without any glue.
Digital Woodcraft - 2 Weekend Workshop
With the full group of students, a structure was designed and built over two weekends on the Valldaura Labs campus of IaaC. Knowledge about lamellae cutting and bending long timber members from my own group project heavily influenced the final outcome, where we explored a new way of cutting lamellae and used it to create flexibilty in previously rigid timber members.
IAAC - Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia 3D Printing in Architecture Postgraduate
“Living Prototypes” is a Collaborative Project on digitally fabricated prototypes for residential buildings, using natural materials and developed by three teams of university research centres and industry partners across Europe:
- Iaac + WASP
- ITKE + Fibr
- CITA + Cobod
As a class, we where tasked to design and fabricate various wall segments that connected to the CITA architectural panels and ITKE roof/floor slabs. Production was done in Barcelona, at IAAC, with a KUKA KR 150 and then shipped to Berlin for the exhbition at the Aedes Architecture Forum.
Rhino, Grasshopper (G-Code generation, Geometrical analysis)
Ender 5 Desktop 3d Printer, Kuka Robotic Arm
IAAC - Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia 3D Printing in Architecture Postgraduate - Vision Studio
At the edge of Collserola Park (41°29‘N 2°05‘E), a large and green piece of land sits next to the UAB campus, in direct proximity to the student housing complex (La Vila). The 3d printed earthen student housing proposal hosts 25-35 students and is 1.400 m2 in area. It is a system of vaulted corridors flanked by private student residences and larger public community rooms for meetings, cooking, and other collective activities. Each cluster of private rooms, corridor, and common spaces are organized on the plot in a way that contours shared courtyards. The common spaces on one side observe the neighbouring common rooms from different clusters.
Group project in collaboration with Marta Navarro Nader
IAAC - Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia 3DPA Vaulted Prototype Construction
Rhino + GH, Material Testing, Material Preparation, G-code Creation and Execution, Controlling Wasp Crane Printer, Construction Site Experience
Personal tasks:
- Team Lead and Main Fabricator for the Active Bending support system
- Crane Operator
- G-Code Fabrication
- On-Site manual labour
