Abbreviated Portfolio

Jonathan Hiser

Abbreviated Portfolio: Selected Projects

Virginia Tech Class of 2013 Bachelor of Architecture

Jonathan Hiser

Studio Projects

City Movement Cottage-Cluster-Commune

[2011] [2012]

Competitions

VSAIA 2013: The Hearthstone BLT Architects: Avenue of the Arts Gateway Virginia Tech 3rd Year: Smoke Signal Tower

[2013] [2012] [2010]

Other Work

Virginia Tech Class of 2013 Bachelor of Architecture

Europe Study Abroad

[2011]

City Movement

at the

Urban Lab Observatory Cincinnati, OH Spring 2011

The Urban Lab Observatory was an opportunity to study cities and design a building to facilitate studying cities. The project looks to Cincinnati, Ohio, as an example, but also looks to find universal aspects of cities.

The project takes a moment from the site, at an intersection, and uses it as a driving force for the project.

Site: Launching Point

After visiting and analyzing the site, a type of compression and expansion emerged as a launching point for this project. As traffic lights operate, cars compress and expand at the intersection. This is shown through the gradient on the roads in the site plan, and through the sketch of traffic at one such intersection.

The dimensions of the crosswalk area (40 foot square centered in a 60 foot square) provided order. Seven of these squares lie with a 10 foot overlap across the site.

When they follow the traffic pattern, they compress at the intersection and become a starting point for laying out the program.

To further the compression, with each successive floor, one of the 40 foot squares drops off from the plan. This creates a stepped form, compressing at the intersection, and mimics the traffic flow.

Concept: Speed of Movement

While doing a series of photos, I noticed the difference in speeds between walking and driving which led to a diagram (below) It looks at the time taken to travel the same vertical distance on a ramp, a stair and an elevator. This looked at a range of speeds from slow to fast.

From this, an exploration into the program of the building as slow, fast or paused movement was launched; ranging from gallery spaces to the apartments.

Fifth - Eighth Floor

Apartments

Fourth Floor

Gallery Studio Space

Gallery Library

Third Floor

Gallery Exhibition Rooms Film and Media Archive

Second Floor

Street Level

Gallery Lobby Auditorium Offices

Below Grade

Storage Warehouse Woodshop Auditorium Catering

N 5 10

20

40

Redefining Brick: Precedent

Mario Botta’s Bechtler Museum sets a structural and skinning precedent for redefining brick. He engaged the historic brick vernacular of the church across the street from the site, but modernized the language through the use of Terracotta tiles. The tiles act as a rain screen for the steel frame structure on the inside, and still give the patterned feel of brick

Exterior of Bechtler Museum

96’

12’

18” Steel Girders, 1’ Steel Columns,

Terracotta Tile Rainscreen 1’ x (2’-5’) x 1.5” tiles

The ULO employs a similar steel frame system, based on a 20 foot grid in order to minimize the depth of beams to still allow enough clearance below the beams and ceiling. Hung off of the steel frames is a terracotta rainscreen similar to that used in Botta’s Bechtler Museum.

6” Steel Stud Wall

12” Reinforced Concrete

Model in Process showing structure

Facade: Response to the Internal

Dynamic Vs. Static The Terracotta tiling wraps around the building, sticking to the internal circulation. The tiling decreases in size from 5’ to 2’ from west to east, noticable in the South Elevation. To mark vertical circulation and structural elements, the course becomes stacked instead of staggered. This dynamic facade wraps around the static spaces, acceunated with gray concrete tiles.

Terracotta facade wraps around.

Vertical elements in the facade mark the 40’ structural grid.

South Elevation

East Elevation

Window Sizing The hallways and lobby area have large windows to allow the most light in, while galleries have then, long, high windows to allow some light, but protect the art from direct sun. Apartment living areas have large windows, while bathrooms have small thin windows. Finally, the library stacks have no windows, while the study spaces have windows for some light.

North Elevation

West Elevation

Cottage-Cluster-Commune Friendship Retirement Community Roanoke, VA Spring 2012

In cooperation with Friendship Retirement Community in Roanoke, VA, this project aims to design for a growing retiring population. The focus studio met with existing residents, talked with current management, and visited the site in order to grasp a better understanding of the project.

Friendship asked us to develop 15-20 Independent Living Cottages, smalls houses for a still active and mobile retirement population.

This launched into an exploration of social interaction.

Site and Concept

The site Friendship set aside for the project is on the backside of their property. It features a large flat area (bottom center), that drops off into a steep forested area sloping down to a river (bottom). Some other features on site are an oak tree (below left), and a detention pond down the slope.

Spatial

Studying spatial interactions starts with finding different conditions: nested, connected, adjacent, interlocked, and overlapped. These conditions are ranked from most interactive to least starting with nested.

In a nested condition, spaces are placed within spaces. An interlocked condition is the next step in the progression. This involves shared common space, but also gives each space its own territory. The remaining three conditions are separated by the distance between the spatial boundaries; Overlapped is touching, adjacent has a small separation, and connected has the largest separation.

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Interlocked O

v e r l a p p e d

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Social

Much like a college culture, being in a retirement community gives people an opportunity to live in an area with people at a similar stage of life. This community should foster multiple scales of interaction ranging from the larger community to the smaller units.

COTTAGE: a small simple house Focuses on interaction: between residents within the unit between units residents and visitors. between the resident and himself.

CLUSTER: COMMUNE: a group of similar elements gathered a small group living in a close knit closely together community sharing common interests Focuses on interaction: between units within the cluster between residents and visitors

Focuses on interaction: between commune and campus between the cluster and cluster

Commune and Cluster

Pond

Garden

Garden

Community Center

Lawn Space

Oak

Picnic Pavilon Garden

The Commune is the site’s largest scale of interaction. It features a community center nested within the three distinct clusters. This space includes open fields for lawn games, picnics or lounging in the sun.

The entire community, including the existing picnic pavilion, is connected through walking paths with a focus around both the oak tree and the pond.

Small study volumes looked at interactions between the units as a whole. They allowed for quick iterations on the site with the intention of finding a comfortable arrangement keeping with the interaction of the community with a “nested” community center

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The Clusters are intended to have an internal focus as a response to resident’s request for gardening and social spaces. This space becomes the archetypal front yard, allowing residents to sit outside on nice days and wave at other residents walking the paths.

Cottage: Divisions and Openness

The individual cottages focus on making a good space through openness and enhancing the relationship between two connected units. Each pair of units features a shared carport and shared patio space, giving the residents a connection to their neighbors.

The cottages divide into social “spaces.” The most private spaces are the bedrooms and bathrooms, divided into “my space (private).” The next layer consists of the combined kitchen, dining, living and sun space, categorized by “my space (public).”

To make the transition between private and public “my space,” an alcove creates the entrance to the bedrooms. This limits the direct visibility into the public space.

My Space (Private)

My Space (Public)

Our Space

Your Space

Openness drives decisions made when designing the cottages. The first step was to make a gesture towards the cluster space by lifting the roof. Instead of typical A-frame trusses, the roof lifts up, opening to the cluster. However, the gesture is more than a formal decision. It opens to the building’s south side, allowing for more natural light.

Cottage: Material and Structure

Beige Carpet:

Polished Concrete:

Bedroom

Sun room Utility Closet

Small Wood Tile:

Rough Concrete:

Bathrooms

Entry Porch Driveway

Hardwood Floor:

Stone Pavers:

Public Spaces Living Dining Kitchen

Shared Patio

The spaces are divided based on material.The bedrooms feature a softer, standard carpet surface. The higher traffic and most open spaces use hardwood floor, with a smaller scale wood tile in the bathrooms. The sun room uses a polished concrete, to help with thermal massing in the space.

Structurally, the roof is supported by open timber framing. The trusses are placed about 5’ O.C. with columns placed 15’ O.C. The columns divide the house into thirds, with one third being the private space and two thirds being the public space.

Cottage: Light Shelf and Sunroom

With the roof structure’s development, an opportunity for a light shelf presented itself. The shelf is sized to bring light deeper into the space, as well as leave a small sun room under the eight foot shelf.

The section below illustrates the effectiveness during winter (yellow) and summer (orange), and reveals a moment in winter when a single streak of winter sun penetrates the interior (pictured above right).

With the nested sun space under the light shelf, a thermal mass opportunity presented itself. In the winter the sun is able to heat the wall through plenty of direct sunlight, then the wall can radiate that heat back into the space. The charts show some of the work done to size the glazing for this space.

School Rec Center

Site 0

200

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The HearthStone VSAIA Competition Entry Alexandria, VA Spring 2013

Hearth: family life, the home Hearthstone: a stone forming the hearth The Hearthstone is a mixed use fire station, housing, and public space project on a small lot in Alexandria, VA. In conjunction with a nearby recreation center, elementary school, and housing, the project allows for interaction between firefighters and the community.

This interaction comes from providing a fire pit for hosting cookouts, the always popular fire station barbeque, or for teaching fire safety.

Each housing unit features a balcony overlooking the plaza to allow for interaction between residents and visitors.

The glass structure becomes an icon, anchoring the Hearthstone to the surrounding community.

It houses the lobby, information center, and community meeting space.

LEHIGH

N. Broad

St

Lehigh St.

Site Train Stations Bus Stops

To Center City 300

600

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The site provides an opportunity to bring coherence to the block, and to connect the residential zone with the transit centers and N. Broad Street. This proposal capitalizes on the site by creating a purposeful pedestrian zone, a protected public plaza, and sittable space for those waiting to catch a bus or train, all with the intent to bring a sense of community into the area by encouraging social interaction in the space. It also brings a fluid, dynamic, pedestrian character to the site.

BROAD

150

15TH

0

Housing Retail Pedestrian

HUNTINGDON Protected Public Plaza An internal courtyard isolates some of the street noise, and provides a protected space for user interaction.

Sittable Spaces

Purposeful Pedestrian Zone

Sittable space provides place A pedestrian corrider cuts for people to rest, wait for buses through the building mass, giving or trains, or enjoy the space as space to the pedestrian. This is events unfold. done to encourage pedestrian traffic through the block.

Avenue of the Arts Gateway BLT Architects Student Competiton Lehigh and N. Broad Street Philadelphia, PA Fall 2012

Europe Study Abroad Virginia Tech Travel Program Europe Fall 2011

Virginia Tech offers a 70 day European Travel Program for Fourth year Architecture Students. As a part of this program, the group travels to various cities in Europe, including 10 days of Independently planned travel. This included 23 cities, 10 countries and over 5000 miles. Traveling included learning numerous cultures, languages and meant countless sketches and photographs; all of which involved studying modern and historic architecture. The program provided invaluable experience.

Geometry in buildings provided a focus, and this section displays a very small sample of the work done while studying abroad.

Pinakothek Der Moderne: Munich, Germany

Zollverein School of Design (2006) SANAA Cologne, Germany

While in Cologne, Germany the travel group visited and toured SANAA’s Zollverein School of Design. The complex is a converted coal mine, featuring museums and buildings by Rem Koolhaas and SANAA. The building adheres to a strict geometric layout, which is readable through the layout of the spaces and dimensions of floor tiles. The floor heights responded to the function of each floor, with studio spaces being the tallest and most open. Pictured above is one corner of the studio space, with numerous windows directed towards the old coal mine facilities. The building is a cube and focuses on the power of the square. Sketching and studying the building revealed several layers of the strict geometry ranging from space planning to form work marks on the elevations.

Louvre Renovation (1988) I.M. Pei Paris, France

I.M. Pei’s addition to the Louvre museum was a must see stop while in Paris. One thing noted while on site was the axis line it creates down Avenue. It starts with the Arc de Triumph, continues through an Egyptian Obelisk, the Arc de Triumph du Carrousel, and culminates with I.M. Pei’s pyramids (both inverted and the one above). The top sketch looks at the tension created with the inverted pyramid below ground, and the bottom sketch looks at the triangles present in the above ground pyramid.

Portugal Pavilion (1998) Alvaro Siza Lisbon, Portugal

Built for the 1998 Expo in Lisbon, the thin concrete canopy mimics the curved nature of a sail.

Given the Expo’s proximity to the water, the nautical theme is fitting for this coastal city. Specifically, the Expo’s site was chosen as an area to revitalize and rebuild after earthquake damage. Due to seismic activity, the canopy and building are structurally independent. The canopy is roughly 8� thick concrete supported by tension cables. The main building houses exhibits, while the area under the canopy are used for national displays. Currently the building is empty, but there are plans to place a museum inside. The sketch was an opportunity to draw a plan and section on site, using pacing and estimation for correct proportions and dimensions.