JORDAN D. WIDJAJA interpretation
JORDAN D. WIDJAJA jordandavisw@gmail.com +1.312.259.9918 765 W Adams St. Apt 1106 Chicago, IL 60661
i
Accomplishment 2019
Archiprix International Santiago, Chile Favorite
2018
Best of Year College of Architecture, IIT
Schiff Foundation Fellowship for Architecture Design The Art Institute of Chicago Winner
George Danforth Traveling Fellowship College of Architecture, IIT Winner
AIA Chicago Student Award The American Institute of Architects Chicago Finalist
2017
Dwight T. Black Scholarship College of Architecture, IIT Finalist
Nagle / Hartray Fellowship College of Architecture, IIT Finalist
2016
Edson and Fletta Danforth Scholarship College of Architecture, IIT Finalist
2015
Samuel Horwitz Memorial Scholarship College of Architecture, IIT Honorable Mention
ii
Professional Experience
Vladimir Radutny Architects 2015 - 2018 Chicago, IL
Education
Illinois Institute of Technology B.Arch 2019 College of Architecture Chicago, IL
iii
iv
Selected Works
ARENA OF LUDIC PROTOCOL 1
PARAMOUNT RETREAT 17
MCHAP SEMINAR: UTEC 33
LEARNING PROMENADE 43
MELNIKOV HOUSE 55
PROFESSIONAL WORK 69
v
ARENA OF LUDIC PROTOCOL Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago Spring 2018 Instructor: Mauricio Pezo & Sofia von Ellrichshausen, Susan Conger-Austin Collaborator: Jong Nyoung Park
Archiprix International Chile Schiff Foundation Fellowship for Architecture Design George Danforth Traveling Fellowship AIA Chicago Student Award
Translated Artifact A loose tri-dimensional room tessellation, composed and assembled, from the mapping and renaming territory of studied ruins.
3
NAKEDNESS Situated at the edge between a stadium, a theater, a circus and a spa, the contemporary gymnasium keeps a hedonistic memory incarnated in its obsessively sanitized floors. In the idealized image of the perfected body, the ambition of a beautiful and healthy body, the one built over tedious workout and hidden pharmaceutical support, is where the sensual nakedness of the original Greek palestra lies (of course, currently deprived from its philosophical extent). Despite the uncanny metaphor, and maybe closer to the eroded condition of a ruin, a fitness hall can still be understood as a naked architecture for almost naked people enjoying or suffering their own bodies; as a voluntary seclusion into the rules of their games. In those terms, both free time (pure leisure) or normalized time (institutionalized sport) are more or less regulated courts contained within the pervasive typology of an open plan, where architecture is reduced to its bones. Yet, the very informality of the game, amusement and delight, allows for a more theatrical setting or even a permissive free form. Perhaps as the natural consequence of the Metabolist creed, in its high-tech eclectic “symbiosis”, the explicitly “weak” nudity of Kurokawa’s fitness Center in Chicago could be reinvented.
PLAYFULNESS The literal transparency from function to form was more a wishful thinking by the modernist prophets than a substantial principle of the architectonic space. It referred to a desirable efficiency, to a reasonable economy and a logical techné. Beyond social living and working spaces, even then, architecture was unable to fulfill the irrational needs of culture. Play has been a rather neglected dimension of architecture. However, architecture can be assumed as the very outline for a field of action, for a prescribed and regulated game. As a playground, a sport hall is the space to unfold the rules of a sport or the unregulated, uncontrolled recreation. Its function oscillates from health to “mere” leisure. Since play is a fundamental human need, Huizinga’s “homo ludens” spatially functions between the informal and the formless. As a ludic space (a system of rooms to play) the proposed building will be deliberately delineated after those ludic protocols (as an arbitrary process of formal determination): if the building can be understood as a play device (a big toy), the process to define it will also be read as a game, this is: the playful translation of architectonic fragments taken from a mysteriously large roman villa (a place in itself devoted to body culture and pleasure). Thus the ludic room holds a contest for something but also for the very representation of that contest.
4
Inventories; Reinterpreted Archetype A myriad of decontextualized architectonic fragments from the ruined monumental villa will be translated into the proposed building. Each fragment is sum of inspiration from Adriana and reinterpretation of its plan.
5
Framed Serendipity of Playing with Archetypes In order to annihilate the inertia of our most traditional believes, preserved ideas of Hadrian’s Villa were used as ingredients for solving spatial problems. Harmony between ancient ruins and independent character of interpretations. Sum of all those archetypes allow us to explore over the initial intention. 6
Walls as Rooms Defensive interior shelf for an introverted act of preparation, a compulsory linear rehearsal of equipping and cleansing the pre and post-battle body. A protected progression to brace for the appearance of an admirable Spartacus into an arena.
7
Narratives of Space From dormitory lounge, swimming pool to arena, rooms in various scale form continuous yet autonomous space. Light, air and even mood of places are influenced by the one besides of them. They work as a whole whilst keep their own character. With its form and rule, the building work as a machine that aids people celebrate their body. 8
From Colosseum At the building’s stomach, the intended platform for non-mechanized athletic contests is detached from the spectator to isolate and thereby highlight the playground. An epicness setting of such battle encourages gladiators to gear up and battle.
9
To Circus Maximus Like an ancient Roman chariot-racing stadium was energized by the rustle of whirling wheels, the building’s very base is spirited by such noisy residue of mechanized equipment: the drops of deadlifts, the spins of stationary bikes, the whirs of treadmills,the thumps of squash games‌
10
Nest of Play, Home for Homo Ludens The building will be located in one of the existing parking lots of the Illinois Institute of Technology Campus. It will occupy a elliptical volume of 30x30x60m and be half buried into the natural ground in order to follow the horizontal presence of the existing buildings. It will contain two main functions: sport facilities and student housing. 11
Scaled Aperture on Structural Facade System In this setting of symbiosis of sports activity and student housing. Relationship between human activity and architecture is implied between its scale, intimacy and openness. As a subtle yet powerful protocol of space, the building is presenting its own rule by having faรงade of extreme contrast.
12
Unextinguishable Passion of Battle Activities within, along and through the perimeters of building keep adding fuel to the atmosphere. Battles on central arena, speeds of surrounding running track and eyes on series of terraces make the space as a hall of fame. As people see others and be seen, their desire for perfect body and admire for winning grow limitlessly. 13
Heroic Endurance on Arena On the arena, thrill and excitement of game are maximized. Players endure heavy atmosphere before the impact, fall into ecstasy and eat up rapturous applause from audiences. Regardless of outcome, Its heroic moment for one who join in there.
14
Earth as Rooms Curated with a proportion of half above and half below ground, the building showcases the gesture of excavation. The so-called ark is lifted and appears heavy relative to the amount of removed earth. Rooms then extracted out from this man-made earth.
15
Ark of Living Respectively from the bottom, the ‘ark’ confines auxiliary functions of locker rooms, sports pool, and collections of support rooms for the dormitory: study, living, assembly. Such rooms need mystery, a stark contrast with the extroverted arena below.
16
PARAMOUNT RETREAT 990 N Lake Shore Drive, Chicago Fall 2017 Instructor: Mauricio Pezo & Sofia von Ellrichshausen, Susan Conger-Austin Collaborator: Jong Nyoung Park & Changhyun Kim
Tension Drama A frantic and suspenseful drive that derives from the rudimentary idea of defying gravity.
19
HEDONISM “Water always, flows, always falls, always ends in horizontal death”. Bachelard oneiric imagination lucidly refers to the original source, to the birth’s myth on still water, to its purifying dimension (in opposition to the rough currents of rivers or the eternally changing waves of the sea).In its flatness, heaviness, darkness or depth water shines as narcissus’s mirror. It is not only the hygienic or therapeutic bath of the naked body, or the one barely dressed, but also a sensual device, an instrument of contemplation and seduction what is reflected on its surface. This is a self portrait of our hedonistic society, with portable mirrors for lonely tourists or spectacular ones for a feeble collective memory. The celebration of the body is multiplied by the echoes of an anonymous crystalline facade. If there is no innocence in our self indulgences, at least a sense of naturalness, a vague idealization is contained in a fountain.
NATATORIUM The pleasure of the dancer swimming or diving into a pool tank punctuated by large windows is both the voyeuristic excitement of those who look (the mature deaf architect included) and the imagination of the one who knows is being observed. There is reciprocity in that tacit erotic complicity. The “substantial immobility” of architecture, following Borchers definition, is stressed to a degree in which the weight of a volume of water is unpredictably amplified by its movement, by the inertia of lateral vector. Under these contradictory terms (stillness and motion, load and grace, solidity and flux), the studio will explore the sensual and physical implications of those water vessels within vertical format, as a large arrangement of many pools floating on a tower, rather sculptural facility for a collective (and temporary) living at the lakeshore in Chicago.
20
Bodies of Water A selective collection of inland bodies of water throughout the Indonesian islands of Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Celebes, and Papua. There, water levels define the boundaries of their container, while mysteriously masking its depth.
21
Lakes: Boundaries and Depths Reinterpreted Extracted lake selections are abstracted then reduced into their main characteristic qualities. The uniqueness of each are clearly expressed in their simplified deflections. An attempt to uniformly interpret their hidden depths, or rather heights, into a proportion of 1:2:3.
22
Thrilling Core Stripped the structural component down to its essence, a double core, without the necessity to introduce any ‘skin’ structure system, was an effort made to minimize building’s engagement to the ground.
23
Dictating Grid To govern the successive repetition of a ziggurat, a system of 2.25 X 1.4 meters grid was established. The first volume repeats itself and grows gradually in perimeter as it ascends and finalizes as it reaches the tenth, on which the area is equivalent to the site’s.
24
Reckoning Symmetry The tower seek balance, a repercussive requirement of having minimal foundational footprint. Like in classicism architecture, the equilibrium relies on its mirrored rhythm.
25
Projecting Crowns Each volume stabilized by tensile rods, a secondary structural system, that grounded on an orderly fashion to the grid. It forms a forest of skeletal cables which amplifies the building’s verticality.
26
Meditative Quality of Still Water Water’s attractive trait in physical and psychological healing is transcendent. A spa, a sensuous water resort, is then epitomized to be an ultimate seclusive refuge for tranquil contemplation.
27
Pool as Apparatus Within this pool tower, the container and the water it contains need to be a part of us. The pool is staged centrally as to fully utilize its properties of noise and light reflectivity.
28
Regulated Harmony To respect its quiet, ordered, and monumental neighbor of 860-880 Lake Shore Drive, the pool tower is obligated to pay respect to and comply with some of 860-880 LSD’s qualities of regularity, proportion, and repetition.
29
Unobstructed Cityscape Retreat A paramount escape, high above the sky at the edge between the city’s pulses and placid Lake Michigan. A horizontal unobstructed view overlooks the surrounding skyline and body of water, capturing its glistening sensuality while existing within it.
30
Rationally Embedded Stability All the burdens of compression are transferred solely through the impersonated two-legged cores. This parallel pair links, braces, and hence acts as girders which aid the suspension of each ascending volume.
31
Inverted Ziggurat A forest of cruciform cross-section tensile rods are introduced to refine the lateral stability of every volume. The thrill and dramatic intention to defy gravity delivered from this transparency and lightness of assisting tension cables.
32
MCHAP SEMINAR: UTEC Lima, Peru Spring 2017 Instructor: Keefer Dunn Collaborator: Sumin Oh
image courtesy of Iwan Baan
Sedated Contemporary Cities The Universidad de Ingenieria y Technologia, or UTEC, building in the coastal city of Lima, Peru is an arena for learning which sculpted as a habitable urban cliff that seemingly emerged from or was part of the ground. A conscious attempt to re-identify the destination, breaking the archetypical ‘generic city’ exhaustion. 35
RETHINKING METROPOLIS (Excerpts from Arets, The Americas: A Wonderful World. 2016.) The city should be based on an awareness of risk and tension, and the creation of a new dream. Debating the metropolis should be the main challenge of our ongoing research. We should focus on seeking the boundaries of the challenges presented to us: how will the architecture of the city develop within our frantically exciting and increasingly connected, and complex, world? Architects must therefore be inventors, capable of making, of crafting, and of foreseeing the unthinkable in thought, as a constructive pragmatism. We must overcome modernism. Architects must again take risks, must be specialists, and at the same time be like Leonardo’s Homo Universalis: authorities whose domain is the metropolis, for both technological production and invention. The metropolis will be silent, noiseless, clean, the new domain of production and living. The city must therefore be the domain of diversity; it has to be the domain of new developments. The metropolis must be the domain of slowness; it is where Zeppelins transport us on a detached, disconnected expedition, which in itself gives us time to think, and to re-think. The key question is, therefore, how we, using the body of knowledge available to us now, can develop a metropolis that within our current perspective - with knowledge of the achievements and conditions that our metropolitan landscape offers us - enables the latter to be developed further. We must take account of the fact that the world is a mega-metropolis, “a system of neighborhoods” that forms a network which man has built upon the Earth’s crusts. Over millennia, man has adapted nearly all of the Earth’s crust to serve his needs. There is now a need to transform the twenty-first-century city radically through changes that deal with differences rather than sameness, which itself seems to be an issue for late-twentieth-century nostalgia; the difference between city and landscape now blurs more and more. Instead, our cities should be a three-dimensional and hybrid construct, with a clear boundary, so that nature can be nature again - a place which people will again behave as strangers. Contrasts in quality should not be reduced as clear borders are what we need, for we must also know where the city ends and the countryside begins.
36
image courtesy of Grafton Architects
Anchoring Presence Material and its composed assembly of a building should embodies the magic, power, and grace of where it excavated from: the mystical body of Earth. Deliberate relocations parts of mountain, forest, or cliff need to keep its pride intact.
37
A NEW GEOGRAPHY (Excerpts from Ferrell & McNamara, Dialogue And Translation. 2014.) Physicists speak of gravity as the great sculptor, giving shape, order, and pattern to the universe. They speak of gravity as the glue that holds and controls the fates of galaxies through the landscape of space and time. As architects, we share these words - gravity, space, and light - with physicists. When we use the word “gravity,” we evoke the notion of weight but also of intelligent and thoughtful action. So, gravity contributes to the temporal or symbolic stability of architecture. On the other end of the spectrum, we are interested in buildings that try to defy gravity, like Lina Bo Bardi’s museum in Sao Paulo. We get that sense of presence produced by mass bearing down or mass being borne up. It is a kind of ancient feeling of moving amidst the play of the forces of gravity; this is something that should not be lost in architecture. Gravity asks us to think about what we do as architects, how we anchor our buildings to the earth. Around 2008, it was determined that half of the world’s population now lives in cities, so what we build is the new geography of urban life and habitation. We are redefining the outer crust of our planet. Architecture is the shield and protector of humanity. It mirrors our values. It is what defines us. We are intrigued by the similarities between Skellig Michael and Machu Picchu. They were built centuries apart, geographically thousands of kilometers apart, culturally apart, but they appear uncannily similar and somehow tell the same story - that of humanity’s tender clinging to the earth. These man-made stone complexes are intimate counterpoints to the magnificent landscape, mountain, valley, cliff, and ocean. Architecture is some combination of the scientific and the intuitive. There’s the physical climate and the cultural one, and both affect the way in which one builds. We see architecture as the silent language that speaks, and so the role of the architect is to translate need into built form, into the silent language of space. Specifically, we mean the translation of language into a built form that highlights nuance and accent, place and culture, texture and character, rather than a kind of “Google Translate” architecture. We are interested in the language of a place, believing now more than ever before that architecture’s critical role is to claim space, to claim each particular coordinate on this fragile planet, emphasizing and highlighting what is specific in terms of geography, climate, and culture.
38
Solidifying An attempt to visualize space as to be physical and tangible, an alternative reading to embrace the previously null, a method borrowed from Rachel Whiteread. Technique employed was for a better understanding the figural and material attributes of architectural space.
39
Space as the Object On its figure-ground reversal, as architecture and space are personified, the space merited the inherent power of object to attract and repulse, to inspire the sublime and to inflict influence.
40
Space: The Tabula Rasa Architects are gravitated to make sense, interpret, or manipulate the default blank canvas of space. An absent dimension that allow us, as humans, to occupy, experience, and live in it.
41
Material: The Catalyst Like ink on paper, materials give meaning, or rather activates, a space that was previously null. Materials are the substance that let us provoke and construct the world of reality, a physical experience encapsulated in time and space.
42
LEARNING PROMENADE Chinatown, Chicago Spring 2016 Instructor: Carlo Parente
Edson and Fletta Danforth Scholarship
Gesture: Motion as Expression Scaled envelope repetitions are folded, creased, or hinged to impersonate a building that breathes. A masquerade of eight individual ‘villages’ that disguise themselves into a single dynamic composition.
45
THE PEDAGOGY (Excerpts from Holfester, The Montessori Method. 2008.) The Montessori Method of education, developed by Dr. Maria Montessori, is a child-centered educational approach based on scientific observations of children from birth to adulthood. The educator, child, and environment are all participants in the education. The classroom is prepared by the teacher to encourage independence, freedom within limits, and a sense of order. The working method in a Montessori school is not dominated as in traditional teaching methods by a fixed and static relationship between teacher and children, but exploits the infinite variety of relationships of child to teacher, child to child, and child to work. Montessori students work with carefully designed learning “materials” - aesthetic objects which embody a lesson and often include a self-correction principle. Everybody makes their own choice of what kind of exercise they are going to do. The child, through individual choice, makes use of what the environment offers to develop, interacting with the teacher when support and/or guidance is needed. As a result, the system is characterized by many different activities occurring simultaneously.
THE ENVIRONMENT In a game, the genuine movements of play between children with their self-explanatory toy are almost as to have theatrical order. If each toy to be considered as an amusing diminutive learning object or material that has an asserted task, then, a desire to master a game would require children to systematically re-evaluating the curiosity-propelled assessment of playing; an act of refining and perfecting disarrayed sequences to have an eventual problem-solving methodology. A motoric or intellectual experience acquired from the child’s specified game-play is a miniature measure that is part of a bigger reality of life, of which, perhaps, the children’s learning experience should not be bound within a framework of a traditional classroom. A principle to extend the learning landscape beyond a conventional class”room” and a proposition to transform the whole school building as a prepared environment then seek to be necessary. Therefore, as a holistic system, the school becomes a carefully choreographed experiential powerhouse; which enables the imagination for this scheme to be replicated on an ascending interrelationship from a school, to its immediate neighborhood, to the planetary scale of a city. Thus, from those terms, the school is considered to be an establishment of a city-wide comprehensive learning promenade: an intricately enormous playing device.
46
Neighborly Respectful The accordion-like articulation pleasantly correlates a scale mutuality between the introduced bays with its adjacent houses. A substantial mass that is broken down to be in tune with its immediate context.
47
Reminiscing the Endured A patination deliberately induces a reaction on the copper surface, which emanates a subtle color wash over time that ranges from deep rusted red to turquoise; imperceptible as it ages; enveloping precious childhood memories that deserve to persevere.
48
Polyvalent Space This is a kind of open, homogeneous space which, in its flexibility, is about the way people use or interpret or adapt. A prepared canvas for multiple interpretations and approach of being appropriated.
49
Orchestrated Circulation Floor gradation delicately integrates didactic zones of play that are embedded along the casual circulation. An extension of a classroom that promotes the children’s creative participatory.
50
Programmed Stimulation Playful and interactive ‘learning materials’ were installed and be part of mundane surfaces of the wall, floor, or ceiling; free learning interactions and experiences then incited and permeated throughout the building.
51
Necessary Temporary Stops Designed touchdowns; zones of interruption that required children to pause, recollect, be aware, and be immersed with the embedded materials; were scattered on strategic nodes across the school.
52
53
Learning Promenade While keeping the idea of the Montessori method, where education is child-centered based on scientific observations of children, the project essentially encourages children to stroll out from the traditional setting of a classroom.
54
MELNIKOV HOUSE Moscow, Russia Fall 2014 Instructor: Vladimir Radutny
Samuel Horwitz Memorial Scholarship
Affirming the New The socialist revolution in 1917 completely negated the previously existing world. The movement offered people the ultimate opportunity to build a new society and create an accompanying culture.
57
PROGRESSIVE The Soviet Constructivism was a remarkable and radical wave of modern art that flourished and thrived in the tumultuous years around the Revolution of 1917 in Russia. An unprecedented socioeconomic transformation that responded by artists and architects with an outpouring of visionary, experimental and often utopian, projects to give format to the new state distinguished by a phenomenal sense of creative urgency and radical synthesis within the visual arts. Leftist artists used this newly converged and intellectually stimulating medium as propaganda to underline production as the dominant concern; rallies for mass construction due to an imperious problem of utility and of the need to accelerate industrialization. The Soviet Constructivists were productivist as much as aesthetic in their concerns and committed to bringing design into reality; rethinking design so that it applied to actual social needs. Every avant-garde sets out to alternate triumphing artistic conventions and to forcefully introduce radical ideas into the artistic mainstream, but the Soviet avant-garde went further. It was an art converged with social and political revolution that managed to catalyze on art production in the 20th century, echoing throughout the course of modern history.
WHOLENESS Constructivism is a manner of perceiving the plasticity of space and thus the relationship between spatial structures and architectural forms. The movement follows much of the philosophy prompted by artists like Kazimir Malevich and Yakov Chernikov, who emphasized graphic expression as far more important than creating the illusion of reality: realism. If image mirrors our imagination, then to have a clear conscience, one’s thoughts and ideas should be conveyed with no claim to correctness in visual form. The complete picture is already made up of many fragments; the reader needs to grasp the parts to understand the whole, and the whole is needed to understand the parts. Like the way the mindful ordering of words gives meaning to a sentence, the composition of these geometric vocabularies: circle, square, rhombus, checkerboard, stripe, or chevron, with alternating striking colors render universal visual publicity.
58
Frank
ls na atio
tyle
8 90
ic nt tla
4 90 o1 di ra
Fi rs
tt
ra ns -
A
s1 ile ob
n Va
rn
Ca na da tia ,
903
S
npa th Winte r su
th npa r su me um
Nort h Ca
roli na
Wr
No va Sc o
flig ht 1 igh t’s firs t
MI IL
oit ,
ago ,
De tr
Chi c
m to
ies
te In
Fo
Lo
uis S
ull iva n’s Fo rm Fo rd llo pr ws od uc Fu ed nc aff tio or n da 18 bl 96 ea u
M
e oh rR de
nce right influe Llyod W
22 a 19 ide and
1927 Melnikov House
The only single-family dwelling built in Soviet era Including 1000sqft of living space
59
1920’s “Sanitary Norm” A standard minimum of a 100sqft living space
1924 Stalin rise to power Five Years Plans Collectivization Industrialization
1922 USSR Established
MELNIKOV HOUSE MOSCOW, SOVIET UNION
d an
t
en m te sta
Civi l revlt
an
Em pir e
W
94
W
18
94
Empir e
Si
o-Japanese Sin
an Jap
ar ese W pan -Ja no
rea Ko
Pers ian
m
900 n1 lio be
to
oJa
Re
Ot
Si n
19 11
r xe Bo
Italy
Si
n
18
m no 14 co 19 al e r 1 on Wa eg rld g r Wo ectin Eff
y
1 WW 1
1
ese Re vo lu tio
ar W se
WW
Ch in 1908
Lo
908 Revolution 1
G
ea ria id Aust os’s
ne pa -Ja no
Fra nce
y an m er
ar W se ne pa
Pari s,
jl
k Am s De ter St da i
Le M Co eln rb i
15 es 19 enc nflu di an lon 1920 n ok avi ds ce ovatio bo et p an fluen e inn l s ’ i r n obil 1919 r he t i om ie ov s et en aut Bahau us v’s S z’s , N em o en pius’s m ov B o m Gr
na Chi
1921 “New Economic Policy”
Reviving state’s economy after crisis Allows realization of artist and architect works
1914 First World War
1917 Revolution
Russian united to confront with Germany
Tsar abdicate War loss Food shortages led to price skyrocketing
1894 Sino-Japanese War War loss Resentment towards the Tsar
Radical Venture It was audacious for a Soviet architect to design himself a house during that heady time, since avant-gardists devoted their efforts to various forms of collective habitation. However, Melnikov’s outstanding typological solution was in itself bizarre.
60
From Tender Daydreams Melnikov’s mythology constitutes both his fondness to the history of architecture (Egyptian pyramid, Pantheon, Colosseum), and the images of fairytales, folklore, and natural laws and views.
61
To a Mighty Reality These abstract formations took hints of information and working principles from the old architecture, making use of them in the new. The fabrications inevitably precede, escort, and bear Melnikov’s exceptional degree of apprehension, turning composition into a monument of the future as was the past.
62
Spatial Device A typological or symbolic device, developed through the retention of given variables, aimed to fulfill case-specific functions rather than any absolute purpose. These are objectives initiated by clientele, deducted from the construction and character of the site.
63
Spontaneous and Irrational Melnikov’s artistic activity to unclaim for itself any ‘rationality’ of solution, renunciation of any historical prototypes, or other pictorial inspirations, and avoidance to repeat his own inventions are almost axiomatic.
64
Tektonika - Fraktura - Konstruktsiia The Constructivist promulgation of the trinity of tectonics, fracture, and construction could be perceived as a way of reforming classical architectural paradigms, like the Vitruvian firmitas (strength), utilitas (functionality), and venustas (beauty), in the context of the new social utopia.
65
Employing the Behavior Interlocking cylinders are a very stable form that annihilate the need for buttressing, and the lozenge-shaped perforations are naturally formed when openings in a brick wall are composed by corbelled ‘arches’ instead of lintels. Melnikov embraces forms as endowed with vital energy.
66
‘Diagrid’ Framing Load transfers were thereby adhered to the ‘diagrid’ bricks and mortar walls. Without the intention of being a whimsical decorative device, the perforated cylinder spectacles its spiritual energy to look either like a church or a planetarium rather than a house.
67
Mystical Significance Melnikov was beyond avant-garde, both formally and conceptually, his works transcend time. The dynamism and spirit of his works continue to possess qualities that appeal to our sensibility, which allow his architecture to remain fashionable over generations.
68
PROFESSIONAL WORK 2015 Vladimir Radutny Architects
SAWYER RESIDENCE DECK Residential - Exterior Chicago, IL 2016
The exterior of this single family is thought of as an arrangement of continuous landscaped zones offering seasonal beauty for the homeowner, the neighbors, and an occasional passerby. The front, side, and rear yards are all stitched together using similar material palette of crushed bluestone gravel, large pavers, and indigenous plants. Varying in both color and aromas throughout the growing seasons, an urban landscape that is wild, yet beautiful is visible from the windows of both the home and the surrounding buildings. The principal element of this landscape project is the back yard, where the new sculpted deck transforms it into a place for gathering, refuge and play. Composed of cascading cedar platforms, the homes main living floor extends and gradually descends to grade. Each step widens and turns, letting the imagination run wild with its myriad functions. The oversized privacy screen is integrated into the overall composition such that it is not perceived as a wall to the neighbor on the North, but as a new shared elevation in between. Treating the overlap and density of wood elements similar at both sides allows for light and shadow to be mutually appreciated. Over time, the planted “Virginia Creeper� ivy will take over the screen, eventually climbing the guide wire and transforming the deck into a gazebo, adding extra shade and privacy as well as additional backyard splendor for all to admire.
71
72
MICHIGAN LOFT Residential - Interior Chicago, IL 2017
Inside a century old structure initially built for automotive assembly and display, we renovated a residence that was poorly functioning as a domestic space. In resolving the spatial problems inside this impressive volumetric shell we crafted a living environment that evokes mental wellness and inspiration within. Now, as one enters this dwelling through a low, wood clad transition zone the overwhelming feeling of being inside a large industrial room is very much subdued. Scaled architectural components, material restraint and theatrical lighting throughout, lessens the overall spatial dominance, while openness and clarity of space is maintained. The continuous wood platform organizes the vastness of the open room, providing an edge for more intimate furniture arrangement and a backdrop for plants and life objects collected throughout our client’s lives. Clad in black steel, the sleeping cube is situated away from the perimeter for greater noise and temperature control. Acting as a visual anchor atop a platform, it is fully programed, the metal skin transforms as panels open up, revealing one of many uses contained within. While its main purpose echoes a primal cave for sleeping, lined in wood paneling with borrowed daylight forms an oasis within. These meandering spaces are three dimensionally distributed and yet assembled as a one cohesive home inside a raw industrial cloak.
73
SU
PP
AN
CH
AR
TIC
OR
OR
UL
ATE
GA N
IZE
74
OR
T
N TO ER LL CU MIC HIG AN AVE
201 WEST RICE Multi Family - New Construction Chicago, IL 2017
The 2016 West Rice residences are located in the heart of one of the Chicago’s oldest established neighborhoods, Ukrainian Village. Comprised of 4 uniquely configured duplexes with 4 single story units stacked above, this 8 unit residential typology is a design response to our client’s requirement to maximize the site’s buildable area. The building is organized as a small community of individual dwelling units wrapped in one contiguous skin. Unlike a single-family home, each residence is designed with at least three distinct orientations and abundance of outdoor space, maximizing daylight and cross breezes throughout the day. The outward appearance of this project is a direct result of the strategic interior planning, with two large cubic voids defining large terraces at the second floor. In these voids, the articulated steel balconies and stairs are nested, echoing Chicago’s infamous fire escapes and adding visual relief at the SE and NW corners of the site. Individual, large window openings in the building’s corrugated metal skin appear more as perforations within the overall mass, perceptively reducing the building scale among its fellow neighbors. Selected for its reflective qualities, the exterior cladding produces a dynamic play of light and shadow across the façades, highlighting atmospheric changes brought forth by the seasons and throughout the day. This contemporary building development attempts to mark its place in time, exemplifying architecture expression for its immediate surrounding as well as the greater city context.
75
W. CHICAGO AVE
76
VISITING THE AVENUE Speculative Chicago, IL 2017
What if there were no cars? Oct. 30th 2032 - The Cubs won the world series yet again. North Avenue is especially quiet this morning after the celebration. The early sun glimmers off of the recently watered plants, and the last of the morning’s delivery trucks turn off onto Leavitt St. With a sly smile, I realize that these may be the last automobiles I see all day. Could we walk anywhere? The beautiful quiet is only partially disturbed as the streetcar hums past. It stops and lets out what feels like an endless stream of people connecting to the Damen “L” stop. Café seating bleeds into a grassy knoll. Customers enjoy the last warm days as they watch cyclists fly down the middle of the Avenue. As the streetcar disappears into the distance, I try to imagine the invisible lines marking Wicker Park, Goose Island, Lincoln Park, and Gold Coast. But they are impossible to make out through the procession of fall foliage. Could it grow? Dark clouds make their way across the sky. Rain is not a problem after the new setbacks ordinance. Almost all of the buildings overhang the Avenue, providing cover from the unpredictable weather. This loose experience of the city was once found only on North Avenue, but now these curb-less thoroughfares have sprouted up across the city. Similar lines on the ground, surrounded by stretches of paving and nature cast wide, green net, which holds the city together.
77
78
Chicago, IL 2019