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JOSE LUÍS GABRIEL CRUZ
SELECTED ARCHITECTURE AND RELATED PROJECTS
2012 M. Arch CANDIDATE
MODULAR CONFIGUR ATIONS
LIGHT CONFIGUR ATIONS 8
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URBAN ADVANCEMENT
CINEMATIC URBANITY
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PLACE MAKING IN THE DESERT
CONTEXTUAL TEXTURES 26
JOSE LUÍS GABRIEL CRUZ UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE B. ARCH DESIGN 2012
JOSELGCRUZ@GMAIL.COM 386-212-0889
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RHYTHMIC TECTONICS IN SPACE
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CONSTRUCTED VERNACULAR 10
DIVERGENT PATHS IN CHARLESTON 22
AN ARCHIT ECTURE OF DEPENDENCE 30
DEDICATED TO MY MOTHER AND FATHER. I AM FOREVER GRATEFUL.
SITE ANALYSIS
VOLUME WITHIN MASSES
COMMERCIAL/ RESIDENTIAL DIVIDE
SITED ALONG MAIN ROAD ARTERIES
GRADIENT OF HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS WITHIN GRID
MODULAR CONFIGURATIONS
5 PARTNER: TIM BEECKEN CRITIC: ALFONSO PEREZ
RETHINKING THE MANHTATTAN HOUSING TOWER This project addresses the issues of vertical housing within Manhattan by using the housing unit as a generator to rethink the traditional tower typology, that is, “the pancaked section tower.” So, rather than defaulting to what is known, the project questions what it means to live within a housing tower at several scales: the house unit, amongst neighbors, within a community, and finally within an urban context.
Breathability was identified as a missing yet much needed concept within urban housing that is not possible through the stacking of floors. Density was also an indispensable quality that makes up the urban fabric. So, in essence, the goal was to work towards a “breathable density,” one that would allow each unit to receive the basic necessities of a comfortable urban home.
IRREGULAR SYSTEM OF INHABITABLE MODULES DISPERSED TO ENABLE INTERACTION BETWEEN INHABITANTS
HOUSING COMPONENTS
SKY COMMUNITY TYPOLOGY
HOUSE A Single unit with interlocking capabilities
NEIGHBORS Units come together to form a unified occupiable surface
COMMUNITY Variety in organization optimize possibilities of exchange amongst inhabitants
SKY COMMUNITIES Sections of Communities unite to form an interlocking matrix of private and public spaces throughout the structure.
EARLY CONCEPTUAL MASS MODEL
STRUCTURAL + CIRCULATORY CORE
SEVER TO SITUATE WITHIN URBAN EDGE
ELEVATE UNITS / CLUSTERS OF NEIGHBORHOODS
PULL UNITS OUT / CREATE BREATHABILITY
TYPICAL TOWER ORGANIZATION
STRUCTURAL ARMATURE INTERNAL SKIN UNIT MATRIX
COMPOSITE TECTONICS
STREET + GROUND ENTRY DIALOGUE
TOWER OPERATIONS
MERGE OF PROGRAMMATIC GENERATORS
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The concept of the Module as a generator spawned from the study of Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in which he utilized the L-shaped unit as a strategy to maximize dwelling space. The study of the module, together with the given site, Manhattan, led to exploration of new formless typologies which would seek a new mode of living. That is, incorporating the density of the city together with the breathability of an open home. So, by manipulating the unit within an irregular system of organization, the tower is able to provide a unique living experience for each inhabitant while simultaneously maintaining a sense of neighborhood and community.
SECTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF LIVING
HOUSING DISTRIBUTION
Prototype A
1600 ft 2
Prototype B
1200 ft 2
Prototype C
2400 ft 2
Prototype D
2000 ft2
LIGHT ARRANGEMENTS
CRITIC: THOMAS SMITH
CUSTOMIZING LIGHTING CONDITIONS Light Configurations explores the possibilities of configurations within a standard module that results in a flexible and efficient light fixture. In search of this, the center module serves as a housing vessel for the electrical wiring stemming from the secondary, light fixtures. Essentially, the whole fixture becomes a playful exploration of lighting conditions that can be modified for specific lighting needs.
VARIATIONS IN CONFIGURATIONS
RHYTHMIC TECTONICS IN SPACE MUSICAL CONSTRUCTION
Inspired by rhythmic visualization diagrams of the perfomances of Johann Sebastian Bach, this project studies architectural elements by understanding them musically. Order, balance, and a logic of rhythym emerged initially through the translation of these diagrams into architectural drawing seeking to capture spaces within previously defined fields. Further, these drawings spawned the construction of a model which futher questioned how the musicality of points and lines translate into built form. That is, contrasting forms with forms, spaces with spaces, and sequences with other sequences.
LINES + PLANES EXPLORING RHYTHMIC SPACE DEFINITION
9 CRITIC: TONY WHITE
CONSTRUCTED VERNACULAR CONTEXTUAL EVOLUTION
27’ ABOVE WATERBED 20’ ABOVE WATERBED
TIDAL ACTIVITY AS GENERATOR Existing tidal patterns generate relation between tectonic boundaries and surrounding natural environment
FIVE YEAR TIDAL RANGE
DEFINING OF TERRITORY
15’ ABOVE WATERBED
FIFTY YEAR TIDAL RANGE
SEQUENTIAL STRATIFICATION
ONE HUNDRED YEAR TIDAL RANGE
ESTABLISHING MOMENT
CONTORTING LINES AND SPACE
DEFINING TECTONIC EDGES
11 CRITIC: MARTHA KOHEN
MOMENTS IN PATH The pavilion serves as a destination point for visitors traveling along a long continuous walking path. It actively intervenes within the site enabling them to engage in the site’s material and contextual richness by detouring paths into moments of reflection.
CONNECTIONS The intervention laces the woodlands and river together by crossing juxtaposing paths creating interlocking itineraries.
CINEMATIC URBANITY EXHIBITING PLACE
CONTEXTUAL OPERATIONS SITE VOLUME
SEQUENTIAL SPATIAL SCENOGRAPHICS
LIBERATING THE CORNER
PUBLIC ENABLED ACCESS
PROGRAMMATIC TAILORING
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CONCEPTUAL TYPOLOGIES “LIGHTNESS” IN MASS
BOX WITHIN A BOX
VOLUMETRIC FRAMEWORK
ACTIVE TRANSLUCENT EXHIBIT
URBAN ADVANCEMENT
HIGHER LEARNING + SOCIAL HOUSING
15 PARTNER: TIM BEECKEN CRITIC: ALFONSO PEREZ
URBAN TYPOLOGICAL PRECEDENTS OPEN PARK
TYPICAL BLOCK FOOTPRINT
URBAN MALL
THE MANHATTAN BLOCK PROPOSAL The proposed urban intervention is situated within Chelsea’s port industry district, one block east of the Hudson River.
MERGER OF HIGHER LEARNING + SOCIAL HOUSING
Manhattan is a place of exchange, an exchange between commercial and residential, public and private, and varying populations within the socioeconomic strata. Further, amongst these corporal transactions, the urban fabric has become an seamless integration of programs in which one feeds of its counterpart. In our urban proposal, we aim to merge three major programmatic elements which collaborate in attempts to integrate the influences of higher education, its ability to provide an all-around living and learning experience, with that of social housing. These elements are: a university campus, social housing towers, and a public interstitial plaza.
AN OPEN BLOCK The block responds to the existing urban conditions by becoming a porous, carefully juxtaposed group of masses that allows both residents, students, and passersby to engage in the energetic tension that a college campus and public plaza have to offer.
CONCEPTUAL ELEMENTS
+ RESIDENTS
STUDENTS
ANCHORS
SOCIAL MIXTURE ENVELOPING SKIN PROGRAMMATIC UNITS MANIPULATED GROUND
SITE CONTEXT
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ENGAGEMENT + TENSION This elongated juxtaposition allow a spatial tension in between the programmatic containers, that is - the campus building on the left and the complimentary museum building on the right - to energize and feed the activity within.
MID RISE RESIDENTIAL 61,660 TOTAL FT 2 DENSITY OF 1 PERSON PER 405 FT 2
HIGH RISE RESIDENTIAL 114,364 TOTAL FT 2 DENSITY OF 1 PERSON PER 345 FT 2
VARYING DENSITIES Through the categorical mixture of living units, the density of the block achieved a ratio of 201 per acre (as compared to the average New York block of 147:1.
WEST
EAST
NORTH
SOUTH
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ACTIVATING THE STREET The vessel housing the university is constructed through layers of tectonic elements enabling the exhibiton of activity to the street. A LOBBY/STUDENT EXHIBIT B COMMON GROUNDS C ATRIUM D CLASS ROOMS E AUDITORIUM / MIXED USED F PUBLIC LIBRARY G RETAIL / RECREATION H EDUCATIONAL SPACES I HIGHLINE MUSEUM
UNDERGROUND
5TH FLOOR
11TH FLOOR
OCCUPATIONAL NODES
INTERSTITIAL PLAZA
TECTONIC ENCLOSURE
MATRIX OF PROGRAM
SITE CONDITION
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INTERIOR UNIVERSITY Exterior plaza flows inside to the university court where students are both connected to the exterior street and interior campus
PLAZA Interstitial plaza ties the street with the academic, commercial, and residential
DIVERGENT PATHS IN CHARLESTON INSTITUTE OF MARITIME DESIGN
PROGRAM Charleston’s unique urban fabric tells a story of its cultural past. Rows of houses line the streets creating a peculiar rhythm of mass to void relationships. Both work in tandem, characterizing Charleston’s pedestrian experience, one that encourages exploration and discovery. Narrow alleyways stem off main streets generating a sub-system of circulation paths which then lead to the discovery of other streams of circulation or hidden courtyards. With this understood, the proposed intervention takes into account Charleston’s social and existing urban fabric within the architecture. The Institute of Maritime Design is a pedagogical-driven concept intended to echo the city’s founding economic strategies based on maritime trade and cultural exchange. The Institute creates a stronger, more meaningful tie between the inland and the water, as well as the people and their harbor along with its historical significance. It compliments the Port of Charleston which is a few blocks north from the Institute as well as establishes a secondary satellite site.
UNIQUE SPATIAL TYPOLOGY OF THE ALLEYWAY WITHIN CHARLESTON
23 CRITIC: MARTIN GUNDERSEN, GUY PETERSON
GENERATIVE HYBRID SITE DIAGRAM OF STREET EDGE AND ITINERARY
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Entry Reception Sales Room Offices Restrooms Assembly Hall Lounge Tool Storage Exhibition Platform
Amidst its making, boats are assembled in various stages. First, the hull arrives on site. then, the parts, pieces, and sail are added afterward. Within this process, spatial formations and organizations have the opportunity to cater to each individual stage enhancing the making process. Some stages may require more vertical space, others might require an abundance of natural light, and yet others may be best suited within small workshops.
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REVELATION OF ITS MAKING Spaces are organized around the spectacle of the boats within transparent containers exhibiting their making. Thus, the process of making the vessel becomes as important as the finished thing itself.
OVERHEAD PLANE
INSOLATION CONTROL SKIN
TRANSPARENT GLAZING
BRACING + SUPPORT
PLATFORM
MANIPULATED GROUND
VERTICAL CIRCULATION
FOUNDATION
PLACEMAKING WITHIN THE DESERT PLANES AND FIELDS
The desert landscape offers freedom in the interpretation of contextual operations. That is, rather than generate formal concepts from existing surrounding elements, the desert frees itself from formal restraints. The intervention defines its own language amidst the barren plains by responding to phenomenological factors such as sunlight, shade, and climate. This intervention seeks to become a place-marker, a beacon, within the vast tabula-rasa of the desert. Tectonic and formal gestures stem out of the ground rather than simply sit on top of it to firmly anchor itself.
COMPOSITE OF FIELD CONDITIONS
CONVERGE
GATHER
CHANNEL
REDIRECT
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CONTEXTUAL TEXTURES
WEAVING TECTONICS AND A-TECTONICS
Gottfried Semper, the late 19th century German art historian, once compared architecture to weaving saying that it spins available material into temporary shelters, which coalesced into what we think of today as buildings. Thus, a building should display its fabric. In doing so, it can dissolve into the materials from which it was created. The aim of this study is to excavate existing textures within a site in search for a rich woven architecture that assembles itself into an overall pattern that births a rich variety of components.
UNCOVERING PROCESSIONAL PATTERNS Mapping of textural patterns within Pueblo Bonito, a ruins site in New Mexico.
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WEAVING OF LIGHT + SPACES Definition of virtual boundaries through the varying intensities of light
AN ARCHITECTURE OF DEPENDENCE BUILDING THROUGH OUTSIDE INFLUENCES
“Our walls cannot speak, but their muteness bears witness to what we need to know: how we came to be and where we are now.” - Architecture Must Burn
DIGITAL CONSTRUCT, 9” X 36”
The notable Roman architect and writer, Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, opined that the well-educated architect should be “skillful with the pencil, instructed in geometry, know much history, have followed the philosophers with attention, understand music, have some knowledge of medicine, know the opinions of the jurists, and be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens.”1 Architecture, then, must be sensible to the intricacies of design, which entail the cohesion of seemingly separate fields. The process of creating space is as much an anthropological analysis as it is formulaic, artistic, and political. Thus, architecture is not an autonomous discipline. That is, it relies on the universal principles of all of these fields in order to have meaning within itself. Meaning, within the context of the Classical era, was pursued not in the architectural elements themselves but within their relation with separate phenomena. The Greeks, for example, believed that beauty was achieved through a proportional and formulaic consideration of the Golden Ratio, a form of the 1.618 rectangle. Further, discoveries of the divine were thought to be searchable through the use of these proportions to create Order and Symmetry.2 Nonetheless, it was not the architecture itself (i.e. the columns, the ornamental carvings, the materials, the pieces) that cre-
ated meaning. Meaning was always there within the mindset of the epoch. Yet, the architecture depended on these architectural elements to relay their story, their understanding of meaning. The Modern movement of the 20th century saw a departure from the explicit representation of the divine into a, selfclaimed, honest portrayal of “functionalism.” It was an abstraction, or a search for the essentials, that resulted in a reduction of the superficiality that most Modern architects believed to be oppressing all that was Classical.3 That is, nothing was assumed to be true. Truth, then, was no longer with a capital “T.” So in an attempt to liberate themselves with the divine and absolute, the moderns sought out another justification for their architectural conclusions. Philip Johnson later described these justifications as the “seven crutches” of modern architecture: History, Pretty Drawing, Utility, Comfort, Cheapness, Serving the Client, and Structure.4 Thus, meaning within this epoch was not disproven but simply reinterpreted based on a dependent rational framework that would lead to “pure architecture.” Peter Eisenman, most recently, critiqued both epochs, Classical and Modern, for their misguided understanding of the processes of architecture. Michael Hays, in his book Architectural Theory Since 1968 proclaims Eisenman as an advocate for
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decomposition saying that “an anti-anthropological, anti-humanist architecture must manage the conflict between the need for a systemic, verifiable geometry and the desire for a random organization of form.”5 Eisenman argues that the existential realities of a beginning and end are no longer relevant in architecture and that “timelessness” is a superficial desire of the past. “There is now merely a landscape of objects” that no longer signify meaning or hope but rather provide the bare conditions of survival. Ironically, while he is, on one hand, negating the relevance of history on architecture, he is, on the other, proposing that we now return to the primitivism of understanding objects within a field. Nonetheless, the latter three architectural perspectives are threaded with a common string of dependence. Classical architecture depended on the divine nature of Proportion, Order, and Symmetry within their edifices. Modern architecture depended on the honesty of abstraction and the understanding of functional, economical practice.6 Eisenman depended on the diagrammatic nature of textural objects within fields. Common ground lies within each philosophy’s interdependence with fields and subjects outside of architecture to arrive at a meaningful conclusion within the built environment. Architecture, alone, cannot express ideas. While Eisenman may argue that “pure ar-
chitecture” survives on its own, it is not clearly understood what this means. Two columns in juxtaposition with themselves do not create ideas. On the contrary, the study of proportion, dimension, and aesthetics will lead to a conclusion on whether the two columns create effective space. This is true for all architectural philosophy. While there may be disagreement as to the “why” of architecture, the “how” will consistently dependent upon uncontrollable external parameters. These parameters, while limitless, are important for the architect to be keenly aware of because it is his repertoire. They are the tools and words necessary to clearly communicate with the dweller and his surroundings. The universality of these parameters are what, in fact, enable readability in architecture for an international audience. They are in essence the ingredients to cook a meal. Ingredients such as form, skin, layers, and structure are the architectural legos an architect has to tell whatever story may be relevant. It is through the experimentation within these parameters that we operate on an architectural scale.7 While there may be many variations of the aesthetic outcome, these will remain constant. So rather than negating their reality, we should focus on developing the tools we have. This, in turn, signifies the expanding education of the architect, the dissolving of the label, and the reinterpretation of what one does.
The recent trends within the profession and academia has led architecture into a specialized bubble, focusing only within itself forgetting that architecture is not, indeed, autonomous.8 It requires the understanding that structure, for example, is fundamental to many more areas than simply architecture and that principles such as framing and composition span more than it’s adopted owners would suggest (photography and graphic design.) Architecture falls under a universal umbrella called design. It adheres and responds to the parameters set by these principles, regardless of the story or philosophy. We, then, must take into greater consideration the importance of reaching beyond the label of architecture to potentially foreign areas within design that will further develop the spectrum of architecture.
STUDENT INVOLVEMENT
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA, SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE
THE FALL PREMIERE, HOSTED BY THE STUDIO CULTURE COMMITTEE, WAS AN EVENT WE ORGANIZED IN ATTEMPTS TO PROMOTE STUDENT INVOLVEMENT.
ARCHITRAVE MAGAZINE, HELD A FALL EXHIBIT TO SHOWCASE THE MAKING OF THE PUBLICATION (DUE IN SPRING) AND ENCOURAGE STUDENT PARTICIPATION.
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STUDENTS + FACULTY DISCUSS TOPICS OF DIGITAL ARCHITECTURE AND FABRICATION AFTER A LECTURE HOSTED BY THE SCC.
THE STUDIO CULTURE COMMITTEE HELD A SUCCESSFUL AND PEACEFUL STUDENT-RALLY IN RESPONSE TO THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROPOSAL TO CLOSE THE FINE ARTS LIBRARY.
I have been fortunate to have served as President of two student organizations in the School of Architecture at the University of Florida. Both, the Studio Culture Committee and Architrave Magazine, have been learning experiences, not only architecturally, but also in lessons of leadership, collaboration, and organization. I seek to continue as an advocate for the education of the architect as a student and a citizen. During my time as President, I emphasized the importance of becoming a self-motivated student. My peers and I organized numerous faculty lectures, social events, and design exhibitions as a way to provide the student-body the opportunity to become informed of current architectural, communal, and global issues. Further, we encouraged the well-being of the student himself. That is, we provided safety and health-kits to all studios, monitored recycling initiatives, and even repainted the halls of the studios. Thereby motivating the younger students to carry-on these initiatives in the future. ALL POSTERS WERE DESIGNED BY JOSE LUIS GABRIEL CRUZ.