Selected Work

JOSH SCHECTER Selected Work

Brooklyn By Water / 3

1 / Josh Schecter

03

Immediate Space

19

Brooklyn By Water

29

Vertical Neighbors

37

Marked Difference

49

Additional Projects

Contents / 2

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IMMEDIATE SPACE

The Experiential Performance Today we have countless ways to consume art and entertainment, most of which are less expensive and more convenient than live performance. Yet, despite it’s fading popularity and seeming obsolescence, live performance still offers an event entirely unique among the arts: the experience of a collective moment in time and space.

This thesis explores the untapped potential of architecture to generate spaces for experiential and collective moments in performance. Through the re-use of an industrial site, this project provides a unique opportunity to embed performance in the context of a city, drawing from the site an authenticity and specificity normally lacking in theatrical spaces.

Using the tropes of traditional stage craft and theater design as a basis for exploration, this accumulation of theaters will blend current modes of performance with the future possibilities of “immediate space,� creating a context in which performance can once again strive for that unique event, the collective moment.

Masters of Architecture Thesis Critic: Carles Muro

Immediate Space / 4

DRAWING EXPERIENCE Theater is bodies in space. As a result, architecture and theater have always had a fundamental relationship unique among the arts: space defines, gives shape to, performance.

The struggle to craft the ideal space for performance is, therefore, well-worn territory. Over the course of this continuous historical dialogue, the needs of the theater have changed radically, each new form of performance adapting to its conditions. The present condition is radically different than it was even 20 years ago, yet theater architecture has not changed to take advantage of this difference By looking at these past adaptations, this project plots a way forward, incorporating old tropes into new spatial and theatrical arrangements, creating performative “monsters.�

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Stage Types

Stage Elements

Monsters

Round

Proscenium

Arena

Thrust

Runway

Promenade

This diagram explores the possibility inherent in the proscenium type: each substantive element is identified and extrapolated.

Immediate Space / 6

Proscenium

Seating

Stage

MONSTERS Each monster extrapolates the spatial characteristics of common theater elements, like the proscenium frame, to imagine new possibilities for performance. The imagined spaces created provide insight into how design can invert expectations and create new opportunities.

In this example, the frame is multiplied and reoriented. Rather than creating a heirarchical “Fourth Wall� relationship between spectator and performer, the frame becomes a stage set itself, a multi-directional jungle gym for performance.

By losing it’s specific orientation, the frame provides new opportunities for performance.

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Lighting Grid

Fly

Trap

By manipulating the characteristics of each traditional stage element, new relationships between audience and performer come into focus

The concept of colonizing the f;y tower became central to the development of the design.

The entire theater and its seating, suspended in the “fly,� becomes on object to be experienced from both the interior and exterior.

Immediate Space / 8

CHICAGO: YARD 32 A former concrete mixing facility on the edge of downtown, Yard 32 provides a post-industrial setting for the “machine� of theater production.

Several of the elements, renovated and repurposed, provide the basis for the theater complex.

Storage Silos

The site, off the North Branch of the Chicago River, is an ideal location close to downtown. It is situated in one of the cities Industrial Corridors, areas that have become inscreasingly dilapidated and under-utilized.

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Mixing Plant

Material Conveyors

Immediate Space / 10

The complex surrounds a central plaza, visible from the street and criss-crossed by the former conveyor belts, now used to access the theater. Cuts in the silos provide entry from the southwest.

THEATER AS MACHINE Using the industrial nature of the site as an impetus, the design deconstructs the process of producing theater into it’s constituent parts, allowing the visitor to experience this process spatially.

Each element performs one operation in the overall production: the silos house the staff and artists, a trussed box provides adequate construction and reherasal space, the former mixing tower serves as a large freight elevator for set pieces, and the screened cube provides the moment of interaction between art and audience.

Theater production has been pulled apart to allow the process to act as a spatial performance itself.

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Entering from the north along Halsted Street, visitors can walk directly into the theater, move down into the courtyard to watch an outdoor performance, or cross into the silos through one of the conveyors.

Operating as one large machine for theater, the design repurposes and recalls the former utility of the concrete factory without obliterating the traces of its former function.

Immediate Space / 12

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The plaza at the heart of the project provides space for outdoor performances, galleries and events, operating as a large unticketed space accessible from corner of Halsted and Chicago Avenue.

Immediate Space / 14

A NEW PROSCENIUM Looking at the proscenium frame as an object provides a new perspective on it’s spatial properties.

Creating multiple frames approximates a new way of using the proscenium for performance

Traditional

Open Stage

Proscessional

A performance could proceed from one space to the other, creating a entirely unique experience.

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Vertical Stage

Proscenium Stage

Promenade Stage

Hanging Stage

Each of the four theaters shown above challenge conventional stage arrangments and provide new opportunities for performance to occupy and define space.

Immediate Space / 16

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Immediate Space / 18

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BROOKLYN BY WATER

Creating the Canal City

One of the few under-developed areas left in Brooklyn, the neighborhood surrrounding the Gowanus Canal provides a unique opportunity for ambitous urban growth coupled with a comprehensive strategy toward water management and remediation.

Heavily contaminated by neighboring manufacturing and shipping activities, the Gowanus has been designated an EPA Superfund site. The need to address the problem of the canal itself, as well as the rapid development occruing in adjacent neighborhoods in Brooklyn, has created a rare moment in which the shape of the neighborhood can be drastically altered.

This project proposes several solutions to the problems of water use and maintenance in the Gowanus, solutions that will spur development and generate a new connective tissue between the surrounding neighborhoods. Rather than turn its back on the canal, this project seeks to create a new relationship between the neighborhood and its water.

Fourth Semester Core Studio Critic: Spela Videcnik Project Group: Jamie Lee, Roland Faust, Annie Boehnke

Brooklyn By Water / 20

WATER URBANISM In order to identify startiegies for managing environmental and commercial impacts of water in cities, our group began with a comprehensive study of other “canal cities.�

By looking at the kind of urbanism on display in nine cites, including Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Cape Coral, we compiled a typology of conditions typical of urban areas in and around water. The study revealed the importance of multiple waterways for commercial, real estate, and water management, as well as the how residents occupy the water and the surrounding area. Using these insights, we built a code to design our own canal city.

CANAL CITIES BOENHNKE, FAUST, LEE, SCHECTER

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CANAL TYPES

Canal Typology

GREEN SPACE

BAY

PLATFORM

BRANCHING

COURTYARD

Park Typology

WATERFALL

ISLAND

LAYERED

Flow Typology

LOWS

BLOCK TYPOLOGY

PEDESTRIAN

BANGKOK

BOAT

AMSTERDAM

COVERED PARKING

ANNECY

PARKING

Block Conditions

Block Typology

HAMBURG

Canal Conditions

Brooklyn By Water / 22

A view of the saltwater marsh established at the mouth of the Gowanus Canal. Salt water marshes are the most effective means of cleaning pollutants from waterways.

WATER WORK The project creates several layers of water management, in order to mitigate the scope of the present problem, as well as lay groundwork for the future. Dividing the canal into smaller subsidiaries speeds up the process of decontamination by increasing surface area. Establishing three salt marshes at critical zones in the canal generates remediation on a larger scale, while also providing critical park space to an area unable to previously enjoy the water.

BLOCK FORMATION

BLOCK FORMATION

BLOCK FORMATION

BLOCK FORMATION

BLOCK FORMATION

WATER FLOW

WATER FLOW

WATER FLOW

WATER FLOW

The roof system of each block is manipulated to collect rainwater for use by the building, lessening the impact on the city’s storm water system.

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Brooklyn By Water / 24

GOWANUS AVIARY (SOLO PROJECT) Located in the southernmost marsh of the project, the Aviary capitalizes on the newly created ecosystem and it’s role in the redevelopment of the canal. Migratory birds, critical to the full development of a salt water marsh, would be housed and cared for in the rehabilitation center.. Open to the public, the Aviary would showcase both the birds and their newly minted habitat, an area once used as an industrial dump.

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Longitudinal Section showing the two exterior aviaries, as well as the lecture hall and rehabilitation facility.

First Floor Plan

GROUND FLOOR PLAN

SCALE: 3/32” = 1’

Second Floor Plan

SECOND FLOOR PLAN

Brooklyn SCALE: 3/32”By = 1’ Water / 26

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Brooklyn By Water / 28

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VERTICAL NEIGHBORS The Berklee College of Music The American college campus is a unique phenomenon: it is both a spatial manifestation of a community of learners and also the tool by which that learning occurs. The dorms, quads, academic buildings and libraries that constitute the campus do more than simply fulfill their intended function. They act as social condensers, creating collisions between students, their professors, and the multiple disciplines they represent.

A school of music in particular thrives on these chance encounters, using them as the genesis for creative collaboration.

The school’s environment must reinforce these connections, providing a space for groups of musicians to come to together in and out of the classroom.

As the new center for Berklee student life, this vertical campus would act as a focal point for musical invention, spurring both independent experimentation and neighborhood comraderie.

Third Semester Core Studio Critic: Jonathan Levi

Vertical Neighbors / 30

BUILDING A BAND According to professors at Berklee, 90% of a student’s education is derived from chance encounters. Students meet after class, in the hallways, in their rooms, in the cafeteria, and they form bands. It is the single largest engine that drives creativity at the school.

Broken up into small “neighborhoods” of twenty four rooms, Berklee students have access to practice space, classrooms, common areas, and outdoor terraces just steps from their bedroom door. It is a social/musical condenser: creating the greatest number of chance encounters and interactions to generate the largest creative output.

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Classroom

Aggregation

Aggregation

Neighborhood

Common Space

Residential

Educational

Room

The center of each neighborhood acts as a focal point for social activity, as well as a music incubator, incoporating learning, practice, and living into one zone of interaction.

These zones of interaction also serve as the connective tissue between other neighborhoods, bringing students together across the vertical campus.

Vertical Neighbors / 32

VERTICAL COMMONS The location of outdoor space and its access to sunlight is critical to the development of a vertical campus, but the heavily shaded site makes placement difficult. Although shaded by the adjacent building, the south facing courtyard is still the best option for creating a vibrant commons.

0

East

100

250

North

500

West

South

Outdoor Common

Summer Solstice

Winter Solstice

The porosity of the building allows light to filter through the tower, from the outdoor terraces to the rooms themselves.

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Vertical Neighbors / 34

DOMESTIC GRAIN The floor plate size and number of rooms fluctuate from floor to floor, creating a beginning, middle, and end to each neighborhood. Each room also maintains it’s identity on the exterior, allowing it to orient to views and light.

Tower 1

Tower 2

Tower 3

ESTCODE

Tower 1 - Center of neighborhood Tower 2 - Center of neighborhood Tower 3 - End of neighborhood

Plan Type 1

Tower 1 - End of neighborhood Tower 2 - End of neighborhood Tower 3 - Beginning of neighborhood

Plan Type 2

Tower 1 - Beginning of neighborhood Tower 2 - Beginning of neighborhood Tower 3 - Center of neighborhood

Plan Type 3

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Vertical Neighbors / 36

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MARKED DIFFERENCE

Inscribing the City of Parts Macau is a city of parts. As the intersection of the European City, the Chinese City, and the Developmental City, it occupies a unique position among the rapidly developing urban centers of the Pearl River Delta. Since its inception, the city has navigated between these diverse and often opposing factions, crafting for itself an individual identity that is at once independent of and beholden to a set of ideas outside of itself.

The wall, in its various manifestations, has played a fundamental role in maintaining and defining these identities, allowing Macau to exist as a city of exacerbated difference.

Macau: A City of Parts, Option Studio Critic: Chris Lee Project Partner: Navajeet KC

Marked Difference / 38

CITY OF PARTS The creation of a wall is a spatial manifestation of difference, solidifying the idea of the city in relation to its surroundings.

Following this tradition, the project marks the existing limit of Macau, running along the entirety of the northern border with China. The area is currently one of the few parts of the city that has not been overdeveloped, making it an ideal location for the creation of a new framework for future interactions with China. By marking the physical boundary between the two states, the project inscribes the current border into the fabric of the city, drawing a distinction while also providing a framework for integration, once the official border dissolves in 2049.

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Marked Difference / 40

PROJECT TYPOLOGY The walls, meeting at the border crossing itself, split to encompass two large parks at either end, claiming these as shared spaces for both cities.

Macau China

Site Strategy

Residential

Commercial

Unit Structure

Unit Type

The basic building type is specific, yet flexible: it expands or contracts to accomodate different needs. The bottom bar, for commercial activity becomes larger in areas of dense urban activity.

Residential 41 / Josh Schecter

Commercial

Marked Difference / 42

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Marked Difference / 44

The transition from courtard to “gate.� The buildings begin to rest on one other, leaving behind their residential role and becoming exlusively commercial.

GATES At the border crossing itself, the building type condenses to create a series of gates. Rather than providing one giant facility for processing visitors, each gate has a small border crossing station, alleviating the congestion and crowding typical of the crossing experience. The visitor passes through a network of shops, presents his passport, and then continues into the rest of the development. By normalizing a once contentious process, the design also allows the two cities to better integrate, a process critical to the dissolution of the border in 2049.

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The screens provide a porosity , as well as a uniformity: the design operates as one object (wall) comprised of smaller entities.

Marked Difference / 46

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Marked Difference / 48

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ADDITIONAL PROJECTS

Research and Fabrication Along with regular studio projects, the Graduate School of Design offers opportunities to explore topics outside of the conventional scope of Architecture. Several of these seminars and workshops investigate the specific elements of the architectural process, like building components, material systems, and details, while others focus on the underlying programmatic assumptions that pervade society. The two projects included explore two extremes of this architectural research, adding to a broad body of knowledge that compliments my work in studio.

Marked Difference / 50

EVAPORATIVE BRICKS Terra cotta ceramics are cheap to produce, durable, and have the unique ability to allow water to pass t hrough its surface. This last quality makes terra cotta an ideal material for designing evaporative cooling systems. This project explores the possibility of designing a system of stackable bricks that allows air to pass over a series of terra cotta wells, cooling the ambient air and generating a low-cost alternative to conventional cooling.

Evaporation cools air as it passes through the saturated bricks.

Material Practice as Research Project Partners: Alexander Jacobson, Anu Akkineni, Christina Papadopoulou WINNER, Climate Co-Lab Competition, MIT A section of bricks filling up with water, cascading from row to row.

A pavilion designed to create a larger microclimate by aggregating several hundred bricks

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The 9-part plaster mold used to create the bricks

A single brick in front of the mold

Aggregation of bricks, creating a screen effect

Additional Projects / 52

REFERENCE SECTION Developed as a response to the outmoded nature of existing library infrastructure, the project objectifies the library as a relic. Cabot Science Library, currently in the process of transitioning from a physical to a digital collection, was planning on abandoning several hundred out-dated textbooks. This installation under the porch of Gund Hall allowed students to interact with a “core sample� of the original stacks, cut from the current outdated library building and forced into the open.

Library Test Kitchen Project Partners: Jorge San Martin, Ben Ruswick

Books, shelves, , seating, carpet, acoustic ceiling panels: each element of the stereotypical library building was recreated, sliced as if coming directly from the library itself.

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gowanus: canal ciites / 54

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JOSH SCHECTER

josh.schecter@gmail.com 972.523.6037

EDUCATION Enrolled

Harvard Graduate School of Design Master of Architecture I

Summer 2010

University of Illinois at Chicago YArch Summer Program

2004 - 2008

Northwestern University Summa Cum Laude Theater, History Double Major Study Abroad, University of Verona

WORK Summer 2014

Design Intern, WILLIAM RAWN ASSOCIATES Conceptual Design and Schematic Design, Duke University Arts Center, Durham, NC

Spring 2014, Fall 2014

Teaching Assistant, STUDIO (Spela Videcnik) Fourth Semester Core Studio and Option Studio - Harvard GSD Desk critiques, pin-ups, and adminstrative support

Fall 2013

Teaching Assistant, STRUCTURES I (Patrick McCafferty) Introductory Structural Analysis (required) - Harvard GSD Office hours, grading, and administrative support

Summer 2013

Design Intern, JONATHAN LEVI ARCHITECTS

Conceptual and Schematic Design, Scissors & Pie, Boston Schematic Design, Dearborn School, Boston

Summer 2012

Intern, cultureNOW/BOSTON SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTS Exhibition design at the BSA_Space Material collection and website management

2008 - 2012

Theater Experience American Buffalo, Steppenwolf Theater, Chicago History Boys, Time Line Theater, Chicago Stupid Kids, About Face Theater, Chicago On the Shore of the Wide World, Griffin Theater, Chicago

PUBLICATIONS/EXHIBITIONS Platform 7 (Publication), ed. Leire Asensio Villloria; Harvard Graduate School of Design, Fall 2014.

“Marked Difference: Inscribing the City of Parts,” Macau: Cross Border Cities, ed. Chris Lee.

Harvard Graduate School of Design, upcoming publication: 2015.

Platform 6, Exhibition of work at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, 2014.

Macau: Cross Border Cities, Exhibition of work at the School of Architecture, Chinese

University of Hong Kong, Spring 2014.

Platform 5 (Publication), ed. Mariana Ibanez; Harvard Graduate School of Design, Fall 2013.

Platform 5, Exhibition of work at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, 2013.

World School Series: GSD Platform 5, Exhibition of work at the A4 Gallery, Takenaka

Corporation, Tokyo, Spring 2013.

Maps to Apps: The Digital Cityscape, Exhibition design and work at BSA Space, Boston

Society of Architects, Summer 2013.

Resume / 56

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