Helmut Jahn’s Thompson Center, Chicago IL [2007] CMU Studio, Prof Wolf | Individual : mixed media drawing
Education
Acconci Studio | October 2011 - December 2012 Lead Designer Tom Kowalski Studio | October 2012 - present Architectural Designer Urban Design Build Studio | CAFE 524 2010-2011 Student Architect
Carnegie Mellon University | 2006 - 2011 Bachelors of Architecture: Distinction, High Honors, Commendations 2006-9 University of Technology, Sydney | Fall 2010 Urban Projection Masters Studio
Design Impossible [CircleMe] August 2012 | Acconci Studio digital art display for mobile site for physical place, Del Duomo Piazza in Milan Klein Bottle Playground model [MoMA New York] July 2012 | Acconci Studio revisit design for model of original Acconci Studio project from 2001 EDitIBLE [the FRAME] April 2011 | collaboration temporal interactive installation event, medium: desserts INDEX 2010 [Kensington St. UTS] December 2010 | collaboration display & discussion of chosen high rail urban design project Unhealthy for Sensitive People [UnSmoke Systems] June 2010 | collaboration opening with Artist Dee Briggs Fourth Year Design Awards [CMU] April 2010 | individual chosen students display bodies of work E.Lines [EDGE Studio] Gallery Crawl Pittsburgh November 2009 | individual Gindroz Prize: independent study on European public space of eight visited cities Inhabitable Network [the FRAME] March 2009 | individual spatial installation, meduim: arranged phone-book pages hung from string & grid structure SURG [2011] Student Undergraduate Research Grant | collaboration for art installation involving a constructed edible event, with Alise Kuwahara SEED Competition [2010] CMU Urban Design Build Studio | John Folan & team First Prize National Winners, project CAFE 524 community design adaptive reuse SURG [2010] Student Undergraduate Research Grant | collaboration for art installation involving welded components, with Ellen Garrett and Douglas Farrell Gindroz Prize [2009] Marilyn and Ray Gindroz Foundation | individual Winner of travelling scholarship to Europe for summer 2009 for research - sound/sight project Epic Metals Competition [2009] Second Prize | collaboration project using Epic Metal materials for bridge water iltration and research center, with Matthew Huber NCMA Competition [2008] Honorable Mention | individual Fire Tower, second year project NCMA Compeition [2008] Second Prize | collaboration Block Project, with Elizabeth Duray and GIacomo Tinari Velux Competition [2007] Honorable Mention | individual Light Museum, second year project Vito Acconci | Principal , Acconci Studio studio@acconci.com John Folan | CMU Professor, UBDS jfolan@andrew.cmu.edu Pablo Garcia | Faculty Art Institute of Illinois, Chicago pablo.r.garcia@gmail.com
Skills
References
Awards
Exhibitions
Experience
Kaitlin Miciunas 630.901.3513 kaitlin.miciunas@gmail.com 690 Prospect Pl Brooklyn 11216 cargocollective.com/miciunas
Adobe Suite, Rhinocerous, Maxwell Render, Vectorworks Analogue drawing & modeling, digital fabrication Archicad, Autocad, Maya, Welding
KM_01.1 Carnegie Museum of Art Light Annex [2007] Pittsburgh PA CMU Studio, Prof Wolf | Individual : basswood model
KM_01.2 The world that encompasses art is usually site-less providing a placeless-ness that allows occupants to forget where they are - you are nowhere, not until art is present. Anonymous space becomes desirable as potential to be filled with content, an absent backdrop. An annex can add to this conversation in a museum by having an identity of its own. The art cannot escape the site - the walls of the annex create a paneled strategy that controls amounts of lighting allowed into the space, negotiation of light to dark via wall type. Structure and skin unite to create functional ornament, shifting from flat [dark] to volumetric to framed [light]. The circulation becomes a defiance of curation where artwork can be revisited from afar and previewed in advance. The museum then becomes a piece of work.
Carnegie Museum of Art Light Annex [2007] Pittsburgh PA CMU Studio, Prof Wolf | Individual : drawing, basswood model
KM_02.1 Epic Metals Components for Bridge Canopy Rain Water Collection
Infrastructure becomes salesman, advertising becomes transportation... an opportunistic capitalist parasite feeding on the allure and nostalgia of an industrial past, the project incorporates disparate elements of water purification & research into a unified mode of production. Lost amongst the neat and tidy streams of standardized, nameless water bottles being produced, one may begin to question his or her own individuality while riding the conveyor pedestrian pathway. The adventure complicating the seemingly simple role of the human subject in process of consumption, with a gift shop at each end of the bridge. Epic metals are used as a flexible conveyor tract for assembly and conveyor pathways. The project consumes the bridge and herds its consumers across to the big box store waterfront.
Pedestrican Pathway Epic Metals Custom Conveyor Systems & filtered water bottle production line
Epic Metals Competition [2009] Waterfront Fitration Lab Pittsburgh PA CMU Submission | Collaboration : Matthew Huber
KM_03.1 Exterior wood screen allows for views to public interiors
10 day individual competition for a Soup Kitchen in Philadelphia, PA using wood as a dominant material.
Roof Plan:s kylights to public through-way at ground level
Ground and -1/2 Levels soup kitchen and offices
Stewardson Competition [2011] Soup Kitchen Philadelphia PA CMU Submission | Individual
Public Roof Deck
2nd Level private dormitories
KM_04.1 “Not only is the image of an object not the meaning of that object and of no help in its comprehension, but it tends to withdraw if from its meaning by maintaining it in the immobility of a resemblance that has nothing to resemble� -Maurice Blanchot Funded by the Marilyn and Ray Gindroz Foundation, the resulting travels led to an exhibition representing a personal spatial comprehension of eight cities. Using modes of visual representation and captured sound segments from public spaces, each city is expressed through a translation of experience as cognitive reinterpretation, as display to be reinterpreted by the viewer while listening to corded found sound -- each expressing place without verbal explanation but recreating an experience dislocated from its origin.
Gindroz Prize Exhibition [2009] Edge Studio, Pittsburgh CMU Gindroz Prize Winner| Individual : Exhibition Opening
KM_04.2 Berlin Experiential Reinterpretation, Visual Component [2009] CMU Gindroz Prize Winner | Individual : mixed media drawing
KM_05.1 Exterior Elevation 21st St
The design for 30-40 21st St Astoria Queens, to be built in 2014. I designed a rainscreen system forming balconies and playing with scale in a repetitive facade. The panels are Fibre-C custom cut and organized for efficiency and cost productive. The concept for the desig is for weaving balconies - not physically weaving, but balconies that are comfortable and less exposed than many New York City balcony structures. The outdoor space cuts into the floor plan 30� and extends out the maximum 30� to create a usuable exterior space for each apartment. I was hired to design the exterior facade and the lobby of the 7 story apartment building from concept to construction documents. Q21 Apartment Building [2013] Astoria Queens NY TKA Studio | For Construction 2014
KM_05.2
Typical Balcony Component Rainscreen Panels
Detail Exterior Wall Section Exterior View
Q21 Apartment Building [2013] Astoria Queens NY TKA Studio | For Construction 2014
KM_06.1 Architecture is an ongoing conversation. One which references history, negotiates the present, and pojects the future. It is organization, experience, commentary, critique, the undone, the redoing, the rational, the radical, a discourse. However, threats of extinction of architecture has continued from Sant’Elia’s concerns in 1914, and before that, in written concerns by Victor Hugo in Le Notre Dame de Paris who wrote in 1833, “Let no one be deceived; architecture is dead, irrevocably dead; killed because it was more costly [than printing].” Cost continues to be an issue for its lack of desire as essential to the consumer today. In such a commodity and consumer driven society we call culture, what sells is what is of highest value. I would not argue that architecture need never be mundane, or that expensive work is good work - simply that architecture is not a high priority for what is found most desirable today - identity. Society values the luxurious - a luxry of time, of occupation, desires the profitable - a willingness to spend on what is valued, the promiscuous - the rather demystified and absurd, the media - a virtual existence remaining in an addictive fantastical, the unobtainable - what our neighbor has that we cannot, technology - the knowledge in your pocket, the efficient - the prefabricated happy meal, the trendy - preplanned and yet seemingly of-the-moment, and the convenient - that which makes like easier but not without drama. Yet, the consumers are as Dora Epstein Jones said , “people-shaped sheep”. What is desired is what is percerived as desirable. The thesis, then, becomes a response to the question of desire - as an advertisement, as commodity, as a glorified billboard. Process begins with spatial dialogue in a study of a series of scales and relationships accross a matrix of possibilities including the mundane, the imaginary, the isolated, the dense, the iconic. I propose a typology of provocations, ranging in scale and in use - where the function has been abstracted from the form and the form serves the function of self-glorification of space. A typology defined in conversation as a scalar study, a spatial narrative and a scaleless experience. Thesis: Why is Architecture Becoming Obsolete [2011] CMU Studio, Prof Lubetz | Individual
To be continued...
Section
KM_06.2
Series of Multiple Sites, Few of Many
The resulting provocations are to exist in series, assembled for temporary use in a series of sites and scales -- forming contextual relationships in a matrix of possibilities, including the imaginary, the isolated, the dense, the mundane, the iconic.Function serves as a dislocated signifier, an embodiment of an idea, as a device which is absolutely inert and without use. The use, in this case, is to stimulate desire as a communicative experience. If ornamentation’s utility is communication, then the proposal becomes purely ornamental.
“Architecture is not only what is built; it is also a conceptual trajectory, the comparison of concepts stemming from heterogeneous disciplinary fields, which exempt it from all formal unification and open it up to its future development… as a ceaseless exploration” - Marie-Ange Brayer Thesis: Why is Architecture Becoming Obsolete [2011] CMU Studio, Prof Lubetz | Individual
KM_06.3 Plan Elevation
Provocation One: TRIFLE functions at the scale of an object, one which can be held in the palm of one’s hand. It is understood as a whole, rather than a series of parts. It is temporal - able to fold up and put away, in one’s pocket - a trinket, a souvenir, a memory... Provocation Two: PROSOPOPEIA a fabrication series for an occupancy load of one, allowing for a singular spatial experience. It is understood as a whole, while it functions as a volumetric surface. The intimate scale allows for simultaneous comprehension and wonder. Provocation Three: CONCATENATION at the scale of a 20 storey building, the concatenation acts as a series of spaces, filling a definable edge - a singular closed system. The building functions as an assembly space for the purpose of internal observation, of the space itself. It is temporal in that there exists multiple concatenations which travel from site to site, leaving a residue of foundation behind for an unknown future use. The occupants are able to inhabit a winding staircase, yet there are unattainable voids, provoking desire and imagination.
Provocation: Trifle
Thesis: Why is Architecture Becoming Obsolete [2011] CMU Studio, Prof Lubetz | Individual
Provocation Four: UBIQUITOUS VOID the unfathomable extents of the systemic defines the void. The whole is undefined, appreciated as a limitless series of parts. The purpose is to create continuous variance within a restrained grid structure, resulting in endless possibilities.
Provocation: Concatenation
KM_07.1 Unhealthy for Sensitive People [2010] UnSmoke Systems, Braddock PA CMU Installtion Prof Briggs | Collaboration : Ellen G. Garrett & Douglas Farrell welded steel pipe components bolted The United States Air Quality Index rates heavy industrial areas as “Unhealthy for Sensitive People�. Reinterpreting the harsh and unforgiving remains of post-industrial decay in Braddock, this project heightens awareness of dependence on an extinct industry in what was once a thriving city, skirting Pittsburgh. The aggressive formation establishes a relationship between the space and occupant as he or she try to navigate through a staircase and room in the basement of UnSmoke System, an adaptive reuse of an old Catholic School.
Path Project [2006] Shenley Park, Pittsburgh PA CMU Studio Prof Burns & Morris | Individual : basswood model The first year design project for a foot bridge was composed in an obsession of analogue iterations of modeling and drafting. The act of making helped inform the geometry of a nonpre-determined system, a relationships of parts that form a cohesive whole.
KM_08.1 Site : Exhisting Condition
Roof Study Models
The Urban Design Build Studio at Carnegie Mellon University, directed by Professor John Folan, is a collaborative design studio witht he intention of designing and building a project for a Pittsburgh community in need of constructed development. The 2010 team of eleven students worked for over a year in the neighborhood of Homewood, and the project continues to develop with hopes of construction by 2013. The community calls for the development of a ‘third place’, a place other than work or home or school to welcome all ages and support collaboration.
CAFE 524 [2009-11] Homewood PA CMU Urban Design Build Studio, Prof Folan | Collaboration
KM_08.2 Roof Details
The design for an adative reuse of an existing building on North Homewood Avenue, near the Marin Luther King Busway stop in the neighborhood, plans to transform a vacant building to a cafe and local community center. The project has undergone many iterations based on client and community input. Passive strategies as well as sustainable systems have been incorporated throughout in order to provide a net-zero energy building, supporting low maintenance in support of a succesful future and promoting further local knowledge of sustainability, as a catalyst for futuer developemnt in the neighborhood of Homewood and in the greater community of Pittsburgh.
CAFE 524 [2009-11] Homewood PA CMU Urban Design Build Studio, Prof Folan | Collaboration
KM_09.1 String of otential Sites to link to the City Center
Tunis City: Clusters of developed sites and potential for new development and light rail infrastructure around Lake Tunis
New Development Cluster
Urban Projections: Mediterranean HSR [2010] Tunis Tunisia UTS Masters Studio, Prof Lahoud | Collaboration : Jessica Paterson
KM_09.2
Tunis Urban Plan New Tunis HSR Station
New Tunis Residences
New Tunis Museum of Art and Science
New Tunis Commercial shopping district, theatre, institutions & hotel New Tunis University Campus, Recreational park, & Creative LiveWork Studios
Viewing the spatial pattern of the city as a mirror of social conflicts and juxtapositions, Manuel Castells write: “The result is not the coherent spatial logic, be it the capitalistic city, the pre-industrial city, the ahistorical utopia, but the tortured and disorderly, yet beautiful patchwork of human creation and suffering.� The museum acts as a link between residential and shopping and the park and university
Urban Projections: Mediterranean HSR [2010] Tunis Tunisia UTS Masters Studio, Prof Lahoud | Collaboration : Jessica Paterson
A high speed rail line is proposed to connect the Mediterranean loop, giving new context relationships to north African cities along the line. The Tunis site is made up of three disparate clusters, each with differing spatial conditions. The HSR station also acts as a connective link between the Mediterranean and the city, and the city center to the loop around the Tuni Lake - connecting new potential site for development and expansion of the city center to encompass the lake.
KM_10.1 ...”the obsessive reiteration of the [formal] inventions reduce the whole organism to a sort of ‘useless machine’” -Manfredo Tafuri [Architecture and Utopia]
Taking the primary axis of an imagined urban plan and deriving a gridded system allows to break down the series of architectural geometry clusters. One can see the apparent interstitial spaces between building clusters where there exist grid discrepencies, where the frays of the grid become most interesting. Piranesi’s Campo Marzio Analysis [2010] UTS Masters Studio, Prof Lahoud | Individual : analytic drawing