Portfolio Kyle Mahoney
Georgia Institute of Technology
Lund University
Portfolio Directory Emerging Technologies:Modular Tower
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Japanese House
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Design Studio Winter 2013 Design Partner. Ethan Hunter
Professor. Robert Marino
AAD Studio, Fall 2015
Professor. Bernt Nilsson
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Window Concept Design Studio
Spring 2010
Professor. Pegah Zamani
Munich Far East Design Studio
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Summer 2013
Professor. Mark Michaeli
Oxford Emory Cultural Center Design Studio
Fall 2011
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Professor. Judy Gordon
Automatic Painting Experiments
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The Orrery
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Personal Inquiry
Design Studio
Spring 2012-ongoing
Spring 2012
The Astrarium AAD
Spring 2016
Professor. Fred Pearsall
Imperfection and the Dream Masters Thesis
Spring 2017
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Professors. Goran Hellborg Alex van de Beld
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Professor. Bernt Nilsson
Emerging Technologies:Modular Tower The project brief called for the design of a modular tower to fit into the small gaps between the buildings of Munich with the overall theme of urban densification. The individual modules were to be capable of offsite assembly and transport via trailer to a site. A further issue that is confronted is the manner in which the modules would be connected together to form a tower.
SITE PLAN
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6 meters
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Initial structural concept
The most immediate idea for the project had to do with the core fault of modular construction as we saw it. That is the problem of overlapping walls with its accompanying structural and material inefficiency.
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FLOOR LAYOUT 3
FLOOR LAYOUT 2
FLOOR LAYOUT 1
West Elevation
North Elevation
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2 Meters
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11500 2600
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LONG SECTION S01
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LATERAL SECTION S02
layer at the centre of the wall panel. This is standard throughout all central walls in the buildtotal wall thickness occuring as a result of the number of ply layers.
50 mm plywood layers are laminated together to make rigid shear walls. Grooves can be found running through these panels at certain points to allow for services and piping to run throughout the building.
20 mm internal wall lining made of high-grade clear pine. This surface is either DRAINAGE DETAIL D02
untreated depending on the clients preferences.
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To solve the issue of inefficiency we arrived at an idea of offsetting mass and void throughout the entire structure. That is, on any level, half of the living space would be formed by the void between the modules above and below. Next, we conceived an idea for a flexible structure where the vertical structure would taper as it moved upwards. In this manner we endeavored to place material only where we needed it and attempted to achieve a more perfect level of efficiency and structural minimalism.
EXPLODED AXONOMETRIC 1:25
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Japanese House This was a warmup project for a small house in Japan centered around the theme of densifying a city. I chose to try and expand upon my experiences with modular design from Munich with the addition of study into Japanese wood joints. The result is that I tried to make a structure of wooden pieces that could be slotted together with a minimum of effort. I had hoped that it would be a system that could be infinitely expanded upon on or changed the whims of the occupants. Further, I was aiming for a very honest structuralistic expression where the aesthetics of the space were dictated by practical structural and material needs. My process was from the ground up, I moved from the scale of the joint and let the space emerge from those details of fitting things together.
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4m
6m
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Concept for a Window This Concept for a Window was conceived following research into the deep effects that a window can have on an environment. The idea was to take a space equipped with functional, simple windows and completely alter the character of the space with a new window array. Working with inspiration from forest boughs and the idea that the light should be fragmented and redirected away from some areas and into others to promote as much variance as possible, I arrived at a three dimensional array of irregularly cut and angled glass panes.
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1. Apple grove 2. Playgrounds 3. Grass field 4. Commercial Center 5. Sports field 6. Wooded field 7. Gardens 1
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Public area
Munich Far East This is a project placed in an underutilized area of farmland in eastern Munich. The original plan was to concentrate all the desired uses and occupancy for the site into the encompassing structure while leaving the interior predominantly untouched. This evolved into a plan for creating a fragmented thoroughfare of courts each of which would contain a different condition ranging from orchards and gardens to playgrounds. These were to be surrounded and broken up by surrounding “walls� which were made of undulating blocks of mixed use.
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Semi private areas
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Oxford Emory Cultural Center This project is situated on the edge of the Oxford Emory campus in a rural and heavily wooded area of Georgia. The site was set between the main access road for the school and a gymnasium’s windowless brick wall.
The project’s conceptual roots were divided into two strands. The first was based on my photographs above and the urge to recreate the phenomenon where, due to the light, the background gained vibrance while the foreground darkened. The second was based on the idea of merging both the natural and built environment which resulted in a design based around the disintegration of the structure as it reached out to the west. The fingers of the building and forest intertwined.
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5’
ground floor.
1st floor.
5’
15’
15’
30’
30’
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Automatic Painting Experiments This is an ongoing line of experimentation into surrealist automatism and and unconventional rendering. The techniques are primarily based in the work of Max Ernst and include frottage (to rub), grattage (to grate), and decalcomania (the process of pressing a material into wet paint to obtain a random imprint). The typical process involves observing the created affects and finding the forms and characteristics embedded within them and then applying these to a visualization. Its practice has lent me a new way of thinking and challenged me to let go of preconceived notions and look deeper into the world to find new realities.
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Circular berm inscribed into the grid of landfill vents with each pyramid set on an intersection point on the grid.
Orrery : Between the Celestial and the Terrestrial The Orrery is a land art project entry for the 2012 LAGI competition to be located on a capped landfill mound in Staten Island, New York. The brief called for land art developments that would generate significant amounts of renewable energy. The most basic founding principle of the project was that utilizing celestial energy is not a new phenomenon among humans. The only difference is that now we use it for the purpose of generating electricity as opposed to ritual, navigation, place finding, etc.
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Prague astronomical clock
16th century astrolabe
A further generative idea concerned old and new notions of a landfill and its importance. It is a relatively recent phenomenon that we attempt to cover up and forget our landfills. It was not so long ago that some societies celebrated their mounds of waste as symbols of opulence and power.
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“There like jewels sunk in the deep shone glinting stars, though sunlight was in the sky above.” J.R.R Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
The centerpoint of the work is a dark pool set to show the unobscured northern stars as they revolve about the pole star. I fondly refer to it as Mirrormere after the star reflecting pool at the gates of Khazad-Dum in J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Starlight was of the utmost importance to our ancestors for both time keeping and navigation. This pool is meant to show those two uses while calling stark attention to just how devoid of stars our modern skies have become.
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Siderial or star movement clock
29.5 day lunar month
Minimum and maximum lunar rising and setting points
Solar year measured in terms of the Gregorian and Zodiac calendars
The project was meant to create an intersection point between old and new ideas relating to celestial energy and waste. I wanted to evoke a memory of the world perceived in terms of the turning of the sun, moon, and stars, and to create a place that calls attention to the piece of our society that we will leave behind in the landfill. Silver glyphs signifying lunar events
Bronze glyphs signifying solar events
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10m
50m
context
The Astrarium The Astrarium is a second step in my experiments to design around the movements of the night sky. It is comprised of a series of circular spaces designed to map and view specific elements combined with a night functioning library. The central space is composed of a pool which maps the unveiled northern stars with a peripheral band of beech trees and a covered arcade. The next smaller court holds a central dial and engravings for mapping the local time and place in the 29.5 day month using the moon and has basins around its periphery for growing night blooming Nottingham Catchfly up the walls. In the interior of the structure there are apertures in the ceiling which when combined with objects embedded in the walls and floors allow viewers to find the local time and position in the year using the sun. The final and somewhat separate piece for the
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project comes from the nearby silos which I am repurposing for stargazing (they are tall and thin enough to negate light pollution) and will provide the main gateway monument to the site from the old city. A very basic idea for the project stemmed from the idea of experiencing darkness. The entire site including the library is meant to be accessible at night. Additionally the means for lighting the space are very important with the notion being that if the spaces are lit from below with strips of very pale blue lights we can avoid contributing to the light pollution that makes observatories such as this necessary. I have approached this project with no small degree of childish romanticism. A primary point of inspiration comes from The Lord of the Rings with the pool and the placement of the trees came from a hopeless love of looking up (or down) at the stars through swaying beech trees.
Floor Plan
Roof Plan
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Detail for the moon dial which allows for measuring local time from the cast shadows and the 29.5 day lunar month from the surrounding glyphs.
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Carvings outside of the Newgrange neolithic site showing patterns of celestial movement
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7 II
20 cm
cm
Nottingham Catchfly, grown on the walls of the moon court
Fern Leaf European Beech Trees, Grown on the periphery of the star court and to form the basis of the surrounding forest
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cm
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Primary structural unit of white marble concrete
Soil mixture Thermal insulation Waterproof membrane Wooden decking Secondary wooden structure Primary glue lam structure Drainage gutter Flat wooden roof surface
Wooden balcony
Wooden bookshelves Outward fin for the bookshelf with an inward facing vertical strip light
Wooden flooring Marble concrete bricks
Detail Section
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