Graduate Portfolio by Kris Werner

KRIS WERNER W

MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE PORTFOLIO 2018-2020

MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE BALL STATE UNIVERSITY Hello, welcome to my graduate portfolio. This book presents selected projects and designs completed during my graduate student career at Ball State. All projects types include and range from urban planning, park, city, civic, and special project typologies. My favorite project was the urban design project, recon-FIGURE, for my multi-disciplinary design knowledge studio. Featured at the front, it showcases my Revit and rendering skills.

CONTENTS 01

recon-FIGURE Design Studio

p. 2

Civic Incubator Design Studio

p. 12

Urban Wayﬁnding Research Grad Thesis

p. 22

The Space Between Design Studio

p. 32

recon-FIGURE Urban Park + Memorial Software programs used: Rhino, Revit, Maya, Photoshop, Enscape, and Lumion.

-Project DescriptionThis studio explored the operation of interweaving, both conceptually and literally, using the software program Maya with a simple line design. Interweaving is an act of blending or the coming together of discrete elements to inform a larger composition. This large-scale public project evaluated intervention in the city and connectivity to immediate neighborhoods. The tectonic systems, ecological systems, and cultural identities were also a major influence in the study. The final project was a commentary on the modern take on a hypothetical memorial site for native american heritage of this area pre-existing to the town’s establishment. Elements of the geometry were influenced from real life monument parks like Cahokia Mounds of St. Louis area.

Fall 2019, Arch 603 Multi-Disciplinary Design Studio Project achievements: Best laser cut physical models Swinney Park Fort Wayne, IN

Site Aerial View (Autumn)

recon-FIGURE

Line Base Design Maya Software and beginning physics applied

Progression Hair physics animation shown during ﬁrst 5 minutes

Final Maya Product Chosen line design after animation ran for 15 min

Close-up Lasercut physical models derived from line variations

Extents Lasercut physical models derived from line variations

recon-FIGURE

Enlarged Lasercut Physical Model

The diagrams (left) illustrate the beginning stages of the schematic phase. These line designs were derived from line manipulation from Autodesk Maya. This software is a complex tool for 3D animation that simulates real-world, realistic effects through physics deﬁned parameters. It can manipulate 3D geometry to mimick most material properties, such as cloth and fur. However, for this exercise, I applied hair physics to the line design, set the view to 2D and let the program run for 30 minutes to let the “hairs” entangle. Thus, creating a fascinating design as a template for the next stage of the project. The studio professor challenged me to look at this design to ﬁgure how the base design would be represented in the 3D geometry of my project. Like, will the geometry be represented as voids? Paths? Negative or Positive space? Or a combination of all?

recon-FIGURE

Geometry Overlay Diagram

Enlarged Geometry Overlay Diagram

recon-FIGURE

Positive and Negative Space Diagram

After producing a line design from Maya and completing physical study models, I chose one I wanted to move forward with (top left hand corner, p.8). Next, positive and negative space, geometry and other shapes were outlined and investigated. These diagrams show this process, ﬁnding various opportunities to interpret the lines into 3D space. The history of the site indicates that there previously a native american tribe nearby. Along with the archeaological style and appearance of the line designs, this became a strong choice for the building program. The circle diagrams (above) represent the conﬁguration of buildings and their placement in relation to the base line design.

recon-FIGURE

Site Plan 1/64” = 1’-0”

Site Diagram

recon-FIGURE

Site History Diagram 1

Site History Diagram 2

Site Aerial View (Winter)

Site History Diagram 3

recon-FIGURE

Detail Site Plan 1/16” = 1’-0”

recon-FIGURE

Walkway View Rendering

Civic Incubator Career + Resource Center Software programs used: Revit, Photoshop, Revit Render, V-Ray, Blender, OSM, and Rhino.

-Project DescriptionRent-to-own garage complex designed to assist startups and new entrepreneurs. startups and budding entrepreneurs. The idea originated from two pieces: 1) All great businesses start in a garage 2) Utilize the idle shipping containers in the area and convert them into outdoor/indoor garage spaces. This garage complex is combined with a community center that includes classrooms, ofﬁces and a cafe to promote spirit of collaboration and accessibility to resources. The rent-to-own garage aims to improve and promote all businesses that come through and lease out spaces for 90-days.

Fall 2018 , Arch 501 Comprehensive Studio Chicago Union Stockyards Chicago, IL

Exterior Front Facade Rendering

Civic Incubator

Chicago Union Stockyard Site

Civic Incubator

Street View of Selected Site

Chicago Union Stockyards Historical Entrance Gate

Civic Incubator

Our studio group visited the Chicago Union Stockyards to explore and study our sites in person. The site I selected prior to the visit was ideal for the rent-to-own garage program. However, visiting the site allowed me to cross compare all the positives and negative about the site, such as site accessibility from the road, site size, relative location to civilian traffic, and other information. The site as is is generally flat, void of activity, and overloaded with industrial storage, like rectangular storage containers. Some of the surrounding roads are gravel while others are paved. The road appears very wide and not very pedestrian friendly, used mainly for tranportation operations for nearby warehoues and factories. There is little sign of acitivity and traffic outside of industrial operations. After reviewing the site information and gathering data from Open Street Map (OSM), I created a large 3D model file shown (shown right). I learned how to make this by using a tertiary program that I had not used before, Blender. Blender is used for creating animations for cartoons or game-realted graphics. Blender working in this case as a middle man to interpret the data file from OSM into a workable 3D file with accurate heights, roads, waterways and everything. This removed the tedious and laborious step that someone might take to model data from looking at Google Maps. Overall, this became an excellent exercise and tool for future use during the 16 weeks of the semester, as well as a frequently used file among studio peers for their projects.

Civic Incubator

OSM>Blender>Rhino Produced 3D Site Plan

Civic Incubator

Production + Collaboration Categories: Production Logistics Utilities Community

Front-of-house Operations

Lobby Administration Education Training

The preliminary site evaluation study created an understanding of how the Chicago Union Stockyard is an underutililized industrial site. There is no activity outside of business hours and it becomes a dead area in the evening. The studio’s goal was to revitalize and activate the area into a habitable civilian area with programmatic opportunities. For my initial project program, I chose the mixed-use building type: industry and community-center. My study was designed to reﬁne what the building program will exactly provide for the area. Two programmatic divisions were determined that organized the spaces within. The major two were back-ofhouse (BOH) and front-of house (FOH). Within FOH, there is lobby, administration, education, training, community, and production spaces. The BOH include waste collection and management, loading docks, inventory, shipping, handling, MEP, amenities and other industrial processes. These will be separated from the public circulation but still connected to FOH.

Communal spaces

Back-of-house Operations

Loading Dock Inventory Shipping + Handling Amenities

The program became distilled down to a single mixed-use project type that is new and unique: a rent-to-own garage for startups and budding entrepreneurs. The idea originated from two pieces: 1) that great businesses always start in a garage and 2) utilize the idle shipping containers in the area and convert them into outdoor/indoor garage spaces. This garage complex was combined with a community center that includes classrooms, ofﬁces and a cafe to promote spirit of collaboration and accessibility to resources. The rent-to-own garage aims to improve and promote all businesses that come through their 90-day stay.

M.E.P. Waste Management

Civic Incubator

Schematic Program Section

Schematic Program First and Second Floor

Public-centric

Program Axon 1 Preliminary Form

Industry-centric Program Axon 2 Final Form

Public vs Industry Dichotomy, 3D

Public vs Industry Dichotomy, Plan

Civic Incubator

7 13

10'-0"

30'-0"

9'-0"

Level 3

Mezzanine

0'-0"

5 4

2 1

20'-0"

10 9

7 -2'-0"

Level 2 15

-1'-6"

Level 1

Lobby and Cafe

Ofﬁce

Vestibule

Storage

Kitchen

Reading Nook

Accessible Bathroom

Classroom

Vertical HVAC Space

Collaboration Zone

Garage Units

Roof Vegitation

Conference Room

Courtyard

Break Room

Fan Room

Floor Plans 1/32” = 1’-0”

Civic Incubator

Section 1/16” = 1’-0”

Exterior Courtyard Render (Top), Collaboration Zone Render (Bottom)

Urban Wayﬁnding The Impact of Technology in Navigation

Research Thesis Software programs used: Adobe Suite CC, Rhino, V-Ray

-Project DescriptionLiterture review on the topic of urban wayﬁnding with a project evaluating mobile phone-based and new comprehensive application that is more intuitive for the user environment. The structure of space, form and information can all be found in a city and understood by its users. Grid systems, streets, signage, landmarks, and all the characteristics of a city make it into an interpretable landscape. This landscape requires navigation that is both helpful to the user, efﬁcient for travel, and pleasant to use. How well do current mobile phone-based navigation systems and applications operate today for the user navigating in current city settings? This thesis evaluates current applications and their breadth of use, targeted demographic, and projected effectiveness. In general, these applications aren’t comprehensive in meeting all needs and being a universal application besides from a couple popular contenders, such as Google Maps.

Spring 2020 , Arch 604 Graduate Thesis Studio

Book Cover

Urban Wayﬁnding

-ABSTRACTBecoming familiar with a new city can be a difficult task, especially when navigating independently without assistance. Fortunately, information is readily accessible through mobile devices. Mobile phonebased navigation systems allow users today instant guidance on the correct path to their destination, access information on transit options or browse local destinations. This tool is incredibly useful and efficient. However, it’s apparent that people have become less reliant on memory and intuition, increasing the personenvironment disconnect—a problem seen commonly in this digital age. However, prior to digital access, information for navigation was sourced from human perception and legible understanding of the surrounding context. Navigation and engagement with the city require the identification of characteristics that develop a mental image of the environment. This idea of a mental image is sourced from Kevin Lynch’s literature. Specifically, his book, The Image of the City. This was a source of inspiration to understand human connection and city legibility. Legibility is also defined as imageability, or “that quality in a physical object which gives it a high probability of evoking a strong image in any given observer.” Imageability is an integral mechanism of wayfinding in the urban environment. People develop a mental image of their city by identifying structure in its form. This is valuable to orientation, marked with street signs, grids, landmarks, and other key identifying characteristics. We must consider not only the city as a thing in itself, but the city being perceived by its inhabitants. Lynch’s philosophy is important when addressing the issues within the person-environment disconnect caused by digital intervention and realizing a new way to reconnect people with their surroundings. I propose a mobile phone-based navigation application that strengthens the human intuition to legibly read a city and strengthen the relationship between observer and environment. I believe that it is the responsibility of urban planners, UI and web developers to understand the core concepts through physical and digital integration. More importantly, the successful city exists in the mindset of people, and how well people understand and connect with the city itself. With this application proposal, people can become better connected with their surroundings while retaining all the useful functionality of popular navigation applications used today.

-PROPOSALThe structure of space, form and information can all be found in a city and understood by its users. Grid systems, streets, signage, landmarks, and all the characteristics of a city make it into an interpretable landscape. This landscape requires navigation that is both helpful to the user, efﬁcient for travel, and pleasant to use. How well do current mobile phone-based navigation systems and applications operate today for the user navigating in current city settings? This thesis evaluates current applications and their breadth of use, targeted demographic, and projected effectiveness. In general, these applications aren’t comprehensive in meeting all needs and being a universal application besides from a couple popular contenders, such as Google Maps People completely rely on these tools...to a fault. As much as this tool proves to be a navigational advantage, there are issues associated with these mobile phone-based applications. People develop a blind reliance upon this tool which creates issues and numerous instances of people becoming stuck or lost. In some extreme cases, even leading to one’s death because the application guided people over abandoned bridges, deserts, or off cliffs. Therefore, these tools aren’t necessarily your best bet from point A to point B, or the safest. I aim to strengthen and focus on this quality with a new mobile phone-based navigation application. This application brings together all the strong aspects of each existing application, such as Google Maps, Open Street Map, Blind Square; and it addresses issues of memory and building a sense of place, including imageability.

-METHODOLOGYA majority of information included throughout this thesis project was collected through a literature review of books, journals and articles that cover the disciplines of architecture, urban planning, wayfinding, and psychology. These all developed my view on the topic of urban wayfinding and mobile navigation. Urban wayfinding is a “research area in perception and cognition, which is a subfield of environmental psychology”(Cubukcu 4). This starts to develop the building blocks to understand wayfinding, such as the environmental psychology defined by Kevin Lynch’s “The Image of the City”, which outlines principles of the built environment, city legibility, imageability, structure and identity.

Urban Wayﬁnding

As seen in Kevin Lynch’s study, a person’s mental image of a city is consistent with the public image of a city. The form of the environment is the most important factor in shaping the image. These common themes shaped the 5 elements of a city that make it imageable: path, edge, district, node, landmark.

Path

District

Edge

Node

Landmark

Coverage of Countries with Google Street View in 2017

Project Title

Navigation Apps Survey

Google Maps Massive data source for suppling walking/trafﬁc directions and transit info. Over 220 countries and territories mapped. Real time GPS navigation with millions of locations mapped. Pro: popular and well-known Con: not universal, frequent rt Apple Maps Similar to Google Maps for exploring or step-by-step trafﬁc directions. Pro: View city in 3D Con: Only compatible with iOS phones

City Mapper This offers a convenient way to see options for all modes of public transit, bikes, mopeds, e-scooters, and carsharing in one interface. It compares all transit option in real-time while analyzing traffic. Pro: many options for public transport Con: Not offered in all cities Waze This app tells you about traffic, construction, police, crashes, and more in real-time while navigating. It offers options for navigation and alt routes. Pro: gives various options for route overview Con: car-centered Open Street Map Enjoy voice and visual offline navigation, viewing points of interest, creating and managing GPX tracks, using contour lines visualization, a choice between car navigation, cycle navigation or directions in the pedestrian mode. Pro: Different modes for transportation Con: limited POI Map Quest Get where you need to go with the MapQuest turn-by-turn GPS Navigation app. Whether it’s using voice navigation for walking or driving directions or exploring points of interests on the map, MapQuest offers many tools. Pro: gives option of 2-3 routes to take Con: only offered in USA and Canada HERE WeGo This gives detailed information on city navigation with any mode of vehicle. Turn by turn voice navigation that shoes alternative routes during the route. Pro: offers information for 1300+ cities Con: voice component is not 100% reliable Transit Navigation app for finding buses, trains, and rentable single user vehicles. It shows every possible route in the vicinity and helps users find the best route to get there. Helps familiarize user with the transit around the city which helps create imageability of overall cityscape. Pro: shows instant ETA’s Con: not supported in Indy Metrobus Mexico Offers CDMX metrobus information. It’s relatively accessible and reaches all areas of the city. Provides a signage system that can be easily interpreted and create imageability for locations across the city. Pro: offline capability Con: does not show exit locations accurately

Project Title

Navigation Apps for the Disabled Survey

Blind Square Most common app paired with third party navigation apps to deliver voice assist and detailed points of interest/intersections for safe travel inside and outside. Gathers information about surroundings through Foursquare and OSM. Pro: marks position for ﬁnding way back Con: only available iOS Lazarillo GPS Provides information regarding surroundings as the blind user walks. Communicates important information about locations, upcoming events, times of operation, etc to improve services. Pro: works while the screen is off Con: distance announcements are too far before intersection. Autour Audio that allows users to experience spatial navigation through ambient audio. Uses headphones, with open-air or bone headphones being recommended. Gives sense of distance, locality, and reveals information that visual cues would. Pro: provides nearby information Con: needs headphones GetThere Audio navigation before/after intersections, request location by shaking device, and provides detailed information to stay on route and additional information about surroundings. Pro: programmed with various languages and used on any smart device. Con: does not recognize short routes. overTHERE Helps blind people explore and interact with the surrounding environment by using virtual audible signs. Audio cues make it each to accuately and quickly pinpoint exact locations of business and addresses. (iBeacon). Pro: Bluetooth, hand-free headset support. Con: No ability to read signs Tap Tap Helps hearing impaired to become attuned to noises in environment. Vibrates when it detects sound and adjusts sensitivity to your environment. Useful when a stop is called or coming up to an intersection. Pro: allows for environment awareness. Con: only helps with sounds not navigation Signly Engages deaf users by adding a smart layer of signed content to bring information to life. Point smartphone at Signly trackables and content appears onscreen. Augmented reality engine looks for signs and objects. Pro: designed to navigate on network rail Con: primarily in the UK Click & Push This wheelchair accessibility mapping service enables users to engage with their community without the fear of difﬁcult terrain. It collects all information (sidewalk damage, unshoveled lanes, potholes, steep curbs) and compile it into a map. Pro: wheelchair users provide information Con: needs consistent data added Route4All Universal navigation that is designed [not only] for disabled people (blind, wheelchair users, seniors, etc). Used to search for routes with information on barriers and landmarks, providing alternate routes for pedestrians with and w/o limitations. Pro: completely universal Con: pedestrian network underdeveloped

Urban Wayﬁnding

Availability of Apps Based on Scale and Location

Availability of Apps Based on Phone Type

Urban Wayﬁnding

Primary Function of Apps

Target Demographic of Apps

Urban Wayﬁnding

MENU SCREEN

E B

D A

Great Lion Statue

Landmark - 17 min Open 24 hr !! Hours or service may differ due to COVID-19 Reviews

3000 ft

Urban Wayﬁnding

(Nearby pins)

CO CONNECT BLUETOOTH B

CITY, NEIGHBORHOOD

Informational blurb pops up when you select a picture that you’re interested in hearing about. Each picture represents a nearby pin location. If you click the picture a second time, it will automatically set up navigation for that location.

You’ve made it! Informational blurb pops up when you’ve arrived at the location selected from before. It will prompt you to continue interacted and a guided tour.

Guided Tour?

Yes

3000 ft

Navigation App Design (Final)

The Space Between Special Project Software programs used: Rhino, Illustrator, Photoshop

-Project DescriptionShort 5-week special project challenge that uses the schematic process of x-raying Sears-styled Four Square houses from a 1950’s-era catalogue to create a fragmented form for this project and investigate domestic space. An important piece of working with this fragmented form is to establish a stakeholder or occupancy type. The chosen occupant became a llama farmer and the ﬁnal form and project received a tailor designed program.

Summer 2019 , Arch 600 Design Studio

Four Square House X-Ray

The Space Between

This course explored the latent potential within the architectural poche found in suburban homes to be a generator for design inquiry. While fragmenting this catalogue home, I found means of occupation within the functional void behind the visible structures of domestic space.

Four-Square House Axon

I digitally modeled this American Four Square House. Following the basic documentation of the original home, students will then X-ray the building for the purposes of revealing existing and new relationships between the structure’s massing or pochѐ. The pochѐ ﬁnding exercise enabled explorations of surgical removal and addition to the building composition in order to break apart the compartmentalized order of the building (as seen in the Four Square House x-ray, p. 33). The goal was to identify the potential within these structures to accommodate alternative uses and enable spaces of possibilities to emerge. Four-Square House Plan

The Space Between

Fragmented Four Square House Iterations

The Space Between

First Floor Plan 1/8” = 1’-0”

Second Floor Plan 1/8” = 1’-0”

Section 1/8” = 1’-0”

Exterior 3D Schematic

KRIS WERNER W

MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE PORTFOLIO 2018-2020