L AU R A VEIT
Contents
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Harne s sing Water Sealink Loose Density Shells Lightness Ghost Chess Sof ter Ground Santorini Studies
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1 Harnessing Wa t e r
Harnessing Water points to a crucial need for the longterm sustainable development of Vieques, Puerto Rico. Hurricanes and heavy rains cause flooding by 7
overwhelming traditional drainage infrastructure, or by overcoming hard barriers between water bodies and human settlements with storm surges. Our strategies assume that if we view water as an adversary, we cannot expect to overcome it. We must instead consider its sustentive power. We propose to harness the power of water by integrating it into the built environment at all scales. On the architectural scale, we have developed an “anchor house� pointing toward building design on Vieques that can provide durable hurricaneand earthquake-resistant 8
housing on the island. The concepts in the house design can be used to construct a home from scratch, or to retrofit an existing building to increase its self-sufficiency. Elements of the house include solar power and rainwater collection, a specially-braced seismically-sound area, raised piers, and a veranda that is structurally separate from the roof. A system of rainwater tanks is structurally integrated 9
with the roof such that the weight of the stored water can resist the hurricane-force winds acting on the roof during a severe storm. At the larger landscape scale, bioretention areas, wet ponds, and rainwater gardens will decrease stormwater runoff and flooding during storm events. These interventions will also decrease sediment and PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon) runoff that may damage offshore wildlife. Coupled with soilbased filtration systems, these strategies have the potential to recharge groundwater and decrease the salinity of the 10
water table. The Esperanza environs provide the case-study for intervention since they fall within the largest alluvial valley on Vieques, where a recharged water table can make a crucial difference in resiliency and selfsufficiency. Central to this approach can be the integration of the needs of local residents and visitors into ancillary uses of waterrelated green infrastructures. Within the large drainage basin, differing site locations can engage various associated activities: the enjoyment of landscape, ecological education, 11
historical education, sports, and agriculture, among others. When sites fall within the Esperanza town fabric, they can be integrated into the site design of our anchor house or similar structures that are designed to withstand flooding. Bioretention sites placed between houses may also be connected to overflow from their rooftop rainwater collection systems. We additionally propose an educational park on the site of railway and sugarcane warehouse ruins near Esperanza, re-purposing old rail lines as a historic walkway that allows 12
visitors to enjoy the naturallyoccurring wetlands. This strategy is critical of current proposals to heavily develop and densify this wetland area including the Sunbay Project. Our strategies are intended to help Vieques become a model for the Caribbean that promotes a long-term view of biological and social resilience.
GSAPP, Columbia University Advanced Studio V , Fall 2018 Site Location: Vieques, Puerto Rico Studio Critic: Richard Plunz Collaborator: Anqi Liang
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Water as Anchor Horizontally-grooved, textured paneling increases the surface area of the roof available for water collection. Water collected in the roof is stored in tanks above wet walls and above rooms adjacent to the garden. Excess rainfall flows to a community collection tank. The weight of water in the tanks (3.6 metric tons per tank) counteracts the force of wind in hurricane conditions and acts as an anchor for the roof. The weight of the water provides approximately 50% of the force necessary to resist Category 5 hurricane winds. This supplements the reinforcement of special bracing and connections in the house.
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Wind Action A standing-seam hipped-roof construction minimizes resistance to hurricane-force winds. The roof’s incline angle is between 20 and 30 degrees, which is the range recommended by the International Association for Wind Engineering to minimize uplift and problematic pressure differentials between the interior and exterior of structures.
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Ventilation Trade winds blowing predictably from the northeast are drawn into the house through many openings. Cross-ventilation is enhanced by stack ventilation through the roof’s highest point, a waterproof but wind-permeable opening.
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Water Below The robust wood foundation of the house allows for construction on a variety of sites. The piers may be adjusted to accommodate hillsides, or the house may be raised above a median flood level in flood-prone areas. The foundation footprint is minimized to allow for water to pass below the house during storm events.
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Stronghold In addition to robust framing throughout the roof, extra bracing in a stronghold area of the house provides additional security during a hurricane. If desired, the entire house may be framed in this way. This framing strategy also provides strength during earthquakes.
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Shading Structurally separate from the roof, a veranda shade runs above the porch to provide shading to the house and to the outside area. The shades are noncontinuous to allow for wind to pass between them, further reducing the danger of uplift on the roof.
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Solar Energy The roof is equipped with strips of small (15.6 cm2) solar panels that allow for the production of 947.83 kWh of energy per day in a total solar panel area of 9.75 m2.
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Bathymetry in soundings Coral reef
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Fissured aquifers Saline water lagoons Potential bioretention sites
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2 Sealink
The maritime arts and economies campus will simultaneously provide a pathway to jobs paying salaries above national averages in a host of 27
related fields (lighthouse design, ferry operation and maintenance, boat building, dock design and construction, ocean navigation, etc.), and will create a link from the city fabric to the shoreline landscape with a matrix of open space. The campus will incorporate classroom and workroom spaces for 1,000– 2,000 post-secondary students of various levels. Construction of the campus entails the dredging of a large portion of the Tongue Point area to create a new inlet for docking ships used for study on the campus. The site’s soil 28
is primarily composed of fill contaminated by years of heavy industrial use, so soil remediation will be a major component of the early construction phases and subsequent educational program. The campus plan incorporates this cleaned fill into new topographies around the site that will mitigate flooding. The majority of manufacturing operations that required massive factory buildings in the city have left Bridgeport over the past fifty years. Like the United States at large, the city’s industries have shifted from producing 29
goods to producing services. The new campus aims to reintegrate selected forms of manufacturing into the economy to serve as an antidote to the alienation of service-economy jobs. Furthermore, as the citizens of Bridgeport anticipate sea level rise and the effects of extreme storms, enhancing the maritime economies of the city may indeed prove prescient. GSAPP, Columbia University Advanced Studio IV , Fall 2017 Site Location: Bridgeport Waterfront, Bridgeport, CT Studio Critic: Adam Frampton, Only If— Collaborator: Alicia French
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PYRAMID MOSQUE
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3 Loose Density
A radical flatness contributes to the overall efficiency and accessibility of the social housing project for seniors. At only three stories high each floor generates 49
horizontal linkages between programs and neighbors. A figural ground floor links multiple community programs together. Programs on the outer edge serve the community at large (an after school program, garden shop, etc.), while those near the interior serve the residential community (a large pool, a pottery classroom, etc.). Engaging equally with the individual and the collective, the units of the senior housing project are arranged in mirrored sequences that contain a variety 50
of heterogeneous unit, providing spaces for a range of living situations: home care aides visiting with elderly individuals, grown children living next to their parents, etc. Square footages dedicated to kitchens and living spaces in standard apartment sizes have been given instead to common areas that run along the interior edge of the sequenced bands of units. Large shared kitchens and dining rooms are also accessible at strategic points adjacent to apartments. Each band of units also has an exterior balcony edge, which is open to light and air. 51
A central reading room extends from the ground floor through both residential floors. Its form is carried through to the roof, where it becomes a greenhouse amidst a gently topographic green roof that integrates a half-size track, apiary, amphitheater, and other programs for residents.
GSAPP, Columbia University Core III Housing Studio, Fall 2017 Site Location: Claremont Park, The Bronx, New York City, NY Studio Critic: Adam Frampton, Only If— Collaborator: Graysen Babbitt
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4 Shells
The system of umbrella structures was developed as a result of investigations and research into tensile and thin shell structures. Hyperbolic63
parabaloid surfaces were generated with analog means (stretching fabric over a threedimensional frame). These doubly-curving surfaces were then used as a basis for forming thin, reinforced plaster shells.
GSAPP, Columbia University Tensile and Compression Structures, Fall 2018 Studio Critic: Robert Marino, Robert Marino Architects Collaborator: Mariella Tzakis
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5 Lightness
The library aims to provide a respite from the visual, vehicular, pedestrian, and commercial activity of the street at the ground level while opening up to views 73
of the historic fabric of the neighborhood at higher levels. The building is structured around a core of shifted, layered public spaces that allow for deep filtration of light from a skylight at the top of the building. Acting in tandem with the public spaces (auditorium, cafĂŠ, etc.) that fill the central core, and which are illuminated by filtered daylight, other more private work spaces (librarian offices, maker spaces, etc.) inhabit the interstitial space wrapping around these central 74
public areas. Though these private spaces do not receive daylight from the central skylight, they will receive a different quality of light through the faรงade of the building, which will appear as an opaque solid at a distance but will in fact provide views from the inside out by way of a screened facade.
GSAPP, Columbia University Core Studio II , Spring 2017 Site Location: Downtown Brooklyn, New York City, NY Studio Critic: Stella Betts, Levenbetts
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6 Ghost Chess
Ghost Chess leaves a record of the game by way of ink contained within the pieces. Though the marks show moves, they are an incomplete record 87
of match since they do not capture the order in which moves were made. The color of the ink provides the only indication of which pieces are white and black since the pieces are made of clear resin.
GSAPP, Columbia University Architectural Drawing and Representation II , Spring 2017 Studio Critic: Farzin Lotfi-Jam, FarzinFarzin
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7 Softer Ground
The East River Estuary Center provides educational programming for elementarythrough high-school-aged students in the New York City 93
area. The Center’s focal point is a wetlands frame, a bracketed area of the river which is filtered through an outer protective berm. This filtration berm allows for the collection of scientific data concerning the East River estuary system’s ecological health. The buffering of the interior aquatic space from the estuary at large also allows for the restoration of the enclosed space to its pre-industrial state. In this enclosed space of pre-industrial estuary “soft ground,” teaching areas will 94
house eelgrass, oysters, and other species native to the East River ecosystem. At the time of colonial settlement, the site of the Center, where Sixth Street meets the riverfront, was the point of entry for two tributary streams into the harbor. At the deeper end of the framed area, a floating fourstory observation “barge” will house the Center’s main study and teaching rooms. The barge will move up and down with the tides, connected by a ramp to the pavilion. Protected from the swift East River currents by the berm, the barge will register the 95
vertical cycles of the tide. The final component of the Center is a system of two research areas, which take the form of enclosed ramps that start at the center of the pavilion and tilt down and curve towards the deeper part of the river to facilitate sample collection for wetlands research.
GSAPP, Columbia University Core Studio I, Fall 2016 Site Location: 14th Street and East River, New York Studio Critic: Tei Carpenter, Agency— Agency
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8 Santorini Studies
Precedent studies of mat buildings and of developed areas of Santorini provide a basis for ongoing research into the density of vernacular forms on the island 103
of Santorini, Greece. The studio will develop new forms of housing appropriate to local forms in order to provide additional housing to island residents who are looking for alternatives to over-tourism and ruthless development schemes.
GSAPP, Columbia University Advanced Studio VI, Spring 2019 Site Location: Santorini Island, Greece Studio Critic: Konstantinos Pantazis and Marianna Rentzou, Point Supreme Collaborators: Shuya Tang and Mariella Tzakis
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