graduate architecture portfolio 2012-2014
LAUREL SIEBER
“I see the task of architecture as the defense of the authenticity of human experience� -Juhani Pallasmaa
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CONTENTS
05
Degree Project: Out-Patient Housing Facility S14
21
3 Lines in the Desert F13
27
Marfa Artist’s Compound F13
39
Urban Apertures SU13
45
Buried Cube S13
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Film Archive and Media Center S13 cultural institution
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Digital Spiraling F12
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Bent Plywood Chair S13
residence
residences & studios
urban intervention
temporary/pavilion
temporary/pavilion
furniture design
Degree Project: Out-Patient Housing Facility St. Louis Spring 2014 (15 weeks)
The building serves non-admitted patients and their families who are visiting St. Louis from out-of-town to receive medical treatment at Barnes Jewish Hospital, located immediately north of the site. The project addresses how distraction and overstimulation can be dealt with, altered, or blocked on a busy site located at the intersection of an interstate and a heavily trafficked road. The building is meant to be a refuge amongst the overstimulation. It is decidedly inward focused, with all rooms facing inward toward a shared central landscape, rather than out toward the surrounding city. The goal was to create a sense of security and protection for people who feel vulnerable and lack a sense of control over their lives because of their illness. The building prioritizes communal space for the social support that it provides. The ground floor provides support functions: a chapel, library, meeting rooms for support groups, childcare, communal dining, fitness room, and miscellaneous gathering spaces. There are 36 housing units for short or long term stay located on the second and third floors. The design also recognizes the role that natural light and nature provide for a healing environment. 05
St. Louis Central West End
Kingshighway
Forest Park
Metr
o
BJC
Clayton Ave I-64
Forest Park Southwest
600ft
211,000 sq ft
Site
300ft
Central West End
Pull away from distracting stimuli of Kingshighway
View from hospital
Pull away from distracting stimuli of Kingshighway
Pull away from distracting stimuli of Kingshighway
View from Euclid Ave
Building faces inward, protected from surroundings
Building faces inward, protected from surroundings
Respond to the end of pedestrian axis of Euclid Ave
Pull away from distracting stimuli of Kingshighway
Buildin
Pull away from distracting Building faces inward, protected from surroundings stimuli of Kingshighway
Respon
Respond to the end of pedestrian axis of Euclid Ave Building faces inward, protected from surroundings
Break open toward Euclid, Forest Park, and bridge
Respond to the end of pedestrian axis of Euclid Ave
Break open toward Euclid, Forest Park, and bridge
Break o
Second Floor Plan
Third Floor Plan
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handrail grass pavers soil drainage board insulation concrete slab drop ceiling structrual column glazed enclosure
structural grid
north elevation
east elevation
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3 Lines in the Desert West Texas Fall 2013 (2 weeks)
This project is a second home for a couple in the desert of West Texas. The house needed to satisfy the couple’s love for swimming, writing, and aviation, and be able to house their extensive contemporary art collection. The scheme is straight forward, in accordance with the clients’ appreciation of modernism, with just 3 lines cut into the desert: the house, the lap pool, and the airstrip. The house is organized linearly, with the shared spaces located near the entrance and each consecutive space becoming progressively more private. The shared spaces are as open as possible, with a high ceiling to accommodate large works of art. In order to differentiate space, the ceiling undulates, folding down to create more intimate space and rising to create grander spaces. On the exterior this is all hidden by a minimalist façade in which I took clues from Donald Judd’s work and studied repetition and progression in the openings. This sets up a contrast between the implied box form perceived from the outside and the more dynamic interior space.
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Marfa Artist’s Compound Marfa, Texas Fall 2013 (10 weeks)
This project is a walled artist’s compound with residences, studios, and gallery space, located immediately next to Donald Judd’s art compound in West Texas. Inspired by Navajo prints and a desire to create collaborative space, I developed a grid of crossing lines from which the forms of the building were derived. The residence/ studio spaces became wedge-shaped, interdependent buildings which pull apart to create shared exterior space. The pinching which occurs in plan also happens in section. Each unit also has its own internal private courtyard which divides the residence from the studio. The grid lines continue into the gallery and library/ dining buildings where they become lightwells which cut into the rectilinear space. The lines are also laid on the site, becoming landscape elements. The buildings are made of rammed earth in order to satisfy climatic requirements, material availability in this remote region, and the rustic atheistic of West Texas.
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east elevation
west elevation
section through library, diningroom, and gallery
section through residences
window detail
door detail
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37
Urban Apertures Barcelona, Spain Summer 2013 (8 weeks)
This project is about activating an existing public space with new pavilions. I responded to the unusual shape of the site, which was cause by the demolition of a portion of the densest part of Barcelona’s urban fabric. Because it was a kind of leftover space, it could be accessed by a lot of different entrance points. Each entrance was very different in form, scale, and experience. I studied these apertures into and out of the site to derive the forms of the pavilions and then located them at these entrances in order to further shape the experience of entering and leaving the site. The pavilions are lifted off the ground so as not to disturb the natural activity which already takes place on the site (soccer games, block parties, dog walking). Instead, they appear to float above the space, becoming portals which you must work under to enter the space.
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Buried Cube
Helsinki, Finland Spring 2013 (1 week) work completed with Xialu Xu This quick team project gave us the opportunity to become familiar with one of Helsinki’s public squares and to design a small intervention for it. After visiting the site in the middle of the winter, we were struck by the difference between what we saw and the pictures we had found of the site in the summer, when it became a popular outdoor market. The one similarity we found was that the site always seemed to be buried. In the winter it was buried under snow and parked cars. In the summer it was buried under vendors and people. Our concept was to create a temporary pavilion which also seemed buried, and grounded despite its lack of permanence. The pavilion consists of a continuous ramping spiral with opening which also users to view the surrounding city at different heights. At the top there is an outdoor platform from which people can look down onto the hustle and bustle of the market or out to the sea.
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Film Archive and Media Center Helsinki, Finland Spring 2013 (8 weeks)
The project is situated along the Baana, a pedestrian/bicycle path created from a retired train line ruining through the center of Helsinki. The question of how to negotiate the height difference between the street level and the base of the Baana (six meters below) became the priority of the desgn. The solution was to create two ascending volumes, one which reaches from the Baana up to the street and another which reaches from the street up toward the city, becoming the only building along the Baana to break the strong vertical boundary of the walls and make a connection between the two levels. From the Baana level, you enter a long ramp, which slopes up the hill. The theaters are accessed from a mezzanine level halfway up the ramp. From the street level you can access the classrooms and administration, or you can choose to either descend down toward the Baana or ascend up into the library, a terraced open space which contains the media stacks and gallery. The roofs of the rising volumes create an accessible public space.
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Baana level 1 2 3 4
Street level
Mezzanine
tickets & coats conservation screening rooms storage
5 lobby 6 projection room
7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
lobby coats childcare computer workstations classrooms secured media studio administration delivery 14
1 13
3
2 3
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3
3
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5
11
6 3
3
10 9
4 8
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Second floor 15 16 17 18
Third floor
newspapers and periodicals media browsing & stacks scholar in residence units sauna
17 18 19 20
gallery special events cafe kitchen
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17 17
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16 15
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copper panel air space windstopper rigid insulation, 50mm wood frame construction moisture barrier gypsum board, 16mm
wood deck drainage layer 3-layer bituminous sheeting rigid insulation, 200mm
wood deck drainage layer 3 layer bituminous sheeting rigid insulation, 200mm concrete topping, 80mm wood slab, 300mm
concrete topping, 80mm wood slab, 300mm
building section
glulam beam glulam beam glulam column, 300mm
glulam column
A Roof Connection
wood deck drainage layer 3 layer bituminous sheeting rigid insulation, 200mm concrete topping, 80mm wood slab, 300mm flashing mulion glass curtain wall
C
Roof and Curtain wall Connection
concrete topping, 60mm wood slab, 300mm waterproofing, 10mm rigid insulation, 160mm cast-in-place concrete retaining wall glulam column, 300mm glulam beam, 675mm depth
D Ground and Floor Connection
copper panel air space windstopper rigid insulation, 50mm wood frame construction moisture barrier gypsum board, 16mm
B
Roof Detail
waterproofing, 10mm cast-in-place concrete retainging wall glulam column, 300mm steel base plate reinforced concrete slab, 120mm rigid insulation, 100mm reinforced concrete footing french drain
E Foundation Detail
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attach joining spirals
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these two faces will be touching
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r
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p
assemble one complete spiral
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tabs on interior of seam
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Digital Spiraling Fall 2012
This was a multi-part project in digital representation, all based on a precedent image of a broccoflower. Throughout the project I attempted to understand and represent some of the complex geometries in the vegetable. I studied how the spiraling pieces fit together to create a fractal, where the same geometry is continuously repeated at varying scales. The project concluded with the construction of a piece of a system and an understanding of how the system could be used to construct a buildable pavilion.
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Bent Plywood Chair
e bent all-purpose plywood bent chairplywood chair
Spring 2013
This chair was designed as part of a furniture design seminar taken while studying in Helsinki. The assignment was to design and build a bent plywood ‘all-purpose’ side chair for use in a public building. The chair design arose in the context of Finnish furniture design traditions, after studying examples from Finnish furniture design masters, as well as bent plywood material properties, and their implications on chair structures. The process included observing and measuring famous chair designs, sketching and digitally modeling ideas, creating and testing full-scale mockups, making a mold and bending the plywood, cutting the plywood to its final shape, and bending and welding steel tube legs.
Washington University in Helsinki Furniture Seminar Spring 2013
all-purpose bent plywood chair Washington University in Helsinki Furniture Seminar Spring 2013
96 ° 803 mm 412 mm
412 mm
434 mm
434 mm
517 mm
573 mm
96 °
Laurel Sieber
573 mm
Laurel Sieber
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LAUREL SIEBER curriculum vitae Contact
Education
Skills
phone: 630.740.6258 email: lsieber2@gmail.com address: 708 Castilleja Ct Naperville, IL 60540
Washington University in St. Louis Masters of architecture, 2012-2014
software:
Aalto University, Helsinki Architecture, 2013 University of Illinois [Urbana-Champaign] Bachelors of Science in Architectural Studies with highest honors, 2007-2011 Minor in Business Study Abroad Helsinki, Finland
winter/spring 2013
Barcelona, Spain summer 2013
AutoCAD Rhino Revit Sketchup Grasshopper Photoshop Illustrator Indesign Vray Premiere
Other: model making, sketching, writing skills
Professional Experience
Awards & Recognition
Warren Johnson Architects April 2012- Aug 2012 Intern Architect
Merit Scholarship, Washington University
Robert Morris University Summer 2011 Architectural Drafting Intern Washington University in St. Louis Whitaker Lab Assistant 2012-2014 Digital Fabrication Lab Assistant 2013-2014
Bronze Tablet Recipient
Top 3% of graduating Undergraduates, University of Illinois
James Scholar Honors Program
Campus Honors Program, University of Illinois
Gargoyle Honor Society
Architecture Honor society, University of Illinois