Liam Lowe liamlowe@cmu.edu 607-793-4223 5831 Holden St.#2 Pittsburgh, PA 15232
Hello! I am a fifth-year B.Arch student at Carnegie Mellon University. CMU has given me a broad interest in the field of design, from digital fabrication through planning and geography. I have worked as a monitor at the School of Architecture’s Digital Fabrication Lab for three years and had the opportunity to spend a semester in Copenhagen, DK. My trip to Europe instilled an interest in larger patterns of urban development and geography. During the summer of 2012 I worked at the Studio for Spatial Practice on architectural and urban projects for both communities and private clients.
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Inclines of Pittsburgh Latent Infrastructures Culture Shock In(Klein) Party Wall Rowhouses South Side Ferry Terminal Frick Park Environmental Center Chicago Symphony Outreach Center Hand Drawings Fabrication BIG BOX Store Cycology 401 Grant Street Watson Top
Pittsburgh: topography and railroads
Inclines of Pittsburgh Completed Studio Professor Site Description
August - December 2012 Thesis Prep (Year 5) Mary-Lou Arscott, Martin Aurand Pittsburgh, PA During the first phase of my thesis I examined the ways that industrial society marked (or was marked by) the terrain onto which it was projected. Inclines provide a series of cases to focus this study due to their relationship to topography, transit, industry, and society. By beginning to understand the history of industry and infrastructure in the region, one can speculate about possible futures and new ways to capitalize on the city’s unique terrain. A small book was made, situating the inclines in their broader context and providing axonometric drawings to compare their relationship to the landscape and nearby infrastructure. View full document: http://issuu.com/liamlowe/docs/pittsburghsinclines
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St. Clair Incline
Knoxville and Mt. Oliver Inclines
Castle Shannoon Inclines 1 & 2
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Neville Hollow: sectional axonometric sketch
Latent Infrastructures Completed Studio Professor Site Description
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January - Present Thesis (Year 5) Mary-Lou Arscott, Martin Aurand Pittsburgh, PA My thesis explores the intersection of society, infrastructure, and urbanism in Pittsburgh. The goal is to utilize latent infrastructural logics in the city’s terrain to develop a new transit strategy and park system for its residents. The system will reflect the formerly industrial landscape of the spaces it occupies, elucidating networks and patterns invisible after years of disuse. By including transit in this hybrid urban development I hope to more deeply connect residents with the form and history of their home and provide a much-needed asset in Pittsburgh’s expansion as a contemporary metropolis. The project will provide an expanded sense of place in Pittsburgh, a physical manifestation of the city’s cultural and historical landscape.
Transit system: routes utilize existing rail infrastructure
Layers of infrastructural history
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Modified houses: artist’s residence
Culture Shock Completed August - December 2012 with Colin Haentjens Studio Urban Lab (Year 5) Professor Rami el Samahy and Eve Picker Site Brookline, Pittsburgh, PA Description Culture Shock offers a new type of housing community in Brookline and links Brookline Boulevard to the neighborhood’s extensive network of wooded hillsides. We propose altering and expanding housing options with both renovation and new construction. Shared amenities such as a common house, daycare facility, and public space are also integrated in the center of the block, providing a new hybrid semi-public space. This area, with its new path connection and recreational uses, would provide a contemporary model for community in the existing monoculture of detached housing.
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Artist’s residence
Common house New townhouses
‘Playhouse’
Garden residence
Daycare
Divided suburban houses
Building modifications & new construction
Bike/Pedestrian Path
Terraces
Planting variation
Courtyards Bioswale
Landscape strategies
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Hillside townhouses
Gardener’s residence
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Common house
Existing housing sizes
Convert to duplex
New construction
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Geometry, indexing, and tether points
In(Klein) Completed January - April 2012 with Joe Colarusso, Michael Jeffers and Anna Rosenblum Site Frame Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA Description In(Klein) is a site-specific installation exploring complex geometry through digital fabrication. A mรถbius strip is an example of a Klein surface: it is closed and non-orientable, meaning it has no determinate inside or outside. We built a room-sized mรถbius from 486 unique CNCcut PETG triangles, suspending them from the ceiling with fishing line. The resultant construction defied a simple understanding of space and provided an ambiguous sense of enclosure. Winners of the Frame Gallery Grant.
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Surface geometry test
Structure and assembly test model
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Party Wall Rowhouses Completed Studio Professor Site Description
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August - September 2011 Study Abroad (Year 4) Courtney D. Coyne Jensen Holmen, Copenhagen, DK Located in Copenhagen’s developing inner harbor, the project is comprised of twelve attached townhouses. The staggered units provide for indoor connections between neighbors, fostering a sense of community rather than one of division and privacy. These offsets also provide for shading and weather protection over the front door and a visually private but connected upper terrace.
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South Side Ferry Terminal Completed Studio Professor Site Description
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South Side Works entrance
January - May 2011 Advanced Construction (Year 3) Freddie Croce South Side Works, Pittsburgh, PA This terminal is designed for a new water taxi service to operate on Pittsburgh’s rivers. The water taxi system would provide lowvolume transportation for daily commuters as well as high-volume transportation for sporting and special events. The terminal building consists of a wide glass concourse stepping down to the water and a narrow concrete bar containing support spaces. The public waiting area is terraced following the reshaped landscape, allowing views out to the dock and boats from anywhere inside. The spaceframe roof construction provides structure for a suspended cable-net curtain wall, providing visual access from inside and out.
Site plan
Roof detail
Sectional model
NS section
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Final model
Frick Park Environmental Center Completed Studio Professor Site Description
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August - December 2010 Site (Year 3) Takako Tajima and Christine Brill Frick Park, Pittsburgh, PA A portion of the park is a post-industrial site where slag (a byproduct of steel production) was dumped for many years, creating an artificial landscape. The project straddles the border of slag and forest environments, offering an opportunity to compare conditions on either side. A variety of indoor and outdoor classrooms and exhibition spaces are arranged along a vertical datum extending from the slag into the forest, hovering on a steel frame. This subtle shift focuses the visitors attention towards the ground, and the terraced classrooms allow one to physically access the terrain below. The structure follows a depression in the land and culminates in a view of Homestead and the Monongahela Valley.
Site plan
Study model
Sketches
NS section
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NS section
Chicago Symphony Outreach Center Completed Studio Professor Site Description
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March - May 2010 Materials (Year 2) Mick McNutt The Loop, Chicago, IL This annex to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s current facilities is intended to house a new education and outreach branch of the organization. The building requires a performance space, classrooms, a library, various gathering spaces, and a restaurant. Total area of the project’s program is around 30,000 sq. ft. As one ascends my building, each floor gets smaller to provide roof terraces for outdoor gathering. The building is wrapped in a polycarbonate skin on the street facades to help block noise from the street and L Train. The skin wraps inside to excite the main stair, and an opening is cut for views from the concert hall.
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Hand Drawings Completed Course Professor Site Description
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September 2008 - December 2011 Various drawing classes, self-guided Doug Cooper, Sarah Ruck Pittsburgh, PA / Copenhagen, DK Various drawings completed for courses at Carnegie Mellon University and the Danish Institute for Study Abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Wall section, Peter Zumthor’s Kunsthaus Bregenz
Serial vision, Copenhagen, DK
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Helsinki, FI
Stockholm, SE
Randers, DK
Pittsburgh, PA
Pittsburgh, PA
Pittsburgh, PA
Copenhagen, DK
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Plaster 3D Print Twist 1
Fabrication Completed Course Professor Site Description
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December 2009 - May 2011 Digital Tooling (Year 3), Parametric Fabrication (Year 3), self-guided Zach Ali (Digital Tooling) Jeremy Ficca (Parametric Fabrication) dFab Lab, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA and Ithaca, NY Various physical projects undertaken during my time at Carnegie Mellon. Digital Tooling and Parametric Fabrication were elective courses introducing us to tools in Carnegie Mellon’s Digital Fabrication Lab, including paremetric design software, 3D printers, laser cutters, and 3and 4-axis CNC routers. The lamp was a self-guided project and a few duplicates were made by hand.
Louver Lamp
4-axis CNC Twist 2
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BIG BOX Store Completed February - May 2010 with Shawn Cencer, Zach Cohen, Alex Greenhut, Fatima Kanchwala, Paul Kim, and Hubert Li Course Storefront Project (Year 2) Professor Pablo Garcia and Jon Rubin Site East Liberty, Pittsburgh, PA Description We were given access to an empty storefront on Penn Avenue in which we were to construct a low-budget installation related to issues occurring in the neighborhood. With new development in the area and a new Target store on the way, we modeled our construction on such a “Big Box” store. However, the interior of our storefront was constructed entirely of reused cardboard boxes. I worked with a smaller group of students to model the checkout counter as well as create a cardboard lamp “product” for our store.
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Cycology Completed Course Professor Site Description
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March - May 2012 with Joe Dziekan City as Landscape (Year 4) Jonathan Kline East End, Pittsburgh, PA Cycology is a proposal for new bicycle infrastructure connecting Oakland, Shadyside, Bloomfield, Lawrenceville, and the Strip District. Cycology calls for bicycle-priority shared streets as well as green infrastructure in the form of streets converted for pedestrian- and bicycle-use only. The cycle tracks are intended to follow the path of least resistance, reflecting the way an experienced cyclist navigates the city by myriad paths and modes.
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Lane configurations
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Liberty & Pearl, Bloomfield
Parking lot converted to park
Landscaped bicycle/pedestrian street
Integrated and evolving systems
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Grant Street entrance
401 Grant Street Completed Studio Professor Site Description
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January - May 2012 Systems Integration (Year 4) Steve Quick, FAIA Central Business District, Pittsburgh, PA 401 Grant is a 23-floor office tower for Downtown Pittsburgh including public open space and ground floor retail. The building offers a modern collonade opposite the City-County Building, as well as a terraced urban park above service and parking entrances. The envelope is comprised of a double-facade system, allowing for passive conditioning, ventilation and improved insulation. Small ‘balconies’ project into the interstitial space, providing views out and acting as shading on highly exposed parts of the facade. The balconies provide views down to the street, activating the building in response to its bustling context.
View from Oxford Centre, Fourth and Grant
Roof
Park Terrace
Ref. Ceiling
Lobby
Typ. Lower
Parking 1
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Passive ventilation
Active ventilation
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Heat pump/geothermal
SW
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NE
NW
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Assembly diagram
Watson Top Completed Course Professor Site Description
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August - December 2012 with Joe Colarusso, Henry Glennon, Michael Lynes and Dmitriy Yakubov Issues of Practice (Year 5) John Folan Uptown, Pittsburgh, PA We developed Watson Top for ACTION Housing, a non-profit organization devoted to providing quality housing, services, and opportunity in Pittsburgh. Our goal is to provide Uptown with a valuable public amenity: high-足quality public gathering space. The intervention will provide both new and current residents with a place to meet and expand investment in the neighborhood. This intervention is a pilot project and could be implemented further along Watson Street or on other tertiary streets. Quality street infrastructure in conjunction with other ACTION projects will serve to draw additional development to Uptown, increasing residential density and bringing new life to the community. View full document: issuu.com/liamlowe/docs/watson_top_final
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