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01 CONFLUENCE HALL
02 VIEW LIGHT
MUSEUM OF SPATIAL ARTS. JAMES TURRELL STUDIO III COMMUNITY DINING SPACE. COBS DESIGN-BUILD. STUDIO IV
03 BEGINNINGS
SKETCHING. ACADEMIC DRAWING INTERMISSION
04 SOL LEWITT MISINTERPRETATION
SPATIAL INSTALLATION ADVANCED DIGITAL FABRICATION
Con uence Hall serves as the main community space for the Colorado Outward Bound School’s Southwest Program in Moab, UT. It is set on a site between Wingate Cliffs and the La Sal Mountains. The students, staff, and instructors use the hall for course brie ng, training, and community meals, with dormitories to the north, and the warehouse and workspaces to the south. Located on the footprint of an old double-wide trailer (that was sold to help nance the project), Con uence Hall reused the foundation, patio, and existing infrastructure to keep costs low and the construction timeline brief.
The project was designed and built in 19 weeks by a team of 27 students. The team concluded that Con uence Hall should become a communal space that allows programmatic exibility, mitigates the sun and wind, provides structural ef ciency and uses a palette of honest materials while contextually linking to the rest of the site.
Every task from graphics production and full-scale mockups to constructions documents and scheduling was divided among multiple smaller groups with 1-2 team leads. Each student was a part of three different teams with a lead role in one of them. I was a part of CDs and Rooftop Deck teams and a lead of the SIPs team.
Being a part of this Design-Build program is de nitely a period of my career to remember and to re ect back on. Apart from the obvious bene ts of learning about and working with various construction materials and tools, this program gave me an insight into the importance of tolerance and resilience in the architectural profession. From the beginning we were challenged to crystallize a single design approach from a variety of 27 students’ ideas; followed by a couple of months of re ning, testing, producing; and nally 4 weeks of hands-on construction work; all while trying to learn how to communicate effectively among such a diverse group of students, opinions, and characters.
It was a fast-paced, challenging, incredibly stressful, and the most rewarding time of my student life!
SUN & WIND MITIGATION
When considering the extreme solar and wind conditions of the site, careful mitigation techniques are required.
FLEXIBILITY
Flexibility of program through interior and exterior, allowing spaces for both intimate and communal spaces.
EFFICIENCY
Structural ef ciency allows for the delineation and sequencing of space, while saving material costs.
CONFLUENCE HALL AS A LINK
The linear massing of the building serves as a gathering point for the school, strengthening the connection between live and work.
NATURAL & CONTROLLED
Carefully controlled light blocks direct sunlight, while also producing an atmospheric quality in the space .
REFLECT NATURE OF PLACE
Material selection will re ect the nature of Moab, while also re ecting the honesty of the SWP community values.
The program is based off the live - work link, which directly relates to the dining - utility transition of the food and dining.
Thresholds within the building help de ne the program seperation, while breaking the north-south circulation path.
The circulation throughout the building begins with the western entrance, allowing access to the roof deck, while minimizing heavy circulation within the interior .
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N.T.S.
by
JAMES TURRELL
Apart from the assigned design problems such as the site constraints, a very speci c program, client’s (studio instructor) desire to design a truly articulated space have also realized, during the site analysis, that the visual in-and-out connection in various, nested, scales is a very important part of this project.
To create a space with a certain spatial quality for an artist who works with the light and studies how light may change our perception of depth I have worked through many study models in order to understand how different quality light affects different spaces.
have found the spaces created by a triangular pyramid the most appealing and decided to assign them to the exhibition part of museum’s program. After thoroughly researching the works of James Turrell, I speculated he could see these irregular spaces as an attractive challenge for his installations.
With these spatial studies, have also discovered how light can be used as a way nding device. I utilized this idea throughout my project which responded well to the initial design problem of connecting the museum to the site’s context; as well as the connection within the parts of the building; and lastly, on the smallest scale, within interior spaces.
Cascading diagrams representing the minimum space requirements (type and area) as well as the proportionality of one to another.
Site photos capturing views on the site’s approach from Pepsi Center via pedestrian bridge and towards Speer Blvd walking on Wazee Street from the 15th Street.
1420 Wynkoop St.
Denver, CO
The site is located along Cherry Creek between Wazee and Wynkoop Streets. It is surrounded by three main cultural districts: entertainment (Coors Field, Pepsi Center, Elitch Gardens); educational (Auraria Campus); and arts (MCA, Denver Art Museum, Clifford Still, Denver Performing Arts Center, etc.)
Site’s forces addressing visual and physical approach:
- Viewports. Site’s distinct location promotes in and out visibility: Pepsi Center and Speer Blvd. to north west side of the site; Auraria Campus and Speer Blvd. to south west side of the site.
- Access Nodes. Concentration of pedestrian traf c on north side of the site - main access point. Less congested foot traf c on Wazee St. from the 15th Street (south side of the site) - secondary access point. Alley access - tertiary entry (service entry).
Sequence of spaces rearranged from the most common ( rst approach - public, following - exhibition, and administrative - ‘back of the house’) to the organization where exhibition spaces placed in the ‘front of the house’ where building mass is extended over the edges of the site to draw attention from the 15th Street approach.
To better understand and accommodate for the work of James Turrell a series of spatial studies involving light were completed. In this process, it was discovered how light can be used as a ‘way- nding’ device.
Viewports and buildings across the creek imply a ‘blind’ spot - an area of the site that is not visible from the identi ed earlier viewports.
Entry edges are manipulated to address foot traf c.
‘Blind’ spot is re ected vertically for viewing opportunities from the adjacent buildings (east side).
Corners are extended over the edges of the site to allow visibility from the 15th Street.
‘Blind’ spot is subtracted from the overall mass.
South ‘wing’ of the building is re ected and stretched to the west edge of the site, which addresses heavily vehicle traveled Wazee Street and creates a buffer zone between creek’s path and the building and allows visual connection to the courtyard.
Both ‘wings’ of the building then extended to further connect to the lower level of creek’s bicycle and pedestrian paths.
‘Wings’ extensions wrapped in a way that emphasizes the courtyard.
The overlap of the two ‘wings’ happens on the north side of the site which responds to the main access node (see site analysis), and that is where lobby and main staircase are placed.
Color-coded ‘viewports’ indicate how light is used to visually connect two wings of the museum. The openings are organized in such way where a person standing on the ground level of the public space would have a brief ‘preview’ of what comes next - a light gallery on the second level.
NORTH WEST PERSPECTIVE SECTION
SCALE 1/16” = 1’- 0” NORTH
strongly believe in the importance of an architect to have well-developed drawing skills. I was fortunate to have academic drawing as a required class in my undergraduate studies. It taught me to see an object as a whole which is harder than one might think as we all tend to concentrate on the smaller details. Working in a consistent manner, and always stepping back to ensure an even development of a drawing is the most valuable habits have learned over years of drawing.
In this section of my portfolio, I would like to share some of my favorite works; a few of them are just ten-minute sketches while others are six to eight-hour drawings.
SPATIAL INSTALLATION
WALL DRAWING #370
Sol LeWitt created a series of wall drawings with clear guidelines on how to produce each speci c drawing. These guidelines allowed people to produce the drawings without an artistic training. In some sense, Sol had made the production of art more approachable where anyone could become an artist.
In this group project, we were assigned to create a spatial installation using digital applications for a speci c space. We have chosen LeWitt’s original 1982 wall drawing #370 which included ten geometric gures (circle, triangle, square, diamond, right triangle, cross, rotated cross, rectangle, right trapezoid, and parallelogram) that were de ned by three-inch parallel bands of lines in two directions along the x - and y-axis on a at wall.
For this installation, three of the geometric shapes (triangle, diamond, and square) were projected on one side of the octagonal room which created an opportunity to explore the shapes in the third dimension along the z-axis. Numerous sketches were explored before making a nal model in Rhino.
was primarily responsible for the digital modeling, and making layouts for the prints; while other tasks were equally divided between my partner and me.
PROJECTED 2D DRAWING
One of the most challenging tasks was the assembly process, especially of the horizontal elements. It was required by the faculty not to damage any walls. After all the layouts were printed and transferred to the rigid foam sheets, all of the pieces were cut, sanded, and painted. It took three trials and failures before a non-damaging assembly system was discovered: a combination of painters tape, double-sided tape, white glue, and anchoring nails.
