lucca townsend 1
SELECTED PROJECTS 1. wilderness urbanisms
An architectural narrative of site, house, and detail that plays with the edges of reality
2. the modern brothel
A response to the Boston Seaport redevelopment with clients chosen from Craiglist personal ads
3. granary in barragan-land
A cathedral to grain on the site of Luis Barragan’s youth
4. imaginary landscape in the sky: Aerial sculpture suspended over the Boston Greenway
5. a triptych on erotic ri(gh)t(e)s: Papers on utopian eroticism
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wilderness urbanisms
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Nine hands created the land of Wilderness Urbanism. A giant collaged map of this land was divided amongst us as 16�x16� squares. We each created a site from this parcel of land, later to design a house upon, and a detail within. Along the way we reacted to each other, a client, our changing selves, and a degree of the unknown.
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Top row: site Middle row: house Bottom row: detail Left column: plans Middle column: models Right column: sections 8
THE 9-SQUARE All work was created within a 16” by 16” square, when presented, these works were curated on the wall in a 9x9 grid.
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Animation was an integral part of the class throughout, for the finale, I projected an animation over plans, sections, and models. Together the projection, 2d, and 3d work told the story of SITE, HOUSE, and DETAIL in three acts. The animation would interact with each square, so that nine little films moved around on the wall. Between acts, it would break from the ninesquare and one moving image would cover all still work.
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THE SITE
From a collaged cardboard square arose a foreign land. The lines of the sacred original traced and retraced, thought and rethought. Cuts in the paper extruded to glass walls in a wax sea. Buildings grew and fell.
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THE SITE A girl in red boots traversed the land. I found her while animating. Collage becoming a way of thinking, designing, and understanding - infiltrated my four dimensional work. Animations were created using Maya, Cinema 4d, Rhino, clay, drawing, watercolor, imovie, Aftereffects, Photoshop, and were derived from sketches.
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THE SITE
PLAN
Projected on...
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MODEL
SECTION
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THE SITE THE CITY Buildings rest on piles that pierce the underworld. People of the past built massive glass walls in the sea to protect the citizens from nightmares and occassional tsunamis.
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THE HOUSE At a low spot in the terrain, there are cuts in the land through which waste water is filtered into the underworld. The infinitely thin surface gains a thickness here from years of waste buildup. In this thickness, is her house. From here, the girl can pass between worlds.
SITE model: mesh land, wax sea, 3d printed buildings, plexy glass sea walls, and cardboard. 19
THE HOUSE
HOUSE PLAN Sacred Original
The plan and section - originally collaged from a set of drawings of famous built work - inspired iteration in model form.
HOUSE SECTION Sacred Original
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Bodyless, her home serves the needs of a soul‌ A mudroom houses her boots A performance room allows her to act human for the eyes of reality A waste room disposes of her excesses A resting room is last A hallway connects the four rooms This hallway is lit by a long skylight directly under a cut in the land She can watch water from the city flow past her house and into the underworld
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THE HOUSE
PLAN
Projected on...
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MODEL
SECTION
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THE HOUSE
Close ups of HOUSE model: CNCed foam, paint, and miniature prints of process drawings of the house
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THE DETAIL
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Th e flow hallw pas ay i t he s lit Th b rh e sk ous y a lo con ylig n ea cre nd g sky te f ht is c int o th light d rom on It w s eu i t r r as eal u nde rectly ins ity. cted r pir wo und o f gl ed rld er a ass by . cut fro thi in t mt sd oct he he ore lan upp dp d. S e rwo hot he rld ogr can ,m aph wa i r r tch of t or fro wa he m ter ugl the fro ies tm und mt ode he erw city lIh orl d ave , st eel eve and rm ade .
THE DETAIL
INSPIRATION
Projected on...
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MODEL
SECTION
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THE DETAIL
mirror
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mirror
glass
hallway 35
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take aways
-collaging digital and hand-made materials adds thoughtfulness, spirit, and complexity -maya, cinema4d, 3dsmax, aftereffects, claymation, premier, CNC, lasercutting leather smells horrible -to put everything inside of me into my work -to make a detail, and that I need to work more on detailing -the importance of the plan -narrative as design tool
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the modern brothel
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NEIGHBORHOOD: Fort Point, Boston
Animation Stills from a collage response to Fort Point
Downtown Boston 40
Fort Point Historic District
SITE!
proposed developm
Reaction to site in the form of animated collage
d Seaport ment 41
THE SITE
New, largewindowed residential buildings, a bit out of scale with the existing structures
Summer street The elevation of this street makes traversing Fort Point cumbersome, stairs only exist in a few locations. In terms of design, the street allows for entry-points at two levels, or the design could be used as a connector between the levels.
Neighboring historic factories repurposed as high-end lofts
SITE
SECTION
At the intersection of the old Fort Point neighborhood and the looming constructions of the new Seaport neighborhood, the site is lined by streets of different elevations. The building needs to have a powerful connecting force, both physically between streets and figuratively between neighborhoods.
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O N
TI
S E C
NEIGHBORHOOD: Fort Point, Boston
The Site
heterotopias
Mapping Fort Point I had a strange feeling of placelessness in the eerily desolate Fort Point/ Seaport area. I mapped heterotopia as a way of understanding this feeling. Types of heterotopias are designated according to Michel Foucault’s Of Other Spaces. The area was full of these such spaces: museums, convention centers (fairgrounds), museums, parking lots, court houses. Next I mapped pleasure. In order to be able to map in a concrete way, pleasure had to be separated into parts. Food/drink was mapped with white dots corresponding to yelp reviews. Beauty was denoted with lightness where art and outdoor park space resided. Places of work were shaded with black (not that I find work dis-pleasurable). Places of play were highlighted in white. Finally, the overlay of these maps gave me an idea of the centers of pleasure in the area. 44
PLEASURE
DISCONTENT
food/drink
beauty (art and outdoor space)
work
play
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Mapping and research lead me to Craigslist. By searching the personal ads with the keyword “Seaport� I could view certain wants and needs of the community. Each day I would check the listings and gather data. Eight characters based on Craiglist users became my clientele, the residents of the building. The building would take cues from the layout of the website. I struggled with how to use Architecture to define gender... visitors enter through one of three bathroom doors.
public guest private
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Having Foucault on my mind, the soulless high-rise constructions of the coming Seaport neighborhood, and the research into Craigslist personal ads, a brothel seemed the appropriate mixed-use program. At this stage in the design, the Brothel was a utopian one. The residents would support each other as a family, living communally. A large central elevator would connect each floor, becoming a vertical living room.
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Many iterations brought me to the final form of the building. I drew inspiration from the Seattle Public Library and The New Museum. While making this model - struggling with how to scale down materiality - I found the building somewhat appalling. I grew to love the grotesque nature of the building. It is like a body, strangely beautiful flaws and all.
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An exterior stairway spirals the building, an extension of the sidewalk. Pedestrians on the street can peek into windows, and out at views. This ideas plays on the voyeuristic aspect of Craiglist. The stair took shape by connecting “nodes� specific places to look in and out. The stair then shaped the floor slabs. A perforated metal skin pulls the parts together, playing with the fishnet stocking trope. Inside the building, two glass elevators serve the residents and clients. Using the elevator is like browsing on Craiglist. Stills from an animation of the elevator ride border this page from bottom to top.
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SLABS
SKIN
CIRCULATION
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9 GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHT
Roof top accessible by sidewalk stair or interior elevator
8 ENVY
“Bi or curious ladies we are a stable couple looking for a cute sexy bi or curious girl today, if you are looking for a great time nsa with a couple please come by.”
7 PRIDE
“W4Pats fan: I am a mature sexy MILF who would love to strip and pleasure patriot fans . I have a group of bruins fan who like to met before the game like last night. So much fun but the Bruin stunk. Lost 4-0. Good thing they all got off or they would have gone home miserable. Lol."
6 SLOTH
“It’s a glorious sunny Wednesday. Let’s have fun. I’ll be around all day laying in the sun.”
5 VANITY
“Sitting here naked waiting for friends to come have some fun. Come strip, join in, watch from afar.”
4 DECEPTION
“3 sexy and sensuous drag queen/TV/CD party girls. Ever fantasied about not one... not two... but THREE sexy trannies? Come through all sexy, hard-bodied men! t4m tt4m tt4mm”
3 SECRECY
"VERY discrete, versatile but not into kissing. All are welcome, married, single, men, women, etc. Special guests may receive a dinner in the nude”
2 GLUTTONY
restaurant and bar at level of summer street
1 UNCLEANLINESS
baths at level of Boston wharf rd
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PLANS
3 SECRECY
The floor is divided into a private area on the right for the client and a more public half on the left for his guests. The only place where the exterior stair can see inside is the kitchen, where the client prefers to be nude.
2 GLUTTONY
A few feet below Summer Street, visitors descend into a restaurant and bar
1 UNCLEANLINESS 60
Resident’s entrance on the lower right lead to a large bath and the resident’s elevator Three entrances into bathrooms make visitors define their gender upon entering.
8 ENVY
A wall-less space, full of sofas and carpets, gives plenty of room for the group activities that occur on this floor.
7 PRIDE
An dedicated Patriot’s fan gets her own stadium for her performances.
6 SLOTH
The client, a sun-bathing enthusiast, has a large outdoor patio that looks out at the harbor. His bed faces directly east.
5 VANITY
The exterior stair crosses through this floor, becoming a Vasari corridor with various sized windows framing views of an exhibitionist and his wall-less space. His bed and bath are elevated on a stage.
4 DECEPTION
Three transvestites live on this floor. A long runway dominates a large, wide open room with tall ceilings. Curtains separate the beds from the rest of the 61 floor, veiling those behind it as clothes veil the body.
Dyed concrete slabs make each floor visible through the steel skin facade, hinting at the life within and playing on the colors of free sexuality.
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steel skin provides support for exterior stair and clothes the building
when the skin intersects with floor slab, a clerestory window attaches to the steel
window between exterior stair and interior resident
laminated milky glass covers exterior stairway
dyed concrete floor
At intersection of stairway and floor slab, steel beam cantilevers the stair
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building usage over a day
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R1 IN CEILING W1
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W1 P1
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W1 SPACED 8’ O.C. L1
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UPLIT FRITTED GLASS EXTERIOR SKIN FACADE
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Lighting study of the bathing room
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L2
L2 IN WALL OF STAIR ABOVE
take aways: -utopian fantasies are easily corrupted by internet gathered data -to do a controversial project, plans must be explicit -adobe illustrator -making tiny floor slabs out of plaster is difficult -the importance of a precident
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granary in barragan-land
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In this studio, we studied the work of Luis Barragan and his contemporaries. We traveled to Mexico to visit the site and see the works of these artists and architects. The site was the land of the Barragan family’s hacienda, lost during the Mexican revolution. The land resides in the hilly highlands of Jalisco, near the massive lake Chapala. The climate is temperate, with hot days and cold nights. In the rainy season, water rises higher than the stone walls that delineate the land. In the dry season the land drains and becomes crisp under the high sun. The program includes an owner’s house, worker’s housing, guest houses, cows, horses, a granary, and cheese making. The models to the right show iterations of program organization inspired by the constellation of buildings on Phillip Johnson’s land. The red land represents the red soil of Jalisco. In these models, the granary repeatedly appeared as a monumental tower on the land. A beacon for the site, I decided to concentrate on this part of the program. It becomes a cathedral to grain, grain that supports the hacienda year round.
JAN
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SECTION A-A
SECTION B-B
endless rock walls
guest houses with stone wall views
road to owner’s house with original gate
cheese, near road, upwind
retention pond
anaerobic digester uses waste to create energy, placed upwind
worker’s housing at top of hill (ownership over the land)
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In Mexico, I searched for elements of “magic� a word Barragan used in his Pritzker acceptance speech. I found it in his paper staircase, in massive walls, in sharp forms, in tricks of light. The architect created deception with light, form, and orientation.
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Upon returning from Mexico, I defined magic through four terms: illusion, darkness, fantasy, and violence. Modeling each term separately, and then combining these models, I was able to model the idea of magic. An imposing task at first. The models then informed the design for the granary.
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Granaries need to satisfy three problems: how to get the grain in, how to get the grain out, and how to keep it cool. The grain enters uphill, is scooped up by a conveyor, released into storage area, sliding down the smooth interior wall. The grain can then be gathered through the door, framed by a driveway cut into the land. The grain is kept cool by being submerged in the earth. Heat is suctioned up to the top of the structure, painted black to heat up and draw hot air, and vented.
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Section of tapered box beam, tower built in vertical sections
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view from road
from beneath at door
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view from inside
top of stair
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plaster model
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3d printed model
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take aways: -multiple scales: site, building, detail -knowledge on granaries -travel experience -translating ideas into form -sustainable concepts applied to site design
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an imaginary landscape in the sky
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Hovering over the Boston Greenway in airspace previously occupied by the elevated highway, this sculpture spans 600 feet suspended from buildings. It’s form, changing with wind and light, recalls the layered past of the site and its city. Delicate yet monumental, it interrupts the hustle and bustle of downtown with a sense of calm contemplation and intangible transience. The sculpture’s soft motion of woven fiber netting recalls the ocean that once extended to the site. Three holes reference the voids of Boston’s “trimountain” used to fill in land for the growing industrial city. Colored patterning is a reminder of the lanes of
traffic that severed a city from its waterfront to accommodate the automobile. The sculpture weaves into buildings, physically reconnecting the city, utilizing the latent lateral capacity of skyscrapers. Mirroring the intent of the Greenway below, it contrasts the hard urban edges and reclaims airspace for the public. It is simultaneously a commentary on the history of cities and a celebration of current transformation. Its interconnected fiber networks are a physical manifestation of how the layers of time and human action are inextricably linked like ripples in water.
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Map of Boston’s original boundaries and the “Trimountain”
The elevated highway that once occupied this site 94
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early plan with two forms
knitting the city back together
conceptual models 96
watercolor sketch
early iterations mimicking highway lanes
highway lanes go crazy
Our design process includes digital modeling, sketching, and physical modeling. Often my three coworkers and I will each create a design in the morning, then switch models in the afternoon. The process is intimately collaborative and iterative.
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Each iteration responds to our own aesthetics, which buildings allow attachment points, constraints from our engineer, client input, color inspirations, and cost restrictions. Sometimes I’ll have an idea in a dream, or while riding my bike to work. I will then try to recreate that idea in our software as something constructible. At first, we iterate wildly, drawing anything that comes to mind. Simultaneously we research the site, and look for inspiration around us. Next we select a few directions, and finally we concentrate on bringing one design to fruition.
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We have worked with Autodesk to create a custom software that models soft bodied forms. The program allows us the model our sculptures under gravity and wind. Renders such as this allow us to see realistic density of the netting. We are currently working on installations in 5 different cities, some netted sculptures and others out of materials such as mist.
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Our engineers at ARUP work with us to create construction documents. Details like these allow the manufacturer to create our sculptures so that they withstand hurricane winds and other environmental stresses.
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attachment to building
interlocking eye splice
4-way node
sculpture net attachment to structural ropes
netting
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At night our sculptures change color slowly, becoming floating orbs of light. LED fixtures allow us to program sequences of color projection. Using specific colors can cause certain parts of the sculpture to become very bright while others fade away.
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In a collaboration with the Google Arts Team, we designed a sculpture for the 2014 TEDtalks conference on which the public could draw with light. Using mobile devices, viewers could literally paint the skies with the motion of their hands.
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take aways: • • • • • • •
designing at the urban scale experience writing a TEDtalk, and at a conference soft body modeling and animation explorations in composition and movement intensive iteration is exhausting but helpful for form finding collaborating with a close-knit group of designers is extremely fulfilling an appreciation for the geometry of netted forms and diamond patterns
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a triptych on erotic ri(gh)t(e)s
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Three papers on erotic rights. That was the task. To begin, let’s define erotic. And define rights. Or is it rites? Erotic: the excess or suppression of human need which by nature is transgressive or taboo. Rights: principles of entitlement outlined in the social contract The first paper was written with chalk on the city. As we discovered the writing of Foucault, Bataille, and Tschumi, we transcribed their ideas onto architecture. In this act we explored transgression and right, identity and label. The erotic evaded us. The second paper was a film that asked what is erotic? act 1: excess act 2: transgression act 3: obsession Complete with footnotes and a bibliography, the film questioned the concept of essay. Stills are laid out on the following page.
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The third paper was a triptych. Loosely based on Bosch’s Garden of Earthly delights, it concentrates on Boston’s Copley Square. The triptych explores eroticism through excess, transgression, and obsession. It explores rights in utopia and the public square. On the left door is a plan of Copley Square, Trinity Church is cut out as a rose window. The right door is the facade of the Hancock Tower. The inner left door is a Garden of Eden scene, a story of transgression and a construct of society that has defined gender for centuries. The inner right door is a section perspective of the Hancock Tower. Barbie dolls in taboo dress and positions occupy the floors. The floor sections consist of icing. The central diorama is a depiction of utopia. The buildings consist of earlobes, nostrils, and outstretched hands. Utopia resides under a bridge, referencing the arch of heaven and common homeless resting places. A knob spins the background to change the characters in the windows and the sky from day to night. A miniature swing dangles amongst billboards. The box was finished. It raised more questioned than it had answered, like a true essay. It left me asking, what is erotic architecture? Tschumi says “Architecture seems to survive in its erotic capacity only wherever it negates itself.” It wasn’t until I stood in Barragan’s Tlalpan Chapel and momentarily forgot my hunger and thirst that I thought, maybe this is erotic. If a work of architecture can strip us of human need, then indulging in such acts become excesses. Now, what did this have to do with utopia? This required defining utopia. Utopia is less like an island and more like the weather: rebellious and intangible, evoking illusion and inviting fantasy. These facets of utopia arouse critiques of what is, and what could be. Fragments of utopia are cast all over the urban landscape: the Hancock Tower illustrates transience in its transmuting, chameleon-like facade, Diller, Scofidio + Renfro master illusion in the screen-like media lab window, snow takes the city under siege, overnight a blanket covers it in a new facade. The city is forced to change. Streets become battlegrounds as drifts transgress their borders.
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OCCUPATIONAL EXPERIENCE Current Studio Echelman Brookline, Massachusetts Designing Public Spaces, Massive Aerial Installations, 3d Modeling, Creating Presentations, Discussing Ideas Current Boston Architectural College Teaching Assistant Contemporary Architecture and Sustainable Material Assemblies June - August 2014 G.H. Bruce Tensile Architecture Tucson, Arizona Designed and Built Tensile Shade Structures, Website and Book Design September 2011 - March 2012 Cicognani Kalla Architects New York, New York Hand Drafting, Computer Drafting, Model Making, 3D Rendering June - September 2012 Fail Better Farms Etna, Maine Planted and Harvested Organic Vegetables, Built Hoop House 2008-2009 May- August Levenson McDavid Architects Brooklyn, New York Computer Drafting, Material Sampling, Passive House Research, 3D Rendering 2007 - 2011 Organic Campus Montreal, Quebec President, Organized Farmers Market and CSA
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Lucca Townsend 29 Salutation Street #3 Boston, MA 02109 Lucca.Townsend@the-bac.edu 646.438.3271
EDUCATION Current Boston Architectural College Candidate for Masters of Architecture Boston, Massachusetts 2007 - 2011 McGill University Faculty of Science: Psychology, Art History Montreal, Quebec 2010 Fontainebleau School of Fine Arts Architecture Fontainebleau, France SKILLS AND INTERESTS Adobe, AutoCAD, Sketchup Rhino, Maya, Animating and 3d Modeling Sketching, Watercolor, Film Photography Model Making, Hand Modeling, CNC, 3D Printing, Lasercut Extensive Travel AWARDS AND SCHOLARSHIPS Steffian Bradley Portfolio Award Adeline Graves Fournier Sketchbook Prize
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