Lucien C. Menair Architecture & Design
2008-2015
Architecture & Design Portfolio Purpose
This body of work represents my investigations in architecture 2008 to 2015. I intend this to be more than a simple compilation; instead it is meant to reflect an interrelated set of investigations into what architecture is and what architecture can be. Each of the projects is grouped into a theme that is broadly described in each section. Some of the projects are speculative and theory-driven in nature while others are quite practical and immediately applicable. These projects cover a wide range of scales and feasibility and it is my intention in the future to remain committed to this method of working and thinking.
All drawings & photographs in this portfolio are my own unless noted. Samples of my professional work are available upon request.
Lucien
C.
Menair
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lucien.menair@gmail.com
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(972)268-0754
Lucien C. Menair
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Architecture & Design Portfolio Contents
www.menair-design.com
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Perennial [Thesis]
08
Conduit de Seine
36
Breeze House I
55
M.O.P.A
78
Horton Plaza v3.0
86
Breeze House II
94
Quiver
100
FINAL DESIGN Added Flat Roof
al
Sign
r
we
Po d
un
Gro
Touch
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Part One Recovery of Architecture
Perennial Conduit De Seine Breeze House I
RECOVERY The first theme of this work is recovery. Architecture is undoubtedly one of man’s most enduring activities. It is a rich and diverse cultural pursuit that has and will continue to cycle and evolve. What ideas have come and gone in this long history? What has been left behind? What might be recovered from the past and applied to contemporary situations? These projects do not seek to recover any particular historical style, rather they attempt to recover (and re-purpose) some specific historical ethos or concept of architecture and architectural practice. The three projects presented attempt to leverage this idea of recovery to work on a specific contemporary concern or issue.
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Perennial Location: Yucca Mountain, Nevada, USA Thesis Section “Topologies of Exclusion” September 2014-April 2015 Advisor: Kathy Velikov Graduate
Throughout the world, territories of exclusion develop and persist. Resulting from some form of anthropogenic violence, these geographies have been determined forbidden to human passage. They have been redacted from our world. How can architecture be deployed as an agent to produce knowledge and structure relations between humans, nonhumans, territories, and environments? How can we ‘work on’ these sites deemed uninhabitable? Within the shrouded haze of the Nevada test site, the world’s largest nuclear waste repository awaits its inventory. A quarter of a mile beneath the Manhattan-sized Yucca Mountain, 100,000 tons of radioactive Uranium-238 will spread across ten square miles of subterranean tunnels should the project be approved. For the next 4.468 billion years, this waste will emit subatomic particles at nearly the speed of light, damaging to all life. How can unforeseen future generations know and understand this danger? This thesis challenges architecture and its processes to be the method of conveyance for this message. ---
Note: This project uses three discrete formats of representation to separate what is meant to represent the processes of architecture, what is meant to represent the actual architecture, and what is meant to represent the experience of architecture. Highly notational drawings and film (presented here as a filmstrip) convey site activities and processes with layered collages of render, sketch, linework, watercolor, and time lapse photography. Drawings representative of the actual architecture are paired-back simple linework drawings. These drawings mean to be schematic working drawings, but ones mostly devoid of specific detail and dimensioning. Drawings meant to convey the experience of the site make use of the large “empty render”, all sharing a fixed and relational single point perspective.
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This project involved a personal trip to the site in Nevada. For purposes of documenting the journey, a time-lapse film was made and is presented here as stills. More than simply a site visit, the trip also represents the journey any visitor would have to take along US 95, the single road that passes near Yucca Mountain and the Nevada Test Site. It is as much their potential journey as it is mine. As a precedent study of large scale earth manipulation, Michael Heizer’s Double Negative (1969) was also visited and studied in Nevada. Heizer used earth moving equipment to carve a 30 feet wide, 50 feet deep, and 1500 feet long trench in the edge of Mormon Mesa. The stark contrast of the natural organic geology and the massive, geometric, subtractive intervention provide a nearly overpowering experience for the visitor. The full film is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yuXC3QKf_I
Opposite The Journey film stills This Page Michael Heizer, Double Negative [1970]
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Opposite Geologic Survey of Yucca Mountain and vicinity [US Geological Society] Below Nevada Test Site map & proximity to Las Vegas
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Yucca Mountain is located along the southwestern edge of the Nevada Test Site. Established in 1951, this 1,360 square mile federal reservation has been home to 928 nuclear detonations and the secret activities of Area 51. With more than 15,000 protester arrests on its grounds, the Nevada Test Site has become emblematic of civilian distrust of the government. Geologically speaking, Yucca Mountain is the physical artifact of violent volcanic activity more than twelve million years ago. Its sharply defined western ridge line rises more than 1,000ft above the Yucca Flats below and is made almost entirely of volcanic deposits. Its particularly stable geologic characteristics and its location in the nearly rain-free Mojave Desert have made it a leading candidate for long term storage of nuclear waste. The project is currently on hold, pending many issues. Perhaps most important of these issues, if not most immediate, is if the Yucca Mountain project is completed, how will be warn our future selves about what is below?
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Below Plan of Yucca Mountain showing elevation contours at 40’ intervals. North and South facility entrances marked.
North Entrance South Entrance
Below Uranium 238 Bottom Schematic diagram of the nuclear waste storage facility
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Below Industrial Hazard Symbols -- International Organization for Standardization
Harvard historian Peter Galison notes that the seemingly universal “skull and crossbones” symbol can be interpreted widely differently depending on culture. For Latin American, it could symbolize the catholic holiday “Day of the Dead”. For those familiar with pirate lore, the same symbol could be a sign of buried treasure. Other warning symbols are equally or more ambiguous or simply unknown. Even written language itself could and probably will prove to be insufficient with time if it not continuously updated. Historic precedent has shown that loss of knowledge is recurring and cyclical. As communication of warning, more interesting ideas have been proposed. Michael Brill’s “Spikes Bursting Through a Grid” and “Menacing Earthwork” proposals are meant to be physically imposing and scary, warding off would-be intruders. Other suggestions range from genetically engineered blue cactus to actual human remains scattering across the surface of the site. It has been suggested to create a false myth about the site, analogous to the Egyptian curse legends designed to prevent intrusion into the tombs of the Pharaohs. Some have said the best idea is to simply do nothing, hoping against time that the site will never be discovered or otherwise intruded upon. Into Eternity director Michael Madsen contemplates this paradox, solemnly suggesting, “We must always remember -- to forget” The actual current plan, should Yucca Mountain receive its inventory, is to have a series of 25 foot tall monuments inscribed with pictographs and text in all official UN languages with smaller markers placed in the ground around the site. Throughout, the currently held symbol for radiation will mark the danger.
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Below Michael Brill Spikes Bursting Through a Grid [4 & 6] and Menacing Earthwork [5 & 7]
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Below Ise Grand Shrine early 20th century reconstruction Bottom Ise Grand Shrine workshop
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This thesis is a revisit of this conversation. How can we talk with our future descendants? How can we pass them the knowledge that we have now in unambiguous terms. This proposal argues that the process of architecture itself can be this communication device. To achieve this, the idea of cyclical construction and reconstruction must be recovered. The Ise Grand Shrine within the Mie prefecture in Japan is a Shinto temple that has been rebuilt with religious precision 61 times on 20 year cycles. This now 1200 year old embodiment of architecture has allowed every generation to develop and subsequently pass on the skills needed for its construction. Through construction and architecture, a conversation with past ancestors is opened. The shrine itself is a message transcending time. Similarly, Antoni Gaudi’s great Sagrada Familia of Barcelona has been in
Below Sagrada Familia during construction Bottom Sagrada Familia workshop with rapid prototyping technology
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near continuous construction for more than 130 years. The expert skills of masonry and advanced geometry have passed through each generation, by way of architectural construction in the relentless quest to complete the masterpiece. As technology develops it is folded into the process. Processes like rapid prototyping with 3D printers, impossible to fathom in Gaudi’s time are now being used to continue the work. Importantly, Sagrada Familia was never fully and precisely designed, even the design and architecture itself is an evolving process. Instead of a static occupier space, these projects operate dynamically through time. This thesis images another perennial construction.
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Spanning four miles along the pronounced, undulating ridge of Yucca Mountain, and rising to a maximum of 500 feet, this primitive architecture is meant to be site of ceaseless activity and habitual construction and earthwork. The massing of the architectural form provides a rigid contrasting spine to the organic, geologic form of the mountain. This vast artifice is intended to suggest the great, geologic-scale disturbance below, with the mountain itself visually folding over and “draping� the architecture. The earthwork marks the territory of the waste repository below with great quarries while providing the material for the architecture. The parametrically defined [see pages 30 & 31] detail massing of the architecture mimes a synthetic crystalline geology, reinforcing the idea of some great human intervention.
Opposite Left Earth manipulation detail view
Below Architectural detailing. Scale figure shown on top surface for reference.
Opposite Right Massing and earth manipulation
Bottom Parametric transcription of The Waste Land’s syntax and structure into architectural form. Note: This drawing has been reduced for the purposes of this book. View the full version at www.menair-design.com/perennial_transcription.pdf
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Johanesburg Lagos
Casablanca
Madrid
Algiers
Milan
Alexandria
Paris
London
Munich
Cairo
Frankfurt
Amsterdam
Istanbul
Dubai Tehran
Moscow
Karachi Mumbai
Kuala Lumpur
Jakarta
Bangkok
Singapore Guangzhou Hong Kong
Beijing
Shanghai Seoul
Tokyo
The enormous scale of the project and its subsequent need for maintenance will ensure it to be perennial with the earth and humanity. Much like the builders of Sagrada Familia and the Ise Grand Shrine, each generation of builders and architects from around the world will find honor brotherhood, and skills in making the pilgrimage to Yucca Mountain to continue the work. Through this continuous passage of tradesmen and professionals, the knowledge of the repository below will be maintained.
Rio de Janeiro
Sao Paulo Manaus
Buenos Aeries
Lima
New York City Charlotte Miami
Toronto
Atlanta
Detroit Chicago
Houston Dallas Mexico City Denver
Vancouver
Seattle
Phoenix Las Vegas Los Angeles
San Francisco
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This process of architecture and construction through time will ensure the continuity of consciousness of the dangers of Yucca Mountain. To ensure the safety of those on the site and to ensure the endurance of the project, these cyclical, generational construction periods will be brief in nature, with the site left unoccupied during the interim. During construction, activity around the site will swell. Logistical villages of temporary construction will materialize providing bases of operations for the massive effort. Construction equipment and cranes will be freighted in and erected on the site, transforming a solemn monument into a bustling city of fervorous construction.
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Material used for the construction of the architecture will be simultaneously carved from the earth in designated locations, the quarries forming vast cuts in the earth; a registration of the subsurface world. As with Michael Heizer’s Double Negative these geologic scaled artificial land forms will create a profoundly sublime experience, growing larger and deeper as time passes. The relationship of the negative space of the quarries and the positive massing of the architecture will shift over time, a visible register of the project’s endurance.
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The architecture is meant to be allegorical in nature, using its form and processes to reveal and preserve the knowledge of danger below. To define the architectural form and establish a series of episodic programs relating to time scales, cycles, and existence, a literary ally was needed. T.S. Eliot’s 434 line seminal poem The Wasteland is at once a nostalgic remembrance of the past and apprehensive consideration of the future. The poem means to mime the cyclical and confusing nature of life itself. Eliot’s structure and syntax translate directly into the form of the architecture and the themes of each of the verses becomes a specific meditation of time and place via programmatic episodes. Eliot’s necessary difficulty of language in prose becomes a necessary difficulty of architecture and experience in space and form. In addition, each episode has a specific spatial and experiential design. The architecture therefore is a programmatic procession. Verse 1 describes a barren desert with a red rock, inviting the reader to come under its shadow, which translates to approach to the site itself. Spatially, the architecture as seen from the approach operates like a long, line-like vanishing point, encouraging the visitor to move towards the horizon. Verse two serves as an entry point, “waiting for a knock at the door”, poses Eliot. In the second program of the architecture, a long descent through strata of geologic time takes the visitor millions of years into the past. The architecture falls away into a long descending ramp passing below a massive stone structure held just above but open to the sides, allowing light to penetrate far below. Eliot’s third verse describes a still solitary place with the refuse of culture disturbed only by rats from year to year. In this zone, a visitor encounters perceivable effects of nuclear waste, the blue glow of Cherenkov radiation illuminating the lowest vaults while still providing 500ft of shielding from harmful gamma radiation. The third and lowest architectural space, the vault is a large, narrow underground space which the visitor will cross on a bridge. Beneath this bridge is a pool of water designed to both shield the visitor from dangerous radiation and reflect and magnify the visible light from the Cherenkov radiation. The water filled periscopes transmit this light from the waste below. The fourth verse considers a fresh corpse and that it is a fate we all share. Within the architecture, the fourth episode is a cenotaph for the ancestors who have come before to build. As the visitor emerges from the subterranean, the ceiling above gradually ascends away before coming to a large open courtyard space, midway between the lowest portion of the architecture and the highest. Eliot’s final verse describes the last moments of the Fisher King in which he has collected fragments of the past in hopes that they might help his kingdom in the future. Analogous to this, the final program of this proposal is the fragmentarium, a continuously updated repository of language designed as a redundant backup for preserving the knowledge of danger. A last final descent brings the visitor into the spherical fragmentarium. 29
150ft
150ft
[a] descent; [b] releasing; [c] fall; [d] penetration; [e] core head and pressure chamber free; [f] retraction; [g] lift
To contain the repository of language, the perfect geometry of the sphere was chosen to promote each language as equal. Within the fragmentarium, language is continuously and physically written into the geology. A long winding spiral ramp leads the visitor eventually to the neck of the sphere and out again to the surface of the project where she can continue on to the terminus, with the Mojave desert opening all around. [See page 41]
Writing Stage
Honing Stage
I
Drilling Stage II
100 Years II
200 Years III
300 Years
III Drilling Stage I
IV
Massive but definite, the project aims to produce a primitive form of architecture and sequence of programs that can bridge the gap between present and future, while serving as a place of connection for man. This bridge provides an experience of connection to scales of time and space not ordinarily perceived while its logics of constructions embed and preserve the knowledge of the hazard below. The builders will hold the knowledge for future generations of the dangers of Yucca Mountain.
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Below Partial Building Section Note: This drawing has been reduced for the purposes of this book. View the full version at www.menair-design.com/perennial_section.pdf
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There is a shadow under this red rock -T.S.Eliot
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Conduit de Seine Recovering the speed and rationality of modernity
Location: Seine-Arche, Nanterre, France Studio Section “Propositions” September 2014-December 2014 Instructor: Clement Blanchet & Dan McTavish Graduate
The “island” of the La Defense district of Paris was originally conceived to house office programs too large to be accommodated in the historic center. Now, 50 years after its initial conception, this district is in a strong position. La Defense is a strategic reserve that has so far kept Paris intact; each tower built there ‘spares’ the center an invasion. It is also a privileged expansion zone that enables the city - even the country - to modernize itself constantly, allowing the city and national governing bodies to make the tactical adjustment necessary to compete with other world capitals such as London, New York, and Tokyo. La Defense is a theater of progress. It appears that the La Defense Central Business District (CBD), through its historical genealogy, has repeatedly deviated from its original plan and idea. While the original functional conception of La Defense continues to be a real force today, the modernity conceived of and proposed at its conception has never been fully accepted and/or promoted. Generally within French society La Defense is described as a “failure”. La Defense is emblematic of the opening up of a unreserved French modernity and today presents perplexity as to its results. The difference between the visionary and the pragmatic now makes La Defense particularly vulnerable. Which modernity should we recover today? This project looks forward, anticipating the future of La Defense, possible coming roles of architects, and the idea of work and business itself.
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Below Gustav Caillebotte Paris Street, Rainy Day [1876] Bottom La Defense master plan 1955
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Opposite La Defense predicted future expansion, 2014
Gustave Caillebotte’s “Paris Street, Rainy Day� of 1877 celebrated a new ideal of Parisian street life. This street life being characterized by open space and a newly empowered middle class occupying the heart of the city, a condition unlike most European cities of the time. An early example of Urban Renewal, the Haussmann plan that enabled this new urban utopia was totalizing and authoritarian, leaving a profound spatial, social, and cultural effect on the city of Paris. The avenues of the Haussmann plan became sectionally intricate, stacking systems of infrastructure beneath the surface and establishing a relationship of above and below. Early plans for a business district at La Defense propagated the Haussmann axis indefinitely. When a more realistic plan was eventually accepted in the middle of the 20th century, the design was modern but the organization remained true to the Grand Axe. La Defense continues the legacy of the Haussmann plan through its densely sectional infrastructure on axis with Historic Paris. Initial conceptual studies showed a rational and rigid master plan for the district; a clean sheet design that was completely modern and authoritative. However, as the district developed, organic growth began to subvert the initial plan. Companies were unwilling to conform to the pre-configured building forms and EPAD was forced to relinquish some control over the district. By the 1980s, the hierarchy of the central axis became questionable. Building form and typology had become far different than the original plan as corporatism continued to leverage the district. The current, and especially future, La Defense has a nearly indecipherable, organic formation, yet the infrastructural design still belongs to the 1950s. In most areas of the district, the central axis has little or no influence on space and organization.
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The once golden infrastructural has lost its power and significance within La Defense. The under-deck of the district is now characterized by vast voids and junkspace left over from construction and abandoned projects. The historical relationship of above and below has been reversed; the bustling street life now largely exists underground with little need to traverse the various escalators and stairs to the surface. So how can an infrastructure organize space in an organic territory? Experiments from the 1960s already acknowledged problems with La Defense, as the territory began to transform from a master plan to a field condition.
Opposite Top Void spaces within the deck
Below Projected deck expansion
Opposite Bottom Surface vs subterranean
What if we begin to expand the deck according to its own embedded logic as a way of reconciling this unforeseen growth? The centralized deck sprouts appendages attempting to connect all of the buildings in La Defense back to the core. The modernist design grows further and further from the hierarchal ideal of the Parisian avenue. Eventually, the power and authority of the deck to govern the space within its own territory is completely lost as components of the deck become more and more remote from the central space. The modernist idea of infrastructure is insufficient for now and for the future.
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Opposite Major Data Center & Connected Region Below Seine-Arche Region with latency time in microseconds
Response Time: 4.9 μs 9.8 μs
14.7 μs 19.6 μs 24.5 μs 29.4 μs 34.3 μs 39.2 μs 44.1 μs
Instead of a reconfiguration, addition, or modification of the modernist infrastructure, a new infrastructure for a new era is needed. An infrastructure that can anticipate the current charge of work on a global scale. A high resolution scale where a 1 millisecond advantage for a keen trader can mean €100 million per year. La Defense, as a modernist construct, placed emphasis on modernist notions of work; the office building, the configurable floor plan (inevitably a cubicle), and the office worker. But this modernist notion of work has already begun to change, and may even be no longer viable in the future. The culture of the entrepreneur and the free lancer needs no fixed office towers. A curbside cafe or a bench in the park is increasingly the domain of work today.
To serve a new notion of work, a new infrastructural system is required. What if we reprogram the infrastructure for a new form of organizational logic? Breaking the buildings away from their infrastructural systems allows them to be considered separately from their current urban form. An organization that is divorced from existing logic enables new relationships and opportunities while anticipating societal change. A new net of infrastructure can be conceptualized, detached from the old. The current condition of La Defense so little to no internal organization and its relationship to neighboring developments is fractured by an infrastructure never intended to resolve the field condition of the district. Starting from the voids of residual or otherwise underutilized space below the deck, a new infrastructure can emerge. 43
Opposite Exploded Schematic System Design Below Major Data Center Section
FIBEROPTIC CABLES
INDEX OF REFRACTION: 1.47 LATENCY: 4.9 Îźs/KM SPEED: 300,000 KM/s
NETWORK SERVER STACKS
SERVERS: 500,000 TRANSFER SPEED: 100 PB/S TOTAL STORAGE: 500 PB ENERGY CONSUMPTION: 260 MW
A simple and efficient logic based on the physical properties of a high speed fiber-optic network is overlayed on the territory. A spine is then established serving to connect all lines to a main hub. A system of retrofits to existing structures is project, organizing the region onto a new system. The once balanced relationship of above and below is restored, with the underground again enabling a powerful new above ground ideal. The previous junkspace of the deck is transformed into a vastly powerful productive network of highspeed network servers and data storage facilities. La Defense is transformed into a major data center. How does this new concept of infrastructural organization and logic manifest itself spatially? How can an infrastructure produce new urban relationship and conditions? How can we recover the promise of the golden infrastructure?
HVAC Sewer
1 Tb/s Fiberoptic Electrical Water Supply
Finish ceiling Floor anchor Finish floor Finish floor risers Precast hollow core concrete slab Curtain wall mullions Horizontal structure Finish glazing Vertical structure
An infrastructural system, especially one fundamentally based upon fiber optic telecommunications, needs to begin with an emphasis on efficiency and speed. Starting from the simplest prototypical form, a linear package is derived by combining necessary infrastructural elements such as fiber optics, power, water, HVAC, and sewer. The package is then multiplied and stacked vertically to achieve the smallest possible footprint while simultaneously increasing the total density of systems, allowing vertical co-location along the most advantageous points in the system. These stacked systems are then distributed across a narrow field to establish a territory of five meters between package lines. A modular component system of standard steel box section allow for infrastructural flows within a self supporting space frame. A plug-in system of prefabricated hollow core concrete decks within the space frame allow for a diverse range of potential uses within the five meter territory. 45
Functioning as tools of the entrepreneurial subject, these infrastructural conduits reconfigure the existing urban fabric along corridors of data while introducing new formats of inhabitation and more public access to resources previously only available at the corporate level. Robot-equipped maker spaces exist adjacent to tax-incentivized trade zones, hostels, graphic design offices, luxury apartments, or vast supercomputing arrays. Close to the source at La Defense, specialized freelance traders known as quant jocks use the fastest possible connections available to exploit fleeting anomalies of the stock market. The deck is charged with a bustling, frenetic pedestrian activity like a trading room floor. Residential territories of the city become highly liquid -- developers begin to organize space according to logics of speed and bandwidth. Improvised connections contribute to hardlined urbanism. Within a public park, the conduit tunnels its infrastructure underground, sprouting a field of network points along the surface. At the periphery, the conduit masquerades playfully as an object of public use and recreation; hanging vegetable gardens, rock climbing walls, or simply a squash court wall or canvas of the graffiti artist. Where once narrow ribbon farms fed into the Seine for conveyance to market, logistics farmers now orient their plots to the conduit using automating farming equipment. A distributed commodities market allows for a more active engagement into the economics of the harvest. The new, overlaid district of Conduit-de-Seine recovers the speed, the rationality, the universal opportunity, and the fervor promised by modernism.
Below Luxury apartment space
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Below Ground level interaction
Below Server stack space
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Below Residential Relationship
Below Park/Recreation Relationship
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Breeze House I Intergenerational Living
Location: Austin, Texas, USA Studio Section “Dog Yard� January 2014-May 2014 Instructor: Mick Kennedy Graduate With Jeni Nguyen & Lauren Tucker
Originating in Southern California in the 1920s, courtyard housing is a typology of medium-density housing in which units share and enclose a common outdoor space. The building form creates a buffer between busy streets and a sanctuary-like inner space from which the units are entered. While popular for a short time, this type of housing largely fell out of favor as other housing prototypes (like the dingbat) rose to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. The dog-run (or dogtrot) house is a unique, vernacular house design of the rural southern United States that became popular the 19th and early 20th century. The basic configuration of the house separates two living spaces with a central breezeway. Dynamically, as air moves through this opening, it creates pressure differentials in the interior spaces causing natural circulation and ventilation. Combined with a large, overhanging roof, the dog run house allowed for tolerable living conditions in the harsh summers of the American south in the time before mechanical cooling systems. For the city of Austin, Texas, a recovery of these concepts is timely. Austin is a rapidly growing city that is finding its urbanity as it goes. A product of the south, Austin has predominantly grown as a low-density city with a high percentage of single-family housing residential neighborhoods. With population exploding over the last decade, the city is struggling to meet housing demands while balancing a desire for a more sustainable future. This project proposes a hybrid of courtyard housing and the dog run house; the dogyard. Courtyard housing blurs the notion of house and housing, allowing for a typology that can integrate more effectively into the existing low-density fabric. Simultaneously, adopting characteristics of the dog run house allows for more efficient units that rely less on mechanical systems and create natural, inviting environments for residents.
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Photo by Cory Heck 55
The city of Austin could be succinctly described as a city of music and a city of food. The Breeze House is situated in a historically Hispanic, residential part of town and draws from this urban topography and communal culture to establish its program. In the Breeze House the focus of the program is to encourage this communal exchange by emphasizing the experience of food; cooking, preparing, sharing, and eating. This is accomplished in the project by multiple scales of analogous spaces, thresholds, and programmatic features, all of which are designed to create unique and experiential encounters. The core programmatic components of the Breeze House are the living spaces themselves. These spaces are designed to suit extended intergenerational living and establish familial relationships across the site. That relationship takes the form of a main living space, the Casa Grande, containing a large kitchen and celebrated dining room, and a separate but adjacent smaller unit, the Casita, sharing an entry courtyard and the large dining space. This architecture enables family like relationships even for those who perhaps aren’t related by blood; for example an elderly couple living adjacent to a young family who are not blood family, yet create an embedded support system. Extending out from the unit, but carrying similar programmatic intentions and analogous spaces are the courtyards of the Breeze House. These courtyards serve to both join together the living spaces around common and shared space, but also provide the same types of spatial and communal opportunities of the Casa Grande-Casita relationship. The small “neighborhood” courtyards anchor the residential units to a space suitable to spontaneous and moderately sized gatherings, such as a small BBQ or a child’s birthday party. Through a sequence of thresholds, one can then cross into the large central courtyard which is large enough to host a variety of events such as family reunions or weddings. Programmatically, this large space is designed to be flexible with both hard and soft surfaces, enabling sports to be played on the large lawn as well as large seating areas to be deployed for large events.
Peripherally, the western and northern faces of the Breeze House are programmed to serve the central programmatic intentions. An existing alley on the western edge of the building enables a service zone, including parking, that also serves to buffer the main living spaces from potentially bothersome city utilities like garbage trucks. The Northern face of the building seeks to take advantage of the city’s infrastructural growth, and provides a retail face as well as denser living spaces for potential municipal light rail commuters, while still incorporating communally engaging architecture.
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DOMESTIC STRATEGY 59
UNIT TYPOLOGIES 1200 SQ FT
SCALE: 1/4” = 1’
525 SQ FT
SCALE: 1/4” = 1’
900 SQ FT
SCALE: 1/4” = 1’
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580 SQ FT
SCALE: 1/4” = 1’
SCALE: 1/4” = 1’
WET SUBFLOOR
WET WALL
WET WALL
MECHANICAL CHASE
WET SUBFLOOR
UNIT UTILITIES SCALE: 1/4” = 1’63
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
UPPER FLOOR PLAN 65
MEP LOOP I
MEP DISTRIBUTION CORE COOLING FOUNTAIN
COOLING FOUNTAIN
MEP DISTRIBUTION CORE MEP DISTRIBUTION CORE MEP LOOP III
MEP LOOP II
MEP DISTRIBUTION CORE
SCALE: 1/16” = 1’
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MEP DISTRIBUTION CORE
COOLING FOUNTAIN
MEP LOOP IV
MEP LOOP V
SCALE: 1/16” = 1’
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SITE MEP
FAN COIL UNIT
LOCAL AHU SUPPLY
AHU RETURN
DISTRIBUTION BLOCK HOT WATER SUPPLY
CHILLED WATER SUPPLY
COOLING FOUNTAIN
BOILER CHILLER
SPENT COOLING WATER
RETURNED COOLING WATER
NOT TO SCALE
MEP LOOP 67
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SATURDAY AUGUST 8TH 2015 5:36PM CT
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Part Two Urban Investigations
Horton Plaza Museo dell’ Opera del Duomo
MAGNETIC The projects in this section are accessory spaces co-located near major pedestrian destinations within urban areas. Instead of competing with these larger zones of inhabitation and activity, they seek to enhance and compliment the central draw. In doing so, a more rich experience for visitors can be produced, encouraging continued or even expanded influence of the space. In a way, these projects seek to produce a kind of companion urbanism.
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Museo dell’ Opera del Duomo Location: Florence, Italy Studio Section “Urban Design Studio” January 2010-May 2010 Instructor: Steven Quevedo Undergraduate
The city of Florence, Italy, is dominated by a single architectural feature, the Dome of Filippo Brunelleschi. The 376-foot-tall masterpiece of architecture and engineering draws more than ten million visitors per year, making it one of the most visited single locations in the world. Museo dell’Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore (M.O.P.A.) is the museum dedicated to the construction of the “Duomo”. This project expands the existing museum to feature more exhibits including special galleries for the Doors of Paradise, a scale replica of the cathedral itself, a sectional and interactive model of Filippo Brunelleschi’s dome, a gallery for the history of the perspective, and a theater for conferences, as well as additional office space for staff and curators. The building is situated on the eastern corner of Piazza Del Duomo, an urban area of Florence that dates back to Roman times. The objective of the addition, then, is to create a unique museum experience while preserving the tradition and cultural heritage of Florence and working between scales of architecture and human activity. The process of design involved various formats of 2d techniques. Early collage studies helped to form the program and overally layout of the building. In elevation, the essential concept was pulling the down the tradtional Florence terracotta roof tiling onto the face of the building. This in addition to a continuous cornice line allows for a degree of contextual relationships with the old city while anchoring the corner of the block with a strong mass. Interior spaces were developed by hand rendering with en emphasis placed on sectional experience and overlapping interior volumes.
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Opposite Top Collage conceptual study
Below Sectional study
Opposite Bottom Facade studies
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Below Floor Plans
Opposite Contextual and Detail Models
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Horton Plaza v3.0 Polykinetic Cloud
Location: San Diego, California, USA Studio Section “Studio 411” September 2011-October 2011 Instructor: John P. Maruszczak Undergraduate
Horton Plaza is a landmark outdoor shopping center in downtown San Diego California. Adjacent to the historic Gas Lamp district, Horton Plaza is strongly positioned as an urban magnet for residents and tourists alike. This project is a proposal for a new park and entrance for Horton Plaza that attempts to leverage San Diego’s unique climate, Horton Plaza’s interior geometry, and access to public transportation to create a dynamic environment for leisure. As a secondary space to the shopping center, this park means to complement the main attraction rather than compete with it. Programmatically it is simple; a modified topography acting as both recreation space and seating, and a large dynamic sunshade, formed with a tensile structure and membrane.
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Human Movement Bus Stop
The geometry of the new Horton Plaza park is produced by analyzing the movement of pedestrians in the area as well as the interior geometry of the shopping center. The curvilinear geometry of the interior of Horton Plaza forms a negative ‘cut’ in the large mass of the architecture, allowing for an open air experience within the center of a city block. This negative space is extracted and projected onto the park area, but inverted to construct positive forms. Taking into account all of the nearby bus stops, the predicted human movements across the site allow modify the positive forms. In doing so, a more efficient space is created that allows for fluid movement across the site and into Horton Plaza. From these two main principals, the site elements are composed and developed, hybridizing the exterior and interior of Horton Plaza. 89
1 Structural Frame
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Membrane
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Folded Topography
Extruded Ground
Topography Structure
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Below Sunshade and leisure space Bottom Existing structure can be used for projections
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Part Three Specifics
Breeze House II Quiver + Touch Representation
PROTOTYPE It is often difficult to focus on and develop single ideas within architecture school. Most frequently, these ideas remain at a schematic level and are rolled into larger projects as conceptual details or accessory thoughts. The projects in this section take small concepts and develop them to a working prototypical level. To demonstrate this working intent, these projects leave the final form or application on the conceptual level but mean to provide a scalable framework for future development.
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Breeze House II Aero-tuned Form
Location: Austin, Texas, USA Seminar “Air and Architecture” March 2014-May 2014 Instructor: Lars Junghans with Dan Sebaldt Graduate
The ‘Dog Run’ housing typology is one that was developed in the southern United States to combat hot summers. The arrangement of the spaces of house create two separate living areas with an open breezeway in between. Typically dividing the kitchen from the main living space, the breezeway functioned to not only provide a cool, covered outdoor space, but actually to function as an aerodynamic venturi to encourage natural ventilation inside of the house. The goal of this project was to study and benchmark the standard vernacular form of the house with advanced computer fluids modeling and then develop the basic configuration into a more efficient form for improving ventilation. A set goal of around 0.60 m/s interior air speed was achieved by manipulating the size, shape, and location of openings on the leeward, windward, and sides of the house through many iterations of the design. Concepts learned from Breeze House II were applied on a larger scale to Breeze House I to improve site ventilation.
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Below Base Analysis
Opposite Final design visualizations
Below Final design iteration
BASE Side Openings
FINAL DESIGN Added Flat Roof
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Quiver + Touch Intersecting technology and Architecture
Seminars “Responsive Surfaces” & “Touch” January 2015-May 2015 Instructor: Malcolm McCullough & Sean Ahlquist with Dan Fougere & Kristen Gandy Graduate
Haptics is a form of perception that literally means “to grasp.” We use our fingers to explore familiar and unfamiliar surfaces and objects. Increasingly, this type of perception is being used to engage us with our technology. However, this form of tactile-feedback has been almost exclusively the domain of portable technology. How might haptics apply to architecture? Buildings have often been cited as influencing moods, visual perceptions, and auditory perceptions. Any building can be touched, but what would it mean if a building reacted to this touch in some tangible way? These projects explore the interactions that can be produced by haptic sensoral feedback and the role that the sense of touch could play in an architectural environment. The two projects presented here are not on the building scale, but rather on the table-top installation scale. It is the intention that both are scalable. Both of them make use of arduino microprocessors and Java script. The electronic systems were designed to be largely unseen. In addition to sensor integration, these projects are also an exploration of small scale fabrication technology. Various computer-aided tools were used to produce the final forms including laser cutters and a CNC knitting machine. Conventional materials and fabrication techniques were also used to produce the final pieces at reasonable cost. Through these investigations, the question of whether the future visitor of architecture might instead become a user of architecture became interesting. While the intention is not to imagine a future of completely fluid architecture, it does question the future roles of the architect.
Quiver a component system and surface that responds to touch in a delicate, sensitive way. Can an architectural surface like to be touched? This project uses one motor and one servo per panel to respond to the touch of a person by vibrating and slightly twisting, as if it were overstimulated. The motor uses an offset eccentric weight to facilitate vibration and the servo will control rotation. The sensing system is composed of aluminum foil that responds to differences in capacitance caused by human touch. Sensor input from each of the ten panels directs the servo motor and vibration motor to activate. Despite all of the panels sharing similar components and code, each reacted slightly differently, imbuing the project with an un-machine like character. Human reaction to the immediacy of the movement was reflexive, with most people quickly pulling their hands away. A video is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_pVkJSRq_Q 101
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Touch is a prototype installation that reacts to gesture and pressure by illuminating different colors when interacted with. The research and development of this project was directed at children with autism. Autistic children often have poor motor skills stemming from under-stimulated senses. By providing immediate, tangible feedback via the bright illumination, a child can develop finer motor skills by more carefully calibrated and controlled touching and grasping. The expansion of this prototype into an architectural-scale environment could produce a rich, engaging experience for children suffering from under-stimulation. In order to facilitate greater flexibility and easier scaling of this research, the prototype was developed integrating much of the technology into the textile skin. It has been shown that electric signals passed through conductive yarn will vary in voltage depending on the amount the material is stretched. From this voltage differential, a control system was written calibrating specific “stretch� values to color outputs. A video is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hViaGxyDaqs
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Architecture & Design Portfolio Image Sources
All images no rights reserved* 01
https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/atomic_tests_nevada/
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http://nevada.usgs.gov/doe_nv/ymp_text.htm
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium
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https://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/
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http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/hazard-symbols-13405505.jpg
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http://www.arch.ksu.edu/seamon/Brill.htm
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http://www.arch.ksu.edu/seamon/Brill.htm
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http://www.arch.ksu.edu/seamon/Brill.htm
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http://www.arch.ksu.edu/seamon/Brill.htm
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%C5%8D_Ch%C5%ABta
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http://www.greenshinto.com/wp/page/20/
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http://www.appstate.edu/~marshallst/photos/mass_photos/barcelona
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http://disruptivemagazine.com/case-studies/sagrada-familia/
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http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/20684
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http://defense-92.fr/histoire
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http://defense-92.fr/histoire
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http://defense-92.fr/histoire
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gare_de_La_D%C3%A9fense
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https://www.flickr.com/photos/heckcory/albums* [Used with Permission]
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http://www.tuscanyheritage.com/
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http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/1014123.jpg
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogtrot_house
I think that the ideal space must contain elements of magic, serenity, sorcery and mystery. Luis Barragรกn
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