lyn wenzel
portfolio of works
table of contents carondalet park public pool design build spring break books
ecominitropolis woodland farm [in]land summer program
agricultural artery tide bottle study abroad sketchbook
patrick henry learning landscape
2008
2012
carondalet park public pool arch 311 fall 2010
The final project of a three-project studio, this intervention goes far beyond a simple pool structure. Students were asked to incorporate a number of programmatic functions into a landscape-sensitive, community-minded space. In my observations of park activities, I identified the areas surrounding the centralized lake that had the highest concentration of activity. Seeing the pool as an opportunity for connection, I sited my intervention in the space between these established activities. Growing out of the land, the structure and its accompanying pathways reach toward the various park functions and highlight the beauty of the park’s outdoor spaces throughout the changing seasons.
carondalet park st. louis, mo
site analysis
observed fall
analysis and study models
projected winter
spring
summer
studying patterns of activities and areas of intersection
carondalet park public pool
detail section + elevation
A section perspective
plan 1
Standard 25 meter pool
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Kids pool area
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M & w locker rooms
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Main entrance/lobby
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Sauna
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Administrative offices
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Outdoor observation deck
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Spectator seating
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Secondary Entrance/CafĂŠ
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Fitness center
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analog collage: basswood, mylar, ink, craft paper, printed images
design build spring break
spring 2011
During the late fall of 2010 I was approached by my peer and friend, Taylor Epskamp. He had an idea. He wanted to organize a group of undergraduate students to participate in a spring break design build project in New Orleans. So we made it happen. Over the following four months- together with ten other architecture students, one mentor, two Wash U alumni and one professor- we organized, fundraised and designed. And on March 12th, 2011 we headed to New Orleans to build a shade pavilion for the community garden deemed ‘God’s Vineyard’ in NOLA’s St. Thomas redevelopment neighborhood. In seven days we brought the project to life and discovered the opportunities a space for gathering can bring to a community of people. Photographs by Lyn Wenzel, Francis Aguillard Kyle Huninghake and Andy Sternad Project participants: Taylor Epskamp Lyn Wenzel Francis Aguillard Kevin Privalle Kyle Huninghake Sam King Lily Cheng Natalia Roberts Parker Keyes Donesh Ferdowsi Nathaniel Smith John Kleinschmidt Andy Sternad Derek Hoeferlin
books
2009-2012
Even before my official collegiate experience with bookmaking, I was sewing together pages in an effort to create spaces for collecting my thoughts. During the spring of 2009 I took The Illustrated Book, a course designed and taught by Jana Harper, in which we explored various book and image making techniques. It was here that I learned books are a unique canvas onto which we can project, manipulate and relay our thoughts and experiences. Since this discovery I have been constantly making books. This passion drove me to purse an independent study with Jana in my final semester. The culmination of such studies was a project deeply connected to the work I was doing in studio. My first and final official book projects are shown. The people and places of our lives are at the heart of these creations.
This was our final project in The Illustrated Book. Driven by the creation of a ten-word Dada poem, I illustrated the places and people from which I have come. Acetone transfers of my father’s childhood photos and pronto plate illustrations of northern Ohio tell of a journey to home.
BROOKLYN BOARDS. 2nd grader at Patrick Henry Elementary School. Neighborhood member. “I think community means connecting with other people.” JORDAN TSAI. Senior at Washington University. Design Build Studio member 2012. “Community is a very difficult one for me. For me, community is someone that you can relate to in some way, and that there is a function of working together. Even if it is just a little bit, there is a function of knowing, an understood function that something is going on between us. So it’s not unknown. So for example, I can’t say that we have a world community because workers in China who are doing their slave work making these products for us, I don’t understand this function between us even though we do function together because I obviously got this product from them. But whereas the lady who cleans the space here I can have a very small glimpse of connection to them, as they could be part of my community. So, it’s kind of like this density of people, how close they are to you and how much connection is between the dots.” KYNA DOSS. Neighborhood member. “Being in a community community means you community with another person.” “I’m in communities like dancing, singing and ballet.” EMILY TREECE. Senior at Washington University. Design Build Studio member 2011. Patrick Henry Elementary School independent study member 2012. “What I would say a community is is a group of people that rely on each other to function, in a way. For instance, you might have all these different groups that can’t provide everything on their own and they need to rely on each other, so they form some sense of community community, whether it be emotional, whether it be physical needs, whatever it may be. That’s how a community community, I think, comes together, and what essentially a community is is a group that can rely on each other for different needs, both emotional and physical.” FORREST FULTON. Visiting Professor at Washington University. Design Build Studio instructor 2011-2012. “Remember we talked a lot about community being a network of people that trust, or to some degree trust each other. They rely on each other. We also talked about duration, and duration’s important. From year to year, let’s say, this year compared to last year being at Patrick Henry Elementary School, Wash U college is a little more a part of that community but not entirely part of that community community.” “You can make analogies to the natural world, too- ecosystems. They need each other. It’s pretty efficient. I guess each one… all these discreet things have their own agendas, their own needs, but it seems to all work out pretty well for everybody.” MIKEY NAUCUS. TA and graduate student at Washington University. Design Build Studio TA 2012. “Communities are defined by differing associations or different strengths of associations between individuals who need to form collective bonds to account for needs that they cannot accommodate on their own or for situations that require associations to address individual needs as a collective. That could apply to plant or animal communities or human communities. Human communities are usually defined by things that are similarities between people and sometimes those are surface level similarities or sometimes they’re deep cultural similarities, but we tend to make associations with people that are like our self definitions. So however we self define is how we typically form communities even if they’re among people that are of differing appearances or classes or races, they will always come back to some way that we self define. I think communities in general are flexible over time in terms of how their constituents associate and to what degree they associate. Sometimes communities end up being these malleable, malleably defined… they’re fluid in nature. I think about it a lot in more basic terms, though, especially when thinking about plant communities. They form communities to defend against predation or form stable populations so that the individual in that community is in an unstable position until there’s enough of its like around it that it’s not going to die from an individual being grazed upon, but the community would survive and become stable if there’s enough population that some members can procreate. And the same thing is true of animals. There are few animals that don’t form communities that remain ‘lone-wolf ’ individuals and only associate sporadically. I think that there are probably many more species that tend to form groups, even if they’re small groups, in order to deal with predation and with the acquisition of resources that they subsist upon.” REANNAN CONNOR. 3rd grader at Patrick Henry Elementary School. Neighborhood member. “It means a bunch of people helping each other like in different countries.” DONESH FERDOWSI. Senior at Washington University. Design Build Studio member 2012. “To me that’s what a community is; it’s an entity whose concern is the wellbeing of every member of that entity. That’s it in the abstract. In the nitty-gritty I think it entails a genuine affection among people, it entails a real social circle among individuals, and it entails institutions when you reach a certain level of complexity. To me there’s no reason why there aren’t system of education in neighborhoods run by parents. That should be there. There’s no reason why there aren’t ways of sharing food and sharing things that aren’t in some dirty hippie commune, but are sophisticated, down-to-earth ways of life. I think it existed in the past to some extent, but I think whatever was in the past is gone for the most part at least in America. And I think whatever will come in the future will be radically different than whatever was in the past because power will be different than whatever was in the past because power will be different: it won’t only lie with men, it won’t only lie with white people. It will be very different. It won’t only lie with rich people. So community to me is an entity whose concern is the progress of its individual members.” BRANDON POPLAR. 5th grader at PHS. Neighborhood member. “I think community means a neighborhood with gardens and stuff.” ANNA FINNERAN. Graduate student at Washington University. Patrick Henry Elementary School independent study student 2012. “I think community community, like pornography, you know it when you see it. And for me, when I really understood what a community was, I was probably six years old. I lived in a row house. My entire street was a quarter-mile of row houses and we all had front porches and after dinner all the kids in my neighborhood would come and we would play hide and seek and I was sitting on my front porch and I was the seeker and so I was counting and everyone met up on my street and they left their bikes in the front of my house and as I was counting some guy in a pick-up truck pulled up and just walked up on to my front porch where I was sitting and counting, picked up our bikes, and threw them in the back of his truck and drove off. He took like four or five kids in the neighborhoods’ bikes and that’s pretty crushing when it’s your only real possession. Because they were meeting at my house, my bike was in the back, so mine didn’t get taken, but I saw everybody else’s get taken. It was pretty devastating. We all were from different financial backgrounds, so for some kids it was not an option to just have their parents buy them a new bike after it got taken. So, it was actually my mom, I think, decided that we were going to organize a neighborhood car wash to raise money to buy everybody’s bike back. So, in the middle of the street, there weren’t any permits or anything, we just ran our garden hose from the back of our house to the front and charged like five dollars a car wash. We were really little kids, so we did a terrible job, I’m sure. Almost every single person in the neighborhood came and got their car washed. And my job, I was really small and extra terrible at cleaning, so my job was that I was selling liquorish in my little bike basket and riding up and down the street. And there was this one really cranky old lady, and she always had one of those grocery shopping carts because she didn’t have a car so when she went to grocery she would just have one of those carts, and she used to hit us with the cart if we didn’t get out of the way fast enough. She was just miserable. So I had a little sign on my bike that said I was selling liquorish and she stopped me. She was like, ‘HEY!’ or whatever her horrible voice was. She always terrified me, so I was like ‘Yes…’ And she was like, ‘What are you doing?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, our bikes got taken and we are doing all of these things…’ And the whole time she doesn’t break eyes with me, it’s this miserable stare, and she gives me five dollars which, I mean, was a lot of money. And I was going to give her whatever the equivalent of liquorish was, which was like twenty pieces of liquorish, or something, and she’s like, ‘No. It’s fine.’ Even this really cranky old lady who I’m pretty sure hated children, the fact that she recognized that this was something that wasn’t about kids; it was about the whole neighborhood coming together. For me, it was like, oh, I get it. For me that’s when I understood what community was. We shared a time and a space together and even though we had different goals, different values, and in her case, I don’t know what her agenda was but it was not the same as mine, but in that instance it was a group of people who really easily came together to accomplish something that was important for all of us. Her bike wasn’t stolen; she didn’t even like us, but it was this understanding that we all shared something, and I got it.” REESE WILLIAMS. 3rd grader at Patrick Henry Elementary School. Neighborhood member. “I think when you say community it means your home, your neighborhood.” STACY GLENN. 4th grader at Patrick Henry Elementary School. “Community means to me the environment that you live in, like a neighborhood is a community because you help put things together and it influences the community community. There’s different communities in the world. I think this is a community because it helps put things in order that doesn’t have to be in order.” PARKER KEYES. Senior at Washington University. Design Build Studio member 2012. “Community is essentially just people. A simple definition I guess would be a group of people who hold in common some ethos or some idea about themselves that allows them to understand one another and to understand themselves as a group or as a whole. That understanding is completed with the individual’s understanding of themselves as part of the whole which leads to ideas about responsibility and roles in a community community. I think the essential thing to say is that community is really nothing unless people believe in it. So in that way it’s not real. It’s simultaneously not real but beyond reality. It’s not people but the bond between people. It’s the joint. Community is the things between. It’s interesting thinking about community- is it only humans? We use community to describe biological relationships as well. But essentially, I think, my point is the same. It’s individuals functioning within a whole. The way that an ecosystem functions- the way that a community functions- may be the same or similar. I think the difference between animals and humans would be their cognizance of the overarching idea of community which complicates things, but also simplifies them. I think Aldo Leopold uses the example of a field mouse burrowing in little tunnels under the snow before spring has broken and he finds these little roots and he thinks ‘these roots exist for me, because I eat them.’ So he eats his whatever he eats. And then the owl is in the tree above the snow and he looks and sees the little field mouse scurrying around and says, ‘that field mouse exists for me to eat.’ He uses the terms biota as a community of energy exchange that sustains our world. It starts with the sun and ends in the bellies of whatever beings… I guess it doesn’t ever end. It gets transmuted into energy and action, but really it’s not that action that’s the important part; it’s the whole; it’s the stirrings of the entire structure that’s beautiful; it’s that which is between; it’s the exchange. And, I mean, you never really stop exchanging, you die and you rot. You rot and become soil, soil becomes tree. Little more slippery when it comes to humans. The idea is similar, though. I think I’d be remiss without saying the words like trust and love, but I said them so there you go. I don’t think we can really understand the intricacies and beauty of a community in totality, at least- all of it. You glimpse your role in it. You see how you relate to other people and you see how other people relate to other people, and that inference extends out to the limits of your understanding. It’s a beautiful complexity that I don’t think I can ever explain. That’s why I say trust and love.”
ON COMMUNITY. A collection of thoughts, reflections and stories gathered from a community of people defined by their connection to a place.
My independent study culminated in an investigation of the word ‘community.’ I used my studio project as the place from which I conducted these investigations. The final piece was a two-sided poster that displayed the faces and words of thirteen members of the Patrick Henry community. The poster is designed to fold into a mass-distributable pamphlet stitch book.
ecominitropolis
arch 411 fall 2011
This urban design studio and final project called for a mixed-use residential redesign of Kroyers Plads on the Copenhagen harbor. Our focus for the project was centered on the sustainable principles outlined in the municipal document “Eco-Metropolis: Our Vision for Copenhagen 2015.” This initial research was transformed into a series of diagrams and guidelines for designing sustainable urban space which we utilized in our final proposal for Kroyers Plads. Four seasonally-focused section perspectives depict a new community united by the shared spaces and experiences that reflect their country’s values. This eco-‘mini’tropolis represents Copenhagen’s future as the capital for sustainable urban development. The following project was completed as a partner project with my friend and peer Donesh Ferdowsi. All aspects of the project from research to final drawings were completed as a team.
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tomorrow
Today, the built urban environment aspires to foster a passive collective life. Opportunities to engage with the life of society revolve around buying, eating, and sitting. Vague public spaces imply a public with vague vision and little sense of purpose.
Tomorrow, urban spaces will reflect the values in our intentions and announce the aim of our vision. Opportunities to contribute to a larger discussion of how we live collectively will be embedded in the crafting of public space. Shared spaces invite individuals to participate in the life of their city such that dialogue, a vital element of civic life, becomes a tool action and not an end in itself.
Today, medicine protects the health of society by “fixing” the maladies of its component parts. It awaits and responds to illness. Spaces prioritize efficient interaction of vehicles rather than healthful interaction of people.
Tomorrow, the city takes an active role in promoting health as a product of many factors including lifestyle and environment. It facilitates pedestrian and bicycle traffic and offers easily accessible opportunities for recreation. The built environment enhances nutrition and exercise.
Today, as far as most care to know, vegetables are harvested from trucks, meat is skinned in plastic, and nutrition must be read from a label. As our food loses its geographical relevance, our cities lose a piece of their identity.
Tomorrow, the stark separation between rural and urban landscapes, and processes of production and consumption, blurs. Individuals actively and passively develop a personal connection with such a vital part of every culture. The built environment seeks to transcend its stigma as “people storage” and become a vehicle that embraces all the complexities of life.
Today, fossil fuels transport, heat, and electrify our city dwellers. Energy is produced on the outskirts of town, away from life and activity. Coal power plants emit fumes and particulates that compromise air quality and health in our cities.
Tomorrow, wind and solar energy resources curtail our dependence on fossil fuel. Energy production enters the urban landscape and our consciousness.
Today, rainwater is a burden. It floods our sewer systems and must be expelled from our streets and rooftops.
Tomorrow, storms provide viable alternatives to undercut fresh water consumption. Harvested rainwater irrigates urban green space and supports household needs such as toilettes, showers, and laundry.
Today, dense automobile traffic and limited trees frame claustrophobic streets and compromise the quality of space for pedestrians and residents alike.
Tomorrow, higher frequency of pedestrian streets closed to automobile traffic, more efficient electrical public transportation systems, and fewer cars reduces the exhaust clogging our streets. Deeper incorporation of green space produces fresh air.
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energy
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kroyers plads
copenhagen, denmark
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Community: A stepped plaza leads toward a public ice skating rink offering outdoor social space for both residents and non-residents of Kroyers Plads.
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Health: The public ice skating rink allows for active recreational use in addition to larger sporting events like figure skating and ice hockey.
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Energy: Harbor-side wind turbines harness winds blowing west across the open field thus creating energy for residential and commercial areas.
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Community: Scale and proximity within the residential corridor combine with active garden spaces creating areas for healthy community interactions.
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Food: Plentiful orchard space, rooftop gardens and integrated greenhouses provide multiple opportunities for cultivating crops and community.
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Water: Rain water is collected in rain barrels and recycled on site for use in numerous applications from flushing toilets to irrigating crops.
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Air: Increased trees and the integration of green roofs sequesters carbon dioxide and releases oxygen back into
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the atmosphere.
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Health: A bike and pedestrian route spans the site allowing for recreational use. Additionally, the large wheat field can be used as an active field space.
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Food: The growth of wheat and other grain is accomidated because they are staples in the Danish diet and in the preparation of food at noma restaurant.
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Energy: The open field offers ideal wind conditions for harboring wind energy from the west and southwest due to its horizontal surroundings.
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Air: Numerous alleys of trees create cleaner air by sequestering the carbon dioxide produced by many human activities.
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woodland farm summer 2011
During the summer of 2011, I worked, learned and designed alongside the residents and employees of Woodland Farm. My design contributions included developing the plans and construction documents for a 150 resident mobile chicken coop and an old smokehouse redesign. The smokehouse is currently under re-construction and the chicken coop was completed last fall. Eggs now abound.
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olea europaea
pencil
watercolor
[in]land summer program
summer 2012
wurster hall courtyard collage
Throughout my four years of studying architecture, ideas and issues of landscape became more and more prominent in my work. So, during the summer of 2012, I explored landscape architecture and the landscape of the San Francisco Bay via UC Berkeley’s summer institute. My instructors, courses and projects allowed me to experience and appreciate the subtleties of my surroundings. My work from that time reflects the appreciation and beauty I found in varying scales of human and environmental interaction.
pen
ual
vis
al ion cat edu
berkeley, ca
c mi no eco
al tion rea rec
al litic po
strawberry creek watershed watershed analysis
mapping types of human interaction with strawberry creek
center street cover uncover
oxford street
study models
milvia street shattuc
mlk jr way
center street, berkeley, ca
k aven
mlk jr way
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milvia street
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milvia street
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mlk jr way
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agricultural artery arch 312 spring 2012
This semester-long studio focused on the intersection between agriculture and urbanism. The initial phase of the project included research into urban farming techniques and an exploration of the city as a grounds for an agricultural intervention. Students were then asked to select a site and develop a master plan that brought the majority of crop production into the city. Through my studies of population density, vacancy and transportation infrastructure, I indentified Mill Creek Valley as a relevant area to transform into a conglomeration of food production and community space. The downtown intersection of current transportation pathways and past waterways thus became the focus and heart of the master plan- a nexus of people, food and the urban landscape.
mill creek valley
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st. louis, mo
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growing food 1
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Terraced beds: Soil remediation processes that include the use of native Missouri perennials will transform this concrete landscape into a seemingly untamed meadow for the initial phase of the project. Complete with pathways that will remain in tact for the second agricultural phase; this area will be open as a meditative park space. Compost and appropriate soil amendments will be added throughout this initial phase. Simultaneously the landscape will be shaped into terraced beds which will eventually be dedicated to crop production based on sun exposure, soil conditions, companion planting and water requirements. Living walls: Lining major southfacing, elevated highway structures, a louvered vertical growing system [GLT Edible Wall System] will be implemented. This system is referred to as a “loose-media” growing system meaning it will utilize actual soil as the growing medium for plants. Because of the close proximity to highway pollutants and limited soil depth, primarily fruiting and ornamental companion plants will be grown within this system. Additionally, the wall is constructed such that the individual modules of soil are attached to a larger frame. Within the larger frame, filter-like screens act as a means of pollution separation between cars and food. Greenhouses: Constructed over existing railways, these structures will allow food production to continue into colder Midwestern seasons. Because the railway infrastructure serves as the southern border to most of the farmland, direct access to the greenhouses will occur on the northern façade adjacent to the terraced plots. A south-sloping roof system will provide maximum sun exposure for seedlings and winter crops.
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Processing and Distribution Centers: Producing crops in an urban environment exposes them to a number of toxins and pollutants. Therefore thoroughly washing and preparing the crops for sale is a vital element in urban food production. These structures will provide space for washing and processing, refrigerated and unrefrigerated warehouse storage, and truck arrival and departure facilities. With three centers located throughout the valley, major job creation will occur. Additionally, crops will endure minor transportation before being processed for sale at local grocers or the on-site community markets. Markets: Located adjacent to major neighborhoods and community ‘landmarks,’ six markets will provide weekly and bi-weekly sale of on-site produce. Markets from east to west: 1. Cerre St./Bush Stadium, 2. Union Station, 3. SLU, 4. Forest Park Southeast, 5. Central West End/Barnes Jewish Hospital, 6. Forest Park/Dogtown. As these markets grow they will strive to work with local businesses and vendors to provide value-added goods to community market customers. Beyond sales, markets will serve as an educational and social resource: neighbors will meet neighbors, people will learn where and how their food is grown, and children will learn how to be healthier citizens. Community Hubs: These hubs are locations that boast a processing/distribution center, a community market, an open park/agricultural recreation space and the educational facilities that support all of these aspects. Here pathways will lead community members through food production spaces and provide areas for walking, running, biking and skateboarding. Market space will double as educational space for community members to conduct
city analysis population density [people/sq. mile]
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cerre street site
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infrastructural intersections
transportation infrastructure highways metro link lines railroad lines I-70
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I-55
modeling infrastructure, considering interventions
cerre street mill creek valley
site plan
orchard: stone fruit trees apple trees
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berry bushes
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winter crops seedlings
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layers
pedestrian pathways
market pedestrian walkway community gardens rainwater catchment
living wall
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tomatoes peppers eggplant squash greens cucumbers
living wall
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cabbage lettuces root vegetables
processing storage distribution green roof
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A site section
digital collage: photoshop
tide bottle spring 2011
During the spring of 2011 I explored the new and intimidating world of computer representation. This project, in which each student was given an everyday bottle and asked to analyze and represent it, made me think a lot about laundry and how rarely I had time to do mine. Using AutoCAD, Rhino, V-Ray, Illustrator and Photoshop, Tide Mountain Spring detergent was reborn on the screen of my yellow Dell computer.
study abroad sketchbook fall 2011
I spent the fall of 2011 exploring a number of new worlds. Living in Copenhagen and traveling through Europe exposed me to new architecture, new people and new ideas about space and design. My focus during that time was on the urban landscape. That focus combined with various media and drawing methods transformed my sketchbook into a journal of thoughts and ideas concerning culture and the resulting attitude toward urban space. Here are the places I explored.
As a continuation of the previous years’ design build project, this studio focused on the community in and surrounding Patrick Henry Downtown Academy. Exploring the existing project and its context, we began a process of community engagement that centered on site-based testing and incremental design. Our studio of twelve students proposed and completed a variety of projects intended to bring life and activity to the formerly asphalt backspace. Concentrating ourselves into small groups, we were able to address different scales within the overall landscape. Together we became master planners, garden experts, pergola designers, furniture carpenters and toy builders. And together we created a place for the community of Patrick Henry to engage with the soil, the plants, the neighbors and the city. A learning landscape. Photographs by Lyn Wenzel, Donesh Ferdowsi, Sam Xu, Jordan Tsai and Forrest Fulton Project participants:
patrick henry learning landscape
arch 412 spring 2012
Lyn Wenzel Billy Griffitts Jordan Tsai Yurina Kodama Parker Keyes Donesh Ferdowsi Sarah Miller Connie Zheng Michael Halls Sam Xu Elana Abraham Bomin Kim Lauren Miyata Ryan Chiu Mikey Naucus Forrest Fulton
design
learning landscape 2011
site observation+analysis
backspace
drawing
modeling
on-site testing + full scale mock-ups
plan
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playing field
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mound extension
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birch tree allee A concrete work/lunch tables
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with cedar benches B
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log play sculptures
outdoor classroom additions C gingko tree screen D drip irrigation
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tool box
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perimeter garden
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pergola
build
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backhoe
the things we built...
wenzel
jackhammer
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construction edging details
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the place we created...
learning landscape
patrick henry downtown academy
thank you