PORTFOLIO SELECTED PROJECTS
MARIE KJÆRGAARD GOODSTEIN cand.arch. The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture 2016-2018 Program: Architecture, Space and Time
A SCENIC LANDSCAPE IN LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA THESIS PROJECT - VOLA Award 2018
This projects shows a new urban landscape at Pershing Square in Downtown Los Angeles, California. The space constitutes different open venues for cultural and social activities and sports for the locals in the area - a kind of staging of the city’s impulsive behaviour and unpredictability. In this project I used an architectural method that I developed because of my interest in getting a better understanding of how I as an architect perceive and operate in a world where knowledge, economy and culture is exchanged across borders and continents. This method sees architecture as an important part of the current global-local age where even the smallest objects is somehow connected and constitutes a very complex and chaotic global world. Like a biologist examines the object through biopsies to get a understanding of the small but crucial mechanisms, the architect must likewise see local environments as important keys for understanding and interacting in the global-local age. By advancing this method with my project in Los Angeles I can work in the local context of Pershing Square and focus on a very precise and detailed level of the landscape itself. At the same time I can understand and contextualise the project as a small but new and innovative place that will affect the city on a much larger scale.
LOS ANGELES The city of Los Angeles is a megacity known all over the world primaly for its film industri that attracks millions of people every single year. The global indentity of the city is strong and most people would probably say they “know the city” eventhough they never been. Los Angeles is decentralised structure. It’s a city without a center. Los Angeles was originally constituted of a lot of small villages, that eventually grew larger and merged together. Today the boundaries are completely erased and the old villages are now neighbourhoods and exists only as intensities in a hyper complex city structure. Los Angeles almost appears as a foggy horizontal city-fabric that primarily consist of single family houses and a massive infrastructure of highways that runs as main arteries through the city.
DTLA
The city isn’t defined by the human body anymore. Its rapid growth is made possible by the ever expanding infrastructure. A huge part of the city is privately owned and leaves minimal space left for public recreational areas. This affects Los Angeles in a way where there’s no ground for smaller local environments which are exactly what the city needs to create a sense of local identity. You could say that the city lacks a sense of place which is an interesting dilemma for this project that wants to question the dynamics between the global and the local.
nord
DOWNTOWN (DTLA) The only area that shoots up from the horizontal city structure is Downtown. With its high-rise buildings this area becomes a kind of beacon in the city. Downtown is known as Los Angeles’ old business district and today still houses international companies, banks, flagship stores, prominent hotels and government agencies. After the Second World War the area suffered from the suburbanization that characterized that period in time. People only came to Downtown for work and left again at night. The area was left to the homeless and criminals which meant that the area would slowly decay.
SITE
The last decade Downtown has experienced a great inflow. People are moving into deserted factories, old commercial building are renovated and new buildings are popping up everywhere. The population in this area as increased with 87% and the last ten years and Downtown now faces a new challenge with redefining itself as a new residential area and home to about 66,000 people. Because of this development DTLA needs local environments that facilitates a new relation between the city and its residents - urban spaces that creates a sense of place.
nord Grand Central Market Angels Flight Railway
PERSHING SQUARE Pershing Square is located in the heart of DTLA and is one of Los Angles’ oldest squares with its 20,000 m2. The square is embedded is the city’s grid structure is placed within walking distance from large cultural buildings and historical landmarks. In the north-eastern corner Pershing Square Metro is placed and is a part of the still expanding subway system. Under Pershing Square lies a three levelled parking garage that is accessed by ramps along the four sides of the square.
Park Fifth (under construction) Deloitte Pershing Square Metro
Since it was made public is has gone through different transformations. The latest redesign was done in 1992 by the Mexican architect, Richardo Legorretta.
Millenium Biltmore Hotel Pershing Square
In the 2016 The Los Angeles City Council, Parks and Recs and a team of residents took the initiative to do a new transformation of the square.
International Jewlery Center
This project aspires to use the transformation of this site as a starting point for creating a new local environment for the residencies of Downtown.
Los Angeles Theatre
The square is made into a scenic landscape where the people of Downtown can engage in a new way of using the urban space.
U.S. Immegration Court
nord
ISOMETRIC OF BOTH THE STRATEGIC MODEL AND THE SITE MODEL
STUDIES OF ENVIORMENTS AND SPACES IN DIFFERENT SCALES
CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THE LANDSCAPE AND THE ARCHITECTUAL PROGRAM
S. HILL STREET
S. OLIVE STREET
SECTION CC - 1:200
S. HILL STREET
S. OLIVE STREET
SECTION DD - 1:200
S. HILL STREET
S. OLIVE STREET
SECTION EE - 1:200
DETAIL DRAWING OF IN-ZOOM IN PLAN
THE COMPLEX CONTEXT - AN ARCHITECTURAL STUDY 1. SEMESTER PROJECT - MASTER’S PROGRAM
This project has been in a exploratory discussion of the abilities of different architectural tools (drawings, photography, models etc.) to negotiate, discuss and rewrite an extremely informed and complex urban context. Any given urban landscape is in an eternal exchange between layers of time: The past - the archives of the memory, the present - the real tangible structures, and the future - the possibility of negotiation and rewriting of the landscape. Each of them is characterized by their own typology and manifestations. Each of the mediums each contains their own methods of opening up the context and they each have the ability to conduct a mutual discussion of the concrete and the abstract. They let the flow of information circulate through them, process it and rethink it. I consider this useful in the preparation of new architectural projects, but also in the understanding and analysis of existing structures and landscapes. The drawing has the ability to dissolve the specific urban reference. The drawing is a kind of subjective abstraction from the real context. It moves the study from real scales and structures into a different kind of reality. A new architectural context. The layers of time and space can be read together and re-interpreted and the complexity can be readjusted and highlighted through new experiences and new references. In this study, the analog physical model is used to reproduce the landscape that the drawing represents. While some negotiations on the landscape are simplified, due to the limitations of the model body, others become more nuanced in the three-dimensional media. It has the ability to dive into the drawing’s universe and examine its construction.
WIREFRAME SECTIONS OF BUILT MODEL
- AN X-RAY OF THE INTERNAL RELATIONS OF THE MODEL
CENTRE FOR OPEN SOURCE RESEARCH, OAKLAND 2. SEMESTER PROJECT - MASTER’S PROGRAM
This project shows a centre for open source research in the city of Oakland, California. Oakland is a city centrally located in The San Francisco Bay Area. The Bay Area, is constituted by three distinctive areas: San Francisco, Berkeley and Silicon Valley. The region is known for its major biotechnology companies associated with revolutionary science research. The place is also the cradle of the ideas of open source science. With the location of the new centre in Oakland, the centre lies in the midst of these three cities. This is done in an effort to maintain a link between them and its also an attempt to point out Oakland as a city with a great potential in a regional scale. The research that’s done in the centre is practiced across interests, intentions and academia which creates a diverse environment. The professor and the hacker work side by side. Furthermore the centre will have an interactive exhibition and educational department. This department acts as a link between the executive scientists and the public. This means there’s is a programmatic duality and the centre needs two spheres whose functions and needs call for different architectural initiatives. Because of this duality I began this project with a methodical study of casted models that examines the phenomenons: imprint and effect. Imprint is seen as the ability of the material to react elastic and smooth. It describes how a material will be manipulated in the encounter with dominant events. Effect is the ability of the material to actively manifest itself in its context. It carries out an intervention and sets its trace. The architectural process creates an empirical basis for the development of the physical building and it qualifies the various programmatic spheres. This will make the building functions as a whole - a body that can handle different influences and needs.
berkeley
oakland san francisco
oakland airport
silicon valley/san josé
THE BAY AREA
berkeley
san francisco 2149 union st.
silicon valley oakland airport
BART
WEST OAKLAND
3D-AFSTØBNINGER
RUM DIAGRAM
X-RAYS OF CASTS X-RAY AF AFSTØBNINGER
OPEN SOURCE CENTER
INTERNSHIP AT MORPHOSIS ARCHTECTS, LOS ANGELES EMPLOYMENT 2015-2016
During my ten months internship at Morphosis Architects I worked on a lot of different projects and phases of design. I started out working in the model shop building both large scale models for exhibitions, mock ups for assembly and material tests and smaller presentation models for client meetings and design tests. I also assisted the in-house photographer in the photo shoots of these models and image processing subsequently. Later on I was assigned to the design team that work on the Beirut New Embassy Campus. This project is about 93.000 m2 and is expected to be finished in 2023. My job was primarily to design in-build furniture and assist on the IFC (issued for construction) drawings of the buildings interior. Furthermore, I was in charge of researching and deciding on hardware appliances to use and I made different presentations of possible furniture compilations.
IFC DRAWINGS OF INTERIOR DETAILS The Beirut New Embassy Campus, Beirut - Lebanon