UNDERGRADUATE ARCHITECTURE PORTFOLIO
MEGAN JACKSON
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
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TO MASK: TOWER AT SQUARE GARDEN
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TO BURROW, TO CLIMB: THE CELLIST
Spring 2023
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THE FISHERMAN
Spring 2023
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PERFORMANCE STUDIO: FLORIDA LANDSCAPE
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EXPLORATION OF VERTICALITY
Professor Judi Monk | Design 7 Studio Professor Michael Montoya | Design 4 Studio Professor Ryan Sharston | Design 5 Studio
8th Avenue and West 33rd Street
Collaboration with Elena Van Lenten Professor Judi Monk | Design 7The Tower at Square Garden sits delicately within the sky, hiding its transparent walls behind a wrapping metal screen. Entry under the hanging screen leads into the indoor living museum, a botanical garden offering new potential for green space in the dense city. Behind the living museum is to be a mixed use space of dining and retail encased in glass, similar in function to the Chelsea market, with various vendors and pop-up spaces that will include the displaced inhabitants of the lot, a drugstore and a cafe.These two programs of the living museum and the market ascend into the art gallery with generous, stripped spaces for large artwork that can be incorporated into the garden’s exhibition events. The art gallery responds to the exterior by breaking and protruding from the screen. An office space comprises the levels above, which permit the formation of a private space away from lower level noise. This zone is fully concealed within the shell and an opaque wall. The office space may be inhabited by the intended sponsors of the project, Bloomberg Philanthropies, one of New York Botanical Garden’s primary donors. Moving up through the structure exists a void created by the bending of the screen. The void creates a ravine in the sky in order to act as a subsidiary of the primary indoor living museum and a procession into the climactic finale of the auditorium. The auditorium nests within the screen of the building, with seating arranged on and held by the curving frame. The seating is to be relaxed steps that allow for performance events, lectures, as well as a place of rest and solitude to inhabit the outer mask. The composition of a transparent veil layered with visible structure provide the context of midtown Manhattan with a new form and the adventure of animated programs.
art gallery
indoor living museum
auditorium
outdoor garden office
hotel art gallery
indoor living museum
The indoor living museum will be a botanical garden that offers new potential for green space in the dense city with exhibition receptions, limited capacity events for patrons, and will consist of a subtropical species suited for the indoor environment. [above]
Spring 2023
A house of study and practice for the musician imbued with the choice of to burrow or to climb. The entrance of the site demands an answer to this choice. Ascending the sculpture grants access to public areas that roam the platform, allowing interaction with the climate and sightlines of the landscape [the flower]. Sinking into the earth reveals a cocoon of an intimate soundscape intended for sheltered, remote practice [the stag beetle].
Spring 2023
Reconstructing what had never begged to be learned, he began his day. The company operated under the obsession of secrecy, this he knew, but dear God if I have to scale into a pink amorphous blob one more time to be tasting my own sweat clambering I-don’t-know-how-many-feet above an ocean of gurgling black sludge just to clock in at seven A.M. one more time I’m going to personally deliver myself the bowels of this barely living planet and rot.
“I should’ve transferred to the south tower last month…”, the fisherman adjusted his grip on the slick vessel to shoulder the white coat next to him, “…I heard from someone over there that this purgatory of parasitic disgust hasn’t started taking over yet.”
47 minutes and 20 seconds later, as timed by the fisherman (the company gave Sarcodina watches as a yearly bonus which he wore religiously) the vessel lurches, a brief pause, then the reassuring squelch signifying the pod has successfully welded to the vertical tower wounding the sky.
The white coat watches from within the vessel as the fisherman descends from the pod’s landing crater to the tower’s Frontline.
Housing: The ‘parasitic disgust’ made habitable by one of the few known experiments conducted by the company. Residents are comprised of corporate employees and researchers.
The Core: Observation hub swarming with white coats. Forums held for members, benefactors, and researchers. Private, guarded labs located in a subsidiary tower adjacent to the public reception. Used for study and undisclosed experiments.
The Frontline: Skims the surface of the oceanic sludge, allowing fishermen to retrieve and reconstruct the scarce remains of life. The viscous ocean is siphoned through pipes ascending into the central core of the rig for study.
Conceptual atmospheric environments for The Fisherman’s Tower
The Vessel: A detachable bud of the parasitic material used for on-shore employee transportation.
An exploration into the development of a story, provided through the harmony of structure and land, maintained through focus on enchanting elements of nature, such as: a floating central bridge referencing the weightlessness of clouds, the use of diffused light to mimic the invisible coexistence of mist and fog, and the sensation of hiding beneath tree canopies with an undulating roof. The structure is situated parallel to Lake Wauburg and is intended to be an all-encompassing performance studio for dance. The main entrance for guests and administration is held within the left third of the structure on the ground floor. Observation for a view of the outdoor performance studio below, as well as a space of meditation, is raised overhead in the floating bridge that acts as both an atmospheric threshold and a climatic breezeway for the outdoor performance studio. The indoor performance studio is located in the angled space in order to offer secluded views of both the lake and surrounding forest with a curling roof that opens to an overhead light. The indoor performance studio offers a secondary entrance into the ground floor of the site.
Proposed without context
Professor Michael Montoya | Design 4The space calmly wraps into one of hidden delicacy.
Floating light drapes across the subtly angled overhead boundary allowing perception of the otherwise anonymous mechanics of the structure through a lens of flickering warmth. The specific suspension of the place for making has the ability to offer the tempation of the unkown that can pull away from the folded safety of the sculpture.
Continued vertical movement through the compressed zones leads to a carefully channeled path of light that denotes a critical threshold for the emergence of a moment of reprieve from the structure’s dictated experience. The created threshold acts as a means for observation of the contrasting sensations of vulnerability and seclusion.
Re-entrance of the zone for ascension prompts the idea of collecting and compiling different observed assemblies. Positioniong of the stripped silhouette crafts conscious awareness of the excited commotion: elegancy of negotiated movement, subtle overlapping of exchanges, rhythm found in dissonant comparisons. This conscious collecting is organized through the unveiling of soft, flooded light and a situational convergence of space into one locus of attraction.
Place of Making: Seclusion, floating light, warmth
Place of Observation: A stripped transition, moment of reprieve
Place of Collecting: Negotiated movement, overlapping exchange, dissonant comparisons
