ARCHITECTURE PORTFOLIO
Melis Ugurlu
Rice School of Architecture
CONTENTS
Lorem Ipsum
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New Datum
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Within the Walls
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Industrial Promenade
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Folded House
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As architects and urbanists we can only design what we can imagine. We live in a wo adapt to this change? How do we accomodate the unknown future that today’s archi
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LOREM IPSUM
orld that changes so rapidly, thus people’s needs and desires with it. How do we itecture can neither predict nor suffice?
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LOREM IPSUM Mixed use urban project in KBR, Houston Year: Fall 2013 (ARCH 301)
Professor: Sam Stewart Halevy
As architects, we can only design what we can imagine or know of within the means of our time. The time is changing rapidly and so are people’s needs and desires with it. Therefore we need to surrender our architecture. In a world where no one architect or design can predict the collective’s (common interest) or the uncertainties/demands of the future, we should collaborate-both with time and people. The proposal for this urban project aims for a design, much like the world we live in, that constantly changes, disappears and evolves with the influence of the contemporary and individual. The architectural and urban approach is to establish a set of indeterminacies and absence of architecture within certain boundaries and guidelines, which create spaces of freedom that the inhabitants can occupy in their own way. It allows for the people to form and design their own environments to live or work in. Each separate and unique environment can then activate others over periods of time. The project consists of solid and void spaces. The voids are the set of undefined spaces, which have no predetermination of any program or architecture and are initially no-build zones. However their ultimate function is to accommodate the unknown future that today’s architecture cannot predict or suffice. In the form of un-built, they are expectations, speculations and hopes for the inhabitants. When they start to fill up, which could be the case of maximum activation or occupancy of the surrounding solids, they have the potential to take many forms. They could become a new world that can provide every inhabitant with everything they ever needed or a chaotic outgrowth; a platform for all the more, new and popular or a distasteful architectural intrusion. The solids, the built space, are imagined as a field of blocks, which are made out of coordinate lines. The inhabitants can go in and build their own distinct living environment within the limitations of the coordinates. These coordinate blocks also contain certain architectural and cultural elements that will stimulate occupation inside and around each block. The blocks are connected with corridors (much like elevated streets), which then in certain places open up to platforms. These platforms contain raw objects that one can associate with public happenings and therefore stimulates social interactions. These are big TV screens, as a product of mass culture, represent the main communication method of today’s society and therefore have the ironic power to bring people together. Or big lights where you could bring in and place popular objects of the time, works of art or even people underneath the spotlight to derive public’s attention and gazing. And even a set of toilets and sinks that one would visually associate with public bathrooms. All to attract, connect and gather the public. 7
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Solids and voids introduced to the larger context.
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Frames intend to represent the variety in growth
Voids in the project is left unbuilt for the reason that as much as the surrounding built environment stimulates growth within them, them, themselves stimulate a different sense of growth within the frames. In addition to the growth, the unbuilt areas stimulate hopre, expectation and speculation.
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The voids promise something entirely new, heteregoneous by their absence.
All these imply a great potential for the voids, which suddenly leaves the “colorful� parade of the frames as an unprovoking single unity. The voids could become anything: a new world that can provide everything that is ever needed; a chaotic outgrowth; a platform for all the more, new and popular or a distasteful architectural intrusion.
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the voids and frames are filled within time; time is the generator for the new and more
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variety is achieved between frames with the changing desires of people and the time
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phase I there is a hierarchy around the voids
phase II from the immediate neighbors of the voids, the occupation starts spreading out
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phase III when the frames’ capacity hit maximum, they will start activating the voids
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The future scenerios show three of the million possibilities of what this currently undefined space can turn into. With each generation’s pre-conceptions of the previous architectural productions, our profession constantly renews itself by denying its previous self. The voids can become the spotlight for these new and popular creations of time. The inhabitants of this place can also decide that they want to keep these voids pure of any architectural intrusion; the voids are so beautiful as absence. This time, we could imagine this space a public green buffer that connects the lfe in the frames to each other. Or when all else fails, and the inhabitants realize that nothing architects can create could be better the one they create on their own: they can evacuate into these voids. A new world, of their own, will form and the frames will be abandoned. The frames and voids constantly rejuvinate each other. Neither one of them has bias over each other. When the voids get “too boring�, which will, they will head back into their frames as if nothing happened.
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The pit is a physical connector to the Visual Arts Major studios and galleries, but not full potential and the galleries were under-publicized to be noticed. How could we en but respecting the artist workspace?
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NEW DATUM
a social one. Despite its central location on campus, the pit wasn’t occupied to its ngage the pit with the rest of the university by making the existing program visible
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NEW DATUM Rice School of Architecture Competition, 2nd Place Year: Spring 2012
Team Members: MacAulay Brown, Georger Hewitt, Yigit Ergecen
Mind the Pit was a competition that asked for a better engagement of the “pit” with the rest of the university. The pit was a communal space for the Arts and Humanities Majors and a stitch between the three art galleries within the surrounding buildings. Our aim was to make the galleries visually noticable to anyone who is walking by while enhancing the artists’ creative working space. The proposal had two parts. First one was to pop out the windows of the galleries so that both inside the galleries could be better viewed from outside and there would be a physical extrusion out of the building’s courtyard facade, rapidly grabbing people’ s visual attention. The second one was to find a way to make this space both more actively used by the students and visually and physically accesible to anyone who does not study there. We decided to place movable rails and a bridge that ran across the pit. Due to the pit’s location on campus, this bridge would become a main transport from the South of the campus to the building or to the West side of campus. Meanwhile the rails, which can be slid back and forth above this space become a structure that the students can attach and hook different kinds of stuff, which can transform the pit into an environment for creative production and an event space. As it is the courtyard for the artist studios, students can hang their artwork for reviews or presentations, hold various kind of exhibitions and performances by attaching equipment like light fixtures, stage curtains or screens.
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The proposal is for a social and physical bridge, a short-cut to the walk across campus, new possibili
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ities and scenerios for the artist work space, publicity for the smaller and less heard of gallery rooms
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A wide range of possibilities can be imagined of how the structure can be used to transform this spac
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ce through diverse events and creative production.
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What does it mean to imagine a winery in an urban setting? Most wineries that we kn green. This project asked for a winery experience to take place on the Museum Distri schools. Could we capture the same experience of in this setting?
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WITHIN THE WALLS
now of are either on the periphery or outside of the city, situated in an isolated ict of Houston, surrounded by variety of programs such as museums, churches,
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WITHIN THE WALLS Urban Winery in Museum District, Houston Year: Fall 2011 (ARCH 201)
Professor: John Casbarian
The winery has two outer walls generated by the two different grids of the Houston and they enclose the program that is attached to them. The walls physically act as a barrier from the city where once one is inside they don’t have visual access to the outside but they also have extra roles than just being a boundary. Both the private and public programs are attached to the walls as boxes. The “boxes” are very independent from each other and have their own seperate program while being attached to the walls on the back side. The circulation happens along the wall and become a corridor that tie different rooms. The way the walls are oriented create a courtyard space in the middle where these boxes of program float. In order to enhance the experience of “being in a winery” the vineyard is placed in this courtyard space. This way all the rooms open up to this vineyard and it becomes a glue between all the free standing programs.
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Winery Within the Walls Winery Within the Walls
Public Private Courtyard Public Private Courtyard
Grape Sorting Vat Storage
Circulation withing the site
Barrel Storage
Public Circulation
Bottling Grape Sorting Research Labs Vat Storage
Circulation withing the site
Barrel Storage
Public Circulation
Lobby
Bottling
Library
Research Labs
Exhibition Auditorium Lobby Wine Bar Library Tasting Room Exhibition WC Auditorium Kitchen Wine Bar Tasting Room Tasting Room WC Kitchen Tasting Room
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Administration
Administration
Each “box” of program act as seperate objects around the common public vineyard, connected with a back spine corridor.
The moment where the two programmatic elements meet is established as a new space that is public by being exposed to the very end of the “private” process of wine making.
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Houston Ship Channel is not a popular site for either the locals or the tourists. It did n awareness to the ship channel in general and rejuvinate the area with the introduction to exhibit the materials both inside and outside of the museum?
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INDUSTRIAL PROMENADE
not have much to “offer” to the public. The aim of the project was to both raise n of a new maritime museum. How can this project create an experience in itself
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INDUSTRIAL PROMENADE Maritime Museum in KBR, Houston Year: Spring 2013 (ARCH 202)
Professor: Gordon Wittenberg
In order to design a museum that can engage the site, the aim was to put the site on display as much as the exhibition in the museum itself. To achieve this goal, I picked specific points on the site that would be successful to illustrate the Ship Channel through which the visitors would interpret the context of the exhibition. Primarily, a circulation path was generated based on the views of these moments. Turning basin, our specific site which is also one of the most active points in the ship channel; the bridge nearby, which allowed an industrial scenery; and finally due to Houston being flat visitors could have access to the remaining of the ship channel. The aim was also to establish the same experience with the interior program. The program was attached to this ciruclation path as an envelope. As the visitors enter the museum, they are immediately ramped up onto this path where they get a site seeing tour around the site, inside the museum, before they reach to the exhibition. Due to the arrangement of the circulation and program of the museum, the visitors also get to see all the program from above before they physically reach it. The relationship between the path and the envelope is arranged in such a way that the circulation have certain big moments (At specific view points) where it punctures out of the envolope to leave the visitors hanging on in the midst of the ship channel. The path then would make another rapid movement to situate itself back in the interior program, and finally through an underground ramping tube, the public finds themselves standing right at the edge of the water, where the boat tour for the physical visit to the ship channel would begin. Folded plate structure was used in order to add dynamism to the building, where the moments the path breaks free off the museum also have the aspect of breaking free from this active flow. This creates more dramatic movements and contrasts as the path is either “sucked in� into this structure or independently floating free.
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the promenade breaks in and out of the interior propgram to focus the visitor’s experience back and forth between the site and the museum.
circulation path generated from views
program attached as an envelope folded skin forming the structure
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The corridor becomes a public platform for a foreshadowing of the interior peogram and a visual tour of the ship channel, yet independent from the museum in its form and movement throughout
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Operation of folding creates many dualities. A fold has both an inside and out; below and seperates two spaces. How can this be applied in architecture to create distincti reason for this seperation? What does it feel like to be on the other side of the fold?
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FOLD
w and above. A single formal operation produces a single outcome and this defines ive spaces while providing a continuity that in fact keeps them together and is the
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FOLD. House Project in Houston
Year: Spring 2011 (ARCH 101)
Professor: Grant Alford
This house project is exploring the dualities the operation can create, which are both formal and experiential. The project first explores the distinctions between creating space through a sectional and planar fold. The house is made out of two continuous fold planes: one vertical and horizontal. The vertical fold defines the house’s relationship to the ground by seperating the rooms and dividing the spaces in terms of square footage. The horizontal plane is the wrapper around it. It is an enclosing layer, which creates pockets of spaces around the house, each having different qualities. As one side of it can enlarge space to define it as gathering, the other side of the same fold can enclose it to generate a more intimate private space. There is also the above and below quality of a fold. One can gather under and circulate above or hide under and rest above. Each occupation creates a different experience compared to a right angle plane, which would imply both under and above to be formally same and experientially similar. Inside and outside is the most general and biggest quality of a fold that I mostly experimented on. It encompasses all the above mentioned properties and can happen in every form, direction or orientation. From whichever angle you look at the two sides of a fold you experience and see something entirely new and different.
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MELIS UGURLU
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ROOF
3/16” = 1’-0”
ROOF
SECOND FLOOR
3/16” = 1’-0”
3/16” = 1’-0”
SECOND FLOOR
GROUND FLOOR
1/8” = 1’-0”
SITE PLAN
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1/8” = 1’-0”
3/16” = 1’-0”
3/16” = 1’-0”
GROUND FLOOR
3/16” = 1’-0”
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