MICHAEL HARRISON SELECTED WORKS || 2013-2015
University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning Bachelor of Science in Architecture 2009-2013 Yale School of Architecture Master of Architecture 2013-2016
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UPENN SCHOOL OF DESIGN
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DANCE MACHINE
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ELI WHITNEY MUSEUM
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O’HARE ORNAMENT
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MINIMAL DWELLING
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STEREOTOMIC HOUSE
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GRID + GROUND
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VENNESLA LIBRARY
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PARTIAL FIGURES
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CHIRAL FIELDS
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PROJECTION
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VISUALIZATION
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FORMAL ANALYSIS
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ORNAMENTAL TAXONOMIES
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UPENN SCHOOL OF DESIGN FALL‘14 || MARK FOSTER GAGE || PHILADELPHIA, PA
Located at the edge of the University of Pennsylvania’s campus quadrangle, this project for an architecture and design school takes a strong presence on the site as a slightly symmetrical winged building. Seeking to increase the differentiated qualities of the campus and the street, the school presents itself differently to each side of the community. The interior then becomes an investigation of forced perspective and how different systems of organization contend with one another in plan. The corten steel paneling tessellates and wraps the exterior while wrapping back inward. The panels are at moments perforated to allow light to trickle in while concealing light fixtures and hvac equipment in the folding walls of the interior.
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corner entry rendering
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cross sections and site plan, quad night render
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stair, top and bottom
winter_noon
autumn_morning
winter_evening
summer_sunrise
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floor plans, site model photo and study models
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review space render
DANCE MACHINE FALL ‘13 || BEN PELL || NEW YORK, NY Dance Machine is a venue for the study and performance of contemporary dance, located in Manhattan, adjacent to the High Line. The project is viewed as an experiment in stereotomic carving and projection of solid and void. The mass is a simple trapezoidal extrusion of the site which is treated as solid, banal program. The projection of a public stair up and through the building crosses the performance space and is further intersected by four large light wells. The interior thus becomes a complex fragmented cave bringing together performance, pedestrian and light.
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interior rendering of dance hall
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interior renders, section mode, site
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plans, solid void axon, section perspectives
ELI WHITNEY MUSEUM FALL ‘13 || BEN PELL || HAMDEN, CT The existing Eli Whitney Museum campus is comprised of a series of existing sheds along the banks of the mill river. The mission of the museum is to provide programs for a wide range of ages and skill to explore and experiment. Youth after-school and summer programs provide opportunities to make simple machines, play with water tables or machine parts with larger and more complex equipment. This addition to the campus is intended to provide auxiliary learning and gathering spaces while engaging students and visitors with views of East Rock Park, located to the east, across the Mill River. The building is comprised of four sheds, playfully arranged via rotation and displacement. The result is a space large enough to accommodate gallery gatherings and disjointed enough to allow for multiple groups of students to experiment and make autonomously.
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exterior rendering across river
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longitudinal sections
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site plan, floor plan, exterior night render
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interior rendering
O’HARE ORNAMENT SPRING ‘14 || KENT BLOOMER || CHICAGO, IL
Contemporary ornamentation is skin deep. Pattern-making on otherwise uninteresting buildings has become a hasty means of seduction. Historical notions of hierarchy in ornament have been almost entirely consumed by skin-deep facades. The logic embedded in more traditional ornamentation (degrees of coverage and detail, expression of structure, repetition and variation) has evaporated in favor of wrapping paper, indifferent towards the architecture. One of the most pervasively ornamented typologies in architecture is transit space. Train stations, having gone through their boom years prior to the explosion of modernity, retain ornament as a carrier of values specific to their destinations. However, air travel went through its own rapid expansion coincident with the rise of modernism. For a plurality of reasons we find that few airports make any effort towards ornamentation. This project, for the Chicago O’hare airport terminal arrival, attempts to present a means of ornamenting otherwise underwhelming architecture. The ornament is comprised of repetitive geometry arrayed in various capacities at the terminal entrance. The sweeping drape of the addition loosely follows the ceiling profile of the terminal, adjusting to the different logics of the structural grid that exists on the interior and exterior threshold. These otherwise neutral columns are encased in vertical stainless steel members capped with the bent chevron figure arrayed about the ends of the columns.
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front arrival rendering
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tessellation, plan, elevation and render
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arrival rendering
NTON FRONTAGE
MINIMAL DWELLING SPRING ‘14 || ALAN ORGANSCHI ET. AL || NEW HAVEN, CT
Team members: Luke Anderson, Luis Salas Porras, Megan McDonough, Jessica Angel, Justin Oh, Katie Stege, Andy Sternad Our project consists of two volumes, one suspended within the other, pinned together with an efficient stem of bundled utility connections. From the street, the building is scaled to its context and the relationship of the tenant unit within the owner’s larger frame is clear. The owner occupies the first floor with ample access to sheltered outdoor areas that expand the perception of interior volume. Inside, a long double height space links front, side and rear porches and reflects light down into the kitchen and living areas. The tenant unit upstairs features two generous porches and is visually distinguished from the owner’s space by a lighter material palette. As the owner’s family grows, the upstairs unit easily reconfigures into two bedrooms and the owner can occupy the entire house.
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exterior rear yard night render
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first and second floor plan
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front elevation and longitudinal section
SCRANTON FRONTAGE
OWNER UNIT ENTRY
OWNER UNIT ENTRY
TENANT UNIT LIVING AREA
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front, first and second floor renders
CONTINUOUS METAL FLASHING
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construction perspective and variability studies
STEREOTOMIC HOUSE SPRING ‘14 || JOEB MOORE || NEW HAVEN, CT Stereotomic House attempts to make the minimal dwelling large, stealing space from its surroundings through repetitive subtractions. The home uses calibrated voids to produce semi-private spaces for both owner and tenant. Each operation uses the negative to answer individual concerns related to space, program, and environment. Through subtraction, the house remains minimal in its enclosed volume while maximizing its presence on the site and views to the exterior.
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volume axon and site model photos
FIRST FLOOR PLAN SCALE: 1/4”=1’ FIRST
SECOND FLOOR PLAN SCALE: 1/4”=1’
FLOOR PLAN SCALE: 1/4”=1’
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12:00
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09:00
SUMMER SOLSTICE 09:00
12:00
SECOND SCALE: 1
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09:00
EQUINOX 12:00
SUMMER SOLSTICE
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09:00
12:00
EQUINOX
LONGITUDINAL SECTION SCALE: 1/4”=1’
CARVING ADAPTATIONS
FIRST FLOOR PLAN SCALE: 1/4”=1’
SECOND FLOOR PLAN SCALE: 1/4”=1’
TRANSVERSE SECTION SCALE: 1/4”=1’
09:00
12:00
15:00
09:00
12:00
SUMMER SOLSTICE
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EQUINOX
12:00
15:00
CARVING ADAPTATIONS
WINTER SOLSTICE
ENVIROMENTAL SYSTEMS HEAT GAIN
WATER SUPPLY
D FLOOR PLAN 1/4”=1’
TRANSVERSE SECTION SCALE: 1/4”=1’
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09:00
12:00
WINTER SOLSTICE
INTERIOR SECTION PERSPECTIVES
plans, sections and SCALE: sun 3/8”=1’ study axons 15:00
12:00
WINTER SOLS
LONGITUDINAL SECTION SCALE: 1/4”=1’
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09:00
GRID + GROUND FALL ‘13 || BEN PELL Given no program and an abstracted site of an inclined plane the goal was to consisely induce particular architectural qualities. Using a grid that oscillates between opacity and openness, the structure is a test of a bay or cubic lattice system of space making.
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model photos and plan oblique Ground Plan Oblique Scale: 1/2” = 1’ 1011a (Critic: Ben Pell) Michael Harrison 8/30/13
VENNESLA LIBRARY CONSTRUCTION SPRING ‘14 || ALAN ORGANSCHI
Team members: Michelle Gonzalez, Katie Stege This model studies the coupling of Helen and Hard’s hybrid rib system with the technical layering of the building envelope in the design of the Vennesla Library in Vest-Agder Norway. All structural, technical, and programmatic elements within the library are consolidated into a series of ribs. These ribs fluctuate in size, angle, and programmatic construction to define space within the building. Our section model illustrates the representative differences between such spaces; cutting through a transition point in the building, the model shows how the ribs change from bookshelves from seating, evolve in size and angle, and interact with the extensively layered building envelope.
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basswood section model
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model detail photos and detail axon
PARTIAL FIGURES SPRING ‘15 || MARK FOSTER GAGE The proliferation of the alibi in architecture has been well established as a means for giving legitimacy to formal properties of architecture. Through a series of digital manipulations and exploitations of existing recognizable figures, this project aims to make uncomfortable ideas about universal beauty and human form through procedural glitching. By slicing and stretching, repeating and revolving the aggregate finds new aesthetic relationships among its parts.
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busted glitch
CHIRAL FIELDS FALL ‘14 || VICTOR AGRAN Chirality is the name given to molecular structures whose ingredients are identical but whose arrangement is symmetrically mirrored. Molecules exhibiting chirality have vastly different outcomes when in contact with biological processes. These drawing experiments look at how initially symmetrical fields can yield a variety of distorted outcomes as the result of identical processes. The goal was to create drawings that invoked slightly different distortions of space, time and motion.
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alpha and beta
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process drawing matrix
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a a’, b b’, c c’, d d’, e e’, d d’
PROJECTION FALL ‘14 || VICTOR AGRAN Techniques of drawing and projection were the subject of analysis through weekly drawing exercise. The movement of platonic solids in space, composition and translation were used as a means by which to begin to think about movement, rhythm and distortion. Inherent to each drawing is different rule-based logics which gradually distort the clearly intended rules of projection.
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pierro method and taylor method
VISUALIZATION FALL‘13 || KENT BLOOMER AND SUNIL BALD
Through the course of weekly drawing exercises three topics of geometric types were investigated. The first, a cubic lattice structure based on Gordon Bunshafts’ Beinecke Library, the second, infinitely periodic minimal surface tessellations, and finally combinations of topography and topology.
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cubic lattice drawing
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IPMS and topology drawings
FORMAL ANALYSIS FALL ‘13 || PETER EISENMAN Examining several Renaissance works of architecture by seminal Italian architects, the work of the course focused on weekly assignments that compared formal characteristics of each work. Ultimately the analysis attempts to parse out the use of elements and space as a way of distinguishing between degrees of homogeneous and heterogeneous space.
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palladio, il redentore and san giorgio magiore
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alberti, bramante and laurana
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guarini, bernini and rainaldi
ORNAMENTAL TAXONOMIES SPRING ‘15 || MICHAEL SZIVOS A hybrid of prior interests in distorted fields and ornamentation, Ornamental Taxonomies utilizes the coding language of Processing to produce iterative drawings in real time. The result is a collection of drawings and data that will be used to influence surface articulation and possible novel forms of ornament.
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one to twelve
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thirteen to thirty six