MICHAEL NELSON
SELECTED WORKS
CONTENTS Architecture 02 Tianjian International Wellness Park 08 Blue School Expansion 14 Rural Indian Housing Installations 22 RoCon 28 Beaux Arts Ball
Michael Nelson 865.771.6925
m.robertnelson@gmail.com michaelrobertnelson.com
TIANJIAN WELLNESS PARK Tianjian, China Preston Scott Cohen Inc.
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The city of Tianjian is in a rapid development and is pursuing alternative communities that value traditional living/working generational living. The project was driven by the analysis several senior communities. With the over-arching concept of ‘Design Principles for an Age-Friendly Community’ with the aim to create an inter-generational environment for mental, physical and social development. These eight super-blocks, that make up the extension of Tianjian, will each have a specific node that expresses this design concept in a unique way. (Hydro, Garden, Sport, Education, Retail, T.) Within each block the idea of ‘pocket parks’ was used to create an intimate public space for community residents. These pocket parks support the large central node which is along the large public green-way. At the building scale, the idea of the ‘Flexible Life Style Plan’ for housing shows how the health park accommodates a wide range of life-style preferences -- everything from independent living-styles to assisted living-styles.
Through the use of continuous curving streets, long site lines through the super-blocks can be broken up, producing a more intimate neighborhood atmosphere.
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BLUE SCHOOL EXPANSION New York, NY PellOverton Architects
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Having found a permanent home for its lower school in the historic Seamen’s Church Institute building in the South Street Seaport, Blue School has recently begun construction to expand to an adjacent two-story property to create a transitional space for their new middle school. Connecting the current school to the neighboring building (until recently a seafood storage warehouse) provides unique opportunities to expand the school’s wide range of programming initiatives through additional classrooms, office, and flexible use spaces.
On the street, the existing loading docks will be replaced with a new, canopied entry and large storefront windows which will serve to showcase both daily activities and evening events in the front room. The roof, which will be accessible from both buildings, will feature a variety of natural and recreational landscapes, to support instruction, play, and socializing throughout the year.
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The roof garden is split into informal classroom settings by the organization of vegetable and flowering planters. The heights and arrangements of plantings facilitate specific activities; tall tree filled planters provide smaller, intimate spaces for teaching.
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RURAL INDIAN HOUSING Vaghnagar, India Professor Mark Dekay + Professor Sharad Sheth
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Vaghnagar is a small, farming village on the west coast of India. Although these remote villages in India hold true to their traditions, village life is changing. The following project is a collaborative effort to address and design housing for an evolving rural India. We worked with a design school based in Ahmedabad that acted as outside reviewers and consultants for the course, and that educated us on Indian culture. Although this specific prototype is developed for Vaghnagar, the project is imagined in a way that it could be applied to other parts of India. The village is a fairly dense collection of homes and walled in courtyards surrounded by farmland. The site is located at the center of the existing village. A masterplan was developed followed by the housing units. The housing unit is to be repeated throughout the masterplan, but the unit is flexible in layout and orientation. The construction and design follows the historical precedent of typical Indian construction and traditions.
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The housing unit is composed of a series of masonry vaults that make up the main living space and the bedrooms. The vault was chosen because of the limited availability of wood and steel reinforcement. This allows the units to make the necessary spans with limited reinforcement. Incremental building was a driver for the design. Because each unit will be built by the occupant, the unit has the ability to scale and rotate depending on necessity or siting. The floor plan is based on the Indian building tradition, Vastu Shastra. The main principles place the puja, a prayer space, to the north, and the center of the house is kept open. These building traditions are based upon Indian culture as well as daily rituals performed in the home.
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ROCON INSTALLATION Knoxville, Tennessee Professor Greg Spaw
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RoCoN: rotational molded concrete. The installation was based on the fabrication technique of rotational molding and the idea of floating a typically dense and heavy material. Rotational molding, also known as rotomolding, rotocasting, or spin casting, is a molding process for creating many kinds of hollow items, typically plastic. A hollow mold is filled with a liquid material and slowly rotated (usually around two perpendicular axes) causing the material to disperse across the interior area of the mold walls. This creates a uniform thickness of material throughout the mold. 24
The final objects were produced in our aluminium framed, self-design rotational molding machine. Each object being an individual. Materialization of our work showed flaws, but also brought about questions and unexpected solutions during the process. What was happening during the process was as important as what we were physically creating. This allowed the project to progress free of preconceived notions, becoming the true materialization of experimentation.
The object’s pattern comes from the Cairo pattern. It was chosen because of its quality of tessellation. We began with the mold process, modeling in Rhino. Using the CNC mill we created a mold out of MDF. To create a smooth finish on the concrete it was necessary to have a plastic mold. Thin, plastic sheets were then thermoformed over the MDF mold. Concrete tests were preformed to find the greatest strength possible. This was necessary because of the extreme thinness, 1/32�, of the object walls.
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BEAUX ARTS BALL New York, NY PellOverton Architects
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The Architectural League of New York’s annual Beaux Arts Ball event traditionally celebrates a space of architectural grandeur through the insertion of a temporary installation. For this year’s Ball, the League invited eight architects and designers to create animated footage to be projected on the interior wall and corner vaults of the 1875 Williamsburgh Savings Bank in Brooklyn. This four minute-long contribution addresses the building’s recent, extensive restoration by exploring the theme of decay and re-building.
Through a sequence of several short, animated vignettes of varied length, the video portrays the building’s use and materiality over time: from a fictitious history, to the present, to an imagined future. Each vignette incorporates a different aspect of the building, commenting on its unique geometries, ornamentation, and spaces.
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By incorporating New York landmarks, such as the Wonder Wheel of Coney Island, superimposed over the existing wallpapers of the bank the rich history/faux history of the building and its context can be illuminated.
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Michael Nelson 865.771.6925
m.robertnelson@gmail.com michaelrobertnelson.com