Certain Aspects of Architectural Form

CERTAIN ASPECTS OF ARCHITECTURAL FORM FIFTEEN SELECTED PROJECTS 2009-2012

WILLIAM O’BRIEN JR. November 29 - December 17, 2012

The Keller Gallery MIT Department of Architecture

Exhibition Design Lead William O’Brien Jr. Exhibition Team Cecilia Ho Linda Yifei Zhang James Coleman Exhibition Documentation George X. Lin Special Thanks Nader Tehrani William O’Brien Jr. Sarah M. Hirschman MIT Architecture Judith Daniels James Harrington

The Keller Gallery Room 7-408 MIT Architecture 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, Ma 02139-2307 Series Editor Irene Hwang Assistant Editors Elizabeth Yarina Nathan Friedman Mariel Villeré Publisher SA+P Press Design TwoPoints.Net Printer Agpograf Contact SA+P Press Room 7-337, MIT 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, Ma 02139-2307 ISBN 978-0-9836654-3-4 ©2013 SA+P Press, All Rights Reserved

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Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 I. II. III. IV.

Hendee-Borg House . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Chamber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Mouldings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Innie & Outie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Exhibition Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 V. Totems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 VI. Twins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 VII. Allandale House . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 VIII. Weathers Permitting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Postscript William O’Brien Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Certain Aspects of Architectural Form was presented in the Keller Gallery from November 29 - December 17, 2012.

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INTRODUCTION CERTAIN ASPECTS OF ARCHITECTURAL FORM

Certain Aspects of Architectural Form is an exhibition showing fifteen selected projects of the office of William O’Brien Jr. developed between 2009-2012. On display are fifteen illuminated diptychs of architectural visualizations, fifteen ideograms, and a comprehensive catalogue of the selected works.

Certain Aspects of Archiectural Form opened on November 29, 2012.

Opposite: Fifteen ideograms, numbered I-XV Previous spread: Image of Certain Aspects installed at the Keller Gallery

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I. HENDEE-BORG HOUSE A STUDY IN NESTED SYMMETRIES

The Hendee-Borg House is a symmetricalsawtooth roof house for two artists—a sculptor and a media artist—that includes a pair of large artist studios and an attenuated gallery space, in addition to a sequence of domestic spaces.

The studio spaces are planometrically-mirrored about an east-west axis in order to facilitate distinct, natural lighting conditions for each studio under a series of eight skylights. This arrangement provides diffuse, northern light in the south-facing studio, and bands of direct light in the north-facing studio. Although the studio spaces remain connected both spatially and by way of a shared gallery wall, the main living and dining area separate them.

Date: 2011-2013 Status: Schematic Design Client: Undisclosed Location: Sonoma, California Program: House/ Artist Studios Project Team: Bhujon Kang, Linda Yifei Zhang

The primary order of symmetry, as is evidenced from the exterior by the profile of the roofline, is challenged on the interior by particular motivations related to the domestic program. These motivations—the desire for natural light from a skylight in the opposing direction to the series of large skylights, for example—foster several, local secondary orders of symmetry.

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Above: Visualization of interior

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Above: First floor plan 01 Master Bedroom 02 Guest Bedroom 03 Office A 04 Office B 05 Studio A 06 Studio B 07 Gallery Center: Section BB Below: Section AA

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II. CHAMBER AN ANECHOIC ENVIRONMENT

Chamber is a spherical capsule made predominately of industrial felt. From the exterior, it is a soft polyhedron of felt cells, evoking simultaneously the rigid geodesic domes of Buckminster Fuller, and the supple symmetries of Robert Morris. Inside is a darkened anechoic chamber; the folded felt interior surface defines a soft room with deeply textured walls, which inhibit visual and aural means of environmental engagement. The sphere is weighted at the bottom but is untethered, rocking slightly with the movements of its occupant. This movement, limited within a fixed range, aims to intensify the inhabitant’s disorientation with respect to the outside world.

Ongoing collaboration with Joel Lamere of GLD. Date: 2014 Status: Design Development Client: N/A Location: University of Maryland School of Architecture Program: Installation Project Team: Juanita Ballesteros, Daniela Covarrubias, Nicole Wang, Travis Williams, Linda Yifei Zhang, Toshiro Ihara This page: Scale model of Chamber

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Above: Site section Opposite: Axonometric

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III. MOULDINGS A STORE FOR AESOP

Mouldings reuses historic architectural elements that are characteristic to Boston tradition; among them are ornamental crown moldings and curvilinear wrought iron. The space is dressed in a combination of new and antique white oak—new white oak is used for the highlyarticulated display shelves and the antique white oak is used in planks on the floor.

The display shelves are formed through the accumulation of several different custom crown moldings to produce an unexpected texture, one that defamiliarizes the crown molding and transforms its role from an architectural element that conventionally highlights edges to an element that produces a rich and varied surface tex-

Date: 2012 Status: Complete Client: Aesop Location: Newbury Street, Boston Program: Commercial Storefront Project Team: Jasmine Kwak, Penn Ruderman , Travis Williams, Kian Hiu Lan Yam This page: Interior view of Aesop store, Newbury Street, Boston

ture. The entry stair enfolds a sequence of bent wrought-iron bars to make a delicate balustrade, on top of which is set an ornamental white oak rail. The rail presents a second form of defamiliarization of traditional ornamentation, here as a tactile experience, as the ornamental profile of the rail twists at the bottom of the rail announcing via the hand a transition from the exterior to the interior.

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Above & Opposite: Mouldings installed at Aesop store, Newbury Street, Boston

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Above: Accumulated figure Opposite: Individual moldings

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IV. INNIE & OUTIE PRACTICING RUDIMENTS IN CHINA

Innie & Outie are two different types of courtyard houses. Three of each type, totaling six houses, are sited close to Dianshan Lake—a large, freshwater lake in Qingpu, Shanghai, China. The houses are rudimentary in several respects. Materially and tectonically the houses abide by basic construction techniques that are ubiquitous to the region; these include the pouring of concrete and the laying of masonry.

Formally and figurally the houses are primitive; their elevations tend toward the “architecturallyimplausible” in that the proportions of the tower forms are seemingly incapable of housing familiar, domestic spaces. Such ostensible incongruities between exterior form and interior space are sought-after as a way of emphasizing potential readings of the forms as primitive—illustrating morphological processes that are circumstantial and cumulative.

Date: 2012 Status: Design Development Client: Undisclosed Location: Qingpu, Shanghai, China Program: Six Houses Project Team: David Moses, Nicole Wang, Travis Williams, Linda Yifei Zhang

The changing proportionality of the masonry coursing, from the lower portions of the facades to the upper portions of the towers, aims to accentuate the linear process of stonework.

The subtle differences in the rates of change, from horizontally oriented coursings to vertically oriented coursings in each of the towers, demonstrate the autonomy granted to individual stonemasons working on different towers simultaneously. The pattern of stonework for Innie & Outie is also heavily influenced by several buildings constructed during the Qing Dynasty, located in Yangzhou’s Ge Garden.

The design of each house type seeks to address programmatic mandates stemming from certain local, cultural values, for example that all bedrooms and living areas are oriented toward southern exposure, and that bathrooms receive natural light; the development of the two planometric organizations—one of which is “introverted,” one of which is “extroverted”—privilege the former requirement, while the slender, periscopic light-scoops in section address the latter requirement.

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Above: Innie House section Below: Outie House section Opposite: Visualization of house exterior

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This & Following spreads: Project images and photographs of Certain Aspects installed at the Keller Gallery

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V. TOTEMS SILHOUETTES & ICONOGRAPHIC PLURALISM ZOELLNER ARTS CENTER, 2011-2012

Totems—a series of vertically-oriented, protoarchitectural models—represents a reconsideration of anachronous mechanisms of architectural form-making in a contemporary context defined by relational-modeling processes and robotic-fabrication techniques. In an effort to diversify the formal vocabulary of contemporary architectures allied with digital processes, Totems recasts formal mechanisms such as mirroring, symmetry, axes, perspective, anamorphism, and principles informed by Palladianism.

The attributes that are often associated with such archaic formalisms—hierarchical, figural, ornamental, highly-articulated—seem novel once again in the context of formalisms born of digital processes; those which are generally non-hierarchical, field-like, surfacial, and thin. This study aims to appropriate instances of anachronous formalisms that are ripe for reconsideration with the intention of sponsoring strange, vaguely familiar, and nuanced formal languages.

Project Team: Iman Fayyad, Carl Lostritto, Alan Lu Fabrication: Matthew Trimble, Jared Steinmark & Esko Heilner, Radlab

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This & Previous spreads: Totems, images of final objects as well as drawings

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VI. TWINS HOUSES IN FIVE PARTS

This design proposal for two vacation homes for two brothers and their families on one plot of land in upstate New York represents an examination of a curious part to whole relationship. The mathematical principle of “dissection” states that any two regular polygons with equal areas can be divided into sets of similar shapes; “minimal dissection” is the pursuit of the fewest

number of subdivisions in each polygon. This scheme appropriates this principle as a solution to (1) general similarities in the programmatic requirements, and (2) distinctions in the desired relationships to the site, voiced by the two brothers for each of their homes.

Date: 2009-2011 Status: Schematic Design Client: Undisclosed Location: Upstate New York Program: Two Houses Project Team: Bhujon Kang

This page: Visualization of Twins interior

A regular six-sided polygon and a regular foursided polygon contain the same five shapes— each are made up of the same four trapezoids and one triangle. The adjacencies between the five shapes are different within each of the regular polygons, as are their orientations relative to the outer perimeters of the polygons. Translated into spatial divisions in an architectural plan, these fixed arrangements prompt sectional-flexibility. Conceptually, in section the floor planes and the roof planes are configured in order to accommodate strategic micro-topographic continuities and discontinuities across the collective surfaces.

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Above: Visualizations of Twins exterior

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Above: Square and Hexagon Plans 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09

Entry Living Kitchen Pantry/ Laundry Dining Office Master Bedroom Guest Bedroom Sun Room/ Courtyard/

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VII. ALLANDALE HOUSE A CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

Allandale House is an A-frame(s) house for an idiosyncratic connoisseur and her family. Along with its occupants, the Allandale House also provides space for an eccentric collection of artifacts that resist straightforward classification. Wines, rare books, stuffed birds and an elk mount are among the relics on display in this small vacation house.

Date: 2009-2010 Status: Construction Documents Client: Undisclosed Location: Mountain West Program: House

The house links three horizontal extrusions of “leaning,� or asymmetrical A-frames. The skinny A-frame on the western side contains the library, wine cellar and garage. The wide A-frame in the center of the house is dedicated to two floors of bedrooms and bathrooms. The medium A-frame on the eastern side consists of living, kitchen and dining areas. The house aims to undermine the seeming limitations of a triangular section by augmenting and revealing the extreme proportion in the vertical direction, and utilizing the acutely angled corners meeting the floor as moments for thickened walls, telescopic apertures and built-in storage.

Above: Visualization of Allandale House exterior

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Above: Site plan Opposite: Visualization of Allandale House exterior

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Above: Visualization of Allandale House interior

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Above: Allandale House transverse sections 01 02 03 04 05 06 07

Wine Cellar Main Entry Main Foyer / Open Office Kitchen Library Bedroom Elk Mount Location 47

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VIII. WEATHERS PERMITTING A FIELD GUIDE TO TRANSITIONAL ENVIRONMENTS

Weathers Permitting—a proposal for the 2010 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program—aspires to broaden affiliations between natural processes and cultural practices. It seeks to sponsor a renewed curiosity in spatial, temporal, and conditional patterns of environmental transition to which we may have grown accustomed.

The installation is conceptualized as a terrain— a continuous and varied landscape—that resists rigid typological classification. Rather, through formal and compositional metamorphosis, the terrain enfolds a spectrum of diverse, yet correlated landscape characteristics. It is designed as an elevated boardwalk with unconventional properties including malleability and water retention. Conceived as a flexible construct, the design makes use of the common-directionality and inherent material-flexibility of parallel planks of wood in order to guide the locations of folds in its surface.

Date: 2010 Status: Concept Design Client: Competition Location: MoMA PS1, Queens, New York Program: Pavilion Project Team: Cecilia Ho, Sunnie Lau, George X. Lin, Alex Marshall, Travis Williams Animation Music: Dave Eggar This page: Collective pool, Section

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Above & Opposite: Visualization of Weathers Permitting

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William O’Brien Jr. is Assistant Professor of Architecture at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, and is principal of an independent design practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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POSTSCRIPT WILLIAM O’BRIEN JR.

We are self-constituted members of a postdigital generation.

Our design education was defined by the development of computational prowess. It was an educational environment characterized by disciplinary polarization and fraught with anxieties about our allegiances. In the frenzied academic context of the digital project during the early part of the last decade, it seemed to us that the trajectories of the varied architectural agendas of our neo-avant-garde predecessors were crudely bundled into two groups: those whose work aligned with the ambitions of the digital project, and those whose work did not. The former developed an affinity for all things digital, pursuing formal continuity, geometric complexity, and intricacy, while the latter developed an aversion to it, pursuing static, stark, and iconic form.

We have resisted the lure to categorize our work singly, opting instead to hold out for hybrid, heterogeneous characterizations. We are comfortable with the idea that we have not built impenetrable, life-long theses for practice, but rather are working with less rigid hypotheses that provide us with adequate governance. We prefer to build up a culturally-, historically-, and intellectually-charged center of gravity that is at once potent enough to offer stability, but weak enough to be affected by greater, ever-changing spheres of influence.

Having witnessed the collective exhaustion of a phase of the digital project that was monopolized by aesthetic concerns, we are now motivated by the potential of a deeper, more thorough incorporation of computation and digital fabrication into our practice. As computation and digital fabrication become inextricably ingrained in process, they have been resituated as fundamental rather than novel. This transition enables us to direct our attention elsewhere, allowing the emergence of new architectural agendas likely to produce more nuanced work with multiple allegiances. Projects in this exhibition catalogue can now be described in pairs of terms that until recently might have read as contradictory, as implausibly aligned with two oppositional groups: parametric and primitive, systemic and idiosyncratic, differentiatedrepetitive and graphic, malleable and thick, rule-based and authored. As architectural motivations for the postdigital generation, these couplings are not only plausible, but thrilling.

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Above: Visualization images of layout for Incremental Change exhibition at the Keller Gallery Opposite & Following spread: Elevation of layout for Incremental Change exhibition at the Keller Gallery 4

In a little over two years, room 7-408 has transformed from what was once a plotter room into the Keller gallery at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s school of architecture & planning. Through a generous gift by Shawn Keller, principal of C.W. Keller & Associates, the Keller Gallery opened with its first exhibition in the fall of 2011.

With nineteen exhibitions and counting, the Keller has already accomplished much in the way of creating a shared space for the several different communities that pass by and through its door. Part of a larger series of initiatives set forward by Nader Tehrani, who is the current head of the department of architecture, the gallery brings the spirit of debate, ambition, and design into the heart of the school—through and for the faculty and student community. Sarah Hirschman, who helped to launch the curatorial direction of the gallery as its first director, puts it best when she writes that the Keller “uses physicality to get everyone in the room.” As her successor, I cannot think of a better way to sum things up.

The central motivation for such a small gallery—and one less plotting room—is the regenerative challenge to put forth an answer to the question: How to display architecture?

Seemingly simple, this act—one that shifts scales, translates intentions, and relocates our gaze—grows increasingly less straightforward. The simplicity of this question is further amplified by the diminutive dimensions of the gallery. Its size affords only so much and thus forces our exhibitors to be focused, edited, and abbreviated, using limited means to make the strongest conceptual statement. An exhibition at the Keller is conceived as a One-Idea space, a One-Building space, or a miniature exhibit, among a range of other tropes.

As the discipline itself takes on greater, less or simply different responsibilities, the Keller attempts to both reason and argue with the assumptions that have taken hold while we went about our business.

A combination of project images, opening photos, and texts, Certain Aspects of Architectural Form is one of six compact publications that touch upon the immediacy of the exhibition itself, as well as a consideration of the context and conversations that surround it. These collected books do not pretend to recreate the exhibition experience, but rather aspire to expand what we see and what we discuss, as we continue to make architecture in varying formats, and across academic and professional work.