Nicholas Valentino Selected Works
Nicholas Valentino Undergraduate Student, Third Year Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City and Regional Planning Scholar Knowlton School of Architecture The Ohio State University Contact Information 7545 Hunting Lake Drive Painesville, OH 44077 Email: valentino.42@osu.edu Mobile: 440.525.1141
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Selected Works Project 1
Double House
2016 | Fall of Second Year| 4 Weeks
Professor: Beth Blostein
Project 2
Dance & Performance Art Center
2017 | Spring of Second Year| 7 Weeks
Professor: Justin Diles
Project 3
Decadome
2017 | Spring of Second Year| 3 Weeks
Professor: Justin Diles
Project 4
Jesse Owens North Recreation Center
2017 | Fall of Third Year| 7 Weeks
Professor: Ryan Keener
Project 5
Case Western Reserve University Medical Library
2017 | Fall of Third Year| 6 Weeks
Professor: Stephen Turk
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1|Double
House
Creating A Unique Urban Duplex Through Doubling A Double House in its most basic configuration is a single building composed of two living units or residences, usually having separate entrances. By its very nature, the Double has built in efficiencies, either through shared architectural elements or spaces. While architecturally the Double describes a certain typology, techniques of Doubling can be applied an infinite number of times to create increasingly complex organizations. Irregular and interesting massing studies were taken from a previous assignment and manipulated in various ways to create a unique mass that had potential for the future doubling process. After a single mass had been chosen, a similar process of creating study models was done with different variations of combining the doubled mass. With the final doubled mass, it could be placed on the site which included a 40 foot tall building to one side, a 20 foot tall on the other and a back alley giving access to the street behind. This Double House focused on pushing the limits of public spaces. Creating spaces that feel private from anything outside of the Double, but remain very public to anyone inside. The three floors are set up to create the most private spaces on the top and bottom of the building while splitting the middle between the two. This split in the middle allows for the two halves to remain connected by providing an outdoor balcony accessible by both halves. This focuses this public space in the middle of the Double, and slowly fades to private as one travels to the ends of the building.
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Section Axonometric
Most Public
Least Public
The duplex pushes the limits of public space, transitioning throughout the building.
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Patio Deck
Entry Level
Building Plans & Sections
Intermediate Level
Terrace
Upper Level
The composition of the building consists of a single unique mass doubled and combined to give each side of the duplex a similar size. The duplex sits comfortably between the two buildings allowing access from both ends of the site and provides room for outdoor green space. Having a site located on a city-like block, providing residents with outdoor space is beneficial. One half of the duplex has an outdoor patio while the other has a third story balcony, taking advantage of the awkward spaces created by the doubled mass.
2| Dance
& Performance Art Center Bodies, Surface, & Gravity
The DPAC promotes artists who use performance to explore how the human body - sometimes working alone and sometimes amplified with technology - can be rigorously employed as an artistic medium. The center does not focus on traditional stage drama that emphasizes linear narratives or well-established genres of dance that already have their own audiences. Instead, the mission of the DPAC is to develop audiences for the work of choreographers and performance artists who advance unconventional practices and who often perform in atypical cultural settings from the urban environment to museum galleries. The human body’s capacity to generate aesthetic and conceptual artistic intensity whether through physical movement, time-based electronic representation or intimate person-to-person encounter is the unifying element of the work promoted by the DPAC. A simple three-sided mass with a truncated pyramid on the bottom was multiplied and manipulated to create a simple massing model for the beginning of the design. This simple organization of the masses created a sense of hierarchy established at the center of the site. The masses are arranged along a broken axis, and are placed efficiently on the site to pull guests to the entrances in the middle. The DPAC uses its site interactions to pull guests to its center, landing them on the middle of the axis. Extrusions both cut into and grown from the original site plane are used to create interactive spaces outside of the building as a whole. The unique shapes of all of these spaces are designed specifically to attract the guests to the center. This is the only instance the guests truly sit on the axis, as the circulation never follows but instead passes back and forth across this axis as one flows through the building.
DPAC OFFICES
METRO ENTRANCE
PARKING GARAGE
PARK
METRO ENTRANCE
GALLERIES & CAFES
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Plan cut taken from the ground floor highlighting the entrances as well as the overall shapes of the masses above. This gives better insight to the axis created by the masses of the DPAC and how they line up with important site features.
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Shaded areas highlight the circulations throughout the DPAC.
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A
B
Plan & Section Perspectives A B
A
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B
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3| Decadome
Aaron Payne, Becca Schalip, Deshaun Mulders, Maria Northern, Nick Valentino, Nun Cungbik As architectural elements go, domes are deceptive. We could even call domes duplicitous since what you see on the outside is not usually what you get on the inside. Domes like to pretend to be singularities-- harmonious marriages of load-bearing structure and enclosing envelope. But on closer inspection, this story usually falls apart. Most domes are in fact multiplicities and anything but simple. Domes are usually doubled in a significant way. In some cases, they are even tripled. For the final project of my second year, my studio and I were challenged to construct a double domed study space for students to use before final exams. Construction was to be done completely out of cardboard with an addition of one other material to further the design. It was required to fit within a twelve square foot space and accommodate seating for two to four people with at least one desk. We were encouraged to manipulate what a study space could be, both private and casual, and how light would play an important role in creating an effective studying environment.
This double dome gets its name from the ten elliptical masses that shaped the final product. The goal of these subtractions was to create an exterior appearance that was different than what would be found inside. A large elliptical mass carves the top of the exterior giving it a dome-like appearance and a smaller elliptical mass carves the top to reduce material above allowing more light to pass through. The interior of the dome is carved with four elliptical masses to create pockets of space intended to separate study spaces but leave them open enough for the possibility of a group study. Finally, the last four elliptical masses are used to shape the seating and desk found within the dome. These are constructed in the same fashion as the dome to be sturdy and uniform, while also being comfortable and practical.
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During the Double Dome project, I learned to be flexible and work with my team on a seamless production process. Designing with others pushed the process forward and facilitated collaboration allowing us to work through the initial design considerations to solidify our final dome. The exchange of ideas throughout the process taught me how to elevate my designs. The multitude of opinions invested on the project led to a better final design than an individual could have accomplished alone. Completing this first full scale project with my team proved very rewarding.
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The construction process of our dome takes inpiration directly from the material used. Cardboard, which gains strength from its interior corrugation, was the most obvious precedent to adopt when being used in construction. With a dome as bulky as ours, corrugating the structure allowed for it to be lighter weight while still being incredibly strong. Construction had to be done in layers, as sheets were milled to the correct shape and cut out. When construction was finished the dome was flipped to its proper orientation and furniture was installed. The final step was the addition of our second material. We decided on vacuum shaping sheets of acrylic with a variety of styrofoam molds. The arrangement was installed into the corrugations of the dome to diffuse light as it passed through the top, creating a calm studying environment below.
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Dome’s Structural Members
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4| Jesse
Owens North Recreation Center To Create A Strong Presence And An Urban Edge
Jesse Owens, one of the greatest athletes of all time, was also a graduate of The Ohio State University. While a member of The Ohio State University Track and Field Team, Owens excelled at the long jump and sprints. At an Ann Arbor track meet in 1935, Owens set three world records and tied a fourth in the span of 45 minutes, a feat considered by many to be one of the most remarkable accomplishments ever achieved by any athlete. The following year Owens represented the United States at the 1936 Berlin Olympics (Hitler’s Olympics) where he earned four gold medals. Through his athletic excellence, focus, sportsmanship and poise he single-handedly demonstrated the falsehood of Hitler’s claims of Aryan supremacy. In honor of its most famous alumnus, The Ohio State University has named a number of university facilities in his honor. This project is to redesign and replace one of the Jesse Owens recreation facilities with a new building, one more worthy of its namesake. The University has made it a priority to create a stronger presence and a more urban edge along its northern boundary on Lane Avenue. This process started with the redevelopment of the North Campus Dormitory cluster and now the glulam shed of the old recreation center will become something new. Unlike previous facilities, the University has expressed a desire for a multi-story building which creates a stronger street edge and maximizes land usage efficiently. The beginning studies focused on the site, as well as program and typology research. The objective was to compare a variety of typologies to determine which would best combine for a recreation center with the required programs necessary for this location. Following experimentation with massing models focusing on how these combinations of typology and program could combine and relate to the site, a base for the design of the building was chosen. The main idea centralized the basketball courts as in an area-like typology. This idea, combined with main circulation of the northern campus, provided the final building shape with installations of egress and fenestration. The final design highlights the main programs, using them to connect the minor programs, and to become visible between all floors.
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First Floor
B
Intermediate Level
Building Plans D
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C B A
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Second Floor
D
Third Floor
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Separation of Spaces Created by Voids
Transformation Diagram
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B A
Building Sections B
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5| Case
Western Reserve University Medical Library A CraigsList Medical Library
Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in Cleveland, Ohio, decided to build a new library to serve the Medical School as well as researchers in allied health, biomedical engineering, and basic science. Thanks to a generous donation from CraigsList founder and CWRU alumnus, Craig Newmark, the budget for the library will be substantial. Newmark has stipulated that the building must be a state-of-the-art facility so as to contribute to the already rich collection of architectural works and urban space that characterize the University Circle area. In addition to housing their extensive collection of medical and scientific books and journals, the library will also house a collection of physical anatomical models of human organs. Moreover, the library will serve as a small museum, featuring artifacts from the now defunct Cleveland Health Museum, including a collection of antique medical equipment and a life-sized statue of “Juno, the Visible Woman.� Scientific studies and medical practice change quickly in response to new research and discoveries. Hence contemporary medical students rely more on current journal articles and e-journals than on textbooks, a large portion of the library will therefore be given over to computer stations, computer labs, shelving for journals, and informal, comfortable places to read. The library will also contain a substantial collection of recent works on biology, physiology, medicine, and basic science; a large collection on the history of medicine; an important archival collection of old dissertations as well as an important rare book collection. This project acts as the basis for the design and development of such a multipurpose building. Through studies with the Fibinaci Sequence, plans, sections, circulation and site interactions become clear to establish the framework of the future library. Being the starting point of the design, minor program has yet to enter the form, and the focus has been placed on relationships of major program and site alterations.
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Fibinaci Plan Original Fibinaci plan studies worked around a larger idea of erosion. This idea of distribution spread major program throughout the site and placed minor program around it to create unique circulation routes and varieties of open spaces. The section works around an idea of distribution, creating a narrative of program as one flows through the building from the entrance to a moment of hierarchy in the medical museum.
Fibinaci Section
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Fibinaci Blocks Of Building Program
Fibinaci Blocks Create Voids In Cuboid Mass
Building Plans
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B
Building Sections
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B B
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B