Owen Nichols Work 10-11
Owen Nichols Work 10-11
Owen Nichols Work 10-11 Housing-Marino -void manifesto Folk Art Museum-Lichten Measuring “Stick� Young-Projects Architectural Drawing + Representation Bryan Young Library- Rakatansky Airlab-Moreno -backpack -ice
Core Studio III Robert Marino-critic Ayaka Hales-partner
The Housing Studio (first semester second year M.Arch) paired students to design 400 units of residential apartments on a full block site at East 125th Street and Lexington Avenue. We were also asked to consider how the housing strategy could be adapted to a broader urban scale, applying our approach to Park Avenue between East 117th Street and East 125th Street. The approach that my partner Ayaka Hales and I took addressed the program for housing in today’s times. Our “clients,” the eventual occupants of the housing, are classified as introverts, extroverts, and people who fit in between, and we designed the housing for their lifestyle preferences. I wrote a manifesto that explains their dilemmas and sets the stage for the project approach. The manifesto addresses not only social issues but also environmental issues, as our project attempts to address the quality of light and air through sensible planning. Our additional goal in this studio was to create presentations that were not just computer plots. They involved active production of “originals,” handmade mixed media that demonstrate our experimentation and, analogously, our commitment to creating mass housing that can be personalized. We always had our feet in the digital realm, but we amplified, clarified and expanded that information through “analog” media, for example, hand drawing, watercolor, laser etching and silk screening. We wanted to convey a richness and personalization of representation that reflects the richness of personal living. In addition, I experimented with representational modes that embody simultaneity and the dimensions of time and space. I made many hybrid drawings such as section-perspectives and serial perspectives that capture, in one moment and two-dimensionally, a variety of viewpoints that one might experience in three dimensions.
Inverted panoramic perspective through site. Silskcreen, Digital, Ink, Graphite
Composite perspective of void inside introvert’s apartment. Digital, Graphite.
Analytical Section of (opposite) perspective. Silkscreen, Digital, Graphite.
Sheared Section Perspective of Single Tower. Laser etched in Museum Board, Ink, Collage, Yellow plastic sheet, Digital.
Plan of Housing Cluster with exterior projection. Apartments show (1) diagram of hierarchy of space, (2) diagram of light and apertures, (3) plan perspective. Digital, Graphite.
Opposite: Perspective with void section. Digital, Graphite. What happens when the drawing has the same concept as the represented design? contextual displacement results in new understandings of the subject.
This page: Early sketch of housing towers. Ink and Graphite on Paper
Elevation in Perspective Laser etched onto Museum Board, Watercolor, Ink, Digital
Model of four floors of one tower. Chipboard, Wood, Metal, Acrylic.
Void Manifesto We call for a strict demarcation of public and private in cities. No more semi-private/semi-public space. These in-between spaces create public holes in the fabric of cities, swollen streets and concentrated social activity. They are not green parks or gardens that capture light and air and breathe organic life into the city like so many sets of lungs. They are gray areas, gray matter, gatherers of gray dust. They are not privately owned so they become a tumor of the street, with their own social agenda, offsetting the rhythm of the physical city to create new rhythms of urban public life. In the most positive way, these semi-places could give us reason to go outside again. Some of us. As it is now, we don’t want to go outside. We want to go inside, to the only place that we can be at peace in the city. Where no one can see us, because too many people can and do see us all the time. Our entire semi-private life is documented. We are never alone. Until we go home to our own sanctuary. The increase of surveillance and security has made certain people afraid and exhausted: these are the introverts. The introverts lose a great deal of energy from being in the presence of other people. Knowing that someone is watching frustrates them. More and more introverts are created everyday; they are byproducts of urban change. In the gray areas outside, the introverts are claustrophobic. They cannot breathe. They are choked by congestion and constipated by constant contact.
To find peace in mind and body, the introverts want to go home to a place that faces inward, that shuts out most of the city, save for glimpses outward as they please. Views outward in today’s city reveal a curious phenomenon. Are architects ashamed of their own work? Why then do they so often offer glorious views of other architecture? The best view of Paris is from the Montparnasse Tower because it is the only view of the city where you can’t see the Montparnasse Tower. We don’t want to look outside, because frankly it’s not that nice. Fuck context. Can’t our architecture produce its own context? We want to look inside, into the spaces that we live in, the ones that shelter us. This is a celebration of architecture, a selfappreciation. We want to create new life inside, which needs space and air to breathe and thrive. The light and air of the external city are polluted. Breathing is compromised. We need to find ways to create healthy internal environments. Our buildings should have vertical voids that let in light and air, that are regenerative and not just sustainable. Who would want to sustain what we have when it deteriorates our lives? We need new lungs inside the body of the architecture. Concentrated, local, effective. The health of the introvert’s home is thus physical as well as social. Not all people are introverts, however. An entire generation has grown up in the swell of surveillance, media and information
transfer. These people are the representations and the representatives of their generation. They are not afraid; they are the people to be afraid of, the people who love to watch and love to be watched. They are the extroverts. You are all victims of their voyeurism. These people – the extroverts -- need not just to be accommodated but also to be celebrated because there are so many of them and they would be stifled by an introvert’s home. They are the ones that crave social interaction, in the home and in the streets that are burgeoning with their presence. They want to see everything and to be seen by everyone.
of the way we used to live. The living room should now be given a new purpose as the programmatic connector, separator and platform for unexpected interaction. We will no longer cover up walls with furniture; we will use them as circulation and as social activators.
Their lives are open both inside and outside.
Opening up the internal walls re-energizes the introverts and satisfies the social interests of the extrovert. It also allows natural light and air to infuse the interior from the central void of the building, creating a new paradigm for healthy urban living.
The exterior walls that protect the introverts from the fray should swing open for the extroverts, allowing porosity and vision.
The city thus gains a new peaceful breathing organism from within, private and protected from the mania of extroverted street life.
But even the extroverts need inside living space that satisfies. The displacement and redefinition of the hearth in the traditional home has made the so-called living room obsolete. It is a dead room. Separating the living room and lining it with furniture is a relic
Precedent study of cruciform towers and possibility for combination and transformation.
Narrative perspective of earlier iteration. Ink.
Plan perspectives of early introverted apartments with voids.
Technology IV Kevin Lichten-critic Team:Justine Shapiro-Kline, Eivind Karlsen, Luis Felipe Paris
Section Perspective of the American Museum of Folk Art. Graphite, Ink, Digital
In this iterative drawing sequence, the work explores the mis-reading of graphic information in the transfer between different digital software and methods of manual transfer. The use of crude printmaking techniques such as acetone transfer and polyester plate lithography led to a new type of form finding in the deciphering of the material. Spring 2011 Professor Bryan Young
Architectural Drawing + Representation
Interpreted surface line drawing from photograph. Bas Relief Sculpture, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ink on Paper 24x24
A 3D Model was made from the infromation present in the line drawing. Contour and color fills describe the selected areas of the new surface. 24x24
More of the surface is revealed and treated differently according to surfaces on the original Bas Relief. Scalar anomalies are exaggerated and old information is fed into the new software. 24x24
Final Drawing. Pixel size and color to describe selected surfaces play more of a role. The foreground/background relationship is explored and the awkward struggle between two and three dimensions becomes evident. 24x24
Opposite: Through multiple translations, misreadings and misprints, new forms begin to emerge, not apparent in the original artifact. Acetone transfer, Collage, Polyester Plate Lithography, Dry Pigment, Graphite, Ink on Paper 24x24
A mysterious part to an automobile must be understood in all of its fictional complexity through an iterative drawing process. Graphite, Digital 24x24
Young-Projects Design a device to measure the growth of a child.
Core Studio II Mark Rakatansky -Critic The SoHo Art Library
The library was taking advantage of the stair landings along the main circuit. Characteristics begin to emerge, producing irregular creatures and force relatively calm elements to respond to the behavior of the characters.
Early iteration.
Core Studio I Joachim Moreno -critic AirLab Cell Backpack Ice
The Wet Lab, Dry Lab and Dirty Lab scientists have their own private entrance to their private labs. The public have their own entrance, which goes up, under and through the Labs creating a public corridor to yhe roof & public viewing level.
Generating sketch
cell
Design a research cell for a climatologist. Off the Grid. Using the skin to structure the cell, the cell becomes adaptable to other environments.
Backpack
Design a Backpack that filters and transports water.
Ice
Watch ice melt. Draw it.
Owen Nichols o1nichols@gmail.com o1nichols.tumblr.com M.Arch Candidate 2013 Columbia University GSAPP