Paul Rasmussen
Memory, Slowness, Permanence Critics: Thomas Phifer, Kyle Dugdale Studio: Spring 2017
This project explores a shifting overlap of art, urbanism, and architecture on a temporal scale. In Marfa, Texas Donald Judd sought to find an antidote to the New York gallery typology. In 2017 the question arises: How can the Chianti Foundation expand its artist’s residency program while maintaining the qualities of slowness, overlay, and permanence that drew Judd to Marfa? The building services and structure are sliced, expanded, and embedded in the landscape, creating evenly distributed spaces. The installed walls are markers that provide a consistent rhythm and datum for the gentle shifts of the landscape. As one walks along these walls framed spaces and views emerge and disappear. Over time, the spaces between the walls will be occupied and utilized in various ways. Each space has a changing life cycle that eventually reaches stasis with the permanent exhibition of a specific work of art. The walls and their resultant spaces seek to create a Marfaappropriate infrastructure for the production and display of art.
Space 17 For the first four years after its construction, Space 17 remains unoccupied, only encountering artists and visitors as they meander through the walls. In year five of the program, a painter chooses to work in Space 17. A lightweight, wood system is placed between the constructed walls. The painter works in Space 17 for the year of her residency program. Except for a one-week period where Space 17 hosts a land artist’s visiting grandmother, Space 17 lies vacant for the next three years. In year nine of the residency program a performance artist is attracted to the trails of paint that were left in year five, and he decides to live in Space 17 during his Marfa residency. He places prefabricated partitions, subdividing the space and creating a room where he can meditate in isolation. He removes portions of the roof system to bring light into his meditation room After the performance artist’s residence, Space 17 is actively used by the Chinati Foundation and the residency program for storage Over the course of 15 years the use of Space 17 decreases and it falls into a state of neglect In year 25 of the residency program, an artist is intrigued by Space 17’s aged condition and its previous interventions. He removes the temporary partitions, but maintains the openings that were above the meditation room. He creates an apparatus that fragments the light from these openings and projects them onto the paint-splashed, structural walls. This work is the artist’s contribution to the Chinati’s collection and will be displayed permanently in accordance with the Artist’s instructions. Space 17 is now decommissioned and will act permanently as an exhibition space While this is only an example of what could happen in Space 17, each space will have its own set of experiences.
A Temple to Itself Critic: Emily Abruzzo Studio: Fall 2015
Humanity has always used architecture as a facilitator of worship. Yet as society secularizes, so too does the object of architectural adoration. It is now commonplace for architects to erect temples to art, books, or culture. In this building, students will dedicate a tremendous amount of energy to the pursuit of architecture. It is a structure that facilitates the worship, learning, and development of architecture. In this sense, the building is both the subject and object of veneration: architecture that worships architecture. A variety of extreme spatial conditions instills a hyper selfawareness of the body’s position in space. The first floor is an extension of the ground plane, opening to an airy space housing public programs with four bars rising above. Four unique staircases connect the ground floor to these bars and manipulate program throughout each bar. Containing the studios and subsequent support spaces, each bar mediates the dynamism of individual and collective work environments, while questioning the typical organization of the modernist bar.
The Bridgeport Connection Project Partner: Casey Furman Critic: Andrei Harwell Studio: Spring 2016
The Northern Downtown and Enterprise zones lie at the geographic center of Bridgeport. While these areas are positioned to be an incredible asset for the city, the space within is under-utilized and isolated due to the enclosing conditions of the highway and the river. Our proposal seeks to invigorate these zones, creating connections with the surrounding communities that enrich and enliven Bridgeport economically, socially, and culturally. We propose an intervention focusing on these zones, creating environments that simultaneously attract activity and repair the divided urban conditions along the east-west axes. To do so, we capitalize on the untapped potential of the interstitial conditions along the linear corridors of highway and river. We address these universal issues of edge conditions with hopes of creating a more productive co-habitation with these interruptive boundaries -- re-defining how we live and interact with the highway, or the industrial riverfront. While our projects spans nearly three miles we have chosen a small, yet significant area to develop in detail. This exploration demonstrates principles that could be deployed throughout the entirety of the corridor. The site is at the heart of the Enterprise zone, consisting of several large, abandoned manufacturing warehouses. Through the process of selective culling, conducted with a picturesque vision, this area can become a community asset capable of accommodating a variety of programs in an environmentally progressive manner.
Untitled (Boîte à Résistance) Project Partners: Sungwoo Choi, Patrick Kondziola Critic: Peter Eisenman Studio: Winter 2016
Taking Piero della Francesca’s painting The Legend of the True Cross as a precedent, this project seeks to explore the ways in which ineloquence can be used to question institutions of authority. It is hypothesized that gestures of muteness and blankness have the potential to disturb initial perceptions and induce close reading. Our proposal is a virtual duplicate of Gordon Bunshaft’s Beinecke Library. The mass hovers within the plaza and reconfigures the site’s existing relationships. While the exterior mass is almost completely blank, the interior architecturalizes the invisible forces that govern the site. The juxtaposition of exterior and interior creates an estranging tension that references Le Corbisier’s miracle boxes, or boite à miracles.
New Haven Experiment Critic: Peter de Bretteville Studio: Spring 2015
The house is expected to fulfill many contradictory roles. It acts as private sanctuary, as incubator of familial socialization, and finally as member of the larger community. This house explores the relationships or transitions between these roles (The private, familial, and communal). A vernacular gable form is sheared and shifted along the border of the site, defining two exterior spaces. The first responds to the community, and the second is a place of private seclusion. At the scale of the house, sectional shifts are deployed to establish hierarchy. The familial socialization area is on the ground floor. The children’s personal spaces are raised four feet above the ground plane, and the parental private space is elevated to a second level. To further a private and familial separation, the children’s area is pulled away from the other spaces, providing a sense of autonomy or independence.
An Infrastructural Picturesque Critic: Joyce Hsiang Studio Fall 2014
This project lies at the abrupt intersection of two opposing forces: heavy civil infrastructure and picturesque landscape. The intervention develops a liminal space in which both the infrastructural and picturesque are highly visible, amplifying their intrinsic characteristics in a positive feedback loop. Infrastructural follies are strategically placed around the site. These structures fulfill both infrastructural and programmatic needs, and foster a relationship between the individual and the processes that enable modern life. For example, the water tower doubles as a structure for birdwatching. The rise and fall of the river’s tide is magnified, allowing the river to flood and retreat over specific areas of the site. The push and pull between the picturesque and the infrastructural creates a tension that permeates the site, and activates this underutilized boundary.
Extinction/Evolution Critic: Joyce Hsiang Studio Fall 2014
This project proposes an evolution of a building typology threatened by extinction in the digital age. While traditionally the library functioned as a repository, the future library must become a place of communal activity that provides a multiplicity of experiences and education. The exterior articulates an angular landscape, inviting play and athletic activity. The interior is a series of interconnected library volumes, envisioned as a mutation of the Beaux Arts library ideal. Figural poche mediates the difference between faceted exterior and orthogonal interior, as well as establishes a third architectural force. The poche provides secluded spaces and houses library services. Breaks in the poche connect the athletic exterior and academic interior, prompting a mix of program and activities.
Our scheme centers on the idea of a deployable and multi-functional core. The core is efficient, consolidating stairs and utilities to leave the remainder of space open, gracious, and able to connect to the site. The house is a spatial inversion: on the second floor, the core opens into a more private communal space. The density of the first floor is flung to the perimeter of the house on the second floor, creating a thickness to hold furniture and fixtures for bedrooms and bath. The core can be shifted within the volume of the house, which can be deployed on different lots around New Haven. The house is able to adapt to site constraints through the positioning of the core, which can both shield and reveal space. The proposal for 193 Winthrop pushes the core to the corner of Scranton and Winthrop. The core shields the communal space on the first floor from the highly exposed corner, providing privacy and protection for the kitchen, living room, and outdoor space. On the second floor, the view on the corner is claimed by two large windows. This space is multifunctional; lined with a window seat, bookshelves, and desk, it can be adapted to fit the needs of the inhabitants.
Yale Building Project (2015) Designed with Team B
Yale Building Project (2015) Designed with Team B
This project appropriates the circulation strategy of the Salk Institute to organize the distilled domestic needs of an individual. The circulation ascends around the programmatic space and serves as the active agent of compression and release. This approach organizes minimal space to compress and release the body, where requisite programming is compacted to create open spaces. This project seeks to explore temporality and permanence by rendering the durable material of concrete in varying state of decay or disruption. The object creates for itself an enigmatic origin that lends it an air of mystery.
Combination Monster Spring 2015
Paul Rasmussen • 2-19-2016 Domino, Farnsworth, and Glass Houses • 1914, 1951, 1949 Diagrammatic Analysis 2016
Digrammatic Analysis - Peter Eisenman 2014/2016
Composition - Peter De Bretteville 2015
Vizualization I/II 2014/2016
Rome: Continuity and Change 2016
18”x 18”x 18” Stool No glue, nails, or fasteners
Paul Rasmussen paul.rasmussen@yale.edu 801.494.7025 180 York Street New Haven, Connecticut 06511 Education
Yale School of Architecture M. Arch I, May 2017 Brigham Young University B.S. in Construction Management with a minor in Art History Graduated Magna Cum Laude in July 2013 Co-President of the Design Build Organization, September 2011-2012
Experience
Teaching Fellow, Yale School of Architecture, July 2016 - May 2017 Assist teaching 1001c Visualization I: Observation and Representation, 1021a Architectural Design Studio, and 3225b Religion and Modern Architecture Shop Monitor, Yale School of Architecture, September 2015 - May 2017 Assist students with the fabrication of models and furniture Supervise shop safety and first aid Architectural Designer, Plan B Architecture, July – August 2015 Design/Fabricate for the exhibit City of 7 Billion, shown at the Yale School of Architecture Yale Building Project Intern, Yale School of Architecture, May – August 2015 Design and Construct a 1200 sf single family home for a low income family in New Haven, Connecticut Project Coordinator/Estimator, Boyd Martin Construction, January - July 2014 Manage construction projects; overseeing subcontractor selection, submittals, quality control, and RFIs Provide estimates for residential and commercial construction projects Create and modify construction schedules, to ensure exceptional and profitable project completions Sustainability Designer, Alternative Energy Worx, November 2012 - May 2013 Analyze high-performance building techniques, and determine efficient interventions for Utah’s climate Design an energy neutral house and museum BIM Modeler/Coordinator, May Construction Services, June 2012 - December 2012 Collaborate with architects and engineers from CH2MHill to strategize construction in an industrial setting Prepare detailed drawings from BIM models to facilitate construction BIM Modeler, Brigham Young Planning Department, March 2011- June 2012 Construct and coordinate BIM models of the Brigham Young University campus buildings. Assist in the planning, development, and construction management of new campus projects.
Publication
Editor of Prespecta 53, Yale School of Architecture - 2019 (Expected) Yale School of Architecture: Retrospecta 2014-2016: Studio Fall 2014 – Extinction/Evolution Studio Spring 2015 – Minimal Dwelling Monster Urban Design 2015 – Analysis of Amsterdam Summer 2015 – Villa Stein in Space Fall 2015 – A Temple to Itself Yale School of Drama : Head Set Designer “The Other World”- April 2017
Skills
Languages: Portuguese - Fluent Programs: Rhino, Grasshopper, V-Ray, Maxwell, KeyShot, Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Premiere , Revit, Navis Works, Primavera P6, Microsoft Suite Eagle Scout (2006) I enjoy reading, ceramics, cycling, skiing, and playing squash