Michael Pollan Cabin, Materiality and Representation, Firat Erdim, Spring 2020
STUDIO DESIGN
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Fine Woodworking Commune Des Moines, Iowa
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Center for Contemporary Dance Chicago, Illinois
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MODEL-MAKING
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Case Study: Kata Farm Confabulations I-III
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HISTORY & THEORY
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People’s Palaces Reciprocal Landscapes Superfundamental
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RESUME
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Center for Contemporary Dance, Integrative Design Studio, Ulrike Passe and Tom Leslie, Fall 2021
STUDIO DESIGN
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Fine Woodworking Commune Des Moines, Iowa Grid/Grain, Andrew Gleeson, Fall 2019 Located in Des Moines, Iowa’s East Village, the fine woodworking commune provides a space where eight resident artists could live, work, collaborate, and share their creations with the local community. Aspects of woodworking, such as material choice, joinery, and building processes, played an important role in the building’s design. The gallery and shop level floor plans were laid out to accommodate common woodworking processes and their respective lighting and ventilation needs. Furthermore, the glulam structure and mass timber components were designed with specific attention given to the joinery, a feature often emphasized in fine woodworking. 6
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2000’
Des Moines, Iowa
th St.
East 5 Locust
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100’ 7
Wood Shop Workflow Diagram
Wood Shop Section Perspective 8
Level 1
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Level 1 Program 1 - Storage 2 - Retail and Gallery
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Level 2 Program 1 - Assembly and Finishing 2 - Heavy Machinery 3 - Workbench Area
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Mass Timber Joint Model
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Process Sketches
Street Elevation
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Center for Contemporary Dance
Architecture 603 Studio Prize Winner
Chicago, Illinois Integrative Design Studio, Ulrike Passe and Tom Leslie, Fall 2021 The Center for Contemporary Dance provides a central space for a group of dance companies in downtown Chicago where they can teach the art of contemporary dance, rehearse, and host performances. The center is set up to allow choreographers and dancers to experiment and push the boundaries of their art and to promote contemporary dance to the city of Chicago. Two dance studios for teaching and rehearsing sit above the main entry on the northern end of the building. A large atrium provides a space for experimental dance visible to Wabash Avenue where the city can act as both audience and background for such performances. At the core of the building is the 450-seat dance theater and stage house for hosting large performances. The building’s southern end holds the back of house functions including warm-up spaces, dressing rooms, shops, and administrative offices for the dance companies.
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0’ Chicago, Illinois 14
3000’
Monroe St.
Adams St.
Chicago Art Institute
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Jackson Blvd. Michigan Ave.
Wabash Ave.
State St.
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100’
Located at the corner of Adams Street and Wabash Avenue, the site is in close proximity to several well-established cultural institutions including the Chicago Art Institute and the Chicago Orchestra Symphony. An elevated train line runs North-South on Wabash Avenue along the length of the site with a stop at the Adams Street intersection. Visibility from the “L” and street level is an important aspect of the design that allows the center to promote and provide visibility to the art of contemporary dance.
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Physical Model
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1 - Ticket Entry 2 - Main Entry 3 - Bathroom 4 - Ticket Office 5 - Coat Check 6 - Atrium 7 - Dance Theater 8 - Dance Stage 9 - Open to Below 10 - Reception 11 - Production Services and Receiving
1 - Second Floor Lobby 2 - Bathroom 3 - Balcony Seating 4 - Stage House 5 - Private Dressing Rooms 6 - Large Dressing Rooms
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1 - Open to Below (West Dance Studio) 2 - Open to Below (East Dance Studio) 3 - Atrium Crane Shop 4 - Library 5 - Projector Room 6 - Stage House 7 - Private Offices 8 - Open Office
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Projection Performance
Floating Dance Performance
Atrium Amphitheater Performance
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Inspired by Lino Bo Bardi’s design for the Teatro Oficina, the atrium functions as an experimental dance performance space in addition to its use as a gathering and entry space during theater performances. The atrium is equipped with an overhead crane structure, allowing platforms, lights, speakers, projectors, curtains, and other contraptions to be suspended anywhere in the space. With a large glass façade facing Wabash Avenue, a nuanced relationship between audience and performance can occur. People on the sidewalks, roads, or trains can be part of the audience, but the life of the city itself can become a backdrop for the performance inside. 23
Dance Floor Construction Detail
Two studios serve as the dance center’s primary education spaces. Designed with the same dimensions as the performance stage, both studios can be used to rehearse performances as well. The dance theater provides a conventional, black-box performance space and can hold an audience of 450.
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View from “L” Train, Physical Model
Shown above are a few sketches that were important in the development of a public entry sequence to the atrium and dance theater spaces.
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Roof Structure Module
1/2” Scale Model 27
Design as an iterative process: the final concept was achieved only through a series of several iterations. Shown below and on the right are the three models constructed at different points in the semester and a few of the many sketches that were important in devising and developing a final concept. 28
First Iteration
Second Iteration
Final Model 29
Confabulation III, Materiality and Representation, Firat Erdim, Spring 2020
MODEL-MAKING
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Case Study: Kata Farm Materiality and Representation, Firat Erdim, Spring 2020 Partners: Amanda Johnson and Tara Tilstra Kata Farm is a heavy timber building in Varnhem, Sweden that sits above the archaeological site of Sweden’s oldest known church. The building is constructed from a series of equilateral triangular trusses that sit upon a large rectangular frame, which allows it to float above the archaeological site. The goal of this case study was to construct a framing and cladding model, at ½” scale, using drawings and photographs gathered during our initial building research. The model was constructed entirely from wood and illustrates the surrounding topography, footings, framing structure, and portions of the sheathing and cladding systems.
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Confabulation I Materiality and Representation, Firat Erdim, Spring 2020 Confabulations is a series of wood model and hand drawing projects completed at 1/2” scale based on memory and interpretation of texts that describe structures and impressions of spaces. The drawings were made on a large board painted with a thin layer of gesso at the beginning of each project, a method which allowed visual dialogue to occur between each iteration. This iteration began with a short description, written by a classmate, about a house situated around a small, open courtyard. 34
Confabulation II Materiality and Representation, Firat Erdim, Spring 2020 The next project was based on fragments of text taken from my own writing and previous iterations. It began with imagining and modeling a site containing a large tree on a steep terrain. The design emerged from aspects of the previous iteration’s drawing and the model building process, which worked with the landscape and shape of the tree to determine orientation and dimension of key construction components. Walk around beneath Duck and swing out over the edge to get past the branches You’re the only one here in the trees, wind, and sunlight Travel towards the sky
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Confabulation – a type of memory error in which gaps in a person’s memory are unconsciously filled with fabricated, misinterpreted, or distorted information
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Confabulation III Materiality and Representation, Firat Erdim, Spring 2020 The last project in the series circled back to the first one, which was based on a writing cabin built by Michael Pollan and described in his book, A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder. The design process focused on using the lens of the past projects (the drawing board) to create a new cabin design that still incorporated Pollan’s programmatic and site intentions. My design centered on the view from the writing desk, framed by two large trees, with Pollan’s house in the distance.
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Concept 39
Superfundamental Site Section (Hand Drawing), Ecologies of Repair: A Green New Deal Superstudio, Liza Walling and Douglas Spencer, Spring 2021
HISTORY & THEORY
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Peoples’ Palaces Independent Study, Vladimir Kulic, Spring 2022 The exhibition is produced by Cuiling Chen, Zhaoyue Chen, Peter Miller, and Samarth-Vishv Vachhrajani, students in the Department of Architecture, under supervision from Vladimir Kulic, Associate Professor and David Lingle Faculty Fellow. This mini-exhibition was organized in conjunction with the international symposium “Learning from Socialism: Alternative Modernities in the Second World.” It highlighted the less known case-studies from four very different places: late socialist China, Czechoslovakia at the height of Stalinism, postcolonial India, and self-managing Yugoslavia. They demonstrate the stylistic, programmatic, and material variety of these multifunctional structures, ranging from the converted traditional palace of imperial China to the locally situated modernisms of India and Bosnia.
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Reciprocal Landscapes Landscape and Society, Douglas Spencer, Spring 2020 Based on ideas from Jane Hutton’s book, Reciprocal Landscapes: Stories of Material Movements, this architecture theory project contemplates the connections between the built environment and the landscapes of material extraction that allow those places to be constructed. Landscape design and architecture projects must rely on some form of material extraction to be constructed, so there is always a connection between site and source, although such relationships are often unknown or difficult to find.
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Superfundamental Ecologies of Repair: A Green New Deal Superstudio, Liza Walling and Douglas Spencer, Spring 2021 Partners: Carolan Hoffman, Anna Losen, Mae Murphy, and Tara Tilstra Forty-five years ago, the city of Des Moines discovered dangerous levels of trichloroethylene, a known carcinogen, in their drinking water. The contamination was traced to an industrial site, owned and operated by a manufacturing company called Dico, near Des Moines Water Works on the banks of the Raccoon River southwest of the city’s downtown. The city stopped collecting groundwater from the northwest portion of their gallery that was located just a few hundred feet from the toxic site. Eight years later, in 1983, the Environmental Protection Agency added the Dico site to the Superfund National Priorities List, a list of toxic sites throughout the United States. Ongoing legal proceedings followed, and soon after, remedial efforts commenced. In 2021, the site ownership was officially transferred to the city of Des Moines, and the Krause+ Development Group created a proposal to construct a soccer stadium on the abandoned industrial ruin. 50
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With the future of the site in question, we investigated the history and present conditions of the Dico Site in Des Moines and speculated about its future and the future of the Superfund program in its entirety. With ecological and environmental damage in mind, we proposed an experimental system in which remediated Superfund sites would exist in their own classification of property and ownership, in which the sites would no longer be used for material and monetary extraction.
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“The Anthropocene calls to us to recognize that we are all participants in the ‘becoming world,’ where everything is interconnected and learning happens in a stumbling, trial and error sort of way. In the spirit of this participation, many offer the experiment as the only way forward” J.K. Gibson-Graham, A feminist project of belonging for the Anthropocene
INFORMATION EDUCATION
Peter Miller peter33@iastate.edu | (515) 231-9076 Iowa State University Ames, IA | May 2022 • Master of Architecture • 3.97 GPA Iowa State University Ames, IA | December 2018 • Bachelor of Science in Sociology • Minor in Sustainability • 3.98 GPA • Semester Abroad in Salzburg, Austria | Fall 2016
EMPLOYMENT
Architecture Intern ID8 Architects, PLC Des Moines, Iowa | May 2021 — August 2021 Teaching Assistant Iowa State University, Department of Architecture Ames, Iowa | August 2020 — May 2022 Assistant Carpenter Performance Builders Ames, Iowa | April 2019 — August 2019; May 2020 — August 2020 Undergraduate Research Assistant Iowa State University, Department of Sociology Ames, Iowa | August 2018 — December 2018 • “Understanding the Opioid Crisis in Rural and Urban Iowa”
COMMUNITY
ACCESS Assault Care Center Ames, Iowa | May 2017-August 2017 Housing Program Volunteer Intern
LEADERSHIP
Graduate Students in Architecture Vice President | 2021-22 Secretary | 2020-21 Iowa State Men’s Ultimate Frisbee Team Team member | 2015-2021 Captain | 2017-2018 Iowa State Women’s Ultimate Frisbee Team Coach | Spring 2022
SKILLS
Drafting & 3D Modeling Rhinoceros 3D, Revit, AutoCAD, Sketchup Graphics & Rendering Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Indesign, Lumion, Twinmotion Other Model-Building, Hand Sketching, Climate Studio, Microsoft Office
LANGUAGES 54
English, German (Advanced)
Tilda Swinton Performance Art Pavilion, Grid/Grain, Andrew Gleeson, Fall 2019