rmb
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design portfolio
design portfolio
rmb
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ryan m bloom
education Bachelor of Architecture (Minor in Construction Management) ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (IIT), Chicago, Illinois (2006-2011)
Summer Sustainability Workshop ECOSA INSTITUTE, Prescott, Arizona (Summer 2009)
mission: architect Architecture Basics Drafting, Models and more (2006-2009)
Summer of Sustainability Ecosa Institute Summer Workshop (Summer 2009)
Traditional Concept, Alternative Approach Urban Modular Housing (Fall 2009)
Leading Edge Design Competition Community Green Education Center (Spring 2010)
Academics Meets Performance CHIARTS: Chicago High School for the Performing Arts (Fall 2010)
opportunities abroad Developing Sustainable Communities Coffee Storage Banda in Uganda, Africa (2010-2011)
Noin Tab (Elderly Tower) Tall and Green: Seoul, South Korea (Spring 2011)
experience Intern (December 2011-March 2012) FGM ARCHITECTS, Oak Brook, Illinois
Co-Founder (2011) TOASTING DESIGN, Chicago, Illinois
beyond the books Bloom Residence Addition / Renovation for a Private Home (Summer 2010)
ToastingDesign Design Group / Recent Competition Entries (Fall 2011 - present)
Designer / Project Manager (2010) BLOOM RESIDENCE, Jefferson Hills, Pennsylvania
Intern (Summer and Winter 2008) DRS ARCHITECTS, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
table of contents
architecture basics the beginning of architecture school first and second year studios (2006-2008) Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, Illinois Every new step begins with the basics. We began our training with two years of architectural basics with an intense emphasis on hand drafting knowledge, basic design principles, and modeling techniques. Projects included drafting for line weight and quality, geometry and color studies, interpreting objects and built form into drawings, architectural modeling, detail drawing and understanding, drawing conventions, structural principles, design considerations, materiality and proportion, and basic space planning.
mission: architect
summer of sustainability ecosa institute summer workshop environmental design/alternative construction materials and methods (june 2009) ECOSA Institute Prescott, Arizona To broaden my horizons, I ventured out to Arizona for a four week intensive sustainability workshop on alternative construction and design techniques. The workshop included field trips to sustainable architecture and manufacturing sites, class lectures on design techniques and considerations, and hands-on building using various alternative materials. Personal side trips to Taliesin West and the Grand Canyon were also included. Materials used in handson construction included straw bales, rammed and poured earth, cob, adobe, earth plaster, and recycled/reclaimed materials.
mission: architect
Components Prototype A/Am
traditional concept, alternative approach urban modular housing third year studio (fall 2009) project location Chicago, Illinois Housing is a traditional and very common design challenge throughout the world. Urban housing involves density, creating challenges between the closeness of neighbors, the need for public space, and the design of comfortable, sustainable living within a cost-effective means.
Prototype A/Am - Third Floor
This design studio challenged the idea of looking at urban housing with an alternate approach: modular construction. The utilization of this method allows for the building of multiple prototypes in a quick, efficient, and cost effective way. However, looking further at the overall layout of space, the challenge surrounded the design of a more sustainable, modern modular housing solution without compromising the simplicity and efficiency that modular housing presents. The site was a standard Chicago city block with a one-way street through the middle. Moving the street toward the east and utilizing diagonal parking allowed for more green space without compromising parking. The housing solution encompassed two different prototypes, both of which could be mirrored, allowing for a slightly changing facade texture while limiting construction to only a few different modular constraints. The overall product encompassed a unique, affordable, and sustainable new design solution to a traditional design problem.
Prototype A/Am - Second Floor
Prototype A/Am - First Floor
mission: architect
Components Prototype B/Bm
Prototype B/Bm - Third Floor
Prototype B/Bm - Second Floor
Prototype B/Bm - First Floor
mission: architect
leading edge design competition community green education center merit citation awards control of thermal mass | linkage between indoor/outdoor learning fourth year studio (spring 2010) project location Long Beach, California partner Melissa Toops Project Premise The achievement of a net zero energy building encompasses strategic planning and sustainable implementation involving material choices, site orientation, daylight and ventilation strategies, and more. As an educational facility, the use of these strategies is integrated into both environmental building features and educational learning components. For the Community Green Education Center, the employment of building organization, material selections, and renewable resource strategies enabled us to pursue a net zero energy strategy. The organization of the program was developed into cores to allow for a multi-building design. This multiple building strategy allows for better ventilation possibilities, increased daylight penetration, and the creation of multiple outdoor spaces suited for extended outdoor learning and community recreation. It also opens the possibility for future expansion of the Center, expanding the life cycle of the building. The excavation of our site six feet below grade for a lower courtyard brings about the use of the excavated site material. The introduction of a thick mass wall creates a strong structural and shear wall for the building while allowing for the implementation of innovative poured earth technology over traditional concrete construction. The poured earth aids in utilizing all of the site excavated earth as a building material, decreasing the overall embodied energy of the project, creating a thermal mass, directing user views inward to the site, and acting as a visual example of a lowtech and high-tech sustainable design approach. Other material selections focused on the use of recycled and low embodied energy materials. Structurally, glulam beams and columns are implemented as a lower embodied energy material that can utilize ample amounts of recycled and sustainably certified materials. Using glulam members reduces embodied energy by as much as seven times over using structural steel, and with a large quantity of recycling facilities within a 30-mile radius of the site, the opportunity for recycled and reused materials would be utilized fully. The adjustable light shelf, for example, will employ recycled polished aluminum as the material using as much as 13 times less energy than that of new aluminum.
Sustainability and net zero energy design has to reach beyond building design. The Community Green Education Center is designed to bring the community into the site for recreation and sustainable education through its outward expression of sustainable strategies. Community garden space allows for the Long Beach community to get involved in gardening and landscape knowledge, while sustainable landscape installations produced by the students and professionals act as an example for people to experience. Recycling bins, waste management, and visible composting serve to show the public environmentally responsible strategies they can employ in their own daily practice. A connection to public transportation and an ample amount of bike racks serve to connect the community to more sustainable forms of transportation. These strategies and more are openly visible on every angle of the site to guide the community and the Center toward sustainable practice. Overall, net zero energy is difficult to attain. However, the Center strives for net zero energy through the several positive ways previously outlined. Reaching further toward sustainability and net zero energy is the Center’s outward branching influence. Feeding power back into the grid helps to offset any non-passive components of the project while reducing the power needed by the surrounding community. There is also an overall focus on teaching a culture of sustainability to the community at large, becoming a location for community learning through its programs and outward example of environmental strategies. The integration of program, material, and resource strategies in combination with its community education and recreation focus derive the net zero energy principles behind the Community Green Education Center.
Renewable resource strategies involve employing the sun and wind in capturing their lighting possibilities, ventilation opportunities, and power generation capabilities. Lighting is maximized through the employment of a multi-building design as well as light shelf design and translucent circulation pathways. The light shelf was studied closely to determine the optimum design, and catwalk-like circulation pathways allow for further diffused light penetration. The adoption of operable windows both low and high on each wall allow for a customizable ventilation strategy by season. The occupant can adjust the openings depending on the prevailing winds on the site to maximize their ventilation comfort. Furthermore, with the positive wind and solar power capabilities on site, the Center employs enough renewable power sources to produce almost four times the energy needed, enabling the complex to feed power back into the grid and allow for flexibility in the installation of new innovative technologies without compromising the building’s net zero status.
mission: architect
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Earth
Wind
Solar
Material
Landscape
Transportation
Experience
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Site Features 1. Community Sculpture Garden 2. Community Vegetable Garden 3. Outdoor Classroom Area 4. Landscape Installations 5. Outdoor Auditorium 6. Outdoor Shop Area 7. Recycling and Composting Center 8. Waste Receptacles
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Notable Features - Paths of permeable earthen brick and recycled aggregate; drop off lane of permeable concrete - Trees, grass, and other plantings of native origin - Bike racks for total of 54 bicycles - Lounge with large operable overhead doors for connection to exterior lounge and outdoor auditorium - Proposed bus stop/secondary drop off location for connectivity to public transportation - Rain catchment cisterns for roof water collection and reuse in landscape and greywater systems
mission: architect
mission: architect
academics meets performance CHIARTS: chicago high school for the performing arts fifth year studio (fall 2010) project location Chicago, Illinois CHIARTS is a Chicago high school that meshes academic, college prep, and performance arts educations into one school. Often housed in inadequate space, CHIARTS was interested in coming up with ideas for a new space. Located downtown, the program encompasses spaces for academics, music, dance, theater, visual arts, and performances. Immediately drawn to the influence of density, the fluidity of performance, and the rigidity of academic curriculum, I was intrigued to experiment with how to mesh these varying and often differing components. The outcome was a building with an inward focus toward the students’ ultimate goal: performance. The performance spaces are centralized in the building with an exterior courtyard on the top to allow for light penetration and alternative learning and leisure space. The academics and performing arts learning spaces are then placed vertically around the performance spaces, allowing for vertical density while creating a play and interaction between the exterior perception and the interior experience.
City = Density, Verticality
Concept
Education = Efficiency, Defined Performance = Fluid, Loose
Performance Object | Educational Tower
Educational Tower Performance “Object”
Educational Tower surrounding Performance Object
academics music dance theater visual arts performance support
CHia RtS DOWNTOWN
Education surrounding Performance
mission: architect
2nd Floor
3rd Floor
4th Floor
5th Floor
7th Floor
Early Conceptual Studies
Ground Floor Floor
6th Floor
8th Floor
Facade Concept
Site Chicago Loop E Van Buren Street and S Wabash Avenue
mission: architect
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view looking north interior of atrium and circulation levels main performance entry at night main performance entry lobby night view looking south
mission: architect
developing sustainable communities coffee storage banda in uganda, africa sponsor Crop to Cup Coffee Company IIT Interprofessional Project 333 (IPRO 333) (2010-2011, ongoing beyond IIT) project location Uganda, Africa team project (team leader spring 2011) The IPRO program encompasses a project-based curriculum involving a team of students from a variety of disciplines. Our IPRO team, IPRO 333 was approached by Crop to Cup Coffee Company to address community and coffee quality issues in the Bugisu region of Uganda, Africa. The goal was to use locally available materials to design a common space building where Ugandan coffee farmers could organize their crop for direct export. To this degree we designed a three-building coffee storage hut, or “banda” that would be used for office space, sample tasting and storage, and coffee storage for export. Designed using earthbag construction, the project uses almost entirely siteavailable materials (earth) to construct a self-supportive dome structure. Benefits of the project include: • minimal transportation costs • cooler, drier storage space more ideal for the storage of coffee • improvement of overall coffee quality and consistency among farmers • central community location will allow for knowledge exchange • the community building together will begin a new level of interaction not previously seen • improved quality of coffee brings more income to farmers, increasing overall standard of living • introduction of a more effective building technique for that region of Uganda
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winter 2010 trip to uganda
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2 1 our travel team with part of the farming community 2 outer coffee bean cherry and inner parchment beans 3 learning about coffee farming methods (pulper shown) 4 coffee parchment drying bed (dried parchment beans shown)
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conceptual banda image (by Mark Swingler) current building practices (based on wealth and material availability) earth bricks transported from the base of the mountain project site and road up the mountain (site location at top right of image)
opportunities abroad
IPRO 333 history and team structure
section through storage bandas drawing by Ryan Bloom marketing and networking
precedence in uganda Uganda Ecovillage
construction documentation site plan implementation strategy images by Mark Swingler The project as an IPRO has now ended and is moving into the implementation and build stages beyond IIT. Site, construction, and marketing strategies are underway, and fundraising for the materials both in the U.S. and Uganda are being considered. For cultural reasons, our team will not build the entire set of bandas. Instead, we will go to Uganda to work alongside the farmers in building the first banda, empowering them to become invested in the project. From there they will have the ability to build the rest of the project as well as expand the project in ways that suit them best.
Part of the Spring 2011 semester involved hands-on building with earthbags to fully understand the process and the abilities needed for construction. A construction manual of pictures, drawings, and text is being compiled for the farmers from what we learned and researched regarding this exciting construction technique. --------->
opportunities abroad
noin tab (elderly tower) tall and green: seoul, south korea fifth year studio (traveling studio with the CTBUH) (spring 2011) project location Seoul, South Korea partner Matthew Abbott awards shortlisted in the “Why Tall?” International Design Competition (summer 2011) The Tall and Green Traveling Highrise Studio, sponsored partially by the CTBUH, is directed towards changing the students’ thinking about highrise design and impact. The students travel at the beginning of the semester to the location for which the studio is directed to experience the culture and determine the “agenda” for which they will design their building. Therefore, each set of partners in the studio develops a different project with a different program geared toward improving the society through highrise design. Our studio was focused on Seoul, South Korea. While Seoul is very developed, my partner and I decided to focus on a major problem plaguing the city: it’s rapidly aging population. We set our agenda to focus on a highrise for the aging, focusing on the changing family structure, social needs, and design implications surrounding the topic.
By 2050 over 40% of South Korea’s population will be over the age of 65 South Korea’s traditional living patterns are changing dramatically. The homes that once housed up to three generations of family are undergoing a transformation into single family and private apartment living.
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To create a vertical residential community for older people, bound together through a program of recreational and leisurely pursuits To bring the most popular leisure activities for older Seoulites - trekking in the mountatins - into the city through the creation of a “mountain path” within the new complex To make this mountain path a public route and so extend the public park that is Seoul Forest into the vertical realm, and create engagement between the public and the elderly residents of the towers
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To create a series of public functions along this route, including exercise spaces, lounges, small cafes and a small library, while ensuring a sensible division of public and private routes and space within the scheme To create a series of significant, open green spaces in the complex for recreational purposes and to for bringing nature up into the sky To create a unique living experience for the South Korean elderly through the arrangement of living and guest accomodations and the other programs
opportunities abroad
nodes and views The placement of public nodes helps to create anchor locations for the path while creating spaces for the elderly and the community to interact.
component breakdown The kit of parts can be broken down into a serious of components, including: • greenroof • glazing facade (curtain wall) • slab (concrete) • structure (steel truss and structure supported on concrete cores)
kit of parts
building section (right)
The building is broken down into a kit of parts comprising four stories each and connecting to at least two cores. Altering the stacking configuration of the kit of parts creates a variety of outdoor terrace spaces, gardens, and community activity areas throughout the height of the tower.
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The 216 meter tall highrise encompasses 1104 total residential units of one- and two- bedroom apartments. Community spaces include gyms, cafes, libraries, worship spaces, classrooms, and gamerooms.
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paths weaves through building mechanical floor located at the middle of the complex various green space levels parking garage underground
opportunities abroad
ground floor plan (above) floor plan (right) design process the design was achieved through a series of model progressions
opportunities abroad
typical structure steel truss system cantilevered off concrete cores
typical residential sections
exterior experience above
interior experience below
showing cross ventilation within components
driveway entry above view from Seoul Forest left
opportunities abroad
bloom residence addition / renovation for a private home design / project management (2010) project location Jefferson Hills, Pennsylvania addition square footage 240 net sq ft total project square footage 730 net sq ft general contractor The Window Specialists project status exterior complete, interior and landscaping in progress The Bloom Residence is a compilation of objectives that developed over a year’s timeframe. I acted as the designer, developing various schemes and creating the construction and permit drawings. I also worked with my parents to attain and analyze bids, submit for permits, and purchase materials. I managed the project through the permit and construction process, acting as the main contact with the general contractor, attained information from the building inspector, and coordinated efforts on site while doing some of the renovation myself. The project scope included: - basement and first floor addition - porch enclosure to house a new first floor full bathroom - full kitchen renovation - interior room renovations, including insulation, drywall, electrical, and painting
There were several opportunities for material management. Windows removed during construction were repurposed in the house. The brick removed from the front face was saved for use on the front corner columns and later need. Appliances and interior wall coverings were saved, resold, or donated to a construction material resale location. Existing kitchen cabinetry was reused elsewhere in the house. Landscape plants were saved and replanted.
* The Bloom Residence renovation design began in 2009 with the thought of my grandfather moving into our home, requiring my parents to provide another bedroom, first floor bathroom, and other amenities. As the design work continued, my grandfather suddenly passed away in late summer 2009. We halted our design work, but decided in early 2010 to continue the renovation on a smaller scale. The project, overall, took on great meaning for me, both as a reminder of my grandfather and the opportunity to help my parents after all they had done for me growing up. *
The Bloom Residence and its final images are still in progress.
beyond the books
beyond the books
before and after_interior 1 dining room to family room 2 kitchen 3 family room to dining room before 3 (below) after 3
before 2 after 2
1 after 1 before
beyond the books
beyond the books
ToastingDesign design group / recent competition entries co-founders Ryan Bloom, Matthew Abbott, Aric Austermann, Mark Swingler website www.toastingdesign.com/blog ToastingDesign is a group of recent IIT architecture graduates directed toward continual movement forward in design. Our current endeavors include design competitions and discussion on our blog. ToastingDesign’s overall mission is to make a difference through innovative, exciting design within the realm of architecture, photography, product design, service, and beyond.
Zoasis (right) competition zombiesafehouse.wordpress.com project location universal submission date (september 2011) brief description conceptual design for a zombie apocalypse safehouse community Move Me (below) competition anonymous.a.02 (through anonymous.d) project location New York, New York submission date (january 2012) brief description design for a temporary exhibition space under the High Line in New York City.
beyond the books
bachelor of architecture illinois institute of technology
rmb
a
ryan m bloom 3342 south lowe avenue apartment 3 chicago il 60616
412 613 6244 rmbportfolio@gmail.com www.rmbportfolio.110mb.com
design portfolio