2016 - 2018
Portfolio
Low
r-low.com
01
Russell Low: Selected Work
01 Dirty Realism
02 Superstrata
03 Eaglebrook
04 Maximal
05 Four Figures
06 Kitbash
04-19 52-61
20-31 62-75
32-51 76-83
rl
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CV and Contents
Work Experience
About
Education
Sorenson Office & Partners Brooklyn, NY
I am designer based in New York
Pratt Institute, B.Arch 2018 2013 - 2018
Rapt Studio San Francisco, CA
City currently attending the Pratt Institute School of Architecture. I will be graduating with my Bachelor of Architecture in the Spring of 2018. I have worked on a variety of project types and scales and is an effective public speaker.
Intern office of 30
Skills
Teaching Experience
Digital Tools Rhino 3D Grasshopper Revit TSplines Sketchup Maya Unity AutoCAD Vray 2 + 3 Mental Ray for Maya Maxwell Render Adobe Suite
Pratt Institute School of Architecture Brooklyn, NY
2015 - 2016
Intern office of 5
2015 - 2016
Pratt School of Design Brooklyn, NY 2018
Installation Designer team of 6 Pratt Undergraduate Archives Brooklyn, NY 2015 - 2017
Lead Designer and Archival Coordinator office of 5 DE+ Studio San Francisco, CA 2014 - 2015
Intern office of 5 Jag Architects San Francisco, CA 2014
Intern office of 2
Oakland Technical High School 2009 - 2013
2016 - 2018
Teaching Assistant, Design 102, Spring 2016 - Spring 2018 Representation 01, Fall 2017 Generative Virtual Reality Architecture, Fall 2017
Fabrication Model making Laser cutting 3D Printing
References Scott Sorenson President, Sorenson Office & Partners ss@soap-ny.org
Publication Pratt Institute’s annual publication of student work
2013 - 2014, 2014 - 2015, 2015 - 2016
Michele Gorman Adjunct Associate Professor, Pratt School of Architecture mgorman6@pratt.edu
Photography Model photography
e w t
russell@r-low.com r-low.com 510 734 3140
contact
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Di
01
Su
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dirty realism 2017
Ea
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eaglebrook 2017
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2016
01 Dirty Realism
02 Superstrata
03 Eaglebrook
04 Maximal
05 Four Figures
06 Boathouse
52-61
62-75
maximal 2016
Bh
05 four figures
20-31
2017
Ma
Ff
04-19
superstrata
32-51 76-87
boathouse 2016
Russell Low Selected Work
Di
01 dirty realism 2017
Site San Francisco, CA
Level Advanced Design Semester 09
Classification Civic
Dirty Realism
Left: Bathhouse Hot Pool
Dirty Realism: Towards the New Civic The idea of a reality is a construct, not a given. Our world is proliferated by fictions of every type, so much so that the idealized version of reality is so commonplace that the “fake image� has is no longer thought of as a fabrication. The notion of a Dirty Reality - one that celebrates the banality of urban life - starts to restructure the idea of how the mundane plays a much larger role in our daily lives. Aspirations of utopia are not the future of place and culture. The new civic will be small, emergent, hidden in plain sight - a fiction of its own. How can a divergent urban system start to reassemble the way the one thinks about their city, and more importantly their spatial relationship to their fellow citizens? United across a larger field through color and tectonics, the new civic begins to play an urban game of hide and seek. Camouflaged behind banal containers, the unexpected intensity of the carved interiors barely unveil themselves from the street. As overlapping contexts flatten and then refold onto each other as the system moves across space and time, architectural containers are no longer bound to autonomy. The city begins to reveal itself as a new series of layered containments. Rather than reading San Francisco as an arrangement of adjacencies [neighborhoods], the reconfiguration uncovers the larger field as a series of smaller moments from zones that are otherwise perceived as unlinked, building a new sense of collectivism and community.
Critic Jason Lee
Semester Summer 2017
Tools Rhino 3d, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, 3d Printing, Rendering
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Dirty Realism
Design 403
Summer 2017
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Fig. 01, 02
Fig. 03
Conceptual site plan analysis of Wong Kar Wai’s movies, Chungking Express (1994) and Fallen Angels (1995)
Elements of Architecture, corridor.Corridor iteration section.
Fig. 04
Fig. 05
Generative site plan showing corridor iterations deployed throughout overlapping fragments of San Francisco.
Sections of initial corridor element iterations using the carving tectonic.
Left: Cinematic Site Plans
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Right: Corridor Element Iterations
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Design 403
Dirty Realism
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02
Fig. 01 - 03
Fig. 02
Cropped site plan moments, showing multiple elements across the city flattened on each other.
Public Bathhouse Fig. 01 Public Pool
Summer 2017
Left: Site Plan
Right: Tracking System Deployment
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Fig. 03
Fig. 04
Public Homeless Persons Shower
Deployment of the wayfinding system that begins to carve out an alternative reading of the urban field. As one gets closer to bathhouse, swimming pool, and homeless persons’ shower, the visual system starts to become present.
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Dirty Realism
Design 403
Summer 2017
Left: Pool Model and Street Elevation
Right: Pool Section, Model, and Interior Perspective
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Dirty Realism
Design 403
Summer 2017
Left: Bathhouse Section Model and Street Elevation
Right: Bathhouse Section, Interior Perspective, and Plan
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Dirty Realism
Design 403
Summer 2017
Public Pool Perspective
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Dirty Realism
Design 403
Summer 2017
Site Scale Model Set
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Current Ongoing Thesis Degree Project
Su 02
Site Los Angeles, CA
Level Degree Project Research Semester 10
superstrata 2017 - 2018
Classification Research
Superstrata
Left: Generative Collage
Superstrata: Topomutations for a Vertical LA The street is the last remaining active public space in Los Angeles. But its capacity to provide the public a space for more than just the automobile has been abandoned. Vertical development has redefined the urban experience for the Angelino, leaving the ground for aspirations of elevated density without any connection to the exterior. The street remains dormant, devoid of any relief from the hard edges that encase your urban experience. But the exterior volume of the street presents an interesting opportunity for the public to reclaim space by extending the street vertically, a new datum off of which public space can grow. The interrogation of the architectural envelope has been extensively studied at the ground level, but has not been properly examined in spaces that are not attached to the ground plane. The future of public space in LA demands the examination of the erosion of the binary relationship between inside and outside that is typically found when space is elevated off the ground. The volume above the street becomes a site for introducing a new type of open space, one which grows in and through the built environment, at once integrating itself with, and offering escape from the oppressive envelopes and interiorities of a vertically intensive cityscape. This open space of the new street creates a volume which liberates itself from the traffic and congestion of the ground plane, reinventing a new topography for a pedestrian experience of the urban environment. Here the pedestrian is able to leave behind the overwhelming and exhausting aspects of urban life, accessing a space which allows them to briefly escape their day to day life. This new streetscape turns pedestrian into urban hiker, navigating an invented topography that invigorates them with a new form of urban play, one that transcends the spatial monotony of the typical experience by infusing the given context with entirely new hybrids of spatial environments - topomutations for a vertical LA. In collaboration with Sebastian Lopez Wilson.
Critic Dragana Zoric Evan Tribus
Semester Fall 2017
Tools Rhino 3d, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Rendering
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Superstrata
Design 501
Fall 2017
Left: Generative Collage
LA 2050 Future of Public Space: elevated distributed ground plane
LA 2017 Existing Public Space
Right: Datum Diagrams
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Superstrata
Design 501
Fall 2017
Generative Collages
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Superstrata
Design 501
Fall 2017
Research Booklet Excerpts
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Superstrata
Design 501
Fall 2017
Desert Collage
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Ea 03
Site Eaglebrook, MA
Level Advanced Design Semester 08
eaglebrook 2017
Classification Educational
Eaglebrook
Left: Worm’s Eye Axon
Eaglebrook This project for Eaglebrook School in Deerfield, Massachusetts is to demolish the two existing art and science buildings on campus, and redesign a new building that combines both art and science departments. Eaglebrook School is private boy’s boarding school, grades six through nine. Located just away from the perimeter of the town of Deerfield, the school is on a grassy shallow hillside surrounded by forest. The campus is essentially insulated by forest and rolling hills, so naturally the incorporation of landscape design and connection to the views of the wildlife is of high priority. The design of the project addresses several critical relationships. Mainly, the form of the building is designed to absorb and speak to the corner of the pond. A simple linear volume is created to reflect the dominant axis of the edge of the pond, then the volume bends in plan in order to create a dialogue with the corner of the pond. The corner of the pond then becomes a focal point for the amphitheatre, which emerges out of the landscape in the curved corner of the volume. Throughout the building, the spaces used for group gathering and socializing become moments where the facade opens up, allowing the beauty of the natural landscape to enter the building. Furthermore, the various art department spaces (such as painting, ceramic, and stone carving studios) are intermixed with the various science department spaces (such as labs and classrooms). This allows neither art nor science to have a distinct area of the building; both fields are interrelated allowing the students to understand the inherent similarities between the two. This act of intermixing reduces any spatial hierarchy that would keep the two fields separate from each other. This idea is reinforced sectionally, as the entire building is essentially one continuous interior volume, with only a few light partitions and glass walls to create enclosed classrooms. Communication and serendipitous interactions between art and science students is opened up by this continuous, flowing space. This building creates and promotes a different type of academic and social culture within the school. Typically, educational spaces are highly divided and autonomous; an educational building is usually a group of individual parts that do not spatially blend into each other. By having all of the group learning spaces connected, the design encourages the school culture to shift towards a more collaborative micro community.
Critic Lou Goodman
Semester Fall 2017
Tools Rhino 3d, Photoshop, Illustrator, Laser Cutting, Model Building, 3d Printing, Rendering
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Eaglebrook
Design 402
Spring 2017
Iterative Development Sequence
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Eaglebrook
Design 402
Spring 2017
Model Perspectives
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Eaglebrook
Fig. 01 Interior perspective in the ground floor computer lab
Design 402
Spring 2017
Interior Perspective
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Eaglebrook
Design 402
south elevation (top)
Spring 2017
Above: West Elevation
north elevation (bottom)
Below: Section B
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Eaglebrook
Design 402
Spring 2017
Left: Section D
Right: Wall Section
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Eaglebrook
Design 402
Spring 2017
Left: Pond Level Plan
Right: Section C
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Eaglebrook
Design 402
Spring 2017
Above: Perspective
perspective
Below: Section A
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Eaglebrook
Design 402
Spring 2017
Model Perspective
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Ma 04
Site n/a
Level Arch 581 Semester 07
Maximal 2016
Classification Educational
Eaglebrook
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Project Title
Design 403
Fall 2017
Left: Fish Eye Perspective
Maximal: an Analysis The following drawings are analytical explorations into the flatteneing of two and three dimensional space. Using Shin Takamatsu’s Kirin Plaza building in Osaka, Japan as a precedent, this set of drawings analyzes the “thick 2d” facade ornament as a system of layered components. The maximalism of the precedent’s architectural elements is further pushed through the drawing process, which seeks to extrapolate and reconfigure the idea of two dimensional depth.
Critic Jason Lee
Semester Fall 2016
Tools Rhino 3d, Photoshop, Illustrator, Rendering
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Maximal
Arch 581
Fall 2016
Left: Elevation
Right: Ornament
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Maximal
Arch 581
Fall 2016
Exploded Axon
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Maximal
Arch 581
Fall 2016
Interrupted Field
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Site Venice, Los Angeles, CA
Level Advanced Design Semester 07
four figures 2017 - 2018
Classification Residential
Four Figures
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Project Title
Design 403
Fall 2017
Left: Urban Scale Impact
Infra-House: Four Figures Residence Alternative models of domestic life have recently emerged through the shifting of traditional boundaries between public and private. This has come about with a direct relationship to shifting boundaries between work, leisure, and family life. The model for how one occupies a residence has transformed because of the internet. The homes has become an opportunity for the expansion of how people conceive of the sharing of their privacy. The private interiority of the home has opened up to the exterior and virtual world. Commonly referred to as the Sharing Economy, this new paradigm of strangers living with strangers offers an intriguing opportunity to use create new types of home experiences. The Infra-House operates as a homesharing residence as well as take away restaurant. The Four Figures are wall systems that begin to emphasize the importance of sharing infrastructural resources, such as water, power, and heat, via a transluscent medium. The center of the home performs as a food sharing gathering space for the neighborhood, while the rest of the home can be rented out via homesharing apps such as Airbnb.
Critic Lawrence Blough
Semester Fall 2016
Tools Rhino 3d, Photoshop, Illustrator, Laser Cutting, Model Building, 3d Printing, Rendering
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Infra-House
Design 401
Fall 2016
Airbnb - LA, 2016 Avg. price per night
No. of Airbnb listings in most popular areas
Desired rented spaces
% of monthly rent earned from hosting your home
Airbnb Diagrams
Types of desired amenities
in Bathroom
in Kitchen
in Bedroom
in Living and Dining rooms
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Infra-House
Design 401
Fall 2016
Above: Upper Plan
Below: Ground Plan
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Infra-House
Design 401
Fall 2016
Above: Section A
Below: Section B
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North Elevation
South Elevation
East Elevation
West Elevation
Infra-House
Design 401
Fall 2016
Left: Elevations
Right: Infra Axon
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Infra-House
Fig. 01 Sleep / Social Wall System
Design 401
Fall 2016
Below: Models of the wall systems
Fig. 02 Sleep / Social Wall System
Above: Corner Perspective
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Site Inwood, Manhattan
Level Comprehensive Design Semester 06
boathouse 2016
Classification Institutional
Boathouse
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Left: Perspective from park
Boathouse The Boathouse for the Columbia University at the northern tip of Manhattan operates as a public edge for the neighborhood community while simultaneously performing as a private rowing complex. The presence of the private institution’s elite sport in a working class neighborhood immediately became the most significant adjacency the design must address. With no community engagement programs currently in existence, this public edge begins to erode the unapproachable nature of the building’s program. Using glulam construction, the tectonic system creates a layering of blurred edges that allows for a dematerialization of the perimeter. With the ground floor serving as rowing boat storage, the top floor contains spaces for the team such as atheletic exercises and locker rooms, as well as classrooms for community children programs. In collaboration with Ana Tan.
Critic Christian Lynch
Semester Spring 2016
Tools Rhino 3d, Photoshop, Illustrator, Rendering, Model Building
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Boathouse
Design 302
Spring 2016
Left: Upper Plan
Right: Section B, Model
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Boathouse
Design 302
Spring 2016
Wall Section and Details
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Boathouse
Design 302
Spring 2016
Section Model
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Boathouse
Design 302
Spring 2016
Public Edge Model
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Visit my website for more work.
e w t
russell@r-low.com r-low.com 510 734 3140