00. Saphiya Abu Al-Maati Portfolio of Work
This portfolio contains work completed throughout the Master of Architecture program at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, & Preservation. Throughout each project is an emphasis on the role that architecture plays in the every day lives of those that encounter it, and how this can become a tool that builds community. Each project, when applicable, is tailored to its specific site, potential users, and always aiming to provide the most positive impact possible for those interacting with it.
Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, & Preservation M.Arch 2014-2017 1
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01. Southwest Land Art Making Place
The Southwest has delivered a set of conditions unique to the rest of its surrounding landscapes for decades - providing spaces of isolation, expansion, and experimentation. From land art to military installations, the landscapes of the Southwest have often been viewed as a blank slate or an empty canvas. While we know that in reality it is not so blank nor quite so empty, it is here that one can find the necessary moments of emptiness that facilitate the ability to think outside of the box and experiment on a vastly different scale, a scale impossible to engage in an urban, and sometimes even suburban, setting. The conditions of the Southwest in question include the isolation, massive topographical shifts, environmental conditions ranging from the mild to the extreme, and an ever present romanticism associated with the desert and its place in the American ideal that are unique to the region. These conditions provided by this particular region have often been observed and discussed through conversations surrounding land art, and their ability to draw attention to such often overlooked possibilities. Land art pieces have come to be known for their radical interventions into the land itself, and while this is true, their legacy has overshadowed an even greater variety of interventions that exist on a multitude of scales. Such sites are not often recognized or understood as being significant or “place,� as they are not marked, called to attention, or designed by a recognizable name. Many are by products of the experimentation and expansion that the Southwest allows for, and with or without intention, have created their own radical intervention into the landscape as well. These sites range from large scale military testing areas that cover miles and miles of barren land to sites of natural resource extraction and even the ruins of forgotten towns. It is at this point that the project begins, and aims to provide the average traveler moving across the region with the tools necessary to recognize such places. 12 sites that represent a variety of program, history, and scale were chosen as starting points for a system to be implemented across the entirety of the region. Each site is marked utilizing recognizable pieces of salient infrastructure or found architectural forms, with the distribution of tower types according to existing infrastructure, program, and site. These towers come to serve as recognizable markers of significant places across the region, bringing to light the often overlooked radical landscape interventions that are so unique to the conditions only available here.
Studio Critic: Julian Rose & Garrett Ricciardi Adv. VI 3
1. Sacaton Copper Mine 2. Northeast Side Denver 3. Spaceport America 4. CH2E Tire Recycling Center 5. Capulin Volcano National Monument 6. Navajo Lake State Park 7. Pueblo Bonito 8. St. Thomas, Nevada 9. Nevada National Security Site 10. White Sands Missle Range 11. Dougway Proving Ground 12. Roswell Auxiliary Army Airfield #3 13. Davis-Monthan Air Force Boneyard 14. Henderson, Nevada 15. Highlands Ranch 16. Lake Havasu City, Arizona 17. Rainbow Acres 18. Dove Creek, Colorado Roswell 19. Veteran’s Memorial Highway 20. Great Salt Lake Desert 21. Great Salt Lake Causeway 22. Jean / Roach Dry Lake Bed 23. Winnemucca, Nevada 24. Burlington, Colorado 25. Kersey, Colorado
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St. Thomas, Nevada A former Mormon outpost founded in 1865, this small town was abandoned prior to the completion of the Hoover Dam in 1938 and subsequently inundated by Lake Mead. The ruins have the town have remained underwater for decades, having emerged from the water only recently due to increased levels of drought. Here the scaffolding ladder tower remains accessible with the anticipated fluctuation of water levels on the site.
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Nevada National Security Site, Nevada Established in 1951 by President Harry Truman in Nye County, NV for the purposes of testing nuclear devices, this military site is run by the United States Department of Energy. It contains 28 areas, 1,100 buildings, 400 miles (640 km) of paved roads, 300 miles of unpaved roads, ten heliports, and two airstrips. While having been vital to US weapons testing and security measures post WW2, it is often unbeknownst to the average traveler passing by until approaching the checkpoint. This new programmatic tower provides a visible landmark that marks the site while providing an active checkpoint, waiting area/cafe, and viewing platform accessible from inside the site.
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Dugway Proving Ground, Utah A US Army facility established in 1942 to test biological and chemical weapons, located about 85 miles (140 km) southwest of Salt Lake City, this site is extremely flat due to the nature of the testing take place here and often, similar to the Nevada Test Site, unbeknownst to travelers passing by, especially because of the fact it is disconnected to cell service in the area. The infrastructural towers placed here mark the site to travelers up to 16 miles away, while providing cellular service and filling a gap in infrastructure at the same time.
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Jean Roach Dry Lakebed, Arizona The sample tower for dense program is located at the dry lakebed of Jean Roach Lake, a site completely barren of both infrastructure and existing physical program though a popular site for overnight stays and recreational driving.
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02. Harlem
Community Gymnasium
With tensions raised between the existing public housing projects and incoming extension of the Columbia University campus, this gymnasium aims to create a gathering point between the two. By opening up a pedestrian park and walkway on the site, the two formerly isolated areas are connected for the first time through shared facilities and open areas. Community is built through reconnecting an axis between the two areas, cut off by the location of the site. By splitting the building across this axis, the open space provided allows for the extension of this path and movement between both sides. Whether using the site for a shortcut, extended playtime, or simply to access the gymnasium, community members now interact with one another and are able to engage in shared activities. Understanding the experience of a gymnasium through characteristics of space, each program is connected to those most similar to it utilizing the earlier study focused on the levels sound, temperature, time spent, and users present within different spaces in a typical gymnasium.The East, West, and entrance building are all connected underground where access to locker rooms, pools, and circulation to the rest of the gymnasium are provided.
Studio Critic: Gisela Baurman Core I 27
Interior Study : spatial categorization Tracking three users’ movements through a typical gymnasium, spaces are qualified by noise level, temperature, time spent, and number of users present. This allows for spaces with similar characteristics to be located near one another, facilitating a smooth transition between activities.
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1. existing site + volume 2. connection between two axes 3. volume separation + alignment 4. typology identification 5. further division 6. elimination 7. shifting on axis 30 8. resulting scheme
Gymnasium Levels : floor plans Community is built through reconnecting an axis between the two areas, cut off by the location of the site. By splitting the building across this axis, the open space provided allows for the extension of this path and movement between both sides. Whether using the site for a shortcut, extended playtime, or simply to access the gymnasium, community members now interact with one another and are able to engage in shared activities.
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Longitudinal Section : entrance lobby (a-a)
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Longitudinal Section : swimming pools (b-b)
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03. Long Island City
Center for Set & Costume Production
Community engagement with the production center is encouraged through visual connections made possible by strategic viewing moments in the facade, including that of the set movement system located towards the front of the building. The large network of theaters in Long Island City requires a great deal of work to be done in order for each individual production to reach its fullest potential. For set designers and costume makers, mos of whom must act as freelance workers, the space to do such work is severely lacking. The Center for Set & Costume Production provides the necessary facilities for both groups to complete their work while building a community where none existed before. While these systems are interrelated though not interdependent, they act as such throughout the architecture of the building, wrapping around and beside one another, creating moments of visual connection and interaction without combining their spaces until their single moment of shared space located at the shared storage and lending library.
Studio Critic: Julian Rose Core II 39
1. program element comparison 2. set - storage - library 3. program allocation 4. long island city 5. local neighborhood 6. on-site
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Long Island City : theater network The large network of theaters in Long Island City requires a great deal of work to be done in order for each individual production to reach its fullest potential. For set designers and costume makers, mos of whom must act as freelance workers, the space to do such work is severely lacking.
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Circulation : independent ramps While these systems are interrelated though not interdependent, they act as such throughout the architecture of the building, wrapping around and beside one another, creating moments of visual connection and interaction without combining their spaces until their single moment of shared space located at the shared storage and lending library.
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Plan: interrelated program The Center for Set & Costume Production provides the necessary facilities for both groups to complete their work while building a community where none existed before. While these systems are interrelated though not interdependent, they act as such throughout the architecture of the building, wrapping around and beside one another, creating moments of visual connection and interaction without combining their spaces until their single moment of shared space located at the shared storage and lending library.
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04. Environmental Communications: Contact High GSAPP Exhibitions
Environmental Communications: Contact High was the first major exhibition of the prolific West Coast media collective, Environmental Communications. Formed by a group of young architects, photographers and psychologists in the Venice Beach of the late 1960s, Environmental Communications honed an image practice that would carve out a new visual syntax for the late-twentiethcentury city. The group’s core members, Roger Webster, David Greenberg, Ted Tokio Tanaka and Bernard Perloff, speculated that their “environmental photography” would transform architecture and shift the consciousness of architecture students via the university slide library. With debts to LA’s electronically mediated counterculture and its conceptual photography movement, their practice was attuned to the spatial, mediatic and social forces they documented in Tokyo, the American Southwest and, most often, Los Angeles, their primary object of analysis. Organized into thematic slide sets with titles such as “Human Territoriality in the City,” “Ultimate Crisis,” and “Hardcore LA,” they experimented with the behavior-altering capacity of images as they pursued their goal of developing “systems of perception.” Through their media experiments, events and slide catalogs, they positioned themselves as interpreters and purveyors of new trends, assembling a mass inventory of images to resist the buildings and monuments that dominated architecture and its institutions.
Arthur Ross Achitecture Gallery, NY 2014 Curators and Exhibition Design: Marcos Sánchez, Adam Bandler, Mark Wasiuta Photography: James Ewing 49
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05. Kuwait National Pavilion Venice Biennale 2016
Hundreds of islands dot the waters between the Arabian and Persian shores. An afterthought in the political maneuverings of their respective coasts, these islands tell an alternative narrative to the one which drives conceptions of the region. They represent a possibility greater than spaces of political contestation and hesitant demarcation. These islands are the sites of identity in formation, places of experimentation and architectural invention. Their historical roles were as varied as places of leisure, spirituality, planning, war, exile, and health. The island is an entity both isolated but also crucially connected through the waters of the Gulf, and thus not an exception to the national but the rule which defines it. This year’s Kuwaiti pavilion looks beyond the shores of the country and argues in favor of a masterplan for a united Gulf. By presenting the untold history of the region and proposing an alternate future, the pavilion casts the hydrography as a singular entity of neither East nor West, but as an untapped archipelago which defined the region and offers the greatest possibility for its reconciliation.
Venice, Italy 2016 In Collaboration with Ali Karimi, Hamed Bukhamseen, Yousef Awaad, Muneerah Al-Rabe, Mai Al-Busairi, Rawan Al-Saffar, Nada Al-Qallaf, Shahab Al-Bahar, Fahad Al-Hunaif 55
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06. South Bronx Structured Housing
In collaboration with Mark Borreliz
Utilizing the characteristics most beneficial for community building found in the study of typology, the structural housing project aims to bring together a wide variety of scales - income, family size, uses, structural systems - in a community that has historically been vibrant and diverse. Rather than creating housing that serves only one faction of the neighborhood, this site would not only provide housing with a range of affordability, but provide facilities for the community to host classes and events, explore new interests, and engage with the arts college adjacent to it. The center block aims to give back to the community with a public park and arts center, a much needed resource in an area lacking in accessible green space. Through the structural housing project, the ideals of community and diversity are further encouraged on a daily basis. Through the use of a perforated screen, the various structural systems that are utilized in this housing project come to life based on time of day and the amount of users present. When the exterior rooms are lit, the structural system involved are visible to the public, expressing the diversity of scale and concept around the site.
Studio Critic: Charles Eldred Core III 61
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Community Space
lounge class room performance space
Micro Units steel truss
single user student
Community Space
library daycare dance / yoga studio
Loft
concrete column grid
single user family group of friends
Row House parallel walls
family group of friends
Range of Possible Users + Uses
Range of Possibilities : users + uses Rather than creating housing that serves only one faction of the neighborhood, this site would not only provide housing with a range of affordability, but provide facilities for the community to host classes and events, explore new interests, and engage with the arts college adjacent, continuing the legacy of community and diversity that this neighborhood is known for.
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Screen + Structure The screen facade on the housing units allows for an understanding of structural change throughout the building as various users turn on and off the lights in their particular areas. Across one day, passer byers may witness the truss system of the micro units or the solid walls of the row houses as they pass the building and gert a glimpse through the screen itself.
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Row Houses 67
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Micro Units 68
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Lofts 69
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07. What if...?
The Block as Experiment, Research, Imagination
As we move into an increasingly uncertain world, designers must hone the tools we have at our disposal and prepare to address an ever wider array of problems. In this research studio, through the development of extreme and isolated situations, students explored how various architectural elements can adapt, change, and aggregate to meet even the most specific of circumstances. Each student developed a single scenario from a given set of topics and began a series of iterations that explored themes of porosity, aggregation, accessibility, etc. on a standard 100x100m cube – the block. In order to explore how architects respond to societal needs, we assembled a dynamic catalog of the elements at our disposal in 24 different subcategories in collaboration with students from TU Delft and IIT Chicago. With this extensive catalog of standard elements in mind, we began our formal explorations at the human scale, to develop individual ‘What if?’ scenarios and explore how they would impact the immediate conditions of a ‘standard’ housing unit, a unit that could be used for comparison amongst the students outcomes. Scenarios ranged from growing enough potatoes for survival within the unit, to the necessary steps needed to burn calories, all the way to issues of ownership and privacy. Students were then asked to apply these scenarios to the 100x100m cube block and begin to aggregate the base unit with only one (i.e. porosity) element in mind, disregarding gravity, community, and all other ideas we typically assume within our architectural explorations.
Studio Critic: Winy Maas, Javier Arpa, Adrien Ramon Adv. V 73
Unit Explorations The following scenarios assessed what aggregation might begin to look like if residents of the block were able to control their environmental systems in a way that allowed for the creation of microclimates conducive to the growing of specific climactic flora. Ignoring concerns of gravity, community, etc. each exploration focuses on a single aggregative method and what the block acts like in such an instance.
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Block Explorations The following scenarios assessed what aggregation might begin to look like if residents of the block were able to control their environmental systems in a way that allowed for the creation of microclimates conducive to the growing of specific climactic flora. Ignoring concerns of gravity, community, etc. each exploration focuses on a single aggregative method and what the block acts like in such an instance.
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08. Atlantic City
Campus Archipelago
As a city historically plagued with low levels of education and even higher levels of unemployment, Atlantic City is facing an immediate crisis in providing stable employment, or even job training, for their residents. With the recent downfall of the gaming industry here, AC residents are left with little education and training only for a very specific, now non-existent job. Job training centers do not exist on the island where the problem is at its peak, and are typically located approx. 1-2 hours away, making it impossible for residents to access these services. Thus, the island becomes the ideal location to introduce a new model of campus - a series of strategically located, programmatically defined spaces that provide a range of job training and skills for AC residents in the area. Each location is designed for its site and surrounding context, providing for one specific program in addition to a repeating column grid that absords a series of rotating programs that can be identified from afar with their large balloons that add to the AC skyline and serve as markers for the campus across town.
Studio Critic: Adam Frampton Adv. IV 91
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ollege 2 min by bus
min by bus my 5 min by bus
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y bus ollege - satellite s by bus
Existing Training / Educational Centers Routes + Travel Time
Existing Job Training Centers for AC Residents 1. Atlantic Cape Community College: 32 minutes by car, 1 hour 22 minutes by bus | 2. Star Career Academy: 25 by car, 1 hour 8 minutes by bus | 3. Jolie Health & Beauty Academy: 22 minutes by car, 1 hour 15 by bus | 4. Harris School f Business: 25 minutes by car, 1 hour by bus | Prism Career Institute: 18 minutes by car, 1 hour by bus | Atantic Cape Community College Satellite Campus 15 minutes by car, 25 minutes by bus
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Key Destinations on Canal Network
Key Destinations for AC Residents + Locations for Campus Parts 1. AC Neighborhood | 2. Boardwalk hall | 3. AC Neighborhood | 4. Atlantic Ave. | 5. Gardner’s Basin | 6. South Inlet
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Plan: construction training The construction training sites will provide a range of services needed in both classroom and hands on training, including classrooms and computer labs, workshops, and an outdoor area to practice hands-on, practical skills, located in the center of the site as the backdrop to all other activity. 97
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Plan: educational services + computer training With intense coding and computer training, a new workforce of residents equipped with a range of technological knowledge will be ready to immediately tackle the tech field, while other users will be ready to meet AC’s top 2022 jobs far before that, trained and experienced in educational services for all ages. 101
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Plan: urban agriculture Urban agriculture will involve indoor and outdoor food production, a cooking school in order to learn how to best utilize the food grown, and basic elements of storage and facilities. This program will begin to take on Atlantic City’s condition as a food desert through the growth of fresh food and crops in the outdoor spaces, as well the production of food year round within the greenhouses. 105