CHALE WOTE PAVILION ACADEMIC Design-Build Installation Spring-Summer 2016 CASE Studio Project
VARIEGATED ACADEMIC Student Housing Proposal Spring 2015 Partner//Krystal Tyrrel
THESE VIRTUAL STRINGS ACADEMIC Virtual Reality Installation Fall 2016 Group//Pete Zambeletti, Nathaniel Gunderson, Catherine Walker
I’M MELTING ACADEMIC Artist Residency Fall 2014
MATERIALS + ENCLOSURES ACADEMIC Building Enclosure Design Fall 2016 Group//Krystal Tyrrel, Stephanie Williams, Majbritt Lyngsø
EVERSION ACADEMIC Wearable Prototype Spring 2016 Partner//Cody Seipp
OPERATION RAILBRIDGE VOLUNTEER Urban Installation Proposal Fall 2016 - Current Post-Design
LOCKER ROOM RENOVATION PROFESSIONAL St. Lawrence University Locker Room Renovation Summer 2015 Beardsley A+E
100 BARCLAY TABLE PROFESSIONAL Table Design & Fabrication Summer 2016 Method Design
Chale Wote is a street art, dance, and music festival in the British colonial district Jamestown in Accra, Ghana. From its inception year in 2011 the festival has fostered a community of do-it-yourselfers, artists, and citizens that are actively working to make their future visions of Ghana a reality. It is an exploration of past, present, and future that allows participants to �build bridges of understanding and possibility... connecting our visions of reality with one another for affirmation, encouragement, support, questions, and the challenge to dig deeper.� The CASE studio of Spring ‘16 was invited to design and build an installation that would showcase the research being done into panels made from agricultural waste products. The final build was the culmination of efforts from the CASE undergraduate, masters, Ph.D. students and faculty in addition to next generation companies and groups such as Ecovative, e2e, and AMBIS technologies. Based on a semester of personal and group material and design explorations it showcased the structural, aesthetic, and evocative potential of coconut agro-waste panels. Sustainable, local, and modular this designbuild installation presented to the Jamestown community a unique building option that they can take ownership of. I was heavily involved in the final pavilion design as well as investigations into panel aggregation methods. I was also a member of the eight person team that went to Accra to build the pavilion.
Variegated: marked by variety. This proposal for a new dorm is sited on a prominent hill at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; it seeks to celebrate and display the individual, the community, and their integral relationship. The proposal allocates one customizable cube (8’x10’x8’) to each student that encourages personal artistic expression on the exterior and promotes an infinite number of room aggregations and organizations. Enabled by operable sides that function like garage doors and a set of casters, rooms can hook up to one another, the bathroom, or congregate to create a common space. The vibrancy of the individual is expressed graphically while the vibrancy of the community is expressed spatially. Conscious of a more sustainable living condition, these minimal spaces suggest the potential for a student to keep the unit past their time in one specific dorm. The whimsical dream suggests that one could move their room not only horizontally across a floor, but vertically in the elevator, and even beyond the envelope of the building on the room-mobilizing gondola. Students can spend the day downtown or inhabit one of the many abandoned factories in Troy, NY. Scattered across floor plates, campus, and Troy these mobile rooms will liven, personalize, and engage.
These Virtual Strings proposes an installation for the Brooklyn Academy of Music that dances between the realm of the virtual and the real. By utilizing the abundant virtual reality technology available on devices as simple as smart phones, this installation choreographs the body in the virtual so it is read in th physical. As patrons enter the lobby at the historic Harvey Theater they would see a white and semi-transparent shell with lights and shadows moving across the exterior. As they slip into the space they would discover the sporadic source of the display; five performers wearing geometric headdresses dance around as if they are looking without seeing. The headpieces are directed around by the wearer and lights on the ends cross over other performers and onlookers. Two performers suddenly remove their masks to reveal they are ordinary patrons, and two more theatergoing individuals slip on the adornments and take their place. The role of patron and performer is blurred. Inside the mask one enters the virtual, now surrounded by BAM memorabilia the patron orients them self, noting text also floating in the space. Attempts to unravel the information around them are translated to body movements and a light performance out in the real world. A modern take on the shadow puppet shows of old.
At what point does the part become indistinguishable from the whole? When does the nostalgia imbued in a found object become blurred? How do people connect the familiar and cheery with the foreign and grotesque? Predicated on the part-to-whole sculpting work of Subodh Gupta who combines common household items like pots and pans into a greater whole such as a skull, I sought to blur that divide through another operation: melting. Early studies explored the potential effects of melting on a Subdoh Gupta sculpture, as well as material studies melting crayons, gummies, and toy soldiers. Through many iterations this project finally adopted a common found object, lego bricks, and rather than build with them as explicitly intended, melted them together. The melted legos emerge at several scales and steps in the creation of the final building. They appear as the actual building material as well as the driver of the plan and section form. The final building is an artist residency, the artist dorms, gallery, and work spaces are defined by the melted lego-language pieces and are connected by the rationalizing grid. The nostalgic becomes novel as tectonic and material expectations are subverted.
The structure of the circulatory system enables transportation, regulation, and control of blood, temperature, nutrients, and antibodies. This project studied and adopted its structural logic in hopes of creating a body-enhancing wearable that allows for a similar diversity of abilities. Through continuous research and formal explorations several questions came to surface: How can this form be deployed about the human figure? How does this structure utilize its inherent formal and structural properties as a framework into which other elements can be deployed? The arm prototype created displays three distinct spatial elements, each promoting the acceptance of a body-enhancing system. This logic is a transformation on that of the circulatory system that fulfils a number of functions simultaneously with surface, void, and throughput. The maximized surface area allows for optimum green growth for air quality amelioration through phytoremediation; the void condition accepts material that would open and close as required by the body for thermal regulation; and the interior condition could become a transportation system that could monitor and deliver life sustaining medication.
Operation Railbridge is a project focused on activating the railway underpasses throughout downtown Schenectady, NY in order to add to the sweeping urban renewal. The nine railbridge locations currently exist at divides between neighbourhoods but hold the potential to become connecting attractors that stitch the disparate areas together. Artists, architects, designers and the public will work together to create urban infrastructure installations that respond to the historic, current, and future cultural conditions. The collaboratively designed spaces will activate the public and create catalysing points in the growing city of Schenectady through lighting, acoustics, green integration, furnishings, and way-finding. As sensual attractors these points will enhance the public experience and mobility through the city, engaging the public. Most important to the experience will be the narrative expression that celebrates the vitality of Schenectady, its people, and the railroad. Post-Design Principal: Kristin Diotte, Kate Sweater
LIGHTING
NARATIVE
GREEN WALL
RAILROAD
WAYFINDING
WALKABILITY
Beardsley Architects + Engineers Principals: Michael Reynolds + Steve Moolin Work included: 2D drafting, sketching, digital modeling, conceptual and schematic design work, visualizations, construction & demolition documents Beardsley Architects and Engineers is a divers firm that works at the scale of a small firm but had the resources of a larger firm. Equipped with experienced architects and engineers I was able to experience a breadth of projects in various stages of completion. I spent time creating egress plans for a courthouse renovation, visited multiple job sites, assisted in schematic design and client meetings for a new great camp design as well as an adaptive reuse for North Star offices, and worked on construction documents for a medical office building.
The St. Lawrence University Equestrian Locker Room renovation was the project that I spent the most time on and had the most autonomy in doing. I spent time discussing design options with upper-level architects and created both the demolition and construction drawing sets. Additionally I helped in selecting finishes and hardware. This project was incredibly rewarding to see come to life, and has led to Bearsley taking on not only this renovation, but a renovation and addition to the rest of the equestrian facility.
Method Design Principals: Demetrios Comodromos & Reese Campbell
Work included: 2D drafting, digital modeling, conceptual and schematic design work, visualization, model construction, and millwork construction documents
Method is a nimble firm that is able to take on projects of many scales and scopes through concept driven work, quick iteration, and constant client contact. In my summer there I was able to work on an apartment remodel, a hotel schematic design, construction sets for an office remodel, conceptual design for a grand staircase, and a furniture design project. The furniture design project as shown on this spread was for an apartment sales office. The client desired table that would serve three functions; a place to look at apartment floor plans, a place to store those plans, and a seated area for closing deals. I assisted in the schematic design all the way through the millwork construction drawings to deliver this 27’ split-level table. That commanded the room and created three productive zones; pitching, storage, and closing through a conceptual and functional kink in the table.