Shepard Halsey 2015 M. Arch Portfolio Application Draft

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Shepard Halsey

2016 M. Arch Applicant


Table of Contents 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Material Translation Drawing Org Chart Investigation Desk Diversion Photo


Material Translation


Material Translation Cathedral Church of St. John The Divine Intro to Architecture, Columbia University Summer 2015 Studio Critic : Emanuel Admassu

The project proposes a temporary event space and program, a climbing wall, translating the contrasting textures and materials of the church into an interactive whole-body experience. The wall scales 80 feet of the exterior south facade, framing views with rest areas and apertures. It traverses the intersection of styles where the Gothic Nave meets the Byzantine Crossing, terminating in a prayer and meditation platform atop one of the four monolithic columns that make up the base of the supporting arches of the dome. The project draws focus to the unique history of the cathedral and its potential to engage curiosity and imagination. The cathedral’s unfinished state exposes a tactile record of the variety of materials and construction methods used in the cathedral’s evolution. Through the design of the wall, the history of the church as evidenced by its material is transcribed to a vertical, tactile, whole-body activity.

4 / Academic Work

The wall serves as a mechanism to preserve the church by informing the public of the history of the structure, its evolution, and the entombed potential for creative uses of space — an operation similar to that performed by the Highline on a discarded elevated rail. The site becomes a generator of new possibilities and uses for our disused objects. Economically, socially, and spiritually the project aids the health of the church. The wall generates traffic and revenue, employing the communal, quasi-religious nature of exercise in city life today. Additionally, the project redefines “church” while furthering its inclusive mission. It facilitates youth outreach, providing young people with a positive group activity, building confidence, and introducing them to the church and its message. The act of climbing becomes a metaphor for religious seeking; a vertical pilgrimage ascending to higher spiritual understanding.


5 / Shepard Halsey


Material Translation

Analysis Analytical drawings developed a notation to describe and investigate the changing textures and materials throughout the site as well as the boundaries where they meet. Scan lines split at intersections of material; heavier line weights indicate richer textures. Points of high contrast read similar to a visual scan diagram. The unfinished, rough textured Crossing is revealed as the energetic focal point and generative core of the structure. The variable of scale is adapted into the analysis in addition to texture, hybridizing the analytical notation with a tool from a studio mate. In the axonometric diagram of the Crossing shown on the opposite page, dashed lines illustrate scale by measuring the height of vertical surfaces in ‘human body lengths.’ Scale and texture interact to compound the energetic focus of these transitions and boundaries, manifesting the tension and drama of this area of the site.

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A

A

B

B Moments (A,B) above show the interior of the cathedral where the smooth limestone of the Gothic meets the rough granite of the Crossing. The patchwork brick is found in a prominent area where services are held. These odd moments inadvertently become the most compelling feature of the church, as the analytical drawings reveal the textural contrasts occurring at these transitions through a profusion of field lines splitting, radiating, bouncing back and forth at these moments. 7 / Shepard Halsey


Material Translation

Site Selection The project required selecting a site to overlap 300 square feet with a studio mate, both an interpersonal and a design negotiation. The chosen site was analyzed through drawing and modelling. A design and program emerged, that of a climbing wall, on an exterior site of the cathedral where styles, materials, and textures change abruptly, shown in plan and in photos at right. The drawing method and the tension revealed as scan lines traverse the face of the building inform the design of the wall, traversing a path derived from the middle drawing on the facing page.

Selected Site Plan

8 / Academic Work


Event Site Surface Condition

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Event Site Analysis Axonometric

Event Site Treatment


Material Translation

Model Physical and digital models explore surface manipulations: the joining of planes and materials through folds, cuts, tension, and friction. Different routes for the wall and the possibility of a twoply climbing surface were modeled digitally, examining the possibility for creating additional space between the folds of the wall.

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Material Translation

Build To minimize impact on this landmarked cathedral, the structural system of the wall is anchored to the building using gravity and friction, as would be a climber in ascent. In the way that fingers are placed on ledges and cracks, the rubberized feet of the structural rods would be carefully placed in the areas of highest material contrast, the friction allowing the wall to cling to the Cathedral, a minimally invasive intervention. Structural Detail

Event Site Section Facing West 12 / Academic Work


Event Site Horizontal Section Cut 13 / Shepard Halsey


Material Translation

The wall becomes a three dimensional extraction of information contained in the drawing process, a whole-body, interactive translation.

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Drawing


Drawing Assorted Media Drawings done over the course of the last year

I began drawing a year ago. I sketch from photographs I’ve taken or interesting images I encounter. Drawing has aided my development and discovery of particular interests and ideas as a designer: texture, materiality, mass, decay, and utilitarian objects. Drawings reveal my curiousity in the lonely utility of various objects and spaces, their character, and their neglect. The airport scenes — the tarmac and waiting area, the highway overpasses and exit ramps: bustling, familiar, useful, but somewhat cognitively neglected and negatively-connotated spaces. Nobody likes the airport. Being stuck in traffic could be found enjoyable. It is sad to lose sight of the world around us, to fail to appreciate with amazement the wonder in all things.

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Clockwise From Left: Shipbreaking, based on an Edward Burtynsky photo Citicorp Center view from a doctor’s office Winter weathered home Previous: Railyard based on a drawing by Eric Gould

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Drawing

Left to Right, Both Pages: Gate waiting area Activity on the tarmac Lovell House (from an early photograph) Skyline mirage

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Over: Bryant Park Deer figure Hurricane Lantern

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Drawing

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Org Chart Investigation


Org Chart Investigation Found architectural fractals Personal project

The project begins with the found object, an organization chart from a work project detailing the asset holdings, entity ownership structure, hierarchy, and types of entities/assets owned by a family (husband, wife, descendants). The chart, created somewhat randomly by an accountant without regard to any spatial considerations, becomes a fractal image. A universal resonance is revealed, displaying an underlying principle about how we create, organize, and perceive space. As a few feet of sandy runoff in the street may be a scale replica of a part of the Amazon basin, I believe the same is true of this org chart. It is a mapping of something else out there, the direct result of the underlying probabilistic connections of all things, that all forces are forces.

Original document (redacted, notes unrelated to this analysis) 22 / Personal Work


Analytical drawings examine variables such as entity type (individual, pass-through, real asset) and articulate how they operate on each other and on the space created and presupposed by the fractal concept. Individuals are revealed as source, assets as end. Pass-through entites, which distribute liability become the ground between - the unseen operator that disperses lines, liability, and financial risk.

Asset Analysis

Analysis Revealed in the drawing process is a tensile underlying structural element. The legal ownership framework itself a distribution of risk and liability, becomes a structural distribution of mass and volumes. Hard assets are revealed as void, as these entities can stand alone, possessing inherent value and utility. Lines of ownership feed upward to provide the ultimate foundation of ‘wealth-support’ to the individuals.

Ownership Analysis 23 / Shepard Halsey


Org Chart Investigation

Volumes were introduced, extruded upwards from the footprints of the original diagram, as though it were in plan. Heights were determined based on the number of connecting lines of ownership interest through each entity. Volumes were merged with the ownership tension structure, scaled to the height of each volume. Surfaces were offset to become volumes themselves, thereby melding the ownership and asset information into a single unit, iterated to blend information from the asset and ownership analyses, combining plan and data into a single spatial construct.

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This is indeed the axis on which man is organized in perfect accord with nature and probably with the universe, this axis of organization which must indeed be that on which all phenomena and all objects of nature are based; this axis leads us to assume a unity of conduct in the universe. -Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture

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Org Chart Investigation

Perspective

Through an iterative process defining set operations on a found material, the result becomes a spatial construct displaying spatially the financial lives of a family unit. A traversable structural topography reveals the dispersion of risk, liability, and assets. Life becomes place.

Beginning with a found object imagined as a fractal image and translated through operations into a spatial concept. The result could be a housing development, a library, a corporate campus —the infinite possiblilities of a world of direct resonance and correlation.

Plan

Front Elevation

Rear Elevation 26 / Personal Work


Desk Diversion


Clockwise from Left: Chopstick walker Cutting and folding note cards Page fastener critter Another page fastener critter

Desk Diversion Small creation made during breaks at work using page fasteners, chopsticks, and other scraps lying about, a good outlet when I’m feeling stuck and need to work a different part of the brain. Often combined with doodling. Subjects portrayed in their natural environment.


Photo


Photo Photos taken over the last few years Canon G1X and iPhone

Photography was my first encounter with the principles of composition and the theory and processes through which images are scanned by the eye, constructed and perceived by the mind. I generally take photos in a documentary way as I encounter interesting moments. Found objects and images are my favorites. What I consider “found” are the overlooked elements, like the building rooftops with their ducting and vents, or highway overpasses and exit ramps — compositions unplanned in their elegance and the simplicity of their relationships. Many of my photos taken out of a car window or out of my office window. Texture, mass, scale, haze, perception and the definition of space are elements contributing to my images.

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Left to right, both pages: Reclamation Rooftop intrigue Window reflections

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Photo

Left to right, both pages: Tree stump topography Tug boat graveyard - Arthur Kill, Staten Island Overgrown tennis court, snowy haze Whitestone sentinels

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Photo

Clockwise from Left Truncated triangles wave Highway ramp with power lines Bruckner Expressway

Facing: Mets game

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