2020 Portfolio by Courtney Ward

Courtney Ann Ward | Texas A&M Undergraduate

table of contents

01 converging interstices 02 ornament as crime 03 inhabiting abstraction 04 building blocks 05 hew 06 graphic explorations

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CONVERGING INTERSTICES

This project uses the old Roman city as the foundation to create a Museum and passageway to Ciutadella Park. The overlay of the historical context with todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s buildings and roads created a diverse network of convergences. We defined these overlaps as interstitial spaces and explored the concept in terms of both what it meant to occupy interstices, or small intervening spaces, and traditional architecture interstitial spaces in both plan and section. With these overlaps, we created a library of unfamiliar geometry. We then selected specific components that would best lend themselves to the programmatic requirements according to the project brief. Once assembled, primitive operations were used to manipulate the masses in order to better serve their assigned function and for the integration with the existing building on site. The existing building is not simply torn down, but partly preserved, as it is still a protected building, and further promotes the relationship between the two components.

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section

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level 1 plan The integration of the two elements serves to create a striking juxtaposition between the two time periods being displayed. The interstitial spaces visible on the faces of the new geometry allow the user to visually experience the historical context, while the interstitial spaces found between levels on the interior provide the user with a palpable experience. The materiality of the new massing intends to tangibly distinguish the new from the old while creating a cohesive whole.

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The museum has three gallery spaces, capable of housing permanent and temporary exhibitions, along with the capacity for administrative, classroom, and workshop spaces, a library, and a cafe. It also establishes a new entrance to the park, which derives its form from a Roman building once existing in that position on the site.

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cross section

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Interstitial Spaceâ&#x20AC;? - an intermediate space located between regular-use floors to allow space for the mechanical systems of the building.

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ORNAMENT AS CRIME

This project speculates on a prison in the post-singularity era. The prison is occupied by both humans and AI who have committed cyber crimes who are exposed to a customized VR simulation as punishment to fit their crime. This process would simulate time and therefore expedite prison sentences while still carrying out the intended correction. In creating this new prison typology, we are reinterpreting Foucaultâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s anthropocentric basis to fit the conditions of a post-singularity and post-anthropocentric society where the effects reach both human and AI while redefining the rehabilitation process to achieve proper reintegration into society.

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crime through time

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The original identity of the fragment or object and all of the history it brings with it; the new meaning it gains in association with other objects or elements; and the meaning it acquires as the result of its metamorphosis into a new entity.â&#x20AC;?

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transverse section

machine view scans

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plan

VR modeling

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3D model

This model is based in cities and can be implemented in multiple locations throughout the world as needed. Each model will be tethered to the city and thus acts as both a panopticon and a reflection of crime rates within the city. The aesthetic agency operates as an interpretation of ornament through VR generation. In this manner, the influx of crime data gathered from the city generates further ornamentation. These concepts are represented through the form of a narrative collage in which the progression through the experience of the prison is displayed in a digital reinterpretation of the collage. The collaged images become something elseâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a new form that is neither representative of nor derivative of the original architecture that seeks to further dilute reality. This produces a program that blurs the lines between reality and simulation through strategies of manipulation of time and space in an effort to change societal perceptions of the purpose of prisons. This progresses past Foucaultâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s analysis of prisoner treatment and separation from society by providing a solution in the form of a post-heterotopic existence: an in-between space that acts as a way to not only alter an individual criminal, but as a way to repurpose the influence of the prison on society.

top view

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INHABITING ABSTRACTION This project is critical of housing that segregates people based on economic or identity profile. Instead, the project advocates for designs that increase density and privilege collectivity, challenging dominant suburban models based on detached single family houses on subdivided lots which are socially and ecologically destructive. There is a need to redefine how we live, the formation of new subjectivities and communities. As an experiment in the design process, and unique vantage point to evaluate the work, the project is captured in a capriccio scenographic drawing. As the five-week design investigation ends, the studio environment simulates a scaled model of contemporary domestic life. With the drawing, each desk is an individual component that embodies a residential plot. Displaying the organization and relationship of the component to their respective adjacent areas. Establishing a part-to-whole relationship in order to highlight the modern reality of the interaction of neighborhood communities in an urban context. This begins to challenge the recognized community setting and reconsider ways in which shared space and community outreach can be expressed.

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BUILDING BLOCKS

The project focuses on the ideas of the aggregation of primitive forms being arranged in various configurations that begin to discuss the architectural fundamental elements such as the primitive hut, grid, and typological ensembles. While working in the one to one scale the assembly of the forms began to expose the relationship of geometry within the built environment in a low fidelity representation.

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condensed cube

The assembly was done over the course of a week with 14 - 18 year old students in which they were exposed to the general architectural concepts and asked to replicate the concepts using the 46 different forms provided. The students chose the strategies in which they fabricated the formation and then later were asked to make drawings through elevation, plan, and section.

primitive hut

interior of primitive hut

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campers in lecture

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HEW

Within this project I began to explore the notion of materiality and its relationship to light as well as the use of modular parts in order to make a difficult whole. As the project began we were instructed to create a light sculpture that consisted of opaque materials. In order to further the exploration of materiality, I chose to fabricate my sculpture out of plastic Christmas ordainments. Each of these ordainments comes together to form a part to whole relationship, where each of the parts is rotated in different directions in order to give variation. The rotation of these parts is regulated in relationship to one another based off of the distances given by the Fibonacci ratio. The use of the pink light was used in order to give the project a soft appearance against the harsh plastic.

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GRAPHIC EXPLORATIONS

Within a series of posters designed for the Texas A&M America Institute of Architectural Students, the use of Scandinavian graphic design techniques were used in order to raise interest in different activities. The use of patterns and simple forms were used to create varying affects within each poster.