Short Portfolio, Research and Design

CONTENTS: GAZE SUBVERSION HELMET Har vard Univer sity, 2014 S U B V E R T I N G T H E G A Z E : R E D E F I N I N G T H E RO L E O F T H E O B J E C T Har vard Univer sity, 2015 MEDELLIN: URBAN POROSITY AS SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE Har vard Univer sity, 2014 TRANSFORMABLE DESIGN METHODS Har vard Univer sity, 2013 PLAYHOUSE: FORMAL ACOUSTICS Rice Univer sity, 2012 SICHUAN AVIATION S k i d m o r e , O w i n g s & M e r r i l l L L P, 2 0 1 1 - 2 0 1 2

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GA Z E SUBVE R SION HELME T

Ab str act:

H o w it wo rk s :

Why is there a tendency to associate visibility and transparency with truth, democracy and knowledge?

Are there other forms of knowledge that come from the veil? How can we avoid the gaze, subvert it?

A facial recognition camera, operated by a raspberry pi, controls the gaze of the wearer by obscuring his/ her vision once a gaze is met. If a gaze is met, the prosthetic draws attention to the fact and blocks the view of the user while preventing the external participant from engaging visually with the user. The opaque aperture as well as the acrylic materiality of the rest of the form is naturally reflective so when a gaze is met and the aperture becomes opaque both the user and participant are made even more aware of their confrontation by virtue of seeing their own reflection looking back at them. The visibility of the user and participant is constantly changing based on this identification of the gaze.

Through the process of creating a device that draws awareness to the gaze, the Gaze Subversion Helmet, many fascinating questions arise. The form of the helmet lends it to be further objectified when the aperture becomes opaque. How does this heighten the experience and the awareness of the objectifying gaze?

While this device does not address the digital realm of cyber-space, it focuses on the physical confrontations and a heightened awareness of the moment from which the gaze manifests. Its purpose is to react to this physical confrontation of real bodies and gazes.

We are a species that requires privacy, yet that privacy has been deprived of us through concepts of total visibility and the ever present gaze. How can we design using a play of nuances of visibility, allowing for the gaze to manifest at particular moments and denying it at others? What can we learn from these nuances that we would not learn from a society of total visibility or total veiling? Drawing on architectural and design precedents, this helmet explores these nuances. The implications of the helmet go beyond the theoretical applications. These concepts can further be applied medically, specifically to those with difficulty with eye contact and personal confrontation.

P r em i se: The idea behind the Gaze Subversion Helmet was designing a device that would identify the gaze. Initially the design incorporated tracking the heart rate of the user and drawing connections between an increased heart rate and a confrontation, the moment when the eyes lock and the pulse quickens.The concern with this method was that many stimuli could cause an increased heart rate and therefore this is better when coupled with another measuring device. Facial tracking offered a more precise way of capturing the manifestation of the gaze. The design of the helmet developed around this, starting out as a pair of glasses in earlier iterations and then evolving into a full head covering.

Ma t e ria ls : Smart Tint Plastic; White Acrylic; Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi Camera H e lm e t P ro t o t y p e a nd A p p lic a t io ns : The Gaze Subversion Helmet is a prototype that allows its user to avoid confrontation. There are times where an environment may seem overwhelming or hostile and this device’s purpose is to mediate the experience of the user with his/her surroundings. For this iteration of the prototype, it is specifically concerned with eye contact and the gaze shared with others, something that is indicative of a person’s comfort level with the surroundings.

The design contains a facial recognition camera, situated above the wearer’s eyes, operated by a raspberry pi.

The purpose of the camera is to control the gaze of the wearer by obscuring his/her vision once a gaze is met. The front aperture is electrically operated to become either transparent or opaque. When no electrical current is running through it, its resting state is opaque. Conversely when an electrical current is running through the plastic, it is transparent. Therefore the design concept requires the plastic frontal aperture to be attached and operated by the raspberry pi.

This device brings awareness to the gaze between bodies. There is a blur between the subject and object relationship as the relationship between the user and

the outside participant is constantly in flux. The actors in the experiment are the user, the camera, and the external participant. The camera plays a crucial role and is in charge of identifying confrontations. It does this through programming that specifically recognizes frontal faces and since it is placed just above the user’s eyes in the same plane of his/her face, it registers potential eye contact or face-to-face situations. In other words, the external participant and the user have to be facing one another in order for a gaze to be recognized.

The camera has a constant gaze as it is in control of these visual confrontations between the user and the outside environment. If a gaze is met, the prosthetic draws attention to the fact and blocks the view of the user while preventing the external participant to engage visually with the user.

This device does not address simply the gazes of the external participants on the user, instead both user and external participant need to be engaged in a gaze with one another.

In order to give greater control to the user, other iterations of this prototype would re-introduce the heart rate monitor. This device tracks the heart rate through the earlobe (it is worn like a clip-on earring) and can monitor fluctuations that, when paired with the face tracker, would be caused by making eye contact.

Further testing needs to be completed in order to understand “negative” responses and “positive” responses. This could then be incorporated such that initially the camera tracks eye contact and then the heart rate monitor tracks whether or not this is an agreeable confrontation, which would then signal the glass to either stay transparent or turn opaque.

This device and its successive prototypes can be applied to people who have difficulty negotiating busy environments or who have trouble making eye contact, for example, in cases of people with autism or PTSD. It allows an introverted experience to exist within an extroverted environment, an escape, of sorts, until the outside environment becomes more hospitable again.

The Gaze Subversion Helmet, initially a tool to explore theoretical concepts of Lacan and Foucault, has developed into a tool to also explore the human condition and our relationship as bodies with other bodies.

RE DE FIN IN G T HE R O L E O F

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T HE O BJEC T , A C O MM UN I T Y B AT H H OU S E I N JE RUS A L E M, IS RA E L

SUBVE R T ING THE GA ZE:

South-West Sectional Model

N

South-East Sectional Model

North-East Sectional Model

North-West Sectional Model

user enters from here and proceeds left

ascent

frigidarium

cool steam chambers

cool showers

moss and mist: sound-scape

texture-scapes

dry heat

caldarium

hot sauna and light chambers

Unrolled Plan

subterranean

frigidarium section

frigidarium plan

moss and waterfall sound-scape section

Unrolled Section

texture-scape ravine plan

caldarium section

caldarium plan

Drawing Excerpts

From the moment this gaze exists, I am already something other, in that I feel myself becoming an object for the gaze of others. But in this position, which is a reciprocal one, others also know that I am an object who knows himself to be seen.

Jacques Lacan Prec e d i n g R e sea r ch : My interest in the gaze started with Lacan’s story about the sardine can. A fisherman pointed out the can and said, “You can see that? Do you see it? Well it doesn’t see you!” He constructed from this simple conversation a whole theory on the gaze. Most important to my understanding of it was the Mirror Stage Theory. This theory explains the moment of recognition of the self by the infant. As soon as the child recognizes himself as an other, by looking in the mirror, he is at once objectifying himself in order to find subjectivity. From this theory stems multiple gazes.There are gazes of longing, derived from the child’s want of oneness again, which is impossible as it would require us to loose subjectivity.

And there are those of judgment and control such as Foucault’s analysis of Bentham’s Panopticon and the structuring of society.Through surveillance and visibility we create docile bodies. Prisons, schools, hospitals and institutions of any kind act in this same manner. The gaze, or the knowledge that it might exist, controls people’s behavior and affects how they perceive and respond to one another.

To define it, the gaze is characterized by an intent look that has the effect of controlling and creating relationships between bodies. We are all subjects and objects. The gaze inherently will always produce a subject and an object. And the relationship between the two is constantly in flux, switching back and forth between the participants.

Diego Velazquez toys with this interplay in his paintings, specifically his “Las Meninas”. In this painting we are looking at the princess and her court who are looking at the King and Queen, who are looking back at them and also at us through the mirror’s reflection in the back of the room. We are at one time both objects and subjects, objects being gazed at by the figures in the painting and subjects gazing back at them. This painting is very different from his previous work “The Rokeby Venus”. In the latter, we are objectifying the woman depicted in both her physical manifestation and in her frontal reflection. She is also objectifying herself,

a narcissistic gaze that relates back to Lacan’s mirror stage theory. Contrary to this, “Las Meninas” creates an interesting juxtaposition of gazes that confuse the status of our role in viewing the painting and elevate the power of the sovereignty.

We live in an extremely visual society. “Vision, rather than a privileged form of knowing, becomes itself an object of knowledge, of observation”1 “Knowledge was conditioned by the physical and anatomical functioning of the body, and perhaps most importantly, of the eyes.”2 Since the Renaissance, there has been a desire for transparency. Visibility was and still is equitable to knowledge, democracy and truth. Leonardo Da Vinci examined the human body through dissections.

Architects began obsessing over glass curtain-walls.

The veil was lifted in order to reveal the innards. There was, and still is a favoring of sight over all other senses and we as a society generally tend to trust our vision despite the knowledge that our eyes can play tricks on what we perceive. This perception distinguishes differences between the habitus we know and that of the ‘other’.

Looking at these concepts architecturally, I began to study the architecture of Loos and Corbusier. Both of these architects use the gaze but in different ways.

While Loos’s architecture proves to be introverted and focused on bringing the gaze inward, Corbusier’s architecture is the opposite, extroverted, and directs the gaze outward. Le Corbusier once wrote, ‘Loos told me one day: “A cultivated man does not look out of the window; his window is a ground glass; it is there only to let the light in, not to let the gaze pass through.”’3 For Loos, the subject is the stage actor in the space, experiencing the very theatrical quality of the architecture. The gaze in his houses fosters a sense of defensiveness and surveillance. For Corbusier, the subject is the camera eye, the inhabitant becomes incidental in the architecture and only his trace is left in the photographs. His constructed gaze is one of recording and registering the surrounding landscape viewing the window as a lens and the house as a camera.4 1 Jonathan Crary, “Subjective Vision and the Separation of the Senses”, “Techniques of the Observer”. Techniques of the Observer, On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. MIT Press, 1990. 70.

2 IBID, 79.

3 Beatriz Colomina, “The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism,” Raumplan versus Plan Libre. 010 Publishers, Rotterdam.

2008. pg 74.

4 IBID.

Like Velazquez’s play with subject and object relationships, Loos’s houses achieve a similar interplay.

In the Josephine Baker House, relatable to “the Rokeby Venus”, the glass pool in the center of the house puts her on display to her guests. There is a skylight that reflects upon her and the water so that she not only becomes an object of her visitors’ gazes but also of her own gaze looking back at her in the reflection on the glass.The four glass sides of the pool act as an interface for which the gaze exists. Similarly, in Loos’s Moller House, the lady of the house, in her “lady’s room”, has visual access to the rest of the house but at the same time is put on a stage where an intruder can clearly see her. However, more like “Las Meninas”, he creates a theater of gazes that, in turn, objectify her but gives her the ability to survey, making her the subject to objectify and scrutinize those that enter her realm.

I n i ti al T h esi s Stu d y: Throughout my thesis year, I tried to understand how the gaze manifests in space and in different spatial configurations. I started by looking at different “built” arrangements and moments of visual confrontation.

My initial studies explore how angle, curvature, materiality, and multiplicity affect this manifestation.

Through drawings and modeling I have tried to understand the existence of these confrontations between bodies. Simple moves and alterations from the standard co-planar, perpendicular spaces affect how a body might respond to a surrounding environment and how bodies can confront each other in these environments. Similarly, how these different spaces come together affect our relationship with how we navigate through their sequence.

Taking these concepts, I applied them to a human scale prototype, which led me to the design of the Gaze Subversion Helmet. Architecture plays an enormous role for the gaze, it can either allow it or subvert it. Our visual and transparent society fosters an environment for the manifestation of all these aforementioned gazes.

Since we live in such a visual society, one overloaded with glass towers and virtual worlds and identities, I am drawn to the idea of subversion of the gaze. I have looked into ancient and medieval cities that achieve this subversion to a degree. The labyrinthine arrangement of these cities and the narrow passageways allow for particular lines of sight to be formed or disrupted. It is also interesting to consider how religion in these

medieval cities plays a role in their structuring. Because of the tradition of women being veiled in Islam, there exists a literal veiling achieved by the architecture in these ancient cities as well as by the clothing. Narrowing and widening of streets, cloistered neighborhoods and courtyard housing allow for the woman to pass unseen.

stone quarry from the time of King Solomon, which has, ironically, been used as an auditorium, another theater of gazes. Also, important to note is the dividing boundary of the 1949 Armistice Agreement, which acts as a border condition between culturally different neighborhoods.

T h esi s Q u estio n:

P ro g r a m :

Therefore, drawing on this research, my question is: how do we bring awareness to the gaze’s manifestation and from this, how can we create architectures that toy with the different nuances of visibility and our perception of space and surrounding bodies? How can we use this to break from preconceived notions of habitus or cultural identity that are informed and strengthened by the gaze’s totalizing existence? By denying the gaze, its reappearance has a more thought provoking value. By denying visibility, our sensory experience changes. We are able then to not rely on our sense of sight and instead turn to the other senses in order to understand our existence in space and our relationship to others.

Much like ancient Roman baths had the ability to bring people of all classes to one social condition, this project- a community bath house- seeks to attract a diverse user group of people from the surrounding neighborhoods. Unlike most other social settings and public spaces where the gaze plays the strongest roll, this project’s procession diverts, displaces and redefines the gaze allowing for a full sensory experience and multiple sensory interactions that would foster an environment free from “the controlling gaze” and these preconceived notions of different cultures.

Si te: The gaze facilitates judgment and control between bodies. Particularly, it is dominant in a city like Jerusalem, where I have chosen to site my project.

The cultural, political and social tensions manifest a society of surveillance. In this society, it heightens these differences and creates barriers between cultures and groups of people. It is active in the markets and streetscape of the old city and plays an important role in distinguishing neighborhoods, religious and cultural groups. While this thesis is not about religion or cultural conflicts, it addresses these issues by virtue of the fact that these various cultures rely on the gaze to separate and distinguish themselves. The religious culture of the area amplifies the experience of the gaze or the fear of it.

Specifically I have chosen to bridge the old city with the new, situating the project at an intersection of several neighborhoods: the Arab neighborhood, the Hasidic neighborhood, the “secular” new city and the “old city”. It exists on the hillside adjacent to Jeremiah’s Grotto and the Garden Tomb, submerses under the Arab market place and extends under the old city wall with a few ‘reveal’ moments into the old city. Adjacent to its subterranean portion is the Zedekia Cave, a

De s ig n P ro p o s a l: This project intends to disorient the user. It creates a procession that will largely deny the gaze but then reorient the user at moments by allowing it. By depriving the sense of sight, the other senses can take charge, making one aware of a. the inability to see at particular moments and b. the acute qualities and perceptions of the other senses- allowing one to experience the space and the other people without the judgment of the gaze. By pinching, skewing and swerving the path, the user must navigate fully aware.

By creating moments where users can see others going through parts where from they have just emerged, the space creates solidarity. This thesis is interested not only in the individual’s response to the architecture but also in how these bodies encounter one another and how the architecture can direct and influence these encounters. While the architecture remains constant from one visit to the next, the bodies that navigate it make each experience unique. In a way it becomes a spiritual procession, culminating with a pool to pass through- which also has religious and spiritual undertones referencing this purging or cleansing- and then reemerge into the real world with the hope that this newfound awareness is carried out there.

The programmatic procession consists of the textured entry that transitions into a smooth surfaced area and a gradually increasing heat that complements the

program of the removal of clothing. This is followed by a heavily steamed tunnel, which opens up to the first of the two pools, the caldarium- the first “public plaza” of the building. After this the user goes through an area of dry heat and materiality change and then a heavily textured “ravine” signifying the upcoming decent. As one begins to descend, the temperature transitions from the heat of the higher elevations to the cool of the lower elevations. The space tightens and twists and leads the user through the sound-scape.

This space relies heavily on the initial drip sounds that escalate to the full-on waterfall sounds and is coupled with a mossy soft-scape, totally contrasting the rougher and textured surfaces of the previous zone. After, an area of cool mist first subverts the gaze and then opens it to the frigidarium atrium. This atrium acts as another “public plaza” in the building but also invites the voyeuristic gaze of those occupying the ground above the building, with one of the ‘reveal’ moments at ground level. The user is then taken through the showers, wind tunnel and then is directed to the final ascent up the grand exit. This building is largely about its experiential qualities and the conditions of the body in space and how it can relate to other bodies in space.

I have drawn inspiration from projects like Antony Gormley’s Model and Blind Light installations, Diller Scofidio and Renfro’s Blur Building, Peter Zumthor’s Therme Vals and Jorge Silvetti’s Tower of Leonforte.

What they all have in common is denying visibility through different means so that moments of clarity are heightened.They disorient so that orientation becomes more valued. Similarly, the idea of the labyrinth is to disorient. Not to be confused with mazes, which are intended to lose the user, a labyrinth provides a straightforward path but disorients via the twists and turns. A labyrinth is the starting point of my design strategy.

For this project, the major components of materials are texture, light, shadow and water. There are moments where one is able to walk blindly but rely on textured walls to lead the way, or moments where the sound of water gives the user an idea of depth of space. For reorientation, light dances across specific points of the path and ‘reveal’ moments allow for the user to get an idea of his or her point along the path.

It becomes a space where the gaze is subverted in order to dismember judgment and control, aspects common to our society of surveillance.

H a r va rd U ni ve r s i t y , 2 01 4

URBA N P OR OS I T Y A S S OCI A L IN FRA ST RUC T URE

ME DE LLIN:

Medellin, Colombia has gone through a dramatic transformation over the last two decades. It is a city that is in a central location for trade in relationship to North America, Central America and South America.

Historically, this prime location of Medellin has been used for illicit reasons.

It supported a thriving drug trade which involved the city in several drug wars between the different gangs and caused a climate of danger and unrest. The state government of Antioquia and the city government of Medellin took measures to clean up the city and with the death of the notorious drug lord, Pablo Escobar, the city has been transforming into a new destination for tourism and culture. The coffee industry has always been inversely related to the cocaine industry in Colombia depending on trade and economy that involved the farmers. Many farmers found that it was easier to leave their coffee plantations and plant coca instead.

With the decrease of the cocaine trade, Antioquia’s coffee industry is thriving, providing some of the best coffees in the world. Governor Fajardo is creating a new policy for development in the towns of the state. Unfortunately, the locals do not have the exposure to the process, as coffee in its raw form is exported directly to be roasted and packaged elsewhere, and therefore do not have the appreciation of this national commodity. The state government is currently trying to create pride for Colombian coffee amongst its people by awareness campaigns, coffee companies bringing in to the country their roasters and production facilities, and supporting a coffee culture amongst the people.

Coffee farming involves a series of steps that include germination, planting, picking, de-pulping, washing, fermentation, and parabolic drying which results in the green coffee that is then sorted and exported via three major shipping ports in Colombia: Buenaventura, Cartagena, and Santa Marta. A new port is promised to be opened in Turbo which would cut the traveling time from Medellin through this extremely mountainous region in half. After export, this green coffee then goes through roasting and packaging and then is sold globally. Medellin still has many urban issues. It is situated in a valley and has a series of informal settlements that creep up the mountain side and cause issues of land erosion. Many of the people moving into these areas come from rural areas and are seeking opportunities in the city. The informal settlements still experience high levels of crime but urban strategies in these neighborhoods, with projects such as the Biblioteca Espana in Santo Domingo, Medellin, are providing opportunities for education and improving these neighborhoods.

This project’s objectives are to: 1. promote new Antioquian Coffee policies to support social and educational content through architecture, urban design and landscape architecture; 2. understand and intervene multi-scale coffee networks of trade and production through specific projects; 3. support, re-value and protect the creeks of the Aburra valley, understanding them as main structures for the built and social form; 4. deploy an alternative system to articulate and mediate informal expansion of the city up the valley; 5. propose a buffer zone that both helps bring the urban to the rural and visa versa, seeing the creeks of the Aburra valley as a natural conduit to foster this relationship.

Site Land and Use Analysis: COLOMBIA

Site Land and Use Analysis: MEDELLIN

Site Land and Use Analysis: VOLADOR HILL

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TRANSFORMA BLE DESIGN ME THO D S

Most design solutions for lighting and sun shading are off the shelf, applications or systems independent of what they are controlling or shading.

These are generally based on manufacturing standards and are either rotating (louvers) or rolling (blinds). Conversely, a custom building facade is static in that it incorporates specialized louver systems or other operable units.

Our design approach is to mediate between the customized and standard, and between applied systems and those that are fully integrated into their support systems. Our project started with a three-fold concept: 1. have the system that can be integrated into the structure, 2. design a system that will work as an aggregation, and 3. have a customizable design that is inherently visually appealing.

Our system is incorporated into a standard truss structure, which can accommodate the potential of lighting and shading. In the case of a triangulated truss the approach was a mechanical louver system that could open, close, and operate within a triangular space. While the visual solution creates a fanning effect, the actual motion is linear, requiring a mechanical solution that travels in the same manner.

The solution we arrived at uses a programmed Ardiuno connected to all of the motors via EasyDriver boards (there is a motor set up for each fan), threaded rods, and a custom arm that moves along the threaded rods - when in motion - to open and close the sun shades that are integrated into the structural trusses.

TEAM: TATJANA CROSSLEY, JEN KRAVA, MATTHEW MONTRY

R i c e Un i ve r s i t y , 2 01 2

PL AY HOUSE: FORMAL ACOU STI C S

By analyzing the way in which sound particles bounce and interact, this project seeks to explore and better understand how to control sound in a space and mold an end result that is based on these implications. This form responds to the natural disposition of a ray, when directed a certain way, colliding with an object and then being redirected, and makes sure that these rays follow a particular path, chimney-ing the sound up and away, allowing for a multitude of different program to interact The spectators can enjoy the many aspects of what this gallery extension of the Met antique instrument collection seeks to provide: antique instrument restoration facilities, displays, small performance venues and a larger auditorium venue. A diaphragm is formed between the exterior crystalline structure and the interior wood structure creating varying sound properties in the different spaces. This exterior glass skin showcases the wooden interior skin and also acts to highlight the vertical circulation located on the Lincoln Center side of the building, offering views to those experiencing the diaphragm via the grand stair or those witnessing from across the street. This project, situated on a triangular plot on Broadway, locks itself into the site, maintaining a triangular footprint, and twists upwards to integrate itself into the city grid and surrounding infrastructure. This design’s goal is to provide an overall experience that works as an acoustic pavilion in the upper-west side NYC whilst also providing a contrasting visual piece next to the classicism of the Lincoln Center and the urban skyscraper surroundings.

wood panel skin exterior glass skin and diagrid structure

I-beam structure cantilevered main stair steel tube aluminum mullion diagrid steel frame monocoque steel structure

interior wood skin

monocoque structure

interior circulation

north-south section

level +2 Plan

S O M , S a n F r an c i s c o , C A , 2 0 1 1 - 201 2

SIC HUAN AVIATION,

S k id m o re , Owin gs, & Me rri l l , L L P

Construction Details:

During my employment at SOM, I worked on the Sichuan Airlines Center in Chengdu, China, which won the 2016 AIA International Region Merit Award. I partook in the Design Development and Construction Document phases where I coordinated with the engineering department and landscape consultants, worked on drawings and models for both phases,

created client presentations, did construction detailing and collaborated in material selection. My primary role in this project was on the lobby interior and exterior column enclosure, creating a series of iterations of the column base. With each iteration, the entire form of the building is affected since the particular angles of the column base carry up the curtain wall. By creating

computer models for each iteration, renderings and building physical models, we decided upon the final form. In the CD phase, I worked on mullion detailing, curtain wall glass selection, and technical drawings and calculations to clearly show how the angles morph from floor to floor so that it could be built without speculation.

Mullion Details: