Thomas Rush Friddle
Thomas Rush Friddle Yale School of Architecture 180 York St. 3rd Floor New Haven, CT 06511 thomas.friddle@yale.edu 1-574-551-9485
Thomas Rush Friddle . . . is an architectural professional in the New York City Thomas is a graduate student at the Yale School of area. Architecture in New Haven, CT where he is a candidate for the Master of Architecture degree. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Architecture from Ball State University where he graduated Summa Cum Laude. In addition to a degree in architecture, Thomas received a diploma from the Honors College for advanced studies in liberal arts.
At Yale, Thomas is a graduate affiliate of Jonathan Edwards College. He has held teaching fellowships with Peter Eisenman, Mark Gage, and Ben Pell. With Mark Gage, Thomas published two books with Yale for the courses Disheveled Geometries and Design Reconnaissance. Thomas’ work has been published in the Yale student journal Retrospecta.
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Studio 10| CASIS Headquarters 30| Void House 42| Layers of Love 52| Life Aquatic 58| Water Research Station 64| Marley Retreat 72| Emerging Modules 78| Animate Facade 88| Manifold House 94| Flock 98| Science Hill 108| Public Penetration
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CASIS Headquarters The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) is an organization chosen by NASA to manage the United States’ laboratory in the International Space Station (ISS). For this project proposal, CASIS was interested in locating a headquarters, mission control, and public exhibition/ education facility in New York City near the United Nations. The goal of this proposal is to set up a series of charged relationships between user groups, objects on display, and architectural elements. These complex, intertwined relationships encourage both the public and the CASIS members to question what is familiar?, what is strange?, and what defines my constructed frame of reference? This proposal places people, architecture, and space objects into dialogue.
Moving from the outside to the inner rooms, the physical frame of reference changes from the logic of the city to the logic of a structural network, each acting as an armature for contrasting relationships. The exterior of the CASIS headquarters is a dynamic form. It is instantly recognizable to drivers on the adjacent highway as well intriguing to New Yorkers walking in the neighborhood. Its face to First Avenue is just as important as its legibility the Long Island City waterfront. It is comprised of four angular masses which appear to hover above ground. The masses themselves appear like large geological masses sheared from a former static condition. Between them are perforated ruled surfaces which defy gravity in their elastic appearance as they unify a monolithic reading of the building. While the
exterior fluctuates ambiguously between a monolithic whole and a series of masses, the interior is a series of radically different rooms and floor levels that are held together within a treelike structural web. The exterior suggests an interior of bold and heavy structural gestures, but the inside subverts those expectations by providing a sequence of interior atmospheres woven into a diaphanous web of structure. The density and figural qualities of this structural tree will hold up the exterior skin and the interior volumes while providing a sense of spectacle and rhythm to the visitor’s circulation throughout the CASIS headquarters.
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Void House Void House is a team entry for the 2013 Vlock Building Project design competition. Team included Sungwoo Choi, Thomas Friddle, Meghan Lewis, Hank Mezza, and Huizhen Ng. The parti is inherited from our classmate Michael Cohen after a competition amongst individual students. This parti separates the house into two sides: one side with all systems/ fixtures and the other side with all living spaces. We maintain the parti by organizing kitchen, utilities, and bathroom fixtures along one side of the house to free up larger widths for living spaces. Between these two competing interests are carefully placed voids which function as two level light wells during the day and as lanterns during the night.
On the upper level, three nooks jut out from the massing to exploit zoning allowances on the narrow lot. Within the house, the upper level corridor becomes part of these nooks so that no space is wasted within the tight floor area.
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Layers of Love The Layers of Love project is an architectural design and urban planning competition sponsored by Gresham Smith Architects. The project is a community center for the Julia Carson Legacy of Love organization in a distressed Indianapolis neighborhood. The challenge posed is to counter the urban decay responsible for creating fourth world conditions. The fourth world is defined by third world conditions which exist in a first world country due to socioeconomic and industrial decline. To improve conditions on this site along Fall Creek Boulevard, it is important to look at the site through a historic lens. Following examples from the prior viability of the neighborhood, this design seeks
both density and an iconic landmark. The first move is placing residences and mixed-use commercial structures along the main streets with intimate proximity to sidewalks. Creating density on the block restores a familiar urbanity while allowing a larger structure to emerge as well. The community center is shape to shield the block from fast-moving traffic and to provide a landmark for the neighborhood. The design addresses basic needs: shelter, identity, dignity, and love. In order to achieve these abstract ideas, the building focuses on gathering spaces like galleries and creating a singular architectural identity. To honor the late Julia Carson, a Mother’s Wall was suggested by her sons. The Mother’s
Wall is an opportunity to showcase creative work and accomplishments from the community on prominent pin-up surfaces within the building. Through transparency, the skin allows this creative progress to project out to the neighborhood.
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Life Aquatic The Life Aquatic Coral Research Lab is a proposal for an international design competition sponsored by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and Cripe Architects and Engineers. It addresses the enormous challenge of designing a lab facility on a remote site in Salt River Bay in St. Croix. The site is remote, lacks potable water, and is in nearly undisturbed condition.
This design drastically reframes the definition of laboratory and embraces natural cycles to ensure its longevity. It predicts a future where buildings embody topographic potentials. This architectural topography is shaped to form a water collection, filtration, and storage mechanism. The construct is shaped to form a bargelike base and is moored to an abandoned hotel ruin.
The floating research lab’s site response blatantly contrasts its static counterpart: the ruin. In order to participate in a future which brings massive ecological challenges, Life Aquatic implements drastic changes in architectural language to represent the values of a changing world as well as to provide systems for coping with it.
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Water Research Station The Water Research Field Station is a joint creative effort with Ball State’s Field Station and Environmental Education Center (FSEEC) and Dr. Melody Bernot. It is intended as a small-scale research platform which furthers Ball State’s sustainability and immersive learning pedagogy. The project required close attention to the client’s research needs, material performance, feasible fabrication, environmental cognizance, and ease of implementation. The field station is required to fit within a 15’ x 15’ x 15’ volume. The design enables research to study the effect humans have on the environment from an elevated position.
The three conceptual intents of the research field station are to provide researchers with unique ability, adaptability, and a delicate stance on the site. Each platform allows researchers to sample water with wading into it. By eliminating wading, these platforms prevent biases in water, silt, and soil samples. The platforms may be reconfigured into endless configurations to facilitate multiple experiment setups while retaining its light footprint. It is temporary, symbiotic, and noninvasive.
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Marley Retreat The Bob Marley Retreat is developed after performing biographical research on a specific artist drawn at random. From the research, an architectural language was developed to evoke and accommodate a portion of the artist’s persona, tastes, and philosophy.
The site is a rocky plot overlooking the ocean near Ocho Rios, Jamaica. The design is intended to pick up on both the balance and the rhythm of Marley’s music and his natural lifestyle in order to translate it into comfortable living spaces. The basic form is the square: a shape that often symbolizes strength and stability. This square emerges out of the earth to reveal the ground level and then becomes the second level. As it hovers, it symbolizes the delayed 3rd beat in reggae music. Each level forms into diverging tapers which evoke tension, the upbeat, and forward motion in reggae.
The equality of the two diverging elements in scale and in compositional weight reiterates strength and balance. The form is manipulated to blur the distinction between interior and exterior - not only with permeable facades, but also with interior gardens and topographic ribbons which further dissolve the box. These elements pay homage to Marley’s rural upbringing and allow the beauty of the site to show within the dwelling. Ambiguity in interior and exterior enclosure increases perceptions of spatial extent while relatively low ceilings and overhangs emphasizes the feeling of comfort, safety, and shelter.
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Emerging Modules Emerging Modules is a second year (undergraduate) studio competition entry sponsored by the Indiana Concrete Masonry Association (ICMA). The prompt was to design a sustainability learning center in downtown Indianapolis.
From a single module which responds to daylight and desired solar heat gain, an aggregation emerges to address prevailing winds, critical views, spatial ascent, and interior to exterior relationships. When a new level of modules is stacked, it torque is recorded by an angled section which becomes a volume for circulation and provides the effect of ascent.
As a critical intent, the landscape is marked by the emergence of the edifice and the edifice retains fragments of landscape as it aggregates vertically. At each level, exterior terraces expand to encourage escape from the interior and repose within the promenade to the top. Interior and exterior converge in a dialectic that challenges visitors to ponder the role of a building and the necessity of environmental response.
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Animate Facade Animate Facade is a final project for Mark Foster Gage’s seminar Design Reconnaissance. This project takes an existing facade by Preston Scott Cohen and embellishes the original cladding system.
From the existing metal panel tiling pattern, individual tiles begin to warp away from their consistent positions. They are able to move out from the building, rotate, and scale to produce an overall effect of animation. The cells become much more like plate armor or earth tectonics than the original sheet metal facade.
Within the tile unit, ornamental divisions emerge to further animate the facade. In order to achieve this ornamentation, the geometry of the hedrons is subdivided to create micro-ribs. Each of these ribs then receives either relief or depression from the original hedron to allow its ornamental expression to be read. Finally, a variable coloration is applied across the entire new facade system to comment on the possibility of advanced color control possibilities in architecture.
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Manifold House The Manifold House is a prototype house designed to fit within a variety of narrow lots. By meeting the specific problems of narrow lots, this prototype positions itself to be applied to many lots in New Haven, Connecticut where hundreds of sites exist which are too narrow to be built on by traditional home builders.
The overall layout of manifold house is based on the division of the home into three segments. The three segment dwelling was extremely common in federal style townhouses in New York City. By analyzing this historic type, new applications are gleaned for the narrow lot typology.
In the front third, a living room allows guests and residents to gather near the front door, porch, and sidewalk. In the back third, a kitchen, dining area, and casual family room allow connections with the more private back yard. In the center of the house sits the manifold composed of stairs, powder room, daybed, and skylights. This manifold is the experiential exclamation point as well as a useful device to prevent the deep, narrow house from taking on a tunnel effect.
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Flock This scheme inscribes the grid with two difFlock is a one weekend exercise from the first ferent grid systems. The first grid is parallel to the site semester design studio at Yale School of Architecture. The prompt is highly abstract: design a spatial composi- boundaries while the second grid is rotated. From the intersecting grid lines, portions of the site are carved tion within and upon an angled plane. away to create depressions while in other areas, the grid lines are extruded to create walls. However, above the entire rigid system, a new logic plays out: the swarm logic.
Folded triangles begin near the angled ground plane where they appear to emerge from an inner crystalline structure within the earth. But, soon they are above head height and their lightness becomes baffling as they flock upon one another in a system that is unfamiliar yet elegant. The tracking of the various scaling and rotation operations of the triangular pieces becomes the device which inflects the experience on the ground plane.
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Science Hill The Science Hill project is part of an effort to activate the under used top of the Yale Science Hill. Tasked with creating a public presence for the Yale Peabody Museum atop Science Hill, this project uses a new circulation strategy as the means to draw more attention to the museum.
On the hill itself, the project radicalizes the existing colonnades and portico designed by Phillip Johnson by opening them up to two-level inhabitation. On their upper surface, a garden program exploits their large footprint and energizes their current static condition. From the bottom of the hill, it is the view of this radicalized shift that encourages the journey to the top of the hill where the new exhibition galleries are located.
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Public Penetration Public Penetration is a mid-sized building for dance studio and performances spaces adjacent to the Highline in New York City. Since the Highline was created, a powerful effect has swept the neighborhood where quickly built luxury apartments are replacing the former meat packing district. Unfortunately, while the Highline itself is a successful public and tourist amenity, little of this traffic has flowed into other strange public devices. This projects hopes to change that fact.
The idea of involution gained popularity after the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault were appropriated by architecture. While many architects imagined the possibilities of buildings that were geometrically topological, perhaps the better embodiment of the aforementioned philosophies of empowering “the other” is to set up charged relationships between the inside and the outside. Because the site has an amazing proximity to one of the highest trafficked public spectacles in New York City, this dance facility is a perfect opportunity to test the hypothesis.
Two penetrations are present in this project. One penetration occurs at the level of the sidewalk where passersby are able to peek into the back of the performance stage. This placement allows voyeurism to an extent, but it is most powerful as a message that the inside is not barricaded from the outside. The second penetration occurs at the level of the Highline. At this level, the deck of the walkway veers out of path and directly into the center of the building’s mass. Within this path, the building skin is involuted and its materials gain a faceted tectonic quality. The varied transparent and reflective materials play into the spectacle of the Highline while allowing visitors to observe the inner workings of the dance studio and performance facilities casually.
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Freewheeling 130| Formal Analysis 144| Visualization 152| Center for British Art 160| Diagrammatic Analysis: Alberti 170| Voronoi Azure 180| Design Computation 196| Lasercut Light 200| Volume Nugget
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Formal Analysis “It wasn’t until the fifteenth century that two of the most important ideas for the discipline of architecture were defined: the human subject and his or her space of occupation. The course will attempt to outline through lectures, readings, drawings, and critiques the evolution of these two terms in the period of time from 1450-1750, the time of the rise and fall of Western Humanism and the advent of the Enlightenment. The course will attempt to familiarize the student with the theoretical implications for today’s architect as they appeared in Italy in this time period.”
“This course studies the object of architecture - canonical buildings in the history of architecture - not through the lens of reaction and nostalgia, but through a filter of contemporary thought. The emphasis is on learning how to see and to think about architecture by a method that can be loosely called “formal analysis.” The analyses move through history and conclude with examples of high modernism and postmodernism.” -Retrospecta 12’,13’
-YSOA Website
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Visualization “This course investigates drawing as a means of architectural communication and as a generative instrument of formal, spatial, and tectonic discovery. Principles of two- and three-dimensional geometry are extensively studied through a series of exercises that employ freehand and constructive techniques. Students work fluidly between manual drawing, computer drawing, and material construction. All exercises are designed to enhance the ability to visualize architectural form and volume three-dimensionally, understand its structural foundations, and provide tools that reinforce and inform the design process.�
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Center for British Art As a team including Sungwoo Choi, Thomas Rush Friddle, and Hank Mezza, we studied Louis Kahn’s masterpiece in New Haven: The Yale Center for British Art. This project began with hand sketches and on-site observation of the project. These early exercises aimed to capture the conceptual and qualitative realities of the building. After initial studies, we worked to produce a BIM model which cataloged the building in its entirety. The process was especially useful in understanding the buildings spatial organization and the relationship that the facade had to the interior organization. Instead of using the BIM modeling data as simply a means of
drawing to expand each student’s analytical and expressive repertoire. Fundamental techniques are introduced through short exercises and workshops leading toward a sustained study of an exemplary precedent building. Quantitative analysis is pursued through both assembly modeling and visual dissection of both the programmatic spaces and functional elements. Observational and imaginative manual drawings allow for a reconstruction of the design process and reestablish the thought patterns that formed the building’s design priorities. These discoveries then are re-presented through interactive, multimedia presentations to describe the building as“This seven-week, intensive course introduces sembly and its design ambitions.” Building Information Modeling (BIM) alongside manual
producing construction documents, we interrogated the tool in new ways and leveraged the powerful model for hybrid drawings containing both vector and rendered characteristics. For the final project, we used the BIM model to produce an artistic animation which aimed to express the concept of entry to the building as well as the relationship between the major voids of the building. The exploration of the multiple uses for BIM modeling was enlightening and colors the way that each of us will understand its power as we move forward in our education and professional practices.
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Diagrammatic Analysis : Alberti analytic models and discussions - an in-depth analysis of Alberti’s writings and buildings and their necessary effect on today’s architectural culture. Such a look back at the origins of the architectural discipline is particularly appropriate today, when the state of the discipline seems to be pulled in multiple directions. In this respect, it is especially poignant when Mario Carpo suggests that We found that Sand Sebastiano - in contrast Alberti’s work initiated an idea of the discipline as a noto other works by Alberti - was almost entirely free of “Many historians have written that the mod- tational system akin to contemporary computational logornament on the interior space. Furthermore, we found ern architect was the brainchild of Leon Battista Alberti. ics. It is hoped that the students will gain new insights that the system of organization used in the facade related to an overall system used to structure both the plan While this attribution has been endlessly debated in the through the readings and drawn analyses, specifically in the work of Alberti as the first humanist architect but and the sectional proportions. While the front belonged annals of architectural history and theory, rarely has such a discussion been held by architects for architects. also generally in the relationship of originary disciplinary to a Roman and frontal architectural conception, it thought to today’s complex cultural diaspora.” seemed that the interior was a centrifugal Greek space. This seminar proposes - in readings, drawn analyses,
As a team with Bruce Hancock ‘15, we analyzed Alberti’s church San Sebastiano. Our research resulted in the production of drawings as well as models which were developed throughout the semester and culminated in final documents to be presented to a jury.
In order to tied together these divergent spatial conceptions, Alberti used the space of the portico to realign the pilaster elements of the frontal facade with the carved poche of the interior Greek cross organization. The sequence was thus tripartite, but was not symmetrical. After entering the chapel space, no side was given preference which allowed the space to spin.
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Voronoi Azure “Parts is Parts seminar examines the component nature of architectural production, specifically at the interface between the customarily distinct practices of fabrication and construction. Looking at a range of historical and contemporary examples, the seminar explores ways in which constructional techniques and typologies have been both restricted and propelled by The intent of Voronoi Azure was to inveslimitations of scale—often provoking new directions in tigate the potentials for quick fabrication using CNC plasma cutting technologies. The geometries were made design technique and production technology. Readings and case studies in the first half of the term are used to by using grasshopper scripts and then selecting voids where less voronois would appear. To facilitate fabrica- outline the history and theories of modern production practices, from 1851 to the present, and serve as the basis From the weekly design responses, we devel- tion, additional scripts were developed to unfold the individual voronoi cells and to add patterning tabs. The for a series of material studies to be produced at full scale. oped an attitude about how we might apply our own The course culminates in a final design project.” techniques to a final project. As a team we were specifi- tabs themselves facilitated connection and decoration. The Voronoi Azure is a team design and fabrication project for Ben Pell’s seminar Parts is Parts. Team members were Derek Brown, Thomas Rush Friddle, Hank Mezza, and Mark Tumiski. Throughout the semester we worked in pairs to analyze case studies which addressed novel application of parts and assemblies in architecture. For each of these precedent case studies, we examined readings, drawings, and images in order to prompt our own design responses to the weekly theme.
cally interested in the notions of monolithicity which we had encountered from the essays in the book Monolithic Architecture by Machado and el-Khoury. Furthermore we had gained an interest in piles from projects like Aranda & Lasch’s Grotto proposal for Ps1.
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Design Computation During the semester, we began by exploring minimalist art and using the parametric nature of computer language to recreate works by masters such as Donald Judd, Sol Lewitt, and Gerhard Richter. Later in the semester, we moved on to operations which unfolded through time. This included the possibility of producing multiple pieces using the same scripts. Along with the ability to perform scripts through time, came the exploration of video game production. The production of the video games exemplified both animation and user interaction capabilities within Processing. Beyond the video game exercises, we began to use array logics to manage extremely large amounts of decision making with simple program parameters. This logic helped us to work with pieces such as Gerhard Richter’s 4,900 Colours and Archizoom’s dys-
topian No Stop City. Later in the semester, we explored the 3D interfaces which could be written into the Processing platform. At this point, the explorations take on an eerily architectural resemblance.
which is essential to advance the development of BIM, performative design, and other emerging methodologies. This seminar introduces design computation as a means to enable architects to operate exempt from limitations of generalized commercial software; to devise problem-specific tools, techniques, and “The capabilities and limitations of architects’ tools workflow; to control the growing complexities of contempoinfluence directly the spaces architects design. Computational rary architectural design; and to explore forms generated only machines, tools once considered only more efficient versions of by computation itself. Topics include data manipulation and paper-based media, have a demonstrated potential beyond mere translation, algorithms, information visualization, computaimitation. This potential is revealed through design computational geometry, human-computer interaction, custom tooling, tion, the creative application of the processes and reasoning generative form-finding, emergent behavior, simulation, and underlying all digital technology, from e-mail to artificial intel- system modeling. Using Processing, students develop computaligence. Just as geometry is fundamental to drawing, computa- tional toolsets and models through short, directed assignments tion affords a fundamental understanding of how data works, ultimately comprising a unified, term-long project.”
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Lasercut Light As an extension of an architectural design studio project aiming to renovate Detroit’s Michigan Central Depot (MCD), the development of the Lasercut Light model became a means of expressing ideas about architectural renovation and rebirth.
This model uses material contrast to represent intervention and preservation. The solidity of the steel exterior represents the historic facades and structures of the MCD while the laser cutting of acrylic represents the interior changes. The variable density of laser cutting patterns represent the gradient of ceiling and floor treatments relative to programmatic layouts.
In order to develop this model, a great deal of time was expended outside of studio learning the techniques and logistics of metal cutting, grinding, and welding. Although these skills did not directly inform or enhance the design studio, they enabled me to create a fresh form of representation that will ultimately be more valuable than the design itself.
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Volume Nugget The Volume Nugget was a multifaceted design exercise. It was intended as a brief introduction to Maya software and as an exploration of volume and void in design. It was also an exploration of rapid prototyping and the use of polyester resin in design representation.
The Volume Nugget was undertaken during the research phase before a large studio project. Although it was intended as a software and materials exercise, it became and investigation of spatial relationships, non-reciprocity, shapelessness, and the influence of tools in design. This specific nugget used a doublewalled 3D printed prototype to create both interior and exterior surface characteristics while containing discrete volumetric properties.
The initial process included learning Autodesk Maya, large-scale 3D printing, polyester resin casting, and resin coloration methods. In order to separate the positive from the negative during the casting operations, a new process was undertaken. This process produced an artifact as well as a series of slices that expressed the resin volumes as well as indexing the history of the fabrication processes. The extraction of the mold involved contour cutting, extracting prototype slices, and reassembling two individual products: one in powder and one in resin. The Volume Nugget was a critical project in my development of 3D modeling in digital and analog modes.
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