TROY HILLMAN
MEMORIAL TO THE CLOSET REAL DEAL FAIR PLAY MOUNTAIN FERAL GARDENS
MEMORIAL TO THE CLOSET Each year, Taubman College of Architecture holds a competition in name of Raoul Wallenberg, a courageous hero from World War Two, and alumnus of the college. The competition takes place during the undergraduates’ final semester at the college, where each student’s work and thesis is driven around Wallenberg’s legacy: using architecture and design as a humane social art. Traditionally, the National Mall in Washington D.C. is a site for dead subjects. We commemorate issues that have been put to rest. While discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation continues to be a civil rights issue in the United States, its death is near. Memorial to the Closet uses national memorialization to hasten the death of discrimination against homosexual people and kills forever the “closet” that keeps homosexuals in secrecy about their sexual orientation. Black coal is mounted on the stairs of the Lincoln Memorial, the nation’s utmost symbol of civil rights. As visitors explore the memorial, the coal will crush and spread by foot into a pattern that covers, then fades, from the Mall’s grounds. As the mound dies, he issue dies. Concurrently, visitors fill a container at Lincoln’s feet with coal. The remaining black “mark” across the memorial’s front permanently redacts our history of civil rights.
“My idea was to shift the way we think about the memorial landscape, to make it more of an open conversation rather than an impossible quest for some kind of immutable national essence. Coalitions and perspectives that are never represented in the memorial landscape would emerge experimentally. More voices would find room for expression. A more open, democratic sphere of memory might flourish.� - Kirk Savage, Temporary Monuments
Model
Memorial to the Closet is constructed (Present)
Dispersal begins and flower pattern spreads over the National Mall
Mound is completely walked off, and the flower pattern covers the National Mall
Memorial faded on January 20, 2017 (upcoming inauguration day) and the issue is resolved
Interior Rendering
Exterior Rendering
REAL DEAL “The house provided an especially favored site for uncanny disturbances: its apparent domesticity, its residue of family history and nostalgia, its role as the last and most intimate shelter of private comfort sharpened by contrast the terror of invasion by alien spirits.” - Anthony Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny The houses of Ardmore Street in Ferndale, MI, are traditional early 20th century Sears Roebuck homes. They appear as Rockwellian normalcy, allergic to abhorrence, and psychologically inconsequential. Here, idealized interiority (private and intimate) is rendered distant or removed by default exteriority. Real Deal takes issue with this complacency and advocates that "domesticity" - including all efforts to modify, tame and occupy, deserves a more transparent, legible, formal witness. Constructing, re-figuring, undoing and the made-up become directives for both expression and exposure of the recalibrated sub-urban neighborhood. These new hyper-real occupancies find homes for simultaneity (beautifully sad), and conflated dimensionality (outside-in-and out again). It's a new "normal" Everyday is extra-strange.
Hair Stylist - Section
Smoker - Section
Hair Stylist - Plan
Smoker - Plan
Pâtissier House - Model
Taxidermist - Model
Taxidermist - Plan
FAIR PLAY Â As the city of Austin, Texas grows, new development housing is quickly being constructed to fill the demand for increased population. More specifically, East Austin has become a target because of its lower land value. The increased demand for housing, and ultimate increase in rent prices, has caused the Austin locals to either deal with such cheap and unwelcome housing units, or move from their neighborhood altogether. Fair Play advocates for housing that embraces these inevitable changes with luxury, different scales of living, and southwest architectural configurations. Units are divided based on the residents income in terms of scale, but not on quality. For locals unable to afford the more extravagant housing units replacing their neighborhood, they are given smaller units, with more discreet and personal entrances. In each unit, whether costly or not, the residents are given pieces of luxury; bathrooms are made up of colorful tiles, an exterior courtyard, and a inhabitable concrete wall that serves as seating and storage. Fair Play seeks for equality in a disparate situation.
Overall Building - Plan
Section looking West
Section looking West
1/8” = 1’
1/8” = 1’
Overall Building - Sections
Detailed Section
Model
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1
1. Concrete Footing 2. Footing Drain 3. Concrete Slab with Radiant Heat 4. Reinforced Concrete (24�) 5. Tile Finish 6. Stucco Finish 7. Wood Finish 8. Roof 9. Parapet
MOUNTAIN Mountain began with several tutorials in Rhinoceros in addition to analyzing the strata formed in various geological sections. This study became the catalyst for two similar, and bigger projects; the second being a refinement of the first. Each project included designing a mountain to replace Chicago’s Union Station. The mountain would acquire the same program as the former rail station, however it would have a ‘walkable’, public surface, great height, and extreme changes in form that should mimic those forms found in mountain strata. The research and organization of mountain strata became the driver behind the mountain design. After studying characteristics in the geology of Mountains, I used examples in form to create a new architecture for the station. Eventually, the study became one of turning ‘sheets’ into ‘tubes,’ and creating a habitable space within the in-between spaces for the original program. Furthering the design, the mountain surface was produced to encourage walking and gathering with entrances and mini-ponds.
Sheets
Tubes
Surface Detail Diagram
Plan
Longitudinal Section
FERAL GARDENS and Other Follies
The term “queer” was first defined as odd or peculiar, but has since transformed to include someone [or something] falling outside of the hetero-norm mainstream. Heteronormativity has been used to constrain and limit one’s identity by placing prejudgment and stereotypical generalizations on groups of people based on their sexual orientation. Being queer can be seen as a threat to this idea, since it disturbs and challenges prescribed thoughts about how one should act or perform in relation to space and others. As a queer individual, one must reach for space that exists within, but often obliquely tangential to this predefined hetero environment. This thesis strives to blur the boundary between differences in sexuality through spatial devices and relationships found in architecture. As heteronormativity remains a device of control, so does the act of domestication. Domestication has been used as a tool of conformity in order to direct the actions and performativity of gender, as well as limit the function of the home to the heteronormative lifestyle. The thesis explores the boundary between queer and heteronormative spaces, using Hadrian’s Villa as a historically queer site, the domestic guest house as an architecture of control, and the garden which mediates the two. The ruin, the surveyor, the moat, everyday domestic rituals, and the maintenance of gardens have all been put into question, in order to find spatial relationships that lend themselves to freeing of limiting definitions and stereotypes.
Bedroom Image and Plan
Porch/Rocabruna
Dining Room Image and Plan