BIG PROJECTS SMALL PROJECTS
Tyler Boyett University of Illinois at Chicago
Big Projects Small Projects
Big A New Cultural Center
8
A Three-Dimensional Urbanism
24
Stranded Together
42
Small
4
A House of Two Parts and Three Things
56
Proposal for an Aboveground Pool
68
A Bamboo Enclosure
76
The House [on a] Corner
84
Contents
Big Projects
A New Cultural Center for Chicago FALL 2017 | SAM JACOB A New Cultural Center is about one thing inside another, buildings inside of buildings, spaces inside of spaces, or programs inside of programs. Discrete parts sit assembled within a larger frame on the site of the current Chicago Cultural Center. Replacing the current center in program, the New Cultural Center will serve as a permanent home for the Chicago Architecture Biennial, as well as host to city government offices and public ammenities. Defined by frames, containers, and artefacts, each part can also be identified with a program. Through the simple act of placing these objects inside of, intersecting, and adjacent to eachother, both spatial richness and programmatic complexity emerge. Broadly defined as either cultural or municipal, parts of alternating kinds are placed within or beside each
8
other. This alternating of program types offers the chance to view cultural life through the lens of the municipal and vice-versa. Grocery store aisles and library book shelves blend into one another, gallery space exhibits a glass box housing the gym, office workers in business attire mingle around theatre goers in formal wear. The urban move of pushing the main massing to the west side of the site opens an opportunity in the way of a public plaza adjacent to Millenium Park. Although the largest container generally defines the limits of the cultural center, smaller containers, frames, and artefacts continue to spill out into the plaza forming a playing court of architectural objects and spaces. Thus, municipal life and cultural life can be seen as worlds akin rather than askew.
18
21
A Three-Dimensional Urbanism SPRING 2017 | KELLY BAIR & ANDREW ZAGO The purpose of this research project was to explore 3D strategies for producing an urban scheme, rather than a traditional master-plan strategy or top-down approach. Situated next to Lafayette Park in Detroit (a prototypical top-down planned development), this research acts as a foil, whilst also taking Lafayette Park as it exists (buildings and all) as the initial massing to be manipulated.
24
This particular investigation was focused on thinking of the ground as a thick, pliable object which sits on the ground and is folded twice: once in half (a hot-dog fold) and once again (the scrunch) to fit on to the site of the project. The ground becomes the building, and the buildings become bridges that stick into and out of the doughy yellow ground. The project looks roughly like a lasagna noodle, and the program for it includes public housing, a charter school, and office space for greening of Detroit.
By thinking of the ground as a thick surface that could be folded and cut, the roles between ground and building are reversed. Taking the footprint of LaFayette Park as a whole, the plan was first thickened to a depth of 20 feet. Mies’ apartment building footprints were then subtracted from the thick surface while their form still remained on the ground. After subdividing the ground into five strips, each strip underwent two folds. On the second fold, the shape of the scrunch is manipulated so that when floor plates are inserted, the occupiable space fits the necessary requirements for the program type. The buildings, going along for the ride with the soft ground, now serve as transition points, circulation veins, and special program areas. A clear dichotomy between ground and building still exists although their functions have been switched.
27
To further explore the architectural implications of this urban proposition, a single piece of folded ground was fleshed out. This scrunched piece is explored as office space, school classroom areas, and apartments. Because of the double fold, all program is organized around an interior pinched void that is neither interior nor exterior, producing more porosity and variability in what would be a traditionally deep floor plate for a building of this scale. School Program fills out much of the west leg, with theater space, gymnasium space, and large classrooms occupying the “feet.� Office space for the Greening of Detroit occupies much of the slanted leg of the building. The slant allows for larger floor plate sizes, as well as larger windows for daylighting the floors. Residential units occupy the tall legs at the east side of the building, taking advantage of the smaller floor plates and the spaces near the atriums that provides an interior courtyard space.
32
Stranded Together SPRING 2016 | STEWART HICKS & JULIA DICASTRI At its most basic, this collection of objects and spaces (cultural center consisting of ballroom, museum, and library spaces) explores how perception of orientation can affect character, yet in the end, concludes that shape doesn’t really matter. At once you can gawk at Stranded, majestically splayed up to the heavens. Its wiggly poise and dignity direct attention to the task at hand. Though its origin is clearly understood, we have yet to randomly guess why Stranded’s growth can be to indifferent to our regimented society. Stranded commands respect and admiration from all those who look up to its fingers, as it brazenly gazes off into the depths of the future. 42
Stranded is both dopey and majestic. To emphasize these characteristics, Stranded is put into a troupe with two others, the circle and square. In this trio, Stranded plays the role in comedy known as the “straight man.” All three, when perceived as upright, maintain a dignified character. However, when the curtains close and you blink, Stranded is all the sudden on his back like a turtle, while the circle and square remain upright. Circle and Square act as an exception to the rule regarding orientation and character. Shape does not matter. Ballroom, museum, and library are stratified throughout each cast member as layers of sediment, each program shifting to the shape of its container.
Larger radius for a lazier bend
Slight tilting for a curious posture
Stiff and rigid top
Slight tilting for a curious posture
Straight projection for a proud thing
Largest radius to give sturdiness but softness
45
50
Small Projects
A House of Two Parts and Three Things FALL 2016 | PENELOPE DEAN & GRANT GIBSON Domesticity in the present age might mean that our social and private lives have become surprisingly disparate. These differences, understood through the things we keep in each space, ultimately determine what our dwellings look like. This project explores the worlds of restraint and release, and what connects them. Its massing imagined as a still life, the composition is made of two “known” objects resting around a 3rd “unknown” which hugs the ground: Two primitives and a squishy, soft third thing. 56
Above, a concrete vault contains the world of the public life, a clean straightforward way of living in a linear space. The secret world is envisioned as living between two surfaces (akin to a bed), the thick wallto-wall shag carpet (the mattress) and the tufted squishy roof and ceiling (the quilt). The relationship between the two worlds intersects at one conspicous point, the vertical steel tube. Other than that, the worlds remain out of sight from one another. While some spatial qualities carry over, atmospheric qualities remain antithetical.
PRIVATE OBJECTS
SOCIAL OBJECTS PRIVATE OBJECTS
SOCIAL OBJECTS
DECOR + Site
DECOR + Objects
ACCESS MODIFICATION
DECOR + Site
The inhabitants of this house live half their lives in a serial fashion. Objects like the couch, dinner table and working desk aren’t placed too close together, helping to keep the occupant’s lives neat and orderly. Predictable. Social gatherings happen at foreseen points along the main space. Yet this offers freedom to move to and fro among groupings of objects. Just do one thing at a time: DECOR + Objects a little work at the desk, get a snack from the refrigerator, watch some T.V., go back and finish work. The slippery and shiny gold floor helps moving back and forth. While tricky at times, this sacrifice is made for the posh image one must construe. The floor also looks slightly beige, depending on the lighting. Yet, there are moments, specifically at the groupings of objects, that allow you to get off the cold, gleaming floor, and onto something a little more hospitable. STRUCTURE Views and windows are aligned just perfectly to frame lovely views as you live your life at each point of objects. The whole volume you occupy and invite friends into is conceived as a singular tube, a soft, relatable extruded vault.
BUILT-INS
ACCESS MODIFICATION
STRUCTURE
BUILT-INS
ENVELOPE + APERTURES + Site
ENVELOPE + APERTURES + Site
Downstairs offers a reprieve from a lifestyle of put-togetherness. Hugging the landscape makes the beds feel more private because of how spread out each is from the next. Buried, the beds and accompanying belongings can be barely found in a prairie of burgundy shag carpet. To be hidden is what is desired. While everything’s on display upstairs, it’s a relief to relax and hide away in this underworld of secret space. You can put your things within the wall cubbies that arc over and above, like a thick quilted blanket. But they don’t have to be stored. leave your things anywhere within arm’s reach, you don’t want to be getting up out of the carpet anyway. Pin-point windows open up precisely where you could sit and look out through them, but do not offer a revealing glance inside. The shag surface transitions to a private garden as you step outside. The messy ferns offer a continuation of the thick soft surface to the outside. Both the shag and garden offer a way of living without inhibitions. The bathroom on the lower level is exposed, yet made private through its dislocation from the two main sleeping spaces (the third will only be occupied occasionally). Only one main entraince allows the secret world to remain as such, and the private lives of the inhabitants to remain hidden.
PRIVATE OBJECTS
SOCIAL OBJECTS PRIVATE OBJECTS
DECOR + Site
SOCIAL OBJECTS
DECOR + Objects ACCESS MODIFICATION
BUILT-INS
ACCESS MODIFICATION
STRUCTURE
59
1
2
1
2
1'
3'
Proposal for an Aboveground Pool SPRING 2016 | GREENWALD VISITING PROFESSOR WORKSHOP Completed in collaboration with Andrew Jennings, Spencer McNeil, and Juan Suarez Rather than structures outside of the water, this pool contains all necessary equipment floating on its surface. 69
72
A Bamboo Enclosure (with fence and walls) SPRING 2017 | PAUL PREISSNER An exploration in mundane materiality producing a fence, a wall, and a facade. 77
Utilizing standard cedar fence plank, and then later 8 foot bamboo poles, the desired effect of “fuzziness� was produced by controlling plank spacing and angle of rotation. A simple prototype was detailed to exhibit how a single construction assembly could be utilized in a loose spiral to act as fence, facade, and wall.
78
The House [on the] Corner FALL 2015 | KELLY BAIR Two eerily similar yet distinct masses provide the basic framework for subversive two-and-one relationships found throughout this three-unit apartment. Playing games of “almost symmetry, each massing is based off an “M-Shaped” roof profile intersected with another. As a whole, discrete and compound massings are produced, corner conditions become “inside” or “outside”, and spatial types range from thin surfaces to thick intersections. 84
The way the two masses intersect one another serve as a means to blur the lines and accentuate the differences between the objects. Halftoning rustication provides further means to accentuate or blur edges and soften corners. The house is treated an a uniform object in that regard. While both masses remain similar formally, one is a two unit residence and the other is a single family residence.
X
Typical
X
First Degree Mitosis
X
Reverse Mitosis
X
Typical
ON A-001
M-Shaped
ON A-003
M-Shaped
OFF T-000
M-Shaped
OFF C-002
M-Shaped
X
Nest
X
Rotate and Nest with Flip
X X
Rotate and Nest
X
Turn and Skew Flat Contort
ON C-003
M-Shaped
ON C-002
M-Shaped
OFF C-003 OFF B-002
M-Shaped
OFF B-001
M-Shaped M-Shaped
X
Cleave
X
Fragmented Cleave
X
Squeeze
X
Profile Invert
ON B-003
M-Shaped
ON B-001
M-Shaped
OFF A-002
M-Shaped
OFF A-003
M-Shaped
The project began as a massing exploration using the “M-shaped” roof profile. Though initially a basic extrusion, experimentation in shearing and lofting non-planar profiles resulted in a massing that began to confuse surface and corner. These massings were taken to further studies that examined the results of careful addition. By locating an intersection at a peak of the M profile, the surfaces between the two masses begin to blend and distort.
Y
Bird’s Eye 1
The intersected masses became the basis for the House [on the] Corner, which gave a strong foundation for a massing in which two can be read as one.
Bent Cruciform
Y
Bent Cruciform
M-Shaped
Worms’s Eye 2
M-Shaped
87
2
3 1
4
2
3 1
3
4
+40'-0" roof peak
+40'-0" roof peak
+24'-0" second floor
+24'-0" second floor +12'-0" first floor
+12'-0" first floor +0'-0" ground floor
+0'-0" ground floor
+40'-0" roof peak
+40'-0" roof peak +24'-0" second floor +20'-6" +24'-0" mezz. level second floor +20'-6" +12'-0" mezz. level first floor
+12'-0" first floor +0'-0" ground floor
+0'-0" ground floor
94