ABC
to the Rock that keeps me stable the Tide that spurs me on and the Void whose depths I will never truly find
Brunnelleschi Center for the Arts Summer 2013 Professor Steve Cooke Italy Studio Florence, Italy
The program callef for a center dedicated to Filippo Brunelleschi, the famed renaissance man, that would advance the arts, sciences, and faith. But what made the project unique was its site: the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, Italy. WIth such a charged site that was at the heart of the Florentine Republic with buildings like the Ponte Vechio and the Piazza del Duomo it was important that the new intervention be respectful of the sites history. But it was also important that the building be a product of its zietgeist, a style of today; after all it was for Renaisance man. Another design challenge was designing a building that was for a culture different from ones own. One of the observed characteristics of the Florentine culture was the importance of public space int he city. Wealthy mearchants had long built these spaces as monuments to themselves, but these acted as important places where they became important to the daily lives of florentines. This type of patronage created some of the great public spaces of the world, and these spaces need to continue to exist and there construction should still happen.
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[Parti] incline the piazza allowing for the public to rest on it, elevated and giving them an oppurtunity to people watch; and allow for the builidngs skin to protect them from the elements. This displaced ground floor allows for different and unique entrances to the building giveing the three programatic
elements
there
own unique feel. Open the ceiling to give occupants views to the the steple of the Ponte Vecchio above, while bringing natural light into the building.
[SketchSection] Due to the complexity of the program and that the indvidual elements needed to be read seperatley and as a whole together it was important to develop sectional relationships that allowed for a disscociative spatial
configuration.
The
program was split into its indvidual parts and then divided and layed out to maximize this dissociative configuration.
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1_restraunt 2_cafe/gelotaria 3_kitchen 4_artist studio 5_workshop 6_freight elevator
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1_artist studio 2_office 3_library entrance
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1_auditorium 2_museum entrance 3_ramped piazza 4_library kiosk
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split level
2 1
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1_auditorium 2_gallery 3_storage 4_library
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1_gallery 2_piazza vista 3_library
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1_gallery 2_library
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1_gallery 2_library 3_bridge to chapel 4_chapel 5_prayer rooms
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[Museum] A gallery is a space that allows the occupant to experience the art in its best manner, but also accounts for “museumhead�, giving occupants the moments to reflect on the city and a break from the gallery. The museum has series of galleries of different scales, allowing for different forms of art, while allowing for vistas of the city and moment of pause and respite.
[Temple] The journey to the temple was designed to feel like a hijra, where the walk through the building gives different views and vistas to the city outside. Finally the occupant is lfted and a bridge takes them across the building to the Chapel. The Chapel is entered from below forcing the occupant to look up and as they come arround they get the view of the sanctuary. Light wells bring light in to hte pathway and the prayer rooms.
[ResearchLibrary] The goal of the library was to create an inward space that is well-lit. Designed to be away from the noise and the spectacle that occurs in the Piazza del Signoria. Sky lights in the middle of the building bring light into the study areas adjacent to the books. With a space adjacent to bookshelves with natural light, scholars can stay and study for hours.
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Cirque du Soleil Tower Summer 2014 Professor Martin Gunderson Chicago, IL Tower Studio
The premise of the program is that Cirque du Soleil, the famed circus troop, is planning on moving their headquarters to a building to the heart of Chicago, the city famed for its skyscrapers. But like its history of innovative building construction, the goal of this building was to build something that would be new in the chicago skyline. The proccess began with a series of sketches for the purpose of playing with forms. The tower needed to represent the program of the different elements inside of it: a place for performance, a place for practice, office space, and housing. The goal was to give these programs a formal logic that worked for the functions that they needed to perform and then make them work together as a whole. A gestalt of these formal peices would be ideal for the perfect building.
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[Programs] Programs were taken apart and forms were applied to the individual peices. Offices and housing required that the masses have floor plates, so these acted as the smaller scale lighter visual elements. The larger elements like the auditoriums and the practice rooms they need to be very vertical masses to accomadate the performers performances.
[SketchModel] Slowly forms were attached to the programmatic elements. Then a plexi gass three dimensional grid was created that could easily be manipulated and attached to, allowing for quick and easy process models to further formal exploration
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[VerticalGarden] At the top of tower is a green house, where food and farm good can be grown. This limits the cost of food buy eliminating shipping costs and halting the need of food to be shipped in from outside of the city.
housing office auditorium elvated public space performance space
Modular Dissonace and the Urban Terraform: Parrallel Podia on the Hong Kong Waterfront Spring 2015 Professor Nancy Sanders Hong Kong Urban Design Studio Group Project: Graphics by Gadiel Marquez Models by Vignesh Madhavan
The idea of the modern metropolis is rapidly changing in the era of hyper density. With the population growing at an exponential rate with no signs of slowing down, architects and urban designers are coming up with new an inventive ways fo dealing with density. No city is a better case study for how to deal with density than Hong Kong. Located on peninsula the city became a port town that became a hub for commerce and trade. Due to its unique geography of the mountainous island the city and its towers are forced to occupy the edge of the harbor, and due to the minute amount of buildable land the only way to go is up to accomadate the density. As a consequence to limited land and great demand for it, the vertical city was born. With that came the conception of the podium, an architectural typology where all the programmatic elements that a person requires is compressed into a single tower. Giant malls are at the base of the tower attracting the spectacle of the city. Above these malls housing and offices are put above, creating a vertical city where a person would not have to leave this steel structue for anything. This typology has also created bridging
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[Density] almost like a scene from Blade Runner the metropolis’s density has a feel of a dystopian science fiction film. With signs, scaffolding, and visual noise everywhere one looks the city is an overwhelming blur of experiences. Walking down a street is like a constant shock of visual and auditory stimulation
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41 [Housing+PublicSpace] Today Hong Kong’s solution for its housing influx is to build forests of banal towers. These towers are isolating experiences where an occupant enters the base then take an elevator to a narrow corridor and then into there room, an experience devoid of human contact or the random interaction that the street allows for.
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[Construct1] This solution has created fields of towers that are clones of one another, creating a mundane existence for the occupant. The sameness has created these odd visual landscapes where the skyline looks like a tesselated field of pastel colors and rectilinear forms.
45 [Construct2] Bring the neighborhood to the podium typology. Get rid of the “layer cake” solution that has long been the norm and bring those element into the tower. Allowing for a vertical “street” where the random encounters and social interaction can happen inside the tower. Make the programs have a puzzle peice connection not a stratified relationship
[SiteGrid] Grids were created, scales of programmatic elements from average aparment sizes to the size of soccer fields were taken into account. From that information scales of spaces were made and divided to fit those programmatic elements.
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[KaiTak] From the the site analysis two sites were chosen that faced one another across the harbor. The first being Kai Tak, the abandoned airport that projected out onto the harbor. Here was a pristine peice of land, completley flat and open, devoid of the density that surrounded it. From this three dimensional grids were created in the form of models.
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[CausewayBay] Directly across the bay from Kai Tak was a sister site, Causeway Bay. Here too was a site of reclaimed land, flat and open. But unlike the other the site is pressed againt the city and metropolis.
[Housing+PublicSpace] The strip is split in three potions: housing/commercial, park space, and civic space. The west side of the strip has a transportation hub with subway and transit to move people back and forth throughout the site. The front end of the site has housing and offices. In the middle is a park in which a grid was used where various scales of outdoor sports fields were used to measure the scale of how big the plots of grass would be. On the far side is a civic center with museums, libraries, and other public buildngs. The whole site is linked by a swimming pool and aquarium that run side by side giving visitors an oppurtunity to swim alongside the animals.
[Pool+Aquarium] Ullaborio omnist, conet et, est libus nulluptiunt rem. Sam, corum autemqui cus repe ma dolum quaerem estibus aut plic te eruptat quuntur, ullor molenti ntemqui dus. Hiliquiae laborem porecabor simenest, untur a doloraero venimagnist ernam, omnimaximus ea volor se eatur? Ximuscit odionsectem qui volum quia quossusamus. Giatemquat quasse nimagnamendi officimincit fugit, quas ducidebit exerum lique nullabores excepel lorepro molupta sedicie ntemporias enis miliciassum et et aperspist ius, es quatis quatius escia sundae doluptatiat harumqui aut alignim oluptas delicia nonesed quuntur, to volora sum inullitio voloresequam aspiet as des re si renda ipidunti dipsunt faccaeste pa quos sum fugiam sapel moditat.
[CivicCenter]
Teahouse in the Wetlands Spring 2014 Professor Stanley Russell Tampa, Fl Elective
The Japanese teahouse, or Chashitsu, is a free standing structure built and designed specifically for a tea ceremony. The ojective of the project was to design a Japanese style teahouse in the setting of Florida’s wetlands. In a traditional teahouse the structure is entered from a garden and entered through a small square door, forcing the individual to bow down. This action is a mental device causing the a person’s mindset to switch from being outside the experience of the teahouse to inside it. The tea room istself does not have any furniture and is supposed to be rustic and simple and devoid of all decoration. To translate this typology to Florida’s condition required that the traditional teahouse’s ideas had to be made to fit into the Florida vernacular and culture. To do this a site was chosen that portrayed the Florida landscape: the Hillsborough River. The river has all the elements of the wetlands cyprus trees, mangroves, and overgrowth; a natural garden.
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[Nijiriguchi] Built over the water a dock is taken from the park across the river to a white wall, blocking the view to the other side. when approaching the wall the closer one gets the more their eyes get washed by the vivid white wall causing the wall to be a physical representation of the liminal moment of the entrance to the tea house
[Mizuya] On the other a side a vista to the mouth of the river greets the visitor. Two spaces were allotted split by row of bamboo allowing for two private and intimate spaces giving the space a use when a tea cermony is not occuring. Both spaces have views one to the mouth of the river, the other to the mangroves on the banks.
[TeaHouse] Inside the tea house the walls and the bamboo seclude the occupants by blocking views into the teahouse. Above a trellis system gives the occupants shade but lets them feel the elements. In the space the tea house stays very true to the Japanese style, so a traditional tea ceremony can take place.
Coffee Table Fall 2014
Junto Design Studio is an office that
Junto Design Studio
prides itself in its community involvment
Office Work
and its egalitarian approach to design.
Designed by Vignesh Madhavan
The meeting space is a small one but it
Built in conjunction with Junto DS
required a space for informal meetings with clientele. And what better way to conduct a meeting than around a coffee table? The design had to be circle to avoid the sharp corners created by a rectilinear object, a hindrance in a small space. The table also had to accommadate the needs of a meeting space; a surface to write on and interact with clients, a place to to put drawings and other material to reference during a meeting, and some way to reinforce Junto’s branding. The elements that were required of the table were distilled into there individual parts, and a table was formed where its form expressed its function individually and in its overall compostion. The apportioned laminas of plywood provide storage for drawings while also reinforcing Junto’s brand. Above the partitioned mass is a glass surface allowing for the presenter to draw and explain ideas to the client. The iconic form and materiality of the table makes it unique within the office, but its delicate features allow it to disappear into the context of the studio space.
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[Assembly] Designed to be flat-packed the table slide together on its four steel rods. its paperclip like legs were designed to make the table feel light and the chrome-plating made it look like the mass was floating.
c&c milled plywood steel spacer
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bent steel rod w/ welded spacthreaded steel rod
“The Pauper�
summer 2015 Instructor Mike LeMieux Furniture Workshop
To me design is the creation of objects and things that improve the daily lives of people. But far too often good design is something that is unavailable or inaccessable to the general public. My goal with this project was to design a chair that was not only comfortable and aesthetically pleasing but also affordable. To make a seat and back comfortable the best form is a slice of a cone. The form of the seat is then projected on a cone and the contour of that cone makes the ideal curve for your back and your bottom. Then ideal measurments were done to find the best height at which the chair should be . Making the chair affordable required an understanding of material and its capabilities. To make the legs, plywood was used because of its relative cheapness and ability to use a c&c router, limiting the use of labor in its construction. The seat and back are built from bendable plywood, and because the curves of the back and seat are the same the mold can be used for both. Due to the affordability of the materials the chair is $46 in materials, and cost can go down further with manufacturing.
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back spine (x2) seat fisth tail pelvis
Photography
valencia, spain
Hong Kong, China
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[farnsworth house] plano, usa
[pantheon] rome,italy
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sienna, italy
[brion cemetary] altivole, italy
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san gimignano ,italy
san fancisco, usa
[villa rotunda] vicenza, italy
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[lake shore drive apts] chicago, usa
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[art institute of chicago] chicago, usa
florence, italy
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[boboli gardens] firenze, italy
[kiyomizu temple] kyoto, japan
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[boboli gardens] firenze, italy
awaji island, japan