06 The Community Connection Center

Atlanta Reactivation ‘Play vs. Protest’ Civic Center

Year 4 | Fall 2020

Site: Atlanta, GA

Professor Jennifer Pindyck

Where south downtown community discovers unity through diversity. The Community Connection Center expresses connection. An adaptive reuse project for the existing Constitution building. It creates a place of belonging, embracing diversity, in community and the built environment. Fracturing and displacing heavy extrusions to highlight the areas for engagement and fluid connectivity.

The design theory is a concept for participation in the conversation of unifying through diversity. The C.C.C. inserts commentary within the larger system. Aesthetically and programmatically uniting through differences, the structural insertions and attachments to the existing building moves as actions towards the agenda of “play’ and “protest”. Create experiences of heavy and light, loud and quiet, dark and bright. Moments of clarity through actions of architectural controversy.

The bold architectural moves were inspired by the investigation of Gothic architecture and through the abstraction of its fundamental design characteristics. Applying the abstraction created a unique contemporary design.

Collaboration room. The extrusion punctures highlight spaces for loose programming tailored to services for community engagement

Spaces and experiences created by the volumetric extrusion insertions in the building form

Programmatic Abstractions

Systematic Abstractions

Interior Visual + Physical Experiential Connection

Public engagement and movement with the volumes

Arrangement of punctures create occupancy, transition, and frames views

CONCEPTUAL ABSTRACTIONS Transitional Spaces + Experiential Climb

Circulatory Abstractions

Interconnected Masses + Density

Circulation creates experiential visual and physical connections among programs

Intersecting plane that frame visual connections and dynamic spatial qualities

Bold volumetric form installations creates expressive spaces and visual dimension

Dynamic social environments

Interconnected masses reflects connective community

Transitional spaces and experiential climb for playful interactions

Moments of clarity in the darkness. Person experiencing light through a light well volume puncture

Oh The Places We Will Go ...

Hand-crafted portable wood writing desk

Year 3 | Fall 2019

Professor Rebecca O’Neal

This box is a representation of past and present, built and designed for the authors, by looking closely at their most prized writings and inspired by their stories. Through this investigation of Southern Literature and specifically the authors, Harper Lee and Mark Twain, cultivated the common themes that guided my design theory. The major themes that drove my design were friendship/bonds, southern lifestyle and culture, self-discovery, and adventure.

Harper Lee is originally from Alabama, where she recorded personal experiences to inspire her stories. To Kill a Mockingbird has autobiographical roots and the main element throughout the story, the oak tree knothole, was actually a critical aspect in Lee’s life. Earlier, she was a stewardess and travel played a crucial part in her life. She quit her job to revise her stories where she typed on her typewriter. Travel and accessibility to writing very impactful.

Mark Twain , while from Missouri he spent most of time up and along the Mississippi River. He was a pilot and riverboat captain. He was always traveling and exposed to many cultural elements. Twain was an experiential writer; hand writing his ideas and stories coupled with hand sketches was crucial tradition to his writing process. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a “hymn” to his childhood.

Design Intentions:

Rope Connection = durability for travel and experiential travel logging

Stain = exhibits a deep oak appearance

Sketch Flap = Twain quick hand writings and hand sketches

Flat Open Surface = Lee + Twain typewriter accessibility

Hidden Compartments = “Boo Radley Oak Knothole” compartments holds her notes

Larger Compartments = sketching paper, writing and typing utensils

Storage flap folds down to create flat top surface Slanted writing surface folds over top the flat surface and locks desk

Author’s desk annotated illustration of how box folds together

To Write To Store

Athenaeum Nautilus

Adaptive Reuse Public library for Southern literature, arts, and history

Year 3 | Fall 2019

Site: Chattanooga, TN Professor Rebecca O’Neal metal fins and panel facade. reflects existing skin quality and regulates sun/shading locally resourced wood. perforated design for texture and shadow steel structural system arranged collaborative spaces

Architecture is storytelling using the language of landscape, history, and built forms. It tells a narrative of the values of a particular community, Chattanooga, in its time and place. Athenaeum Nautilus’ design concept and program is inspired by the in depth investigation of southern literary author, Mark Twain. This building is a hub for communal interaction that cultivates knowledge and experiences.

Mode of circulation. Reflects the circuitous journey Mark Twain experienced down the Mississippi River. Circulation connects program spaces physically and visually.

Rendered interior atrium space highlights perforated ramping system as the main method of programmatic connection. Circulation drives the design concept. An interactive and experiential circulation path designed by inspiration from Mark Twain’s (also in reference to novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) experience of traveling down the Mississippi River.