wbsmith_portfolio_reduced by William Smith

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

William Brian Smith | Portfolio Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation Master of Architect, 2011

COMMENTS 14 | Touché Jürgen Mayer The Architecture of Accident, or When a Building Sweats 30 | Dumb, Deaf and Hungry How Sun Chips are Ruining America 64 | Wright vs. Miliutin 128 | Judging a Book by its Cover STUDIOS 16 | Meteorchitecture, Part 2 Core Studio I, Fall 2008 Janette Kim, Critic

TECHNICAL ADVICE 62 | Becton Hall, Yale University: Laboratory Mechanics 102 | Artists’ Lofts Bronx, NY: Integrating Design, Structure and Building Systems. 4

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

6 30 56 68 88 108 134 METEORCHITECTURE, PART 1 Core Studio I, Fall 2008 Janette Kim, Critic

ACOUSTIC ECOLOGY Core Studio II, Spring 2009 Mark Wasiuta, Critic

MEDICAL ADVICE: How to Eat an Artichoke without Dying

1700 UNITS OF HOUSING Core Studio III, Fall 2009 Michael Bell, Critic

BOTANICAL GARDENS AND ROOT RESEARCH CENTER AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Advanced Studio IV, Spring 2010 Hernan Diaz-Alonso, Critic

GHANA AND A CHOCOLATE FACTORY How to save Ghanaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s aging cocoa farms and stimulate the economy while doing it.

LOVE/LAJE

Reinventing the domestic paWilliam Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio tio for a new urban use.

For Robbie

In a world of myriad uncert economic) how is it that arc rogance? Never has the idio feeds you had such resonanc teorology (a.k.a. our reason light on the mysteries archit PART 1: AN AIR LAB /

Studio I. Fall 2008. Janette K

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

tainties (climatic, political, chitects get by with their arom donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bite the hand that ce. Perhaps a look into mefor existence) can help shed tects attempt to prevent.

Kim, Critic

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

OBSERVATIONS: Condensation/Enthalpy A 7 hour observation of the phenomenology of ice melting. Variables: Temperature, Environmental Hermeticism, Density of Ice, Humidity.

10 William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

If you watch ice melt, you will get bored and fall asleep. During the 7 hours it takes to completely melt a liter of ice, the mind wanders and the eyes become transfixed as the phenomenology of evaporation, condensation and enthalpy become manifest. Within this process are myriad environmental complexities that cause one to seek insights into other natural phenomena like clouds and glaciers, deserts and tropical forests. Particularly fascinating is the process of condensation. Condensation is the change of the physical state of aggregation of matter from gaseous phase into liquid phase, or the reverse of evaporation. The science of studying the thermodynamic properties of moist air and the interrelationships between these in order to analyze, and predict properties by changing in the conditions of moist air is called psychometry. Although the principles of psychometry apply to any physical system consisting of gas-vapor mixtures, the most common system of interest is the mixture of water vapor and air, because of its application in heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning and meteorology. In human terms, our comfort is in large part a consequence of not just the temperature of the surrounding air but (because we cool ourselves via perspiration) the extent to which that air is saturated with water vapor. Thus, condensation is directly related to our experience of place. Studying and observing condensation becomes a critical architectural methodology in establishing spaces of comfort or discomfort.

Change in Surface Temperature and the Development of Condensation, 54 Minutes

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William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

MAKING THE CUT

At the University of Florida School Of Medicine students are required to take Anatomy and Physiology during their first year. Âś The first semester begins with an intimate partnership with a cadaver, a body donated to further the study of science and medicine. Legs are severed, chests are scissored and faces are literally peeled apart. Students carry sketch pads and sketch pens and are constantly drawing in plan and in section the relationships between vein and artery, between dermis and muscle tissue and between bone and ligament. They are in fact architects disguised in blood-stained lab coats. Âś At the start of the semester, the brain of the cadaver is removed and stored in formaldehyde-filled tupperware bins. Five months later, the students remove the brains from their bins and begin a month-long study dedicated to neuro anatomy. Architecturally, the brain is the most complex organ both in plan and in section. The brain is a labyrinth of neurons and tissue, a place where up is down, down is around. To aid them in their study, the students use a meat slicer, one commonly found at a local supermarket. They place the brain on the meat slicer and shave thick slices of brain into their hands. These steak-thick slabs of brain are then analyzed, prodded. Their fingers jam into the brain and they trace the section of the brain, noticing changes in tissue density, color, and thickness. Âś Thus to convince Mark Wigley, their sections literally bleed - off the page and into the hands of students - the blood of the section. In that blood floats proof of the architecture of anatomy, the grisly reality of brain-program adjacencies. Perhaps in this light, medical doctors are more architects than architects. 12

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

MAKING THE CUT: A 3 Part Process: 1. Using 840 straw bits, construct model with multiple interiors and redundant surface area. 2. Cast model in plaster. 3. Saw plaster model into half-inch sections. Alternate Method 1(a). If you get lost use thread to string a section. 2(b). Take x-ray of threaded section.

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

Touché, Jürgen Mayer.

The architecture of accident, or when a building sweats.

Like good surgeons, architects suffer from what they call the “God complex.” Architects: always trying to change the plan, despite being given a perfectly fine plan anyways. In a world of myriad uncertainties (climatic, political, economic, etc...), it seems the only thing certain is architecture. Or that’s what we would like you to believe. Much to our chagrin, we assume certain truths about materials, our visual and sensorial relationship to buildings and to the earth: you see through glass, rock is hard, north is cold, etc... Yet the problem and reason for architects is the weather. The weather: always fucking things up. Architects build houses and then God levels them with meteorological toys. Architects build glass houses; God throws stones at them or smears it with condensation. What gives? All architects wanted to do was let humans view out into the Earth God created. Well, too bad; he doesn’t want that; look somewhere else. I think I read a book about this in AP English. Hey, what’s always going to happen? The weather. What’s never going to happen? An architect’s architecture. So what is architecture? A poncho and a one-way ticket to Ecuador. See you there. So go ahead and drag that Ecotect desktop icon into the recycling bin because you’re not going to need it. 16

THROUGH SEC TION

The research pavilion sponsors a physical and information exchange between the scientists and visiting public. The program is arranged according to temperature and hermetic requirements of specific research laboratories.

biology laboratories where data sets are transcribed into accessible and less informal bodies of literature, images and maps for critical public and media interpretation.

The phenomenological spectacle of water vapor experiments from isolated laboratories becomes visible and palpable to the public through the architectural array of laboratory condensing repositories, which create the facade of the pavilion.

The more “social” laboratories (biology and ecology) act as facilitators between the public and more “nonsocial” sciences, or those requiring maximum isolation. As research is conducted in isolation, its formal results are transferred to peripheral

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

How does the public understand the environment? How can science enter the public debate concerning the environment while maintaining its critical autonomy? How can the public receive necessary and accessible information concerning immediate and future environmental changes so that they can become participants and collaborators with field researchers?

research as well as a public demonstration of progress and possible instructor of environmental stewardship? More importantly, what would these spaces look like and how would they function to include both researchers and the public? 6

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Whereas we now have a fairly detailed knowledge of the myths and circumcision rituals of exotic tribes, we remain relatively ignorant of the details of equivalent activity among tribes of scientists, whose work is commonly heralded as having startling, or at least, extremely significant effects on our civilization.â&#x20AC;? - Bruno Latour

What boundaries, if any, should exist between laboratory and public space?

How can the research laboratory serve as both an incubator for environmental William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

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+4 +10research and the public cooperative with scientific debate. Part+10 2/2 of+13 semester devoted to climate WITH JANETTE KIM, STUDIO CRITIC +8 FALL 2008

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Images: Hudson River temperature and material albedo census.

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William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

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+8 William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

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{23rd Street}

{Office Bldg., Black Faca

{Madison Sq.}

{Jet Liner}

{34th Street, Penn Station}

{14th Street}

{Empire State Building, Observation Deck}

{NYTimes Building, Construction Decking}

{East River}

ade}

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71/53 81/63 DP: 44 (AM)/ 53 (PM) Avg. ST: 48.5

85/68 83/66 DP: 60 (AM)/ 67 (PM) Avg. ST: 63.5

77/60 67/51 DP: 64 (AM)/ 62 (PM)

54/41 41/30 DP: 33 (AM)/ 42 (PM)

Avg. ST: 63

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August

{Altocumulus}

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

Condensation visually registers the difference between two competing temperature systems. From sweaty diet coke cans to bulbous cumulus clouds, the public experiences condensation at widely different scales. Yet, despite its ubiquity, the process and function of condensation remain enigmatic to the public. As such, this project aims to delineate condensation and its paramount role in shaping our understanding of climate control. As condensation reveals what is lost in the physical translation of water vapor, the body of science has failed to translate this process into a tangible and accessible experience. The project architecturally appropriates the process of condensation to create thermodynamic boundaries and openings between the public and science. The design methods and techniques sponsor this engagement and encourage both the public and science to collectively administer a method of reaction. Design strategies include using potential program temperature variability as a system of creating critical physical and programmatic adjacencies to emphasize the interplay of empirical laboratory studies (wet lab) with theoretical (monitoring and observation) and computational explorations (dry lab). Programs are arranged by scale of experimentation and temperature variability. For example, the material storage (refrigerated, vaulted) is located at the top of the building, abutting the heat exhaust pipe extending from the ventilation tower. This relationship of hot/cold supports the formation of condensation along the east wall of the building and creates a palpable public performance. Next to the material lab, the wet lab conducts large-scale condensation experiments visible to the public below (efficacy of cloud condensation nuclei in the formation of clouds). Furthermore, this geometry allows warm air to rise from the gallery and cold air to sink from the material storage creating a selfregulating temperature mechanism. It is programmatically critical that public spaces and private (i.e., science) group gathering spaces embrace each other. This degree of collaboration renders the scientific process transparent and dramatically diminishes its obscurities. Perhaps more important is the placement of group gathering spaces. Though research labs demand isolation, it is imperative that each body of science have a â&#x20AC;&#x153;front porchâ&#x20AC;? where ideas can 22 William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

What is architectureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s relationship to weather? In its simplest terms, architecture is an attempt to separate one from weather. The layers of a buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s skin are each systematically designed to control atmospheric conditions to provide ideal interior environments. In extreme climates weather often produces a hermetic architecture that encloses the interior to account fro extremes. The every day - those days that linger within these extremes - has a potential for new types of permeability that is yet to be exploited. 24 William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

SQUAL

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PRECIPITATION (Landing near station)

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, ,

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RAIN SHOWERS, violent

SLIGHT SHOWERS of SNOW PELLETS

SLIGHT SHOWERS of HAIL

STATIONARY FRONT WARM FRONT

COLD FRONT OCCLUDED FRONT

DRY LINE

C V

CONTROL

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

VARIABLE

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Continued...be exchanged. These places that create focus points to promote circulation and offer respite include: the entrance/condensation gallery, which is combined with public space and a shared cafĂŠ; open stair case(s) along the perimeter; and various circulation areas such as corridors and vertical and horizontal links and niches. At a larger scale, the buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s position on the site responds to the arrogance and self-centeredness of traditional site planning. The bent L-shaped form gestures towards the public promenade, aspiring to belong with the process it mimics: water.

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

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William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

A MODERN PROBLEM FOR A MODERN MUSEUM: NOISE. WHY DOES THE MOMA SOUND LIKE A HAIR DRYER? CORE STUDIO II. CRITIC: MARK WASIUTA. SPRING 2009.

ACOUSTIC

ECOLOGY

Americans: deaf, dumb and hungry. ¶ This year, America’s favorite death-bychip company Frito-Lay debuted a new, 100-percent biodegradable bag for their multigrain Sun Chips. The only problem: the new packaging is louder than a gasoline lawn mower. Sun Chips. Guess what? They have nothing to do with the sun and everything to do with a big money chip factory in Plano, Texas. ¶ Are you a fake yuppie hippie who likes fake things like “cleanses” and “detoxes?” Then you’re probably the same fake yuppie hippie who sees Sun Chips at your local Texaco and thinks it would complement your fake cayenne pepper lemonade diet. ¶ Since Sun Chips (texture: like if you chewed up a tortilla chip, spat it out, and then baked it) are Frito-Lay’s “healthy” (LOL) snack, they are also the food conglomerate’s “environmentally-friendly” snack, probably because if you are the kind of hippie who cares about your body, you probably care about forests or whatever. And since they’re “environmentally-friendly,” Frito-Lay has introduced a 100-percentbiodegradable bag, which I guess you are encouraged to just throw out wherever?

WilliamBrian Brian Smith. Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011May | Portfolio William M.Arch, 2011. Comprehensive Portfolio 2010 33

SPEAK UP. I CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER MY BAG 34 William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

Cont’d...Opening a bag of Sun Chips is both deafening and embarrassing. First, it’s like opening a bag of thunderstorms: so loud. Second, you’re opening a bag of Sun Chips, and now everyone is going to know about it and criticize you for going off your yuppie cleanse. All animals within a 10 mile radius will come running to your door step because for all they know you’ve opened a bag of Kibble and Bits the size of a Range Rover. Just give it to the dogs because trust me it’s not worth it. The bag is just too painful to listen to. The bag is loud! How loud? Air Force pilot and blogger J. Scot Heathman says they’re louder than the cockpit of his jet. He measured the decibels when he crinkled the bag and found that it produced a sound of 95 dB, more than ten times as loud as regular chips, which maxed out at 79 dB. That’s louder than a gas lawn mower (90 dB), and almost as loud as a subway (100 dB)! If this is what it means to be green today then I want to be black. The way we live now: going as far as we can to save the environment when we can’t even save ourselves. The problem here isn’t the environment: it’s the Sun Chips, and that we eat them. The other problem here is the noise. By attempting to reduce one kind of pollution, Frito-Lay has created another. If you live in New York City then your ears are hurting. New York is one of the loudest cities in the country (according to Men’s Health, leading aural and acoustic experts.) We make a lot of sacrifices living in New York, NY. Used to, one could drive to work in a Honda Accord, alone and quietly and with minimal odors. Now days, New Yorkers must choose between riding in the air conditioned car alone with a rotting corpse or rubbing thighs with a pant-suite publicist. I think I’ll walk. In New York, everything is public. That kiss you just stole from your girlfriend; I saw that. I also saw you peeing behind the falafel cart and yes, I saw you pick your nose and rub it on the subway handle bar. New Yorkers: we can’t even pick our nose in private. In New York, you can’t even call your grandfather to wish him a happy 80th birthday while walking to school because guess what? You’re deaf. Not

him. You. Why is that every time you’re trying to talk on the phone someone is dying (ambulance) or someone’s on fire (fire truck) or a black Lincoln town car is honking at you trying to get you in his car. No thanks, I’m walking. The only decent place to have a conversation with someone in New York is in Connecticut. Noise is why all friendships have been relegated to tweets and facebook posts. Because no one wants to talk anywhere because no one can hear them; they can’t hear themselves. Used to, if you wanted a quiet place to contemplate how depressing your life is, you went to the museum. Well, guess what. Museums are just like Sun Chips: loud, overpriced and smelly. Used to be that you could go to the MoMa, sit down on a cushioned bench and wonder about what, if any, connections existed between Fiesta Ware and Van Gogh. Now you go the MoMa, you sit on a bench and someone is preaching about reactionary and post-modern-isms. Or a 14 year old school girl whips out her Sidekick and starts sexting one of her boyfriends in the sculpture gallery. And now you’re forced to ponder the Water Lilies with a pubescent giggle track. The only place you can contemplate art in the MoMa is in the bathroom. Going into the bathroom at the MoMa is like stepping into a Lexus LS400. It’s seriously quiet. You can always tell an expensive car by the way it sounds because the only sound rich people want to hear is the sound of their AMEXes rubbing together. As museums have become less elitist, they’ve become louder. Is that a coincidence? No, because poor people can’t afford quiet things because quiet things are expensive. Rich people have iPods and the poors have battery-powered 1992 Sony tape decks. America: Sonically Segregated. If you see something, say something. If you see a low-flying plane in Manhattan, say something. If you see a low-flying plane in Queens, you live in Queens. Sun Chips and the MoMa are systematically destroying modernism. Modernism: when things were quiet, clean and uncluttered. Nowadays: when things are loud, dirty and cluttered. In the MoMa, fancy curators decide what to hang on egg-shell walls. They are obviously all ADD about everything. They measure distances between things and use math to decide how high to hang paintings so that they are presumably

America: Sonically Segregated. If you see something, say something. If you see a low-flying plane in Manhattan, say something. If you see a lowflying plane in Queens, you live in Queens.

perfect for viewing. Everything is just perfect until someone sneezes like a bear and grabs a Picasso to break her fall. You just lost 6 million dollars, but it’s just money, and you decide what things are worth anyways so just decide its worth less, okay? Your concrete and wood floors are so great. They are so modern! You know what else is modern? Louis Viutton stiletto heels. You know what those sound like on your modern floor? Like dropping your MacBook Pro on a bag of Sun Chips. Now your modern museum sounds less like a Lexus and more like an arcade at the Port Authority. You know what was great about precell phone New York? Phone booths. Unlike today, phone booths used to be a place where you could duck in and make a quick call to your pal Jose to tell him the deal is off. Now, phone booths are where you put advertisements for Jewish dating websites and lottery tickets. What gives? Museums should be more like phone booths and less like the 1 train at 8:30 on a Monday morning, thanks. Also, when you go to a movie you are watching images with a sound. But that sound was curated and orchestrated to match the movie so that when we see Leonardo sinking into a cold wet abyss, we hear the Greatest Singer in the World and we cry. What we’re crying about I’m sure is up to the viewer but the point is that we’re crying and that’s what James Cameron wanted. What is it that you want, museum curator? It’s funny because I’m certain that what I’m seeing is what you want me to see but what I’m hearing is something completely unexpected and unwelcome. You thought it would be neat to put a cool sound installation in the lobby? Yeah that was neat and a great place to fall asleep, but the thing is I could hear that post-modern moaning all the way up on your seventh floor. There I am minding someone elses business and all of the sudden “Grooouuuuuushsshh”. What? I get it: sound is art but that Matisse becomes less art and more screen saver when your sound art hijacks my aural senses demanding attention and money or else it will crash me. What’s up with that? You remind me of someone I know. Sacrificing bodily health for the heath of the “environment.” Their comeuppance is a bloody ear drum, yours, a confused and disgruntled public. Think about it. I haven’t.

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

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William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

Electric Shaver, 80 dB MoMa Collage: Comparing household appliance decibel ratings with museum exhibitions and circulation space

Our ears, unlike our eyes, are incredibly democratic organs: they ingest everything. Much to our aural detriment, ears have no lid to cover and protect them. Whether we wish it or not, ears are constantly processing information mapping sonic landscapes while simultaneously editing, cataloging, recalling. Indeed, the sounds we hear are physical landscapes that delineate people, places and culture. Sounds construct, demolish physical and mental impediments: “this sounds familiar;” “this sound is unbearable;” “you sound like me.” Thus, sounds inform visual identities as much as the sights themselves and issue a type of sonic marker. So, it is remarkable that museums and other institutions of culture fail to acknowledge the ear as perhaps the most critical sensory organ of the visitor. They know precisely what they want you to see; however, they know not what they need you to hear. For the museum’s every effort to ensure a calculated and well-crafted visual experience, they have systematically ignored perhaps the most crucial sensory organ of the visitor: the ear. Despite effort-fully physically framed artwork, they have dismissed the acoustical frame with which the public views the art. There exists a certain sound ecology appropriate for museums and specifically the Museum of Delineation. Here, the acoustic environments of the museum are of paramount importance. It is not about the absence of sounds but of the aural congress of myriad sounds manipulated, conjured or inhibited. As such, the structural, material and programmatic properties of the museum are elected arbiters of the sonic environment. In other words, the sounds of museums are no longer unintended aural consequences; rather they are transcribed into notes of intention within the museum’s soundscape.

Material Sound Absorption Coefficient, Alpha Plaster Walls, 0.01 - 0.03 Persons (each), 2.0 - 5.0 Glass, .05 - .10 Concrete (unpainted), .00 - .20 Seating (occupied), .80 - .85 Steel, .00 - .10

Washing Machine, 60 dB Material Sound Absorption Coefficient, Alpha Plaster Walls (painted), .05 Persons (each), 2.0 - 5.0 Glass, .05 - .10 Hardwood Floor, .05 - .15

Hair Dryer, 80 dB Material Sound Absorption Coefficient, Alpha Plaster Walls, 0.01 - 0.03 Persons (each), 2.0 - 5.0 Glass, .05 - .10 Concrete (unpainted), .00 - .20

Steam Iron, 85 dB

Sink Disposal, 105 dB

Material Sound Absorption Coefficient, Alpha Plaster Walls (painted), .05 Persons (each), 2.0 - 5.0 Glass, .05 - .10 Hardwood Floor, .05 - .15 Carpet, .15 - .20

Material Sound Absorption Coefficient, Alpha Plaster Walls (painted), .05 Persons (each), 2.0 - 5.0 Steel, .00 - .10 Carpet, .15 - .20 Seating (occupied) , .80 - .85

WilliamBrian Brian Smith. Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011May | Portfolio William M.Arch, 2011. Comprehensive Portfolio 2010 39

MUSEUM ACOUSTIC GWR

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GLg GLg a

GSm

Hz 500 Db 80

Hz 70

Db 80

APL APL

GLg GLg

GLg GLg a

GSm

APL APL

Db 0_50_90

90_0

Hz 70

SDd

ASt

AWR AOO A

AOO AWR AMt

0_0_0_0_0_20_0_0_0_0

GLg GLg

SDd

ASt

APL APL

Hz 70

GWR

Db 60

AWR AOO AMt

APL APL

Hz 70

Db 60

AOO AWR AMt

AWR AOO AMt

GLg GLg

GWR

ASt

GLg GLg a

GLg GLg

Hz 500 Db 80

GSm

Hz 70

Db 0_10

50 10_0

GLg GLg

Hz 150

Lumens Hz 250

0_10 50 10_0

Lumens

GLg GLg

GDM

Active Noise (Public/Museum/Absorption/ Attentiveness) Galleries (Lg Scale) Galleries (Sm Scale) Digital Galleries Multi Media Gallery Library

GDM

0_10 50 10_0

Lumens

GLg GLg

Hz 70

Hz 250

GLg GLg

GDM GDM GDM GDM EMG EMG

Hz 500

EDo ECr ECr Eso

Program Grouping: Active Noise (Public) Lobby Entry Public Passage Reception Bathrooms Café Seating Cafe Service Counter Event Space Classroom Library

Hz 500

Passive Noise (Private) Café Storage Coat Room Event Storage Education Storage Circulation/Mechanical/Electrical Kitchen Storage

40 William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

Material Sound Absorption Coefficient - Ð Plaster walls Unpainted brickwork Painted brickwork 3 mm plywood panel 6 mm cork sheet 6 mm porous rubber sheet 12 mm fiberboard on battens 25 mm wood wool cement on battens 50 mm slag wool or glass silk 12 mm acoustic belt Hardwood 25 mm sprayed asbestos 100 mm mineral wool Acoustic tiles Open Window

0_10 50 10_0

Lumens

GLg GLg

Hz 70

GDM

GDM GDM GDM

EMG EMG

EDo ECr ECr

Acoustical Rating: Active Noise (Private) Kitchen Conference Room Education Director’s Office Staff Offices Conservation Work Area Administration Zones Service Zones

Hz 150

50 10_0

Hz 500

Db 0_10

Lumens

Hz 150

GSm PP RLR GSm PP RLR GSm PP RLR GSm PP RLR GSm PP RLR GSm PP RLR GSm PP RLR GSm PP RLR GSm PP RLR G GSm GSm GSm GSm

0.01 - 0.03 0.02 - 0.05 0.01 - 0.02 0.01 - 0.02 0.1 - 0.2 0.1 - 0.2 0.3 - 0.4 0.6 - 0.07 0.8 - 0.9 0.5 - 0.5 0.3 0.6 - 0.7 0.65 0.4 - 0.8 1.0

PROGRAM MAPPIN SDd

SDd

Db 80

AMt

Db 90_50_0

Hz 500 Db 80

GLg GLg

GSm

ASa ABo

0_0_0_0_0_20_0_0_0_0

APL APL

GLg GLg

GLg GLg a

Hz 70

AK AK Eev Eev Eev Eev Eev Eev Eev Eev Eev Eev Eev E

ASt

GLg GLg

GSm

0_90

Db 90_50_0

CS Hz 500 Db 80

GLg GLg

GLg GLg a

Hz 70

0_50_90

90_50_0

Hz 70

GSm

GLg GLg

GLg GLg a

Hz 500 Db 80

GSm

Hz 70

Lumens

GLg GLg

GDM

0_10 50 10_0

Hz 250

Hz 500

Hz 150

Db 0_10

GSm a

50 10_0

Hz 500

Lumens

GLg GLg

Hz 70

GLg GLg GDM

Db 0_10

50 10_0

Lumens

GLg GLg

GDM GDM GDM GDM EMG EMG

Xx10

Eso ECr ECr Eso

Eso

0_10 50 10_0

Lumens

GLg GLg

Hz 500

Hz 150

GLg GLg

Hz 250

GDM

GSm

Hz 500

GLg GLg

Hz 70

GDM

Hz 500

GSm

Hz 150

GSm

Hz 500

PP RLR GSm PP RLR GSm PP RLR GSm PP RLR GSm PP RLR GSm PP RLR GSm PP RLR GSm PP RLR GSm PP RLR GSm Hz 500

SDd

APL APL

GSm

Db 80

Hz 150

0_90

ASt

ABo ASa AMt a

SDd

Db 80

Sst Sst Sst Sst Sst Sst Sst

SDd

Db 80

GLg GLg

GDM

GDM GDM GDM GDM EMG EMG

Eso ECr ECr Eso

Program Grouping:

RRLRRLRRLRRLRRLRRLRRLRRLRRLRRLRRLRR RERERERERE RP RP RP RP RPRP RP RP RP RP RP RP RP RP RBRBRBRBRB RRRR RC CSCSCSCSCSCSCSCSCSCSCSCS CCCCCCCCCC CSt CSt CK CK CKs EVvEVvEVvEVvEVvEVvEVvEVvEVvEVvEVv EVSt EVSt EMgEMgEMgEMgEMg ECECECECEC ECfECf ECf ECf ECf ESt ESt

EOEOEOEOEOEO EB EB ELELELEL GLgx10GLgx10GLgx10GLgx10GLgx10GLgx10 GSmx10GSmx10 GSmx10 GSmx10 GDx10GDx10GDx10 GCvGCvGCvGCvGCv ALALALALALALALALALALAL AOoAOoAOoAOoAOo ADvADvADvADvADv AScAScAScASc AMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAM ARoARo ABo ACrACr AStAStAStAStAStAStAStAStAStASt

AKAK AB AR AR AR SOSO SStx10 SStx10 SDSDSDSDSDSDSDSDSDSDSDSD SWSWSWSWSWSWSWSW SL SL SB SEvSEvSEvSEvSEvSEvSEv SE Xx10Xx10Xx10Xx10Xx10

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

Selected Animation Stills From Acoustic Xerography A very short film. Museum of Delineation Spring 2009

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

46 William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

Quiet Monsters gorge on sonic energies; Loud Monsters purge and propagate sounds. Drawings sag from felt walls; paintings stick to foam teeth; movies creep into acoustic shadows; feathered floors silence every click of a Jimmy Choo stiletto. No sound is unreasoned. Every sound is suspect. William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

12 11

9 8

48 William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

ACOUSTIC NARRATIVE Scripting the life and death of the museum’s sound.

RECEIVING/ SHIPPING AREA. Decibel 1

range 0-120. Absorption Coefficient, alpha = .01 - .04. Acoustic Atmosphere, reverberative. Sounds from delivery area should leak into the elevator area but no the entryway. 4

C URATORIAL OFFICES.

Decibel range, 3090. Absorption Coefficient, alpha = .01 - .04. Acoustic Atmosphere, reverberative. Copy machines, faxes, ringing phones contribute to the office sonic atmosphere and empty into the sound monster below.

HALL OF A C O US T I C A L MIRRORS. Deci7

bel range 0-120. Absorption Coefficient, alpha = .01 - 1.0. Acoustic Atmosphere, variable. An experimental acoustic gallery with operable acoustic screens allowing specific sonic curation. 10

THE OF

RING SILENCE.

Decibel range 0-20. Absorption Coefficient, alpha = .9. Acoustic Atmosphere, suffocating. The only thing you should hear in the ring of silence is the sound of your heart beating. This is where sound goes to die. Forever.

A PLACE TO EAT. Deci-

bel range, 60-95. Absorption Coefficient, alpha .00 - .02. Acoustic Atmosphere, cacophonous. A place where the sound of your fork scraping your the tuna off your plate can have a life of its own.

ELEVATOR CORE/INFORMATION. Decibel 2

range, 30-90. Absorption Coefficient, alpha .8 - 1.0. Acoustic Atmosphere, Deadening. Sounds from delivery area absorbed into material. Sounds are heard, then destroyed. 5

PHONE

X H I B I

TION

BOOTH.

Decibel range, 0-10. Absorption Coefficient, alpha .99 - 1.0. Acoustic Atmosphere, Suffocating. All sounds cease as one enters the phone booth, a place of solitary confinement, self-reflection. 8

BOWERY OBS E RVAT I O N

DECK.

Decibel range, 30-90. Absorption Coefficient, alpha .01 - .2. Acoustic Atmosphere, Variable. A place to hear and be heard, see and be seen. Perforated materials funnel city sounds discreetly into the museum.

CHRYSTIE OBSERVATION DECK. Deci11

bel range, 30-50. Absorption Coefficient, alpha .02 - .07. Acoustic Atmosphere, Variable. Lined with trees and a limited access street, the Chrystie Street deck reciprocates the Bowery sonic atmosphere.

SOUND MONSTER #1.

Decibel range, 6095. Absorption Coefficient, alpha .00 - .02. Acoustic Atmosphere, cacophonous. This is the “sound bowl” of the museum where sound detritus from offices echo, multiply and intensify. 6

QUIET MONSTER #1.

Decibel range, 2035. Absorption Coefficient, alpha .8 - .9. Acoustic Atmosphere, deadening . Made from tessellated acoustic panels, this space swallows acoustic energies from surrounding exhibits. 9

MEDIA WALL.

Decibel range, 60-95. Absorption Coefficient, alpha .00 - .02. Acoustic Atmosphere, reverberative. This solid concrete wall displays projection media and separates the media hall from the hall of silence. 12

TRANSITION PLATFORM.

Decibel range, 6095. Absorption Coefficient, alpha .00 - .02. Acoustic Atmosphere, cacophonous. Sounds from the Media gallery below enshroud the museum goer as he moves from the Ring of Silence to the Cafeteria.

MUSEUM OFFICES. Deci-

bel range, 30-80. Absorption Coefficient, alpha .00 - .02. Acoustic Atmosphere, cacophonous. Here, sounds from the office and sounds from where you eat mix together in a reverberative pharmacology of acoustic events.

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio 49

This Page. The Ring of Silence.

50 William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

52 William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

54 William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

The Ring of Silence*

*Inherent in the design of the Museum of Delineation is the fundamental compulsion to control the behavior of sound. Its architecture enables the curator to think critically about sound and gives them a means by which to exercise choice in the types of soundscapes existing in the museum. The Ring of Silence is just one acoustical and physical palette in which curators can determine the acoustical aesthetic behavior of an exhibition. It is the acoustical black hole where sounds go to die, a formidable sound monster capable of consuming the most aggressive of sounds. Clad in foam with a floor nearly 4 feet thick, the Ring of Silence achieves the acoustical equivalent of an anechoic chamber, so thick that one may not even hear their own whisper.

56 William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

RING

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

EAT YOUR HEART OUT

How to eat an artichoke: don’t eat the leaves. Recently, a Miami doctor filed a $15,000 lawsuit against Houston’s Restaurant for apparently not explaining to [him] the mortal dangers of consuming an artichoke whole. According the Miami New Times, the doctor was admitted to the hospital shortly after consuming the artichoke for an exploratory laparotomy. He’s suing for “bodily injury, resulting pain and suffering, disability, disfigurement, mental anguish, loss of capacity for the enjoyment of life, medical and nursing care and treatment, and aggravation of pre-existing conditions.” The lawsuit alleges that the server never asked if Carvajal knew how to eat an artichoke and that the restaurant had a “duty to train its table servers to explain the proper method of consuming an artichoke.” The following pages offer documentation and instruction for anyone confronted with the prickly perils of consuming an artichoke. Good luck! William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

60 William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

How to Eat the Artichoke:

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% .0

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1 /8.3 L49 /5.7% 0.48

L58/6.31 0.62/9.8 %

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Artichoke Calorie Replenishment

Dollars Earned/10 Min.

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L3 2/ 2

2.6

$8.0 0 L8/1 9.06

Harvest, Calories Burned/10 Min.

9.0%

5% /13. 3.42

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3/ 2.7

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1 9. 7 1/2 L2

Leaf Number, Length Leaf Surface Area, Width

Edible Pulp Surface Area, Length Edible Pulp Percent/Leaf. Width

/18.2 4.79

.77 / 26 L15

7 L25 / 24 .83

L19 /2

6.1 6/ 28 .7%

5.6 2 L1

3/2 7.9

24 0 Ca lo r ie s

L6 /21 .4

.97/24.1%

$6.00 Artchoke x 12

62 William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

Artichoke x 3

60 calorie s

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00 $3.

% 2.3 5/1 2.5

s alorie 120 C

L3/12.15

2.60/10.0 %

0.79/6.5%

L11/24.76

L23/26.04

0.7%

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8.61 /

34.8 %

8.9 7

/32

.5%

$5 .00

Art ich o

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L4 /1 9

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4.05 /2 6

4.17/2

1.90/8.6 %

L29/22.22

L34/20.16

L40/15.46

L12

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0.72/5.1%

L46/14.19

L24

/28 L18

/27

0.12/1.9%

L54/6.51

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0.7 /2 L2

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L2 L28/ 23.0 8

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L3 3/1

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William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio .80 % /9 4.2 1/ 0.4

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BECTON HALL: A TECHNICAL ANALYSIS ARCHITECTURAL TECHNOLOGY SPRING 2010, K. LICHTON, CRITIC Becton Hall is a modernist object; an architectural container. There are two primary documents that record Breuer’s and Yale’s architectural intentions: an architect’s report by Marcel Breuer and Hamilton Smith, Architects, released in June 1965 and a press-release issued by the Yale University News Bureau on October 21, 1965. As stated in these two documents, Becton’s ambitions are simple: allowing adaptability to simple programmatic change over time, c engaging in a facade dialogue with the neighboring Strathcoma Tower, and unifying the disparate functions of Engineering and Applied Science into one complex. As built, however, these ambitions seem to us more like justifications for other unstated design motivations. Indeed, all three of Breuer’s stated ambitions are achieved at the expense of other, unmentioned architectural moves. Regarding the aflexibility of the laboratory space: though Becton contains open-plan offices and laboratories that are windowless and supported by highly changeable mechanical systems, these spaces are only possible through the isolation of all other programs out of the building. Regarding the second, Breuer’s analysis that Becton engages with Strathcoma Tower is unconvincing, for he simultaneously describes moves that conflict with that building – the conscious decision to vertically mis-align the two buildings – and moves that connect the two – paneling Becton with panels that have “color, texture and surface modulations sympathetic to the masonry of [Strathcoma]” – though this last point is debatable as well. Finally, regarding the third point, Breuer’s primary engine of unification is the b terrace, which is supposed to “transition between buildings of divergent styles, unify elements in future building development, and provide a diagonal pedestrian route from the science facilities to the rest of campus”. Ultimately, however, the terrace is a simple slab of elevated concrete, and any functions it provides are more the function of its location as a surface than functions of it as a designed object. Instead of these three ambitions, then, we identify two primary ambitions: the subjugation of programmatic complexity to the cleanly modular ideals of modernist science through the implementation of a “unifying” terrace that removes all non-scientific activities out of the buildingg underground, and the aesthetic expression of this modular ideal on the surface of the building via pre-cast concrete panels that play with light and shadow and turn the east façade into a constantly-changing exercise in graphic design. These two ambitions are enabled by both the structural and aesthetic qualities of concrete, which Breuer solidifies by making the pre-cast elements structural – and thus integral – to the building’s functioning. The building’s mechanical organization can largely be described as a dual system: despite their proximity and shared envelope, both offices and laboratories operate under separate conditioning systems. This can be attributed to the laboratories’s need to strictly control and maintain its local climate. However, a closer examination of the building’s mechanical systems reveals its redundancy and possible wastefulness. Built before the energy crisis of the early 1970s, the building takes full advantage of both steam and electrical heat. With each laboratory using two 3kW electric heaters and with each office having a separate air reduction box, it becomes apparent that the building is over-equipped. (Put in perspective, a 3kW electric heater is enough to heat a residential swimming pool to 107 degrees).

64 William Brian Smith. M.Arch, 2011. Comprehensive Portfolio May 2010

l m

h i

q p

MECHANICAL ELEMENTS:

a. lab return air riser b. lab supply air riser c. lab exhaust fan and plenum d. lab air reduction box e. lab supply air diffuser f. lab exhaust hood g. lab exhaust riser h. return air vent i. air supply intake vent j. lab supply air conditioning unit k. lab return air handling unit l. office return air handling unit m. office supply air conditioning unit n. supply chilled water o. return chilled water p. office return air duct q. office return air vent r. office supply air duct s. office supply air electric re-heating unit t. office supply air diffuser

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

wright vs. milyutin Both Frank Lloyd Wright and N.A. Miliutin acknowledged the crisis of their modern City. The American city suffered from an over centralization of power, which threatened the Individual and undermined American Democracy. For Wright, new technologies rendered the city irrelevant. No longer should the city function as a central meeting place whose “Great Mouth” thanklessly swallowed the wages of the rural farmer. The extant Soviet city, according to Miliutin, represented an obsolete bourgeois capitalistic marketplace, which contradicted the Communist society espoused by Marx and Engels and the Socialist society mandated by Stalin. Such cities emerged on the basis of trade, and as the political environment changed these cities lost their function and meaning. Thus, these new technological and political circumstances necessitated new methods of construction and city planning, which established places intrinsically developed from their respective political and social ideals. Accordingly, Wright’s design for Broadacres and Miliutin’s plan for the linear city attempted to resolve the crisis of the city through the abolition of the distinction between urban and rural life. Though Wright and Miliutin shared similar goals, the process and reasoning employed by either differed greatly. Wright utilized technology to decentralize the city and reintegrate man into communalism, while Miliutin employed meticulous planning skills to collectivize, economize and organize the socialist worker. 66 William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

Wright believed in several inherently just rights of man: His social right to a direct medium of exchange in place of gold as a commodity; some form of social credit; his social right to his place on the ground as he has had it in the sun and air: land to be held only by use and improvements; his social right to the ideas by which and for which he lives: public ownership of invention and scientific discoveries that concern the life of the people. Broadacres was an attempt to activate these rights. With these rights came the freedom to decentralize and redistribute properties so that one could lay claim to what was naturally given to him, “the ground itself.” Thus Wright established the underlying premise of Broadacres: the redistribution of land, with a minimum of one acre allotted to each childless man. Thus, “agriculture represented the absolutely fundamental element of the economic and social structure.” It was through the entitlement of land and the subsequent sense of ownership that the Individual could be reclaimed from the city, where renters deferred to landlords in a perpetually demoralizing feudal system. What Wright meant when he spoke of Individuality was integrity and character, the same integrity and character that Thomas Jefferson thought vital to the survival of his Southern Agrarian Democracy and the correlating principles of self-government. If the goal of Broadacres City was to decentralize the city and reintegrate its people, services and industries, then new technologies were the means of which to accomplish this. As new communication and industrial technologies became available, the function of the city had to be reconsidered. For Wright these new technologies offered a chance to speculate about developing new, more efficient urban and city typologies that would utilize the very tools it created. In an article revealing his plan for Broadacre City, Wright outlined specific technological advances that would help realize man’s inherent and just rights: The motorcar; the general mobilizations of the human being; Radio, telephone, and telegraph: electrical intercommunication becoming complete; standardized machine-shop production: machine invention plus scientific discovery. Integrating these technologies into the countryside essentially fused agrarian and urban ideals creating a bucolic cityscape capable of sustaining Wright’s Usonian vision. Machine design and integration made decentralizing the city possible and solidified the union between man, technology and the earth. This integration further blurred the lines between town and country. In doing so, Wright reinserted his own anarchic individualism by rejecting life in the capitalist city and regaining one’s innate “natural” condition. This integration and distribution was significant because it reversed the traditional role of the city inhabitant seeking the reason of

Machine design and integration made decentralizing the city possible and solidified the union between man, technology and the earth. This integration further blurred the lines between town and country. In doing so, Wright reinserted his own anarchic individualism by rejecting life in the capitalist city and regaining one’s innate “natural” condition.

68 William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

his existence in nature. Now, the rural individual living in nature extracted the advantages of the city. Central to the function of Broadacre City was Wright’s principles of land ownership and housing. Wright established that the state, by way of the county, would distribute the land – “a minimum of one acre going to the childless family and more to the larger family as effected by the state.” Those who could not afford to purchase lots would be given land. This further reiterated his ideas about democracy, which according to Wright, depended on the distribution of independence and liberty. As well, there could be nothing poor or mean in Broadacres. Housing varied across Broadacres and represented an amalgam of fused service, industrial and commercial functions with attached shops, laboratories and workshops according to a home’s resident and his means of work. The merging of professional and residential units would “…enrich and variegate the aspects of the new city, save us from the battle of signboards and, again, from all the enormous waste of the old backand-forth haul of the professional from his suburb to his city.” Commensurate with a true capitalist system, opportunities for growth existed as did the stratification housing typologies. Wright described the houses as “the luxurious dwelling (House on the Mesa), Taliesin (equivalent), and luxurious homes,” etc… these were “obviously destined for those at the apex of the “broad based pyramid.” This variety in housing demonstrated Wright’s appeal toward an organic development of architecture. Organic architecture “means that buildings would take on, in endless variety, the nature and character of the ground on which they would stand, and, thus inspired, become component parts.” As such, Broadacres was to be developed “in sympathy” to the terrain. The natural topography would guide the building and the design of the physical structure, thus creating an infinite expanse of varied but harmonious unions of architecture, man, and nature. Wright strove to design a “…City that is Nowhere unless Everywhere,” that had “endless unity-in-variety,” thus insinuating the creation of an organic, center-less, boundless hybrid city/country. Ironically, however, he referenced the design of community centers, placed near the governing county seat. Wright placed particular importance on the design, placement and program of the community centers. This center would be the “salient feature of every countryside,” a catch-all of sorts that housed every major urban cultural accessory: golf courses, racetracks, the zoo, aquariums, planetariums, botanical gardens, art museums, libraries, galleries, operas etc… The center’s design made apparent Wright’s struggle to reconcile the competing cultural discrepancies between urban and rural life. Nevertheless, the

community center personified Wright’s ideological search for a “middleness,” and bridged his agrarian utopia with the cultural sophistication of the urban alternative. Wright valued education and understood that a “soul without knowledge is without power.” In fact, in his model of Broadacre City, Wright placed the schools at the very center of his model. It remains unclear, however, whether this physical placement of schools paralleled his ideological framing of education. While in the model, the school zone established a focal point, he later stated that the schools “would be set in a natural park in the choicest part of the whole countryside.” Whether or not this was the center would be up to the laws of nature. Despite this, the program and organization of schools facilitated the decentralization and reintegration process of services and citizens as Wright aimed to segregate and divide the children between smaller schools in hopes of safeguarding the quality of education and maintaining the “organic integration of the individual.” Other institutions would follow similar organizational strategies of segregation and decentralization in effort to consolidate the “desirable features of the city with the freedom of the ground in a natural happy union…” However, none of this was possible without considerable technological applications. Only with the introduction of the automobile could Wright’s dreams of creating a sprawling, mobilized, “living city” materialize. In fact, Wright no longer referred to family units in Broadacre City; they became instead “one-car, two-car, three-car, five-car” houses. The automobile thus became the catalyst for organizing and maneuvering this new City. The automobile made possible the physical movement Wright needed to decentralize the urban city and reintegrate man into his new community. For Wright, roads were the arteries of the city; the automobile its lifeblood (fig. 1). He spoke of giant, twelve-lane roads that would simultaneously unite, separate and integrate the city and its citizen. Above all, Wright stressed the technological imperative of incorporating new machinery that enabled the transmogrification of the countryside into the agrarian city ideal Wright envisaged. If Wright merged the city and the country using new transportation and machine technologies, Miliutin did so utilizing the pragmatics of thoughtful planning and new construction technologies. The Soviet Union had neither the infrastructure nor the money to support the creation of a speculative new futurecity. Instead, they needed realistic and achievable plans to create a new city that rightly expressed and enabled the practice of new political and social ideals. A follower of Marxist theory, Miliutin designed the linear city in direct response to the Communist Manifesto’s call for the abolition of the distinction between

city and country. Like Wright, Miliutin acknowledged the importance of decentralizing areas of production. Similarly, Miliutin cautioned against the “extreme isolation of the country” and favored the “mechanization of agriculture.” This abolishment of the distinction between city and country was significant because the existing Soviet city was borne from a now obsolete bourgeois capitalistic marketplace. In his book, Sotsgorod, Miliutin methodically explains the planning concepts behind his linear city. Essentially, new socialist principles demanded the reconstruction of the Soviet economy and demanded a new Soviet way of life. There existed basic and fundamental problems in the Soviet Union that threatened and diminished the Soviet quality of life (i.e., sanitation, housing, transportation and education). Miliutin designed the linear city to fulfill requirements established in the Communist Manifesto, to increase labor productivity and to increase living standards through cooperation and collectivization. He elaborates, “The reconstruction of our way of life on new socialist principles is the very next problem facing the Soviet Union… the Soviet village must be built in such a way as not to perpetuate the very conditions we are struggling against, but rather to create the basis for organization of a new socialist, collective way of life.” His use of the word “village” suggests the maintenance of such a lifestyle small, contained, but with immediate access to industry. Just as Wright expressed his want for a “middleness,” Miliutin called for “the avoidance of extremes.” Meaning, for example, that while the expensive and exhausting process of fusing agriculture and industry may initially limit resources to the consumer, it by no means meant that they would reconcile themselves to an “animal level of existence.” Paradoxically, the goal of the linear city was to simultaneously raise capital investments in agriculture through workloads while at the same time striving for increased standards of living. There existed a critical difference between Wright and Miliutin on the organization and propagation of industry. Miliutin warns that, “industrialization of agriculture…means mechanization of the process, and not propagation of small-scale industry throughout the countryside.” Conversely, Wright claims that, “The big factory will subdivide, soon recognize the need for dividing up into smaller units spaced according to the new standards of space management largely due to the car.” Again, this difference was significant because it controlled the extent to which either Wright or Miliutin integrated town and country. Wright integrated work and residence to localize industries so that highly mobilized citizens would have access to services when needed. This increased quality of life. Alternatively, Miliutin feared

that combining sectors would lead to increased costs, infestation, and uncleanliness. Yet programmatic adjacencies were acceptable in so much as they were distinct from each other. For example, Miliutin situated industry next to residence as an economic imperative to increase production levels. This increased labor productivity. This need for increased labor productivity sponsored a radical social reorganization as well. In the linear city, women joined the workforce to increase productivity, labor and wages. The socialist ideal of collectivization made this possible. Collectivization consolidated individual labor into a shared cooperative among community members. Daily duties like cooking, educating and farming became the responsibility of the community; therefore, the linear city introduced new public buildings that recombined domestic programs previously ascribed to the patriarchal and bourgeois family home (kitchens, pantries, entryways, corridors etc...) Thus, the constitution of a linear city family hardly resembled the nuclear family Wright championed in Broadacres. For these reasons, Miliutin’s housing plans stressed construction efficiency and an economy of living. In fact, what Wright called a home, Miliutin called a “cell” or “minimal dwelling unit.” Miliutin even goes as far as describing in great detail the exact measurements of this new unit. His illustrations reveal, moreover, the extent to which he reduced and compartmentalized the home to its fundamental elements: beds, desks and storage folded out of walls; rooms shared a single bathroom; and common areas were eliminated (fig. 2,3). One can only assume that the new Soviet quality of life would not come from spacious dwellings on sprawling acres, but rather from a greater sense of self worth promoted by collectivism, public contribution and cooperative living. Miliutin planned the linear city so that one could walk from one section to another, namely from a dwelling to a place of work. With a depressed economy and limited technology, paved roads suitable for travel did not exist, making cars nearly irrelevant - unlike Wright’s planning for Broadacres, whose function depended on the mobility of the citizen. This necessitated a tight organization city sectors in so much as major units of production existed within walking distance of major transportation routes. Whereas Wright envisioned an endless and expansive network of super highways, Miliutin called for the “shortest and most direct” lines of travel between areas of production and places of living. To this end, the sectored “bands” of the city layered and organized themselves parallel to railroad lines (fig. 4). The principle organizing and ideological difference subsisted between Miliutin’s economy of travel versus Wright’s luxury of travel; each in its own right vital to the process of Continued on page 76...

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1700 UNITSOF

HOUSING

LONGISLAND CITY,QUEENS

FALL ‘09 WITH EVAN SHARP, STUDENT PARTNER AND MICHAEL BELL, STUDIO CRITIC William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

* “I KNOW WHERE I AM, BUT I DON’T FEEL AS THOUGH I AM AT THE SPOT WHERE I FIND MYSELF” What if our housing had to be erased every 10 years? What if the building industry, like most other industries, embraced its commodity side. What if architects were willing to part with precious designs and permanence? How might this change the way we think of space making place creating?

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

HUNTERS POINT SOUTH Hunters Point South is rooted in architectural uncertainty. First a quiet middle-class residential neighborhood, then a densely occupied industrial site, then a grassy playground for the city’s avant garde, today Hunters Point South is Long Island City’s architectural graveyard, a dumping ground for local construction contractors and a nebulous planned zoning district. Physically and historically, it is composed of dead and impermanent buildings. It is permeated by the absence of architecture, full of nothingness, and surrounded on all sides. Since its first urbanization, Hunters Point has been a community shaped by trans-

portation infrastructure, and the historical communities inhabiting the area often – like many communities in transitory New York City – sublimated almost overnight, their longevity a victim of external pressures applied or withdrawn by designs intended for communities on either side. Despite its emptiness, Hunters Point South is a place filled with the absence of architecture, a place where the sensation of erasure is far more powerful than the sensations contemporary developer architecture can provoke. Far more than urban void, Hunters Point South is that rare, qualified urban nothingness capable of producing decidedly unfamiliar, diametric sensations, a place inhabited only by Mother Nature’s necrophiliac repartee with the shattered remains of shelters past. It is a

place defined only by the heteronomy, differentiation, and perversity that arise from the inevitability of entropic erasure.

BUILDING Our building consists of 41 platforms elevated above Hunters Point South and optimized for day lighting. Residences are built on top of these platforms. Each platform supported by large structural columns that also feed mechanical systems to the platforms. The building is capable of carrying ~1700 units of varying types including, but not limited to: multi-family housing, single family housing, single occupant rooms, shared collegiate studios, dorms, studios, lofts.

ERASURE Each platform must be erased and its architecture completely removed once every 12 years – the half-life of the American familial generation – and left empty for one year. This process is staggered, so that in any given year a percentage of the total platforms lie empty. The process of erasure allows for a physical, architectural and mental recuperation; it is a community planning CRTL + DEL. During this dormant period, emerging building technologies and housing strategies can be experimented or built upon empty platforms.

PLATFORMS Much like consumer products – appliances, electronics, clothing, cars – are understood to be complete and functional items with a planned obsolescence, so our buildings are meant to be complete and functional units with a planned disassembly. They are entirely a product of their time, and upon removal are meant to be recycled elsewhere in the building or offsite, as technological innovation dictates.

ASSEMBLY Today we propose one form of architecture capable of responding to the crisis of erasure: instead of construction (nails, glue, welding), we propose assembly (nuts, bolts, framing). By embedding the processes of assembly into each building, we automatically embed the process of disassembly into each building, and so anticipate their erasure from the beginning.

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NET ZERO? This looming act of erasure produces communities that live differently in time. Formed with an inceptive recognition of physical impermanence, platform communities are literally uprooted from the Earth. They exist in a constantly changing relationship with their own spatial organization, creating spaces that are poignant, fragile, and fleetingly beautiful. Are such communities the product of their spatial organization, as are most urban communities, or are they disassociated from it completely? Will such communities persist and rebuild together after erasure, or vanish like their architecture? The answer to either one of these

questions answers the other. In an era of often immaterial social relationships, platform communities find meaning – good or bad – in their physical substance.

erasure generates a methodical architectural evolution, the fallow cycle rooting each new generation of housing in a rich terra subrigo.

PRODUCTS EVOLUTION Presented with the inevitable crisis of erasure, architecture is forced to adapt. A preemptive architecture emerges, one without pretensions of permanence, and so one that is able to turn the event of erasure into the anticipation of a fresh rebuilding: breakdown to breakthrough. Without “permanent” architecture, notions of acquired authenticity and hierarchies of generational housing become obsolete. Over time the repetition of

Much like consumer products – appliances, electronics, clothing, cars – are understood to be complete and functional items with a planned obsolescence, so our buildings are meant to be complete and functional units with a planned disassembly. They are entirely a product of their time, and upon removal are meant to be recycled elsewhere in the building or offsite, as technological innovation dictates. Disasembled buildings can be donated as emergency housing or starter housing.

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INFRASTRUCTURE Though the architecture of each platform is evanescent, the infrastructure that nourishes the architecture abides all acts of erasure. Structural shafts cycle air, water, sewage, information and inhabitants in and out of the building. They are the only part of the building touching the ground, yet they do not penetrate the platforms in order to distribute services. They are, however, the only recognizable elements after each 13 year cycle. Their replacement is thus dictated by the cycles in civic planning and architecture. Unless, of course, new housing technology supposes a detachment from the city infrastructure and provides an alternate sustainable resource.

WORST CASE With the new zoning and Special Zoning District, the maximum envelope of potential development under the proposed actions includes up to approximately 7.47 million gross square feet (gsf ) of new buildings. Up to 5 million gross square feet of residential space or 5,000 dwelling units are expected to be developed. Of these, 60 percent (3,000 units) would be permanently affordable to middle- income families, and 40 percent (2,000 units) would be market-rate units. On Site B, up to 1.65 million gross square feet of residential space (or 1,650 units) would be developed. Of these, 20 percent (330 units) would

be permanently below-market rate units for low-income households, and 80 percent (1,320 units) would be market-rate units. New retail uses would be concentrated along 2nd Street to create a neighborhood retail corridor. Up to 90,500 gsf of retail space is expected on Site A and 36,000 gsf on Site B. While no specific tenants have been identified, retail uses are expected to serve the local population.

EVOLUTION Platform housing combines the amenities and views of high-rise living with the pace and physical connection to a community of the low-rise. The conflation of these two states of living creates a hous-

ing archetype, as the platform house is capable of subsuming many others – detached, semidetached, row housing, partywall housing – and integrating aspects of others – block housing, slab housing, and tower housing.

occupied by the human body is a space between two housing systems.

MARKET FORCES Impermanence and compaction into the floor grants domestic architecture freedom to submit itself to the market for designed objects. Since the layout and appearance of each wall panel is inconsequential to the core functionality of the unit, wall panels are able to be replaced, upgraded, and sent for repair as needed. In the absence of permanence, the exterior of each unit becomes a place for self-expression; we anticipate a stratification of branded panels – the Mercedes-Benz panel; the Apple panel; the Wal-Mart panel – that, paradoxically, may in face accelerate the adoption and evolution of the architecture of the home. Impermanent housing is housing that is chosen, not housing that is moved-into.

MARKET FORCES Our proposed residential buildings on top of the platforms use Bosch aluminum framing as the structural element. Our floor / ceiling cartridge has been designed to carry all of the infrastructure requirements of each residence – HVAC, lighting, radiant heating, plumbing, and wiring – maximizing the architectural flexibility of the wall panels. Each cartridge is a self-contained vacuum of the modern home; a compaction of the space of the domestic unit into a modular floor system. As a result, the space in each house William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

William Brian Smith. M.Arch, 2011. Comprehensive Portfolio May 2010

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

Continued from page 65...cultivating the collectivized or the integrated individual, respectfully. Where Wright identified traveling with freedom and democracy, Miliutin considered traveling an opportunity to save money and time for the sake of increased industrial production. Under socialism (and according to Engels) “education and labor will be united.” Meaning, for example, that through the unification of educational institutions (i.e., production laboratories, work shops, fields, libraries, etc…) an industry could turn into a school through uninterrupted intellectual growth and thus promote the proliferation of field experts. Although Wright testified to the social significance of an education by “doing,” he cautioned against the “expert”: “The expert?,” he questions, “He is a man who has stopped thinking.” It must be understood that while Wright sought the literal fusion of the city and country through the integration of their parts into a new whole, Miliutin aimed to approximate the two through layering. In other words, if Miliutin brought the city and country together (i.e., established their adjacency), Wright essentially made them one. This linguistic qualification is important because it establishes the technological discrepancies that made each city “possible.” While Cars and “helicopters” enabled Wright to weave city and country together, technological shortcomings of Soviet infrastructure denied Miliutin such freedom. Miliutin recalls that, “we have now neither the technology nor the material means” and thus he deferred to planning ingenuity to bring the urban and rural together. Broadacres was Wright’s dreamscape where fantastical future utopian devices could merge with realistic and achievable construction methods. New advances in technology enabled Wright to propose a new agrarian city situated somewhere between the present and the future (fig. 5). Save the oncoming Great Depression, America was not on the brink of a systemic political, economic and social collapse. Thus, the sense of urgency to implement Wright’s proposal was not nearly as great as it was in the Soviet Union where socialist reconstruction necessitated an immediate and absolutely attainable plan for city development. Accordingly, Miliutin’s linear city was simply real and achievable, where as Wright’s Broadacres could be viewed as speculative and indulgent. The goal of the linear city was simple: reorganize labor and housing to produce a new and unified economic arrangement where cooperation and collectivization met the needs of the population. This was a logical and pragmatic response to the needs of a transitioning country, a system capable of sustaining and multiplying itself. Broadacre City, however, wanted to exceed what one thought was “quality of life.” Miliutin claimed to enhance the quality of life while at the same time increasing labor productivity. One cannot help but assume he meant that the Soviet citizen should rethink what “quality of life” meant and adjust their expectations according to the economic environment. Wright, however, employed Broadacres to coax the citizen to imagine limitless possibilities of the freedoms sponsored by an industrialized agrarian democracy. Where Broadacre City established and cultivated the individual by means of direct ownership of land, Miliutin’s linear city perhaps demanded the sacrifice of the individual for the good of the country.

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BOTANICAL AND CENTER RESEARCH A BIA UNIVER STUDIO SPRING 2010 WITH HERNAN DIAZ-ALONZO

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SYSTEMS/FOUNDATIONS/PROGRAMS Compound Pulley System

Rigid Cable System

Enclosed Root System/ Controlled Environment

Fibrous Skin Cladding

Elastic Connection Bands

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SYSTEMS/FOUNDATIONS/PROGRAMS A

COMPOUND PULLEYS/PLANTERS/SEED PODS A. Root container (enclosed) with weight-sensitive release connection B. Single pulley with nutrient spout C. Root container (enclosed) with protective sheathing D. Root container (exposed) E. Root container (enclosed with protective sheathing F. Seed pod G. Double pulley H. Seed pod with protective sheathing I. Root container with elastic covering J. Root container with

T. Root container (exposed) rigid covering K. Seed pod with weightsensitive release connection L. Triple pulley M. Compound root container with single pulley system N. Seed pod O. Root container (exposed) with cable connectors P. Double pulley with protective covering Q. Root container (exposed) with cable connectors R. Root container (enclosed) with weight sensitive release connection S. Triple pulley

This Spread. Typical Section Through Aeroponic and Observation Containers Previous Spread. Elevation

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

The project’s provocation denies and inverts the typical relationships between building and ground, plant and ground. Just as roots affix a plant to the earth, a foundation fastens a building to the ground below. While one system seeks nutrients, the other provides the physical shouldering to maintain structural integrity. Root systems and building foundations are the physical interfaces between the earth and plant, earth and building. Remove the earth and you physically compromise both plant and building and you ostensibly preclude their existence. This project proposes a hanging aeroponic research laboratory. It engages the public through an unadulterated display of botanical experimentation, from those that failed to those that succeed. The supporting armature is suspended above the earth, and maintains nominal contact with the ground below. Dead and live loads alternate between a system of compound, fixed and moveable pulley and cable systems, which support and move spherical containers. The containers support two types of reciprocating experimentation: on one hand an enclosure provides a method of controlled experimentation for root systems, where gases, fluids can be precisely measure and administered; on the other hand they offer an opportunity to expose the plant’s root system – allowing them to absorb nutrients extant in their environment. To offer more control, a fibrous skin can clad groups of spheres providing insulation or UV protection. The structure behaves erratically as weight constantly shifts due to environmental and experimental influences on the plants. A drop in temperature, a drought or a rainstorm could alter the physical identity of the plants, and thus by extension alter the identity of the entire laboratory system. In this sense the laboratory’s relationship to the ground is variable. Just as a plants root system will alter its direction, its thickness and length in search of sustenance, this system perpetually modifies itself as it seeks something it will never find: equilibrium. In this sense, the pulley systems, the armature and spheres engineer spontaneity; they instigate variability. Thus, the building become more like the program it supports: variable, spontaneous and at the mercy of the elements surrounding it.

“MAGIC. VEGAS MAGIC, NOT HARRY POTTER MAGIC.”

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WHERE THE EARTH SUPPORTS

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SEASONAL SHEDDING 1

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ARTISTS’ LOFTS: INTEGRATING DESIGN, STRUCTURE, CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUES AND BUILDING SYSTEMS. WITH DAVID WALLANCE. SPRING 2010. Given that the building is defined as an Industrial Loft building with the purpose of serving artisans involved in the industrial arts, our aim is to create a pleasant working environment that is simultaneously environmentally conscientious. We define a pleasant working environment as being: - Light-filled - Spacious (column-free) - Well-ventilated - Easily navigable This criteria informed the development of each of our technical systems, from structure to skin. Throughout, it was important that we communicate the function implicit in each of our systems by exposing them, such that the users of the building are engaged in its operations. It was also important that we integrate the systems with one another as much as possible to have them function holistically. To achieve column-free long spans and to maximize floor-to-ceiling heights, we designed an exposed steel portal frame system. The 280’ length of the building is divided equally into eight 28’ wide bays. Each bay is structurally selfsufficient, incorporating a pair of portal frames spaced apart with I-beams. Between each bay is a 7.5’ wide infill zone. This structural rhythm allowed us to achieve wider spans for each bay as well as to slim the structure down. Further, the infill zone provides a clean, integrated HVAC strategy. The portal frames consist of tapered columns that carry the main transverse loads. Separating each bay are W10 x 45 beams. The central six bays house the workshops and are designed as a free-plan.

The west and east end bays each contain a structural core featuring a 10” fullygrouted CMU wall extending the full height of the building. The portal frame of the six bays and the CMU walls work together to take lateral forces in both directions. The ground floor and the top floor are anomalies in this system, with floor heights taller than the standard 14 feet on floors 2 through 6. Consequently, the ground floor portals sit on 4’ tall steel pedestals that taper outward from the columns. The top floor, programmed as a large display gallery, takes on an entirely different rhythm to express its change in program and its lighter load. The beams spanning between the columns on the roof are lighter, specified as W10 beams and support the roof and an armature of solar panels. Our decision to expose the structure led to the design of a portal frame that is carefully considered to reflect the loads that it bears as well as to provide an elegant aesthetic. For example, two additional steel flanges are welded to the tapered beams in the portal frame to allow the column to read as continuous from floor to ceiling, enhancing its verticality. The portal frames are designed for precise off-site fabrication and minimal on-site assembly, with consideration to truck bed sizes as well as efficient erection. The design logic, with regard to construction sequencing, allows for load-bearing elements to be completely assembled independently of floors, walls and enclosures.

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Because of the structural capacity of the portal frames and the cores, all facades are non-load-bearing. Consequently, each façade may operate in accordance with environmental rigor. A relatively opaque south façade minimizes solar gain, while the north façade provides maximum indirect natural light. With the intention n of engaging the user, the rain screen incorporates operable vents placed 8 feet above each floor slab. Surrounding the solar chimneys are windows (3’ x 5’) which allow light to penetrate the east and west sides of the chimneys and add to their transparent material functioning. Aluminum panel rain screens provide the outermost cladding element of the south façade. The rain screen panels (1’ x 3’) are modulated from a clear face to a tri-striated pattern, serving to break up a potentially monotonous façade. The north façade is a fully glazed unit curtain wall. Glazing the north façade allows maximum light while minimizing solar heat gains. Thus, it helps reinforce a prime architectural intent of balancing desired indoor environmental conditions for the specific program while maximizing possible passive environmental systems. The mullion grid is strategically designed to capture views of the portal frames; each portal frame pair is directly center between the width of two glass panes, which measure 4.18’ x (3.25’, 4.42’, or 5.58’). The unit curtain wall clips to the edge of the concrete slab via a Halfen concrete anchor. To allow for fresh air ventilation, we incorporated a curtain wall ventilator (11” H) positioned 6” above each floor slab and flush to the concrete slab and attached between two horizontal mullions. The east and west façades serve to integrate and unify the distinct designs of the north and south façade. The curtain wall façade of the north wraps around the building, turning the corners and continuing along the east and west façade until it is met with pre-cast concrete cladding panels, which conceal half of the stairway and provide for the cores’ functioning. The opaque concrete is then broken up by the aluminum rain screens, extending from the south façade. One of the primary criteria from day one was an effective passive ventilation system. Considering that the building would be supporting activities of an industrial nature, we wanted to design a robust strategy that would work well on

most days of the year while expressing its function to those outside the building. This led to the solar chimney element of our design, where 7 solar chimneys at 123’ tall slot into the infill zones on the south façade. While our calculations tell us that each chimney area needs 10 sq.ft. to circulate the fresh air as required through the building, we exaggerated the design to a 60 sq.ft area to celebrate their function as billboards for sustainable design. Fresh air enters the building from the north façade through vents (placed low on each floor). The chimneys are southfacing and glazed on three sides and solar gain creates buoyancy inside the chimney that drives air up and out the top. This effect, known as stack effect, naturally draws the fresh air from the north across the building and through vents in the back wall of the chimney (placed high on each floor). Due to the public nature of these chimneys, their design needed special attention. Taking care to avoid them being an external application, the chimneys have been brought into the building through 6’ recesses in the floor plates. Structural glass panels fit snugly between the portal frames with the width of the chimney seamlessly filled by a single 7 foot panel, displayed on the facade external to the building. The west and east faces of each chimney are divided by two glass panels at 4 feet in length and 6 feet. This divide allows the glass seam to nest alongside the south façade’s aluminum rain screen, aligning to the notch in the floor plate. Given the dimensional limits of structural glass fabrication, the design provides for continuous seven foot high glass panels throughout, such that the visual datum at eye level is not obstructed by glass seams or supportive hardware from close up, and the standard 14’ floor spans are divided on center. The solar chimneys are supported structurally by a laminated structural glass ring which is built up to 1 ½ “thick and 12” wide. The glass rings allow ground level seamless views up the chimney. The north face of the structural chimney is comprised of a 6” wide structural wall , black painted to further enhance heat absorption. Upon cresting the roof, this back façade is exchanged for structural glass. 4” square steel tubes support the chimney vertically and provide the armature for custom spider

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clamps to tie back to. These spider clamps are fused to a planar sandwiched support for the glass ring. Each 7’ height gain of the chimney is framed by this transparent ring and its six custom spider supports. A multivalent design, four of these supports have the third function of penetrating the glass membrane to tie back to the floor slab with a Halfen anchor. This occurs at every other seam (at every slab). The design incorporates a roof angled to 13.5 degrees, the ideal direction for solar gain. As this is a low-rise warehouse building with a strong structural system and a passive mandate, the roof becomes a prime location for energy production. As such, the SunPower 315 solar panel is arrayed on the south facing roof. 3’5” by 5’ wide panels each create 315 peak watts of energy while simultaneously shielding the building from overhead sun exposure and winter heat loss. In addition to harnessing solar heat, the roof is inverted to allow for rain water collection, channeled to a central gutter which feeds the buildings active grey water system.

CHIMNEY LINE 123’-0”

ROOF LINE NORTH 117’-0”

ROOF LINE SOUTH 108’-6”

SEVENTH FLOOR 88’-0”

SIXTH FLOOR 74’-0”

FIFTH FLOOR 60’-0”

FOURTH FLOOR 46’-0”

THIRD FLOOR 32’-0”

SECOND FLOOR 18’-0”

FIRST FLOOR 0’-0”

B’

C’

IT’S IN THE DETAILS

GLASS CHIMNEY STRUCTURE: SOUTH FACADE

NORTH FACADE CURTAIN WALL DETAIL

GLASS CHIMNEY ATTACHMENT DETAIL: SOUTH FACADE

D’

E’

F’

G’

H’

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio 107

1 1

10”

”

20” 20”

MECHANICAL SYSTEMS: 1

Despite the buildings robust passive system, there will be days in the summer and winter where the passive system will need to be supplemented with a mechanical system. Utilizing an energy-efficient radiant heating and cooling system minimizes exposed pipes or ducts which might interfere with artist production or gallery viewing. The supply and exhaust ducts are integrated into the portal frame system via the 7.5’ wide infill zone between bays, creating a fluid hybrid of our structural and mechanical system. The duct size is 20” in diameter for the main ducts in occupied spaces, 14” for the branch ducts which are between each bay and 10” for the terminal ducts.

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Programmatically, floors are subdivided into individual bays with column free spaces to support a variety of workshop-style artisan studios and to accommodate production and/or fabrication machinery. Each bay is defined by its own solar chimney and portal frame pair, and feeds the main circulation artery along the north edge. An in-house display space for resident artists is incorporated in the design, on the first and top floor. These galleries allow for a rotation of work to be displayed. The ground floor gallery is designed to encourage the public to engage with the building and its creative mission. The gallery on the top floor provides a wider view of the surrounding area, where the public can simultaneously view art while having a sense of perspective of being at the top of a functional workspace.

B’

C’

D’

INFILL STRUCTURAL ZONE

E’

F’

G’

H’

ONE STRUCTURAL UNIT

20’ - 6”

ROOF LINE 108’-6”

14’ - 0”

SEVENTH FLOOR 88’-0”

14’ - 0”

SIXTH FLOOR 74’-0”

FIFTH FLOOR 60’-0” W10 TAPERED BEAM

14’ - 0”

W21

FOURTH FLOOR 46’-0”

SLAB ON

METAL DECK

14’ - 0”

TAPERED COLUMN

14’ - 0”

THIRD FLOOR 32’-0”

FIRST FLOOR 0’-0”

4’ - 0”

18’ - 0”

SECOND FLOOR 18’-0”

GETTING THERE: Fabricated steel portal frame beams and columns are trucked to site on an 18-wheeler with a 70’ trailer. The steel beams and columns are welded together flush-finish and bolted together on site to form a portal frame. As articulated above, the steel pieces are welded to give the appearance of the column continuing through the beam to meet the column above. A range of I-beam sizes are then spliced into the portal frame to form a structural bay and an infill zone. The units are then stacked and bolted to one another to form the structural frame of the building.

FABRICATED STEEL PLATES ARE TRUCKED TO SITE ON AN 18-WHEELER WITH A 70’ TRAILER

THE STEEL PLATES ARE WELDED AND BOLTED TOGETHER ON SITE TO FORM A PORTAL FRAME

THE UNITS ARE THEN STACKED AND BOLTED TO ONE ANOTHER TO FORM THE STRUCTURAL FRAME OF THE BUILDING

67’ - 6”

A RANGE OF I-BEAMS ARE THEN SPLICED INTO THE PORTAL FRAME TO FORM A STRUCTURAL BAY AND AN INFILL ZONE

W16 W21 W21 W18 W21

W21

W16

W10

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio 109

TURNING GHANA’S MOST ABUNDANT AND NATURAL RESOURCE INTO

SOLID GOLD How an urban cocoa farming teacher’s college and chocolate manufacturing center can revitalize a tiring industry and keep jobs and money within Ghana.

WITH

BRENDAN SULLIVAN FALL 2010. MARKUS DOCHANTSCHI and CHAD KELLOG TRAVELING STUDIO: ACCRA, GHANA

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William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio 111

Each year Ghana exports $87,000,000,000 worth of chocolate. Their GDP is $16,000,000,000. Ghana will soon face an economic crisis. Its primary cash crop, cocoa, is facing multiple production hurdles: farms are in disrepair; farmers are migrating to urban centers looking for higher-paying, less labor-intensive jobs; the health of farming soil is quickly deteriorating; and competing cocoa farms are popping up elsewhere along the equatorial belt. Making matters worse, the Ghanaian government sees little need to rejuvenate the aging industry in light of a newly discovered oil reserve directly off the coast of Accra. What little infrastructure capital remained to tend to crop issues is quickly being funneled into the procurement of oil manufacturing equipment. The stability of Ghana in its on-going yet precarious movement towards becoming a fully developed country depends on sustaining multiple domestic economies. Ignoring the fragile state of its cocoa industry now will only render its future recovery null. In order to sustain the viability of its cocoa industry, Ghana must overcome two gaps. The first is a production gap: compared to nascent, foreign cocoa farms in other equatorial countries, Ghana harvests almost 60% fewer beans per acre. The reasons for this are myriad and complicated but stem from a lack of education resources for cocoa farmers. Extant in other burgeoning cocoa farms in countries like Vietnam, for example, are systems of education that help guarantee proper training in cocoa farming techniques. These include but are not limited to disease control, pesticide treatments, fertilizer techniques, harvesting methods as well as training in

the nuances of the fermentation process. The second gap is a processing gap. Typically chocolate-consuming countries are also the same chocolate manufacturing countries. Cocoa beans are cheaply exported from Ghana to countries like the United States where the process of turning the cocoa bean into a chocolate bar can add almost 2,500 percent in retail value. This system creates little incentive for the cocoa farmer who only sees a fraction of the price, known as the “gate price.” Yet the problems Ghana faces with its cocoa industry will soon become issues of global concern. At the rate that farms in the Ivory Coast and Ghana are diminishing (combined they control over 70 percent of the world’s cocoa beans), chocolate could become more like caviar in the next twenty years. It is entirely possible that the world could run out of affordable chocolate as farmers begin to abandon crops and migrate to cities. The reason for this unimaginable shortage – which has been presaged by the doubling of cocoa prices in six years to an all-time high over the past three decades – is simple. Farmers in the countries like Ghana that produce the bulk of cocoa bought by the multinationals who control the market have found the crop a bitter harvest. The minimal rewards they have historically received do not provide incentives for the time-consuming work of replanting as their trees die off – a task that usually means moving to a new area of canopied forest and waiting three to five years for a new crop to mature. Meanwhile, as the supply of the raw material diminishes, millions of new consumers in the developing world (in China, for example) are becoming addicted to the sweet energyfix at the end of the processing chain. Many farm holders only make 80 cents a day, and there is no incentive to replant trees when they die off, and to wait up to five years for a new crop, and no younger generation around to do the replanting. The children of Ghanaian cocoa farmers, whose life expectancy is only 56, are heading for the cities rather than undertake backbreaking work for such a small reward. The goal of this project is to create a new educational model that addresses the problems processing and production to help seal those gaps, rejuvenate an aging industry and create a new niche economy centered on the processes and manufacturing of chocolate. We imagine creating an industry cen-

112 William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

Local capable up to 60 cocoa a y

Techinca training education occurs facilities o factory. training f machine and qual training. $

Students of the Cocoa Farming Teacher’s College participate in an en exchange with partnered cocoa farms. Farmers attend classes in the city focused on farm management skills, while students of the Teacher’s College complete field work. Upon graduation, graduates of the Teacher’s College

T 1

Small, 200 Sq Ft. Artisan Factories are available for lease to graduates of the school’s Artisan Chocolate Management Program. Each space is equiped with a roasting oven, chocolate conch, cold storage, and a chocolate tempering machine.

4B Chocolate Company, a for-profit chocolate company whose earnings are re-invested in education and training programs.

Subsidiary factories are partnered with a local education center. This factory is reponsible for coordinating international exports from local artisan chocolate makers.

factories are of processing 0,000 tonnes of year

al/vocation from the n center at the of the local The focuses on handling lity control

Roasting

Winnowing

Conching

Education centers along with artisan factories process 815 tonnes of chocolate a year

Tempering

Inherent in the process of chocolate manufacturing are physical and intellectual identities that provide for a broad range of educational opportunities.

Chocolate bars made by artisans at the education center are exported with its partnered factoryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s exports.

Employees of a schoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s partnered factory teach classes in business management, food chemistry and information technology.

Culinary School 5,000 Sq Ft.

Teacherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s College 10,000 Sq Ft.

Graduates of certain programs may obtain permits to manufacture chocolate on premises

Business/Design/IT 3,500 Sq Ft. Alongside artisan factories, space is available for retail and wholesale venders selling consumbables and infrastructure related to the chocolate manufacturing process

$ William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio 113

Cocoa Farm

$2.64

PRESSING

$3.20

EXPORTER

INT’L EXPORT

$2.74 $2.87

Cocoa Farm FARM GATE

LOCAL BUYER

LAT O

GRINDING

PRESSING

$47.00

CHOC

$26.00

AT E L

Sugar

Fruit

Spice

Salt

TEMPERING

CONCHING

ADD-INS

T UT

LOCAL TRADER

O UR

R AKE

C O

RETAIL

GRINDING

DAIRY/BAKERY PRODUCTS

MARKETING

L AT E / C

$25.00

$67.50

COC

GRINDING

PRESSING

PACKAGING

M E R GOOD

$47.00

LI Q O

W DER

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L INDUSTR I A

COCOA C

CHO

BAKER

CONSUMER

Raw Goods Delivery

Artisan Winnowing Drop Off

I.T./Quality Control Circulation

Artisan Winnowing Drop Off

Teacherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s College Circulation

Culinary Circulation

Retail/ Wholesale Circulation

Business/ Design Circulation

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio 115

tered on the very incentives that Ghanaian farmers wished they had. Chief of our concerns is creating a chocolate industry centered on entrepreneurship and small business ownership. We want farmers to have control over their crop from bean to bar so that they can reap the full benefits of their labor. Secondly, we aim to create a battery of skilled teachers capable of transforming reluctant cocoa farmers into eager businessmen and women. Thirdly, we aim to merge the processes of teaching and making to create an educational and manufacturing symbiosis centered on the exchange of ideas and goods. The challenge of this project is creating an educational system to assist in the recovery of an economy near collapse. Its success depends wholly on the establishment of a government autonomous, for-profit corporation whose bylaws have written in them a transfer of power, intelligence and money to our education system. In other words, the genesis of this project depends primarily on the creation of a for-profit chocolate manufacturing company who umbrellas smaller systems of educations and manufacturing. Thus, the diagram on the preceding page illustrates the economic and physical relationships governing the creation of such a system. Capital investments from a central agency trickle down through a series of manufacturing processes, each diminishing in scale with every transfer. Larger factories focus on industrial chocolate processing (such as baking powders, bittersweet chocolate, etcâ&#x20AC;Ś) while smaller, entrepreneurial workers focus on filling a larger, more lucrative production gap: artisan chocolates. Our company operates within a broad spectrum of employment. Firstly, on a technical level, our company employs engineering and chemical specialists who design evaluations for equipment, systems and processes related to manufacturing chocolate and chocolate related products. Secondly, on a managerial and business level, we employ supervisors, quality control managers, and financial and sales forecast analysts. Thirdly, we hire a vast labor force capable of large scale chocolate processing including but not limited to: bean sorting, roasting, washing; conching; pressing; molding; tempering; design and packaging. Our company guarantees that all products processed and exported from

FACTORY SCALE AND REPLICATE 2,000,000 Ft2

Typical Large-Scale Chocolate Manufacturer

150 Ft2

Proposed Factory Size, Accra

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our factory contain only ingredients grown in Ghana. Purchases for our factory help the local and rural economies in many ways. Most importantly, however, is the way our company will help reform the cocoa farming and harvesting businesses. Our cocoa processing factory is partnered with an education center located in the South Industrial Area of Accra. The partnership with the Accra Educational Center will improve access to education in the greater Accra area, promote better agricultural practices and help address child labor in cocoa growing communities. Our commitment to better farming also includes a Cocoa Teacherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s College aimed at training teachers to train farmers in rural Ghana. This training will directly help farmers increase yields, improve quality and increase their incomes. We represent an innovative way by which we can significantly impact science, design, culinary arts and business management across the education continuum. It creates the opportunity to bring leading scientists, business managers and educators together to develop, implement, and/or disseminate vetted and novel methods, technologies and practices that can broaden not only our understanding of chocolate processing and production but also our understanding of the modern complexities of becoming a developed, competitive country as Ghana paves its way to participate and excel in an international market. At the center of it all is the alliance of industry and education to form a group of networked individuals committed to industry advancement and education, who realize that the two are inextricably linked together. As such, they are committed to help each other and to be helped by others in the pursuit of preparing Ghana for extraordinary growth in the coming decades. As an institution dedicated to chocolate industry production, education, teacher training and research we have the following objectives: To bring industry-based experiences to local students in the classroom, exposing them to the excitement of Ghanaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most profitable natural resources; To train and support a network of faculty from our employment pool whose knowledge can transcend industry/education boundaries; To connect participating students directly to the chocolate processing industry.

PROCESS AND PRODUCTION Raw Good

Product

Raw Good

Product

Raw Good

18-21 C

33-38 C

20-21 C

70-72%

80-85%

45-60%

700,000 Tonne/Year

67,000 Acres

2.3 Tonne/Acre

1.6 Million Cattle

Max Temperature Range:

30-32 C Humidity Range:

90-100%

Product

Raw Good

Product

Raw Good

Product

10-31 C

4-5 C

32-40+ C

18-21 C

30-33 C

17-20 C

40-95%

32-37%

70-95%

60-70%

80-100%

60-70%

254,000 Acres (2020)

45,000 T/Yr

N/A

Ventilation Requirement:

2,700,000 Acres

120,000 Tonne/Year

17% 500,000 Ft2 [.24 Tonne/Ft2]

28 Tonne/Year

30,000 T/Year

% CROP

2,000G/C/Y

% BAR

16 Million G/Yr

% CROP

19%

% BAR

7.02 Tonne/Year

% BAR

6,000 T/Yr

2,400 T/Yr

13%

N/A

1.4 T/Yr

.552 T/Yr

% CROP

100%

37,000 Gallons/Yr

15 Ft2 [.535 Tonne/Ft2 ]

HARVESTING Havesting takes place twice a year. The main harvest lasts from October to March while the interim harvest lasts from May to August. All harvesting is done by hand.

FERMENTATION

EXPORTING After drying, the beans are graded, packaged in canvas bags and shipped abroad where they are further processed into chocolate

ROASTING Cocoa beans are roasted to bring out flavor. The roasting process takes about 25 minutes and occurs between a temperature gradient ranging from 250 - 425 degrees.

WINNOWING Upon arrival to a factory, the beans are cleaned and winnowed. Winnowing produces a higher quality bean by removing the husk leaving only the super flavorful cocoa nib

CONCHING The nibs are ground coarsely in conch machines The heat exuded by this process ensures that the cocoa butter present in the liquor melts, rendering the cocoa liquor liquid. The conching process can take 3-4 days.

TEMPERING/MOLDING Tempering ensures the formation of the right cocoa butter crystals so that the chocolate will harden into shiny, hard and solid shapes. Only when it has been tempered, the chocolate can be poured into molds or deposited as drops and finally cooled.

MARKETING Perhaps the most important moment in the chain of chocolate processing aside from the actual growing of the beans, marketing strategies have the potential to insure that farmers and virtually everyone connected to the industry have a higher and more consistent profit margin.

The pulp containing the cocoa beans is removed from the pods and left to ferment for five to seven days. This takes place on the ground or in trays where the beans are covered with banana leaves.

DRYING After fermentation the beans are spread out and left to dry in the sun for about six days. The beans are turned regularly so that they retain only moisture content (Âą 3%).

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MAKING + LEARNING: AN INTEGRATED CAMPUS

Our curriculum and training focus on the cocoa industry as a model to improve the productivity and competitiveness of the skilled workforce, both in rural farming areas and in urban Accra, and raise the income-earning capacities of people, especially women and lowincome groups, through the provision of quality-oriented, industry-focused, and competency-based training programs and complementary services. We are an industry and demand driven, outcomebased education center with training programs based on cocoa industrygenerated standards. We focus on primary, secondary and tertiary cocoa industry training programs including cocoa processing, manufacturing, and farming; farm and business management; information technology, software development and computer networking; graphic design, marketing, and textile making; culinary arts; and urban agriculture. In pursuit of this mission, our educational center will: 1. Provide open access to education and training without prejudice to gender, emotional, sensory, mental or physical disability, religious, ethnic, or socioeconomic background; 2. Provide relevant pre-employment and continuing education and training in diverse occupations to meet the career interests of both males and females as well as the needs of the economy and the cocoa industry; 3. Provide an enabling environment for girls and women to acquire technical and vocational skills in diverse occupations; 4. Provide career information, labor market information, placement and follow-up support services to its clients; 5. Upgrade indigenous systems of skill acquisition and production; 6. Promote sound environmental practices; and 7. Emphasize quality improvement, technological advancement and the global competitiveness of Ghanaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cocoa sector and its related products and services.

NO ROOFS

An olfactory relationship

DROP-OFF SERVICE

A shared canopy roof system serves not only as program unifier but also a sensory teaser. Roasting rooms on second floors allow both heat and aromas to escape creating an stimulating pharmacology of sight, sense and touch.

Winnowing

Winnowing (the only process of chocolate making that does not affect its taste) is quarantined in its own

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concrete bunker. Artisans simply roast their beans then drop them off to be shelled.

GROW/SELL

EVERYWHERE, CHOCOLATE

HEAT EXCHANGE

Farm Management

Learning through chocmosis

No room temperature

Farm management takes a hands-on approach with integrated culinary, agriculture and business classrooms. In one afternoon you may study global trade policies, understand dangers of witches root, and burn your first batch of chocolate.

Every classroom cluster on campus is paired with a chocolate processing lab. Each lab is equipped with roasting ovens, conchers, tempering machines, cold storage and design molds.

The canopied roof system provides methods of heat exhaust wherever roasting ovens are present. Cold storage is shared among workshops and is chilled by circulating chilled sea water, which keeps the chocolate at its optimum post-tempering storage temperature of 55 degrees.

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LEFT: And then we had a vision: A campus, like the sails of a boat in the Gulf of Guinea, would appear above the waves of Accra. A symbol of journey, progress, hope. Model constructed from concrete and hand-folded wax.

OPPOSITE: Site model. Basswood, cloth, handmolded metal framing.

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PROGRAM DISTRIBUTION

Addressing Needs

1 Site Plan

2 Circulation

3 Truck Delivery

4 School Cross-Circulation

5 Artisan Factory Circulation

6 Teacherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s College Circulation

7 Combined Program

9 Roof Canopy Beam Distribution

10 Areas of Heat Exhaust

11 Water Collection

Teacherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s College

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Program distribution arose from needs of circulation, goods distribution and storage needs. Its arrangements creates patterns on flow that provoke unexpected meetings of students and makers.

PICK UP

Creating Community Bean storage and distribution create a centralized yet informal meeting area. The storage hubâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s monolithic stature belies its true function: to provide visual connection through campus.

CONCHING GALLERY

Drop-Off, Conch, Age

Culinary students drop off roasted beans into conching units where they slowly turn into liquid chocolate. Afterwards, the chocolate is aged on an aging wall, in full view of the public. William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio 127

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Don’t Judge a Book b

Your insides might be nice, but it’s the out 130 William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

by its Cover.

tside that sells.

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M ichael Pollan’s second book , A Place of My Own, chronicles the plight of the author designing and building a small writing hut outside his home in New England. It is both a memoir of his experiences and an argument about architecture. Through a series of essays that ostensibly concern the process of building, Pollan develops an argument against post-modern architecture, and he inserts multiple original and borrowed theories urging for architecture’s return to nature . The methods of his persuasion are strong, personal appeals to our emotions. Using the cover image, manipulations with the subtitle and the preface, Pollan baits readers with vivid, intimate accounts of his relationship with his process of building. From the beginning Pollan conflates theory and narrative, creating a sometimes convincing yet occasionally confusing text. Readers should not be faulted for their confusion; for throughout the book it seems we are subject to Pollan’s personal struggle with the complexities of architectural process and theory. No-

where is this struggle more evident than in the modifications of the book’s cover, the change in the book’s subtitle and in the addition of a preface. If the cover, the subtitle and the preface are the identity of a book, then to understand their modifications is to understand the evolution of an author’s identity to their writing. Since first published in 1997, Michael Pollan’s A Place of My Own has been through two publishing houses (Random House 1997-2007, and Penguin Books 2008-Present); the cover of the book changed three times (1997 (hardback), 1998 (paperback), 2008 (paperback)); and the subtitle has been through two iterations (“…The Education of an Amateur Building” (19972007) and “…The Architecture of Day Dreams” (2008- Present)). In the 2008 paperback edition, published by Penguin Books, Pollan added a nine-page preface. In A Place of My Own, Pollan argues that architecture belongs to nature. Yet he struggles to fit architecture theory within the merits of nature as evinced in his many different and sometimes contradictory declarations about the scope and meaning of this book. Through his title, subtitles and 304 pages of his book, Pollan argues that A Place of My Own is simultaneously “…the biography of a building…every building,” “The Architecture of Daydreams,” “The Education of an Amateur Builder,” “the story of an education,” “an argument about architecture,” an argument against the conception of architecture during the 1990’s, “a tool for exploring architecture,” “a how-to-think-about-it book,” “about the art of architecture,” and “a defense of nature.” Perhaps more revealing, the Library of Congress catalogues A Place of My Own under “Huts – Design and Construction – Popular Works” as the primary index, while they index “Space and Time – Popular Works” as the secondary index. In other words, the scope of the book eludes Pollan as he struggles for an effective way to commu-

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nicate his theory. If Pollan struggles to find an effective thesis for his book, then how will his intended readers understand his premise? Yet, Pollan wants readers to know what the book is not. In his preface, Pollan responds to readers and reviewers who thought and wanted the book to be a how-to construction manual. He attributes this confusion to the book’s organization, which appears to be a step-by-step guide to designing a small cabin: chapter titles include “The Site,” “Footings,” “Framing,” “The Roof,” and “Windows.” Perhaps, too, this could be attributed to the Library of Congress categorical index. Pollan makes it clear in his preface that this book is definitely not what the Table of Contents would suggest it to be, but rather something else. If we are not to take his Contents literally, then we might assume that Pollan wishes to communicate to his readers through metaphor. In fact, Pollan employs the book cover as his most outstanding metaphor. Book covers are powerful marketing and communication devices. The choices publishers and authors make concerning the cover are perhaps the most important decisions made in the process of book publishing. The cover combines the expertise of the author and the design, marketing, publicity, editorial, sales and legal departments. Everyone gives input regarding its content. To understand the modifications of Pollan’s book cover and subtitle is to understand how Pollan’s identity with his work evolved. The cover and subtitle for A Place of My Own changed through six iterations over nine years and with two publishing houses. The cover for the first edition in hardback, published in 1997 by Random House, consisted of two images (a foreground and background), author name, his previous book, current book title and subtitle (see figure 1). The background image of a light, fine-grained wood stretched the entire width and length of the cover. The second image of a hand-drawn elevation of

a small cabin centered itself between the subtitle and the author’s name. In this edition the page-centered cabin drawing dominated the cover, despite its relatively small size. Its white background contrasted against the regulated lines of wood grain and subsequently attracted attention to its blankness. Was this the image Pollan needed to communicate his theory that architecture belongs in nature? If so, then where was nature? The only resemblance of nature perhaps lied in an abstracted notion of nature in the image of sawed wood. It is not hard to sympathize with reviewers and readers of this first edition book when they lamented the fact that A Place of My Own failed to provide construction methods for such a place. In the second edition of the book, published in paperback by Random House in 1998, nature in photorealistic image dominated the cover (see figure 2). Here Pollan directly answered his reviewers who criticized the book’s previous edition’s misleading contents. This book was definitely about being in nature. The title’s typography, now larger and expansive floated above dense greenery and forest. The cover shed the image of the cabin as a construction elevation in favor of a photorealistic image of a cabin (though still not the cabin in question), now occupied by a shadowy human figure reading a book by a window. More importantly, we might infer from the placement of the new cabin that Pollan used this architectural devise (the image of nature, as well, is not the site in question) to hint at a broader metaphor, one explored throughout A Place of My Own, which concern his theory of how architecture facilitates human habitation in nature. At this point, we should ask how his new book cover image operates in the terms of his architecture theory. What exactly is Pollan’s theory? Well, it’s hard to tell. Throughout the book, Pollan exhumes design policies from great architecture theorists, politicians, poets and literary giants. In all, he wields the com-

To understand the modifications of Pollan’s book cover and subtitle is to understand how Pollan’s identity with his work evolved.

bined and multifarious knowledge of 84 scholars, borrowing from Vitruvius, Lewis Mumford, Thoreau, Peter Eisenman, Christopher Alexander, Thomas Jefferson, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Wallace Stevens, to name a few. Ultimately, Pollan concludes that architecture obey “laws of nature” the “facts of the human body.” For example, architecture (in this case his cabin) should be “sensitive” to its site; it should be small and oriented for efficient use of solar exposure; it should dissolve itself into the landscape ; it should not be too big; it should embody a “betweenness,” occupying at once shadow, field, wood and sun. Pollan capitalizes on A Place of My Own as a brainy gym for intellectual aerobics in which he conclusively argues for the title of his book: a place. “Placeness”, Pollan remarks, is a theory of instinct but rooted in inherent laws of nature. For architecture to have “placeness” it must appropriately respond to the body’s physiological and psychological experience of a space. Because architecture has a responsibility to the human body and nature, it could be argued that the image of the cabin in the second edition in its new, photorealistic context more appropriately corresponded to Pollan’s theories of “placeness” than the previous edition’s cover. In this light, we understand the critical role the book cover image has as the first opportunity for an author to communicate his arguments. While the text of the newer edition did not change, Pollan’s public identity to the text had altered. The book’s subtitle in the second edition, now somewhat blurred by a dark red in-fill, floated between the title’s “A” and “Place” as if its significance diminished. A quote from the Chicago Tribune now resided in the middle of the page: “A Glorious piece of prose…Pollan leads readers on his adventure with humor and grace.” Consequently, the author and publisher clued the potential reader that the book was less construction manual and more prose; it was less an education and more an adventure. Since first published in 1997, Michael Pollan’s A Place of My Own has been through two publishing houses (Random House 19972007, and Penguin Books 2008-Present); the cover of the book changed three times (1997 (hardback), 1998 (paperback), 2008 (paperback)); and the subtitle has been through two iterations (“…The Education of an Amateur Building” (1997-2007) and “… The Architecture of Day Dreams” (2008Present)). In the 2008 paperback edition, published by Penguin Books, Pollan added a nine-page preface.

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The paperback editions following the 1998 release corresponded to Pollan switching publishers from Random House to Penguin. In process, both the book cover and subtitle experienced substantial edits. Most notably, Pollan changed the subtitle to “The Architecture of Daydreams” (albeit unofficially; the Library of Congress still recorded the book’s subtitle as “An Education of an Amateur Building”). Just as the second edition communicated Pollan’s shifting approach to the identity of his book through image, the new change in subtitle signaled a shift in the way Pollan identified with his theory through words. We are now confronted with a choice of interpretation. Should we read the title as A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams? If the colon served as a grammatical substitute for the word “is” then we can infer that a place of your own is an architecture of a daydream. That is, “place” is more a metaphysical construction of your daydreaming than an actual space. Viewed this way, “architecture” loses its literal connotation of a physical construction and now serves as a borrowed literary devise suggesting a “result” or “system” within which dreams can operate. Conversely, we could read the subtitle not as an extension or qualifier of the title but as a literal sub title, or an alternate name for the book: A Place of My Own or The Architecture of Daydreams. The “or” requires us to make a choice. The book is either about a place of my own or it is about the architecture of daydreams. Regardless of its interpretation, the new subtitle made clear that the book was not about his experience of building (per previous subtitles). However, his experience, and thus the narrative, was the context for his theory. The changing of subtitles also signaled a change in the way Pollan identified himself as an expert of his material. Whereas with the original subtitle “… The Education of an Amateur Building” the word “amateur” might have suggested Pollan’s limited capacity to discuss a topic like construction or building. Also, its omission in the new subtitle avoids confusion with syntax. That is, one could read “amateur” as a noun so that the subtitle is understood as “an amateur is building,” rather than understanding “amateur” as an adjective that modifies building, which might suggest the personification of a building as it received an “education.” Removing “education” and “amateur” from the subtitle prevents readers from doubting the knowledge base of the book’s writer. That is, this is no longer a book about a beginner learning, but rather about something else: something more mysterious perhaps more theoretical, as the new subtitle suggests. Though the words of the subtitle changed, the structure of the subtitle appears to be the same. Pollan replaces “education” with “architecture” and “building” with “daydream.” This

makes sense if we consider an education to be an assemblage of lessons (an “architecture”) and if we interpret (as Pollan does) buildings as extensions of our daydreams. It would not make much sense to suggest that A Place of My Own is “…The architecture of buildings” or “The architecture of architecture.” Daydreams seems a more appropriate and coincidental corollary for “architecture or buildings” and for Pollan’s theories of design. As such, the new subtitle “The Architecture of Daydreams” accomplishes two things: it reiterates Pollan’s obsession with traditional architecture theories and processes while further obscuring the meaning and contents of the book. The operative word in the new

world’s “largest” thesaurus) is “castle in the air.”). His use of the word “daydream” works as strong, literary weapon to convince readers that the “age-old” process of architectural design has remained unchanged: architecture is still in the business of translating a singular idea from a single person into reality. After reading the subtitle and the preface we can assume that Pollan not only believes in the Howard Rourke model of architecture but defends its existence in the process of building and designing today. That is, the singular vision of a designer, the “daydreams” of architects take precedence over collaboration. Ultimately, if Pollan insists that no difference should exist between architecture

subtitle is “daydream.” To understand the process of daydreaming is to understand how Pollan interprets the architecture design process. Unlike dreams, which occur during REM cycles of sleeping, daydreams occur while you’re awake. Thus while regular dreams are motivations of your subconscious, daydreams are perhaps direct extensions of your conscious, fleeting or extended escapes from life’s banalities. According to the new subtitle and the new preface, Pollan posits no difference between buildings and daydreams. Buildings are simply tangible extensions of the wondering “wisps” of architect’s (fittingly enough, the first synonym for “daydream” on Thesaurus.com (the

and daydreams, then perhaps the subtitle is redundant, “…The architecture of architecture.” Yet, grammatical redundancy is a powerful communication technique, particularly when wielded by a wellknown, best-selling author like Pollan. While the previous paragraphs focused on the changes that occurred to the subtitle, it is also worth discussing the changes Pollan did not make to the title. Despite its shift in cover placement or change in text size and color, the title “A Place of My Own” remained unchanged over the past 13 years. It could be argued that Pollan employs the title as rhetorical redundancy. Technically, the title is an example of syntactic

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pleonasm, a grammatical redundancy where one or more words in a phrase is optional. Though the phrase “My Own” is common enough where its usage may seem unremarkable, if we consider the talent of a writer like Pollan and prominence as a book title we must suspect he engages it purposefully. If redundancy ensures understanding, it may be used to emphasize a point or overwhelm a reader. And while it may be synonymous with other words in its phrase, its redundancy does not necessarily suggest functionless. Therefore, we should consider the function and motivation of Pollan’s pleonastic title A Place of My Own. A good place to start is by looking at the alternatives: “My

By reversing the seasons from summer to winter Pollan emboldens architecture with a sense of purpose.

The changing of subtitles also signaled a change in the way Pollan identified himself as an expert of his material.

Own.” Now, the operative word in the title is the modifier “a,” which suggests that this “place” is one of two or more spaces. Indeed, this is Pollan’s second space, the first being his house, which is located nearby. This secondary space serves as an escape from a primary space and helps reiterate the concepts of “daydreams.” Its architecture offers something different and thus is distinct from other architectures. Moreover, it exists only in relation to another building; its meaning is dependent not only on its order (his second space) but its proximity to other spaces. If the conditions of his logic rest on the syntax of his title, then a set of requirements begins to emerge: that architecture be no bigger than it has

Just as the cyan filter on the cover homogenizes the rendering of his cabin, the hyperbole of his preface suggests an authority with which he wishes to will his readers.

Pollan perceives the roof as his greatest Trojan Horse, reserving most of his ammunition for defending this argument.

The pleonastic “My Own” reiterates the personal quality of Pollan’s logic: that “places” are spaces with invested meaning.

Place,” “A Place,” or “My Own Place.” The first and third option, “My Place,” ignore the “a” suggesting the book concerns his real house, not his “daydream” house as photographed on the cover. The second option “A Place” ignores the “my” alleging the book is about any place, which it is not. Just as important as the redundancy of “my own” is the inclusion of the modifier “a” and the exclusion of the modifier “the”. If the title must read A Place of My Own, then how is it used? First, the title could be interpreted as a division of building typologies. If we assume “A Place of My Own” as a laconic repositioning of Pollan’s architecture and design theories, then it could be read as “Architecture is/should be A Place of My

to; that it perform as an alternate space, an escape from other buildings (which might not qualify as architecture); that it be located within nature. These requirements help distinguish the architecture that his title suggests from other building typologies. In this way, the title forms a critical base with which Pollan measures the success or failure of other architectures. The title’s second function solicits an emotional response. The pleonastic “My Own” reiterates the personal quality of Pollan’s logic: that “places” are spaces with invested meaning. According to Pollan, “places” are not designed. Spaces evolve into places through the memory of its inhabitant. Yet for a space to

evolve into a place, it must have coded in its architecture moments of un-design or freedom for the inhabitant to make with it what he wishes, what Pollan calls a “collaboration not so much in space as over time.” The title reinforces the obligation of the individual to assist in the creation of their places. The architect can only design so much; what remains is up to the person and the capacity of their imagination. Pollan depends on the imagination of the reader to place themselves inside the world he created for himself. Thus, the cover image serves as that gateway between what the reader wants to read and what the author wants the reader to think they’re reading. The cover image in the current Penguin edition differs drastically from previous cover images at Random House. Now, the image is a photo (with credited photographer) of the actual cabin on Pollan’s land in New England adjacent to his home. Where the previous edition’s cover depicted a thick canopy of trees during a summer day, we are now presented with the cabin at dusk during the winter. The shift in seasons could be attributed to Pollan’s affinity for Bachelard’s Poetics of Space in which Bachlelard claimed that generally houses mature “when the poetry of shelter receives its fullest expression.” A house under siege from the elements “becomes an instrument with which to confront the cosmos.” The snow covered ground and cabin, icicles sagging from the roof ’s lip and the warm glow of interior light, reiterate the human ability to live in this world in spite of it. The entire image, save the lights in the cabin, is coated in a cold, cyan filter. The intensity of the blue, a metaphorical redundancy, confirms nature’s strength over human beings. This is Pollan’s way of saying humans will be forever relegated to a shelter of our own making to ensure our existence. Yet at the same time Pollan’s switching of seasons makes it difficult for us to consider living in this world without some type of shelter, signifying the importance of architecture in the hierarchy of human needs. The photo of the cabin nestled next to a rock almost appears to be between trees. Beautiful, yes, but this is not merely a publicity photo. The image is successful not only because it solicits a response (or purchase) from readers, it performs as an allegory for Pollan’s argument: that architecture respect nature and humbly, delicately find its way into nature. Like finding your way into a party where you were not invited: it requires enough confidence to get through the door but not too much as to draw attention to yourself. Once inside, you simply behave within an accepted range and mimic those around you. According to Pollan, if architecture is to “crash” nature’s “party” it should do so on these terms. By reversing the seasons from summer to winter Pollan emboldens architecture with a sense of purpose. This

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LOVE/ LAJE

Supplanting the public square with something very private (only to make it very public again). Rio de Janeiro // Spring 2011 // With Keith Kaseman

William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

laje of the upper class can be seen as a centripetal social force whose directions are impelled towards its center. To laminate a laje is to physically adhere multiple laje layers together. The laje laminate is subject to physical distortions and modifications. Laminates can be offset from each other prompting variance in movement from static to dynamic, down-tempo to up-tempo. They can be congested to resemble walls or barriers of movement. Their extrusions and rotations contribute to spatial dynamism, creating steep slopes or ramps in a Cartesian flux. If the laminate is old and weak it can be subjected to pulls and pushes which expose opportunities for inhabitation within its layers. Frac-

HE WORD “LAJE” has assumed multiple

meanings in terms of its physicality (a slab or surface) and its social and cultural behavior. Physically, the laje is simply a surface made from a variety of materials but most commonly concrete, tile or shingled roofing material. The location and function of the laje mostly depends on the user’s socioeconomic background. In the favela the laje is typically the roof surface, and it serves as a physical extension of a home. The latent programmatic potential of the favela laje depends wholly on the appropriation of its user. Most common, however, the laje performs as a viewing platform, an extension of the physical and social topography of the favela’s surroundings. It is here that users secure control of their surroundings through surveillance; thus, the favela laje can be viewed as a cultural panopticon. While every roof constitutes a surface upon which a laje may be appropriated, not every surface can constitute a laje. Given the density of favela residents and high competition for space, the laje must be understood as a non-essential, a luxury of space. Only those who can afford the extension and appropriation of roof space can claim the laje as a legitimate space. Otherwise, the home’s extension beyond the roof must be considered essential to the survival of its inhabitants and thus is relegated to functions of sleeping or other formal functions of liv-

ing. If the laje is physically a slab then its latent program behavior sanctions a cultural tabula rasa. Its benign topography solicits multiple and differing functional interpretations. When too often methods of living are bridled by the constraints of bureaucracy, the laje represents a spatial freedom. Ultimately, the laje personifies the luxury of choice. If the favela laje represents the user’s choice to expose and survey, the laje of those with greater means represents a user’s choice to conceal. Within Rio’s valleys of economic prosperity, the laje expresses a user’s urge to hide. It is here that the laje constitutes another spatial luxury: to expand horizontally. While the favela laje demands an upward movement, the laje of those with greater resources desires an expansion outward, a planar trophy to the breadth of their means. It is here, flanked by thick, tall walls that the laje becomes a more private affair. In this light, we can consider the favela laje as a social centrifuge; it’s users devoted to expanding means of communication. Conversely, the concealed

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turing the hermetic seal of the laminate sponsors an amalgamation of interior and exterior weathers. Humidity, condensation, and temperature are in perpetual inconstancy and thus undermine established convictions of architectural inside-ness and outside-ness. Given the actions one may take to physically modify a laminate to create spatial variation, it might be worthwhile to appropriate the action verbs as metaphors for programmatic behavior. In other words, how might a laminated laje construct serve as a social, cultural, and economic laminate? What program potentials exist, if any, from metaphorically and physically adhering multiple and diverse publics? Let us not be seduced by

the architectural Loreleiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s of naivetĂŠ. The idea that architecture is able to change society is out of date; but I continue to believe that architecture can produce concrete material stimuli that can lead to a change of sort. It can provoke situations; it can create atmospheres that are balanced or unbalanced. The function of architecture should be to encourage the viewer to think critically and to be open to change. In itself, architecture cannot change anything; what it does do is prepare the way for change. This is the arrogance of Program: to confuse title with function, and to presume action from function. Program in name only precludes innovation and contributes to the indolence of the architect.

So, what is the program of my architecture? I cannot answer. What I can describe is the atmosphere of my intentions: to imagine a place of powerful assembly where people coalesce in celebration of their country, their neighbor. It can be a place to plant a garden in fertile, dependable soil; it can be place to roast chicken hearts with your friends while watching your country take gold. It is in this vein that the laminated laje begins to speak of something more powerful. It begins to supplant the derelict public square with a boundless, laminated energy.

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x-direction laminate

Ability to Pay Room subsidies relationships This diagram proposes an economic system based on a user’s ability to pay. Subsidies are provided by profits from market-rate rooms.

[ 36 ]

No two rooms are finanically alike. Rates and thus profits can vary based on size, location, duration of stay, etc...

Financial life line

Market rate rooms serve as financial “life lines” to other rooms in the hotel. Each room is connected to a “family” of other rooms where subsidies from profits are distributed.

x-direction laminate on threshold of becoming habitable for overnight sleeping.

x-direction laminate enganged for overnight occupation.

Floor Peel: Laminate in x-direction gradually peels from y-direction laminate creating pockets of sleeping space.

LAMINATED LAJE | ABILITY-TO-PAY

Ideas in

3 Minutes

PUBLIC LAJE VS. PUBLIC SQUARE

ome of us have a hard time explaining one idea in one minute (“Dad, I need my allowance’; “It’s not you; It’s me”; “It was dead when I got here.”) let alone 36 ideas in three minutes. Architects are notoriously bad presenters. Perhaps it’s because we would like to think our ideas are too complicated for anyone to understand what it took 275 hours to make. Or maybe it’s because we would like to think that they shouldn’t understand it because, hey, we’re architects, right? Either way, we are bad at talking about ideas, which is why we draw them. All bets are off, though, when an architect opens his mouth to speak and things like “programmatic (not a word!),” “performative (also not a word),” and “tectonics (what?)” fall out of his mouth. The concept for this site specific studio midreview was a three-minute pitch. All of your thoughts, emotions, ideas, worries and concerns boiled down to a few grains of salt. Hello, my name is Brian and my project is about ______; and I am interested in _______; I’d especially like feed back on _______. Successful? I can’t wait to do it again.

Laminate Hole

Sleep in Here

Laminate Sleep

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Walk Here

3-dimensional room subsidies relationship. This diagram proposes an economic system based on user’sability fo pay. Subsidies are provided by profits from market-rate rooms. Guests in market-rate rooms may either elect to be witting or uwitting participants in room sponsorship for those in financial need. See drawing 2/4 for details.

circulate on y-direction laminate y-direction laminate

circulate on y-direction laminate

Financial “life” lines

Sleeping Peel Bed

Subsidising Nodes

While laminate is typically associated with a structural thickening, it can also perforate a building where breaks in structural seams allow light, air and sounds to circulate through the building.

Storage Peel

Bed Potential Peel

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GSAPP W. BRIAN SMITH

LAMINATED LAJE | ABILITY-TO-PAY 3D

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

CARD # 4 | SITE 2

LAMINATED LAJE | COMBED VOIDS 2

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

CARD # 10 | SITE 2

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GSAPP W. BRIAN SMITH

LAMINATED LAJE | ABILITY-TO-PAY

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

CARD # 5 | SITE 2

LAMINATED LAJE | STRANGE LAJE

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

CARD # 11 | SITE 2

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GSAPP W. BRIAN SMITH

LAMINATED LAJE | POROUS LAMINATE

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GSAPP W. BRIAN SMITH

LAMINATED LAJE | COMMENT TK

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GSAPP W. BRIAN SMITH

LAMINATED LAJE | SKETCH ON ME

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GSAPP W. BRIAN SMITH

LAMINATED LAJE | POROUS LAMINATE

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GSAPP W. BRIAN SMITH

CARD # 6 | SITE 2

CARD # 12 | SITE 9

This derivation proposes lining the circulation of the building with sleeping rooms coupled with break-out porches - a place to hang out with your neighbor, interact with passing public, or to take 10 from your roommate.

Break out porch Break out porch

Sleeping Circulation Building Circulation

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COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GSAPP W. BRIAN SMITH

LAMINATED LAJE | SLEEPING VOIDS

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

LAMINATED LAJE | INVERTED LAJE

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

CARD # 16 | SITE 9

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GSAPP W. BRIAN SMITH

LAMINATED LAJE | SLEEP IN CIRCULATION

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

CARD # 17 | SITE 11

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GSAPP W. BRIAN SMITH

CARD # 18 | SITE 11

INVERTED OFFSET LAJE VOID = SOLID

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GSAPP W. BRIAN SMITH

CARD # 22 | SITE 11

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GSAPP W. BRIAN SMITH

LAMINATED LAJE | ABILITY TO PAY (2)

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

CARD # 23 | SITE 9

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GSAPP W. BRIAN SMITH

CARD # 24

Public Grand Stand

Watch Here

Rest Here

Step Here

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GSAPP W. BRIAN SMITH

LAMINATED LAJE | CONNECTED PATIO LAJE

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

CARD # 28

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LAMINATED LAJE | SITE PLAN

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

CARD # 29

Sleep Here

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GSAPP W. BRIAN SMITH

LAMINATED LAJE | PREVIOUS LAJE

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

CARD # 30 | SITE 11

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GSAPP W. BRIAN SMITH

Sleep Here

Walk Here

Walk Here Sleep Here

Sleep Here

Walk Here

Sleep Here

Walk Here

Sleep Here

Walk Here

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

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LAMINATED LAJE | LAJE BRIDGE CARD # 34 | SITE 12

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

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LAMINATED LAJE | UNDER THE RUG LAJE CARD # 35

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

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LAMINATED LAJE | WALL OF BEDS PLANCARD # 36 | SITE 2

STUDIO SANGUE BOM 2011

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GSAPP W. BRIAN SMITH

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OPPOSITE: Exposing the laje: Push up (socially centrifugal) versus push out (socially centripetal). How might these two disparate formalities and functions of the laje combine to create a new, urban laje? BELOW: Wall of Beds X-Ray Study. From 36 Ideas in 3 minutes, Rio.

his project is about the Urban Laje. For those of you who don’t know, laje is Portuguese for ‘slab’; however, it is colloquially referred to what we would call a patio or a deck. Buildings are built on lajes, but lajes are also built out from buildings. So, imbedded within the word laje are two meanings: a technical one (a slab, or foundation) and a behavioral one (patio, porch, deck.). The location and function of the laje mostly depends on the user’s socioeconomic background. In the favela the laje is typically the roof surface, and it serves as a physical extension of home. As you move from down hill into the valley of Rio, the laje typically becomes more enclosed and architecturally defined. In many ways the laje represents lux-

ury of space and it serves as a viewing platform or programmatic tabula rasa as it extends into the physical and social topography of ones surroundings. At the urban scale, the laje’s function is augmented from a discrete collection of slabs to a stitched network of highly charged spatial possibilities. The urban laje represents a new way of thinking about the architecture of annex. If at the residential scale the laje supports necessary quotidian domestic rituals (eating, clothes drying, sunbathing), the laje at the urban scale promotes new ways of community gathering, interaction and accommodation (soccer games, Olympic tailgating, outdoor cafes, hybrid hotels/ hostels). The urban laje also sponsors spatial diversification. Borrowing from current

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methods of domestic expansion and laje exposure (vertical/push up expansion and horizontal/push out expansion), the urban laje delineates multiple interface strategies with what I call synthetic urban topography. A laje is not a laje unless it sprouts from something. Every laje is supported by an armature of some sort – whether it be a home’s wall or roof, or a building’s foundation or improvised scaffolding. In this way, I’m thinking of the sites two terms: the first is its capacity to support the pre-bias of this synthetic urban topography; the second is the way this spatial bias could support the organization of the urban laje: in some cases the laje mimics its structural partner, in other ways it may support its function. I’ve been thinking about this urban

Getting up and out: methods of laje exposure.

Laje Brainstorm: All the different ways to exploit and incorporate the function and behavior of the laje. Ideas range from environmental (solar chimney laje) to urban amenity (condensation laje) to accommodation (hostel laje).

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William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

8 Laje Exposure Sequence

Spaceship Rio

Laje Exposure Sequence

Spaceship/Sailboat Laje Spaceship Rio

$$$ 8

Spaceship/Sailboat Laje $

High-end/Low-end Laje

$$$ 17

Sailboat Rio 5

High-end/Low-end Laje

Spaceship Rio

Sailboat Rio 22

Sailboat Rio

6 Laje Exposure Sequence Spaceship Rio

Spaceship/Sailboat Laje $

$$$ 4

High-end/Low-end Laje Sailboat Rio 17

LOVELAJE The word “laje” has assumed multiple meanings in terms of its physicality (a slab or surface) and its social and cultural behavior. Physically, the laje is simply a surface made from a variety of materials but most commonly concrete, tile or shingled roofing material. The location and function of the laje mostly depends on the user’s socio-economic background. In the favela the laje is typically the roof surface, and it serves as a physical extension of a home. The latent programmatic potential of the favela laje depends wholly on the appropriation of its user. Most common, however, the laje performs as a viewing platform, an extension of the physical and social topography of the favela’s surroundings. It is here that users secure control of their surroundings through surveillance; thus, the favela laje can be viewed as a cultural panopticon.

Laje Exposure Sequence Spaceship Rio

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High-end/Low-end Laje Sailboat Rio 17

While every roof constitutes a surface upon which a laje may be appropriated, not every surface can constitute a laje. Given the density of favela residents and high competition for space, the laje must be understood as a non-essential, a luxury of space. Only those who can afford the extension and appropriation of roof space can claim the laje as a legitimate space. Otherwise, the home’s extension beyond the roof must be considered essential to the survival of its inhabitants and thus is relegated to functions of sleeping or other formal functions of living. If the laje is physically a slab then its latent program behavior sanctions a cultural tabula rasa. Its benign topography solicits multiple and differing functional interpretations. When too often methods of living are bridled by the constraints of bureaucracy, the laje represents a spatial freedom. Ultimately, the laje personifies the luxury of choice. If the favela laje represents the user’s choice to expose and survey, the laje of those with greater means represents a user’s choice to conceal. Within Rio’s valleys of economic prosperity, the laje expresses a user’s urge to hide. It is here that the laje constitutes another spatial luxury: to expand horizontally. While the favela laje demands an upward movement, the laje of those with greater resources desires an expansion outward, a planar trophy to the breadth of their means. It is here, flanked by thick, tall walls that the laje becomes a more private affair. In this light, we can consider the favela laje as a social centrifuge; it’s users devoted to expanding means of communcation. Conversely, the concealed laje of the upper class can be seen as a centripetal social force whose directions are impelled towards its center.

Spaceship/Sailboat Laje

1 Laje Exposure Sequence Spaceship Rio

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William Brian Smith | Columbia Univeristy GSAPP | M.Arch, 2011 | Portfolio

topography in its capacity to contribute to the larger urban fabric of Rio. They are not just armatures for urban lajes – but they are in many ways urban amenities. For example, I saw site two’s long, north face as an opportunity to provide a mechanism for passive environmental control (which explains the solar chimney) coupled with a long, slow urban ramp. While the chimney contributes to the control of comfort for one environment, its albedo dominate south façade encourages the barnacle-like growth of the urban laje – adapted, of course, to provide unprecedented views of Tiredentes Square. Other examples include: A weeping wall (site 3), a glitter bar (site 1), a sleeping wall (site 5), a rotated laje to provide seating and video projections (site 6), a bridge between two streets (site 10), structural walls (site 11), public bleachers (site 12), and an urban jungle/ monkey retreat (site 4). The idea behind all of these is to employ the urban laje to provide a new, hybridized strategy for publicness in

Rio. The urban laje offers a method of support as Rio continues to remove its community dust covers. The reopening of Tiredentes signals a strong desire for re-establishing the city and its architecture as a true and abiding resource to its citizens and visitors. As the city continues to grow and diversify its need for an exhaustive and diverse catalogue of spatial ideas is paramount. Hopefully, thinking about the laje in terms of its urban potential can help us re-think what it means to live in and occupy a city we call our own.

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OPPOSITE: Urban Material Laje: Grass/ Concrete/Laminated Bamboo.

ABOVE: Laje Oasis: Duck Pond Laje. Laje as rain water collection and moments of reflection.

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LAJE/MODEL OPPOSITE: Laje Models. A material study in rockite, chipboard and glitter. Scale 1/32.

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Site

Site 9

Site 2

Site 11

Site 4

supports a central argument in Pollan’s writing, one that accuses post-modern architecture of abandoning its physical relationship to nature and the human body for an intellectual affair with literature and media. Continued page 146... Continued from page 131...According to Pollan, architecture’s curiosity with a world of ideas compromised its purpose. Blaming the temptations of expressing these ideas physically, Pollan argues that, “…architects will naturally tend to emphasize those elements in their designs that can be communicated effectively in the relevant media, and these are inevitably going to have more to do with two-dimensional signs than with threedimensional space, more with images and information than with the tactile qualities of materials and the experience of space. This kind of work has acquired a name: “magazine architecture.” Of course, it never rains in magazines.” When reading A Place of My Own, we must understand that Pollan romanticizes “old concepts” of design whose processes of creating forms helped negotiate people and nature. The advent and proliferation of new communication devices such as radio, television, phones and later the Internet, sponsored an existential crisis in which people began to question what constituted as “reality.” If nothing was as it seemed, then architecture was free to reinvent itself as a literary art. Now, Architecture could join the debate concerning our newly mediated environment and express opinions through idiosyncratic, personal or arbitrary design just as literature could do through stories. Given the specificity of the cover and the breadth of Pollan’s research, it is troubling to open the book and read paragraphs of generalizations in the opening pages of the preface; generalizations that not only contradict his writing but dilute the complexities of the profession he’s called into question. In the first two paragraphs he claims that A Place of My Own “is the biography of every building;” that it “could have been written about almost any building;” and that it discuss the “age-old” and “universal process” of design. However, it’s doubtful that his book could be used as a map to explore other buildings. In fact, Pollan uses the book to distinguish his design and construction process from those of post-modern architects. Certainly the concept of buildings is universal; everyone can touch and see space. Yet the processes through which buildings are created are decidedly not universal. Some buildings are designed by computers, others by focus groups; some are designed by humans; few are designed by architects. If this book is the “biography of every building” then should we bother reading any more books about architecture? Just as the cyan filter on the cover homogenizes the rendering of his cabin, the hyperbole of

his preface suggests an authority with which he wishes to will his readers. The function of the preface is to extinguish doubts a reader may have over his qualifications to speak on a subject as “mysterious” and “impressive” as architecture. For Pollan, if architecture questioned reality and communicated ideas through signs and symbols it lost its original purpose of mediating humans and nature. For much of A Place of My Own, Pollan laments that he ventured into architecture theory at a time when it discovered literary theory as a means of communication. In his words, he had “come to building looking for a way to get past words, only to learn that architecture was really just another form of writing.” For Pollan, buildings must have a firm hold on reality (i.e., the physical laws of nature and physiological “facts” of the human body). Architecture becomes lost and irrelevant as soon as it becomes culture commentary. Pollan worries that architecture cannot be about “placeness” if its primary logic concerns argument rather than nature. If A Place of My Own does anything, it manages to layer multiple readings into one text. On one level, the ostensible purpose of the book tells a story about building a cabin. Pollan employs the genre of memoir to share this narrative. Yet his narrative follows the sequence of construction. On another level, his chapter titles are appropriately named for moments in the process of design and construction: “The Site,” “Framing,” “Windows,” “The Roof,” etc… Yet, as discussed before, the chapter titles operate as metaphors for other arguments. We must assume he chose them strategically for they are his literary Trojan Horses: well disguised weapons of criticisms. One moment you think you’re reading a chapter about Framing, and then Pollan slips in metaphysical arguments about self-identity and the presumptions of modern architecture theory. If we assume that a given length of a chapter and its number of citations are directly related to the text’s importance then Pollan perceives the roof as his greatest Trojan Horse, reserving most of his ammunition for defending this argument. Indeed, not four sentences into the chapter Pollan asserts that, “To think about roofs is to think about architecture at its most fundamental.” Notice the infinitive “to think.” He could have said, “The roof is architecture at its most fundamental.” But twice he uses the word “think” further emphasizing that this is a “thinking book” and perhaps not a “biography” book as he would like us to think in his preface or an “adventure” book as the cover text from the Chicago Tribune would likes us to think. Pollan explores his most basic theories and purpose of architecture through the concept of the roof. In fact, the roof is so important that in the cover image of the Penguin editions, the image of the cabin changes from elevation to perspective, revealing

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the breadth of the A-framed roof. This new image provides the preliminary metaphor for his most crucial arguments. When Pollan argues that architecture’s primary purpose is to offer shelter against the elements, he uses the roof image as a metaphorical buttress to this argument. Now, the roof is covered in snow and icicles, which conveniently strengthens this argument. The roof is also pitched; a deliberate and environmentally necessary architectural move that proves, for Pollan, the roof is supremely functional. Never mind the modernist flat roof whose design flew in the face of function. It is no coincidence that the confidence of Pollan’s writing increased as his cabin reached completion. He is, of course, like any good student. He approaches a new subject with caution: “I guess…,” “Maybe my instinct…,” “The Golden Section seems to…” . But as the student gains knowledge, he also gains confidence: “A certain truth does reside…(emphasis Pollan’s),” “The house is a mark of our weakness and power…,” “Do not get the wrong idea,” and “If this [postmodernist discourse] sounds a lot like inside baseball, it is.” What began as a somewhat tepid approach to understanding the process of architecture and design ends in a rather fervent denouncement of architecture discourse in the twentieth century. His instinct and initial argument that architecture should be rooted in the laws of

nature had a convenient scapegoat in the postmodern movement. While Pollan argues that postmodernism failed to resolve issues of nature, he politely ignores that Vitruvian model of the primitive hut failed to resolve issues regarding human desire: “Very often architects seem to be afraid to just come out and say they like something, they think they’ve got to take it back a little.” For Pollan, the postmodern movement, with its obsession for language, took the human body for granted. The theory of postmodernism “imported by Eisenman” failed to explain Pollan’s visceral reactions to places. Pollan argues that postmodern theory can only explain the part of architecture that can be translated into words or “discussed at conferences.” Evolution, for Pollan, is a much more useful example to explain the sustaining power of some architecture. He remarks, “Certain architectural configurations survive simply because they have proven over time to be a good way to reconcile human needs, the laws of nature, and the facts of the human body.” The rhetoric of this sentence is powerful. One cannot argue with laws, and the human body is composed of facts, rather than say, fictions? The evolution of architecture sponsored a trial-and –error logic that produced an architecture rooted in such “laws.” This, Pollan warns, is a unique process to architecture, one that is unavailable to words or “conferences.” For architecture to turn its back on its

own history puts its progress in mortal danger. Once architecture becomes a communication medium, it gives up its chance at creating placeness. At this point Pollan’s argument for nature fails to explain how architecture should progress. His sole hint at the future of architecture lies yet in another ambiguous metaphor: the garden. He remarks, that, “…the garden offers us an experience whose power does not depend on codes or conventions or even the suspension of believe, though all those things are at work here too, making the experience that much richer.” He explains that the garden is rife with symbolism, but the difference between the garden and the goals of postmodern architecture is that it’s not necessary to understand the garden’s symbols in order to appreciate the richness of its complexity. Pollan suggests that postmodernism excluded people from understanding its architecture because academic and philosophical rhetoric obscured its meaning. We could infer that for Pollan, the meaning of a building must be communicated through a feeling, a physical and perhaps emotional response to an architecture. As soon as a building tries to “say” what it is, it has lost contact with the body’s nervous system. An architecture that ignores the body is certainly possible, but Pollan doubts it would ever “win our hearts.” We are to assume now that the purpose of architecture is to win over our emo-

tions rather than our bodies. Pollan is too good of a student to give an outright answer, “it’s one thing and another,” he confesses. For clues towards his bias, I return again to the cover image of the latest edition of A Place of My Own. If, as Pollan argues, architecture should avoid communicating ideas through signs and symbols, he has certainly gone out of his way to compose and alter the image of his cabin to communicate an idea of “placeness.” The cold, cyan filter enshrouding his cabin acts as a rhetorical hyperbole: nature conquers all. The image of his cabin, with its warm, incandescent glow, is now reduced to metaphor as it solicits an emotional response. At last, the pixels on the cover accomplish two goals: they visually broadcast Pollan’s theory and they sell a book. “This,” the image says, “is a place. Choose me.” To witness the evolution of the book’s covers is to witness a crisis unfold. To alter the cover image is to alter the identity of the book. Where the first cover suggested a “How-to” book, the latest cover suggests a “How-to-think-aboutit” book. This is an author who desperately wants to be viewed as a theorist. Yet at the same time, he cannot sell a book of theory; instead he capitalizes on the hope of readers emotionally identifying with something everyone wants: A place of their own.

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LOVELAJE 4 sites, 4 obsessions, 4 urban lajes

1 2 3 4

URBAN JUNGLE LAJE STEPS STEPS STEPS LAJE

YOUTH SOCCER LAJE

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1. URBAN

JUNGLE LAJE

An urban oasis for people and monkeys (maybe).

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A true public amenity: public steps for anyone at a

anytime.

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STEPS STEPS STEPS LAJE A true public amenity: public steps for anyone at anytime.

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YOUTH SOCCER LAJE Catch a game. Watch a game.

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4. SOLAR CHIMNEY LAJE? A public ramp folds up into a solar chimney. Heat sponge on one side, lookout point on the other.

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