samuel xu
samuel xu
“It’s not what you look at that matters. It’s what you see.” Henry David Thoreau
preface
“Architectural vernaculars at their best are like familiar faces in which we can recognize a deep character and rediscover the essential qualities we value most in architecture. We seek to re-create strangeness, beautiful and sublime, to revive and intensify a place and what is familiar by complicating and defamiliarizing our relationship to it. The combination of selected characteristics of things made and things born allows for a kind of architectural husbandry, a wrinkled emergence of strangely familiar forms. What emerges through the mixing and hybridization of figures and types is local form—a transmutation of place—a secular vernacular that in place becomes spiritual.” -Marlon Blackwell In his 1917 essay Art as Device, Viktor Shkolvsky conceived of the term ostranenie as a way to describe the phenomenon of an audience’s enhanced perception of the familiar after being exposed to common things presented in an unfamiliar or strange way. Shkolvsky posited that that which is familiar is taken for granted and automatically perceived, yet when one is presented something usual in an unusual way, one is forced to process and comprehend the familiar as a novel manifestation, heightening awareness and appreciation of what was once only commonplace and typical. In many ways, I see my work as an extension of ostranenie. I seek to operate in the realm between the vernacular and the universal, the plain and the modern, and the iconic and the invisible, to create architecture that is simultaneously both and neither. My work aims to challenge the role of architecture not as an apparatus to draw attention to itself, but rather as an instrument that frames its context into focus in an effort for the audience to re-engage with the familiar. It is through the lens of this delicate complicity between the familiar and the strange that architecture becomes a poetic means to intensify awareness and cognizance of the place and story from which a building evolves.
portal house Design Principals: Tony Patterson, Eric Hoffman, Anna Ives patterhn ives / coen + partners, 2013-present Project Team: Samuel Xu, Jason Ward, Aaron Senne, Anna Ives, Charity Seyer, Amber Chapin, Colby Perrine, Erica Twomey Nestled among existing trees, the dwelling’s unique position resonates with the inherent qualities of the surrounding landscape. Paralleling the natural topography, a large void in the center of the residence aligns precisely with a bend in the nearby creek and frames distant views that expand the dimension of the property. Situated at the intersection of public and private levels, the portal is reminiscent of the vernacular dog-trot house typology, offering a shaded breezeway for entry, environmental response, and entertaining. This strategy fosters a dialogue between two distinct volumes in the project: one elevated within the tree foliage (upper level for sleeping and study), and one embedded in the rolling terrain (lower level for living and entertaining). A detached guest house is sited within close proximity to the pool terrace, designed to provide additional flexibility for intergenerational living and guests. The pool at the crux of the project links the house to the creek beyond, forming a phenomenological relationship between water as a natural site element and water as a domesticated spatial experience. As a building that quietly sits within its landscape between forest edge and wetland, while at the same time striking a bold pose within its context, the Portal House seeks to both amplify a serene valley and tame its wilderness. The Portal House is tailored to family life and entertaining, fostering indoor to outdoor connections. Sensitivity to existing conditions, careful positioning relative to topography, orientation to sun, wind, and view all anchor the building to its place. Material strategies also seek resonance through locally available limestone and a strong cultural tradition of masonry.
2015 AIA Saint Louis Design Honor Award: Unbuilt
site studies; site models
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floor plans
building section / environmental systems; building model
view from portal; living room
kitchen; play room; dining room; master bedroom; pool house
material strategy; stone screen mockup
newtown archive Design Principals: Tony Patterson, Eric Hoffman, Anna Ives patterhn ives, 2015 Project Team: Samuel Xu, Colby Perrine
Founded over 300 years ago as part of the original acreage purchased by William Penn from the Native Americans, Newtown’s streets are lined with Revolutionary War homes and historic vernacular structures. Newtown was once the County Seat, and the Court Inn (constructed in 1733) was once a popular gathering place in proximity to the busy court house. The Court Inn now houses the Newtown Historic Association, established in the 1960’s to preserve the town’s heritage. The rear lot of the Court Inn was identified as the location for an expansion that would allow for climate-controlled, condensed archival storage and a large multi-purpose space for both internal and community events. Following a rigorous study of the site and existing buildings, a strategy was developed to build across the back edge of the lots to create a private courtyard capitalizing on the existing mature landscape, restored root cellar, and human scale of the historic structures. Derived from local carriage house typology, the expansion is deferential to the street facade of the existing Court Inn and fully transparent to the internal courtyard. The archive expansion is comprised of two levels organized around a central hearth. The lower level is sub-grade and houses the archive collection as well as volunteer workspace and a central lightfilled area for public research. The main level, at street grade and fully accessible, contains the public lobby and multi-purpose space. All support functions, elevator, and catering kitchen are contained within a service bar defining the east edge of the project. With a large skylight and fully glazed wall opening to the new courtyard, the building is filled with natural light and maintains a strong visual connection with the historic structures. Materially, the archive expansion’s facade is red sandstone at the lower level and service bar, and wood shingle for the gabled main level. Both materials are applied in a narrow coursing that mirrors the Court Inn brick coursing, further strengthening the resonance between the new and existing. 2016 AIA Saint Louis Design Merit Award: Unbuilt
conceptual diagrams
study models; courtyard vignette
floor plans
building sections
building model; view from street
terraced rehabilitation Critics: Tony Patterson, Mick Kennedy University of Michigan, 2013 Project Team: Eric Meyer, Claire Kang
Conceived as a physical rehabilitation facility with a wellness center, housing for care-givers, patients and their families, as well as assisted living, Terraced Rehabilitation leverages surface and grade change on a sloped Los Angeles site to promote a heightened awareness of both ground and sky. Ambulatory experiences, physical training, and increased interaction between inhabitants are all foregrounded through the design of the circulation path through the project. All dwelling units are organized around two central care-giver units which connect the community in a central courtyard. Units are developed around centralized plumbing cores, allowing interior and exterior conditions to mix through a porous perimeter. Drawing off of the existing regional typology of the courtyard house, this project seeks to utilize and incorporate the courtyard not only as an introverted space allowing access to natural light and cooling breezes, but also as a communal outdoor space, with varying degrees of privacy, that permit both interpersonal and architectural encounters. The act of moving through a set of gracious pathways and courtyards as a daily routine promotes a sense of community by increasing the frequency of social interactions, or at least the opportunity to see and to be seen. Windows and their sills, blurring the space between interior and exterior, extend private space into the public circulation path, opening onto larger social courtyards, which serve as rest stops along the street. A greater sense of community through increased personal encounters offers a productive approach to intergenerational housing, physical rehabilitation, and aging with grace.
2013-2014 ACSA / AIA Housing Design Education Award
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site research; unit studies C a rol D r
Sunset Blvd
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building massing; unit layouts
courtyard; ambulatory encounters
floor plans
wall sections
study models; site model, photo credits: Tony Patterson
unintentional monument Critic: Farzin Lotfi-Jam University of Michigan, 2013
In the heart of America, Detroit—once prominently known as the world capital of automobile and mass production—currently lies dormant as a city of ruins, a landscape of manmade architectures abandoned and terrorized through the process of societal and urban disintegration. Of the ruins that remain, the Packard Automotive Plant is the most prominent—74 buildings, 3.5 million square feet, a mile-long urban structure in the city—the largest abandoned building in the world. In The Modern Cult of Monuments, Alois Riegl defines two types of monuments: the intentional monument (whose value has been determined by its makers at its inception) and the unintentional monument (whose value and heritage is progressively determined and assigned by its surrounding culture). The Packard is not a ruin to be disregarded but rather a constructed urban apparatus that collects cultural fascination and value as it has emerged as a public arena for urban recreation/ exploration, artistic exhibition, and image proliferation. This research project locates the Packard on the same stage as intentional monuments defined by UNESCO, and investigates them side by side as generators of heritage value—a “cultural process of performance that is concerned with the production and negotiation of cultural identity, individual and collective memory, and social and cultural values” (Laurajane Smith, Cultural Heritage).
Contributing research to Fellows Exhibition, University of Michigan 2014
In a random sampling of one hundred collected Instagram images found online tagged #packardplant, photographers displayed and highlighted their fascination with the ruined factory both spatially, objectively, and personally. At the intersection of cultural enthrallment and image memorialization, the images illustrate the Packard as both subject and background, repulsive and interesting, and ruined and glorious. The Packard, although not purposefully constructed monumentally, is an urban attractor that produces and is assigned value, iconicity, and fascination—an unintentional monument constructed by its representation.
ruin analysis (rendering credit: Farzin Lotfi-Jam)
Acropolis analysis (rendering credit: Farzin Lotfi-Jam)
monuments vs. ruins
BRUSH BRUSH PARK PARK PLAN, PLAN, 18971897
REMAINING REMAINING BUILDINGS BUILDINGS FROM FROM 18971897
BRUSH BRUSH PARK PARK PLAN, PLAN, 20132013
ABANDONED ABANDONED BUILDINGS, BUILDINGS, 20132013
GROUND GROUND COVER, COVER, 20132013
OVERALL OVERALL CONDITION, CONDITION, 20132013
Packard Automotive Plant research and mapping
Packard Automotive Plant image mapping
Instagram image collection
enigmatic iconicity Critics: McLain Clutter, Claire Zimmerman University of Michigan, 2014
Enigmatic Iconicity meditates on the phenomenon of architectural idolatry—the cultural obsession with iconic buildings and the image proliferation of architectural iconicity—and speculates on novel possibilities of the contemporary architectural iconic building and its image. Iconic architecture is the construction of spectacle. Highly visible, memorable, and photogenic, its image is marketed and proliferated across global stages in its endeavor for the achievement of absolute celebrity. The crisis of iconicity is that it is constantly in flux, slippery and unstable, continuously being readjusted and redetermined by its urban context, cultural perception, and image vantages. The icon oscillates between the iconic and the anti-iconic, as its proliferation cancels out its own iconicity. If the icon is distinctive, highly visible, photogenic, memorable, and regarded as a landmark for a city, then the anti-icon is something that blatantly refutes those characteristics and directly opposes those ideals. If the icon is about spectacle and image, then the anti-icon attempts invisibility. This project reconsiders the iconic building as both an icon and an anti-icon, mutable according to circumambient situations and continuously self-generating. On the site of the abandoned Spire project in Chicago (the alleged next world icon), a new building typology emerges, a posticon, one that acknowledges that iconicity has exhausted its strategies of standing out in the city and embraces a new aesthetic of perceptual mutability. From certain perspectives, the building disappears, humbly hiding and subtly blending in with the surrounding buildings, and from other views, the building stands out as a figural form. The dialectics of iconicity are manifested as architecture is challenged to act as an apparatus that draws focus toward itself while bringing its context into focus. Publications: Dimensions, PitCrit, Cloudzwatching, 2015
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US Cellular Field
Willis Tower Skydeck
Soldier Field
Shedd Aquarium
Adler Planetarium
Grant Park
Art Institute of Chicago
Millenium Park
Navy Pier
Cite Restaurant Lake Point Tower
Trump Tower Terrace
Hancock Observatory
North Avenue Beach
Lincoln Park Zoo
Wrigley Field
Montrose Point
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Pren tice Wome n’s Hosp ital
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site / image mapping
camouflage studies
form iterations; site model
figural axons; building model
building section; urban context
iconic vs. anti-iconic views
Chicago skyline