JENNIFER Y. KIM
THE COOPER UNION 2008 - 2014
ACADEMIC WORK SUBURBAN TRANSFORMATION
Aurora, CO
LACERATED TERRAIN Magnetic Field Studies
URBAN INTERVENTION
New York, NY
FLOAT
Installation
STUDENT THEATERS
Lincoln Center, NY
TOY
Toy Inspired by El Lissitzky’s Proun Room
DATUM
Analysis Maison Curutchet - Le Corbusier
THESIS EXPLORATION
City in Flux
PROFESSIONAL WORK MUSIKERHAUS - Model
Raimund Abraham Exhibition
HOUSE IN CAPE COD, MA - Model
RKTB Architects
AMERICORPS
The Land Heritage Institute _San Antonio, TX Fool Hollow State Park_Show Low, AZ
Cesar Chavez Foundation_Phoenix, AZ
Truman Heritage Habitat for Humanity_Independence, MO
Wichita Habitat for Humanity_Wichita,KS
Hurricane Sandy Disaster Relief_Moonachie, NJ
ACADEMICWORK
The Cooper Union Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture
2011 SUBURBAN TRANSFORMATION The Spine: Revival of Suburbia through Linear Reorganization Aurora, CO 4th Year Studio
Suburban sprawl encompasses a significant portion of the United States and continues to grow, fulfilling the demand for single-family homes in planned communities. Suburbia is portrayed as the ideal model of the family-oriented life. The homes and neighborhoods within it are quintessential examples of Americana. Yet the ongoing development fails to address the harmful issues that suburban growth creates. It imposes multiple lane streets that cut through the natural landscape, creating miles of dreary, fence-faced streets. It uses maze-like roads that enforce privacy and creates wasteful yard spaces. Its residents are highly dependent on the automobile due to a lack of human and natural relationships. By intervening on a one-mile square of a typical suburban layout, I propose a transformation of a “no-place” into a “some-place” by promoting sustainable and environmentally conscious planning without compromising the desires of a suburban lifestyle. In this proposal, the new main street provides a clear and linear organization of storefronts and amenities. It serves as a spine that anchors the streets and trails which hold residential and urban programs. Pockets of single and multi-family houses are surrounded by parks and natural landscape and are no longer among endless, mazelike roads ending in cul-de-sacs.
The Sub-Urban Condition Model 2011 The new programmatic urban layout is introduced in a rural setting by repurposing and reorganizing the streets and residential areas. This involved consciously intertwining infrastructure with nature. By examining the landscape, I utilized the natural foliage and watershed to establish a network of walking and biking trails and parks among a system of multi-family houses and businesses.
2009 LACERATED TERRAIN Magnetic Field Studies 2nd Year Studio
A series of drawings explored the conditions of magnetic fields created by bar magnets and iron filings. The found properties then led to a proposed architectural study involving metamorphic movement. By imposing a translation of the conditions displayed in a magnetic field, I explored the possibilities of merging land, structure and enclosure as a single interrelated entity. By rendering the vectors of a field as cuts and its source as nodes of intensity, I established a land condition where the terrain consisted of multi-level platforms that blur boundaries of exterior and interior spaces. The structures and enclosures are projected from the same vectors that “lift and fold� from the ground.
Study with magnet and metal filings
2012 URBAN INTERVENTION: The Ancient in the Modern Library - Lafayette Street, NYC 4th Year Studio
The vacated site of LaGrange Terrace in Manhattan’s North of Houston Street district (NOHO) is the location for a new library. The proposal includes the original colonnade from four of the nine existing row houses. The intervention began as an inital mark on the site establishing a tabula rasa, a blank slate onto which the ancient and the modern could impose, pierce and engrave themselves. Studies involved projections of structural and organizational attributes from historic buildings in the vicinity: the Astor Place Theater, the demolished Chapel and The Cooper Union leave their impressions, creating an archive of the district’s historic and current transformations displayed within the new library’s form and function.
FLOAT: Space as Self-Reflections Date: Dimensions: Medium:
2008 12’ x 15’ Mirrors and Lights
2010 STUDENT THEATERS Lincoln Center, NYC 3rd Year Design Studio
The iconic Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is the site for two new theaters in this design studio. At the southwest corner of the superblock is an open area facing West 62nd street and hidden in the shadows of the Metropolitan Opera House. I used this to my advantage when acknowledging the surrounding context. Immediately outside of Lincoln Center are the lowincome housing projects, Central Park, Fordham University, Julliard, and Fiorello LaGuardia High School for Art & the Performing Arts. As a site that is surrounded by students and residents of all classes, I proposed two theaters specifically for young audiences which emphasized local productions and entertainment. By acting on the diagonal pedestrian traffic flow from the Josie Robertson Plaza, my intoduced colonnade spans the site and allows multiple entrances accessible from both within the Lincoln Center Plaza and the opposite facing street. The 650-seat proscenium theater is designed as a shell enclosed within a perimeter of vertical panels that allude to the Opera House. The underground 150-seat theater-inthe-round allows smaller, more informal productions. The roof is a disk, cut from the ground and situated on a tilt, allowing natural light to fill the theater during various intervals throughout the day.
2012 Construction Toy: Architectural Toy Inspired by Modern Art
This toy was produced during a seminar which explored the concept of play through architecture. Taking inspiration from modern artworks, the class created construction toys that evoked the same principles of a chosen art piece. Using El Lissitzky’s work as a starting point, I imagined a toy that displayed the concepts of the Proun Room by using geometric shapes, linear vectors and colors in an implied infinite space. A tongue and groove technique allows the toy pieces to fit and slide into any orthogonal position on the grid base. Pieces range from single, solid blocks to smaller gridded surfaces. The goal of the toy is to explore a three-dimensional concept of space that is both structured and free.
Proun Room El Lissitzky
2010 DATUM Maison Curutchet- Le Corbusier La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina 2nd Year Analysis Studio
After producing a full documentation set and models of Maison Curutchet, a series of analytical studies revealed the architectural conditions of the house. The narrow, four-story house and clinic was designed for Dr. Pedro Curutchet in 1948. Maison Curutchet shares an identical structural framework with Corbusier’s earlier Maison Domino. Although the principles are the same, the alternating sizes and locations of its floors suggest a hidden condition. This analysis focuses on revealing the floating effect of Maison Curutchet by recognizing its third floor as a datum more significant than the ground below.
2013 - 2014 CITY IN FLUX: Mobility as the Catalyst for the Revitalization of Shrinking Cities Thesis
This thesis addresses two American issues, the mobile home community and the shrinking city, by reinventing one to revitalize the other. Mobile home communities, better known as trailer parks, take on the stigma of poverty and as a result are often banished to the outskirts of failing cities. This project proposes a city network along which a mobile city transforms an existing urban fabric. It is based on the accumulation of reformulated trailer units as an impetus for the regeneration of the shrinking city. I became aware of the stigma attached to the mobile home community when I assisted in the restoration of one damaged by Hurricane Sandy in Moonachie, New Jersey. This community was located in the industrial outskirts of the city and experienced heavy flooding. They were one of the last areas to recieve aid. My team and I crawled under the homes wearing biohazard suits to safely gutout molding insulation and install new ones. While we worked around the axles and wheels of the mobile homes, I wondered why these families did not drive away before the flood occurred. The answer was obvious: these homes may have been built on wheels, but their sheer size restricted any movement. By deconstructing the mobile home, structurally and programmatically, I was able to experiment with transforming the dwelling and re-introducing mobility. The first step was to decrease the size of the home significantly while providing adequate space for comfortable living. The studies included expandable floors, sliding walls, and hitching mechanisms to combine multiple mobile homes into larger living spaces.
Thesis continued
When reinventing the mobile home, I considered the social changes this community could undergo. The goal was to provide an affordable housing option without the attachted negative stigma. The reinvented mobile home community will no longer be associated with poverty; rather, it will be an alternative housing typology. Currently, the homes mimic the concepts and materials used in the suburban house. The proposed mobile home will utilize lightweight, translucent, energy and cost effective material for it’s exterior while tailoring the interior to achieve the comfort of a ‘home’. This involved studies with materials, colors and patterns that evoke tranquility and nostalgia. The size of the manufactured home today can be built as large as eighteen feet wide by seventy-five feet long. Residents also have the option to combine mobile homes together to create the doublewide and the triplewide. The proposed mobile homes are significantly smaller, capable of maneuvering among other vehicles on streets and highways. Organization of the interior spaces requires utilizing every inch of the space in the most efficient manner. Inspired by doubleheight trailers proposed in the 50’s, I used this model to separate the common areas from the sleeping quarters.
Thesis continued
Many mobile homes mimic the physical characteristics of the typical suburban house. However, unlike suburban homes, mobile homes are built on wheels and do not have a foundation. These differences contribute to the stigma of this housing type. I was intrigued by the unique ground condition of the mobile home. The absence of a foundation reveals an impermeant condition suggesting mobility, shown expecially by the imprints the mobile homes make in the earth. The ‘objects of permanence’ (CMU block supports, skirting, stairs, and balconies) leave impressions in the ground if a mobile home moves away. This impermanence is a concept I wanted to maintain in my proposal. Tracks left behind suggest a constant movement, a community in perpetual motion. To give the option of expanding the home when not in transition, I took the principles from the ‘objects of permanence’ and created permanent spaces situated on the sites. These fixed pods allow mobile homes to park and expand their living quarters in a number of different arrangements. They can share a pod with another mobile home or expand into multiple pods at the same time. Parking and expansion options change constantly based on the resident’s desires. As a result, the arrangement of the community is always in flux.
Thesis continued
As one of the leading states with a growing number of mobile home parks in the US, I looked at South Carolina and three of its cities. These areas differed in population, income and demographics. After analyzing the types of trailer parks, I examined the major highways and streets that converged on a potential site for a mobile city. Orangeburg, South Carolina, a once thriving and historic town, has slowly been shrinking. What used to be a downtown district has now diminished into a strip mall. The proposed mobilization of itinerant communities within shrinking cities allows for programmatic reorganization and revitalization. I believe that transient architecture can create a viable community and that the mobile city is the generator for the shrinking city. The future mobile home culture will not define a class of poverty but will belong to the decisive itinerant. I propose this as a new form of urbanity, built on faded city fabrics: The spontaneous city. The mobile city. The city in flux.
Southern Pines of Florence Mobile Home Park Florence, SC
Planned plots of land with community amenities Location: Middle-income, suburban neighborhood
Westwood Mobil Home Park Columbia, SC
Planned plots of land with community amenities Location: Low-income, Industrial neighborhood
Patterson Trailer Park Allendale, SC
Unplanned plots of land without community amenities Location: Low-income, rural neighborhood
Trailer Parks and City Boundaries in South Carolina Bottom left: Allendale, SC Top Left: Columbia, SC Top Right: Florence, SC
Site for Mobile City Orangeburg, SC
Natural Regrowth Orangeburg, SC
PROFESSIONALWORK
MUKIKERHAUS: RAIMUND ABRAHAM Exhibition Model The Cooper Union: Arthur A. Houghton Jr. Gallery Date: 2011 Scale: 1:50 Materials: Cast Ultracal
Foam (CNC-milled formwork) Basswood, Plywood
Centerpiece model for an exhibition celebrating the work of architect and educator, Raimund Abraham. Located in Hombroich, Germany, Musikerhaus consists of residence, rehearsal, and performance spaces for musicians.
HOUSE IN CAPE COD, MA Project Model RKTB Architects - New York, NY
Date: 2013-2014 Scale: 1’- 0”= 3/16” Materials: Basswood
This model of the House in Cape Cod was constructed as part of the design process to expand an existing single-family house. Two separate wings consisting of four bedrooms, a kitchen, bathrooms, and a sunroom were added to the original house.
2012-2013 Americorps: National Civilian Community Corps
LAND HERITAGE INSTITUTE San Antonio, TX Trail buidling and campsite construction in a 1,200 acre parksite. TRUMAN HERITAGE HABITAT FOR HUMANITY Indepenence, MO Construction of homes for low-income families. REBUILIDNG TOGETHER Moonachie, NJ Disaster relief in mobile home parks . FOOL HOLLOW STATE PARK Show Low, AZ Landscaping and renovations of amenities . CEZAR CHAVEZ FOUNDATION Pheonix, AZ Landscaping and renovations at a low-incoming multi-family housing community.
WICHITA HABITAT FOR HUMANITY Wichita, KS Construction of homes for low-income families.
JENNIFERYKIM@OUTLOOK.COM 347.612.9492
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