PHILLIP DENNY WORK pdenny@andrew.cmu.edu www.phillipdenny.com +1 240 529 8089
Campus: Situating the Global University
PHILLIP DENNY
Selected Projects Curriculum VitĂŚ (abbreviated)
01
Campus: Situating the Global University B.Arch Thesis Project (ongoing) Carnegie Mellon University 02
Is This Not a Pipe?
Volume Magazine/C-Lab Columbia Laboratory for Architectural Broadcasting 03
Tenerife
EMBT Arquideas Grant 2013 04
Rome Center for Peace & Religious Studies Cornell University in Rome 05
Scenes and Speculations: Future Cities Commissioned Research on Gulf Urbanism 06
Theater for a New Audience
Carnegie Mellon Drama + Architecture Collaborative Studio 07
Al Wakrah Village Housing
Carnegie Mellon Qatar + Qatar Museums Authority 08
Frick Environmental Center
Landscape + Architecture Studio 09
Saco Lake Bath House + School for Dance Material Tectonics Studio Projects 10
White Cube, Green Maze: New Art Landscapes Heinz Architectural Center, Carnegie Museum of Art
Biography
PHILLIP DENNY pdenny@andrew.cmu.edu www.phillipdenny.com +1 240 529 8089
EDUCATION
Carnegie Mellon University B.Arch | Minor in Architectural History Cumulative GPA 3.89, Design GPA 3.93 Dean’s List Fall 2009 - Fall 2013
Cornell University
Visiting Student of Architecture | Rome Semester GPA 4.00 | Spring 2013
Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar Visiting Student | Doha, Qatar Semester GPA 4.00
HONORS
BECA Arquideas Grant 2013
First Place Winner, International competition juried by EMBT Architects.
Louis F. Valentour Travel Fellowship
School award for design excellence. Architecture study tour in UK + France.
Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society
Nominated and inducted Spring 2012. GPA within top 7.5% of University class.
“Crossing Boundaries” Juhani Pallasmaa Charette
Invited participant in a week-long design charette with Professor Pallasmaa.
Head of School Commendations All semesters, Fall 2009-Fall 2014
College of Fine Arts, Dean’s List All semesters, Fall 2009-Fall 2014
LEADERSHIP
inter·punct
Editor-in-Chief, Student Journal for Architecture Theory, 2013-ongoing
Student Advisory Council Elected Class Representative
Odyssey
Research Honor Society, Faculty-elected, Spring 2010
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Volume Magazine/C-Lab Columbia Laboratory for Architectural Broadcasting
Researcher, Editorial Intern, Volume 37 Is This Not a Pipe?, Columbia University, New York, NY May - August 2013
over,under
Design & Research Collaborator “Scenes and Speculations” Boston, MA May - August 2012
Carnegie Museum of Art Heinz Architectural Center
Intern Curator White Cube, Green Maze & Maya Lin Exhibitions May-July 2011
ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE
Research Collaborator
Pittsburgh Projects & 4D Doha Apps for Architecture
Teaching Assistantships
Architecture Design Studios: Foundation II (Gutschow, Year 1), Environment (Mondor, Year 3) Architecture for Non-Majors (Hutzell, Mixed), Pre-Collegiate (Wolff, High School) History Courses: Survey of Arch. History II: Modern (Gutschow, Year 2)
School of Architecture Lecture Series Graphic Designer, Assistant Coordinator
EXHIBITIONS & PUBLICATIONS
AAP in Rome Exhibition
Exhibition Committee, Architecture
Fourth Year Design Awards
Louis F. Valentour Travel Fellowship Recipient
Sheraton Doha Design Competition
Design charette hosted by Qatar Museums Authority
Meeting of the Minds-URO
Al-Wakrah Village Housing Project exhibited in Doha, Qatar
NAAB Accreditation Review President’s Advisory Council Review
Thesis, and various undergraduate design projects selected for exhibition
SOFTWARE & SKILLS
AUTOCAD, RHINOCEROS, GRASSHOPPER, V-RAY RHINOCAM, SKETCH-UP, ARC-GIS ADOBE CREATIVE SUITE Strengths in research, design, writing, and editing.
References available upon request.
01 CAMPUS: SITUATING THE GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
PARADISE
01
01 CAMPUS: Situating the Global University B.Arch Thesis
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA Advisors Mary-Lou Arscott, Jon Kline, Charles Rosenblum, Rami el Samahy July 2013 - ongoing
Preface Architecture: a medium for the production of Utopias, and the complex process by which they attempt to become material. Much Architecture devotes itself to the reproduction of the material conditions of the status quo. Architecture creates facilities (from Latin, facile, lit. trans: “easily”, that which makes easier), for the processes of the dominant social framework.1 The impossible dreams of Utopia, however, do not negate its conceptual value. The ‘object’ of the project ‘Utopia’ is not so much a Sisyphean chase after a perfected image-world, but rather the production of a critical mirror.2 All Utopias, while literal No-places, are reflections—inverted, mirrored reproductions—of immediately apparent every-wheres.3 The global stock of Universities constitute a vast catalog of unique No-places situated within the context of the late modern everywhere. A landscape of failed Utopias, the history of Universities is colored by a perennial struggle: the essential protection of sacred Ideals from the forces that simultaneously support, and compromise the project of Universitas.4 This irreconcilable Gordian knot is arguably the root of the diversity of processes that the contemporary University now engages. These processes no longer constitute a singular search for Truth, but rather a complex ecology of often competing, even conflictual aims and exchanges at all scales.
02
The scenes outlined in Campus interrogate the place of this ubiquitous institution within the complex milieu of late capitalism, and ask: what might happen when Architecture is no longer the tool for mediating conflict by separation,5 a fortification holding the forces of Capital at bay, but rather is poised as an instrument for the radical accommodation of conflictual Ideologies—a frame for the hyperbolic juxtaposition of simultaneous, competing realities?5 Campus recognizes the absurd realities of the contemporary University as a very real dream, a compromised utopia. It is not merely a critical appraisal of the University; the scenes propose a series of situations that exploit the institution’s late modern reality for the production of new institutional and architectural possibilities.
01 CAMPUS: SITUATING THE GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
1 Frampton calls attention to this, one of Architecture's essential dichotomies, in relation to Hannah Arendt's analysis of the vita activa and Heidegger's thought on dwelling. See Kenneth Frampton, "The Status of Man and the Status of His Objects: A Reading of The Human Condition" in K. Michael Hays, ed., Architectural Theory Since 1968 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998) pp. 358-376. 2 See Chapter 2 "The Utopian Enclave" in Fredric Jameson Archaeologies of the Future (London: Verso Books, 2005), and Reinhold Martin, "Utopian Realism" Online. 3 The attempt to realize Utopia might be considered a form of Totalitarianism, specifically, the application of a totalizing framework toward a singular future. See Sheldon Rothblatt, "University as Utopia" in European Research University: An Historical Parenthesis. 4 Universitas is here in reference to the concept of the 'ideal' University, a confederation of scholars devoted to the search for "Truth." See, also, the proceedings of the 1972 MoMA conference, "The Universitas Project," convened by Emilio Ambasz, which brought together Jean Baudrillard, Octavio Paz, Umberto Eco, Henri Lefebvre, and Hannah Arendt, among others, to debate the foundations of an ideal University. The Universitas Project (New York: MoMA, 2003). 5 When the political agency of form is taken to lie in its essential finitude—the definition of a 'limit,' the production of distinction. See Pier Vittorio Aureli Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011).
Universitas and the postmodern Metropole Met·ro·pole, n.: The parent state of a colony. Origin: late 15th c.: from Old French metropole, based on Greek meter, metro- ‘mother’ + polis ‘city’
The University is a productive entity at the heart of centerless Empire.1
More than ten thousand universities now dot the
globe, a flexible meshwork of faculties more or less devoted to the project of Knowledge formation. Today, the University can be found anywhere, all over the world. Whether situated in the metropolis or standing in an idyll, all campuses are enclaves of one sort or another. But before the university took refuge in the Ivory tower it was universitas, a body of faculty and students—an essentially placeless federation.2
Before then, Universitas was a
utopian project—a ‘No-place.’ An entity distinctly removed from the political ordering of its context, universitas constituted a space of difference within a city defined solely by the foreign origin of its students and scholars. Not until the sovereign authority of medieval Bologna gifted a chapel to the scholar’s guild did 03
01 CAMPUS: SITUATING THE GLOBAL UNIVERSITY Research Mill Plan
The Plate (Edu-factory) Edu-factory condenses the Social to flash-point: nodes of contact, lines of discussion, planes of argumentation—Edu-factory collapses Life and Labor. Disciplinarity is abolished; new minds for new problems. The epicenter of production, Edu-factory is a re-producer of the Social. Knowers invest themselves with Knowledge; in the process they soak up value like a sponge.
04
Scale: 1:250
01 CAMPUS: SITUATING THE GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
Campus (Genesis) The Building had stood in the center of town for as long as anyone could remember, and before then, too. It was no more than 200 meters on each side. It stood above a patch of ground, campus. Over the years the bounds of campus had slowly eroded. The city dwellers confused one ground for another, and soon nobody could remember which was which.
05
01 CAMPUS: SITUATING THE GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
Alma Mater Scholars huddled on muddy ground (Athens all over again. Democratic space realized at last?) The Refugees eagerly dream of new Urbanities. Impromptu symposia commence as the Knowers debate the formation of a masterpiece—a University: autonomous, pristine, ideal.
06
universitas become university, suddenly finding itself on a campus.3 Within the context of late capitalism, the state of the university has reached triple-point. At the beginning of the new millennium the traditional notions of universitas—university as Utopia for the pursuit of Knowledge—have been marginalized by market imperatives: research funds, prestige value, endowment growth dominate the modern University agenda. Universities worldwide continuously produce knowledge, write patents, innovate new technologies.4
University
destroyed Universitas, and is itself at the edge of crisis. If the groundless universitas was literally utopian, then the modern campus is the ideal University’s heterotopic counter-site. Defined by Foucault as a space that accommodates and reproduces a society’s inversion, the heterotopia is at once removed from its context while at once being intimately bound up within its very culture. The global proliferation of universities at once reproduces the hegemonic subjectivities of Globalization’s willto-education, while simultaneously negating the sociopolitical 01 CAMPUS: SITUATING THE GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
context of the heteropic campus.5 Considering the modern university as an effectual mechanism of globalization, it ought to be examined through the lens with which we critique globalized capital.6 The replication of the university model across the globe via satellite campuses represents the incursion of foreign logics upon local territories.7
As distinct
from colonialism per se, the university is not just a microcosmic core sample of a society and its accompanying politics to be transplanted elsewhere, a project of authoritarian translation, but rather a finite instance of the metropole’s inversion: the university is a metropolitan antithesis. Campus as anti-city, or enclave—what Castells has termed the transnational enclave.8 In the same way that the intimate frictions of vastly differing ideologies incited violent altercations between town and gown in the earliest colleges of Oxbridge, the postmodern campus is imbued with the latent potential to destabilize the status quo.9 Campus has always been a fascinating stage for the playing-out of binary oppositions. The University: standard-bearer for the pursuit of pure Truth, and the same, an engine for extracting practical utility from new Knowledge; institutional reproducer of subjectivity, while at once a context primed for the disruption and subversion of subjectivities. Yet, still, the university, by way of its pernicious intimacy with the complexes of capitalist production, is essentially a normalizing institution. While the history of the late twentieth century is punctuated by moments in which university’s complicity with the mechanisms of late capitalism incite popular unrest, the story always ends in the same way: a brief period of popular consciousness is followed by an inevitable return to order by means 07
Scale: 1:250
Consumer Paradise
The University had become a mall. A luxe terrazzo unfolds underfoot in every direction. Everything gleams beneath the relentless Glo速 of fluorescent tubes. Exact air-conditioned, it is Eden. Even the atmosphere is indulgent. 08
01 CAMPUS: SITUATING THE GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
Consumer Paradise Plan
01 CAMPUS: SITUATING THE GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
Debates Within the Tower notions of disciplinarity are to be abolished. Knowers will be socially and cerebrally mobile, able to (and required) jump nimbly between domains of Knowledge according to whim or reason. Curriculum reverts to its Imperial definition: racetrack. The debates drag on for weeks at a time. Stultifying horizontality‌ the madness of their meetings sublime. Point Counter Point in a cyclical discourse of absurd proportions. Consensus is never reached. Discussion plods on, sideways, with no hint of relief. Before long, the Knowers realize their Dreamed-of University has suddenly come into being. 09
of police action.10
The violation of the campus’ political bounds
explicates the crisis of autonomy in the postmodern university. The superposition of disparate political orders is irreconcilable within the totalizing framework of the late capitalist city. Traditions of autonomy, whether upheld de facto or juridically codified, hold the precinct of campus as an extra-political space.11 This irreconcilable conflict is at the heart of globalization’s absorption of the University in the twenty-first century. The global dispersion of the University forms a constellation of extra-political territories whose supranational coordination echoes that of postmodern Empire. Just as late capitalism’s transnational enclaves are linked by the flows of international finance, world Universities are bound by the pervasive exchange of Information. An archipelago, the global network of universities is both a ‘smooth’ extension of the post-Fordist economy and a discontinuous inversion of the global polis.12
Enmeshed within the
is positioned at the helm of vast flows of capital. Ubiquitous, diffuse, the university is bound loosely together by commonly held rules. Since the university’s medieval formation a series of dicta have codified the role of the university in society: ius ubique docendi, Constitutio Habita, Magna Charta Universitatum.13 Academic capitalism forms the modus operandi of the postmodern university, despite its idealized independence from politics and the market. The University in the market economy endlessly chases revenue production. Growth is the dictate of success in the market. More is more. From the creation of non-academic consumable goods found in campus bookstores, to the displacement of student dining halls in lieu of national restaurant brands, campus has become a Consumer Paradise.14
Facing massive governmental de-investment,
public universities, too, must engage in market activities as a matter of course. Students have become commoditized, a stream of revenue to be exploited by the burgeoning academic-capitalist complex. Faculties vie for funding linked to enrollment figures, offering courses taught by legions of underpaid graduate students. The university is yet another industry whose profit margin relies upon the exploitation of a precariously situated labor force.15 The dot com boom of the nineties marked a radical transformation of production in the age of Empire: no longer was the economy tied to the reproduction of material wealth (vis-à-vis the industrial production of goods), but rather, vast wealth would be borne of speculation, the endless manipulation of exchange value. The virtual has unequivocally displaced the material. The disappearance of the factory from urban centers is perhaps the clearest evidence that the city has become the factory.16
The factory is everywhere, and
nowhere—a pervasive, ethereal network.17 10
01 CAMPUS: SITUATING THE GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
complex mechanisms of the global economy, the postmodern university
The rush on the University in the early aughts evidenced the position of higher education as an inroads to the post-Fordist labor market. In 2001, amid the excesses of new Globalization’s bull market, university tuition and enrollment surged, soaring past historical rates of growth. Enrollment, formats, tuition have since multiplied, transformed, and bloated. The market calls for the processing of more students, more tuition hours, more—. The University campus seems to wobble on the edge of anachronism as web-based educational models are the order of the day. The State’s endorsement of online education, and investment in MOOC initiatives foreshadows an immediate future: Knowledge will be free, and it will be online. The project of online higher education aims to equitize access to Knowledge. While the World Wide Web University is opening new avenues to Knowledge, the MOOC isn’t itself an equivalent alternative to the brick and mortar institution. The modern University is first and foremost a public space—rarefied air for the ‘Free’ exchange 01 CAMPUS: SITUATING THE GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
of ideas. In an era in which technology provides the ability for remote surveillance of the private communications of Billions, the web has quickly become less public than even the most insular private college campus. The threatened disappearance of publics is but one part of the crisis of the modern University.18 Crisis is a moment of opportunity. In which the normalizing parameters of the institution are shaken and dematerialized. Crisis is a duration in which the space of possibilities suddenly becomes vast.19 Witnessing the apocalyptic tail-end of university’s long-arc from religious scholasticism to academic capitalism, the university can be redirected to an alternatively productive model within and against late capitalism. “A building has to hold the forces that might want to transgress its order and should accommodate them through the management of the spaces so that at the same time, the same forces are restrained.”20
Campus does not disavow the forces
of capital and Globalization, but rather seeks to inscribe a space that is simultaneously within and without. While
the
concepts
of
institution
and
utopia
are
seemingly
antithetical (the institution is literally the ‘establishment,’ the utopia ‘No-place.’), elements of the one are always, necessarily, bound up in the workings of the other. The University is an institution that holds a utopian ideal at its core, a fact of its heterotopiafunction.21
Campus exploits the University’s heterotopian logic
by creating an alternative utopia in the contemporary University’s place. The Utopian animus of the University has always been the pursuit of Truth. However, the entry of capital has transformed this simple logic into one of exchange. The modern University is a site for the exchange of knowledge for value, the entry of commoditized knowledge. In order for the University to nourish its 11
Scale: 1:250
Hangar The University finally learned to stop worrying and love Research (dollars). There is no need for Byzantine ethical posturing or skunk-works secrecy in Edu-factory. Veritas is flexible, anyway.
12
01 CAMPUS: SITUATING THE GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
Research Mill Plan
01 CAMPUS: SITUATING THE GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
City Within the walls of the Tower, the City folds upon itself. A massive cabinet of metropolitan density, it is a frame of collective space, and a museum of the City that once was. Within, an energetic Public lay claim to Streets and Squares. City-Building is Civic-Stage; within the Tower a different quality of life lives on.
13
01 CAMPUS: SITUATING THE GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
Frame Climate-controlled and relentlessly empty, the Living Room is 40,000m2 of Almost Nothing. On its surface camps coagulate, then languish, before finally disappearing—absorbed. Conscripts to Knowledge wait to ascend the Tower. Slowly, cohorts percolate through, exploring. No one has ever Known the Tower in all —no single map is a record of all its rooms.
14
ideal it must regain autonomy. The University must divorce the pursuit of Truth from the pursuit of capital.22 While the separation of education from the reproduction of value constitutes a difficult decoupling of the University’s contemporary functions of economy, it can reposition the university as a necessary, productive public at the core of society.23
Campus proposes a
space for the exchange, pursuit, and generation of Knowledge that empowers the Knower (the precariously situated Knowledge Worker) by establishing a discernible place for him within urban society.24 The Knower is a unique member of the Knowledge Society. Precariously employed, highly educated, and young; the Knowledge worker’s needs are worlds apart from those of previous generations. Frenetic nodes in a highly charged network, Knowers thrive on proximity, flexibility, and security. Campus imagines a social contract between universitas and context that governs an order of exchange that is inclusive rather than 01 CAMPUS: SITUATING THE GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
exclusive, connective rather than disjunctive. By way of a simple agreement, Knowers can become an integrated component in the social ecology of cities. In exchange for the monetary support of the urbs, the Knower agrees to apply his accumulated knowledge to its dissemination: the Knower becomes Teacher. The city guarantees its own future vitality through this multigenerational exchange. Public investment in the young Knower is repaid by his commitment to become a Teacher, to educate future Knowers, and citizens alike. Campus thus short-circuits the late capitalist paradigm of educational attainment: cash for Knowledge, and resituates the university in relationship to a public. Campus can no longer be a colonized territory of late capitalism, the University an outpost of the disembodied market. For the Institution to regain the precious ground of autonomy, it ought to remember that campus, while referring to ground, structure, and locus of the Institution, originally referred to a battlefield. Now, it would seem that the field has been lost to the market. While the University must strive towards autonomy, it cannot become a hermetic enclave. Throughout its history the University has been, for better or for worse, bound to its reality—and all of the frictions and compromise that entails. Campus thus imagines a radical accommodation of the forces that seek to transgress the limits of the institution and its ideals. A project of utopian realism, Campus recognizes the reality of the University in late capitalism as itself a complex fiction constructed by global forces, and asks: what might happen to our battlefield—campus—when we recognize the forces of global capital as manipulatable flows rather than adversarial conditions?
15
01 CAMPUS: SITUATING THE GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
Corporate Eden A crown of Hotel Suites® sits precipitously above the void. Heroic elevator bundles pierce the emptiness with Piranesian audacity. The immediate needs of a transient population are automatically provided for in the rooms. Food, liquids, climate, entertainment—all optimized to ensure spontaneous and uninterrupted satisfaction. It is a Taylorist dream. A vast golf course spills out across the roof…an ersatz Arcadia, open Daily.
16
Endnotes:
01 CAMPUS: SITUATING THE GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
1 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000). 2 Neave, Blückert, Nybom, eds., The European Research University: An Historical Parenthesis (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 3 Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, A History of the University in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) pp. 92-96. 4 Jeffrey Williams, "The Pedagogy of Debt" in Edufactory: Towards a Global Autonomous University (New York: Autonomedia, 2009) pp. 89-96. 5 Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias" October (March 1967) 6 Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2000) 7 Andrew Ross, "The Rise of the Global University" in Edufactory, pp. 18-31. 8 Castells, Chapter 2: "The Network and the Self" in The Rise of the Network Society. 9 The student uprisings of 1968, and 1971 in New York, Paris, and Athens, e.g. Radical student-activist demonstrations had lasting effects on the composition, and policy of both Universities and cities. In Paris, after the end of student revolts, the state education system atomized the Université de Paris, creating smaller campuses scattered about the periphery. See Ridder-Symoens. 10 Like the uprisings at the Sorbonne, and three years later in Athens, the Columbia University protest was ended by the intervention of the civic police force. Foucault was greatly affected by a similar experience in Tunisia, March 1968, in which massive student strikes were dissolved by police brutality. See Didier Eribon Michel Foucault (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989) p. 194. 11 The right to political autonomy, specifically the exclusion of the campus precinct from civic control, was established in the medieval period at many European universities. The University of Prague was famously spared in the Russian supression of the Prague Spring uprisings, 1968. 12 Pier Vittorio Aureli has defined the polis as the socially-produced space of the city; the space of, and produced by politics. The University, understood as an exclusive enclave (per Manuel Castells, "A New Globe in the Making") might thus be considered a disjunctive space within the global network. 13 Sheldon Rothblatt, "University as Utopia" in European Research University, Neave, Blückert, eds. 14 Campus succumbed to Junkspace sometime in the early-2000s. See Rem Koolhaas, "Junkspace" October 100 (Spring 2002): 175-190. 15 Ilkka Kauppinnen has argued that the University is no longer a promoter of national economic competitiveness, but that Universities have impelled the "transnationalization" of academic capitalism. See "Towards transnational academic capitalism" in Higher Education vol. 64, no. 4 (October 2012): 543-556. 16 The University is considered a component of the city-as-productive-mechanism in "All Power to Self-Education," introduction to Edufactory: Towards a Global Autonomous University. 17 The un-rooting of centers of production is a key facet of 'network culture,' and a factor contributing to the productive agent's precarity in the late market economy. See Kazys Varnelis, "The Rise of Network Culture" in Networked Publics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012) pp. 145-164. 18 The relative attraction of online education might be considered one symptom of the recent swing towards austerity politics post-2008. See Pier Vittorio Aureli, "Less is Enough" (Moscow: Strelka Institute, 2013) 19 Crisis has been appropriated as a productive force in the postmodern creative economy, see Agenda: can we sustain our ability to crisis? De Smedt, Clouette, Neiheiser, eds., (Barcelona: Actar, 2009) 20 Pier Vittorio Aureli and Martino Tattara "A Simple Heart: Architecture on the Ruins of the Post-Fordist City" Architectural Design vol. 81, no. 1, January 2011. 21 Rothblatt, "University as Utopia." 22 Autonomy is a precondition for the pursuit of Knowledge, as argued by Stanley Aronowitz in The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher Learning (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000). 23 Antonio Negri, "From Koolhaas's 'Generic City' to 'Junkspace' in Berlage Survey of the Culture, Education, and Practice of Architecture and Urbanism, Salomon Frausto ed., (Rotterdam: nai010 Publishers, 2011). 24 Loosely analagous to what Richard Florida imagined as the constitutive members of the 'creative class.' Richard Florida The Rise of the Creative Class (2002). 25 Reinhold Martin, "Utopian Realism" Online.
Advisors: Mary-Lou Arscott, Jon Kline, Charles Rosenblum, Rami el Samahy. Support: Kai Gutschow, Kelly Hutzell, Michael Kubo, Francesca Torello, Talia Perry, Zachary Weimer.
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01 CAMPUS: SITUATING THE GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
Stoa A library, a University, an office, a museum—Edu-factory merges genres of Knowledge Space without compromise. The Public Realm is a Productive Realm. Edu-factory condenses the Social to flash-point: nodes of contact, lines of
18
▲
discussion, planes of argumentation— Edu-factory collapses Life and Labor.
02: IS THIS NOT A PIPE? VOLUME 37 IS THIS NOT A PIPE? COVER DESIGN, IRMA BOOM
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02 IS THIS NOT A PIPE? Volume Magazine/C-Lab Columbia Laboratory for Architectural Broadcasting Editorial Intern, Columbia University, New York, NY with Benedict Clouette, Jeffrey Inaba, C-Lab May-August 2013, Published November 2013
Original research, text, graphics, and layout design for “Mechanization of the Office” and “Increasing efficiency, increasing usage?” Interview with Mahadev Raman, Arup, "Its the physics" in Volume 37.
Before electric illumination the workday was bound to daylight hours. The optimization of the architectural plan to admit maximum natural light caused U, H, L and other such letterform typologies to proliferate (the earliest generation of mechanized buildings retained
these
pre-Industrial
forms).
The
electrification
of
the workplace at the turn of the century introduced a range of technologies whose effects would diminish the contingencies of environment that impeded the efficient performance of work. Electric light flooded the pre-War office, allowing work to proceed around the clock. Otis’ electric-powered elevators lifted droves of workers as tall office buildings sprang up across metropolitan centers. The plan of the office building, now artificially lit and conditioned, swelled to brutal depths. The development of technology would continuously transform how and where work took place in the twentieth century.
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
Drawings, text and layout by Phillip Denny with contributions by Maria Broytman.
31
32
Drawings, and text by Phillip Denny. Document design Irma Boom.
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▲
34
03: TENERIFE SITE PERSPECTIVE
35
03 TENERIFE BECA Arquideas Grant 2013 First Place Winner, International Competition Juried by EMBT Architects, Barcelona, ES December 2013
The thalassotherapy center is an immersive landscape: it is a place within which the user submits the body to spa treatments and transformation. In order to treat the body and mind, the user must first be removed from the usual. Arriving at the center, the user enters the pavilion at the high end of the site. Here the patron is oriented and directed down through the atrium to the changing rooms. From the changing rooms the bathers move along a corridor, passing through a series of water gardens which frame and orient the user to the sea beyond. As the bather moves along the path the space begins to open. Suddenly the bather finds himself on the slope among the many basins. Set within the basin are planters for flowering shrubs and trees, whose branches provide shade and whose rustling leaves create a soothing soundscape. After bathing the user may choose to have a massage in the hammam, or relax in the steam sauna, beneath a skylight that refracts the seawater above. In the evening, the user returns to the pavilion by the way he arrived. Moving back up through the atrium, he reenters the everyday, replenished and rejuvenated.
36
03: TENERIFE Saltwater Basin
Sauna
cc
Water Garden
Entry Tunnel
Changing
Sections
The site’s slope is manipulated to create a series of terraces cc that simultaneously hide unsightly development downhill, and open a dialogue with the sea. 37
+260
+240
+220
03: TENERIFE
+200
Desalination
Saltwater Basin
Extant Structures (Basins)
Sauna
Freshwater Basin
Entry Tunnel
Architectonic Elements (Frame)
Restaurant & Arrival/Check-in Mechanical
Program (Fill)
Site Plan / Diagrams
The project’s particular geometries are an artifact of an incomplete resort development project. The poured-in-place concrete foundations are repurposed to become thalassotherapy basins and spa facilities. 38
03: TENERIFE
Vignettes: Atrium + Arrival
The main building functions as a point of departure and arrival, where patrons transition from their everyday world to one of relaxation and introspection. 39
cc
Meditation
03: TENERIFE
cc
Restaurant Arrival
Entry Parking
Mechanical
Transverse Section / Plan +268
40
â–˛
The basins are scattered over the landscape, opening up vistas onto the sea beyond.
04: ROME CENTER FOR PEACE AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES
GROUND PLAN
41
04 ROME CENTER FOR PEACE AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES Cornell University in Rome Pax Romana Studio
Cornell University, Rome, IT Professors George Hascup, Davide Marchetti Spring 2013
The Rome Center for Peace and Religious Studies project reconciles the need for the construction of a massive institution on an actively utilized public landscape. The project explores the potentials of the mat-form building to activate context and expand the urban field. The architecture connects a series of interrelated programs to a wide range of urban situations. The project’s intricately scaled network of outdoor spaces extends the public realm over, under, and through the built environment. The ground plane is considered as an intensive architectural landscape, a plinth of public programs that create a public campo above. At the heart of the building, a central void connects all of the project’s functions, a nonprogrammed green space sheltered by the building-as-canopy above. The building’s raison d’etre, the religious study centers, occupy the highest points of the building. Raised above the public plinth, the centers pair enclosed study spaces with exterior courtyards. The study centers and libraries form a continuous, porous canopy that unites the building’s form, and defines the public realm.
42
04: ROME CENTER FOR PEACE AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES
Section / Courtyard
The site's ground is intensively manipulated, an architectural landscape that aims to instigate moments of public enticement and interaction. 43
04: ROME CENTER FOR PEACE AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES
Site Plan
The architecture soaks up its context like a sponge. It carries the surrounding urban texture over the site and throughout the building. 44
04: ROME CENTER FOR PEACE AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES
Concept Drawing
The project generates spatial complexity by layering formal traces of historical site features, contextual axes, and programmatic factors. The interplay of layers becomes a dialogue played out within and outside of the Center. 45
Figures
Canopy Development: Diagram / Section
The Center preserves the site's current open space by framing a public courtyard. The library and learning centers spill out onto the main courtyard, ensuring access to light and air. 46
Extrusions
04: ROME CENTER FOR PEACE AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES
Excavations
04: ROME CENTER FOR PEACE AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES
Ground Plan
The ground plan elaborates a complex dialogue between contextual site features, historical absences, and local use-functions.
47
Contextual Relationships
Block Porosity
Green Spaces
04: ROME CENTER FOR PEACE AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES
Contextual Situation
Site Envelope
Formal Relationship / Public Interface
The building cedes space to public use at key points on the site. At the corner closest to the Colosseum, the Center anchors a piazza.
48
5 2
10
10
1
2
3
1 2
04: ROME CENTER FOR PEACE AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES
Level +2
Level 0
2
10 4 1 1
6
2 1
8
1
9
7 2
2 1
Program Library Learning Center Circulation Desk Auditorium Meeting Courtyard Archive Gallery Cafe Dormitory
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Level -1
Level +1
Plans
The building is a complex assembly of distinct volumes and excavations pulled together by the institution. Green spaces permeate the structure, dissolving thick poche. 49
Dispersed
PROGRAM Consolidated
Porous
FORM
04: ROME CENTER FOR PEACE AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES
Lithic
Formal Development / Learning Center
50
â–˛
The Peace Center's porous form carefully balances dark spaces for the preservation of rare artifacts, and light-filled spaces for their study.
05: SCENES AND SPECULATIONS: FUTURE CITIES
PETRO-FIT, “RIG TOWER”
51
05 SCENES AND SPECULATIONS: FUTURE CITIES Three Scenes and Speculations from a Future City over,under / Carnegie Mellon University Researcher, Design Intern, Boston, MA with Rami el Samahy and Adam Himes May-August 2012
If all design can be seen as ways to predict—and shape—the future, no field ought to look further forward than urban design and planning. However, as a profession, planners tend to be fairly cautious, relying on historical precedents rather than future trends in shaping cities. There are perfectly rational reasons for this tendency; the past is a more knowable territory than the future. And yet, do we limit our vision if we fail to occasionally untether ourselves from the past, and seek where design opportunities may lie in the future? Our research team—architects and urban designers, curious about alternative approaches todesigning the urban future, especially as it relates to the Middle East—began by creating a digital compendium of all the predictions we could find (past and present) related to the future of urban environments. We tagged and sorted these in various ways to see what we might uncover. Among the most interesting (and obvious) discoveries: projections into the future are more telling of the present in which they are created.
52
05: SCENES AND SPECULATIONS: FUTURE CITIES
2012
2025
SITE 2040
2050
Rising Sea Levels
Conservative projections of sea-level rise expect a +1m change in the next hundred years. Doha, Qatar would see profound consequences after even a marginal rise in sea-level. 53
Village +1.5m rise
Existing Existing Existing Existing
high high high tide high tide tide tide lowlow tide low low tide tide tide
Solar Solar Solar Solar Desalination Desalination Desalination Desalination Brine lift
high high high tide high tide tide tide lowlow tide low low tide tide tide
05: SCENE 1: SABKHA CITY
Brine Brine Brine lift Brine liftliftlift Brine lift
New Infrastructure
01
02
Brine Brine Brine Brine isiscarried isiscarried carried carried through through through through existing existing existing existing village village village village plumbing plumbing plumbing plumbing and and and and fed fed fed fed through through through through heads. heads. heads. heads. scaffolding scaffolding scaffolding scaffolding toto to spray tospray spray spray
03
Brine Brine Brine Brine reservoir reservoir reservoir reservoir
Brine Brine Brine Brine distribution distribution distribution distribution
01
AApublic AApublic public public saltwater saltwater saltwater saltwater pool pool pool pool serves serves serves serves asas as as reservoir reservoir reservoir reservoir before before before before brine brine brine brine isisdistributed isisdistributed distributed distributed toto to the tothe the the spray spray spray spray grid. grid. grid. grid.
The The The gate gate gate gate permits permits permits permits a asmall aasmall small small AAthin AAthin thin thin sheet sheet sheet sheet ofof of seawater ofseawater seawater seawater travels travels travels travels through through through through a aaa The amount amount amount ofof of seawater ofseawater seawater seawater toto to enter toenter enter enter series series series series ofof of solar ofsolar solar solar stills, stills, stills, stills, causing causing causing causing freshwater freshwater freshwater freshwater toto to to amount desalination. desalination. desalination. desalination. collect collect collect collect onon on glass onglass glass glass planes. planes. planes. planes.
02
03
Brine Distribution
Brine Reservoir
Brine is carried through existing village plumbing, and distributed through scaffolds to the spray heads.
A public saltwater pool serves as a holding tank for brine, which will be distributed into the spray grid later.
Brine reservoir
A public saltwater pool serves as reservoir before brine is distributed Brine reservoir to the spray grid. A public saltwater pool serves as reservoir before brine is distributed to the spray grid.
existing through ds. existing through ds.
04 Desalination Desalination Desalination Desalination gate gate gate gate
Solar Solar Solar Solar desalination desalination desalination desalination
Solar Desalination
05 Dock Dock Dock Dock
AAfA loating Afloating floating floating pier pier pier pier rises rises rises rises and and and and falls falls falls falls with with with with the the the the tides. tides. tides. tides.
04
Gate
A thin sheet of A tidal-powered water is evaporated gate permits a by solar exposure. limited amount of Freshwater collects seawater to enter in the stills. The the system daily. resultant high-saline Solar desalination brine is collected.
A thin sheet of seawater travels through a series of solar stills, causing freshwater to Solar desalination collect on glass planes. A thin sheet of seawater travels through a series of solar stills, causing freshwater to collect on glass planes.
Solar Desalination Infrastructure
How can one of the most energy-intensive and ecologically destructive infrastructural processes (and a necessary evil for life in the Gulf) become productive and positive? 54
05
Kinetic Dock As the tides rise and fall, a cablepulley system opens valves and locks throughout the village, initiating Desalination desalination.
gate
The gate permits a small amount of seawater to enter Desalination gate desalination. The gate permits a small amount of seawater to enter desalination.
Current-Pump
Scaffold Plumbing
05: SCENES AND SPECULATIONS: FUTURE CITIES
Scale Scale = 1:500 = 1:500
250
Solar Desalination Arm
500
500 250 1000
2000
Brine Sprayer & Matrix
2000
1000
Scale Scale = 1:250 = 1:250
Preservation Bubble
Elements / Below Sabkha City
Desalination's waste, high-salinity brine, is repurposed for the creation of an artificial salt-landscape above the Gulf's inundated coastal towns. A simple system of tidal-, and solar-powered mechanisms allows desalination to occur without external power. 55
05: SCENE 1: SABKHA CITY
Urban Core Sample
A new kind of urbanism grows above the Gulf's inundated coastal towns. A freshwater reservoir anchors each urban courtyard, a new type of street furniture that serves as a meeting point for village life. 56
05: SCENES AND SPECULATIONS: FUTURE CITIES
Urban Courtyard
An urban courtyard is accommodated above the remains of each one of Al Wakrah's historical villas. Urban life is centered around spaces for the production and storage of freshwater. 57
05: SCENE 1: SABKHA CITY
Sabkha City Courtyard: Desalination Arms Sun/Mode Diagram
Tidally-activated Pedestrian Bridge
ht hig
t ow
ide
Tidally-activated Dock
ide
l Urban Mechanisms
Sabkha City is animated by the many tidal-, and solar-powered mechanisms that adapt Al Wakrah to life with rising seas.
58
MODULES
Scaffolding Module 3.4 x 3.6 x 3.6
05: SCENES AND SPECULATIONS: FUTURE CITIES
Aggregation
Units (Module Aggregations)
Unit Aggregation
Unit Aggregation
Module System
Much of Sabkha City's infrastructure is composed of repurposed construction scaffolding, which provides a fine-grain, flexible construction module. 59
Year 2012
Villa courtyards areilled f with a site-cast concrete liner in anticipation of their inundation and destruction.
Year 2012
Villa courtyards areilled f with a site-cast concrete liner in anticipation of their inundation and destruction.
Year 2012
Villa courtyards areilled f with a site-cast concrete liner in anticipation of their inundation and destruction.
Year 2014
Villa courtyards are filled with a site-cast concrete liner in anticipation of their inundation and destruction.
Year 2012
Villa courtyards areilled f with a site-cast concrete liner in anticipation of their inundation and destruction.
Year 0
Interior spaces are cast in concrete to provide foundations for the salt landscape.
Scaffolding is deployed throughout al Wakra as a framework for the growth of a new landscape. Construction mesh is stretched between the scaffolding to form spans between each tower.
Year 2014
Villa courtyards are filled with a site-cast concrete liner in anticipation of their inundation and destruction.
Interior spaces are cast in concrete to provide foundations for the salt landscape.
Year 2012
Villa courtyards areilled f with a site-cast concrete liner in anticipation of their inundation and destruction. Villa courtyards are filled with a site-cast concrete liner in anticipation of their inundation and destruction.
Scaffolding is deployed throughout al Wakra as a framework for the growth of a new landscape. Construction mesh is stretched between the scaffolding to form spans between each tower.
Interior spaces are cast in concrete to provide foundations for the salt landscape.
Scaffolding is deployed throughout al Wakra as a framework for the growth of a new landscape. Construction mesh is stretched between the scaffolding to form spans between each tower.
Villa courtyards areilled f with a site-cast concrete liner in anticipation of their inundation and destruction. Villa courtyards are filled with a site-cast concrete liner As sea levels continue to rise, al Wakra’s historical buildings in anticipation of their inundation and destruction. are washed away by the tides and the freed courtyard casts float out to sea.
Interior spaces are cast in concrete to provide foundations The negative form courtyard casts are pulled by the tide for the salt landscape. into the Gulf. The village’s inundated ruins become a marine habitat.
Scaffolding is deployed throughout al Wakra as a framework for the growth of a new landscape. Construction mesh is stretched between the scaffolding to form spans between each tower.
Villa courtyards are filled with a site-cast concrete liner in anticipation of their inundation and destruction. As sea levels continue to rise, al Wakra’s historical buildings are washed away by the tides and the freed courtyard casts float out to sea.
Interior spaces are cast in concrete to provide foundations for the salt landscape. The negative form courtyard casts are pulled by the tide into the Gulf. The village’s inundated ruins become a marine habitat.
Scaffolding is deployed throughout al Wakra as a framework for the growth of a new landscape. Construction mesh is stretched between the scaffolding to form spans between each tower.
As sea levels continue to rise, withalaWakra’s site-casthistorical concretebuildings liner Villa courtyards are filled are washed away theinundation tides and the courtyard casts in anticipation ofby their andfreed destruction. float out to sea.
The negative form casts are pulled by the tide Interior spaces are courtyard cast in concrete to provide foundations intothe thesalt Gulf. The village’s inundated ruins become a for landscape. marine habitat.
Scaffolding is deployed throughout al Wakra as a framework for the growth of a new landscape. Construction mesh is stretched between the scaffolding to form spans between each tower.
Year 2075
As sea levels continue to rise, al Wakra’s historical buildings are washed away by the tides and the freed courtyard casts float out to sea.
The negative form courtyard casts are pulled by the tide into the Gulf. The village’s inundated ruins become a marine habitat.
Year 2075
As sea levels continue to rise, al Wakra’s historical buildings are washed away by the tides and the freed courtyard casts float out to sea.
The negative form courtyard casts are pulled by the tide into the Gulf. The village’s inundated ruins become a marine habitat.
As sea levels continue to rise, al Wakra’s historical buildings are washed away by the tides and the freed courtyard casts float out to sea.
The negative form courtyard casts are pulled by the tide into the Gulf. The village’s inundated ruins become a marine habitat.
The salt landscape continues to grow.
The village expands into the Gulf.
The salt landscape continues to grow.
The village expands into the Gulf.
The salt landscape continues to grow.
The village expands into the Gulf.
The salt landscape continues to grow.
The village expands into the Gulf.
The salt landscape continues to grow.
The village expands into the Gulf.
The salt landscape continues to grow.
The village expands into the Gulf.
Year 2014
Year 2012 Year 2014 Year 2075
Year 2014 Year 2075
Year 2014 2075 Year
Courtyards are filled with a concrete liner.
Year 2
Landscape growth infrastructure is inserted.
Year 5
Year 2075 Year 2075
Courtyards become buoyant as tides rise.
Year 2077 Year 2075
Year 2075 Year 2077
Year 2077 Year 2075
Year 10
Year 2077 Year 2125 21?? Year
Salt landscape continues to develop.
Year 2077
Year 2125 21?? Year
Year 2077 Year 2125 21?? Year
Year 2125 21?? Year
Year 15 Year 2125 21?? Year
Courtyards sink, seed new landscape growth.
Year 2125 21?? Year
Year 25 Sabkha City grows above the inundated old Town.
60
05: SCENE 1: SABKHA CITY
Year 2075
Linear Oasis
Desertification
Al Ruwais
one-third
threatens
of
the
over
Earth’s
population and affects over 40% of its land area. Over twelve million hectares of arable land is 03
lost
every
Al Dhakira
year
to
desert
encroachment.
01
Dukhan
The
02
Linear
hybrid Projected Area of Urban Growth
Lusail
infrastructure integrated
Doha
Proposed Doha Metro
05: SCENES AND SPECULATIONS: FUTURE CITIES
sprawl It
Umm Sa’id
is
that
a
provides
solutions
problems
of
resource Al Wakra
Proposed GCC Railway
Oasis
botanical-mechanical
scarcity, at
to
the
desertification,
a
and
regional
serves
as
sandstorms,
a
a
urban scale.
barrier
to
self-sustaining
source of water and food, and a limit to urban growth. After the construction of its most basic infrastructure, the Linear Oasis can passively collect water from the
atmosphere,
supporting Al Dhakira
A
Dukhan
Al Dhakira
B
agriculture,
live-work settlement, and transit Al Dhakira infrastructure.
Dukhan
Dukhan Lusail
Lusail
Doha
Lusail
C
Doha
Doha
Proposed Doha Met
01
local
subsequently
Proposed Doha Met
Proposed Doha Met
02
03
Transit Hub
Market
Bridge
Transit hubs are located at the intersections of Linear Oasis and existing transit infrastructure, and the proposed GCC railway.
Linear Oasis is paired with an open air market in locations where the wall is an urban growth barrier. Fresh produce from the Oasis is transported here for sale.
Where Linear Oasis crosses water and other difficult terrain, it serves as a springboard onto which new transit or power infrastructure can be attached.
61
Construction +1 year
Agriculture +5 years
+5 Years Agriculture
Transit & Infrastructure +15 years
+10 Years Transit
Settlement +25 years
+15 Years Settlement
05: SCENE 2: LINEAR OASIS
+0 Years Construction
Linear Oasis Phasing
Construction of the wall seeds the development of a new, liveable territory Northwest of Doha, Qatar. Irrigation and transit infrastructure ensure liveability while the wall itself defines an urban growth boundary. 62
= ale Sc
1:1 x10 -9
500mm
750mm
250mm
875mm
Water-collecting Hydrophobic Panel
Panel-Frame Connection
Panel Aggregation Floral Irrigation
05: SCENES AND SPECULATIONS: FUTURE CITIES
Systems
Linear Oasis employs a system of water-collecting surfaces to harvest ambient moisture in the air, and directs the collected water towards irrigation for agriculture and flora. 63
Tubular-steel Frame
Drought-resistant Planting
Water-collecting Panelized Surface
Panel Aggregation Corner Detail
05: SCENE 2: LINEAR OASIS
Water-collecting Hydrophobic Panel
Corner Detail Surface Panel Aggregation
Details
The panels aggregate to form a water collection surface that feeds an agricultural irrigation system.
64
05: SCENES AND SPECULATIONS: FUTURE CITIES
Rig-Tower: Doha, Qatar
The Rig-Tower becomes a new addition to the Doha skyline, constructed at blazing speed—even by Gulf standards—and at a lower cost than any structure of its size. 65
Infrastructure
Rig
Storage
Refinery
Pipeline
Program
Agriculture
Amusement
05: SCENE 3: PETRO-FIT
Commute Reversal
Construction
Education
Mall
Skyscraper
Petro-fit Matrix
Infrastructural possibilities are paired with programmatic opportunities as a first step toward imagining architectural futures for a Post-Oil Gulf. 66
1500 m
1000 m
500 m
05: SCENES AND SPECULATIONS: FUTURE CITIES
0m Empire State Building
Sears Tower
Burj Khalifa
Rig Tower
There are 120 offshore rigs in the Gulf. Together they measure 307,006
m2 (3,304,582 ft ) in area. 2
Rig Tower: Module + Assemblage
Platforms in the Gulf are designed to drill in relatively shallow waters, and to be self-propelled. Each of the rigs three pylons is retractable, allowing for the platform to move itself to a new drilling location as needed. 67
05: SCENE 3: PETRO-FIT
“Rig Tower” Detail
68
▲
The “High-Rise of Homes” becomes reality in the Gulf as oil derricks are repurposed for a novel residential development project.
06: THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE
SECTION (THEATRE-MACHINE)
69
06 THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE Architecture + Drama Collaborative Studio in cooperation with Theatre for a New Audience, New York Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA. TFANA, New York, NY Professors Hal Hayes, Dick Block, and Peter Cooke, OAM Fall 2012
“I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across an empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.”
Peter Brook The organizational diagram of the archetypal theatre building reserves the performance chamber as the sole intersection of public & private, theatre & patron, reality & illusion. The Theatre for a New Audience proposes an alternative diagram that instigates moments of synchronistic programmatic cross-pollination by rearranging the theatre’s constituent programmatic components according to hyperrationalized adjacencies and functional efficiencies.
70
06: THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE
Lobby & Roof Performance Garden
Interspatial relationships are established through curated visual and surface continuities. Spaces unfold one into the next.
71
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Cafe Lobby Patron’s Lounge Production Technical Terrace / Garden Forecourt & Performance Space Auditorium (Thrust)
4
4
3 5
1
7
2
6
Orchestra Level Plan
The raised lobby volume consolidates the theatre’s social functions onto a single horizontal plane.
72
06: THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE
8
Performance Garden
Tension Grid / Production Space
Transverse Section
Performance Chamber
The performance chamber is flanked on one side by a corridor that enables free circulation while carefully preserving public-private relationships. Space required above the chamber for technical needs sympathetically accommodates the depth of the planted roof terrace.
N/S Corridor
Back of House
06: THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE
Performance Chamber
The performance chamber gathers an audience of 299 into an intimately scaled space. No seat is more than 30’ from the center of the stage.
73
Performers
Public
Composite
Program Scheme
Programmatic juxtapositions drive the architecture’s formal-spatial manifestation. Functions often religiously separated are brought into contact, creating charged and dynamic zones of activity. 74
06: THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE
Production
06: THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE
In Context
The Theatre for a New Audience will be flanked by new, massive residential towers in coming years, meanwhile it is a dynamic presence on Flatbush Avenue. 75
Plan +096 (Roof)
Performance Garden
Plan +056
Atrium Conference Room
Offices
Plan +034
06: THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE
Upper Balcony Seating
Terrace / Garden
Technical Lobby
Outdoor Performance Technical Gallery
Plan +015 Lobby Tickets Cafe Production
76
â–˛
Outdoor Performance
07: AL WAKRAH VILLAGE HOUSING
SITE PLAN
77
07 AL WAKRAH VILLAGE HOUSING Gulf Urbanism + Architecture Design Studio in collaboration with Qatar Museum Authority Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, Doha, QR Professors Rami el Samahy, Kelly Hutzell. Spring 2012
A proposal for the integration of new housing above the Emir’s reconstructed historical village in Al Wakrah, Qatar. The existing architectural condition on site speaks to the village’s historical social dynamics. The urban fabric is defined by the organic aggregation of inwardly focused courtyard units. As a result, the village is an archipelago of introverted courtyard houses within an intricate network of circulation and social spaces, the sikka. The proposal seeks to subvert this urban paradigm by introducing a second layer urbanism to the site. The integration of new housing above the village’s historic fabric allows for gradations of public and private space to occur vertically, liberating the ground plane as a continuous network of public spaces.
78
AH VILLAGE HOUSING COURTYARDS Parti
Housing Units and Corridors Housing
AL WAKRAH VILLAGE HOUSING CIRCULATI
Circulation Circulation
Community Courtyard Public Space
Communal Space Spaces Communal
Existing Buildings Existing Structures
VILLAGE HOUSING SECTION
Ground Plan Ground Plan
07: AL WAKRAH VILLAGE HOUSING Community Courtyard
Public CorridorÂ
Garden
Apartment
Semi-Private Terrace
Site
The existing architectural condition is considered a material landscape that the project may augment and exploit. The new intervention generates a mat-urbanism that opens the possibility for new modes of interaction between users and their environment.
2m 0m Scale 1:100
4m
6m
8m
79
10m
Efficiency
Studio
AL WAKRAH VILLAGE HOUSING BIRD’S EYE 2-Bedroom
07: AL WAKRAH VILLAGE HOUSING
1-Bedroom
Housing
Al Wakrah's existing condition is the result of a decades-long accretion of units following ad hoc logics. The new housing proposal contributes to this complex system by adding yet another layer. 80
07: AL WAKRAH VILLAGE HOUSING Student Housing
Staff Housing
Hotel
Family Housing
Communities
The housing project is itself comprised of four smaller communities, each set in relation to a public space, and each stitched together by the historical village below. 81
KRAH VILLAGE HOUSING CIRCULATION Roof Terrace Roof Terraces
Roof Terraces Main Level
Housing Units
Interstitial Space Private Gardens
Ground Level
Public Private
Terraces: Diagram + Model / Perspective
Public spaces of nested scales and varying degrees of privacy are integrated throughout. At the terrace level, above the housing units, a continuous roof-scape allows for neighborly interaction. 82
07: AL WAKRAH VILLAGE HOUSING
Public Ground
07: AL WAKRAH VILLAGE HOUSING
Tectonic Scheme
A system of pre-cast structural elements pairs with a modular shading system to ensure rapid expansion and a multitude of shading possibilities. 83
AL WAKRAH VILLAGE HOUSING STRUCTURE Shading Shading Components
Prefabricated Structure Frame
Existing buildings Extant Structures
Extant Plan
Ground Plan
07: AL WAKRAH VILLAGE HOUSING
Prefabricated Housing Unitsunits
Project Assembly
84
▲
The scheme’s structural module allows for a delicate integration of new architectural features with the historical context, while maximizing architectural variety.
08: FRICK ENVIRONMENTAL CENTER
ENTRY
85
08 FRICK ENVIRONMENTAL CENTER Landscape + Architecture Studio
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA Professors Christine Mondor, Jennifer Gallagher Fall 2011
At present, the south end of Frick Park is a tract of wetland under-utilized by the city of Pittsburgh and its inhabitants. Disconnected from the rest of the park by an expressway overpass, the area has become a polluted landscape. The project creates a series of programmed surfaces that provide a linkage between the more well-trafficked areas of Frick Park and the forgotten portion to the south. The architecture augments the user’s access to, and understanding of, place by synthesizing spatial relationships between the architecture and its environs. The environmental center is organized as a landscape transect. The architecture both responds to, and acts upon, the landscape along its length. The user is thus immersed in a dialogue that instills an appreciation of the ecological diversity inherent to the area. Educational spaces are dispersed along the building’s length, each focused on a specific ecological condition, and landscape space.
86
08: FRICK ENVIRONMENTAL CENTER
Plans
Building as transect: the environmental center extends itself across the site, instigating moments of dialogue with a range of landscape ecologies. 87
08: FRICK ENVIRONMENTAL CENTER
Perspective, Section
Architecture’s relationship to nature is interrogated in a number of spaces. Classrooms function as lenses onto specific landscape ecologies, while courtyards envelop extant site features. 88
Nine Mile Run Classroom
Forest Classroom
Wetlands Classroom
Meadow Classroom
08: FRICK ENVIRONMENTAL CENTER
Skin Diagram / Perspective Section
The site is brought under, over, and through the center. The building's perforated copper screen functions as a trellis to encourage flora growth. 89
Green Roof Native groundcover + perennials
Green Roof Board-form concrete hardscape Ipe wood deck
Concrete slab
Glazing
Performative skin Perforated copper
Tectonic Scheme
The Environmental Center's lithic tectonics are a blank surface to be colored and manipulated by the environmental context. The enclosure system mediates the 'hard' structure's relationship to environment. 90
08: FRICK ENVIRONMENTAL CENTER
Structural Frame
acer saccharum sugar maple
Acer saccharum Sugar maple acer saccharum sugar maple
populus grandidentata
gymnocladus dioicus
platanus acerifolia
fraxinus nigra
Populus grandidentata Bigtooth aspen
Gymnocladus dioicus Kentucky coffeetree
Platanus acerifolia London plane
Fraxinus nigra Black ash
populus grandidentata
gymnocladus dioicus
platanus acerifolia
fraxinus nigra
bigtooth aspen
bigtooth aspen
kentucky coffeetree
kentucky coffeetree
london plane
london plane
black ash
black ash
pennisetum
fountain grass
Pennisetum Fountain grass pennisetum
fountain grass
08: FRICK ENVIRONMENTAL CENTER
Planting / Greenhouse
A demonstration greenhouse is situated at the south end of the site. Workshops and public programs are conducted here.
91
Site Conditions Forward Ave
Nine Mile Run I376 Overpass
Ecology Forest
Wetlands Meadow
Use
Pedestrian
Movement
Vehicular
Parti
Site Diagrams
The site is read as a series of forces and contingencies that define a diagram for the architectural
92
08: FRICK ENVIRONMENTAL CENTER
Park Boundaries
Meadow Classroom
Greenhouse
Library
Cafe
08: FRICK ENVIRONMENTAL CENTER
Forward Avenue
Nine Mile Run Stream
Section / Model
The building unfolds along a series of linear paths that cut through, over, and beneath the building.
93
Lobby
Meeting Room
Art Park
08: FRICK ENVIRONMENTAL CENTER
Nine Mile Run Creek
Classroom
94
â–˛
Each of the four classrooms functions as a lens focused onto a specific landscape zone and its attendant issues.
09: SACO LAKE BATHS + SCHOOL FOR DANCE
CALDARIUM
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09 SACO LAKE BATHS + SCHOOL FOR DANCE Material Tectonics Studio Projects Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA Professors Jeremy Ficca and Tom Price Spring 2011
PROJECT 1: SACO LAKE BATHS The Bath project investigates the role of the building envelope as mediator between environment and spatial experience. The user encounters a series of spaces in which the relationships between self, architecture, and exterior condition are transformed. The hiker’s first impression of the spa is of an excavated monolith, an outcropping of rock in the forested hillside. A long bridge provides a singular pathway between natural and constructed environment, reinforcing the architecture’s role as experiential mediator. Upon entering, the user moves downward through the building, confronting a series of spatial episodes within a concrete structure loosely-bound by a gabion envelope. The user finds the lowest level inundated with water, a grotto space in which one is alternately isolated from, and exposed to the environment. A pair of light wells illuminate the baths while simultaneously inviting the climate into the lowest depths of the building.
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+055 09: SACO LAKE BATHS
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A visit to the Baths involves a sequence of mediated experiences of the environment. Moving down the building towards the baths, the user's experience of their environment becomes increasingly unmediated, visceral. 97
Frigidarium
Changing/Lockers
Caldarium
09: SACO LAKE BATHS
Entry
Section / Corridor
Throughout, the gabion wall functions as a mediator between interior and exterior. A stone wall suddenly luminous, the gabions filter sunlight into the complex. 98
09: SACO LAKE BATHS
Entry / Tepidarium
Upon entry an enormous aperture frames the user's view of the landscape beyond. In the tepid-bath, filtered sunlight reflects onto cast-concrete walls hanging just above the surface of the water. 99
Gabion wall, steel-framed Structural steel bridge
09: SACO LAKE BATHS
Site-cast concrete
Axonometric / Model
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The building's tectonic scheme carefully separates two systems: the superstructure, and enclosure. All of the surfaces kinaesthetically engaged by the user are in cast concrete, while the gabion wall, generator of visual affect, is always just out of reach
09: SCHOOL FOR DANCE
URBAN SITUATION
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The circulation element unites the school’s three main functions (performance, education, and administration) by eliciting a different attitude toward each. The path circles around the performance space, allowing a range of perspectives. The circulation cuts diagonally through the school, creating a series of smaller spaces centered around a generous stair. At the highest level, the pathway brushes against the administrative area before letting onto a public roof terrace. Throughout the building, the integrity of the horizontal floor plate is interrogated as cuts and folds are introduced to generate inter-spatial continuity and an architecture that prompts the engagement of the body.
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09: SCHOOL FOR DANCE
PROJECT 2: SCHOOL FOR DANCE The project assembles a set of programs (too large for the site) in a vertical composition. A stable form contains a range of disparate programs, united by a zig-zagging circulation path that maximizes interaction between each. The architecture is rendered legible to the urban condition as the facade hides or reveals public and private spaces.
Screen
Glazing
09: SCHOOL FOR DANCE
Structure
Concrete
Models / Tectonic Strategy
The building’s composition is conceptualized as an interplay of four autonomous systems whose collision and cooperation yields the architecture’s final form. 103
administration
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GALLERY
09: SCHOOL FOR DANCE
FLY
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Plans
A serpentine circulation trajectory twists and unfolds through the building. Programs and vistas form a cinematic series of images presented to the user. 104
Administration
Mixing Chamber
Studios
09: SCHOOL FOR DANCE
Gallery
Lobby
Auditorium
Flyloft
Perspective Section
The generic slab is cut and torqued at each level, opening unexpected vistas between distinct levels and programs.
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structure
administration
circulation
Administration
School
school
Theater
performance
Circulation
Program
09: SCHOOL FOR DANCE
Structure
Diagrams / Mixing Chamber
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The collision of structure, circulation, and program create dynamic spaces between areas of activity.
10: WHITE CUBE, GREEN MAZE
INSTALLATION VIEWS
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10 WHITE CUBE, GREEN MAZE: NEW ART LANDSCAPES Heinz Architectural Center Carnegie Museum of Art Curatorial Intern, Pittsburgh, PA May-July 2011
White Cube, Green Maze: New Art Landscapes presents, in six case studies, the emergence of a new museum typology characterized by the synthesis of architecture, landscape design, and art in situ. The show presented the Olympic Sculpture Park by Weiss+Manfredi, USA; Raketenstation by Raimund Abraham at Stiftung Insel-Hombroich, Germany; Jardin Botanico de Culiacan, by Taller de Operaciones Ambientales and Tatiana Bilbao, Brazil; the Grand Traiano Art Complex by Topotek 1, HHF Architects, and Johnston Marklee, Italy; and the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, with work by Tadao Ando and SANAA, Japan. In addition to models and original drawings, the exhibition showcased original photographs created by architectural photographer Iwan Baan.
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Curatorial Internship, with Raymund Ryan, Curator of Architecture, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Provided design consultation and digital modeling expertise. The show travelled to Yale School of Architecture after opening at Carnegie Museum.
BIOGRAPHY
Phillip Denny (b. 1991) is a designer working in architecture, graphics, research, writing, editing, and curating. He expects to graduate in May 2014 with a B.Arch degree from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. Since 2013 he has been the Chief Editor of inter·punct, a student-led journal for architecture theory and discourse. Phillip has worked at over,under in Boston, MA, where he developed the Future Cities project on urbanism in the Gulf. He has also worked at Carnegie Museum of Art, where he assisted in curating the White Cube, Green Maze: New Art Landscapes, and Maya Lin exhibitions. Most recently, Phillip was a researcher at the Columbia Laboratory for Architectural Broadcasting where he researched, wrote, and designed “Mechanization of the Office,” for Volume a quarterly magazine on architecture founded by Ole Bouman, Rem Koolhaas, and Mark Wigley. Phillip is currently developing an architecture thesis, Campus, which interrogates the contemporary university’s architectural, urban, and institutional form. Phillip lives in Pittsburgh and New York City.