AARON KOOPAL PORTFOLIO 2023

AARON KOOPAL PORTFOLIO

SELECTED WORKS 2023

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The myth of architecture is that it’s polished, that a building is neatly organized with absolute mathematical perfection with little tolerance for error. Yet this simply isn’t the case. Behind the graphical cleanliness of architectural drawings, models, and diagrams is a hidden chaos that is rarely conveyed through the final product: process. To hide this design condition — the process of making — is to deny the rationality that makes architecture worthwhile. It’s the imperfections of design that remind us who and what we are designing for. The way we think, solve, and iterate is what drives the things we create, and process — or the reminder of it — bring familiarity to the very human condition of making.

The caveat is that process is inherently messy, yet at the same time, a form of beauty. A form that lacks finality yet still somehow conveys a complete story. As a designer, I firmly believe that the process of making something is just as important as the thing itself; it tells the story of how something came to be as well as why something is the way it has become.

The following work is what I believe to reflect these notions.

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PART AND WHOLE Fall 2021 Partner: Griffin Lilly 2021 DLR COMPETITION WINNER At its most basic form, a connection is the negotiation of material. When two pieces come together, each must acknowledge the other. It tells a story of compromise, justification, and final resolution: negotiation creates dialogue, and dialogue creates story.

This project seeks to take advantage of these qualities, thereby using these negotiations to create a narrative about our own architecture – its process and context. By doing so, we have developed a framework of understanding architecture as a system of parts.

Speaking on strictly material terms, a building is simply a series of parts. Parts are assembled with other parts – creating systems – systems are used to create forms – forms then which dictate light, shadow, mass, void, and other phenomena.

Overall, this project is a holistic reinterpretation of the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Downtown Chicago. We sought to imagine a philosophical response to the post-modern qualities of the existing architecture that is both hostile and unnavigable and remedy many of the existential issues the museum faces due to these issues.

Each piece plays a subtle, yet significant role in the larger makeup of what is. The whole cannot exist without each of the parts. As we examine pieces and parts more closely within the realm of architecture, we’ve began to notice that they tell a story about what is. Material has the ability to show process, create moments of reflection, and speak to broader themes of making.

In addition to this, we are emphasizing a didactic approach to the proposal as both a framework for considering the process of the renovation itself as well as a creating an architecture that is honest with its material conditions as to emphasize the importance of tactility, rawness, and the human touch.

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What’s left is delicate relationship between the part and it’s whole. These two aspects of architecture contribute to the subtle arrangement of material, their connections, and overall strategy.

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VIGIL & THE GREEN MAN Fall 2022 Partners: Gabriela Robles-Munoz, Oliver Goché, Jia Lan Chow 2023 SUBSTANCE COMPETITION FINALIST Setting the stage for Vigil was a labor of love, a process laden with consequence and unpredictability - in every step of making, we were concerned not only with crafting an assembly, but allowing the assembly to craft itself. The “rig” as we call it, is a drawing apparatus in more ways than one. It's a drawing - and it creates one. The following is a poem written to accompany this project: Combustion and fire are stark reminders of our vulnerability. Flame cannot truly be controlled.

Fire, and the adjacent, ever-present fear of being burned, are reminders that we are alive. That we can only control so much that even a flame contained to a candle, will still cause wax to drip.

Never disappearing, simply changing form.

Transferring - becoming a document of its own change - just as we do. The vigil honors this change. A reverent acknowledgement of what has passed, and how it never truly disappears - it simply changes form.

Total darkness.

A sudden match strike. The warmth of candlelight - shaping the space as eyes start to adjust. The sharing of flame - one candle, two finally, a third. A chanting begins as the flame is dispersed. Three more candles. six, nine, twelve - intensity rising as the space fills with smoke. Flame keeps spreading, this time inverted - hot wax cries out. Declaring new form.

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Candles drip and wax collects - the fence catching fire that drips from the wicks. The scent of campire fills your nostrils, smoke creates a haze that simplifies the equation.

It calls attention to the roof leaks - where sun cuts through, dwarfing candlelight.

Hatches, unseen, open at a cue. evacuating smoke - bringing clarity once more.

Inverted candles begin to drop. Their own brightness becoming their demise. They join their siblings on the ground - evidence that what they endured is only natural.

Flames grow tired, begging for dark once again. Their performance seeks an end either naturally or by force. The bringer of flame circles, extinguishing sources. One, two, three - gusts of breath tease the dark again.

The end draws near, fingers plucking out flame. the chanting continues - for one final breath. One candle remains, the single source of light. Eyes adjust once more. This time to darkness.

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DIA: RESIDENCY Spring 2021 Partner: Gabriela Robles-Munoz 2021 BWBR COMPETITION FINALIST

Art and architecture are mediums that, through their creation and expression, are a reflection of their makers and the circumstances they endure. The creation and final forms of each are laden with circumstance. The product cannot exist without the process.

This architecture is meant for those whose lived experiences inform the things they create, whether these creations are tangible artifacts, writings, spaces, or just thoughts.

The creative process is iterative, destructive, and highly personal. In order to create a residency that we felt could accommodate the needs and desires of creatives, we deliberately moved towards design decisions that would create open-ended, ambiguous spaces whose prescription would ultimately be determined through their usage.

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Those who inhabit this space, both through the things they create and the simple fact that they inhabit, participate in the relationship of what is to what can be.

The self, through presence, absence, and potential, is the link to the whole.

The occupation of the building affects the lives and processes of those within it, just as the occupants inform the program and subsequent usage of the space.

This architecture, through intentional exposure of its connections, details, layers, and inner workings, lays itself bare.

Transparency, layering, and repetition work together with subtle variation, through which varied details expose the fact that this structure is not a homogenous unity, but a heterogenous totality.

This totality, through its lack of explicit prescription, allows its inhabitants to contribute to what the space becomes.

Although it exists as an entity separate from those that interact with it, this architecture reaches its fullest potential when its inhabitants, though occupation, bring definition.

The material conditions of the space, through their consistent nature, fade into the background. Lack of interruption or ornamentation allow users to focus on how the space makes them feel. This quality contributes to the things created here – whose focus is on introspection and the varied individual experiences that occur within a shared reality.

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PIVOT WINDOW DETAIL SCALE - 1” : 1’

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E - 63: LAND ARCHIVE Fall 2020 Partner: Oliver Goché 2021 RICHARD F. HANSEN COMPETITION FINALIST E-63 is a future proposal that seeks to document, record, archive, and preserve the Midwestern landscape for future posterity.

There is no doubt that this region is rapidly changing in violent and existential ways as a result of mono-agricultural production, desertification, and an increasing strain on underground aquifers. From this, we have begun to imagine what the future of Midwestern landscapes look like; one where a hypothetical dust bowl has wiped out much of the existing ecological and cultural phenomena in the Midwest.

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With this in mind, we began to interview various demographics that occupy the Midwestern landscape with what they call home. We sought nothing more than to understand their lives and their stories through their own perspectives. From these interviews, we gain a frame of reference for the relationship that our architecture has to the ecological and cultural landscape of the Midwestern region, and how we can create ways to exemplify these stories.

Through this research, we realized that this landscape, and its ecology, is directly intertwined with the culture that encompasses it. In the Midwestern region, a threat to ecology is a threat to culture.

This project aims to capture these elements in the landscape before they are lost through methods of speculative documentation. These methods include the archiving of objects and the stories that are connected to them, projections of phenomena from throughout the landscape, as well as data from an already semi-in-place infrastructure that can record the landscape to the micro-scale of a singular seed.

By hypothesizing the future of data collection and its parallels to agricultural production, we sought to see how these stories, phenomena, and data may continue to be recorded for our posterity in the event that the Midwestern landscape we recognize today isn’t around anymore due to the existential threats it faces.

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What this experiment begins to do is set apart various spaces on this scar in which observance can happen. Together, they act as rooms for reflection of the stories, people, culture, and ecology of the landscape in the hopes to start converstions about the issues of food production and agriculture as a whole.

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The experiment sits just outside of Collins, Iowa. What remains today there today was once called the E-63 rail line and was abandoned in the 1980s. Currently, the site sits defunct and unused - like a scar on the landscape.

All of these spaces are made up of semitransparent surfaces, in the hopes that site lines are minimally restricted to the surrounding land.

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