PORTFOLIO
Selected Works / M. Arch
Andrew Luttrell
Preface:
“An architect’s function is to help man forget his troubles, and enrich his spirit. We must not lose sight of our task.” - Paul Rudolph
Andrew posits that architecture is a service based profession. Architectural designers have the opportunity and responsibility to turn care for our neighbors into three dimensional, spatial interventions. Put into practice, this is often an exercise in empathy and listening. By approaching design problems with both a relational and a critical eye, Andrew believes that designers can tap into architecture’s unique ability to address and respond to human issues.
Soli Deo gloria.
Weeks. ADS 7, Fall 2024
The Tree_Office is an office+park. Located in San Jose, CA, this building is home to three different offices: a law office, an advertising and PR firm, and a tech company. For reference purposes, these businesses were represented by the TV shows Suits, Madmen, and Hooli from Silicon Valley, respectively. The office program, daylight, and publicity needs of each firm varies significantly, meaning that this building is truly multi-sided. The given program called for 300,000 sf of office and a corresponding 300,000 sf park volume in the project, for an architecture that would truly integrate office with park. Reaching 435 feet tall, the building packs 22 stories of interior programmed space and two “pass-through” park levels. These levels provide a protected area for employees to retreat to during their day at the office. Similar retreat areas are available across the exterior terraces of the building, with interior terraces functioning as exterior workspaces. A landmark in the San Jose skyline the Tree_Office presents a more integrated framework for workplace design.
Polemic Precedent Collages
1. “Tethered Recursion” - KRJDA’s Union Carbide Headquarters+ Gaudi’s Park
Guell
2. “Pulled Apark” - KRJDA’s Ford Foundation Building + Arriola & Fiol’s Placa de Virrei Amat
Passeig de Sant Joan
Concept
Circulation
Formal Massing:
Composing the tree office
Public + Trunk
Amenity + Meeting
Branches + Office Amenity
Large Office Support
Medium Office Support Small
5’
50’
Floor 7: Fitness
5’
50’
Floor 14: Office (Medium)
Andrew Luttrell
Final Models
1/32” scale tectonic model
1/64” scale massing model
Batt insulation
Rigid insulation
Ceiling hanger
Hung ceiling tile
Irrigation/drainage pipes
1’ deep soil
Gravel layer
Drainage mat
Waterproofing membraine
Fascia
Double-pane glazing
Double-pane glazing
Rigid insulation
Concrete waffle slab
Fascia
Hand rail
Raised floor system
Plan
Taxonomy & Area Table
Gillham Park Urban Transitional Living Center
14 Weeks. ADS 5, Fall 2023
The Gillham Park Urban Transitional Living Center (UTLC) is a medium-term residential facility for at-risk youth in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. The specific user group of the building is those who are aging out of the foster care system, as they are often vulnerable individuals. In order to prepare these youths to enter the workforce, the program includes spaces for training in ceramics, woodworking, and the culinary arts. As a theoretical framework for healing spaces, this building uses techniques of Kaplan’s Attention Restoration Theory (A.R.T.) to guide specific moments and general gestures of the building. The core tenet of A.R.T. is that nature helps the body regulate the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The four elements of A.R.T. are being away, fascination, extension, and compatibility. Being away is the feeling of separation from the thing that brings stress. Fascination is a sort of effortless soft focus, and is easily achieved by watching a flame dance, or watching trees move in the wind. Extension describes the feeling that an interior space is a part of the outdoors. Finally, compatibility is a recognition that someone’s social environment plays a large role in helping them decompress from the stresses of daily life.
Early Design Work:
Framing the Site - Important Adjacencies
Early Exterior Perspective
Key locations for different uses of the site
Final Deliverables
Buildability Studies:
Isometric Cutaway of Floor and Facade
ECOWAS in Topeka
Bowman Design Competition Winner. 8 Weeks. ADS 3, Fall 2022
The ECOWAS Cultural Center and Consulate is the political and social interface of the Economic Council Of West African States (ECOWAS) with the USA in Topeka, Kansas. The building serves as an artistic hub in which West African Artists are given a chance to have their work displayed for foreign audiences for the first time. Politically, the consulate housed on the third floor presents West Africans an opportunity to be protected and be given a louder voice in Topeka. The building concept was to represent West Africa through dance and Kansas through landscape. Within the hundreds of West African cultures, dance is used ceremonially, grotically, and of course for fun. Dance, however remains a constant across every major tribe. With dance as a shared cultural custom across West Africa, it becomes a “cultural signifier” for West Africa at the scale of this project. The polyrhythmic columns and articulated facade are both nods to the physicality of dancing. Beyond physical architectural tropes, this building aims to establish a precedent for architecture addressing cultural integration and representation. Encouraging an ever-deepening engagement with foreign peoples and ideologies, this project serves as a model towards an architecture of celebration, service, and integration.
The Problem: Integration
ECOWAS
The Economic Council of West African States
The Client, a political entity,
A collective of fifteen states in West Africa, representing the best the world has to offer in terms of agriculture and grain production.
A model for successful resource distribution and collective growth.
Topeka, Kansas
The Site,
A center of politics in an agriculturally significant state. A representative of the U.S. and of the state of Kansas.
A choice location for the interface between the U.S. and a community of Nations with fast-growing agricultural prowess.
Final Diagrams
Introduction
Interaction
Formalization
Design Methods: Model Making
ECOWAS in Topeka
West Elevation
North Elevation
14 Weeks. ADS 6, Spring 2024
In Spring 2024, El Dorado Architects led a group of 8 students in a research-based ADS 6 studio. The fundamental goal of the studio was to design a materials laboratory for the upcoming Gateway South development by Good Developments Group. Sited in the historic Crunden Martin East building in Saint Louis, MO, the project aimed to understand what tools and resources a student, designer, or scientist would need to research a material and become an expert in it. The idea was that if you can understand what is needed, you can design space for it. The modus operandi for discovering these needs was to put ourselves in the shoes of a material researcher and undergo a rigorous investigation into a material. At first, each student engaged with multiple materials to get a feel for different processes and procedures for research and representation. Then, each student chose one material in which to become an expert. I selected the earthen adobe as my material of study, and this material dictated the last 10 weeks of my semester.
The structure of the semester was a series of exercises leading up to a grand exhibition of all student work for the crew of GDG and El Dorado in the Crunden Martin East building. The first project was daily sketches. The second was aptly labeled “cubes,” followed by “re-search” and modeling of a material for exercises 2 and 3. My re-search was a digital and analog process of getting to know adobe by making it and building with it. This research led directly to my final design, explained on the penultimate spread of this project. (pages 58 & 59)
Exercise 00: Daily Sketchbook
A daily sketch was composed to record processes, discoveries, and follies throughout the semester. In a semester of material research and highly conceptual study, sketching discoveries, theories, and questions quickly proved the most effective way to quickly document and evolve ideas. Sketching has been an essential part of my design process throughout my academic and professional studies, and remains a core practice of my life as an amateur documentarian.
Shared below are a few favorite sketches which diagrammed ideas about materials, construction processes, and digital doppelgängers. (Explained on the following spread.) The sketches below are hypothesizing about digital representation possibilities for steel, earthen adobe, and TPMS cubes. In the end, I was the only designer in my studio who decided to continue sketching every weekday, as my love for craft took over.
Exercise 01: Cubes + Digital Doppelgängers
The following two spreads document various material studies performed briefly by composing 2” cubes of each material. The second step of each material study was the construction of “Digtal Doppelgängers,” designed to capture the essence of a material in a digital space beyond just the visual.
This first cube was made from Rockite portland cement and a fine countertop concrete aggregate. The digital doppelgänger shows a Quickcrete bag with a formula on it. This formula describes the chemical, aggregate, and fibrous composition of the concrete mix, as well as the curing time for the concrete to reach full compressive strength.
This second cube was actually an analog doppelgänger of the TPMS cube seen to the right. The analog cube is made of a sea sponge. This material was chosen due to it’s self-supporting interwoven structure. This structure allows the sponge to maintain a rigidity and stability when dry, despite using very little material to compose itself. This behavior mimics the digitally modeled gyroid cube to the right. The gyroid is a specific kind of TPMS (Triply Periodic Minimal Surface) that creates an extremely strong but lightweight and efficient structure through a repeating, interwoven network of surfaces.
Exercise 01: Cubes + Digital Doppelgängers
This third cube was cut from pink form (rigid insulation) and had holes drilled from the corners of the cube to the center. Black and gold spray paints were then applied to the cube, specifically in the drilled holes. The final form is the result of chemical reactions between the foam and a solvent in the spray paint that causes a bubbling melting.
Controlled decay became the conceptual driver for a series of digital doppelgängers. These were highly experimental photos made through a technique called data-bending. This specific set of photos was shot as .RAW files, which were then brought into an audio editor. Audio effects (reverb, echo, reverse) were applied to the file, which was then reexported as .RAW data. Once edited, a simple file format change in photoshop allowed me to view the final products of each iteration.
This final cube is 8 cubic inches of solid cold-rolled steel bought from Metal by the Foot in KC. After purchase, this cube was sanded and polished to a mirror-finish. The digital doppelgänger that accompanies this cube is a tape loop. Tape loops are made by deconstructing a cassette tape, adding spools to the interior of the case, and winding a single loop of tape through the spools. I made 3 total tape loops for this project with recording lengths of 7.5, 11.75, and 14.25 seconds. The tape looping process was chosen for it’s visual resemblance to the manufacturing of cold-rolled steel in a factory.
Adobe was selected for it’s indigenous histories, material/insulative properties, and simplicity of production. I was able to produce around 75 adobe bricks during my personal time throughout the latter 10 weeks of the semester. I used clay and sand from the riverbed in Ogden, KS. Adobes are typically sun-baked and require no firing, however the wet springtime conditions of Manhattan, KS precluded that natural drying process. Instead, I enlisted 8 different ovens at 170° F. for 12 hours each. This low temperature helped dry out the bricks without charring the MDF formworks.
Exercise 03: Model
Final Wall Assembly
Column and Formworks
Tabletop
The final pinwheel design of the adobe model was based on an iterative form-finding process. The core of this process was a study of the brick as a unit of measurement and as a representation of the Crunden Marten Building’s unique history. The second study that motivated this form was a deep dive into tessellation, tiling, and other repetitive material behaviors. The brick is a unit of material specifically designed at the scale of the human hand. Brick, therefore, is especially capable of reorganization and reorientation into alternate patterns that create visual variation, embody structural concepts, and give opportunity for architectural expression.
Other Works:
Collage
A series of collages translating notes from readings about collages. Left: collage of the short film “The Boy with the Red Balloon”
Thank you to those who love me, and to those who push me. I would not be here without you.
-Andrew
Andrew Luttrell
5th Year Architecture Kansas State University acluttre@ksu.edu