What might a city like Los Angeles, an endless fabric of houses and urban homesteads constructed upon the myopic promise of infinite land, limitless ecological bounty, and the hubris of the automobile, look like without its infrastructural straight-jackets?
In a future Los Angeles, where autonomous rideshare fleets have replaced private vehicles, online commerce has supplanted physical shopping, digital augmentation of humanity’s physical and cognitive capabilities is normalized and invisible, and where real-time drone delivery and removal of goods has made personal property and storage obsolete, the concept of housing would no longer remain a discrete typology. It would no longer be spatially and organizationally based upon the needs of the automobile, the nuclear family, the storage of private property, or legal and administrative boundaries, but instead around a broad vision of fluid urban community. Housing could be lighter and thinner than its thick-footprinted predecessors, far more customizable and systemically expandable, less reliant on mechanical systems, and more open to the outdoors. Moreover, housing would not be beholden to the spatial logics of anachronistic infrastructures such as deeds
1. The “perimeter” of the site as a legal and infrastructural framework is now irrelevant. The Spatial logic is instead the expandable 25 foot by 25 foot square grid.
2. The only infrastructure remaining is the light rail line, which has been extended and re-routed across the site due south: a 32 degree offset from the square grid.
and plats, rights of way, medians, crosswalks, and sidewalks.
This project re-imagines the urban ground plane as an uninterrupted public zone: a tiled field condition punctuated by a rhythm of collective and experientially programmed building modules. The last vestiges of private domesticity, sleeping and washing, are distributed freely within these programmed masses in temporally occupiable, loft configurations. While there is potential for an infinite number of module permutations, three module concepts—comprising one site tile—are expanded upon in architectural detail. Each module design is articulated around one experiential condition: Module A around solace and individual contemplation, module B around relaxation and recreation, and module C around communal gathering and social interaction. The project’s aspiration toward barrier-free urbanity is reflected by a material, aesthetic, and tectonic pursuit
3. All primary site circulation will be parallel or perpendicular to the North-South meridian established by the 32 degree infrastructural offset.
4. Each enclosed mass will be offset by 10 feet from a grid line in a minimum of one axial direction. These masses may not move obliquely.
of “thin-ness” and “light-ness.” All modules are constructed with lightweight and easily assembled components which not only minimize material thicknesses and the visual and physical separation between indoors and outdoors, but also decrease the layered complexity of building assemblies, reduce embodied energy, and eliminate the need for storage, furniture, and mechanical systems. Walls and floors are constructed with modular fiberglass reinforced polymer panels, alongside extruded structural profiles of the same material. Additionally, braided steel tension cables span across the open cavities of the panels, creating a multi-directional network of lateral support. The edge profiles of building elements and apertures are tapered to create the appearance of near-flatness, and material connections are detailed to enhance the somatic and visual effects of thinness and lightness through cantilevers, floating edges, visual reveals, and suspended planes.
5. Major site paths will be 5 ft wide, and made of pavers. Secondary paths are to be 3 ft wide and unpaved. Dimensions for all other built elements will be multiples of 5.
6. Tiles can aggregate in rows, each with an incremental offset of 5 feet from its adjacent row. A row cannot offset the same distance and in the same direction as adjacent rows.
GROUND FLOOR AND SITE PLAN
3RD FLR
2ND FLR
MODULAR FIEBRGLASS REINFORCED POLYMER PANEL SYSTEM
FRP STRUCTURAL PROFILES
DIEGETIC SYNCHRONI CITY
MONG KOK, HONG KONG SAR, CHINA
PROJECT TYPE: Academic (M. ARCH)
STUDIO: ARCH 8010, Prof. Esther Lorenz, Fall 2018
PROGRAM: To establish a critical and cinematic framework for spatially understanding the city of Hong Kong, to explore this framework through the production of a three minute film, and to translate this framework into the design of a mixed-use campus for an underutilized government-owned lot in bustling Mong Kok, Hong Kong. The proposal, based around the design of a new film school and public cinema, also includes a variety of community and commercial spaces such as a youth hostel, an elderly home, a recreation center, and a business incubator. Project duration: 14 weeks.
The contemporary city exists in a state of perpetual synchronicity, whereby incidental and serendipitous events and non-events are given a complex stage set through which they can overlap, intersect, and converge: together cultivating a sense of collective narrative and meaning. In Hong Kong, the overwhelming hyper-density of pedestrian activity and circulation, the intense interweaving of programmatic and spatial uses along public circulation corridors, and the multiple planes of elevational articulation facilitate spatial and temporal moments which heighten a participant’s sense of synchronicity within this urban theater. In this theater, however, the participants are both the actors and the audience members, and the mediating element is the spatial and temporal frame.
The architectural proposal comments upon this perceptual phenomenon, and aims to amplify it by envisioning the site as a spatial and temporal microcosm of the city. A host of programs (film school, public theater, community spaces, etc.) are woven together into a network via the extension of the existing elevated public walkway system, which serves as both urban connective tissue, as well as a fluid sequence of indoor and outdoor (formal and informal) stage sets. These urban “stages,” though comprised of countless individually unrelated stories and incidental happenings, take on the perception of a collective narrative--even spectacle on occasion--through the architectural curation of spatial convergences, temporal overlaps, sequential juxtapositions, and deliberately privileged visual connections.
AGE: 26, 32
ROLE: Domestic
SCENE O NE
In The Park"
MAIN CAST
ENSEMBLE CAST
ATTRACE Culinary Artiste
NAME: Tala and Jaslene
Houseworkers
FAVORITE FOOD: Pineapple Rice
ANSON Assoc. Professor ROLAND "Cultural Critic" BARLEY Facility Manager
PROGRAM + CIRCULATION
Street level circulation at Broadway junction is presently disjointed, confusing, and unsafe: particularly for pedestrians. The discordant confluence of elevated rail lines, mis-aligned street grids, and the Atlantic Avenue viaduct create disruptions and impasses in an already hostile and intimidating streetscape. Surrounded by such infrastructural cacophony, and a corresponding lack of street life, the site operates only as a transit connection: insular, and spatially divorced from the community below.
1. Makerspace
2. Observation Deck
3. Artisan Studio Space
4. Classrooms 5. Cafeteria
6. Industrial Viewing Theater
7. Public Plaza
8. Office Lobby
9. Shared Street Crossing
10. Long Island Railroad Station
11. Coffee Bar
12. Grocery / Market
13. Grocery Loading / Back-of-House
14. Street-Level Commercial Storefronts
15. Small Market Vendor Stall
16. Truck Loading Zone
17. Flexible Market Vendor Zone
18. Bus Stop
19. Gymnasium
20. Recreational Center
21. Athletic Swimming Pool
22. Commercial Kitchen
23. Cafe / Restaurant
24. Pool Deck
25. Shallow Children's Pool
26. General Community Pool
27. Deep Diving Pool
28. Stair-Ramp / Bleachers
29. Diving Steps
30. Auditorium / Theater
31. MTA Main Subway Entrance
32. Security Office
33. Community Spaces
34. MTA Back-of-House
35. Mail Room, HR Admin Back-of-House
36. Main Office Atrium / Lobby
37. Small Commercial Storefront
38. Flexible Community Rooms
39. Coat + Will-call
40. Reception for Auditorium / Theater
41. Back-of-House for Auditorium / Theater
42. Sloped Landform Ramp
43. Parking Garage Ramp
44. HRA Social / Communal Office Space
45. HRA Open-Plan Office Space
46. HRA Conference / Gathering Space
47. MTA Elevated Subway Concourse
To integrate the station with the surrounding community and the new HRA facility, we argue for a bi-axial site strategy based around three major moves. First, an occupiable landscape containing shared spaces between the community and the HRA which would act as both a neighborhood buffer to the detritus of the train-yard, as well as a strong pedestrian link between surrounding residential areas; second, a series of infill and adaptive re-use interventions dedicated to social, economic, and community amenities alongside and underneath the tracks of the L-train; and lastly, three HRA administration office towers which rise above the datum of the tracks: simultaneously advertising the new community junction to those arriving by train or passing by on the viaduct, operating as a legible and occupiable public connection between the subway transit hub of Broadway Junction and the Long Island Railroad, and a bridge over the streetscape impasse generated by the viaduct.
CORE AT THE CONFLUENCE
YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO, USA
PROJECT TYPE: Academic (M. ARCH)
STUDIO: ARCH 7010, Prof. Julie Bargmann, Fall 2017
PROGRAM: To propose a new urban paradigm for a shrinking postindustrial city, and to develop this paradigm through a series of strategic urban and architectural scale interventions. Project duration: 14 weeks.
Youngstown, Ohio was once a prosperous steel-producing town, and a symbol of 20th century America's manufacturing prowess. Decades of poor urban and infrastructural planning, combined with a severe lack of economic diversity, however, left it vulnerable to the subsequent forces of de-industrialization. Since its industrial peak in the late 1950s, the city has been rapidly shrinking in population, yet its footprint, form, and infrastructures have not adjusted and "right-sized" to match the scale and needs of its current economy, population, and demographics.
SHRINKING CITY / INACCESSIBLE CITY
The steel plants which once powered the city’s economy and anchored its urban form are long gone, yet the sites where they once stood along the Mahoning River remain barren, polluted, and sealed off from the outside. The surrounding urban fabric is littered with brownfield sites and industrial parks, and fragmented by fences, railway yards, and limited access highways which were built in the 1960s to bypass the city altogether. The result is an increasingly sparse, under-served, and isolated population—one whose remaining economic opportunities are hermetically contained within faceless, auto-centric, and monocultural industrial parks far from the historic city core, and neighborhoods they aim to serve.
"RE-WIRING" THE CITY
The aggregation of “right-sized” interventions could promote a larger pattern of strategic “corridor-ization” at the scale of the city. Such urban re-structuring would allow for a denser, and more vibrant urban fabric--even with a continued trajectory of population arbitrage.
"RIGHT-SIZING" INFRASTRUCTURE
A targeted strategy of removing over-scaled and obstructive infrastructures, and subsequently re-claiming and promoting finer, “right-sized” ones could harness the city’s trajectory of contraction to encourage greater population densities along resilient, mixeduse, and pedestrian-oriented corridors. To test such a strategy, I propose the dismantling of a one-mile stretch of Interstate-680 through the centrally located, industrial neighborhood of Mahoning Commons, and explore a range of opportunities for “right-sized” infrastructural intervention presented by this removal, all of which aim to establish tighter links between the adjacent land uses.
C - C
D - D
SECTION A - A
SECTION B - B
SECTION C - C
SECTION D - D
SECTION E - E
DWELLING: NOVA SCOTIA
UPPER PORT LATOUR, NOVA SCOTIA, CANADA
PROJECT TYPE: Academic (B.S. ARCH)
STUDIO: ARCH 411, Prof. Donald Koster, Fall 2013
PROGRAM: A private, seasonal retreat with a sauna and boat storage for a couple and three children on a large, forested, waterfront site. Wood construction. Project duration: 7 weeks.
The site plan is organized about the crossing of two prominent axes: the vehicular approach from the North, and the elevated pedestrian path leading Westward from the garage and boathouse towards the main house and waterfront beyond. The form, program, and circulation of the home is similarly organized about these two axes. The living, kitchen, and dining spaces are raised up to the second floor and oriented so as to take advantage of the expansive coastal view to the South and West. On the first floor, a guest suite and a sauna are separated from the family’s bedrooms by a covered breezeway. In addition to its programmatic function, this interstitial space serves as a framing device for the approaching visitor’s view towards the water, and as an invitation to that visitor to complete the journey and continue on to the end of the path.
