2009 Portfolio

Ben Regnier Portfolio 2002-2009

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Ben Regnier

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3654 Beethoven Los Angeles CA 90066 310 902 0714 bregnier@gmail.com

Objective....... A Project Architect position at a progressive architecture firm that will provide a creative outlet and opportunities for advancement in the future.

Experience.... May 2006 - Present

Marmol Radziner Prefab Los Angeles, CA Acted as Project Architect on several residential and retail projects. Aided in design process, built BIM models and worked on details in every division. Generated digital and hand renderings. Designed mechanical and plumbing systems. Prepared sets from ground up for client meetings, permit, and construction. Revit administrator and tutor for office. In charge of agency research. Prepared and presented office education seminars on prefab construction, building and zoning codes.

Obtained LEED AP credentials.

Projects: Palms Residence, Wada Residence, Chevlen Residence, Vince retail locations in New York and Los Angeles Preceptor: 2004-2005 Rogers Marvel Architects New York NY Worked directly with associates and principals on SD, DD, and CD set completion and coordination. Studied and presented programming options. Prepared presentations and documentation for environmental impact reports, RFQs and RFPs, as well as awards applications. Produced renderings and diagrams for presentations and team meetings. Built finish and study models in foamcore, wood, plastic, metal and many other media.

Projects: Westchester Reform Temple, Kate Spade stores, State Street townhouses, 350 West Broadway tower, American Can Lofts Intern: Summer 2003 DiMella Shaffer Boston MA Worked on DD and CD set completion and coordination. Built working and display models in foamcore. Organized and managed drawing sets and documentation for several projects.

Intern: Summer 2002 MBT Architecture* San Francisco CA Worked on CD red lines (floor plans / sections / elevations / finish plans). Made presentation drawings, and study and presentation models in foamcore. 3D CAD rendering work. Attended and recorded client and subcontractor meetings. Researched architectural products and acted as liaison with subcontractors. *MBT Architecture was recently acquired by Perkins + Will Intern: Summer 2001 Gould Evans Affiliates Kansas City MO Worked on construction drawings (floor plans / sections / details). Made drawings and layouts for client presentation and for publication.

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Ben Regnier

{

3654 Beethoven Los Angeles CA 90066 310 902 0714 bregnier@gmail.com

Skills.............. Physical: ink and pencil drafting, perspective drawings, woodworking, model building in paper, wood, metal, plastic, and other media.

Digital: Revit Architecture and MEP, AutoCAD, Form-Z, Rhino, 3DMAX, Adobe Suite, Microsoft Office Other: photography, videography, intaglio, welding, writing (editorial and fiction).

Education...... Rice University

2004-2006: B.Arch degree 1 year of preceptorship and 2 more graduate level studios. Entered in architectural competition while working. One semester spent abroad in Paris. Involved in Rice Building Workshop, a design-build studio affiliated with Project Row Houses in Houston. Recipient of Fossi Traveling Fellowship for best graduate level project.

Related coursework: architectural history and theory, documentary filmmaking, sustainability, professional practice.

2000-2004: BA in Architecture 4 years (8 semesters) of architecture studios, as well as required and elective courses in history and theory, materials, structures, and cultural criticism. Cumulative GPA of 3.75, studio GPA 3.85. AIA Certificate awarded at graduation as well as local travelling fellowship.

Related coursework: photography, videography, typography, intaglio and freehand drawing

Interests.........Dedicated husband and parent of twins.

Maintains an active interest in writing (fiction and nonfiction). Essays and short stories have been digitally published. Writing portfolio available upon request. Continued interest in photography and videography, especially as it relates to architecture and architectural theory. Main area of interest in all media is the intersection of physical reality and collective and individual memory.

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Ben Regnier

{

3654 Beethoven Los Angeles CA 90066 310 902 0714 bregnier@gmail.com

Contacts........Clover Lee: principal at davidclovers architects and Rice studio professor p: +39 331 403 5934 email: clover@davidclovers.com

Rob Rogers: principal, Rogers Marvel Architects p: 212 941 6718 f: 212 941 7573 email: rrogers@rogersmarvel.com

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Anatomy Laboratory - Galveston, TX - 2002

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The Black Art of Analog - Research Pamphlet - 2002

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Trans Generational Housing - Houston, TX - 2004

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Weathering - Photography/Intaglio - 2004

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Westchester Reform Temple - Westchester, NY - 2004

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Turntable Security/West Broadway Tower - New York, NY - 2005

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Marcus and Driving - Fictional Essay - 2005

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Parachute Jump Pavilion - New York, NY - 2005

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Library in the 13th Arr. - Paris, France - 2005

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MC2 Live/Work Complex - Shenzhen, China - 2006

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Urban Ecology of Houston - Houston, TX - 2007

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Marmol Radziner Prefab - Los Angeles, CA - 2007

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North Elevation

Anatomy Laboratory

Galveston, TX, 2002 Sophomore Studio, Rice University Professors: William Williams and Doug Oliver

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This anatomy laboratory, classroom, and library is situated on a compact site, closely bordering two other buildings, a small park, and a garage across the street. Utilizing a folded ribbon for formal organization allowed for the building to respond to each boundary in a unique way, also addressing its de facto status as a “gateway� to the campus.

Site Plan

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South Elevation

East Elevation

North Elevation

West Elevation

Section

Section

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The folded plate responds physically and materially to the program it encloses, shading the rare book room at the top while providing ample light and adequate drainage to the offices on the open third floor. This open mezzanine space, with limited access from the lab below and the library above, maintains a necessary distinction between the highly disparate programs on each floor, even while these spaces are linked by the continuous enclosing ribbon.

South Oblique

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Detail Model

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The studio required building two large models, one of which was large scale sectional model illustrating the systems of structure and enclosure. This model indicates that the ribbon, instead of being a monolithic graphic object, is instead a complex assemblage that changes its composition to respond to programmatic imperatives. In retrospect, more variation in form and materiality would have probably strengthened the project further, differentiating each space further and obviating the need for additional supporting columns that compete with the dominant grain of the elevations.

North Oblique

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The Black Art of Analog Research Project, 2002 Professor: Sanford Kwinter

This small book was part of a seminar that explored the interrelationship of technology and history. It documents the development of analog computing in the last century, and its effects upon popular culture through the parallel development of analog sound synthesis.

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Case Study: Gifu

Trans Generational Housing Houston, TX, 2004 Senior Studio, Rice University Professor: Dawn Finley

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This project involved the development of a housing scheme (in this case, senior housing) through case study analysis followed by iterative development of the concepts discovered in the case study. The project I studied was the Gifu Prefecture housing by Sejima and Associates. “Seam and Peg� tactics were derived from this project and then extrapolated into a three-dimensional architectonic diagram that explored the spacial possibilities of the analysis.

Ben Regnier / A302-402 / Housing: Trans-Generative Models / Rice School of Architecture / Spring 2004 / Instructor: Dawn Finley

Analysis Model

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Analysis Model: Details Ben Regnier / A302-402 / Housing: Trans-Generative Models / Rice School of Architecture / Spring 2004 / Instructor: Dawn Finley

Analysis Model: Details

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Ben Regnier / A302-402 / Housing: Trans-Generative Models / Rice School of Architecture / Spring 2004 / Instructor: Dawn Finley

The diagram involved showing different possible interactions between c-shaped extrusions (the “seams”) with planar “pegs” unfolding and recombining the extrusions at intersections and end points. The interactions were designed with thought towards possible interpretation as public/private “mixing” spaces in a final housing scheme.

Analysis Model

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Plans

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The given site was in the middle of an artificial superblock, wedged between 1960’s era brick duplexes and a parking garage, with a park to the southeast gently sloping down to a section of sunken freeway. The project was created as two north-south bars, with c-shaped units each featuring a large directed window in the living room/kitchen. Flipping these units in either the latitudinal or longitudinal direction allowed for apartments to have widely varying levels of privacy and relationship with their neighbors. Between each two units, as both an amenity and a sound barrier, is a shared private-public outdoor “room”.

Site Plan

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Model Views

Longitudinal Section

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Further amenities, such as a screening room, convenience store, and library, open to both the residents and the surrounding community, both enliven the scheme and foster interaction between the occupants and the neighborhood. A quasi-public street through the center of the project maintains the neighborhood’s access to the park, while tying the park’s program (playground, pool) to specific programs in the housing block (convenience store, “front porch,” day care).

Latitudinal Section

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Rendering: Interior Court

Rendering: Interior Court

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The end aim is to promote both an active lifestyle and community involvement while maintaining both a sense of security and the impression of privacy and group ownership. This not only makes the everyday experience in an assisted-living environment more enjoyable, but has documented real positive impact upon physical and mental health.

Rendering: Interior Court

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Weathering

Photographic and Intaglio Printing, 2004

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This series began as a photographic exploration of texture and surface. Two of the photographs were chosen for an intaglio process that furthered this investigation, compounding the photographed weathered building surfaces by etching them into copper plates using a technique invented for circuit boards.

These plates were then printed using a ink that oxidizes upon contact with the plate, blackening in thinner areas and remaining bright red in the grooves. The end result is a palimpsest that oscillates between the graphic and the photographic, the image and the physical object.

Diagram: Garden and Bimah Locations

Westchester Reform Temple Westchester, NY Rice Preceptorship Program Preceptor: Rogers Marvel Architects

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Part of the Rice B.Arch degree is a one year preceptorship at a cooperating firm. In addition to many concept models and renderings, I worked on a single project, the Westchester Reform Temple, from early schematic design through the beginning of contract documents. This synagogue, extended several times over a half century, was looking to build an entirely new sanctuary space and renovate the remaining building to expand their religious school. As there was only one possible location for a large building on the site, the early design process was directed towards in-depth program analysis. Directionality and important sanctuary elements were considered, as well as acoustics, seating, traffic flow, and the necessity of a conjoined “social hall� to the sanctuary space to expand seating for special events and high holy days.

Diagram: Sanctuary Layout

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Concept Model in Site

Concept Models

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Schematic design then continued through the production of ten different organizational schemes rendered as tiny “built diagrams� to showcase to the client. No single solution was chosen, but rather elements of several ideas were brought together in a collective solution.

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Light Study Model

Light Study Model

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The chosen design, involving “ribbons� of material changing profile slowly over the length of the space, was then modeled at a larger scale to study lighting and profile. Even at this large scale the model remained a conceptual study.

Light Study Model

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Model: Library and Classrooms

Rendering: Library

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Further models and renderings completed the initial design study. One area in which had a larger contribution was in the rehabilitation of the existing sanctuary to include 10 new classrooms and a library for the religious school, a difficult task given the triangular form of the existing building.

Plan: Mezzanine Classrooms

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Assembled Model

Turntable Bollard System New York, NY Rice Preceptorship Program Preceptor: Rogers Marvel Architects

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One of the most complex models completed while at Rogers Marvel was a working model of a device designed the “security architecture” wing of the firm, rock12. This “turntable” bollard system allows movable bollards to be installed in streets with less than 18” of excavation. The model was largely laser cut and sat on a miniature thrust bearing that allowed it to rotate freely.

Model with Clear Top

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Unfolded Poster

West Broadway Tower New York, NY Rice Preceptorship Program Preceptor: Rogers Marvel Architects

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This tower project in SoHo involved a three-day brainstorming session involving a “kit of parts� modelling system on the large scale and a series of investigations into above-grade retail at a smaller scale. At the end of the process a booklet was presented to the client that unfolded into a single poster-like sheet.

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Marcus and Driving Fictional Essay, 2005

This was a short writing made as an initial entry to a weblog started in late 2004. Further writings about architecture, photography, cities, and culture can be found at autoautism.blogspot.com Marcus starts the drive by a right and then a left, a quick lateral jog that maintains a straight southern course. The streets here are compass-true, each crossroads making two lines that perfectly quarter the earth. Longitude is not the same as latitude, to understand the horizontal bands you have to tilt your head until it is parallel with the equator—twenty two degrees, understanding this infinite plane that slices the earth like an orange, revealing that this entire town was created at some bizarre angle to Cartesian reality.

Close to home are the large houses on small lots, crowded together, maximum isolation, maximum comfort, maximum efficiency, cost completing this equation, the envelope of each house swelling and contracting until an optimum figure is reached, freezing it in its wood frame and thin stone. Traveling south the houses get smaller and the land gets bigger, as if each building bleeds itself to create more space. There are more hills out here—or maybe he just see them more readily, as the swelling bare earth swallows verticality and yellow fields surpass green trees and grass under the blue-white spotted sky. The air is cool and the wind is light, and if he puts the heater on the windows and sunroof can stay open to the air.

In a satellite photograph a car is a tiny dot, maybe you can tell the color but not any real detail, not how old the occupant is or if they have friends in the back seat. Driving has the same perspective to Marcus, everything flattened and reduced to coordinates and flashfrozen at each present moment. Driving is a series of thin slices, like that fat criminal in his highschool biology book that men had cut like deli meat and splayed out on glass. On the highway at night he would pass by a hotel, and if you looked at the right moment, knew the sightlines, you would see lobby coke machines on every floor out the windows for an instant, the building bisected by a dashed red line. Driving is about tangents; the orbit of a satellite is made of an infinite series of straight lines, with the Earth always pulling at a right angle.

The way an object changes shape as you go by it, everything lining up for an instant and then spinning away, its perspectival moment spent and gone.

He looks to the side as a bean field passes by, the field opening up as the planting’s row lines point into his eyes, and growing more opaque to the sides until it is a thick yellow blur.

It is a moiré that is the result of roundness, light falling at from every angle, but all of the light his eyes receive was pointed straight at his pupils, a sphere of particles bombarding his face at every possible now. The roof of the car is reflecting the sun, creating a vertical column of light at a constant angle from the two o’clock sun, perhaps briefly illuminating an

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aircraft, a cloud, or the moon.

The streets change surface from smooth asphalt to a rougher, potholed variety, one without markings and curbs, and this gives way to gravel. You move to avoid the dust that you create, constantly running from a white cloud in your rear window. There is a crunching sound from the tires, and Marcus likes to gun the gas and jerk the wheel to send the rear of the car swinging back and forth, until things turn uncomfortable. He stops for a train and watches it go past, slower than his car but massive beyond belief, and long string of inertia, its contents heavy and elemental. His sight cuts through the train every few moments, as the linkage passes in front of the car. If he took a picture at night, holding the shutter open, the whole train would become a blur, semitransparent in the middle, revealing a road that points infinitely South.

Marcus lives in a house that goes like this: street-yard-wall-house-yard-fence-trees-ditchpath-stream-path-trees-field-highway-street-hill-horizon. Sitting in front of his rear window he feels like his house is a stage set, an animated diorama with tiny cars and trees beyond, framed and finite. As a child he could see the cars on the highway, especially at night, when he had to go to bed with people still rocketing by, audible even under the covers out of view inside his bed. The highway pushing sound over the gully, through his walls, around corners and deep into his ears, keeping him wide awake late, staring at his glowing red clock, waiting for it to have been long enough to get up and look. Occasionally his parents would take that road and he would desperately search through the passenger window for a glimpse of his house through the trees, the house staring back, diminished and monochromatic.

On a dirt shoulder, it is time to stop. He turns the key and the car rattles to a close, shuddering gently as the aluminum cylinders transmit their force to the frame. Marcus drives a decaying Volkswagon of middle age, red and sagging. Every mechanism in the car seems provisional, voluntary—the clutch or the radio or the seat belt all have an equal chance of working at any one time. The car has been scarred and weathered by water, heat, cold, and time, expanding and shrinking until it lost any produced monolithic quality, but is merely a loose matrix of glass, vinyl, and metal. The car is alive, has lost any quality of a product, has been absorbed by the chaos and decay of the world around it. Gravel is stuck in the tires with tiny flecks of white primer showing where the hood has been struck. Marcus must periodically fill the car with clear golden oil which it then quickly turns black and proceeds to slowly distribute over the road in a series of small spots, marking where the car has been in a continuous dashed line. Transmission fluid is a greasy red and radiator fluid, antifreeze, is a smooth neon green. There is water in antifreeze—water in his car.

His insomniac childhood nights, spent staring coldly at the blue/white wallpaper or creating patterns in the textured ceiling three feet from his face, lofted in the dark, his brother gone from the bed below to another room. Sometimes his father would come home late, the headlights briefly creating a sweeping illumination on the ceiling and walls as the car mounted the curb. The light always moved across his room in exactly the same way.

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His father would come upstairs and Marcus would pretend stiffly to sleep, modulating his breathing as he received a sandpaper kiss goodnight. The room always the same dark blue and grey, with the same warm light from behind the door, sneaking out of the cracks.

He stops for a second, enjoys the absence of sound, the void a negative shape, cast, the mold created by constant engine and gravel noise broken suddenly and gone. There are trees along the south edge of this westerly road, and to the other falls away into a smooth deep field. His white cloud has overtaken him. This is not lost enough, and because he is alone and young, Marcus says it out loud: “this is not lost enough.” He isn’t trying to get lost, but it sounds good, like a movie. His voice sounds thin and small stuck between the dust, sun, and car. He gets back in, shakes the car awake and turns around, east, to find the highway.

“Sneaking out” was a phrase his mother used to describe suspicious activity in the dark.

Despite its origin, this phrase now defined the loose and shifting realm of stolen night time to Marcus. Sneaking was a fair description of the adrenaline and silence of car-pushing, door-closing, and stair-climbing. And the rest of the night was definitely Out. Sneaking out had been done so often that it had been his primary life, with school and day being a hazily remembered back side spent in anticipation, writing letters, obeying rules and napping.

It’s getting dark now, slight orange and red to the west spreading over to the east and becoming deep blue-violet. The highway is a line bisecting this, I-35 going north northeast, bowing slightly, pulled by the city’s gravity. The highway is an extruded no-man’s land, lofted above everyday life, deadly. He went to New York one time on a band trip and found the whole city occupied. Not even an alleyway to escape the dense crush of eyes and ears and feet covering every square inch with gum and trash and spit and view. More alive were the cracks between boarded up windows, the sliver of dark just visible beyond the curve of the subway tunnel, the areas no-one can see, spaces that inhabit themselves, the rest of the city a floodlit exterior, occupied and known.

Marcus likes the shoulder of the highway, gravel and weeds untouched like the moon, likes to stop, wants to stop, but the minute he loses his velocity his power is gone and the other cars can see him, strobelit, naked. Velocity is the frontier of the highway, the texture of the road elongated by speed into a barrier that nothing can cross, a million cars a million isolated pockets of air drifting in space.

They used to go out at three or four on K-10, and pick an offramp, seldom used and isolated, turn left and drive down a country road, perpendicular and away from this extruded civilized frontier, into nothing farmland. They would turn out the lights and drift slowly through clouds of insects with the windows open, no longer a vehicle but part of the landscape now, a moving component counterweighting the delicate trees and fences, ditches and grass that stretched out for miles, rolling beneath the wheels. Everything was the same color, a graphite that reflected like pewter and fell away to infinity. A firefly would strike the windshield and leave a green fluorescent smear that would slowly fade to shining grey.

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At some point you would have to stop, because the only way back is the way you came, retracing your exact path, being pulled back home as if by a string, by gravity. But the stops were the best part of the trip, the infinite point of rest at the apex of the pendulum’s swing, spent in the backseat.

In the dark, all space is negative, the void filled at points by headlights and billboards and rhythmic yellow and white lines, the occasional green roadsign fluorescing into existence in the corner. One is supposed to pay attention to billboards, but more interesting is the space below and around, scaffolding and eaves, with shadows of every imaginable shape. Marcus has a friend that visits these places; she finds clearings and vistas and overhangs and long winding stairways, with inches of dust and soot and spraypaint everywhere. Spraypaint is dust thrown out of a can with glue to stick it to a wall. Some warehouse somewhere is filled with barrels filled with color.

She once brought him to visit a stepped plateau dead center of three monolithic silver office towers, a fountain and steps and a few sickly plants, up a few feet, like an altar for necktied sacrifices. It’s busy enough during the day but in the middle of the night it’s alive by itselfthe water is still on and light music still plays from hidden grilles, music just for crickets and empty cigarette packaging. Marcus likes spaces like this, like the highway, better at night, with yellow and blue sodium lighting that vibrates only barely, adding waver and strobe to everything, and a hum that is always just inside of your ear, to the back and right.

The car is moving in a river of positive space created by the road and light, a puddled space that spreads to enclose all available road, sidewalks and parking lots and garages, the asphalt and the blueyellow overhead light symbiotic. From above, out the scratched rounded plastic of an airline window, you don’t see the light directly, only the rounded grids of illumination, the darkest areas complete voids. One never sees people or even cars moving in the lit asphalt lots, everything is arrested by light, frozen and static, watched. As a child Marcus used to think of vision being like beams of seeing coming out from his eyes, grabbing objects and making him aware to them. But it’s the opposite—his eyes are passive receivers of the controlling beams thrown by hooded towers.

Locations were always paired by a journey, ends of a string. Home to diner, diner to her place, out of the car hidden across the street and through the door to her bed, making the smallest of noises as moving parts unstuck and stuck again. But it was the string that kept memory, the journey the shape of the car’s interior stretched across fifty miles, tiny orange buttons red dials and the white headlights turning into glowing threads that follow every curve and bump in the road. And everything else charcoal. Her car was an aging BMW near to death, with round headlights that were identifiable from two blocks away, as he waited on the corner in a chilled sweatshirt.

The highway splits away to exit and he follows the righthand curve, pulled by the dive into a deep crevice unnaturally vertical, dynamited. The road curves and gives way to another notch

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and this time he goes left, perhaps north, now cut loose of the infinite grid of Cartesian reality. It is dark here, streetlightless, and he turns the stereo off to better hear the car as it displaces the air, creating eddies and winds. Suddenly, it becomes a street with houses and shops and delicate paintstriped curbs. Detail is revealed in the lightest of grey shading, the neighborhood the lightest of pencil tracings on black paper.

He stops here, pulls into a diagonal greypainted space, a notch for his car. This is the point of rest before swinging back. He stops because you have to stop—it is part of the motion’s whole. He gets out, feeling the chill of the wind without the filter of grille or glass. The transfer is from a cocoon of warmth and quiet white noise to one of cold and almost silence, with a faint whistle.

The street goes like this: window-sidewalk-curb-parking-asphalt-parking-curb-sidewalk-door.

The street is a room open at the top, extending for miles in each direction. He starts to walk in the direction he has been traveling, as if pushed by his car’s former velocity. The chill is felt on his cheeks and eyes and ears. The road is so deserted he begins peopling it with memories, friends and people from school, remembering previous drives and laying them on top of one another until the collected traces overwhelm the map they were laid on, pushing it away and reaching outward, hungry and ancient. Memory is a piece of steel that keeps his spine stiff, gently humming at the back of his skull, pushing his head rigidly forward.

Memory is numb.

At the first corner, everything goes dark. A streetlight has shut off, the quick shuttering of fluttering green illumination bringing a deep redblack veil that covers everything, fading the houses and the curbs and the poles and sky to the same tone and color, erasing. Marcus cannot see the street for a second, and feels invisible, gone. He is part of the pavement, the wall, motionless and dumb. There is no sight, no sound, no movement. He turns and nearly runs back to the car.

Holy shit it is cold, his coat feels like saran wrap, and thought is impossible. He gets back in the car but does not turn it on. He and the car are the same color as everything else.

His coat and the car are thin carapaces that mimic the street and sky, layers in an infinite cocoon, of which he is a homogenous core. He pushes gently and turns and the car shakes alive, producing color and sound. Heat and light and motion, all related in an intangible way.

Marcus grasps the lever and reverses the car to face back home. Now, with a destination, expedience takes hold and the whole route makes itself known at once, a clear shape in his mind. The journey is a glowing string in front of him, a channel of vistas revealed in gentle curve.

When he’s out, alone and free, these trips will make sense; they’ll have a purpose and a place and everything will work together, he’ll be like an arrow in flight, fired at a high trajectory but uncertain in its target.

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Back onto the highway, like a rail this time, why do people even need to be here, you just need to keep the wheel steady and the pedal down. The lights sweep the inside of his car rhythmically, his car motionless with waves of light cascading.

There will be a home, a center that is his, dents that are his, scratches created by his hand.

The door will make a noise that is his and he will know this. A city that is big but not intimidating, cold in the winter and hot in the summer, dry when he wants it and with huge broadleaf trees reaching towards windows.

When he was a kid the places he was driven to were isolated pockets of concrete-plastic newness in a sea of farmland. Then one day he climbed a hill and saw felled trees for a mile in every direction, curved streets and cul-de-sacs already etched in the ground. The huge grids of farmland fragmented and preserved in pockets, recreated as a backdrop for picture windows, only visible from a single angle, like a diorama.

There is some adult place out there with the same raw excitement as the spaces beyond his childhood back fence, and he will find it, show it to his children, a mediated frontier that is not alone but alive, created somehow by occupation. And all around them the grids of asphalt containing these pockets, waiting.

He crests a hill and passes a low rock wall and then he is home, through the big door for the car and then a smaller one, into the ticking woodframed home quiet. Marcus doesn’t want to stop, everything has ended so quickly and he still has some potential energy to spend, his mind racing to compensate for his still body.

There is a schism between the life he likes and the life available, a schism of quality. There is nothing of that childhood space, that stolen time, in any job or home he knows, but it has to be out there, there is something real waiting just beyond his view, and it’s only a matter of time before he finds it. He can see his life from a satellite, the regular grids with a twisting path among them, and it’s amazing how much is flattened, how most of what matters is an invisible texture from this scale.

In the house, beyond the sound of the house cooling and shrinking, there is white noise, air pushed off of cars a half a mile away, transmitted across the valley and through the cracks in the window to his ears. He knows what is out of view, over the fence, it is schematically clear to him because he has been there, and will go there tomorrow, after he sleeps.

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Axonometric

Parachute Jump Pavilion New York, NY, 2005 Independent Contest Entry Teammate: John Peek

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During my preceptorship I co-authored an entry for the Van Alen Institute’s Parachute Jump Pavilion contest. We started by examining the history of Coney Island as an interaction between movement and perception, a history that includes theatrical devices, early photography (especially that of Edweard Muybridge), the inventions of Thomas Edison and Leon Theremin, and (of course) the modern amusement park and its paraphernalia of lighting, noise, and violent movement.

Our strategy thus became a series of devices, such as operable screens, telescopes and remote listening devices, and mutable lighting that responds to inhabitation. These technologies are used as tools to explore the complicated history of Coney Island, reviving the almost totally dissolved physicality of timber, steel and glass that once defined the place as divorced from everyday reality.

Rendering: Main Courtyard

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Library in the 13th Arr. Paris, France, 2005 Fifth Year Studio, Rice University Professor: Kent Fitzsimons

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Completed during a study-abroad studio in Paris, this project involved a new library and school building on reclaimed industrial land in the 13th arrondissement. The city has in recent years covered over the rail yards for the Gare d’Austerliz and is repopulating the space with commercial and residential blocks. I began the project by investigating the material reality of this enormous public works project and the new spatial conditions it has generated, that obliterate the formerly industrial character of the neighborhood. I also generated a quick series of case studies, both in Paris and elsewhere, that involved similar programs or spatial conditions, to attempt to gain a hold on the scale of the site. The existence of a party-wall condition with Le Corbusier’s Salvation Army building complicated matters further.

The site as it exists is an archeological remnant-- the last reminder of the original topography of the site. A shallow gully slopes from rue Cantagrel to rue Chevaralet, the canyon walls formed by the "bridge" of rue des Grands Moulins one one side and the refuge on the other.

Existing Conditions: Concept Statement

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The Rive Gauche development is a project of monstrous artifice -- an enormous slab levitated over programmatic and geographical realities, creating a tabula rasa for a new community. This is not done in the spirit of progressivism, however; this enormous plinth is carpeted with a traditional perimeter block system, the buildable envelope a synergy between profitability and non-controversiality.

The buildings on the edges of the slab negotiate delicately between old and new, attempting to "naturalize" and hide any artificiality.

But what if a building deliberately exposed this engineered denial of topography and exploited the gap between new slab and old ground? The readers in this library exist precariously, inserted between the ancient "earth" of written knowledge and the floating slab and clerestories above.

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In addition, while turning its back on the mid-century "tower in the park" planning of the surrounding neighborhood, this new development has not accounted for public space to alleviate the filling-in of relatively open industrial lowlands with repetitive perimeter blocks. The only nod to greenspace is a shrunken garden and monotonous allees of saplings along every new roadway. This "new land" is too expensive to leave bare. As a remnant left at the edge of the ZAC, this area is an ideal location for a neighborhood park. A new typology of public space, created on top of a "peeled and planted" section of the slab, this new park would end with an overlook facing the rest of Rive Gauche, hopefully prompting a critical reappropriation of what this new neighborhood is and means.

45

CROSS SECTIONS 1 : 300

STUDENT HOUSING

0

5

10

STUDENT HOUSING

0

5

10

STUDENT HOUSING

0

5

10

STUDENT HOUSING

0

5

10

OFFICES

0

R. GRANDS MOULINS

25

25

10

INALCO COURTYARD

50

25

COURTYARD

50

INALCO

50

R. CANTAGREL

R. CANTAGREL

PRIVATE GREENSPACE

100

R. CANTAGREL

50

INALCO

100

R. GRANDS MOULINS

25

REFUGE RESIDENCE

100

INALCO

R. GRANDS MOULINS

5

100

INALCO

R. GRANDS MOULINS

25

REFUGE RESIDENCE

50

R. GRANDS MOULINS

Latitudinal Sections

46

REFUGE SERVICE COURT

APARTMENTS

R. RÉSA

100

APARTMENTS

APARTMENTS

My solution involved drawing attention to the artificiality of this new ground plane by “pulling� it up into a switchbacked neighborhood park-- a sorely needed resource for the area. The library was then inserted beneath this new ground plane, with storage areas at the bottom and terraced reading rooms sitting above, with views out into the new park space. The park also punctures through the building to allow a pedestrian shortcut.

The Rive Gauche development is a project of monstrous artifice -- an

enormous slab levitated over programmatic and geographical realities, creating a tabula rasa for a new community. This is not

done in the spirit of progressivism, however; this enormous plinth is

carpeted with a traditional perimeter block system, the buildable envelope a synergy between profitability and non-controversiality.

The buildings on the edges of the slab negotiate delicately between old and new, attempting to "naturalize" and hide any artificiality.

But what if a building deliberately exposed this engineered denial of topography and exploited the gap between new slab and old ground? The readers in this library exist precariously, inserted between the ancient "earth" of written knowledge and the floating slab and clerestories above.

In addition, while turning its back on the mid-century "tower in the park" planning of the surrounding neighborhood, this new development has not accounted for public space to alleviate the filling-in of relatively open industrial lowlands with repetitive perimeter blocks. The only nod to greenspace is a shrunken garden and monotonous allees of saplings along every new roadway. This "new land" is too expensive to leave bare. As a remnant left at the edge of the ZAC, this area is an ideal location for a neighborhood park. A new typology of public space, created on top of a "peeled and planted" section of the slab, this new park would end with an overlook facing the rest of Rive Gauche, hopefully prompting a critical reappropriation of what this new neighborhood is and means.

SITE PLAN 1 : 500 0

5

10

25

50

100

ASPHALT CONCRETE GRAVEL GRASS PLANTING

Site/Park Plan

47

Exploded Perspective

48

The park was supported by a series of cross brace/columns, that organize the circulation through the library space as well as providing support for the weight of earth and paving above. The offices and administrative areas above the library were sheathed in a perforated metal paneling that screen it from public view while dematerializing the mass and letting through light.

Circulation Diagram

49

50

51

Concept Sketch

Live/Work Prototyping and Production Facility Shenzhen, China, 2006 Fifth Year Studio, Rice University Professor: Clover Lee Teammate: Jon LaRocca 52

This final school assignment challenged us to imagine a new industrial future for Chinese Special Economic Zones (SEZ’s). The given program was a large industrial/residential complex outside of Shenzhen, north of Hong Kong. The first step in the studio process was to produce a quick individual “RFP” that gave an indication of the direction we would take the rest of the semester. I had two main objectives at the beginning of the project. First, the large amount of program combined with a desire to avoid verticality led to the idea of linearizing and “sandwiching” programs together. In addition, long-term trends in employment in urban China indicate that there may be a new market opening up for more skilled labor. I posited that a new type of factory could be built, one that combined prototyping, testing, and production to make limited-run, high-craft versions of common objects. The product I chose to highlight was seamed nylon, used to make tents, bags, and protective gear. The RFP produced was admittedly somewhat dystopian, as I was trying to enhance the impact of my presentation and avoid timidity.

Mangagement / Display Manufacture 500 Units @ 300 sf 3 Communal Spaces

Site Scale 1" = 250'

Program Diagram

program scales

53

54

RFP statement of intent: “corpus universitas” The SEZ is rapidly approaching a point where land prices and cost of living are making it inviable as a manufacturing base. One can assume that as the market progresses much of the Pearl River Delta will fall to the same fate. However, the infrastructure and proximity to major trading and shipping areas mean that industry is not likely to move that much farther inland for items that require oversight and quick communication. This, combined with a growing experience workforce suggest a particular future for PRD factories.

This project attempts to critically re-imagine a live/work factory as a site for large-scale rapid prototyping-- limited runs of experimental assemblies or industrial-botique products. The factory floor is kept open and flexible, with only a grid of streets. Above, a “thick roof” holds utilities, waste lines, heavy traffic, offices and housing. This elevated socle warps in response to needs for entry, drainage, and light, while containing disparate programs.

Carpeting this socle is an idealized natural scene that replaces the wasted industrial landscape below. Rain and wastewater is pumped to the surface and biologically filtered as it drains into the river, leaving cleaner than it entered.

The workers, embedded in the muscles of a market economy, are constantly aware of the global network surrounding them.

55

Versailles 47 010 000 sf

Central Park 41 660 000 sf

Washington D.C. Mall 28 400 000 sf

Rice University 12 470 000 sf

Parc Villette 4 940 000 sf

The Mall of America 3 170 000 sf

The Galleria 2 370 000 sf

The Pentagon 1 520 000 sf

Taj Mahal 1 430 000 sf

World Trade Center 1 300 000 sf

Rockefeller Center 1 260 000 sf

The Acropolis 810 000 sf

Lincoln Center 710 000 sf

Site

Case Studies at Scale

56

400 000 sf

As the project developed it became rapidly apparent that, although the project was a very large building (almost a million square feet), it was quite small for a landscape. To pick apart this in-between scale, existing campus and superblock projects were collected and examined to get a hold of sizes and attempted strategies. It was determined that instead of making very large buildings, a process of dilution and expansion, our team should begin by designing very small landscapes, in an inverse process of concentration and intensification.

Site Plan

57

Top to Bottom: First Floor Plan, Second Floor Plan, Site Plan

58

The complex is organized as a series of parallel intertwined strands of program. To one side is a two-story factory structure with ramps, freight elevators and a series of loading docks that allow the floor to be reconfigured as multiple smaller loops or one large facility. Administrative areas are embedded within this space. On the other long edge of the site are the residential buildings, configured as a field of individual units organized around various amenities. These amenities are paired with various testing stations used to check the performance of the manufactured goods to extreme temperatures, winds, and rain. The project play with the idea of “social cogeneration�, using industrial waste heat and energy to improve the quality of life, not the efficiency of the complex. Thus waste heat and water is used for a greenhouse, and the wind and cold air is ejected into neighboring courtyards, creating local artificial microclimates that are an outdoor twin to the tiny test landscape within the factory.

Model Oblique

59

Longitudinal Sections

60

Rendering from River

Rendering: Housing at Wind Research Area

61

The Urban Ecology of Houston

Houston, TX, 2006-2007 Independent Research Sponsored by the Rice Design Alliance

62

“The Urban Ecology of Houston� is research project completed with the help of the Rice Design Alliance, in a grant received my final year at Rice. In a team with Jean Daly and my wife Katherine, we collected, analyzed, and projected new ways of integrating infrastructure with public space in contemporary cities. We chose a segment of elevated highway south of downtown, the Pierce Elevated, to show how these ideas might be implemented.

The hope is not only to provide valuable public venues for adjacent communities but to ameliorate, eliminate or even reverse the divisive, detractive force infrastructures can generate. To put it simply, what if the Pierce Elevated became not a dividing line but a organizing and uniting seam between scales and neighborhoods? What if the periphery can become a kind of center?

Underneath the Pierce to the left: US-59 at I-45

63

The Comey Plan

64

The project began with research into Houston’s urban history, as seen through the filter of new infrastructure. One of the first things we came upon was an early, 1912 study by Arthur Comey where he proposes extending and widening the existing river and bayou system in downtown Houston, using it as a park system and urban generator.

Comey Plan Street Sections

65

Case Studies at Scale

66

The next step was generating a list of case studies that showed successful integration of infrastructure and public (or semi-public) space.

Half of these studies were in Houston. Each location received an analysis and distillation down to particular conditions and strategies, such as strong cross traffic, or an added program.

Images: Allen Parkway

67

Organizational and Programming Strategies

68

The last, ongoing, step of this process was to use these new conditions and strategies to generate solutions for the Pierce Elevated. These solutions involved both ameliorating perceived negative conditions beneath the freeway, and inventing new programs and services to draw new users. We have just completed a small book documenting our working process, and have begun a companion website.

Strategy: Evaporative Cooling

69

Setting a Module

Marmol Radziner Prefab Los Angeles, CA, 2006-2007

70

For the last two years I have been a team member at Marmol Radziner Prefab in Los Angeles. In addition to regular duties as a project architect, I have assisted in agency research, new materials research, production administration and Revit administration.

House in Summerland, CA (scheduled to begin production in April) 







71

Revit Model - Overall, Structure, Wireframe

72

A design-build office is a perfect venue to take advantage of the efficiencies presented by parametric building information modeling. Part of my work at MRP has been streamlining our production process using BIM, producing automatic counts and material takeoffs, steel shops and cut lists, and refining our modeling process to better reflect real methods of construction. I am also involved in developing new drawing set standards for factory production-- modular production demands a different approach, one that in many ways is more related to product or transportation design than architecture. The latest BIM adventure has been implementing the Revit MEP software, which will eventually allow us to design and integrate our mechanical systems without the need for consultant coordination.

Wall Sections

73

A Module in Production

Modules Waiting for Delivery Wrapping

74

Another component of my work is overseeing the factory production.

This has been an enormous opportunity not only to experience construction first-hand, but due to the collaborative atmosphere at MRA, I have been able to have input and feedback on the process of construction itself. For many aspects of the design we partially bypass the shop drawing process, enabling a reduced schedule and greater quality control. Delivery and setting is also done under office oversight, as is the final finishing.

Setting a Module

75

$31.88

$20.84

CHINA

MEXICO

GERMANY

UNITED STATES

AVERAGE HOURLY MANUFACTURING SALARY BY COUNTRY

$2.96

$.72

COST SHIPPING 40’ CONTAINER

FROM

TO

LOS ANGELES

DESERT HOT SPRINGS

MEXICO

LOS ANGELES

LESS THAN $500

TIME

MEXICO

NEW YORK

$2000

LOS ANGELES

NEW YORK

$2000

LOS ANGELES

EUROPE

$2000

LOS ANGELES

LONDON

$2000

LOS ANGELES

DENVER

$2000

LOS ANGELES

CHICAGO

$1000

LOS ANGELES

MIAMI

$2000

LOS ANGELES

DUBAI

$2000

CHINA

LOS ANGELES

$2000

CHINA

NEW YORK

CHINA

EUROPE

$2000

LOS ANGELES

ATLANTA

$2000

DISTANCE

COST OF SHIPPING 1300SF HOUSE

$3000

4 DAYS INTERMODAL

BY 2010 HALF OF ALL SEA-GOING CONTAINERS WILL BE HIGH CUBE (HC) CONTAINERS. HERE ARE SOME COMMON SIZES FOR HC CONTAINERS 53’x 8’x 9’6” STANDARD RAIL HC. LEGAL FOR TRUCKING IN N. AMERICA 48’x 8’x 9’6” LARGEST INTERMODAL (SEA-TRAVELLING) HC 53

45’x 8’x 9’6” COMMON INTERMODAL HC

’

48

’

40’x 8’x 9’6” MOST COMMON INTERMODAL HC

45

’

40

’

MARMOL RADZINER PREFAB



HC 20’ CCC 1

0” 8’-1 ”X 7’-8 ” X 0 LB 4 ’9 0 R 1 52,9 ERIO HT INT WEIG X  A M 



HC 10’ DDD 1

 



 



X ’-8” X7 B ’-3” 00 L R 9 T 22,4 IO R H E INT WEIG X MA  





76

0”

8’-1



IS HC 45’ EEE 1



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ON GC

N

PPI

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8 ”X 7’-8 5” X LB 44’- 7,200 R 6 ERIO HT INT WEIG X MA

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

ISO HC 40’ AAA 1

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  

”

’-10

8 ”X 7’-8 5” X LB 39’- 7,200 R 6 ERIO HT INT WEIG X MA    

K RAC LAT S* F G N PIN SIO HIP EN X.) O S T EXT S I M PRO HC OS IMU E (AP X 40’ ITH P A M W K M LU LB AC VO 00 T R PING 95,0 A L HT F HIP EIG W S X MA 

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IM AX OM

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AL

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RM

NER TAI ] ON ONLY C NG A PPI ERIC SHI H AM C I ST RT ” ME NO 9’-1 DO IN ”X BE KING 8’-4 U C UC 8” X 00 LB ’2 H R 5 60,0 HIG TR ERIO HT 53’ RAIL + INT WEIG X [ MA

  

 





*POST EXTENSIONS CAN BE USED TO ACCOMMODATE HIGHER CARGO (AT A HIGHER SHIPPING COST) MARMOL RADZINER PREFAB

Most recently we have begun research on ways of “extending our reach,” making our buildings available to foreign markets (and possibly even off-shoring part of our production process). Future goals include more flexible and immediate methods of weatherproofing and connecting utilities on site, and ways of marrying prefabricated housing with international shipping standards. Standardized prefabricated housing has long been one of the unreachable dreams of modern architecture. Many attempts have fizzled or failed, from the Unite’ d’ Habitation to Lustron Houses to the long line of unbuilt prefabs available online today. I am confident that MRA’s program of building first, dreaming second will prove a viable model for a continuing design/ build practice.

STANDARD CONTAINER LOADED HORIZONTALLY USING ROLLER OR TRACK SYSTEM EMBEDDED IN CONTAINER FLOOR UNLOADED AT SITE ONTO TEMPORARY STAGING PLATFORM SAME HEIGHT AS CONTAINER FLOOR (TYP. 52”)



*





 

SHIPPING IN A CONTAINER PROTECTS THE MODULE DURING TRANSIT AND ALLOWS THE SHIPPING COMPANY TO USE NORMAL CRANING AND STACKING METHODS, SUBSTANTIALLY REDUCING SHIPPING COSTS BY SEA OR RAIL.

FLAT-RACK VERTICALLY: TOP-PICKED BY CRANE HORIZONTALLY: FORKLIFT

 



*POST EXTENSIONS CAN BE USED TO ACCOMMODATE HIGHER CARGO (AT A HIGHER SHIPPING COST)



MARMOL RADZINER PREFAB

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3 7

6

2 5

4

1 3

2