Architecture Portfolio

Caitlin Simcox

Selected Works of Caitlin Simcox

Produced 2018-2023 KieranTimberlake + Rice University 5.

Projects are organized by studio in chronological order ending with an addendum comprised of notable examples of physical models

1. Wetter Mühle

This project intends to turn the current, uncharacteristically flat roof of the Swiss Mill in Zurich into a thermal collective experience for public use in this gloomy climate. Tying into the infrastructure of the Limmat River below, which serves both leisure activities in the form of Badis (pools demarcated on the water) and energy harvesting through dams and hydropower plants, we focused on thermal qualities rather than aquatic. A prime source of available thermal energy is the excess heat and water from the milling processes in the building below, which will be used to facilitate the atmospheres created in the series of spaces in this project. Zurich gets relatively little sun for a very outdoors-centric culture, and as the human body is itself a means of energy harvesting from the sun, the Wetter Muhle is designed as a thermal wellness center to extend and replicate desired sunny days yearround. Recognizing the benefits of intentional bodily exposure to extreme hot and cold conditions, the spaces harness the excess from below to create zones for a pool, both wet and dry saunas, movement rooms with heated floors, gathering spaces dedicated to extending the perfect day, and exterior decks for sunbathing when possible.

In order to do so, the building consists of a stone base to conduct and maintain the heat desired for the spaces above, and a fully glazed, timber lamella structure vaulted above, landing lightly on the tempered plinth. The atmospheres are consistant despite the conditions outside, a dichotomy that the project plays into most of the year with its transparent facade, relaying its respite and keeping constinuents connected to the outside world in every season. Lamella length is modulated based on the size and intentions of the spaces, but the lattice pattern extends and is visible throughout the whole project, running the arched vaults along the length of the building. This was inspired by precepents of royal greenhouses, adapting the ornateness and grandiousity of intersecting forms in an accumulation of cheap luxury through the economy of smaller wood members spanning the high vaults by interlocking support. FInally, connection details are inspired by Japanese joinery to emphasize the core timber materiality.

Project collaborator: Alec Burran

ARCH 602: Under the Roof Spring 2023

Jeannette Kuo and Ünal Karamuk Swissmill, Zürich, Switzerland

Hot, Dry Sauna Render

River Side Exterior Deck Render

Heated Solarium Render

Hot, Humid Sauna Render

North Elevation (River Fscing)

Lamella Joinery Connection Details

2. Quilted Community

For a school in the Third Ward of Houston, consideration must be made for the interest of the students, staff, and greater community that has already been vastly displaced as shown by this very lot. The neighborhood is a food desert, lacks accessible, developed green spaces, and does not have public educational or social resources greared primarily towards preteen aged students. With these factors in mind, the goal was to design a middle school inspired by Waldorf teaching styles that would maintain and develop the pre-existing natural growth, aiming to be a continuation of the home, an extension of the community. Exterior spaces are divided by referencing adjacent parcel boundaries to extend across the site, which are then used to designate either green spaces or hybrid spaces. Earthen plots are categorized as natural ecology, cultivated land, play fields, or some other occupiable lawn/garden/playground to be used by both students and the broader constituency. The hybrid program type is derived from the Waldorf model’s emphasis on the outdooors and encouter-based learning, overlapping shared spaces and covered outdoor areas to create outdoor classrooms and active pavilions, mediating the interior to exterior boundary.

Additionally, by integrating this schooling methodology, the creative arts, physical movement, and environmental education are catered to designated spaces througout the campus. A combination of flexible classrooms-both interior and exterior--and dedicated active zones are designed to allow the freedom for individualized learning paces, human connection through collaboration, and developmental goals in social, emotional, and physical realms in particular. This approach is especially tuned to the middle school intention, when students are looking to their peers and elders for social approval, and navigating the complicated in-between of childhood to adolescence, thus they are trying to move away from “childish play”, aspects of which are still extremely important to their learning process. Ideally, this proposal will nurture the connection between home life and school life, recognizing the resource possibilities that can be provided to students and their communities both physically on the campus and socially.

Project collaborator: Marlena Fleck

ARCH

601: F(re)E-thinking School Architecture

Fall 2022

Nicola Springer Third Ward, Houston, TX

Building 2 Eat Space Render

Structural Exploded Axon

Site Plan

Roof Plan

Building 3 Catwalk Render

Diagrammatic Site Plan

North Elevation

Building 2 Move Space Section

Building 4 Sound Space Section

1 7-PLY GLULAM BEAM

2 STEEL INTERNAL KNIFE PLATE

3 12”X12” GLULAM COLUMN

BEAM TO COLUMN

1 5-PLY CLT DECKING

STEEL BEARING SEAT WITH KNIFE PLATE

3 7-PLY GLULAM BEAM 25FT O.C.

4 2” CONCRETE FINISH FLOOR SLAB

5 20” HOLD FOR MECHANICAL SPACE 6 ACOUSTIC DROP CEILING - OFFSET TO EXPOSE

FLOOR TO BEAM

1 5-PLY CLT DECKING

2 VAPOUR CONTROL LAYER

3 RIGID INSULATION (TAPERED WHEN NEEDED)

4 WATERPROOF MEMBRANE

5 2” RETENTION BOARD (INTENSIVE)

6 1/4” STORAGE MAT + FILTER FABRIC

7 12” GROWING MEDIUM (INTENSIVE)

8 VEGETATION

9 STEEL L BRACKET 10 PRESSURE TREATED GLULAM CURB

11 METAL PARAPET CAP WITH CONNECTOR 12 STAINLESS STEEL CABLE FOR NYLON MESH

GREEN ROOF + MESH

Connection Detail Sections

3. UW IEB

My time at KieranTimberlake followed the UW IEB project from project definition through the 50% CD submission. First helping with efforts to finalize the massing scheme, emphasis was placed most on a strategy that best accounted for the drastic slope across the site, footprints of pre-existing buildings, a utility tunnel with access, consideration for a phase II building, and the prescribed programs.

Schematic Design initiated with a more distinct separation between interior and exterior development of the project, and the exterior effort was primarily focused on windows, materiality, wayfinding, and the impact of these aspects on the identity of the project. Stakeholder engagement was referenced often to account for student values while balancing window wall ratio models alongside material and tectonic studies, as well. My work included research and visualization for other exterior “portals” across campus, the existing identity of other engineering buildings, the exceptional presence of vegetation on the site, the possibilities for brick as the primary facade, and most importantly implications of fenestration. These studies then bled into Design Development as constructability details were refined, with the intention for the windows being vertical rips across the facades with slab to slab

glazing aligned across multiple floors and some moments of exception dictated by solar constraints and exceptional viewsheds. Shading needs, height restrictions, and operability were all explored in this phase after programmatic distribution was more solidified, too. In conjunction with planning window typology, strategies for brick patterning evolved with the development of a grasshopper script that would recess and project bricks based on images of surrounding flora in “natural”, randomized designs. Calculations from the MEP partner allowed design work for the roof equipment and parapet to begin in earnest in this phase, too. Construction Documentation to the 50% deadline consisted of clarifying the detail expressions of window types, revising technical issues with exceptional windows, exploring brick expansion joints, and developing a series of thermal assembly diagrams for MEP calcuations, while compiling the submission set. After SD, I headed efforts to quickly turn around some renderings for lighting options on a cafe project, as well.

In production with KieranTimberlake and Hensel Phelps team members

UW Interdisciplinary Engineering Building July 2021 - Present KieranTimberlake University of Washington - Seattle, Washington

Kimmel Center Cafe Project Lighting Option Renders

Viewshed Analysis

Diagrams

Massing Characteristic Matrix

Space and Illumination Analyses

Proposed IEB Portal

Mercer Court Building A

Center for Population Health

Willow Hall

Shifted

Brick Projection Patterns Elevation Rendering Exercise with Context Images

Exterior Elevations, Exterior Section Details, Buildint Sections, + Window Type Schedule

Thermal Assembly Types for MEP

Calculations

Thermal Assembly Areas for MEP

Calculations

4. The Momentum After

Momentum inspires alteration of states, and the greater the disparity amongst forces in a collision, the more extreme the aftermath. The resultant conditions of the impact, whether they be material or immaterial, vary in scale based on the momentum of each part that comes into contact with others at different times and different points of encounter. Because of this, something can be reduced to its smallest parts --through the fragmenting destruction of the process--or built into its greatest whole--through the compilation of forces--as a by-product. Both instances of destruction and social agency are heavily present in the case of the Teatri Kombëtar with the circumstances surrounding its demolition.

Value in violence and disarticulation is revealed in precedents from Barry Le Va’s Velocity pieces and Chris Burden’s Sculpture in Three Parts. The effects of the momentum of the human body and other tools of destruction are displayed, some in real time with direct references to an absent force that has compiled the evidence. These performances can be used to restimulate the demolition site and the types of forces, both visible and invisible, in play at the national theater in Tirana. We observe a fractured movement dependent on its parts broken by corrupt political proceedings and an unwhole

building broken into ruined pieces. The project that transpired from the building/unbuilding caused by the social and physical movements aimed to manifest this momentum in architectural form while embracing its existence in a state of transition. A physical form for a nontraditional theater space was derived from implicating elements of the original theater--particularly its footprint and some of the recognizable moments like the colonnade, the courtyards, etc--upon two interacting facades constructed to maintain a civic thoroughfare through the site. This methodology focused on the hierarchies of the recognizable vs abstract manifestations of the impressions, the interaction of exterior spaces throughout the length of the buildings, and the utilization of the boulevard as a public axis affecting the constituency passing through.

Programmatically, spaces are designated as for performance, audience, and simultaneous (props, seating, and people), taking inspiration from site-specific and environmental theaters as to not explicitly distinguish performer from audience, but instead equalize the space to maintain this community resource.

ARCH 402: Indeterminacy and Disorder

Spring 2021

Ago

Viola

Teatri Kombëtar, Tirana, Albania

Study Entourage Scatter Iso

Theater Entourage Scatter Iso

Exterior Boulevard Entourage Render

Elevated Exterior Entourage Render

Exterior Entourage Render

Section Perspective Render

Section Material Render Details

5. TLC for the TMC

In its physical manifestation, the Texas Medical Center presents a monolithic appearance of coherent architectural language through its ubiquitous use of copper facades. By its sheer repetitive presence, the copper materiality establishes a visual recognition of the TMC, creating a representational style that unites the TMC buildings. The appropriation of this materiality, then, to the specific entity of the TMC links the copper facades not only to this visual identity, but to the med center’s corporate principles considering its network of over sixty medical institutions are heavily driven by interests in capital growth and expansion. TLC for the TMC attempts to counter these effects of the TMC’s architectural moves by addressing the ironic demand it presents for its negative: a housing cooperative that celebrates care work — the necessities of everyday life. A striped copper facade lining the exterior facade of the apartment blocks produces a guise of the language of the TMC, while a stark material contrast of glass brick for the facades facing the interior courtyards favor the residential programs. Care work is displayed without compromising inhabitant’s privacy with this semi-transparency and the collectivization of traditional domestic labor in layers of community.

Collective public programs for childcare, physical therapy studios, and study halls serve the greater TMC area as well as the inhabitants however they choose. Residents access facilities for cooking, dining, and laundry on communal floors meant to foster interdependence and alleviate domestic burden for an already strained constituency. Because of this collectivized care work, in-home apartment spaces are open to harbor innumerable programs that can be highly customized to the particular residents and function to bring interdependent relationships into the home in untraditional manners. It is these moments of interaction, of care for one another in non-ordinary forms, that are then silhouetted such that the rest of the community block feels their presence. These layers of community all take into mind the primary constituents--doctors, nurses, med students, TMC laborers, patients, and their families--and is further translated into unit variation to serve different living conditions and inhabitants.

Project collaborator: Eric Baik

ARCH 401: CARE-WORK

Fall 2020

Brittany Utting MD Anderson Mid Campus, Houston, TX

Ground View Plug Render

Ground View Courtyard Render

Exterior Copper Facade Render

Interior Glass Brick Facade Render

Courtyard and Pavement Details

Exterior Facade

Render