Graduate Architecture Portfolio_Syracuse University School of Architecture.

vol. 01

SELECT WORKS

Christopher Bressler

m.arch syracuse university b.s arch university at buffalo

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PROJECTS [2014-2015] cultural Destination City wall[Mat] Thriteenth Villa

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construction The Fuzzy Wall

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residential Primitive House Excelsior, Again The Bushwick Collection

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other

Six Degrees of ________

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office Vertical Congregation

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Destination City instructor | Elodie Nourrigat,

NBJ Architects term | Fall 2015 // arc. 609 site | Montpellier, France

Montpellier acts as a crossroad between major cities adjacent to and within France. The population fluctuates due to a constant exchange between the amount of visitors: tourists and university students alike; staying within its borders.

Montpellier and its inhabitants are always in a state of transition.

Destination City personifies the unique cultural aspects of Montpellier while integrating a rapid tramway system, effectively creating a networked city. The transit system connects the site to cultural icons and popular attractions, promoting circulation to and fro the site and the city.

The project caters to the tourist, the student, the traveler, the relative coming for a visit; the contributors to the flux. Each tower represents and holds a specific cultural experience which is then directly connected to the correlating attraction; all expanding across the city. The connective agent for a temporal population.

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Lille

Paris

Nantes

Clermont-Ferrand

Lyon

Bay of Biscay Bordeaux

800 km

600 km

400 km

200 km Toulouse

Nice

Montpellier

Barcelona

Marseille

Mediterranean Sea

*Times gathered from RailEurope

[portal]

[carousel]

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Cultural Center Hotel

Park

Cultural Center

Entertainment Center

Transportation HUB

Commercial Center

Educational Center

Entertainment Center

Commercial Center

Educational Center

Agriculture/ Winery

Pitch

Agriculture/ Winery

[tower_entertainment]

[tower_commercial]

[tower_cultural]

[tower_educational] [tower_agriculture]

[shops] [seating] [gymnasium] [restaurants]

[field] [vineyard/processing plant]

[tram stop]

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special program

transportation HUB

hotel

observatory

600 ft

500 ft

400 ft

300 ft

200 ft

100 ft

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C onnect with your CITY

the h.u.b

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M ontpellier By

Air

the pitch

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wall[Mat] instructor | Benjamin Farnsworth team | Sija Racheal Ng term | Fall 2014 // arc. 606 site | Flopopolis, n/a

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Located in the speculative city of Flopopolis, wall[Mat] is the agitated response to Alison Smithson’s ‘How to Recognize a Mat Building and Stan Allen’s ‘Mat Urbanism: The Thick 2-D.’ This project is an analysis of the connection literal flatness had to the issues around the flatness of the image and the flatness of recursion.

Through the implementation of a methodically manipulated grid\pattern, geometries were coalesced into a sprawling and encompassing entity. The grid\pattern becomes the logic for the application of aperture, interior configuration, and form. The adopted program of a supermarket suits its ever-expansive and evocative flatness.

PLAN

AXO

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roof plan

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interior plan

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The Thirteenth Villa team | Kyle Miller term | Spring 2015 site | Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Flushing, NY *Folly 2015 competition entry

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In a 1994 essay titled ‘New Variations on the Rowe Complex,’ Greg Lynn presents what he identifies as a blind spot in Colin Rowe’s expansion of Rudolf Wittkower’s analysis of Palladian Villas - the capacity for formal and spatial order to differentiate and become innovative. Where Wittkower and Rowe use mathematics to cancel difference in search of timeless architectural ideals, Lynn searches for innovative formal and spatial strategies by embracing the unideal.

Lynn’s project of an-exact geometry is calling for a more speculative process of differentiation and variation. The Thirteenth Villa is inspired by this provocation and attempts to generate a new villa, one comprised of the unideal characteristics and traits of each of Palladio’s eleven villas studied

by Rudolf Wittkower in 1949 and Wittkower’s evaluation of architectural aesthetics developed during the Renaissance. Ultimately, The Thirteenth Villa is a project that does not fetishize variation through iteration and heterogeneous multiples, but rather embodies difference to yield an idiosyncratic array of parts once discarded in search of an ideal.

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Villa Cornaro subtracted from Villa Rotunda

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Villa Emo subtracted from Villa Rotunda

Villa Sarego subtracted from Villa Rotunda

Villa (New hybrid name)

Villa (New hybrid name)

Villa (New hybrid name)

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1652

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395

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8.99

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390 292

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387

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8.86 8.75 8.65

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2045

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0 8.95 8.9 9.0

391

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1569

1653

8.87

1570

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1654

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1651

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1649

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1572

8.66

1648

the villa

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Furry Wall instructor | Amber Bartosh team | Colin Hoover term | Spring 2015 // arc. 682 site | tbd

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An architecture activated through touch. The Wall becomes an adjustable surface which redefines the relationship between exterior and interior, as well as the way in which individuals interact with daily objects. Equipped with an Arduino interface, flex sensors are attached to the back of strategically chosen tiles powered by small servo motors with dynamic actuators.

This key tile controls adjacent tiles while touch, whether a push or pull action, activates the surface. Through retraction or projection, the tiled grid becomes a dynamic and articulate surface, sculpted physically by the user. The scale of the apparatus may shift, allowing it to encompass aperture, wall, floor, ceiling, chair, table, etc‌ Space is no longer static. The user is now creator, directly shaping the space which he occupies.

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Primitive House instructor | Benjamin Farnsworth term | Fall 2014 // arc. 607 site | n/a

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John Hejduk’s series of Texas house investigations facilitated the discussion of the ability of the plan to establish a governing ‘logic’ for the articulation of architectural space. Departing from Hejduk’s adherence to a strategy of planar extrusions, a new set of operative techniques is adopted through the mutation and manipulation of simple primitive volumes via the creation of a circumscribing cube – each face of which populated with a deformed grid. The grid then acts as systems for the methodical manipulation of the primitive. Abandoning pragmatic ‘architectural solutions,’ the logics of production emerged through the understanding of the grid which manipulated the geometry. It acts as a frame, privileging certain views and issues. Primitive House is an architectonic volume, the result of a controlled geometric manipulation.

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 

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Its 5:00am on Tuesday morning. Giovanni awakens to the pulsating glow of the three oversized, opalescent spheres that comprise his lighthouse. He lay wondering if today will be the day that she returns. A thick haze is revealed as the sun begins to rise, accentuating the glow from the lighthouse and rendering the three spheres illegible as an amorphous blanket of dull yellow light cloaks their individuality. Giovanni awkwardly climbs down the seven rungs of the ladder that connect his lofted bedroom to the ground below. He prepares an espresso and returns to his bed where he sits upright and, as he does every morning, confronts the blank pages of the sketchbook in front of him.

He retrieves his weathered red pencil from the top drawer of his nightstand and slowly begins to sketch her overall form, paying careful attention to her petite shoulders and delicate ankles. Her hair must be a bit longer now. Giovanni dresses himself and passes through the ethereal envelope within which he resides. He slowly limps down the walkway to the lighthouse, waves aggressively crashing into the shoreline beneath his feat and three bright, white seagulls gracefully passing by above. It takes him nine minutes to reach the base of the lighthouse and another three in the dimly lit, stainless steel cylindrical elevator cab to ascend to the lighthouse control room. He thinks that tomorrow he will replace the panels that have begun to rust. He looks out through the southeast facing sphere and sees a small boat approaching in the distance. Has she returned?

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Excelsior, Again team | Kyle Miller term | Fall 2014 site | Isola del Giglio, Grosseto, Itlay *Concordia Lighthouse competition entry *honorable mention

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This architectural design proposal is comprised of a keeper’s residence and a lighthouse, separated by an elevated, 90-meter long walkway that positions itself 45-degrees south of due east. The keeper’s residence is a box, measuring eight meters by eight meters that is aligned with the walkway oriented at 45-degrees south of due east. The residence is clad in translucent, textured paneling that enables a constant diffusion of natural light during the day and a soft glow presented to the exterior at night. Within the residence is another box, oriented on the north-south axis and at the center point of the main residence. Above the box and below the painted metal trusses is a lofted bedroom where the keeper returns at the conclusion of every day. The lighthouse, a short walk from the residence, is comprised of three, opalescent spheres, each measuring 15 meters in diameter. The spheres glow throughout the night to notify oncoming sea traffic of the rocky coastline that comprises Giglio Island. This architectural design proposal is for a light house and a lighthouse.

8x8

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lighthouse 27

light[House]

Kitchen

Dining Room

Reading Room

Bedroom (Above) Main Entrance

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The Bushwick Collection instructor | Kristian Koreman, ZUS Architects term | Summer 2015 // arc. 608 site | Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY

The Gentrification Lab is a three year long effort, led by ZUS Architects, to identify the impacts of gentrification in specific localities of New York City while developing an intervention which effectively frames a design portrait for these scenarios. The first of these session, which occurred during the summer of 2015, focused on seven stops along the “L” metro-line stretching from 1st Avenue to Brownfield, Brooklyn.

Bushwick, Brooklyn became the foci for a proposed intervention which would counter the gentrification wave slowly encroaching from the already gentrified area of Jefferson Street, northern Bushwick. Erected as a fortress of “Hyper-privatization”, its priority was to preserve the Bushwick character through the projection of its elements on a grandeur scale. It acts as a communal safe haven for native Bushwick inhabitants, as well as, for individuals infatuated by the vernacular Bushwick style. The work concluded with an exhibition and discussion session held by the Van Alen Institute.

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“RESIST BANALITY!” “FORGO THE L-LINE!”

“FORTIFY AGAINST MANHATTAN!”

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FACADE 1

CHANNEL GLASS

FACADE 2

FACADE 3

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a room

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the model_1:500

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exhibition at The Van Alen Institute, NYC Participants include: SO-IL, WXY Architects, NYC Dept. of City Planning, and Interboro Partners. *** https://www.vanalen.org/events/gentrification-lab-nyc-7-stops-on-the-l-line/ *** http://soa.syr.edu/live/events/349-gentrification-lab-nyc

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Six Degrees of ________ team | Colin Hoover + Vivek Vijayan term | Winter 2015 site | somewhere *FairyTales 2015 competition entry

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A tale of association through association. The protagonist is gifted with the ability to visualize and inhabit the perceptions of others whom he has come into physical contact with. He transcends physical boundaries and ignores distances, allowing him to coerce varied spaces into a single, uncanny image. Omniscient, he has seen and done all through the connections he has established with other individuals; the exquisite and extraordinary are reduced to banality. It is only when he starts to notice a familiar yet troubling image embedded within his sight that his interest is peaked. That diagram! It provokes him, egging him to follow the trail and identify the source of the image. Utilizing clues derived from his images, he goes on a journey to establish and reveal that which is unknown to him. A new space. A new place. A new friend.

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“ The most incredible spaces and exotic attractions are downright boring; I’ve already seen them. ”

“A wall in a room.

A large room.

A strange room.

A single bed overlooking the ocean. ”

“The horizon began to spin away, and the prisoner turned to look at me as the world collapsed into an infinite hall of mirrors ”

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Vertical Congregation instructor | Arthur McDonald +

Bess Krietemeyer team | James Marsh + Nader Dou term | Spring 2015 // arc. 607 site | Syracuse, NY

Located adjacent to the Center of Excellence, the Research Tower seeks to redefine the core and atrium of high-rise buildings. By stacking communities of programs along narrow floor plates around a central atrium, it fosters closer interactions between users; both physically and visually.

The Tower reinterprets the Center of Excellence’s concept of landscape by pulling the landscape through the building and vertically distributing it through designed exterior garden spaces. Not only do these garden spaces act as social hubs for the workers, they also become the lungs of the building; they allow fresh air to continually circulate into and out of the open office spaces.

The interior condition of the building becomes passively regulated thus diminishing the need for cumbersome mechanical systems. Piezoelectric panels further augment the structure by becoming a dynamic screen that interacts with the wind and creates energy which can be distributed throughout the building.

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Laboratory

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Typical Plan_Atrium Shift

typical floor plan

SCALE: 1/8”=1’

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WEST SUMMER WIND

WEST WINTER WIND

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operable windows 2 raised smart floor 3 steel framework for panels 4 piezoelectric panels 5 lower garden terrace

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radiant panels 7 operable atrium louvers 8 upper garden terrace 9 evaporative cooling green wall system 10 stair core and vertical chase 12 operable glazed ceiling panels 13 elevator core

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the terrace

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the model_ 1/16”=1’

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THANK YOU Christopher Bressler 845.544.4114 c_bressler@yahoo.com