Dan Froehlich Architecture Portfolio

Dan Froehlich Architecture

Factory of Manufactured Attention

Critic - Adam Elstein, Frank Gesualdi, Ashley Simone

Collaboration with Jack Phelan

The city of Detroit is in a state of socio-economic disrepair. Factories have closed. There are no jobs. Societal outlook on the future has dwindled. The key to rebuilding this city is to condition and re-educate more of its citizens to become productive members of society. The Factory of Manufactured Attention is the solution to our problem. It can produce the model citizen.

FoMA is a new form of a factory that produces educated individuals. The people are now the product. Factory production reignites the economy. Education changes the ethos of the community. Detroit will rise again as a socioeconomic powerhouse. This education facility allows individuals to escape from their harsh realities for an entire year. It is this privacy that creates a focused environment for a more effective learning process. Furthermore, the implementation of the education method of edutainment facilitates deeper comprehension; entertaining and captivating the attention of the learners. These citizens will want to learn!

Individuals who partake in this experience will undergo a transformation: it’s like a magic trick! A popular magician’s trick is the Substitution Trunk in which one person is locked in a box and another emerges from that same box. They come out a different person. FoMA translates these techniques, along with others, into strategies for developing its architecture. The facility requires a voluntary submission of autonomy from the part of the individuals to fully transform into a model citizen. They want to be controlled for the betterment of their community.

The Factory is situated within an abandoned Packard Automotive Plant on the outskirts of Detroit. This adaptive reuse development takes advantage of the existing concrete gridded structural system. New architectural forms and insertions react to the grid in different ways. FoMA creates its own system. It becomes a building within a building. The Factory of Manufactured Attention is the building of the future. With it, we can once again thrive with prosperous lives.

Feeding Tree Leaf

Critic - Carolin Mees

Collaboration with GreenThumb, NYC Parks, and Others

The Feeding Tree Leaf is a seating and shade structure that provides rainwater collection and a space for community exhibit and congregation. The student-led project was coordinated with the resources of GreenThumb, a division of the New York City Parks Department, and with the help of local community volunteers. The structure stands as a permanent and integral part of the Feeding Tree Community Garden in the Bedford-Stuyvesant Neighborhood of Brooklyn.

The structure is composed of mainly marine-grade plywood that has been CNC milled. Additional componenets include the concrete sonotube footings, metal fastener bolts, and a recycled vinyl billboard for the roof cover.

During the design and manufacturing stage, special attention was made towards the labeling and documentation of each component as a means of streamlining the later assembly process. Given the unique shape, each piece was different and required attention to detail.

The design of the structure resembles that of a leaf as a call back to its immediate context and site in a community garden. The design evolved over a series of meetings and interations with the head volunteer gardener. The structure includes two interior benches with enough room in between for an additional table. The open layout also allows access to the back of the garden to access the storage shed and rainwater barrel. The top is covered by recycled vinly pitched at an angle that guides rainwater down a rain chain and into a designated barrel which can then be used for gardening. The walls of the structure are filled with a series of bug and bird houses to attract the natural wildlife and colorful murals that community members are free to paint and draw on to express themselves.

Brick Space

Critic - Richard Olcott

Collaboration with Reeshane Villarama

Located at the Northern end of Sara D. Roosevelt Park, this project is a market, event space, and educational center in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. By utilizing the diagonal split of 2nd Avenue across the street as it meets Houston Street, a diamond-patterned grid is derived as an organizational tool. Nearly every wall, structural and mechanical systems, furniture, and circulation paths conform to this angled grid.

The site includes two buildings divided by an angled pedestrian walkway. The walkway pulls the community into the site as a space for socializing and meeting. The larger of these buildings houses the larger and more heavily trafficked program spaces of a market hall and event/dining space. These programs are arranged around a central service core. The interior programs spread out into the exterior of the site through the placement of market stalls and other furniture, blurring the boundary between inside and out. The smaller building includes several classrooms, administrative offices, and a greenhouse.

The two buildings and overall site is unified by a series of stepped space frame structures. Solid panels in between the structural chords act as shading devices for rooftop activities below and as a housing for solar panels. The light, metallic space frames contrast the heavy, solid brick buildings on the ground.

Micron is a semi-conductor manufacturer that is in the beginning stages of building one of the largest factories for their product in the world. The location of this factory is approximately twenty minutes by car away from the small town of Brewerton, New York. Part of a larger master plan for the whole town itself, one which includes new housing, infill densification, new industries, and green spaces, this project focuses on the development of the transportation networks and infrastructures.

The existing town lacks basic amenities like sidewalks and sheltered bus stops. This project proposes new shelters, a road redesign, new methods of mass transit, and an intermodal station hub. All designs are influenced by the organic qualities of the surrounding wetland site context and create a cohesive nature between the established transit network components. The shelters include an organic pattern of steel and glass with a formed steel roof.

The Brewerton Station project introduces a streetcar system to the residents of the town. The network has stops at major nodes around the town for ease of movement and terminates at an intermodal station. This station acts as a hub between personal automobiles, bike paths, the streetcar, an existing bus network to nearby Syracuse, and a shuttle for the anticipated workers of Micron. The station features a similar style of roof as the shelters in the form of a concrete shell structure. The use of glass clerestories and a concrete base gives the appearance of a floating roof. Access to all modes of transit are provided on every side of the station to maximize efficiency. The large waiting room is accompanied by small concession stands and cafes for those passing through.

Rotated Vertical Volumes

Critic - Maria Vrdoljak

This project aims to both expand and redevelop the existing programming use of the space at the Mott Haven Library in the Bronx, New York. New program spaces include a series of screening rooms, personal streaming rooms, and a recording studio, as well as a new community center and reading areas. The design concept is centered around a series of shifted and rotated volumes that are stacked on top of one another. The shifting helps to open up ceiling spaces for natural lighting to penetrate through to the inteior and create terraces for public access. As the newly added floors rise higher above the street level, they are set back by this shifting to prevent the taller structure from imposing on the surrounding community. The rotational element is added as an interior space regulation tool everywhere from the furniture layout and circulation sequence to the overall design composition.

The current building is covered is a simple brick pattern with limestone finishings around the windows and edges. To mimic this style, the newly added levels also incorporate bricks as a veneer facade. The individual bricks are rotated to complement the design concept. They are also individually shifted to create void spaces in between each other. These openings cover large windows and help to regulate the amount of direct sunlight entering into the building.

Bennington Museum Addition

Critic - Daniel Horowitz

The Bennington Museum, located in Bennington, Vermont, is a small regional museum that dates back to the midnineteenth century. The collection includes many works by Grandma Moses and a series of artifacts from the Revolutionary War Battle of Bennington. This project is designed to create a new, more open space that will generate a more welcoming and enjoyable environment. Inspired by the twisting motion of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s David, the design implements several curved and protruding elements against the straight and angled forms. While circulating throughout the addition, guests will have to subtly twist around to get to the next area, a direct allusion to David

Guests enter the new addition via the main staircase and rise two stories to enter the lobby. Immediately after the lobby is a cantilevered cafe with a panoramic view of the Vermont landscape and mountains. The rest of the main level is filled with open space for sculptures, as well as dividing walls to hang other artwork on, two other cantilevered areas offer added gallery space. A series of green roof sculpture gardens are available to guests on an existing flat roof of the original museum and the roff level of the addition. Both rooftops house outdoor sculpture gardens and planted trees to bring a piece of the surrounding landscape directly into the project. Below the main level museum guests and community members will find the entrance to the existing nature trail on the Bennington site.

Project R.E.A.L.I.T.Y.

Critic - Edwin Liu

Collaboration with Brandon Marks

To combat the destruction caused by climate change, Project Renewable Energy Applications for Life In Ten Years (REALITY) aims to educate the public in learning more about sustainable energy that will help to prevent, or at the very least mitigate, the effects. Built on the former site of Troy, NY City Hall, this research center features an extensive library with community outreach programs to encourage locals to become more interested in environmental action. Upper level apartments and the inclusion of state of the art labs allow researchers and scientists to live and work in the same location to monitor experiments.

The research center is covered in a series of turbines used to harness energy from the wind, as well as, turbines in the adjacent Hudson River for hydropower. Typically, a large wind farm needs several acres of land to generate energy. By integrating the turbines directly into the building, a large amount of land will be saved and left preserved, preventing any further environmental destruction. The research center will act as a role model for a new wave of green architecture, perhaps inspiring the spread of this building typology into dense cities.

Eroded Dome Bathhouse

Critic - Philippe Baumann

Video Walkthrough - https://youtu.be/37gPEeDwzvI

The Eroded Dome Bathhouse is a new addition added to the existing Betsy Head Pool in Brooklyn, New York. The design originally derives from the Musgum dwellings in Camaroon. The dwellings are roof-shell structures built in the shape of caternary-arched domes. By taking the dome structure and introducing rectilinearity, the bathhouse draws in visitors to its many features. The eastern entryway to the complex is pulled back from the street edge to give pedestrians more space on the sidewalk. Due to the Eroded Dome’s location on a street corner, this effectively creates a small plaza in front of the entrance for larger groups to gather. The southern edge of the complex hits the urban context and responds to it by having its circular geometry cut off. The same is true for the western portion that responds in the same way to the edge of the public park. The northern edge of the complex opens itself up to the existing pool site and creates a more seamless transition between the two.

The entire complex is encased by a partial geodesic dome covered in greenery. The trellis between the main structural members allows many different types of plants to grow. These plants help connect Eroded Dome back to its surrounding context with the green park beside it and a community garden across the street to the south.

The Hive

Critic - Andrew Lyon

Collaboration with Taija Thomas

Community is a concept that can be defined as not only having visual connections with your neighbors, but also sharing physical spaces with them. This project is a multi-generational family housing complex in Brooklyn, New York that aims to reinvent a sense of community within the neighborhood. There are five levels of shared spaces within the project itself: public, resident, neighbor, family, and personal. The ground floor houses a small cafe, art gallery and art studios for public use. There is also a public outdoor sculpture garden for locals to enjoy during the day. Within the apartment complex itself is a series of spaces that are only accessible to those who live on site. These physically shared spaces encourage interaction with those around you. On a smaller level are spaces shared between two adjoining units. These neighbor spaces can be programmed in whichever way the two families see fit to enjoy together. Within the units themselves residents share spaces with other family members while also having their own personal spaces such as a bedroom.

The curving and undulating form leaves the building in a flexible state. This informs the fact that the spaces within the complex can constantly be repurposed to a new program for the residents and that communities are ever evolving and will not be stagnant. The wooden panels attached to the facade give the structure a more warm and inviting tone to encourage more engagement between the residents and the larger city community.