DANIEL R. KNEE Architecture Portfolio
CONTENTS
TRANSIFIGURAL MODULATOR
SUPERBLOCK
TERRA FIRMA
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TRANSFIGURAL MODULATOR University of Pennsylvania Graduate [Spring 2019] Arch 602 Critic: Danielle Willems Collaborative The Transfigural Modulator, a design for a large scale data center in Long Island City, Queens, aims to bring architectural presence to data infrastructure, a hyperobject deeply embedded within the fabric of modern society, yet typically unseen by the public. Hyperobjectivity implies that an entity is too large in scale or impact to be entirely observed by the naked eye; often the aesthetics of data infrastructure fall by the wayside and humans tend to ‘see past’ it in the urban landscape. By establishing meandering human-occupied space within a vast display of data storage and elevating the formal and aesthetic language of the facade, the project emphasizes the unseen innerworkings of the internet. As human and machine spaces confront each other, each impacts and is impacted by the other, problematizing this distant relationship in a physical and spatial way, facilitating a transfiguration of each through the process.
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Overall Data Center
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Facade Details
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Facade Details Cont’d
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Site Plan
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Facade Assemblage
Exterior Panels and Apertues
Bespoke Steel Frame
Steel Trusses/Lateral Bracing
Longitudinal Section
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Transverse Section
Building Plan
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SUPERBLOCK University of Pennsylvania Graduate [Fall 2018] Arch 601 Critic: Anna Pla Catala The Superblock, a residential endeavor along Barcelona’s touristic waterfront, derives its geometry from cellular automata, an algorithmic aggregation technique. Inputs such as existing conditions, adjacencies, and urban characteristics result in formations that influence lighting conditions, views, circulation, and building services. A softened misreading of the cellular geometry ultimately results in a new architecture for domesticity. Each of the twelve students in the studio are alotted an individual site within a larger existing building footprint which establishes a cooperative end result, hence the name ‘Superblock.’ Studio wide, the ground plane is left open and accessible to the public with at least three meters of continuous space on each street front. Roof accessibility is also emphasized with the goal of establishing two new urban landscapes on a site which currently provides none.
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Select Cellular Automata Family 1
Family 2
Family 3
Born: 2 Survive: 2,2 Grid: 1,1 Unit: 1,1,1
Born: 2 Survive: 2,2 Grid: 1,1 Unit: 1,1,1
Born: 2 Survive: 2,2 Grid: 1,1 Unit: 1,1,1
Family 4
Family 5
Family 6
Point Group 1 Point Group 2 Point Group 3
B: 2 S: 1,1 G: 1,4 U: 0.7,2.5,0.8 B: 1 S: 1,1 G: 1,1 U: 1,1,1 B: 3 S: 2,3 G: 1,1 U: 1,1,1
Family 7
Point Group 1 Point Group 2 Point Group 3 Point Group 4
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Point Group 1 Point Group 2 Point Group 3
B: 1 S: 1,1 G: 1,4 U: 0.7,2.5,0.8 B: 2 S: 2,6 G: 1,1 U: 1,1,1 B: 3 S: 2,0 G: 1,1 U: 1,1,1
Family 8
B: 2 B: 1 B: 1 B: 1
S: 3,1 G: 1,1 U: 1,1,1 S: 2,0 G: 0.5, 0.5 U: 0.5,0.5,2 S: 1,1 G: 1,2 U: 1,2,1 S: 1,1 G: 1,0.5 U: 2,1,1
Point Group 1 Point Group 2
Point Group 1 Point Group 2 Point Group 3 Point Group 4
B: 3 B: 2 B: 2 B: 2
S: 3,2 G: 1,1 U: 1,1,1 S: 2,1 G: 0.5, 0.5 U: 0.5,0.5,2 S: 2,2 G: 1,2 U: 1,2,1 S: 8,6 G: 1,0.5 U: 2,1,1
Family 9
B: 2 S: 3,1 G: 1,1 U: 1,1,1 B: 1 S: 1,1 G: 0.5,2 U: 1,2,1
Point Group 1 Point Group 2
B: 2 S: 3,2 G: 1,1 U: 1,1,1 B: 2 S: 3,2 G: 0.5,2 U: 1,2,1
Select Massing Analyses Family 1
Family 4
Family 7
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Longitudinal Section
Interior Residential Axon
The resultant cellular geometry of the overall massing scheme informs multiple scales of occupation and interaction; on a building scale it operates as facade articulation, whereas at the unit scale the geometry is softened via drapes and contours, functioning as the furniture and installations in a given unit. This synthe-
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sized application of a geometric ‘misreading’ facilitates new experiential conditions for residents and users, integrating the architecture of specific acts of dwelling with the syntax of the building as a whole. The image above depicts two adjoining units in the western portion of the building.
Floor Plans Ground
Residential
Roof
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Collective Studio Elevation
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TERRA FIRMA University of Pennsylvania Graduate [Fall 2019] Arch 701 Critic: Simon Kim Collaborative The sentient ruins Terra Firma situate themselves in an area of Seoul, Yongsan, recently vacated by the US military, created to process the immense amount of pollution left behind on the site, and to deliver key constituent parts to the people living nearby as refined products. These architectural characters are no longer occupied by their creators, and the continual remediation of the site restores a new synthetic nature to Seoul. The sentient ruins operate independently without supervision. Over time, their mechanisms of refinement and decontamination have led to new atmosphere and environment. They have become overgrown, their finishes have worn, and they have developed patina. Plant life has found a way to grow within these harsh environments. Meanwhile, the advanced infrastructure and its control systems have continued to maintain the processing spaces within. In some of these environments contained, strange microbial life may even survive and thrive in the new synthetic world of Yongsan. The exterior still holds remnants of the military occupation and it has adapted to its new function as a sort of trellis for new life. The natural progression of the ‘life’ within and outside creates a character that transfigures the environment in which it sits. It creates the environment that it inhabits and becomes the environment that it alters. It exists as a sentient, active, and deliberate hyperobject.
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Architectural Character
Harsh Environments
Hyperobjectivity 25
Site Photos
Intimate local streets and alleys
Scalar shift at US military base 26
Section Drawing These ‘ruins’ operate as a means to reclaim the land of Yongsan and create equitable space for the people of Seoul. The ‘ruins’ begin at a central point and network to smaller nodes throughout the site. They extract and process pollutants left behind while becoming immersed in the new synthetic nature that emerges from the processed land. As these characters harvest gasoline, oil, formaldehyde, and a plethora of other pollutants left behind by the U.S. occupation and deconstruct them into constituent parts, they reclaim land - but they present a larger opportunity. Never before has the geographic center of Seoul been a habitable space for Korean people in the contemporary era. And never before has there been a space so polluted which has been systematically reclaimed in this manner - inevitably producing different biological responses from indigenous plant life, resulting in hybridization and differentiation from the biologically familiar.
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Section Details
Amphibious Orb
Eco Pod
Transfigural Threshold
Pressure Exchange Tower 28
Axonometric Expansion In expanding upon the section, the nature of the sentient ruins in their site is revealed to be deeply entwined with the remnants of infrastructure left behind by previous occupants. They have been placed within this infrastructure, creating junction points of extraction and delivery at which they become monumental devices of transfiguration. They have entered into a feedback loop of growth with the local environment in which they emit byproducts of their chemical processing which corrode and deform them over time. Meanwhile, as they process the chemicals smothering the landscape, nature begins to emerge and overtake the infrastructure. The occupants of the future have the opportunity to make the choice of how they wish to inhabit this hybridized infrastructure as it constantly changes.
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Axon Drawing Details
Central chamber for amphibious life
Remnant Infrastructure
Pressure exchange tower 30
Architecture: Homuncular
Whereby models require a critical capacity for abstraction - this is a stand-in for that, here is a representative proxy of something over there - prototypes and homuncular architecture allow for full-scale testing and instrumentality. The homunculus seeks to embody the chemical processes of change over time - corrosion, erosion, and deposition and growth from interstitial spaces which will create hybridized nature and overtake the site as time goes on.
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Material Studies
Model Study Phase I - Patina Formation
Model Study Phase II - Exterior/Interior Developments 32
Overall Homunculus
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Architecture: Worldcrafting With homuncular architecture helping us test and refine the narrative and the character, it is time we experiment crafting the world for such architecture. Temporality plays a tremendous role in the realm’s manifestation as yet unseen public landscapes and strange new microbial life envelope and consume Yongsan - localized instances of this network remediation components seize the poisoned earth in phases as the coming chapter in this mysterious land’s history sets in. With each instance of transfiguration, as architecture and site facilitate mutual change, the resulting physical landscape serves as both a reminder of centuries of careless waste and new opportunities.
Interior - Phase I
Interior - Phase II
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Exterior 36
Daniel R. Knee © 2020