Evan Mason Architectural Design Portfolio by Evan Mason

Portfolio.

Evan Mason Designer

Southern California Institute of Architecture

Evan Mason Master of Architecture 40 1/2 St. Marks Place Apt 3 New York, NY 10003 330.858.7484 emason1517@gmail.com

Contents.

Resume.

06.

Unesco Destination Hotel.

08.

Replica.

26.

Replica [DD]

36.

Fuerza Natural.

50.

Advanced Materials and Tectonics.

60.

The Future of American Infrastructure.

68.

1800.

74.

Resolution & Aesthetics.

80.

Evan Andrew Mason.

[EM]

Evan Mason is a Manhattan based architectural designer with expertise in advanced digital work-flows. He holds a professional Master of Architecture degree from the Southern California Institute of Architecture and a Bachelor of Science degree from Kent State University. After graduating from SCI-Arc, Evan held a key position as Lead Designer and Project Manager at Mark Foster Gage Architects in New York. While at MFGA, Evan managed the design and correspondence for multiple architectural projects at a variety of scales and across three continents. Evan is now seeking employment from a design focused, emergent architecture firm who is as equally passionate about architecture as himself.

Evan Mason 40 1/2 St Marks Place New York, New York 10003

330.858.7484 emason1517@gmail.com

[Education]

[Awards]

Master of Architecture Southern California Institute of Architecture: Los Angeles, California Completed: 09.2018

SCI-Arc Thesis Scholarship: Summer 2018

Bachelor of Science: Architecture Minor: Architecture History Kent State University: Kent, Ohio Completed: 05.2016 Cum Laude

SCI-Arc Continuing Student Scholarship: Fall 2016- Spring 2018

[Work Experience] Mark Foster Gage Architects Lead Designer/ Project Manager 09.2018 - 06.2019 New York, New York Baumgartner + Urui Architects [B+U] Design Intern 05.2017 - 09.2017 Los Angeles, California Southern California Institute of Architecture: Teaching Assistant 09.2017 - 05.2018 Los Angeles, California Mota Design Group Design Intern 05.2016 - 08.2016 Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio

SCI-Arc Spring Show 2017 & 2018: Works Featured

Kent State: Integrated Design Studio Competition: Finalist: Kent State: Florence Spring 2015 Most Inspiring Student Project: CUDC Flocking House Design Competition 2014: Out of the Box Award: Kent State Trustee Scholarship: Fall 2012- Spring 2016

[Skills] Revit. Auto CAD. Rhinoceros 3D. Grasshopper. Adobe Suite. Maya. Sketch-up Pro. V-Ray. Keyshot. Zbrush. Microsoft Office.

UNESCO Destination Resort

Typology: Resort/ Design Competition Location: Saudi Arabia Role: Lead Designer/ Project Manager Design Architect: Mark Foster Gage Architects Architect of Record: Stantec Landscape Architect: Balmori Associates Sustainability Consultant: Transolar Klima Engineering One of the central challenges of this project was to provide a leading showcase international resort destination â&#x20AC;&#x201C; with all the features of a highly sophisticated visitor experience and flawless levels of service â&#x20AC;&#x201C; while also allowing guests to experience the tranquility and seclusion of an untouched desert environment and be exposed to its raw, elemental beauty. The site for the resort features an extraordinary series of towering rock formations â&#x20AC;&#x201C; some with a monumental presence and others with a more delicate and intricate sculptural character. The resort needs both to enhance and preserve this setting, striking a balance between a confident, self-assured presence on the one hand and sustainable integration with the landscape on the other. The visitor will be confronted with a breath-taking fusion of landscape and architecture: a collaboration where both nature and design contribute to a resonant and thrilling ensemble.

Desert Resort Competition / MFGA / Unesco Destination Resort

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NEW NABATEA A feeling of otherworldliness cannot be produced using the common tools of our own everyday world. In order to move beyond this limitation and into the realm of the mysterious and awe-inspiring, our office proposed a question- what if the Nabateans were still with us today? What might their architecture have evolved into given an additional 1800 years to mature and incorporate all of the technologies and developed since? This is the resort we designed, a New Nabatea, that merges design techniques from this ancient civilization with those that followed -including those of today. The result was, we believe a fantastic fusion of not only landscape and architecture, as called for in the project brief, but also of history, all enabled through the use of new and advanced technologies.

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One thing is clear of the Nabateans of Meda’in Saleh- their culture was not only one of wealth and power, but one that vibrantly exchanged ideas with neighboring cultures. This is seen in the architecture that remains at Meda’in Saleh today, as, in even singular buildings such as masterpiece tomb of Qasr al Farid there is not only the exquisite precision of Nabatean stonecutting, and innovations such as the Nabatean column capital found nowhere else in the world- but there can also be found clever reinterpretations of entablatures, triglyphs and metopes from Greek antiquity, curved stone cornices from ancient Egypt, and the stepped “merlon” motifs from early Mesopotamia. Nabatean design culture was one of beautiful fusion, so to imagine a New Nabatea in the 21st century we must imagine that,

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Transverse Section A

Longitudinal Section B

Desert Resort Competition / MFGA / Unesco Destination Resort

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above all, they would have continued to combine into their architecture aspects of design from more recent regional and Saudi design traditions. We have therefore imagined a new and mysterious resort city, complexly integrating into Nabatean design techniques newer influences ranging from the details of Bedouin jewelry and the patterns of early Islamic architecture to the contemporary graphic design trends of Saudi culture today. In order to accomplish this fusion of cultures, patterns, materials, technologies and the forms in our architecture we turned to the new technologies of artificial intelligence to assist us in our fusing several millennia of history and design innovations into an architecture that is as rooted in the deep past as it is in the cutting edge of todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s technologies and design culture. Welcome to New Nabataea.

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Desert Resort Competition / MFGA / Unesco Destination Resort

In their resort design, competitors were particularly asked to reflect on and respond to the Arab world’s historic vernacular architecture and investigate the region’s traditions of art, making and craftsmanship. Inspiration can be found close at hand at Mada’in Salih and elsewhere, but competitors are encouraged to explore the widest possible variety of precedents and draw on the richness, elegance and poetry of the region’s traditional design.

WITHIN THE ROCKS, ABOVE THE SKY Our proposal seeks to be embedded as much within a culture of 21st century innovation as it is with the architectural history of Saudi Arabia and physical structures of the site itself. We were inspired by the verticality of historic Nabatean and Saudi Architecture (pictured to the left) to include not only linear strings of desert-view rooms, but miniature towers of guest suites deeply embedded into the site (pictured to the right). To truly experience the site one must be in it—meaning that our resort could not be a singular large building merely surrounded by a perimeter of nature. Instead ours is an unraveled building, with smaller pieces embedded within the site—all high above the desert floor yet nestled and Desert Resort Competition / MFGA / Unesco Destination Resort

protected within rocky clefts, ridges and miniature valleys. Guests experience nature in two ways, through close proximity to the historic stone of the Sheraan Desert Reserve but through being elevated, visually connected to the vast and magnificent unobstructed horizon that this site, uniquely within the world, can offer to its guests. We therefore describe our guest suites as being “within the rocks, above the sky” – a seeming impossibility made possible through the unique, magical, and otherworldly qualities of the Sheraan Desert Reserve

A NEW AL ULA MILLENNIUM IN STONE In the history of architectural antiquity, the name of only one master stone carver is known to us. Rabez Malco. This may seem trivial except for the fact that his name was found not in Greece, Babylon, Egypt, China or even Petra--- but carved into a façade at Meda’in Saleh. This speaks volumes to the value the Nabateans placed on the art of stone carving—such that of all civilizations it was only theirs where a stone carver was allowed to sign his work. Upon inspecting the works of Meda’in Saleh, this should come as no surprise—as the stonework is unrivaled in its precise monolithic ambition. Our proposal seeks to inaugurate Al Ula as a new center for the next generation of advanced stone carving in the world through the use

of robotic carving techniques. One of Mark Foster Gage’s areas of expertise as Assistant Dean at the Yale School of Architecture is robotic stonecarving, and accordingly our proposal seeks to take advantage of this expertise and use the Sheraan Desert resort as a showcase for nextgeneration techniques that will redefine the use of stone in architecture for a new millennium. With the deep history of Meda’in Saleh with regards to this craft, there is no better place in the world to lead in this category of technology and innovation. These technologies could be used to not only construct key aspects of the project proposal, but could also form and educational component and new and profitable trade into the larger region of Al Ula.

Desert Resort Competition / MFGA / Unesco Destination Resort

PIONEERING SUSTAINABILITY The Sheraan Desert Resort will be a showcase of sustainable technology working in concert to produce a building that is net-zero on an annual basis. This will be done through the choreography of common sense, tried and true technologies and smart addition of the most advanced and emerging technologies of tomorrow. The project utilizes an ecology of these strategies including but not limited to the intelligent use of thermal insulation through masonry construction, low emissivity glass, radiant cooling, natural ventilation where appropriate, calculated sun shading, night irrigation, rainwater collection using “Nabatean channels” carved into the rock that lead to multiple grey water cisterns, a new “bio-reactor” system located underneath our garden oasis which uses the vegetation above to assist in the filtration of water, wind-catching towers, giant gravityfed water filtration towers, a singular solar field hidden from the view of guests to generate all resort power, and the world’s largest “lunar canopy” which is a giant patterned hollow bronze-toned lattice placed high above the garden oasis/bio-reactor below. This lunarcanopy has two functions; during the day water is slowly channeled through the vast surface area of the metal lattice to be heated to high temperatures by the sun and used by the adjacent kitchen and housekeeping services, as well as nearby guest rooms. At night this function is reversed- as the desert air is hot it makes a poor absorber of the stored heat removed during daytime air conditioning. Instead this heat is removed from rooms and public areas and stored in water tanks which, after sunset, then slowly pump this unwanted heat through the lunar canopy where it is sustainably radiated into the night sky. Outdoor guest spaces take advantage of an intelligent range of strategies as well-- including breezy shaded areas, water features with plantings, radiant cooling, the use of dry-mist evaporative cooling systems, deep shading overhangs, operable windows and wind-channeling towers that all assure that all of the Sheraan Desert Resorts spaces offer guests the uncompromised levels of comfort to which they are accustomed.

Desert Resort Competition / MFGA / Unesco Destination Resort

1 Bedroom Guest Suite

2 Bedroom Guest Suite

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2 Bedroom Guest Suite

Valet automobile parking for villa & resort guests Vehicle switch from automobile to desert buggy UNESCO destination resort Resort Villas: 25 sites Phase 1 Exclusive Villas: 20 sites Phase 2 Exclusive Villas: 20 sites

Desert Resort Competition / MFGA / Unesco Destination Resort

3 Bedroom Villa

6 Bedroom Villa

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10 Bedroom Villa

Replica.

Design Studio I FALL 2016 DS 1200 ( 2GAX ): Complex Morphologies Instructor: Herwig Baumgartner Team: Evan Mason Jennifer Dow Complex Morphologies began by studying the Dutch Thonet chairs as a point of departure for formal studies. Working with the spline geometry inherent in the chair, we began cutting and reorganizing the geometry to form a new entity. Something which is clearly not a chair, but still holds formal resemblances to its former self. This language was then taken to the architectural scale, still keeping the formal language of the chair with legs as structure, but adapting it to accommodate the program of a business incubator programmed volume. We began to focus on tight and loose relationships between the spline and the volume where volume doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t simply encapsulate the spline, but rather, volume begins to push back against its structure in certain instances while being unconstrained by the spline in others. In their tightest form, the splines begin to squeeze at the volume creating architectural apertures allowing light into the incubator.

2GAX / DS 1200 / Complex Morphologies: Herwig Baumgartner

GWB. 2”x 6” Metal Stud. Truss Framing. Sheathing. Moisture Barrier. Air Space. GFRP. Structural Tube. Edge Beam.

2GAX / DS 1200 / Complex Morphologies: Herwig Baumgartner

Replica [DD]

Applied Studies Fall 2017 AS 3222 (3GAX): Design Documentation Instructor: Herwig Baumgartner Brian Zamora Team: Evan Mason Jennifer Dow Ross Fernandes Andrea Cadioli Eleonora Orlandi Design Development investigates issues related to the implementation of design: technology, the use of materials, systems integration, and the archetypal analytical strategies of force, order and character.The intent of this course is to develop a cohesive understanding of how architects communicate complex building systems for the built environment and to demonstrate the ability to document a comprehensive architectural project and Stewardship of the Environment. A full Design Development document set is generated from a selected studio project from the previous semesters. Throughout the course, Structural and MEP consultants met with our group to develop realistic proposals for the project while maintaing a California Building Code-compliant building.

3GAX / AS 3222 / Design Development: Herwig Baumgartner & Brian Zamora

Fuerza Natural

Vertical Studio Fall 2017 DS 4000 (3GAX): Fuerza Natural Instructor: Hernan Diaz Alonso Racheal McCall Team: Evan Mason Andy Magner Veering off from the well-lit roads of abstraction, this studio will explore the dark back alleys of literality. A neglected principle of interpretation and production, literality will be assumed as the guiding principle of our projects. At no time in this studio will you hear from me, “That’s too literal.” In contrast to a typology, a species constantly mutates. A species needs a lineage—it comes from other things. Where others use words like “typology,” we will use words like “species.” While others look for categories, we will look for metamorphosis. This studio will mutate known architecture and will shamelessly exploit its clichés. Sure, clichés are boring, but a cliché is a cliché because it’s been in the world—because people have been looking at them and using them. You may think the way to deal with a cliché is to come up with a genius abstraction. We’re not going to do that. We’re going to stay literal. We’re going to turn clichés into new clichés and privilege a permanent state of the present. The future and the past will always be on our minds, but we’re going to do our best to ignore it. As a way to explore the problem of literality, the studio will study carefully what we think an architectural feature or

detail is and combine it with what we think a natural feature or detail is. We’re going to architecturalize the natural and naturalize the architectural. But again, we’re going to stay literal. We’re going to see if staying literal can be a new way to radicalize the idea of autonomous form. If design was originally derived from an expertise of form and proportion, mutating design might be an advanced stance on form and proportion and remains in the tradition. It is not an escape route from the tradition. If traditional architecture is a coded response to how a project is to achieve its beauty, the metamorphosis and mutation of tradition looks to cultivate emergent aesthetics. Such work, when good, ought to produce abominations that force appalling experiences that nonetheless produces lust and arousal. When achieved, this is when we’ll know our work is becoming sophisticated. 3GAX / DS 4000 / Vertical Studio: Hernan Diaz Alonso

Architectural form connotes solidity. It is the static object through which life flows and circulateâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;hence, the contemporary hysteria about program and movement. Instead of focusing on expert social vasculature, our mutant architecture will focus on developing syntactic organs: strange bodies churning out signs and symbols, broadcasting new ways to perceive the real.

3GAX / DS 4000 / Vertical Studio: Hernan Diaz Alonso

Adv. Materials and Tectonics.

Advance Material Tectonics. FALL 2016 3200 ( 2GAX ): Adv Materials/ Tectonics Instructor: Maximiliano Spina Team: Evan Mason Jose Garcia Andrew Magner Advanced Materials and Tectonics takes a new approach to analytical tectonic documentation as it is conventionally understood in practice. Our goal was to challenge representation and search for relevancy in an era where documentation of design and manufacturing are in flux and are increasingly based on three-dimensional live data.Taking the tectonic construction of the San Francisco Federal building as precedent, the challenge was to create a facade system which would respond to the flaws of the existing building. Instead of relying on mechanical pistons to create apertures in the scrim system, the panels themselves fold to simultaneously respond to varying sun orientations and open views to the interior.

2GAX / AS 3200 / ADV. Material Tectonics: Maxi Spina.

The Future of American Infrastructure.

Vertical Studio Spring 2017 DS 4000 (3GBX):Future of American Infrastructure Instructor: Mark Foster Gage Melissa Shin Team: Evan Mason Ross Fernandes The Piezo-Involex Valley is a breakthrough wind driven piezo-electric pressure differential hybrid fluid dynamic alternating current energy generation network throughout the American Mountain States. This infrastructure network utilizes the expanding technology of piezo-electric energy harvesting while simultaneously increasing efficacy of existing turbine technology which has generically occupied the mid-west. The Piezo-Involex Valley takes the principle of damming and applies it to non-liquid fluid mediums, mitigating the ecological, political, and cultural consequences that characterize todays dams. The initial example is located on Mt. Elbert in Colorado. The network is located in the Mountain States at the crucial point where the plains of the Mid-West meet the Rocky Mountains. This region is characterized by a wind belt which spans the entire length of the states formed by the collision of currents from the South, East, and West. The internal infrastructure systems then utilize the increased wind velocity occurring from the natural venturi effect caused by the mountain topography. The increased wind currents pass through a network of cables spanning 10,435 feet.These cables are allowed to vibrate freely, creating an oscillation frequency transmitting mechanical forces to a generation system which converts mechanical to alternating current electrical energy. The Piezo wires span between three Involex towers with the central tower at 6,855 feet in height and the flanking towers at 5,185 feet. Each Involex tower has openings in 360 degrees which captures currents, funneling the pressure downwards into the internal ventilation shafts. These auxiliary shafts meet at the primary shaft shaped in a venturi section, creating increased wind velocity as pressure increases. State of the art turbines are placed within this venturi section in order to efficiently utilize currents from the ground level to one and a half miles in the air.

3GBX / DS 4000 / The Future of American Infrastructure: Mark Foster Gage

1800.

1800 Pavilion - MEXTRÓPOLI Location: Mexico City, Mexico Faculty leader: Herwig Baumgartner Assistant: Garrett Santo Students: Evan Mason, Andy Magner, José García, and Hsengtai Lintner MEXTRÓPOLI is an annual four-day festival celebrating Mexico City’s architecture and urban fabric, and the 2018 edition was held between March 15–20. It is Latin America’s only forum aimed to facilitate the generation and exchange of knowledge focused on re-imagining the built environment. More than 52,000 attendees included students, citizens, professionals, tourists, public servants, artists, and other experts. The festival positions Mexico City as a diverse setting that encourages designers to be both creative and critical. MEXTRÓPOLI includes conferences, workshops, and outdoor exhibitions and pavilions. For this year’s MEXTRÓPOLI festival, a team of SCI-Arc students led by faculty member Herwig Baumgartner designed the 1800 pavilion, which was located on the west side of the Alameda Central park in downtown Mexico City adjacent to a monumental fountain. The pavilion, which measured approximately 22 feet tall by 40 feet long, comprised a structure formed with materials that are typically concealed—#3 and #4 rebar painted black—set atop an obsidian base.

The pavilion was designed in multiple units that were prefabricated and then transported and assembled on-site. Column trusses featured cross-braced rebar members anchored by steel base plates. Above, truss beams integrated with secondary elements, including structural gray shades And nonstructural blue shades. Custom connectors accommodated a variety of intersections between the many segments of rebar. A panel discussion on the topic of craftsmanship in a digital era was held under the pavilion on March 19th and included Hernan Diaz Alonso, SCI-Arc Director and CEO; Alejandro Haiek; Herwig Baumgartner, SCI-Arc Applied Studies Coordinator; Karen Burkart; Brendan MacFarlane, SCI-Arc Visiting Faculty; Francisco Pardo, SCI-Arc Mexico City Representative; and Anna Merci. SCI-Arc also sponsored MacFarlane (B.Arch ‘84), as the festival’s keynote speaker. He is a co-founder of the Paris-based multidisciplinary architecture and design agency Jakob + MacFarlane.

1800 / Mexico City. Mexico / MEXTRÓPOLI

1800 / Mexico City. Mexico / MEXTRÃ&#x201C;POLI

Team: Project Coordinator: Francisco Pardo Project Management: Ximena Orozco Design Team: Wilbur Estrada and Austin Anderson Structural Consultant: Nousse Engineering Photography Courtesy of SCI-Arc

Resolution & Aesthetics

Summer 2018 Graduate Thesis. Advisor: Michael Casey Rehm. Cultural Advisor: Marikka Trotter. Location: Shinjuku, Japan. Program: Mixed Use. This thesis investigates new architectural potentials for excessive density of information. Historically, architects have relied on intricate ornamentation like carvings, stained glass, and carefully composed details to produce an architecture of high resolution, often in the service of a narrative or didactic â&#x20AC;&#x153;legibility.â&#x20AC;? Paradoxically, as access to information has widened and our ability to generate and manage it has improved, our need for such architecture parlante has arguably diminished. This begs the question of whether new kinds of resolutions might generate new types of value as opposed to the obsolete decorative densities of the past.

Graduate Thesis / GT Summer 2018 / Resolution & Aesthetics.

This project creates high resolution by up-sampling existing architectural conditions with the use of neural networks. A mixeduse office and housing complex in Tokyo serves as an enhanced environment for spatial intricacies generated from the slipped walls and grids of Miesian floor plans. These in turn are â&#x20AC;&#x153;trainedâ&#x20AC;? against themselves, over-articulating interior space by sampling the same modernist principles in hyper-complex ways. Every wall contains its own plan and organizing apparatus, allowing a condition where scale is directly proportionate to perceivable information. In a macro view, form appears as expected. As one moves closer, new levels of information are revealed, forming fresh understandings of spatial thresholds. Likewise, the facade is composed of fragments of contextual information. As one moves closer, new revelations are achieved in the same recursive fashion.

Graduate Thesis / GT Summer 2018 / Resolution & Aesthetics.

88.01 |Brick Country House Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe Potsdam-Neubabelsberg 1964 28.02 | Plan Dataset trainB 29.01 | Google Earth Input trainA 29.01 | Plan Output city2plan

Graduate Thesis / GT Summer 2018 / Resolution & Aesthetics.

90.01 | Shinjuku Context trainB 90.01 | Elevation trainA

Graduate Thesis / GT Summer 2018 / Resolution & Aesthetics.

Thank Yo

Evan Andrew Mason.