Nika Teper ’20 MArch Columbia GSAPP

DESIGN PROJECTS THE ARBORETUM : Forestry School + Community Center WEAVING / TAPESTRY : Curtain Wall Design for a University Student Center BOUNDARIES OF IMPRECISION : Hanoi Memorial Bike Bridge THE EDGE CONDITION : Skating and Park Pathway SPLIT / VISION : New York Public Library, Dumbo Branch PLAY LEARN PRACTICE : Childcare and Business Center ______ IN THE CITY

STREET / COURT : Housing in the Bronx BAMB THEATER : A Concert Hall and Public Plaza EGRESS + STREET LIFE : FireEscape Patents / an Alternative History EXCERPTS FROM ESSAYS IN ARCHITECTURE DEVELOPMENTS IN DRAWING INSTRUMENTATION:

Curves and Commensurability in 19th Century Architecture RECEPTION AND ARCHITECTURE:

PORTFOLIO NIKA TEPER

The Daily News Building The Office Lobby, the Concierge and Corporate Manhattan COMMUNITY LANDTRUST AND PERPETUAL AFFORDABILITY:

A Land Ownership Alternative and the Shifting Role of the Architect MAKING TENSILE STRUCTURES : Experiments with Tension and Compression FORMWORK : A Collaboration with Material Scientists at the ETH TENSILE DISSARY : Flying Object MUSIC ROLL : Representing the Elbphilharmonic in Hamburg, Germany PLAYSCAPES : Transforming a Kindergarden into a ropes sturcture

THE ARBORETUM : Forestry School + Community Center A forestry school and community center connect the town of Newburgh to its natural landscape. A shallow, perforated dome structure allows light and weather to penetrate the space. By growing trees within a semi interior space, researchers and visitors can study the effects of moderated environments to better understand tree maintenance processes.

Nika Teper + Morgan Parish - Instructor: Phu Hoang - GSAPP Spring 2019

FORESTRY SCHOOL + COMMUNITY CENTER

NEWBURGH, NEW YORK

WEAVING / TAPESTRY : Curtain Wall Design for a University Student Center A unitized curtain wall design for a university building in New York City weaves together different academic activities. Tilted louvers switch directions, shading and filtering community spaces, classrooms, lecture halls, a cafe and gym. The design brings activity to the building skin - where strips of benches along the facade create seating by the window and access doors enable people to walk along the facade.

Nika Teper - Instructor: Daniel Vos - GSAPP Spring 2020

CURTAIN WALL FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENT CENTER

MANHATTAN, NEW YORK

CURTAIN WALL FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENT CENTER

MANHATTAN, NEW YORK

CURTAIN WALL FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENT CENTER

MANHATTAN, NEW YORK

CURTAIN WALL FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENT CENTER

MANHATTAN, NEW YORK

BOUNDARIES OF IMPRECISION : Hanoi Memorial Bike Infrastructure An oversized urban amenity whose organization is determined by the bombing radius that links target sites and unintended civilian strikes. This project is a monument to Hanoi’s “Victory over the B-52’s” during the Vietnam War. It demonstrates the imprecise nature that directly impacted the dense urban fabric. While Hanoi was not bombed nearly as heavily as the rest of Vietnam and the Vietnam War saw major development in precision bombing. While there were insurgent defense mechanisms and strict air regulations on Hanoi specifically. The radius of error demonstrates that even in a highly controlled urban space with very the specific military targets, the entire civilian population was too under threat and the entire city was within a zone of danger. Imprecision was built within highly specific targets. With Hanoi’s massive bomb shelter campaign and the quick repair after bombing strikes, this impression was understood and lived within the city.

Nika Teper - Instructor: Mark Wasiuta TA: Jarret Ley - GSAPP Spring 2020

Site Plan Derived From the Bombing Radius of Imprecision

MEMORIAL BIKE INFRASTRUCTURE

HANOI , VIETNAM

MEMORIAL BIKE INFRASTRUCTURE

HANOI , VIETNAM

The Edge Condition : Skating and Park Pathway In the late 19th century the East River briefly froze over and New York City residents crossed to Brooklyn by walking on the ice.

A tiered skating and park pathway expands the current sports infrastructure at East River Park in downtown Manhattan. Four podiums, each with a different program, connect the elevated park path to the skating path below. As water levels rise, the podiums fill. Over time, the skating pathway transforms into skating ponds. The transformable configuration ensures that the central activity is maintained at water level.

Nika Teper - Instructor: Ilias Papageorgiou - GSAPP Fall 2017

SKATING AND PARK PATHWAY

MANHATTAN, NEW YORK

SKATING AND PARK PATHWAY

MANHATTAN, NEW YORK

SPLIT / VISION: New York Public Library, DUMBO Branch The DUMBO Branch of the New York Library experiments with planes of focus to create contiguity in divergent spaces - framing both city and library moments with converging and diverging walls. The circulation constantly reorients the visitor, exposing them to multiple activities within the library and the city. The effect is an unanticipated proximity and distance – to the social and urban contexts around.

Nika Teper - Instructor: Mimi Hoang - GSAPP Spring 2018

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, DUMBO BRANCH

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

PLAY LEARN PRACTICE : Childcare + Business Center A childcare facility and business center - built on a Community Land Trust site in Jackson Heights, Queens - expands the possibility of community development. The project aims to maintain affordability, activity, support and growth by weaving public, private and community space. A system of intersecting modules, inspired by the robust awnings that dominate the commercial corridor, create a diagonal procession through spaces with different types of performance and play involved.

Nika Teper - Instructor: Bryony Roberts - GSAPP Fall 2019

CHILDCARE + BUSINESS CENTER

QUEENS, NEW YORK

STREET / COURT : Housing 1. Inward and Outward Facing: engaging both the street and interior courtyards.

2. Large Operable Windows: providing natural Light and cross ventilation 3. Double Loaded Corridors with Public Meeting Thoroughfares 4. Two Story Units: separating shared space from sleeping corridors 5. Varied Brick treatment and Window Trim: creating distinguishable homes 6. Inset Balconies: enabling an adaptable, private semi-outdoor space 7. The Double Courtyard: enabling more public and private outdoor spaces 8. Exposed Truss: inviting the neighborhood to enter a more public interior

Nika Teper + Blithe Archbald - Instructor: Hilary Sample - GSAPP Fall

HOUSING

sunsilk

sunsilk

BRONX, NEW YORK

BAMB THEATER : A Concert Hall and Public Plaza A series of stacked stages accommodate a variety of performances. A double bar massing invites users to enter through or ascend on top and project onto the landscape. Both a gateway to and extension of the river park. All spaces become places of possible activation and theater.

Nika Teper + Berkhan Eminsoy + Alexandros Prince-Wright + Matteo Cordera

CONCERT HALL AND PUBLIC PLAZA

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

EGRESS AND STREET LIFE : Fire Escape Patents Pamphlet In the axonometric cutaway of a New York neighborhood, the current fire-escape typology is removed and replaced with a network of sky bridges, slides, ladders, smart poles and pulley elevators - establishing new urban connections.

By visualizing various patents for alternative evacuation structures one can imagine possibilities in terms of appropriation. Activating the building facade and extending semi-interior and exterior, semi private and public space.

Nika Teper - Instructor: Anthony Acciavatti - GSAPP Spring 2019

FIREESCAPE PATENTS / AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY

MANHATTAN, NEW YORK

FIREESCAPE PATENTS / AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY

MANHATTAN, NEW YORK

Often drawing tools become obsolete, either replaced with more efficient methods or neglected as architectural styles and modes of representation change. However, in exploring past design instrumentation comes an increased understanding about previous design problems, processes and practice. Drawing instruments are indicative of a specific approach to design thinking. Instruments demonstrate specific solutions to the problems of visually communicating complex ideas.

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In the 19th century a great amount of drawing instruments were designed to accurately express unique curves. This influx in specifically curved tools became equally influential in the development of the built environment as it did to the development of ideas about vision and perception. The mechanisms developed ranged from prescribed curved geometries that fit with emerging engineering standards to flexible instruments that allowed for infinite scalability and manipulation. The invention of new drawing tools was taken up by mathematicians, engineers and architects as attempts to accurately understand, define and convey new visions. The acquired knowledge and instrumentation enabled precise architectural experiments in representation. Pragmatic drawing instruments became categorized and evaluated throughout the century by British inventor William Ford Stanley in his various additions of Mathematical Drawing and Measuring Instruments.

The Builder, a 19th century British journal, presented rational, historical and comedic discussions about the curve. Alone these two sources could not accurately convey about the amount of rigorous and peculiar innovations these mathematical instruments enabled. English author and painter, William Herdman’s A Treatise on the Curvilinear Perspective of Nature demonstrates a deviation from accepted forms advocating for an alternative, arguably more visually correct curved architectural perspective. Similarly Viollet-le-Duc’s survey for the restoration of Château de Pierrefonds demonstrates an application of a curvilinear visual preference in his panoramic images that distill the significant immersive experiences on the site. These four disparate encounters with 19th century curved instruments, collectively demonstrate the simultaneous practical and performative design culture.

DEVELOPMENTS IN DRAWING INSTRUMENTATION

Curves and Commensurability in 19th Century Architecture

To imagine a land ownership alternative that prioritizes social value, thereby implicating the objective of pure economic gain, requires the articulation of a robust network of new relationships. The Community Land Trust (CLT) model combats top down gentrification by fronting community invested interests in the development of neighborhoods. The nonprofit ownership practice prioritizes the maintenance and growth of community housing, business and activity in place of profit driven real estate development. Members of a Community Land Trust seek to realize resident envisioned land development. Community members act as architects and urban planners, identifying problems, holding design meetings, building massing models, developing schemes, program diagrams. They create presentations, engage possible funders, market themselves, hold popup experimental programming, involve students, address the environment, examine local industry. The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative specifically highlighted in their 1995 documentary, “When the DSNI was set up, it was agreed… that only as a last resort would DSNI ever be a direct developer itself or ever provide direct human services, that its role was to organize and to plan and to facilitate the process of development and service delivery, but not do it itself.” (Watson, 8). The CLT movement runs like an alternative design bid - build whose strategy is to engage with local professionals, industries, resources.

Community Land Ownership and Social Development The CLT model is bottom up process resulting in a manifold set of determinators for success. Realestate is primarily governed by a capitalist profit market and the bureaucratic state. Successful CLT’S begin to define an alternative social market but exist as urban anomalies. To own in perpetuity, to own as a collective, to maintain and grow within a generally capitalist society requires specific policies of governing boards, tax reductions, productive partnerships and multiple funding models. Social development is also unique to the specific community, history and surrounding context. For success, existing opportunities must be harnessed, looking at where business can grow, jobs can expand and transit mobility can increase. A bottom up claim to land and claim to rights that advocates for the adaption of vacant land as well as community deemed improper land use. While not a method governed by time and efficiency the social priority ensures that the community is on board with the eventual development.

Community Land Ownership and Media Practice CLT development requires constant mobilization to maintain community involvement, secure funding, and combat encroaching development. Never one model of operation is the same, however there are similar media practices for information gathering and sharing. The language of the commons is present in media initiatives and the spaces they create. Current CLT websites exists as robust conglomeration of all current and historical media and documents. Visitors can find local information including related news, historical timelines, project archives, development plans, building resources and contacts.

These websites become destinations for the community, residents, for potential funders, and prospective CLT developments. While completely accessible, the sites are also virtual dumping grounds for files of related media - disorganized and difficult to navigate. Not synthesized but gathered in all formats and onlysemi-grouped.

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Existing and Prospective Community Land Trust Neighborhoods Dudley Street in Boston and Jackson Heights in Queens are examples of inner city neighborhoods with existing and prospective Community Land Trusts operations. With histories of investment and disinvestment, imigration and struggle these neighborhoods present different initial conditions for CLT development with similar realities today. The DSNI was set up in the 1980’s as a direct result of community activism against disinvestment, arson, illegal dumping, and vacant lots. Jackson Heights is currently in the application process to gain CLT status as an enormously multicultural neighborhood with an increasing lack of affordable housing and threats of development and displacement.

Both Dudley Street and Jackson Heights are neighborhoods of similar size with the same

proximity to their respective city centers and therefore face similar threats of development. Dudley street CLT has been especially successful in developing its business district and educational spaces along with housing which makes it an exciting precedent for Jackson Heights whose robust immigrant business district must be developed to remain competitive. Within a CLT structure this development can be controlled by the community.

COMMUNITY LANDTRUST AND PERPETUAL AFFORDABILITY

Architecture and Perpetual Affordability: A Land Ownership Alternative and the Shifting Role of the Architect

RECEPTION AND ARCHITECTURE

FALL

2018

Reception and Architecture Daily News Building 220 East 42nd Street The Daily News Building, a designated landmark address or a figment of an assisted imagination? New York’s Daily News Building exists as a collective spatial imagination of media production and urban life conjured up by perpetual exposure since the buildings’ initial vision. The various involved mediums span Newspapers; The New York Times and Real Estate Weekly, architects publications, industry publications, landmark designation reports, walking tour guides, skyscraper books and Superman the 1978 film. The buildings entanglement with tabloid news, an iconic skyscraper architect, a string of high profile real estate developers, and massive media tenants enable propagation of the same spatial myths to various audiences.

A vertical pinstripe mass, museum like lobby and globe artifact. The building’s features become emblems of the rigor and work of reporting. These real architecture elements are perpetuated through media and artistic productions as well as a designated landmark status. Its media proliferation and superficial preservation enables the building to remain seemingly unchanged. The physical building exists alongside a broadcasted, imagination. Emphasizing distinct attributes that are only physically evident from particular angles and an applied lens as well as animated by required characters. For example, with regards to its urban presence the building has become completely hidden in its surrounding context. It only becomes visible when one pauses in front.

Rather, the urban effect is seen in how the surrounding neighborhood has developed. This imagination becomes an independent architecture as it is preconceived and mediated, producing unchanged results different from the real, more variable spatial implications. The initial vision, history of use, maintenance, ownership, and publicity of form all reference the idea of the desirable office. Studying the imagined architecture from its presentation as building maintenance, ownership, leasing, real estate, media production and architectural impact.

The architectural image, an expansive, vertical, astronomical interior spectacle. In Hugh Ferriss’ Metropolis of Tomorrow, he presents a collection of exterior night renderings of skyscrapers that emphasize verticality and omminance. The one exception from this exterior fixation is the Daily News lobby. While he had produced renderings of the building form from the exterior perspective, they are omitted from the publication. He accompanies the interior rendering with some questions and proposes a metaphysical response.

“Has it merely a publicity value?” “What effect will it have upon the thousand of people who hurry in and out everyday”.

He proposes, “[the] passing realization of the situation of their own planet - revolving, at that very instant in the black crystal of space?”. The three story Onyx glass dome reflects the globe below and draws attention upwards. The unexpected lobby display fills the otherwise empty thoroughfare typology, providing instead a tangible reference for reflection.

The building of a printing plant and editorial office space was founder Joseph Medill Patterson’s intentions when he approached Raymond Hood with his property specifically located near Grand Central and away from the theatre district. Appealing to the economic benefits, land value real estate potential, Hood convinced Patterson to build a leasable tower. The Daily News Building from its conception, always anticipated other corporate tenants. With the main ambition to create a news headquarters the association with reporting was present from the projects’ onset. v

The Daily News Building cannot be separated from the Daily News. The tabloid - in concept - presents quick text, occupies small space, half the size of normal news, tells big stories and uses captivating images. Daily News was America’s first and largest tabloid paper. “It will be aggressively for America and for the people of New York”, a manageable size for the commuter reader. The Daily News Building was constructed for the production, management and proliferation of the Daily News tabloid which started ten years prior. A place where editors could visit nearby news sights and return to quickly produce content.

However the iconic building that represents this occupation was mostly rentable space, the Daily News operation, including the massive printing plant occurred in the attached 9 story building.

Daily News Building began as a tabloid paper and became a place for news and real estate operation. Stories developed in parallel in design, ownership, tenants, media, location. The continuity between the initial conception and creation, to the post construction, its representation monumentalizes the lasting architec-

ture features; lobby the pinstripe mass.

The perpetual discourse surrounding the building has real referential effects in the neighborhood development. In a studio conversation the other week, my instructor brought up her time at SOM laughing about how the globe was such an obvious meeting point that office romances would be sighted and shared amongst employees. The other week at a Shmorgishborg, a New York open market, I noticed a wooden Daily News Truck on a shelf of a vintage toy stand with other nostalgic oddities. The Daily News Building imaginary persists because it entangles many attributes of the New York identity; news reporting, real estate, cinema, skyscrapers. How a building can exist beyond its occupants, beyond its title and even its physical presence. Upon hearing the title “Daily News” the hustle of reporting, furious typing, loud streetscapes, a cacophony of the urban spectacle. When real estate investors advertise this landmark, when guidebooks note the address they are appealing to public imagination.

RECEPTION AND ARCHITECTURE

FALL

2018

Reception and Architecture: the Office Lobby, the Concierge and Corporate Manhattan If the New York office lobby became isolated from the office tower but remained in the urban context of midtown Manhattan. Corporate Midtown would become a series of glass and marble boxes, a series of pavilions. More viable, if New York office lobbies were completely eliminated and the square footage became further densified with office space. Corporate Midtown would become completely impenetrable. The lobby, specifically being at pedestrian level, participates visually in the pedestrian urban experience and viscerally in occupant/visitor procession.

Unpacking the current state of the office lobby provides a lens to understanding how buildings receive guests and how buildings project imaginaries onto the street. Towers hover over the street but the ground floor is experienced at eye level. The office lobby physically transitions guests from the social space, the sidewalk, the publicly accessible forecourt and concourse to the private corporate office. The lobby is a gestural space whose integrated furnishings and concierge characters project the idealist ambitions of the work inside related to the larger world as it guides people to the elevator. The base level becomes a place of visceral and mental conditioning. The street level of corporate manhattan becomes a constellation of privately owned public forecourt spaces, commercial storefronts, concourses, atria and the private lobby.

Compression and Expansion

Unless there is a viable reason to enter further into the building, the office lobby is uncomfortable to occupy. From the street the pedestrian may become enticed to take a closer look into lobby spaces, noticing the rich materials, high ceilings, large colorful artworks and open spaces - even, perhaps - a giant globe? - behind reflective glass. However, there is no real incentive to further progress into the building. Stark, expansive space is visibly illuminated and physically restricted with narrow portals and an almost untouchable pristine appearance. Rather, proceeding into the lobby becomes an imagined scenario in which there is an important reason to enter and seamlessly ascend.

Transparency and light If one conceives of the office tower as a repeated programed mass, the lobby becomes a space free from partitions and dividing logic. While there is uncertainty about entering these intimidating spaces, the office lobby visually perforates the tower grid. The office lobby is primarily glass enclosed but even further pushes that transparency allowing the external viewer to see a recessional open space if not see almost entirely through to the adjacent street.

Concierge and Maintenance The concierge is an archetype of New York City and the protagonist of the office lobby space. A current job posting for JP Morgan and Chase Co. nicely outlines the responsibilities of a concierge.

The job description begins with conversational skills, to promptly greet guests,

versations that take place in the lobby take the form of passerby pleasantries and concierge congregation. This juxtaposition enables an amusing scenario where a concierge may take a personal phone call sitting beside a Calder sculpture in a cavernous room of marble and glass.

provide advice and directions regarding restaurants, accommodations, transit, attractions. The social responsibilities extend to building operations, to be a liaison between the floor receptionist and administration, to register guests and issue employee passes, to answer multiple phone lines. And finally to monitor and record activities, to direct the turnstile and provide reports/ metrics. The concierge is required to maintain a neat appearance. The job description reinforces the spatial qualities of the lobby. Neither the curtain wall or revolving door are the true barrier that define accessible from restricted space.

Rather it is the concierge who determines the line from which the public is no longer permitted. The exact location of the reception desk and the concierges discretion determines exactly where the lobby becomes private.

There is an interesting juxtaposition between the formal appearance of the office lobby, the seriousness of concierge responsibilities/ transactions - the gatekeeper and more common

The office lobby specifically diverges from other lobby typologies in terms of intended longevity of occupation, it is a large space that is characteristically occupied by one. The moments of congestion are concentrated and fast pace, at the beginning and end of the work day as well as lunch, the furnishings are stark. The integrated furniture and overwhelming open space encourage this intended movement. Chase Manhattan Bank Building by SOM void space highlights the escalators that flank either side of the long lobby reception.

The stripped down appearance in terms of furniture and program as transition space, is mimicked in the art hosting a variety of large scale minimalist, pop, colorful art displays. While lobbies are sparsely furnished each element has a specific role. The revolving doors, a wind barrier, necessary to maintain the thermal comfort of the rest of the mass.

The reception desk, where general services are provided and recorded - the main location of interaction. The turnstile, a funnel operated by key pass or identification card. The elevator is the ultimate terminus to the entrance experience.

Art installations, digital media, automatic security gates have changed with style and technological experimenta-

tion. The office lobby, its contents and characters - in the history of the New York skyscraper and today remains fundamentally unchanged. A big, open space designed not for congregation but for flow and visceral impact. The maintenance of original lobby spaces is due to landmark requirements but also a financial investment and image building. The social relationships between employees, concierges and guest and physical furnishings, and procedures in place are remnants of another time.

EXPERIMENTS WITH TENSION AND COMPRESSION

FALL 2019

A COLLABORATION WITH MATERIAL SCIENTISTS AT THE ETH

SUMMER 2019

TENSILE DISSARY : FLYING OBJECT

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MUSIC ROLL : REPRESENTING THE ELBPHILHARMONIC IN HAMBURG, GERMANY

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PLAYSCAPES : TRANSFORMING A KINDERGARDEN INTO A ROPES STURCTURE

FALL 2019