EoYS21_MArch_39

Poly-Relativity MinJae Lee / Selected Works

Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation Master of Architecture 2021

PORTFOLIO DIRECTORY

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The discovery of diverse meanings and the balanced expression of them in design has been the guiding topic of my continuing research since before my undergraduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and now here at Columbia University GSAPP. Projects in this portfolio identify my personal values, seek for a solution to the entailing internal conflicts, and explore the diversities presented by the external world that surrounds me. The objective of my continuing path in the architectural field is to garner a fundamental understanding of social, cultural, economical, and political problems and to resolve them through the awareness of diverse meanings and the intellectual process.

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02 TALLWOOD HOUSING 04 BROOKLYN CULTURAL INCUBATOR 05 BRIDGEPORT TECH ALLEY 06 CIRCLING AROUND 07 WEAVING THE GULF 08 FLEXIBLE THEATRE BK 09 REIMAGINING DOME OF FLORENCE 10 ECO - TOURISM

PATERSON LEARNING CENTER

Passing Down Generational knowledge Spring2021 _Academic / Advanced Studio VI _Instructor Mario Gooden & Torkwase Dyson _Columbia GSAPP _New York, USA

Migration: Bodies in Movement Out of necessity and due to the fugitive conditions of life, people have moved through space, negotiated the barriers of natural, social, political, and economic landscape, and reformulated spatial conditions through migrations and displacements. However, News media presents this scrambling of the planet’s migration pattern as unprecedented, provoking fears of the spread of disease and conflict and waves of anxiety across the Western world. In Europe and North America experts issue alarmed predictions of millions of invading aliens and countries respond by electing anti-immigration leaders who slam closed borders that were historically porous.

However, far from being a disorder or disruptive behavior to be quelled at any cost, migration is an ancient and lifesaving response to environmental change and a biological imperative as necessary as breathing. Migration is not the crisis, but it is the solution and a source of cultural production

Hinchliffe Stadium & Paterson’s Great Falls The ethnically and culturally diverse city of Paterson and the site of Hinchliffe Stadium keep the collective memories of the Lenape people who annually celebrate heritage at the Great Falls and the Negro Baseball Leauge equivalent of the World Series until its closed at the end of 1997 due to disrepair and underfunding.

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In-between and Throughways As time passes by, the form of the construction changes its shape because of melting ice, which brings time as a fundamental factor of the construction. In addition, the reflection on the water shows the transitional process more clearly happening up above and below its surface. This observation leads to think about ceaseless changes, often causing identity crisis in migration, and how to reconnect migrated people and pass down their knowledge from generation to generation.

The collective memories and the rich layers of Paterson’s history have been overlapping, stacking up, and creating a new cultural landscape in the site.

Through perforations and throughways, representing infrastructures, that penetrate the thick topography and call together diverse people into the site, it is possible to experience the perpetual changes and to form a continuity of identity in the movement.

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Program Directory 1 Observatory 2 Control Room

3 Lenape Cultural Center 4 Community Auditorium 5 Counseling Office

6 Performance Stage 7 Art & Dance Studio

Learning Through Movements Learning is a process of repetitions and experiencing oddness at first becomes quotidian life through the repetitions. We learn about each other and learn from each other and we get to know each other better. I imagine a space that fosters such atmosphere through movement.

Respecting the past and history of our ancestors, learning about diversities and ceaseless changes we encounter in movement and migration of everyday life, and bridging the past, present and future are the dream of the Paterson Learning Center.

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TALLWOOD HOUSING

Collective Housing in Bronx Fall2017 _Academic / Core Studio III _Instructor Hilary Sample _Collective Work of 2 _Columbia GSAPP _New York, USA

Urban Density and Livability The South Bronx started to experience urban renewal with rehabilitated and brand new residential structures since the late 1980s, but still one out of two residents lives in poverty, and drug trafficking, gang activity, and prostitution are all still common throughout the area.

In consideration of the current state of the neighborhood, our project was designed as a sustainable mass timber alternative to affordable housing. Livability and Feasibility were integral parts of our strategy because the building had to function as a home if it was to be a viable alternative to traditional building in New York.

We focused on three specific areas of design: quality of life as being fundamentally tied to “Generosity of Space,” “Housing as a Verb,” “Modest, Accessible, Well Designed”; building technology in support of our design and sustainability ethos; and the formation of a training center for mass timber construction.

Broken Windows Theory and Eyes on the Street The Wendell O. Pruitt Homes and William Igoe Apartments, commonly known together as Pruitt-Igoe, has become an icon of failure of urban renewal, public policy planning and public housing. However, was the failure really due to poor design and racial segregation? We believe that continuous maintenance for broken windows and elevators and shared spaces in diverse size where communal activities can take place are the key aspects keeping the movements and security of the neighborhoods.

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Claremont Pkwy

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1St Floor E 171 St

Building A 1 Lobby 2 Community Room

Building B 3 Lobby 4 Community Room 5 Gym

Building C 6 Lobby

Building D 6 Lobby

Permeability of Air, Noise and People

Higher Courtyard Complexes along the Loud Claremont Pkwy and 3rd Ave.

Gentle Permeability from the surrounding into the Sloping Landscape of Shared Space

The courtyards serve as main circulation, but also frame spaces for communal gathering

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E-W Cross Section Building B Building E 4 Community Room 9 Laundry 10 Parking

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Mass Timber As a Counterplan for Housing and Climate Crises We opted for the use of exposed mass timber as both a structural and finish material because of the economic viability and environmentally sustainability of mass timber. In addition, As part of the design, we proposed a mass timber training center to train laborers in the basic carpentry skills necessary to assemble a mass timber building.

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N-S Cross Section Building B Building C 3 Lobby 7 Masstimber Training Center 4 Administration 5 Public Pool 6 Mechnical Room

Building D 8 Lobby 9 Laundry 10 Parking

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TRANSITIONAL CLINIC

COVID-19 Test Center

Fall2020 _Academic / Advanced Studio V _Instructor Michael Bell _Columbia GSAPP _New York, USA

Rapidly Deployable Epidemiology Clinic The clinic is a specific program with exacting needs; one of those needs is to both address the COVID-19 virus; another is to remain safe and resist becoming a transmitter of the virus.

It must embrace the ill and defend against its own user - its own subject. It must also host several subjects; clinical actors / front line workers trained in medicine and patients and the general public if need be for broad testing. These are degrees of epidemiological need; degrees of expertise and observance vs. a person in need. Age ranges will matter as well as various forms of privacy and human rights.

Rapidly deployable clinic is intended as a testing site and initial treatment site. A smaller scale gateway to a larger facility if needed. It thus has a time component to its programming and serves as a transitory space for sites where major hospitals are either overly full or not easily accessible. The work will require analysis to site but ideally the structures are dismountable –moveable.

Gaze from the Birth of Clinic

by Michael Foucault The idea of medical gaze and the objectification of a patient’s body have become an unfair, but necessary violence of the new contract between doctor and patient. Questioning this relationship and finding other possibilities to rewrite the contract were the beginning point of this project.

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Plasticism in Four Dimensions with Time and Space At the early stage, Theo Van Doesburg tried to form an international unity through a pure abstraction that was based on strict rules of composition while he later realized the possibility of new plasticism in four dimensions with time and space. The essence of De Stijl is that life would not be a just right or wrong question, but a vast expanse where many diverse factors are constantly alternating with one another.

Through the experiment with polarized films, it allows us to think about the middle ground, in other words, the imaginable territory, in between visible and invisible.

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ETFE Flexible PV

Aluminum Gutter

Aluminum Channel

Polarized Films

Testing & Screening

Result Waiting

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4’x4’ Folding Portable Stage Unit

Exit Resting Area Reception & Lobby

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Staff Locker

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Visible - Invisible - Imaginable Functionally, each space is separated to prevent the airborne virus from spreading inside of the clinic. However, the user’s vision would permeate or transmit the functionally separated spaces in different degrees and depth.

In the partially visible and invisible setting, the patients could anticipate how the testing and screening process is carried out and how the test center is operating while the staff could more clearly perceive and imagine the existence of patients as a human being, not as a bio sample in a container tube.

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BROOKLYN CULTURAL INCUBATOR

Cultural Literacy Library

Spring2017 _Academic / Core Studio II _Instructor Christop A. Kumpusch _Columbia GSAPP _New York, USA

A Place for Everyone Cities have become spaces where increasingly diverse people encounter such complexities as language, ethnicity and race, gender, and class, etc. Architects have long held the view that physical and social dynamics of public spaces play a central role in the formation of collective civic culture and cultural literacy. This project attempts to develop a new type of library within the context at the micro and macro scales.

The true meaning of cultural literacy should be to have an understanding and appreciation for other cultures. Our site, located at the intersection of Fulton and Dekalb Streets in Downtown Brooklyn, has been in the midst of a transformation with rapid increase of populations and creative tech enterprises. On the other hand, the area has been a home of low-income families in public housing for a long period. Could the library as a social infrastructure and place of communal exchange bridge the cultural illiteracy and inequality that exist in the neighborhood?

BTU Library in Cottbus, Germany The library looks different from every avenue of approach, but it remains a single continuous form. On the other hand, illegible patterns on the building’s glazed panels make it homogenous in distance. These two somewhat contradictory or complementary elements led me to focus on culture’s multifaceted attributes and the word “multifaceted” becomes a key language of my design.

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Experiencing the Uncanny How multifaceted surface or structure can be of use to create cultural literacy? The effect would be that it provides unusual or unexpected visual connections, an essential factor employing communication, fostering literary thinking, comparison and critique on a scale beyond that of one language or one culture.

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BRIDGEPORT TECH ALLEY

Hybrid Campus of Tech Industry and Education Spring2018 _Academic / Advanced Studio IV _Instructor Adam Frampton _Collective Work of 2 _Columbia GSAPP _New York, USA

Revitalization of the deindustrialized city Despite repeated attempts at revitalization, Bridgeport, Connecticut’s largest city, has been suffering since the deindustrialization of the city. What is left over after the majority of manufacturing operations have left the city is a large amount of urban and transit infrastructures that used to support the thriving industrial center with a bombing population.

The downtown of Bridgeport is experiencing high vacancy levels like many other cities in Connecticut, caused by the decrease in population since the 1960s.

As a new catalyst for the multi-dimensional transformation, we propose a hybrid campus of high-tech industry and various types of education based on transit-oriented development.

The new tech campus consists of an integrated transit center for train, bus, and ferry, an incubator where start-ups or companies develop leading-edge technologies, and finally, the primary school facility providing multiple levels of learning from high school to grad school.

Extending Bridgeport Station performs as an organizer to initiate the project, which will draw people from nearby cities and also allow faster travels between Bridgeport and New York City or Boston. Through the proposal, we expect to merge the two areas and create a region which serves as a new global center for high technology, venture capital, and innovation.

Transit Oriented Development and Adaptive Reuse We see that T.O.D and Sequential Planning are the key factors for the multi-dimensional transformation of the city, serving as a new global tech-center on a macroscale and providing a pathway for the local people to link to better opportunities on a microscale.

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Existing Urban Infrastructures and the Potential We focused on the Waterfront Area in the downtown area where the existing Bridgeport train station is located with five parking garages, large, under-utilized and dispersed along the Water Street.

In designing a new urban campus, we saw an enormous potential of the train station and the parking garages to bring density and diversity back to the city that will instigate sustainable development and revitalization. Then, What system can regenerate the economy of Bridgeport and potentially fill or integrate the vacant spaces the manufacturing industry once occupied? How should a new educational program be shaped in a way that not only assists the more extensive urban system but also benefits the local community?

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Legend 1 Ferry Terminal 2 High Speed Train Platform 3 Bus Terminal

4 Makerspace 5 Vocational School

6 Waterfront Park 7 Business Complex 8 Commercial Complex

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CIRCLING AROUND

East River Pier

Fall2016 _Academic / Core Studio I _Instructor Joshua Uhl _Columbia GSAPP _New York, USA

New Landmark Meant to Be Promenaded This project is about vitalizing barren and vacant spaces of the East River Park by constructing a pier as an extension of existing infrastructures.

The Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty were once used to be considered as a pointless structure. This megastructure / pier will become a huge attractor to residents from both Manhattan and Brooklyn and also tourists. By bringing a dense population to the site, rehabilitation of the East River Park and the East River will accordingly be accelerated.

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Quasi Urban Infrastructure Typology and Flow of People Beginning with site analysis, I focused on the flow of people that would be influenced by the city infrastructures. From site visiting, I noticed variations of the urban fabric and classified it into four different typologies: Urban, Quasi-Urban, Park, and Water. As I approached the River from the city center, the density of the infrastructures got lower as well as the density of population. The aim for this project is to draw diverse people and programs that exist in the Urban and Quasi-Urban layers to the Park and Water layers.

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4F Bicycle Rental / Observatory - View to Brooklyn

2F Diving Platforms

3F Observatory - View to New York City

1F Large & Small Pool / Changing & Shower Rooms

WEAVING THE GULF

Lost and Found

Fall2016 _Academic / Core Studio I _Instructor Joshua Uhl _Columbia GSAPP _New York, USA

Public Programs as a Solution for the Social Separation The intervention aims to weave or stitch the gulf and create a public space where residents from both sides of the street as well as visitors can have active interactions. It connects the two sides of the street not only via a physical structure, but also via programs that appeal to a wide audience.

The underground space begins by creating a notable invitation to the public space from both sides of the street: grand staircases. These are designed to incorporate people traveling at different paces through steps and slopes. Kids can also use the slopes as a slide. The staircases lead to the L subway platform level and to a central public plaza, starting from the end of the staircases.

On the subway platform level, there is a performance stage. In the plaza, there is a skate park and a playground, encouraging young people and kids to frequent this area. Underneath the staircases, there is storage for the MTA lost and found storage.

The Gulf Between the Two Sides Beginning with a site analysis, I was interested in the different paces at which people walked along 14th street. By closely observing them, I noticed that residents of Stuyvesant Town walk slower than other people passing through the street and mostly the former uses the northern sidewalk and the latter uses the southern sidewalk. There is a gulf between the two areas, both in physical space and in the way people move through it and use it.

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FLEXIBLE THEATRE BK Fall2017 _Academic / AT IV BLDG SYSTEM INTEG _Instructor Joe Hand _Collective Work of 4 _Columbia GSAPP _New York, USA

Reinvestment to the Undesirable Creek The Civic Theatre at Greenpoint, Brooklyn privileges the sidewalk, defining a street spine, extends the program with the space it requires and imagines the space as a flexible container framed by two thick service walls at each side, allowing the theatre to open from the front to the back.

In addition, the Theatre is based on the flexibility of spaces that accommodate diverse types of events; scenario 1 - theatre with open lobby and loading dock for next performance, scenario 2 - theatre space open front to back for festival, lobby closed, scenario 3 - theatre used for film screening, front lobby used for ballet class.

Privileging the Existing Urban Conditions We imagine approaching the theatre from the north accessible from the G-train and the NYC ferry. From the north, the building is perceived as a series of frames with a sawtooth roof. The sawtooth orientated to the east for less light for night events.

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REIMAGINING DOME OF FLORENCE Fall2020 _Academic / Tensile-Compression Surfaces _Instructor Robert Marino _Columbia GSAPP _New York, USA

Torsion and Elasticity of Tension Surface This project is about re-design the iconic Renaissance dome, in the form of a thin shell, built with modern reinforced concrete.

After studying surface tension and how it is affected by end conditions with different geometries through bubbble experiments, the feeling of twisting force, torsionn, and elasticity of the surface become the main interest.

The re-imaginned shell structure seems like spinning and the diagrid elements are getting smaller progressively, which I believe would give a sense of getting closed to the sky.

Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore In Florence Italy 1413, the supporting octagonal drum of the Cathedral of Florence was completed. A dome design to achieve its 140 foot span was desired, and the overseer of the works announced a public competition to achieve this in 1418. Filippo Brunelleschi, a Florentine architect, won the competition and he determined to resuscitate Roman constructional methods, used many compression masonry techniques to achieve the span; a double shell system, radial reinforcing ribs, and an elongated, almost gothic profile.

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ECO - TOURISM

Algae Research & Urban Connection Spring2018 _Academic / AT Urban Systems Integration _Instructor Craig schwitter _Collective Work of 5 _Columbia GSAPP _New York, USA

Innovate: Research Institute This project envisions Governor’s Island as a self-sustainable environment. We propose a scheme that uses a system of algae ecology to drive the development of the island. We believe algae could be an answer to help create a hub where scientists and educators experiment and learn about technologies and systems related to algae ecology as well as repurpose carbon dioxide emissions. This includes but is not limited to technological research, ecotourism, and the flood resiliency of the island.

Firstly, we aim to attract biochemical companies to setup labs here to shape Governor’s Island into a technology and research hub. Secondly, we want to create a network of ferryroutes, harnessing the flow of Ellis island and Liberty island to build a collective ferry network system, providing another location for tourist to visit and learn about the marine technol-ogies seedbed ecologies of New York. Lastly, we aim to create ecological and public engaging coastlines to allow people to connect with the ocean.

Integration of the Urban Systems The design for a Research Institute on Governor’s Island in the city of New York demands integration of the urban systems, taking into consideration the different scales of systems at play, neighborhood, local and regional, and to find synergies that propose innovative solutions to environmental, financial and urban challenges. The design demonstrates systems integration expertise in transportation, water, resiliency, information services, etc.

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