PORTFOLIO Ian Wach
Reflecting on these past three years, I saw two clear themes in my work. Both deal with seemingly intractable forces: Technology and Development
Contents Section I: Living with Technology Connection/Disconnection 4 Digital Agriculture Campus
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Weak Ties, Strong Ties
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Section II: Living with Development Manhattanville 27 Bibliotheque Botanique 34 Retail Therapy 39
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Section I: Living with Technology Tech connects at the same time it divides. It closes distances across the world while increasing isolation at home. It extracts resources and data and leaves empty promises. These projects grapple with our relationships to technology. 3
Connection/ Disconnection Core III Studio Benjamin Cadena Partner: Camille Brustlein
We designed a housing project for Youtubers/influencers. We were interested in exploring how the ubiquity of smartphones and social media has impacted our domestic lives. To center on this, we looked to content creators and developed a project where they could modulate signal reception with faraday curtains to create pockets of digital privacy. 4
Exterior Perspective
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Site Section
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Common Area Perspective showing Faraday Curtains
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Typical Floor Plan
Unit Diagram showing how curtains and signal can be modulated to enable different activities
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Ground Plan
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Unit Perspective
Digital Agriculture Campus Advanced IV Studio Nahyun Hwang Partner: Genevieve Mateyko
IBM’s history in Hudson Valley is of extraction and pollution. This proposal instead explored possible symbiotic relationships between technology and land to rewrite that narrative. We attempted to devise methods in which land can be productive throughout the remediation process via the act of bioremediation. It is enabled by tech integration in terms of data collection through monitoring wells and storage in a local data center. 11
Greenhouse powered by Data Center heat rejection
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Contamination paths from IBM Pollutants
Field View
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Site Plan
Indoor greenhouse for controlled growing year round
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Covered patio below one of the residential dormitories
Education space for short term residents teaching agricultural and technological self-sufficiency
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Before/After - a lab becomes a restaurant post remediation
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Taxonomy of programs
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Monitoring wells provide soil data to farmers
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Plan Oblique of residential quarters
Strong Ties Weak Ties Advanced VI Studio Stephen Burks
Starting from Anni Albers’ 1947 painting, Knot, I focused on exploring and trying to understand the gradient of the relationships between the three cords (see right). As I attempted various methods of studying the Knot, I was able to draw more parallels between the painting and different types of networks. Strong ties create structure, and weak ties define space. The following studies are abstractions on this concept. 19
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Knot as a network diagram
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Forming a ‘Vessel’ that contains space
Vessel in Ant Farm’s House of the Century
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Partition of knotted ribbons
Partition in Ugo La Pietra’s Casa Telematica
Finding Macrame as a way to develop structure and define space within the Knot
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Knot interior model
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Knot interior collage
Section II: Living with Development Development tends to displace and disproportionately impact marginalized groups. It doesn’t have to be that way. Investments should contribute to the surrounding community. These projects are interventions on typical development patterns. 26
Manhattanville Advanced V Studio Andrés Jaque Partner: Kassandra Lee
We focused on Manhattanville because to us it represented the modern day incarnation of slum clearance. We recognised that it would not be feasible to just return sites to individual sites to individual owners, since the same pattern could then repeat itself. We therefore proposed the creation of a community land trust to be administered the West Harlem Dev Corp and for a development rights sharing structure with Columbia. 27
A ring of cameras surrounds the Forum
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Elevation of predemolition Manhattanville
Notable scenes from Manhattanville before demolition, including dinner at Floridita,
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A family-owned gas station, and
A birthday at one of the apartment buildings
Excerpt of calculations on current and anticipated construction for development rights sharing 30
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Phase I of integrated community and Columbia spaces including a new High School
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Phase II of new community housing, light industrial, and art center integrated with existing Columbia Buildings
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Community art therapy program joined with Lenfest and Jerome Greene Centers
Bibliotheque Botanique Core II Studio Erica Goetz
How do you build a new library facility, without destroying any of the existing park amenities of Sara D. Roosevelt Park? Put the library underground. This is the core concept of the proposal, maximize community amenities with a stepped series of walls and occupiable roof spaces.
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Section
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Site Plan
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Mezzanine Floor Plan
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Basement Floor Plan
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Site Section
Retail Therapy Core I Studio Stephanie Lin
The aim of this project was to reclaim the vacant stores and empty spaces along Broadway between Madison Square Park and 30th Street. During site visits I was noticed the many empty store fronts along what seemed an otherwise busy stretch of Broadway. WholeClosed store fronts on the corner of Broadway and 29th salers were being pushed out to make way for more upscale retail. This project is a kit of parts to allow vendors to temporarily occupy the now vacant spaces. 39
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Axon of a temporary market
Parts and assembly