Through Thresholds - Hasan Aljumaah

Through Thrusholds Hasan Al Jumaah

Table of Content.

In the Horizon Text Library Park Hidden City Urban Livingroom Central Cheesery Journey of Lights Rethinking Public Toilets In Kuwait City

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NOTES: Some line drawings are scaled and modified for the purpose of this digital document, and a technical graphic scale is provided to show its scale. The humble work showcased here mostly developed during Master of Architecture, M. Arch III in the School of Achitecture, the University of New Mexico, USA. Before flipping this page, I shall thank God, my country, my family, my school, my instructors, and classmates for making this happen.

Thank you

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Dwell and work

In the Horizon M. Arch, 501 Sutdio, Instructor: Kristen Shaw, Nora Wndel

The studio calls to design a residency escape and lab in the vast landscapes of VLA, New Mexico. The site is filled and surrounded by antennas and a scientific facility to analyze and store data for NASAA, from the outer world, the space.

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A Day in The Horizon He wakes up when the sun starts to shines from the his bedroom next to the bed. He goes to the bathroom and dresses up and get ready for a busy day, a day that he will meet other scientists.. He crosses a glass garden in a corridor where light is more intense and the space is narrow.. He reaches the kitchen and the living room which is a large open space thats. He eats his breakfast and he senses the quietness of the space.

He can notice the threshold in the floor, he feels a dramatic change between the two spaces.The room is again bright and different. The room holds a void to the sky; this void is closed with glass with unique lighting quality allowing him to experience the outdoor from indoor, he calls it a space to interact with nature. This room is the horizon.

The buildi ng captures the horizon by providing a unique body and mind experience through space. A act of separation on the program of the building has been applied to act like the elusive horizon between two layers. The program is divided into two layers, body and mind layers, like the the sky and the earth.

The space between the two layers surrounded by light screens to achieve significant lighting quality while moving between the earth and the sky.

This space also, unfold the unexpected journey to the horizon. Unexpected exterior path to expansive site reinforces the experience to the horizon. The guests arrived. The guests come from the entrance incline .

The entrance space which holds the void welcomes the guests by elevating them to the horizon, the void between the sky and ground. He welcomes them and walks them to the mind layer. They see the antenna and walk to a offices passing by a green void between the two spaces.

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They reach the office they are amazed by the view through the horizon in this room. They see the expansive site and they feel that they are too close to touch the horizon. They go to a room that hold an aperture where they can they can touch the stars.They sit and discuss for hours and when they finish they leave the office and again they are in the void in between. They sit and relax and enjoy the light coming from the light box.

After the sunset and while everyone is siting in the horizon, the scientist interrupts and says, “Let me invite you to what is beyond. Let us experience the unexpected; let’s inhabit the horizon.”

Everyone is shocked and excited. They pass the threshold between the interior and exterior spaces. They experience and interact with the expansive site; they listen to the wind; they are descended and elevated from the ground, as a plane lifting off. They walk the exterior path. They feel that they are taking off from this world, going to somewhere beyond and suddenly they reach a space: the one space in an expansive site fully open, exposed to the surrounding atmosphere. Everyone now sits on the horizon.

They sit there, chat, eat and enjoy the fire. The night comes in and they enjoy seeing the space and the horizon. They touch the stars and they experience the unexpected beyond.

The Horizon Architecture is like an instrument. Instrument that brings the elusive to be experienced. The horizon is void between two layers the sky and the earth. “The sky does not really touch the earth at any place, not even at the horizon. If the sky and the earth were ever to touch it would mean the destruction of the world - as if to say that the original act of separation must be continued as the horizon.� The building captures the horizon by providing a unique body and mind experience through space. A act of separation on the program of the building has been applied to act like the elusive horizon between two layers.

The program is divided into two layers, body and mind layers, like the the sky and the earth.

The space between the two layers surrounded by light screens to achieve significant lighting quality while moving between the earth and the sky. This space also, unfold the unexpected journey to the horizon. Unexpected exterior path to expansive site reinforces the experience to the horizon.

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Back Elevation

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Front Elevation

Short Section

Roof Plan

Ground Plan

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Long Section

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Competition Studio

Library Park M. Arch, 502 Sutdio, Instructor: Kramer, Steven Moora

The first half of this studio semester was to participate in an international architecture competition. The competition brief by Archasm asked for an architectural idea and concept for a library in Hyde Park in London. The project idea board was mentioned in the top 50 winners list.

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The Library Park as an extension of park comes from the significant historical and cultural context of Hyde Park in London. The site offers a relaxing escape from urban life to its inhabitants and Library Park enhances this.

The building is exploded into two main units, a main library and a multipurpose hall. The act of separating the units on site forces the body to continually interact with the site and its context. Also, The main purpose behind this act is to provide an exterior experience of encouraging knowledge as well as a playful and interactive environment.

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The two units sits on the ground level next to the lake and the walking path with a sloped green roof that enhances the outdoor experience movement through a park. The sloped platform blends into the existing site. The split units form a public space with stairs which descend from Rotten road. The stairs function as seats facing the courtyard which becomes the stage for library events.

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visitor center as a

Hidden City M. Arch, 601 Sutdio, Instructor: Ane Gonzalez Lara

The architecture of this project had begun with extracting narratives and concepts from a biological species, which here in this case, the desert spiny lizard scales. Afterwards, those idea were combined with the project’s site, context, and landscape whose are very dense, dark and rich. The resulted architecture was to form a visitor center in Rio Charma River, New Mexico that speaks both to its context and nature.

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Hidden City Form The final architectural intervention came from the bio system and the site by forming a third dense and hidden layer that appreciate more density and light. This new architectural layer sites on a clear 3x3m rectangular grid that paves the pathways between the architectural repetitive unites. These units take the shape as the shape of the lizard skin, simple rectangle with a direction spine. Each unit’s spin direct itself defiantly toward an optimal angle to elevate the users experience with the light. Also, the 3x3 meters units have deferent height and some are combined to provide larger spaces to the required program. At the end of the day this hidden layer will be as the stars on the ground lighting and call itself a Hidden City.

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Short Section Long Elevation

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Reset, Rehink and research studio

Urban Livingroom M. Arch, 602 Sutdio, Instructor: Karen King

The first mission in this studio was to search for a local issue in Albuquerque, New Mexico and ask the question, how can architecture reset and rethink this issue? Each student applied the same question on his unique research and not approach it with the problem-solution method rather to see what new possibilities could architecture offer to the local through this reset?

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Architecture for the elderly The reset issue focused on the elder people and their relationship with kids in the residential neighbors in Albuquerque.

The Question How can architecture break the elder’s boundaries or restrictions, which have been created by society or themselves? By forming a third architectural intervention that collides the elderly and kids to form new possibilities. This collision would empower the kid’s awareness and energize the elders.

A series of studies and analysis were developed before starting the architecture of the project. Here a map shows the relationship between elderly people facilities sites and preschools and kindergartens sites.

The study and this map were to stress the idea of colliding the elderly with the kids and help decide the project’s site.

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The architecture response to elderly and kids issue by rethinking a collision as a learning experience. This idea is inspired from old Arabic poetry which describes the moment when an old wise soul calls back his young inner child and start talking about experiences in life and learn again from each other.

The architectural concept will interduce the project as learning experiences. Experience will challenge both the kids and the elderly. These experiences will hold moments, a one moment the kid will learn from the elderly, the elderly will tell a story, cook a meal together, plant a seed and slow down the kids.

A different moment, the kids will teach high-speed tech, jump and go crazy. Another will be when they both pause, explore, walk and perhaps just sit back and relax.

These learning paths will be circulated in an architectural program that will be under the title of food, gathering, library, mind, body and go crazy and jump.

Finally, the building will sit in neighborhood’s heart where there the neighborhood park is. This location will give a sense of community and offer a possibility for everyone.

Moments and experiences

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The first architectural act is to choose a site against the conventional precedent that responded to the elderly and kids. Choosing neighborhood’s park to explore the project’s potential. This will give project a sense of embrace by the community.

Following the architectural concept, building as leaning paths and potential for Collison between the elderly and kids. The building form is brock into two masses, the long which will contain the learning paths and the small which is an outdoor enclosure penetrated by on experience from the long mass. These experiences will be stacked on a structural framing system, conceptual, the grid will form a nesting experience and an intersection and discover between the learning experiences.

The envelope as a whole will be general gathering space and covered with glazing system that will be shaded with circular tubes to give the idea of semitransparent and opaque. The envelop system will emphasize on extruding learning path and their possibility when they extend.

Lastly, a window boxes are introduced to act as a pause moment to collide and meet.

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Section A

Section B

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Comprehensive Studio

Central Cheesery M. Arch, 603 Sutdio, Instructor: Jeff Adams

The studio calls for a comprehensive architecture design for a site on Central Ave in Albuquerque, New Mexico which is very vital street. The project’s site was provided by a real estate developer to the school of architecture. the site is part from a big master planning development on Central Ave. The students were required to develop an industrial building starting from zoning and energy codes to building’s details and materials.

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The project is attached to an active and live axis. An axis which can be conceived of as a streamline. Lately, this axis is attracting developers to put massive and rapid development which somehow blocking what is behind. The project idea departures from rethinking the site as a threshold between the residential neighborhood and Central Avenue by creating a progressional access experience. The building form tries to achieve this experience by shifting at Central, it can be conceived as one simple box form, and at the same time, the simple form is curving and opening to welcome the public life around.

The building as a cheesery will sit on this new experiential axis providing courtyards at the curved axis and voids. These courtyards can be perceived as starting and ending points or as moment to pause and capture the light. The cheesery program is organized on these shifting curved voids of movement while pausing to taste the cheese and learn about the process behind it.

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Level -1 1 Receiving Area 2 Staff 3 Milk Storage 4 Storage 5,6 Aging 7 Coolers 8 Mechanical 9 Storage

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Level 0 1 Receiving Area 2 Staff Lockers Room 3 Retal 4 Chessery 5 Food Service and tasting counter 6 Food Hall 7 Coffee Hall 8 Cafe

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12’ 6’

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Level -1 1 Roof Access 2 Storage 3 Staff Break Room 4 Apartment 5 Cheese Lab 6,7 Classroom 8 Open Meeting Area 9 Office 10 Demonstration Room 3’ 1’

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Roof Level 1 Roof Access

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12’ 6’

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3’ 1’

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Front Central Elevation

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3’ 1’

12’ 6’

Section A

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Typical Wall Detail 1

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Typical Wall Detail 2

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Public Architecture and Lighting Design Competition

Journey of Lights M. Arch Seminar, Instructor: Dena Thomas

RBT lighting design competition brief was to reimagine the architecture of a public transit space with a lighting design. the design has won the 2nd prize award.

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Journey of Lights The concept of the lighting design for a transit station is driven by looking at the rail tracks and their journey from station to station. The path of the tracks creates a distinct ground pattern that not only reflects an individual journey, but also how people’s individual journeys intersect and thus intensify when meeting others at platforms.

Ultimately, the project takes the rail track pattern and highlights it above ground to form a lighting and shading feature for an open space transit station. The transit hall is connived of as open public infrastructure that exists on a city square and can be accessed from all sides. People would come to this hall under the open light track pavilion to celebrate and enjoy art, landscape, coffee, and life under the train paths above.

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The light tracks are held by vertical posts that are scattered around the open hall. The vertical support also varies in height responding to the profile of the tracks, which dip down to the train circulation at the basement of the hall. The required program of the transit station is nested under the lighting pavilion and provides an interior experience alongside public art and landscaping in the open, public exterior.

The lighting design detail is an abstraction and inversion of the train tracks. It is a simple steel track joined with steel C channel that holds the LED light strip. This simple detail is bent at the center of the hall to expand the lighting rails beyond the city horizon.

During the day, the sun would project the shadow of the lights, and at night the tracks would shine on individuals as they go on their journeys.

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Axonometric View

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Sectional View

Typical light Detail

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Independent research Studio

Rethinking Public Toilets in Kuwait City.

M. Arch, 604 Sutdio, Instructor: Karen King

An opportunity to look back home. Kuwait.

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Rethinking Public Toilets in Kuwait City Public restrooms mostly exist in the city and fade away beyond its thresholds. Kuwait City is a completely commercial city and it is still actively growing, with rapid construction and commercial developments. Yet within this fast-paced growth, public bathrooms are located on leftover sites, are out of service, are dysfunctional, and they do not engage with the architecture of its surrounding. Because of their dysfunctional conditions, people use toilets in mosques instead, or they go through the added effort and find a toilet within the closest public building. This alternative option has put the surrounding public buildings at risk.

This project takes the public bathrooms and their existing sites, and it tries to find a set of architectural strategies that could enhance the public toilet experience. Most importantly, the project contributes to and participates in a new urban fabric, which has rapidly changed since the discovery of oil in the late 50s.

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These strategies seek to see the public toilets as an urban node in order to reimagine the public toilet experience, and it asks: what is the city and the public missing? What language should its public architecture speak?

By analyzing the 10 founding sites, some common site-specific conditioners were found between the sites. Those common features were categorized into two types of sites; two design strategies were developed. Site type 1: A site where there is a robust public space and ample pedestrian life around it, with fast-growing small restaurants and retail shops that occupy the ground levels of old and new commercial towers. Site type 2: A site that is hidden and exist on leftover space.

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Glimps Of Light (Horizontal Strategy 1 Site Type 1) This strategy focuses on how to impose a very secluded entity in Kuwait’s public city life. The architecture of the project starts descending with its horizontal thresholds and it welcomes a glimpse of traffic that is happening around the commercial city into the bathroom.

The whole architecture isolates itself by a water perimeter circling around the project’s site, which gives an acoustical water effect that borrows from the concept of a water cycle. Also, the project prepares the visitors through its threshold and transitional spaces via its wide corridors. As they navigate and searching for the bathroom, a glimpse of light penetrating from above and the building’s facades, granting one a sense of extreme seclusion through the interplay of light and shadow.

This phenomenon of light and water is extended further into the very secluded space (the bathroom). And, each bathroom is detached from one another and has several unprogrammed spaces to ritualize a utilitarian experience.

Lastly, after the secluded experience, the user could continue their experience by pausing and touching the glimpses of light within the architecture, or they could stay in the very secluded space: the bathroom..

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Section B

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Section C

Roof Plan

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Ground Floor 1 Retail Area 2 Security Offices 3 Maintenance Offices 4 Reception Area 5 Bathroom Area

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Section A

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Vertical Voids In-Between (Vertical Strategy 2 Site Type 2) Rather than composing the project horizontally, this project is imagined vertically. This strategy considers what the urban fabric of Kuwait City is missing, as well as how it can provide a contentious and secluded public toilet experience. This strategy responds to its context by leaving the bathroom sites in-between buildings and allowing them to remain hidden from the public. The idea is to construct a vertical structure, while at the same time remaining hidden or serving as a background. The project celebrates this concept by establishing vertical gardens on the one hand to promote green spaces around the city and to encourage pedestrian life through its vertical microclimate on the other.

The visitor is encouraged to climb the vertical layers from its ground level to its roof top retail area or enjoy the view while rising through the wide and compressed vertical voids. As for the bathroom user, after accessing the reception area at the ground level, the bathroom is isolated and surrounded by green space that provides a private experience and view. Each bathroom, after passing the green perimeter, has several spaces for siting, resting or viewing before reaching to the toilet space. Here the sense of seclusion is achieved by surrounding the bathroom architecture by green layers.

Ultimately, when passing the green layer, the user could fully occupy the void and capture the momentary seclusion.

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6th Floor – Bathrooms

Typical Gardens Floor

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4rth Floor -Bathrooms 1 Entry 2 Washing 3 Seating 4 Toilet

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Ground Floor 1 Reception Area 2 Security Office 3 Maintenance Office

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Section A

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The End Thanks