Jackson McMullen

PORTFOLIO

SELECTED WORKS

CASA GRACIA

YEAR: Fall 2021

PLACE: Orange Beach, Alabama

TYPE: Rental Cabins

The Thicket Cabins are an alternative option to the high rise hotels that dominate the Orange Beach tourist industry. While the hotels rise away from the landscape, the cabins portude into it creating an experience that is specific to the place.

The Cabin takes the form of a mono sloped volume with a ribbon like roof that folds to open the porch up to both sides and the entry.

The exterior space aims to promote community while the interior revolves around a moment with nature.

15 cabins sit on a narrow strip of land within the wooded marsh of Gulf State Park.

The units are grouped in pairs with adjacent screened-in porches to allow larger parties to stay together, and promote a since of community along the path. The Cabins extend off the solid ground and into the marsh to emerse the inhabitants in nature.

SITE PLAN

FLEXIBILITY

The cabins are designed to sleep 2-5 people, with a bed, pull out couch, and space for one in the window seat. The units are grouped in pairs to accomodate parties up to 10 people.

Elevation 1

Section A

A MOMENT WITH NATURE

The Window seat is the fulcrum of the project. It is the main experience, and it solves many practical problems. The window allows the user to inhabit the landscape from the comfort of indoors, but it also expands the living room as a second couch, and serves as an additional bed.

The window seat is built in with casework on the inside so it can be supported without appearing to portrude into the living space. The Shelves run the length of the unit, and provide storage for the program across from them.

CASA GRACIA

YEAR: Spring 2022

PLACE: Gracia, Barcelona, Spain

TYPE: Community & Senior Center

Casa Gracia is a community center on the first floor, and a senior center on the second through fourth floors. It is a place where people gather to meet new people and try new things. Because of this I chose to focus on maxmizing the opportunities for connection. This affected the form and layout of the building, as well as the relationship to the adjacent placas.

GRACIA

GRACIA

GRACIA

GRACIA GRACIA GRACIA GRACIA GRACIA EIXAMPLE EIXAMPLE EIXAMPLE EIXAMPLE EIXAMPLE

GRACIA EIXAMPLE

EIXAMPLE

EIXAMPLE

EIXAMPLE AVE.DIAGONAL

SITE CONTEXT

The senior center is located in the Gracia neighborhood of Barcelona. An older neighborhood characterized by non-orthagonal and irregular blocks.

The Site sits between two lively placas. Placa Raspall is a more regular and commercial placa, while Placa Del Poble Gitano is more irregular and residential

Carrer de Tordera

Carrer de Siracusa

Carrer de Tagamanent

PLACA DEL POBLE GITANO

PLACA RASPALL

PLACA DEL RASPALL

CONNECTION

Connection to the Placas is achieved through large entry ways that allow events to flow in and out of the building. On the Placa Raspall side, the building can be used as a stage, and on the Placa del Poble Gitano side, the large overhang provides a refuge from the elements.

On the upper floors, a combination of balconies and operable glass doors blur the line between indoors and outdoors.

PLACA DEL POBLE GITANO

DEVELOPMENT OF 4 CORES

To foster connection within the building, the plan is broken up into zones instead of rooms.

Four rigid core blocks divide the space, allowing for a multitude of layouts, and overlap between the program.

LEVEL1SCALE:1/16”=1’-0”

LEVEL2SCALE:1/16”=1’-0”

LEVEL1SCALE:1/16”=1’-0”

LEVEL 1

LEVEL 2

LEVEL 3

1

PLAN LEGEND

2 Balcony below Stair Core

3 Exterior Living Space

4 Living Space

5 Storage Core

6

7 Dining Space Elevator Core

8 Restroom Core

9 Rooftop Garden

10 Billiards Room

ORGANIZATION

The rigidity of the cores allows for a loose organization of the program, creating large spaces subdivided into smaller zones.

Because of this, a single space can serve a couple of people, or a larger gathering

The top floor functions like a mezzanine due to secondary stairs that create physical, visual, and audible connections to the floor below.

A VIEW

YEAR: Fall 2022

PLACE: Birmingham, Alabama

TYPE: Start-up Incubator

The Vertical Incubator is an entreprenurial start-up office building with a large park on site. It aims not only to activate the site, and stitch together the two blocks it sits on, but to activate and stitch together the city. It blurs the line between public and private space to bring the city in, and create an inspiring urban work environment.

1ST ST N

2ND ST N

2ND ST N

1ST ST N

MORRIS AVE

MORRIS AVE

17TH ST N

17TH ST N

18TH ST N

18TH ST N

SITE CONTEXT

The Vertical Incubator sits on a block and a half that is not assigned to any district on the Birmingham City masterplan. However, due to its location, it has the unique oportunity to tie together the Civil Rights, Switch, and Business districts.

While the building provides an economic draw, the park provides a public and leisure draw that will work to stitch the three districts together.

The park also completes a string of parks through the city which will improve the city of Birmingham as a whole.

SITE

CIVIL RIGHTS DISTRICT

SWITCH DISTRICT

BUSINESS DISTRICT

LINN PARK

KELLY INGRAM PARK

RAILROAD PARK

2ND

17TH

INNOVATION DEPOT

TRANSIT HUB

The bridge connects the two sides of the park over 1st Avenue, creating an amphitheater and a skate park.

Existing street trees line 2nd Avenue and 17th Street

The trees on 17th Street are repeated into the site to create an alle along the west side of the site.

1

2

SITE DIAGRAM

The elements come together to form a passive side and an active side with a mixing zone in the middle

A stream of swales dissolves the other elements of the park

3

4

ORGANIZATION

The building is arranged into four clusters that each have their own atrium and secondary staircase.

A public mixing zone runs up the center of the building from the park to the roof top.

Photovoltaics

PHOTOVOLTAICS

LED Environments

LED ENVIRONMENTS

Building Plastics

BUILDING PLASTICS

MINI SATELLITES

Mini Satellites

Public

PUBLIC

SECTION A

The program is stacked in a basic way.

The program is divided into 4 clusters.

The program inside each cluster is re-arranged to allow the collaboration to be adjacent to both the workshops and offices.

The clusters are arranged so that the collaboration zones for each cluster overlap

This becomes the mixing zone that connects from the public ground floor to the roof-top event space.

OLD

The building rotates around the center to create balconies and overhangs for each cluster, as well as visual connections down the streets.

Openings in the floor snake ther way up the mixing zone to encourage workers and the public to explore outside of their cluster.

The bottom floor features retail area to activate the street edge, and a theater for larger gatherings and events.

FORM

A rust color pallete of ceramic panels relates the building back to the iron industry roots of Birmigham. The cladding system changes with the form to further emphasize the rotation. At each rotation, a color type of panel is taken away until only the dark red remains at the top.

A bold form moves through the center of the building and up into the sky to call attention to the public space within the building. The transparency of the form allows the building to be animated by people moving throughout, and reveals the red circulation cores on the interior.

MOBILE DANCE HALL

YEAR: Spring 2023

PLACE: Mobile, Alabama

TYPE: Dance and Performing Arts Center

The Mobile Dance Hall aims to play its role as another node in the network of a culturally rich and active area of downtown Mobile.

The Dance Hall plays with transparency, and the weaving together of public and private space to create a venue that doesn’t just celebrate the performance, but the process.

SITE

Revolving around Cathedral Square is a network of public, cultural, and commercial nodes which makes this one of the most lively areas in mobile.

The Dance Hall aims to plug into the existing network, drawing from the activity and contributing to it.

Mobile Dance Hall

Car & Foot Traffic

Bus Stops

Green Space & Vegetation

Retail and Restaurant Hot Spots

SPATIAL CONCEPT

The public and private spaces within the building are interwoven. A Raumplan series of public spaces wrap through the building, each space revealing more of the process that goes into a performance. First just the theater, then the rehersal rooms, and finally the production workshop.

The theater is moved toward the middle of the building to allow other spaces to get light.

There are two rehersal studios. One is in the back for private rehersal. The other is elevated on the front corner to make practice part of the performance

A series of interconnected public spaces weave up and back into the building.

Theater PLAN LEGEND

Rehersal Studios

Public Space

The plan is organized as an “S” form around a mass and a void to maximize natural light. The mass is the theater which does not need natural light, and the courtyard is the void that helps light penetrate deeper into the building.

The 180 seat theater is split into two levels to keep the audience close to the stage, and create a more intimate venue.

Section B

Section A

Intermediate levels and overlapping spaces make it so the public always has a view of the next space they can move to, encouraging them to move up through the building and experience the process behind the performance.

The theater and rehersal studio read as seperate volumes, distinguishing them from the public space.

Section Perspective C

FACADE

The facade plays with transparency to celebrate what is happening on the inside. Aluminum panels cover the private. Fritted glass begins to reveal the semi-private. Transparent glass showcases the public.

The facade is very smooth and flat. All of the exterior finishes are in the same plane. The glass is held in place with structural sealant joints so that no mullions stick out past the glass. However, depth is created through views into the building and people moving inside. The rooftop garden helps make the glass more transparent by lighting it from the back.

074116 - INSULATED METAL ROOF PANELS

076200 - SHEET METAL FLASHING

033300 - ARCHITECTURAL CONCRETE

072600 - VAPOR BARRIER

061600 - SHEATHING

054000 - COLD FORMED METAL FRAMING

084413 - VERTICAL ALUMINUM MULLION

084413 - GLAZED ALUMINUM CURTAIN WALLS

088113- LOW-E FRITTED DECORATIVE GLASS

096466 - WOOD ATHLETIC FLOORING

053100 - STEEL DECKING

084413 - HORIZONTAL ALUMINUM MULLION

084413 - STRUCTURAL SILICONE JOINT

051200 - STRUCTURAL STEEL FRAMING- GIRDER

051200 - STRUCTURAL STEEL FRAMING- COLUMN

051200 - STRUCTURAL STEEL FRAMING- BEAM

055813 - CONCRETE COLUMN COVER

033300 - ARCHITECTURAL CONCRETE

221423 - SPECIALTY CHANNEL DRAIN

DETAILED FACADE

Fritted glass is used on the corner rehersal studio to distinguish it as a volume within the building, and give the dancers a layer of privacy. From the street you will not see individual dancers, but shapes dancing across the facade.

The simplicity and transparency allows the structural and architectural elements to become the defining features of the facade.

FISH HAWK RD LAKE HOUSE

YEAR: Fall 2023

PLACE: Lake Martin, Dadeville, Alabama

TYPE: Lake House

The concept for this project is to bring nature into the house. This is done by pushing and pulling planes to blur the line between interior and exterior. Extended walls guide views out into the landscape. Captured outdoor space infiltrates between the two volumes of the house. Operable walls transform interior spaces into exterior spaces.

PROCESS

The project was molded from start to finish through a rigorous back and forth between scaled drawings and diagramatic sketches. Through iteration, design decisions were made to support the concept.

As the house gets more defined, the concept gets more stable, and the changes become smaller.

PROCESS PLAN

The form of the buiding is two shifted volumes, defined with gable roofs, and thick stone walls running long ways. They are tied together with a glass volume that runs perpendicular.

To move from one volume to the next you must pass through the walls, into an intersticial space which celebrates a dogwood tree, making you aware of the change.

After solving many design issues, the plan started to get away from the original concept.

The plan was refined to solve the necessary problems, while more closely representing the design concepts.

PROCESS PERSPECTIVE

As this process was happening with the plan, it was happening in perspective and elevation.

A form that supported the concept was achieved at a basic massing level.

CLERESTORY & ROOF DETAIL

A clerestory window was crafted to separate the walls from the roof, distiguishing the two elements, and creating a relationship to the exterior throughout the house.

Structural steel plates support the roof while appearing to pentrate from interior to exterior.

The rafters are exposed to create another visual connection running from interior to exterior, and create a light, canopy-like roof.

STANDING SEAM METAL ROOF

SIPS ROOF PANEL

2X8 CEILING JOISTS

STRUCTURAL LUMBER 6X12

DIMENSIONAL LUMBER TRIM 2X12

NON-STRUCTURAL METAL PLATE

STRUCTURAL METAL PLATE

WEILDED METAL MULLION EXTERIOR WALL

DEVELOPEMENT

Through refinement and creation of details, the concept is supported wholisticaly throughout the house.

JACKSON MCMULLEN