Portfolio & cv by Jens Pedersen

CV // Portfolio Jens Pedersen MsC. EmTech and MA in Architecture

About

Contact tlf-DK : +45 42 74 13 38 @ : jenspedersen88@gmail.com web : jens-pedersen.dk

I am a young architect, designer, researcher, etc. who specializes in the use of parametric and scripting tools for the development of architecture and design. A knowledge I have developed and applied through the past 5 and a half years of my education and professional endeavours. Some of my projects bear, what is believed to be clear signs from the use of digital tooling, and some of my recent projects seems to have been conceived without. But in spite of popular opinions, of what a parametric-project should “look-like”, these projects display a more subtle use of the parametric/ scripting tools. This is due to my increased control of the mentioned tools. I hope the progression and skill-set is evident throughout the body of work presented in this portfolio and CV, if not, please visit my personal website or Vimeo account for more projects, experiments and tests:

jens-pedersen.dk

vimeo.com/user6214326/videos

When starting a project I always seek to comprehend the context in which the project will be situated, since I find it highly important to create architecture relating to its surroundings rather than estranges itself from it. I try doing this by using the architecture to alter, or adapt to, the urban flow, or by creating unique interior lighting situations. Some of these problems are easiest solved by using the before mentioned tools, others through physical models or drawings. Beside my desire to create context specific architecture I firmly believe that we as architects have a responsibility to create architecture with respect for the cultural living patterns of the people who will be using the building(s). In relation to this, I also believe that we should always remain critical to the reality which we create, whether it be through a constant re-thinking of today’s typological paradigm or by verbalizing contemporary or future dilemmas. My fondness for architecture arose from several years of moving around and through cities on my skateboard, which made me highly interested and aware of my immediate surroundings – how are people moving around, how is the pavement, what material is used on buildings, etc. These initial interests lead me to start my studies in architecture at Aalborg University – which then lead me far and wide. I still enjoy riding my skateboard around, where ever I am, which in my opinion gives a better and different understanding of your context. It is important for me to state that I am a very committed person, which is a character trade I would say I gained through my early years as a competitive swimmer swimming took up most of my time until I was 16. However these early years taught me a lot about committing to things and to follow through.

CV Education feb 12 - jan 14 : Master of Arts in Architecture(MA) from the department of building design at Aarhus School of Architecture. Thesis: Climate Refuge - A culturally sensitive model v 1.0 - A project that verbalizes and proposes a strategy for future issues with increased forced migration due to climate change. oct 10 - sep 11 : Master of Science(MsC) in “Emergent Technologies & Design”. From the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London, United Kingdom. Thesis: Associative Hydrological Urban Metabolism - Developing a new methodology for designing coastal cities in arid climates. sep 07 - jun 10 : Bachelor Of Science(BsC) in Digital Design From Aalborg University, Department of Architecture & Design(A&D), Denmark. Thesis: FLUX - A design investigation into the paring of advanced geometries, parametric modelling and structural evaluation. aug 04 - jul 07 : High school diploma from Aalborg Katedralskole, where I majored in math

3D - modeling :

Technical Abilities Adobe :

Analyses :

Rhino

Illustrator

Geco

3D’s Max

Photoshop

Ecotect

Maya

InDesign

AutoCad

Lightroom

Model :

Revit

AfterEfects

Laser-cut

Rendering :

Parametric/ programming :

By hand Vray(rhino) Mental Ray(3Ds) Keyshot

Grasshopper Rhinoscript(VB) VB.net C# Processing

Relevant work experience feb 13 - sep 13 : After finishing my internship at AART, they wanted me to continue to work there as a student assistent, where I worked with concept development, 3D-modeling and animation. sep 12 - feb 13 : Internship at AART architects in Aarhus. jun 13 : Worked as a technical tutor for a workshop revolving around the use of grasshopper for complex fabrication issues and robotic manufacturing. oct 11 - feb 12 : Worked as a Junior Architect for Electrutexture Lab in Aalborg. I was in charge of two projects during my stay; one art/architectural instalation for Aabybro, Denmark and a visualizations for a refurbishment of Gabriel Industrial Park, Aalborg Denmark. nov 10 - may 11 : Was a part of a small initiative where we taught VB.net to fellow students at EmTech. mar 10 - may 10 : Worked as a student teacher in 3Dstudio max, where I taught 2nd semester students the basics of 3D - modeling and rendering. feb 10 : Worked as a student teacher in grasshopper for 4th semester students at Aalborg University. I was responsible for counseling students in their individual projects during their 4th semester. The course had an emphasis on parametric modelling, which I specialize in.

Relevant travels 2008: Italy - Venice & Vicenza (14 days) 2009: The Netherlands - Rotterdam, Almere & Amsterdam (10 days) 2009: Germany - Berlin (10 days) 2010: China - Bejing & Shanghai (World Expo 2010) (6 weeks)

Language Danish : Native language English : Fluent in spoken and Written language, scored an 8.0 average on my last IELTS test German : Very basic use

Publications Through my short career I have had a few projects published in different types of magazines. - The project Red Pavilion 2010 was used as the cover image on the proceedings of the total architectural research performed by the department of Architecture & Design at Aalborg University. - My project Associative Hydrological Urban Metabolism was published in a recent article by Michael Weinstock in the AD issue named “The Innovation Imperative Architectures of Vitality”, where it was used as reference images. The images are on pages 96-97. - The same project was written into a paper named “Resource Driven Urban Metabolism“, which was submitted and presented at the Caadria conference in Singapore, 2013. The paper was then published in the conference proceedings. The paper: http://issuu.com/jenspedersen/docs/5b-068 .

Portfolio

Climate Refuge // A Culturally Sensitive Model v 1.0 Design team:

Jens Pedersen

This Project was my diploma thesis from Aarhus Architectural School. The intention of the project was to verbalize future problems with an increase in forced migration due to climate change. The successful relocation of large quantities of people have always been a global concern, which is evident in current refugee camps across the globe. Through a series of studies it became evident that making it possible for people to maintain a similar way of living will increase the likelihood of them being successfully integrated into new societies - this was then tested by developing a initial strategy, model or method(v 1.0) of how you should address the way in which people could be moved from one climate and culture to another. The case that were used for this initial testing was how you could move people from Bangladesh to Sweden. The urban scene was viewed as being the most important to reinterpret, because even though culture is not directly linked to the everyday, it is affected by it over time. So making people able to move according to what they are used to, will make the change in climate and scenery less drastic, and thereby have very little affect on the Bangladeshi Culture.

Another key aspect is the new society that the migrants will meet, for this project there was focussed on people from the lower social classes, where you always have had to work for everything. Moving them to a society that takes care of there weak like Sweden, could be a difficult task, because normally people would just be given a new home in a modernistic apartment complex to live in - no questions asked. This is viewed as being a flawed concept, and was re-thought for this project by making it part of the strategy, that people should build their houses within a developed framework and building method - inspired by the Swedish way of building and using locally available materials. It was chosen to focus on developing a way to build 1 story houses, since that is what the Bangladeshi people were used to live in. The process of building is thought to be able to develop and adjust over time, giving a very urban scenery - see model image to the right and image on the following page. The line drawings at the bottom right displays the process of building and how a dwelling can develop over time and may vary from family to family. For more information: http://issuu.com/jenspedersen/docs/research_150_dpi http://issuu.com/jenspedersen/docs/process_150_dpi

Associative Hydrological Urban Metabolism Design team:

Jens Pedersen Andy VanMater

This project was my Master thesis from the Architectural Association. Me and my thesis partner, Andy VanMater, decided to adress fuure issues with rapid urban growth, to see if would be possible to develop a new appropriate model for dealing with this complex issue. Instead of viewing the city as a collection of singular entities, we tried to view it though the lens of Urban metabolism, where the city is viewed as a holistic entity. Another reason to address this complex problem was that it presented some interesting challenges in relation to computation and applied theory. We developed an urban growth model for new coastal cities in arid climates. Several climactic predictions show that we will live in a world with more deserts, and deserts are as of now, some of the hardest places to live. Our area of intervention was Qatar, for two main reasons, due to their high population growth and CO2 emission per capita. They have a high CO2 emission because there arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t any fresh water resource in the country, so all their freshwater is either imported or generated through highly energy expensive desalination processes. We tried to mitigate this issue by using a recently developed coating, that will make the surface which is applied to able to produce water based on the humidity in the air. This coating coupled with a railing system placed along a network of saltwater canals, became the backbone of the urban model. The canals would increase the efficiency of the water gathering surface(the railing) by increasing the humidity in the air. The canals were developed trough a genetic algorithm where we tested different branching strategies for their length to spread ratio.

The city would only expand according to how many people it would be able to sustain, with the passively generated freshwater. The buildings of the city would aggregate in relation to the generated water canals and roads - see following pages for some urban samples. The two sections on this spread shows different situations in a generated city. For more information please visit this link : http://issuu.com/jenspedersen/docs/urban_metabolism

A new Nordic restaurant Design team:

Jens Pedersen

This was my 9th semester project at the school of Architecture in Aarhus. The brief for the assignment was to design a new Nordic restaurant for a plot in Mejlgade 34, Aarhus C. In addition to function and placement, the material had to be bricks and the restaurant was required to meet local planning-, fire, building regulations, etc. This was very restrictive for the entire project, but gave a very good indication of what to expect from real life after school. The concept for my restaurant was to be seated around a central courtyard, where there would be placed a group of trees(plan above). That you would be seated in a forest should be indicated once you entered the restaurant, but only be revealed once you were seated. The reason for the concept was to aid the story of the nordic cuisine(only using seasonal ingredients), the trees would aid the story through their seasonal changing of leaves. This would also alter the spatial experience of the restaurant throughout the year. Hinting, but not revealing that you were dining in a forest, was done by a careful manipulation of a brick screen.

Swister-Stixs Design team:

Jens Pedersen Andy VanMater Ivan Ucros

Nicolas Villegas Darrick Borrowski Maria Tiliakos

The brief of this project was to design a pavilion using material properties. The assignment was part of a one-week competition for the new Emtech pavilion, where the wining entry would be built in front of the Architectural Department at ETH, Zürich. Unfortunately, our project was not chosen as the winning design but it was still a beneficial exercise to participate and provided an interesting learning experience. The idea behind our proposal was to use “off the shelf materials.” We chose to work with 2x4 inch wooden planks.

Initially we conducted a series of experiments with physical and digital models, where the digital proved more useful due to its rapid output. We manipulated the wooden planks, was by stacking and rotating with a specific angle. The digital model helped us to do an iterative process of an otherwise unattainable number of iterations, giving us a series of different pavilions to chose from. For more information on this project:

http://issuu.com/jenspedersen/docs/110114_swiss-ster_sticks

Red Pavilion 2010 Design team:

Jens Pedersen Thiru Manickam Kenn Clausen

Aste Ploug Esben Skouboe Mads Brath

The Red Pavilion Project was a design invitational, where myself and three other students were invited to do a project in collaboration with local firm Electrotexture. The goal of the pavilion was to examine how to manufacture computational form, and to create a space that would function as a stage for different musical performances and performance arts. The pavilion consists of steel rods, solid steel spheres and 0.5mm steel plating. These materials were welded together to create the structure for the pavilion.

One of the greatest experiences of this project was the opportunity to create computational form with very little CNC technique. Through this experience we achieved a higher understanding of production processes and how you can reduce tolerances. The project was one of the major events at a yearly cultural event named; â&#x20AC;&#x153;Aalborg Culture nightâ&#x20AC;?, where different events, performances, etc are taking place throughout the city.

ERW Design team:

Jens Pedersen Senad Gvozden Niels Nydam Andersen

Morten Lund Dennis GrĂ¸nbĂŚk Lars Knudsen

ERW = Environmental Response Workshop. The goal for the workshop was to get an understanding of kinetic design and modelling, through the creation of an interacting installation. The development of the project was done through physical- and a parametric model(developed in grasshopper). Our project was based on a single component system, which was inspired by the basic principle of a scissor. The interaction was developed in arduino code, and controlled through a arduino board. The installation interacted with its surroundings through a series of sensor inputs, such as light intensity and temperature. The goal for our installation was to optimize its surface area depending on the solar input. In an architectural discourse this would mean minimizing the solar heat gain.

Unfortunately, the resulting outcome was not what we had desired, but merely an open and close effect. Because of the time frame for this project, it was not possible for us to fix the problem in order to achieve our intended results. However I personally learned a lot about correlated modelling in grasshopper and how to use a arduino board. So the gains of the workshop outweighs the flaws in our design. For more information about this particular project refer to this blog:

http:// environmentalresponse.wordpress.com/

The finished structure was exhibited first at the utzon centre and then later at a new cultural institution named â&#x20AC;&#x153;Nordkraftâ&#x20AC;?.

Polymorph Design team:

Jens Pedersen Senad Gvozden Kristoffer Munk

This was a quick hands-on workshop that took place over the span of two weekends. The workshop was called “Joint-Waste”, and took place at the Utzon center in Aalborg. The goal for the workshop was to “up-cycle” waste, by designing a joint or multiple joints. We investigated the relationship between two different geometries, to see what their local interactions would due to the global form. Our goal was to generate a surface which would be doubly curved based on the material behavior of the given scrap material. The surface became a two-sided structure, where one side was made up of squares, and the other of hexagons. The two sides were then connected with metal sticks of varied length, thereby varying the thickness of the surface or screen. Furthermore the hexagons were varied in size(the squares were fixed), which enabled us to control if the structure made concave or convex form. The structure consists of metal sticks, rubber chord and two differently designed joints. For more information about this particular project, refer to this blog:

http://jointwaste.blogspot.com/

The different projects from the workshop was exhibited at the Utzon Centre for “Aalborg Culture night” 2009.

UPP Design team:

Jens Pedersen Mattias Dorph Kenn Clausen

Johan Kure Sophie Mortensen Anders Ogstrup

The point of departure for this project was a design exercise done at my 4th semester at Aalborg university. Initially we were working individually for three weeks, where we developed a design proposal that should be interactive. The interacting part of the project should mitigate issues related to feeling (un)safe in an urban environment. After the first three weeks, the different projects had to go through a selection committee, which had to choose four different projects that were to be further developed for another week, in groups of 6. My project were selected and combined with a fellow student, which lead to the development of UPP, which is a piece of furniture that allows or prohibits interaction between users, based on its two-sided nature. At the end of the final week of design - one of the four projects

were chosen to be fabricated in 1:1, which ended up being UPP due to its strong fabrication logic. The form was derived through a diagrammatic process of different ergonomic seating positions. Which were then incorporated into a parametric model making it possible to alternate the design within an infinite range of possibilities. The final design was CNC-milled with a close to 0% tolerance. It took 1.5 hours to assemble the full pice, which consisted of 310 different parts. The rapid assembly was due to the strong assembly logic. UPP was exhibited at the furniture fair Code09 and at the conference â&#x20AC;&#x153;Performative Architectureâ&#x20AC;?. The picture to the right is from Code09.

UPP