ARC107 Portfolio

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Exercise 1

A Vocabulary and a Grammar This exercise will first introduce a “vocabulary” of architectural “nouns” (line, plane and mass as elements of form; interpenetration and independence as spatial conditions) and operational “verbs” that act on these nouns (such as shearing, intersection and deformation). The relationships between these “nouns” and “verbs” will be studied to understand how to produce an architectural “grammar” that is one of the ways that architects can embody their intentions, goals and values through form and space.

The initial verb was that of «Expand» and after a few iterations and experiments the verb was switched to «Carve» as the student felt his interpretation of «Expand» applied more to that of «Carve».

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Exercise 2

Scale, Movement, and Context

The goal of Exercise 2 is to introduce three characteristics of architecture and the experience of architectural space. In pursuit of this goal, the abstract, scale-less object produced in Exercise 1 will be transformed into a representational, scaled model of a building that people will enter, occupy, move through and which will be designed for a specific site.

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Exercise 2 will involve the production of drawings that record how selected buildings on the Syracuse University campus reflect the three characteristics of scale, movement and context. The knowledge acquired through this investigation will then be applied in the second part of Exercise 2 to the transformation of the object produced in Exercise 1.

This project was done in a group composed of: Mason Malsegna, Gianluca Ferrari, and Xinran Min, and JoĂŁo Pedro Ellery.

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Exercise 3

Learning how to learn from Architecture The Double House by MVRDV is composed of two housing units which are arranged and combined by interlocking pieces. The house is divided in 1/3 and 2/3 of the space as that is how much each family originally owned. Instead of creating two simple vertical houses, each house pushes and interlocks with the other thus giving the houses more horizontality. This was done since public living spaces require larger rooms so by pushing these spaces into the other house, you allowed each room to serve its function.

In addition to the latter, the move was also mainly introduced to allow for a full view of the park in front of the house.

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In order to obtain maximum spatial organization, the individual rooms are mostly stacked onto each other to make use of the house’s verticality.

Additionally, there is a maze-like circulation where you’re constantly moving in and out from public to private spaces and vice versa.

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In general the public spaces are open and are distinguished by large windows on both ends, whereas the private spaces tend to have walls on all sides with small windows.

Contradicting this argument, the central spaces on the higher floors are private spaces which possess large windows.

The reason for this is that those rooms are already at a floor where an outsider can’t look into the room from the streets, therefore the room won’t lose its privacy.

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Exercise 4 Design as Synthesis

This exercise reiterates the issues presented

in the preceding three exercises of the course, by integrating them into a single design problem: a small building containing a space or spaces for an artist to work, space or spaces in which to live, and space or spaces for the artist’s work to be exhibited. This building will be located within an artists’ colony, to be configured in the first part of the exercise.

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This house was designed for a rock band of four people. There are three different programs (living, practice, performance) which are split in different built environments. Each space is seperated from the others in order to allow them to fulfill their specific functions through ÂŤisolatingÂť it from the other activites from other programs.

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A rectangle is divided in three and then the top and bottom parts are shifted in different directions. This move is followed by a push within the top one and the bottom has a box extruding from it. To reconnect the two different programs an interlock is added. A frame is also introduced to help determine the performance space.

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