Jonathan Lain selected works 2009-2015
www.jonlain.com
09 15
Curriculum Vitae
Information
[name]
Jonathan R. Lain 08/01/1990
[address]
3358 Landings Dr. Ann Arbor, MI 48103 USA
[phone] [email]
Education
[2013-2015]
(260) 438 4981 jonlain@umich.edu
Master of Architecture (with distinction) University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Planning GPA 3.85
[2009-2013]
Experience
[October 2014-July 2015]
Honors Bachelor of Arts in Architecture (Cum Laude) Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana College of Architecture and Planning
The Los Angeles Design Group - 251 Hampton Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90291 Architectural intern- Schematic design Blue Plate Oysterette. Model for Chicago Biennal Lakefront Kiosk competition. Exhibition/installation for Jai and Jai Gallery, Los Angeles: Houses and the Figures that go in them.
Exp. cont.
[June-August 2014]
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP - 224 S. Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60604
[June-August 2013]
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP - 14 Wall Street, New York, NY 10005
Architectural intern- Schematic design Pazhou Star River. Detail development/rendering, elevation and section drawings. Concept design Yangpu Poly Shanghai. Diagrams, presentation materials, digital models of schemes, site drawings.
Architectural intern- Worked primarily on design development for Shum plans and elevations, as well as detail/material renderings.
[August 2013-May 2015]
University of Michigan TCAUP FABLab - Ann Arbor, MI
ZĂźnd Coordinator- Teach students to operate CNC knife cutter. Provide assistance with student/faculty projects along with routine machine maintenance.
Recognition [October 2015]
ACADIA - Computational Ecologies - Featured project: Protean Atmospheres
[2014-2015]
TCAUP Architecture Student Showcase - Featured projects
[2013-2015]
TCAUP Architecture Merit Scholarship - 4 semesters
[2009-2013]
CAP Dean’s List - 8 semesters
[December 2012]
CAP senior capstone competition - Honor Award
[December 2012]
CAP Best and Brightest Award - Architecture Dept. scholarship
Skills
Software Photoshop Illustrator After Effects InDesign Rhino Grasshopper 3ds Max/ Vray Maxwell Autocad Maya Revit Processing Python Mudbox Blender
Language English Spanish Russian French
Additional
3d printing, 3d scanning, laser cutting, CNC 3-axis, Zund CNC, drawing, modeling, graphic design, motion graphics, painting
Contents
Academic [01]
Thesis: Eidetic Figures (probably objects)
[02]
Options Studio: Protean Atmospheres
[03]
Systems Studio: Vienna Colonies
[04]
Networks Studio: Pirate Cloud
[05]
Somnium
[06]
Miller College of Business
[07]
Chaise_01: One size fits one
[project]
eidetic figures (probably objects) graduate thesis project September 2014- May 2015
[blurb]
Employing the technique of photogrammetry to capture ready-to-hand forms that exist in everyday subjective experience of the world. Dissolve the relience on the significance of explicit form. Arriving at a naïve process of encountering an architectural object, where the subject is erased from the particular content and the object is afforded an attitude of autopoesis. The process of digital translation “re-codes” an eidos of of an original object into a new material/medium.
[details]
advisors: Ellie Abrons & Adam Fure colloaborators: Vinnie Montesano
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5
6
7
Scan Process Images of the Venus de Milo, a culturally distinguished and highly photographed object, are gathered from Google Images and used to reconstruct the object with photogrammetry.
PROBABLY OBJECTS Photogrammetry captures objects as raw data, indifferent to context, place, and material specificity. As a technique, it eliminates traces of an object’s environment and redraws its form as points in digital space. A common effect of digital culture, photogrammetry ignores the contextual and concrete specificity of objects as it interprets all matter as equivalent data. Eidetic Fragments renders this indifference visible, turning scans into architecture. Specifically, this thesis exploits the miscalculations that come from imperfect scans to produce large-scale architectural figures with varying degrees of legibility. Photogrammetry works by analyzing images to determine the location of points on the surface of an object. These points are then translated into a digital model and connected by a polygon mesh. The more images there are of the original, the better the digital copy. Selectively omitting images of discrete portions of the object or changing the settings of the photographic capture (through lighting, lens aperture, shutter speed, etc.) produces blank spots in the scan that erode the boundaries of the original. This produces figuration that moves between the poles of abstraction, crude polygonal meshes that fail to convey the formal characteristics of the original, and identity, clearly recognizable copies. In Eidetic Fragments an amorphous vertical mass conjures an elephant’s trunk while a grotto-like ceiling resounds the outlines of the torso of the Venus de Milo. Our thesis reveals the translational gap suppressed by photorealistic applications of photogrammetry. It produces hazy architectural figures that materialize the immaterial habits of perception. Gestalt principles of perception explain the capacity of humans to piece together whole images from chaotic sensory fragments. In Eidetic Fragments the perceptual agency of subjects is removed. Instead of the subject actively synthesizing fragments into images, they naively encounter remnants of a once symbolic whole as fully formed objects
Milo + Tennis Balls (formal sense) Here the two objects are put into relation with one another based purely on their inherent formal propensities (i.e. convex surface nested against concave surface). The boolean cube acts as the spatial ground (as well as a minimum architectural device) through which the forms are isolated—this action on the compositional pair of objects sublates the figurative into the figural.
Milo + Tennis Ball Formal Non-sense
Animals (content sense) Animals
Content Sense
The relation of two animals enacts the role of embeded content within form. A tiger’s mouth gapes at the neck of a zebra, an elephant’s trunk extends toward the outstretched neck of a giraffe, and a gaze is exchanged between animal parts. The legibility of animal form is made secondary to the legibility of animal traits: figure is raised above image.
a Gymnasium (probably a spin club)
a Temple (probably for hedonism)
an Athanaeum (probably for literature and robotics)
Agglomerations The scanned forms are presented in a homogeneous material where it is often difficult to gauge where objects begin and end. The typical sense of enclosure is discarded, and a maleable understanding of interior and exterior is adopted. The interior becomes a hazy concept of “just how far you’d like to venture into?...”.
an Athanaeum Section
[project]
Rainbow/ Cloud Protean Atmospheres Options Studio September- December 2014
[blurb]
Grounding the ephemeral cloud and rainbow, making them material and tangible. Not by mimicking, copying, or representing, but through immanence—being contained in new mediums. Formally, cloud and rainbow are no less “Real” than their “natural” equivalents, but objectively, what the new cloud and rainbow are in, and that which they enter into (relations, vectors) bring about realities/clouds/rainbows that haven’t previously been experienced.
[details]
professor: Meredith Miller collaborators: Carla Landa 12,500 m2 color cloud factory, observation platform, weather park, public exhibition/performance space, psychadelic hang-out
PROTEAN ATMOSPHERES Cloud formations and rainbows live within perceptive imagination as transient and mystical objects. Their ineluctable qualities are founded upon their temporal presence, metamorphic form, and distance from the earthbound subject. While clouds and rainbows are the stuff of sublime dreams and fictions, they can be known as weather products of vectorial interaction, arising out of specific instances of atmospheric matter, force, and energy. By grounding the cloud and rainbow onto a mundane material reality, what was once distant and imagerial is now sensed and occupiable. Atmosphere is captured and translated into a taxonometric array of material objects. Color spectrums are experienced through time and materialized, set in play through a scenography of continuously
shifting climates. The plane of the ceiling puts pressure on theatmospheric territory, delimiting the extent of the environment made, while the stair lances the planes of ground, horizon, and sky—bridging separate realms of matter and the metaphysical. Though there is a casual usage of architectural references (Mies’ uniform ceiling, Leonidov’s structural heroics, Lissitsky’s punctilious juxtaposition of elements), there is an intentional affect with “mishmash” that prompts a sensitization to what the elements are capable of through their relationships. What emerges is an occupation of image through perfunctory psychadelia.
Cu con
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Cloud Simulation: The process of cloud making begins by modeling individual particles within a unitized system. Species are drawn from the World Meterological Organization's taxonomy of tropospheric cloud types. The ontology of clouds is studied as specific instances matter and of multiple forces and vectors coinciding at a given time and location. Temperature, wind speed/direction, and air density all contribute to the production of certain formal types. Seen in nature, atmospheres act dynamically and often out of reach in the environmental background. However, once simulated, frozen, and materialized, cloud qualities become tangible and inhabitable in static form.
stage 01
stage 02
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A Separate Physics:
The frozen clouds become literalized matter requiring control and precision in recreating cloud form. These clouds display a physics separate from that of our “naturally” driven world. When placed beneath the ceiling plane, the two worlds meet. It is the role of the subject to bridge the gap between these two planes—one that is grounded in matter and the other that is vaguely metaphysical.
Cumulus Congestus:
stage 03
formation
with great vertical development and heaped into cauliflower shapes – indicates considerable airmass instability and strong upcurrents.
North
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Hill
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East
West
Powder Hoppers
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Powder Hoppers
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SCALE 1:1000 0
5
10
20m
COLOR FLUX & CLOUD FORMATION Initial Condition South
North
LGrn
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Or
Trq
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East
Bwn
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SCALE 1:1000 0
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20m
COLOR FLUX & CLOUD FORMATION Eventual Condition South
Color Flux: The stair begins in its initial color state of blue powder coating. New colors are dispersed through the ceiling system and added into the local atmosphere. Driven by wind and precipitation, the color builds up on the clouds, stair, ceiling, and ground.
Cloud Formation: Clouds are shipped to and assembled on site from lightweight cast aluminum panels. Beneath the ceiling, the clouds spend a specified “life-time� of three color cycles, accruing their idiosyncratic pigments.
Site Elevation
[project]
Vienna Colonies Systems Studio January - May 2014
[blurb]
This studio focused on the aggregation of component geometries to explore the relationship of part objects from a “flat� ontological perspective. As the particular component is given agency from within the whole, relational possibilies emerge with respect to propensities of space and form.
[details]
professor: Matias del Campo collaborators: Drew Delle Bovi, Weijia Zhang 4,800 sq. m. mixed-use, high end residential, cafe, shopping, nightclub
1:500
component generation isocahedron
boolean
deletion
inverse boolean
component drop simulation
component mirror cut
08
terrace/ gym
07 06 05
5-unit
04 03
4-unit
02 01 LL
3-unit 5-unit 4-unit
P
3-unit
final aggregation
cafe/ boutique club parking
Austria
Site Plan - Stephansplatz, Wien, Austria
club lower level 1:100
1:5001: 500
terrace 1:100
5 unit floor level 4 & 7 1:100
ground level 1:100
[project]
Pirate Cloud Networks Studio: Elsewhere September-December 2013
[design]
In an effot to hide the activity of the Pirate Bay organization through the use of the decoy, Belle Isle of Detroit is taken as a site for explicated digital networks. Terrestrial existence of the digital cloud becomes visible through evidences woven in the air above.
[details]
professor: Neal Robinson site extent: 0.52 sq. mi decoy headquarters, drone hanger, platforms for public viewing
▓▒░ ŧɧε ¦ бʟɩɳd►
In order to properly decoy, the blind conceals the Pirates’ true whereabouts. The PirateBay’s array of hidden cloud servers allow for it to stretch its hands over the globe from undisclosed locations. By employing drones, a technology currently laden with paranoia, activity on the island can be conducted without any human physical human presence. From a hanger situated on the island, drones can download orders from the cloud, construct the new cloud, recharge, and refill carbon tow. The drone’s compact size and manoeuverability allow for it to undertake the complex weaving patterns
Drone Path 01
Drone Path 02
Drone Path 03
Drone Path 04
[project]
Somnium ACSA/ competition: preservation as provocation undergraduate studio October - December 2012
[blurb]
Address historical Castle Pinckney in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. Preserve the site while invigorating new uses for the island. Observe the effects of errosion and natural disaster while keeping a small ecological footprint.
[details]
professor: Kevin Klinger collaborators: Vinnie Montesano 4,000 sq. ft. performing arts center, outdoor auditorium, exhibition museum space, welcome center, historical displays
Somnium Somnium is an escape from reality. Often we are confronted with the horrors of the world: war, poverty, oppression. But art provides the means to counteract these forces. In the dream, vision and feeling inspire us to create, whether in the plastic form of architecture, or through the captivating performance of drama, music, and dance. Though not always utilized in times of conflict, Castle Pinckney symbolizes war in its heavy physical form. This edifice played a minor role in the War of 1812 and the Civil War and was altered and build upon numerous times for non-military uses. The questions of restoration and preservation is an important ones when considering the structure’s negligible history. To contrast the fort’s historic function as a mechanism of war, one that was never intensely tested, it is transformed into a locus for expression and creation. The initial construction phase consists of an archaeological dig which will uncover the many layers of the fort to be studied and documented for record. All recovered artifacts are displayed within the proposed welcome center. This process uncovers the castle to its raw state, ready to be built upon with a contemporary sensibility. The primary programmatic component is a dynamic, adaptable performing arts center. The structure takes form as a suspended auditorium enveloped by the concourse of the building. Lifted, the auditorium is closed for private events and performances. The lower half of the auditorium is able to be lowered down into the tectonic covering layer which supplies additional seating and stage place for larger public performances.
Additionally, the auditorium can be utilized as a container of refuge during a natural disaster, such as as a hurricane. The building’s valuable artifacts and contents can be loaded into the auditorium, lowered, and secured in the heart of the fortification. Within the fort, the faceted covering landscape serves as a basin to collect rainwater to be reused within the building. As the faceted skin escapes the walls of the fort, it spills into the surrounding grounds of the island, providing a structural and permeable mesh panel system (used in combination with planted cod grasses) to control further erosion of the island, preserving the foundation of the castle and its addition. In its original form, the castle provided a mind of security to Charleston in times of war. Through its history, the changing of function and worth as a historical object requires new attitudes. Somnium is the next layer, perpetuating artistic expression and creative thought through program, serving as an outlet for the the community of Charleston.
shute’s folly island Charleston Harbor
aluminum skin
floor/ interior
structure
auditorium
photos: Historical American Buildings survey
faceted landscape
vertical mangrove structure
phase 2: building construction phase 1: archaelogical dig existing
private
transition
public
disaster
exhibition area
auditorium flex space
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Level 2
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Level 1b
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Level 1a
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1
1 Auditorium storage 2 Mechanical 3 Lower concourse 4 Exterior seating 5 Exterior stage 6 Lobby/ Entrance 7 Restrooms 8 Showroom 1 9 Interior stage / seating 10 Auditorium flex space 11 Showroom 2 12 Cafe 13 Office rooms 14 Showcase
[project]
miller college of business renovation/expansion undergraduate studio January - March 2012
[blurb]
Expanding traditional notions of academic learning spaces to create unique opportunities for immersive and collaborative learning in a technology driven environment. Creating a new recongnizable face and presence on campus for Ball State’s college of business.
[details]
professor: Pamela Harwood 100,000 sq. ft. interactive classrooms, collaborative learning areas, cross-disciplinary connections, open department and
[project]
chaise_01 “one size fits one.� undergraduate options studio January-May 2013
[blurb]
Using digital cartography as a means to capture the distinct formal qualities of the individual human form. Translating digital scans by digital computation and fabrication to produce a uniquely fitting chaise for a single user.
[details]
professor: Michael Silver design team: Jon Lain, Matt Lawton, Vinnie Montesano, Steven Putt full scale finished prototype LIDAR scanning, Microsoft Kinect scanning, Geomagic Studio 12
CNC Routing (opposite left):
UNIVERSAL TO SPECIFIC
The thickened surface model is split into 3/4 inch slices (the thickness of stock MDF material) and nested. With the limitation of 3-axis milling, flip operations were used to maintain the detail of each geometric surface.
Digital Model (opposite right): An estranged sense of sidedness is produced from the offsetting of the scanned surface: one sittable, the other, a scaled or puffed-up version of the original surface.
The management and analysis of complex data generated by handheld and ground-based scanning machines allows the designer to work in an atmosphere of unprecedented specificity. Our ability to robotically materialize 3d mapping data in real space establishes a vital link between digital cartography, the real world, and architecture. This project explores the use of computer mapping, design, and fabrication in an effort to probe the relationship between new modes of space mapping and furniture design. From the reclining figure of an individual body, form is digitally captured as point-cloud data.This spatial information is then built into surface mesh geometry and given thickness. Split into millable segments and reconstructed, a one to one relation traverses from the physical to the digital, and then back to the physical. What results as the original subject occupies the chaise, a figure sitting inside its own figure: a one size fits one.