Discontinuous Continuity

Course: ARCH 501 Design Studio—Mixing Chamber

Instructor: Maya Alam (maalam@design.upenn.edu)

Collaborator: N/A

Location: Penn Museum, South Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Duration: Fall 2020 (Sep. 2020 - Dec. 2020)

Over the course of the semester, I became increasingly interested in formal and conceptual relationships between continuity and discontinuity.

What started as a modeling exercise in the previous project, where continuous and discontinuous curves are forming an engaging AR installation, became an exploration into architectural concepts, where a complex matrix integrates the overall gesture with the interior moments coherently, while maintaining visual disruptions to engage the visitor.

The final project is to design an Archive and Research Extension for the Penn Museum. The overall massing employs continuous curves to define a big gesture that connects one wing of the existing building with the other, while the discontinuous moments allow to organize the distribution of opaque and translucent materials on the facade and through this the views from the street to the inside of the building.

Large cone-shaped volumes are cutting through the overall massing, revealing the interior ’s unconventional space. Visitors moving in between these spaces experience an active play between solid and void, volume and surface. Bearing the shape of the outline of the cut-out volumes, the resulting curved wall and tilted floor are connected by a contour-like stair landscape, which also acts as the main circulation.

Perspective Chunk Rendering

In what began as an exploration, continuous and discontinuous curves were forming an intriguing design concept that began as a modeling exercise and later became an exploration of architectural concepts.

Top: Elevation Rendering

Bottom: Paper Model Photos

The museum extension is located in Stoner Courtyard, facing South Street to provides the public with a unique opportunity to face the museum archives. The arch in the building gives the new public portal to the musuem and the inner courtyard. The play with the translucent façade materials allow the views from the street to the inside of the building. The big gesture bears in the form of continuity, while the discontinuous moments allow to organize the distribution of opaque and translucent materials on the façade that better explain how discontinuity and continuity exist harmoniously with each other.

Section Perspective Drawing

The cut-out volumes become the resulting curved wall and tilted floor that intersect with each other to create this dynamic dynamic

The inner couryard is redesigned to live coherently with the musuem extension. In plan drawings, the curved walls and interior volumes are connected by a contourlike stair landscape from lower floors to upper floors as the main circulation. This approach brings the viewer to go through the entire building, and functions as space for rest. The large corridor on the third floor goes through the entire building to connect the views of the street and the courtyard inside and outside.

Idealization

Course: ARCH 502 Design Studio—Spolia Agency

Instructor: Brian de Luna (delunab@design.upenn.edu)

Collaborator: N/A

Location: 52nd Street EI Station, 52nd Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Duration: Spring 2021 (Jan. 2021 - Apr. 2021)

Food system planning is a multi-faceted topic that engages numerous stakeholders ranging from local farmers, food distributors, to consumers. The food economy is an important part of regional economic development, in which local food production, distribution, manufacturing, and preparation can provide abundant jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities.

In the 52nd corridor, food access and serving are some of the important issues in the complicated food system in West Philadelphia. The maps focus on the restaurant industry, in which the activities range from food preparation and serving to food consumption. The first map in the sequence analyzes the current condition of restaurants in different types and capacities in relationship with food-related occupations in the corridor, followed by the second one artistically demonstrating the idealized restaurant zones. The final map of combination gives a new condition that organizations and individuals appreciate the connections between the existing food infrastructure and new possibilities.

Integrating the idea of idealization from the maps, the building aims to explore idealized programs to expect new possibilities as the community concerns, such as the communal kitchen and collective working space. The building inherits the history from euclidian precedents and reminds people of memories from the designed texture maps, which stand as a social condenser to expect carnivalized changes and freedom to remake the corridor and the city.

In the analytical map, it analyzes the restaurants locations and their capacity in relationship with food related occupations. It leads to thinking how the food system, in this case, the restaurant industry, could create jobs and opportunities for people living nearby, and also influence local economy. There are different types of food including fastfood, Chinese food, soul food, Jamaican food and vegan food. The sizes of circles represent restaurant capacities like how many people it can accommodate, ranging from 25 to 100 people. The artist map gives a step of idealization using artistic approach. In the clean and ordered geometry, each circle represents an idealized food zones that includes existing restaurants and may also implicate restaurant or other types of food infrastructure that people wanted in this area. The continuous curves going across circles and also the shared colors among them give the sense of connection, similarity and differences among these food zones.

The final relief map is a combination of the previous two maps but also add a further step of idealization. It gives a new condition that I combined the existing corridor and its food condition with the idealized food zones together. I further placed the objects with the adjacent areas bump out as a new 2.5dimensional map. In this way, I want to express the idea that, based on the idealization of food areas in the artist map, we can also expect new possibilities such as communal kitchen, Michelin restaurant and many other types of food infrastructure that 52nd corridor don’t have, that people want. Just like the colorful chunks embedded into the black and white map. Let’s say, to expect carnivalized changes and freedom to remake the corridor and the city.

Elevation Rendering

Integrating the idea of idealization from the maps, the building aims to explore idealized programs to expect new possibilities its the history and euclidian geometry from studied precedents to create compound figures, and use the approach of “doing perfectly with the geometry. For the interior, I use wood as material and the maps as the displacement texture to better memories of the 52nd corridor.

possibilities as the community concerns, such as the communal kitchen and collective working space. The building inher“doing a section” to show the inner space. For the exterior, I chose to use red modern brick as the material which works illustrate the compound geometry and the depth of the space, and in a cultural sense, to remind people of histories and Idealization

Interlock

Course: ARCH 602 Design Studio—Monolithic Hybrids

Instructor: Danielle Willems (dwillems@design.upenn.edu)

Collaborator: Chunyu Ma

Location: Anable Basin, Long Island City + East River, New York

Duration: Spring 2022 (Jan. 2022 - Apr. 2022)

Our project breaks the non-designed space of traditional data centers and conveys the sacredness of data in the future through a grand and spectacular vertical space design functioning as a data center and museum. The word Interlock is obtained from the design process and expression of the project that conveys the idea of interlocking architectural visual space and function of data servers, as well as the interlocking of experiencers’ sensory perception and spiritual mind in this scared grand space.

The design approach uses interlocking fragmented puzzle pieces to form grand concrete structures that carry the servers and water cooling systems and interior space for a museum exhibition to embrace the sacredness of data. As data continues to grow in the future, the puzzle pieces could be subdivided and still interlocked to store more data while occupying the same amount of space.

The exterior cladding design responds to the interior space, expressing the concept of parts forming a whole. Three types of cladding that use ceramic tiles, solar panels, and steel parts engage with each other with no exterior window to express the feeling of monolith and sacredness.

The project’s location was the Abable Basin in Long Island City and surrounding East River, which was the former proposed site for the New York Amazon Headquaters. This is a unique opportunity to rethink data centers and museums with public infrastructure as a platform to explore futural machinic architectural space.

Plan Drawing

Visitors could experience from the entrance to the data exhibition space, the corridor, the central atrium, and water platforms platforms in a sequence.

Section Drawing

The section gives the visual transition from the void to the solid and to the void. The building has no exterior window. It

It uses skylight to allow lighting coming hrough the building from rooftop that functions as a passive cooling system.

Interior Renderings and Details

Left: Elevation Renderings

The long and short elevations show the distribution of three claddings on the exterior facade. The roof system is made up of both solar panels and glass to absorb light energy and provide daylight to the interior of the building.

Right: Cladding Types—Renderings and Physical Models

There are three types of cladding on the façade - ceramic panels, solar panels, and metal parts. The ceramic panels use gray gradient for color as the main cladding. The solar panels absorb sunlight as a sustainable way to provide energy for the data hall. The metal parts of the vent openings, as the result of interior design extending to the façade design, provide cooling system for the data servers. The exploration of cladding tiles in physical model are presented accordingly.