Academic Portfolio 2021

KYLE BALSTER ARCHITECTURE PORTFOLIO Academic portfolio of Kyle Balster, spanning his Masters Degree in Architecture (2019-2021)

Hey there! It is great to meet you.

My name is Kyle Balster, an architectural designer with a Master of Architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture. I am a designer who prides himself in creating compelling and energizing work that responds to human needs.

Inside this work sample, you will find a selection of my work from my time at SCI-Arc (August 2019 - September 2021).

Collection Tower

Graduate Thesis

01

Semester : Summer 2021 Instructor : Tom Wiscombe Curltural Advisor: Marikka Trotter Thesis Prep Advisor: Kristy Balliet Site : Midtown, Manhattan NYC, NY Scale: XL

Fata Morgana Flat Out Large

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Semester : Spring 2021 Instructor : Tom Wiscombe Site : Downtown Los Angeles Scale: XXL

Conversation

Rethinking Height

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Semester : Fall 2020 Instructor : Elena Manferdini Site : Downtown Los Angeles (U.S. Bank Tower) Scale: XL

(In)flux

Le Musseé Imaginaire

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Semester : Spring 2020 Instructor : Damjan Jovanovic Partner : Jordan Scheuermann Site : West Hollywood (LACMA) Scale: L

Kaleidoscope Slice It!

Semester : Fall 2019 Instructor : Andrea Cadioli + Curime Batliner Partner : Peter Kluzak Site : SCI-Arc Gallery Scale: XS

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WHAT’S INSIDE?

PROJECT TITLE COLLECTION TOWER STUDIO TITLE

cover imagenature description Perspective rendering illustrating the part to whole of the tower while residing within the Midtown, NYC, NY landscape

Collection Tower is a project restructuring the construction and thought around the modern-day sky-rise. The contemporary tower is a collection of slabs - stacking one atop the next - creating relationships only where the top and bottom touch. While this strategy is programmatically facilitating and is easy to understand, it throws the wellbeing of tenants and residents out the window. Through this stacking logic, green space is limited to adapted floors or balconies, and interstitial space for gathering is just a loss of money for the developer. While it is simple to talk about the negatives, what then would be a solution?

The Collection Tower is based on a collective, both formally and programmatically. Objects take on characteristics both formally and programmatically. The different programs housed within each shape are office spaces, retail spaces, apartments, and single-family houses. With two centrally located cores, objects can organize themselves vertically, intersecting at moments and boolean away from each other to create moments of separation.

Homogeneity is found with an operative act to create a family between all of the different shapes. By shearing the north and south facades, expansive curtain walls are constructed. Atop this, a unifying logic is created amongst all of the objects in the collection.

The facade was targeted as a solution when tackling the problem of energy creation and usage of a building of this scale and magnitude. By creating a prism shape integrated into each object, the focus can be taken on the upper and lower facing facades. On the top, solar is integrated into the facade, tracking the sun path for maximum solar gain.

On the lower facade, balconies, windows, and back yards are integrated allowing the programs to reach outward.

Overall, Collection Tower aims to change the perpetuated logic of how sky-rises must be organized, from a lacking stack of slabs to an organized collection of individual objects.

Semester : Summer 2021 Instructor : Tom Wiscombe Curltural Advisor: Marikka Trotter Thesis Prep Advisor: Kristy Balliet Site : Midtown, Manhattan NYC, NY Scale: XL

Collection Tower

(T) “Cabinet of Curiosity’ (Menagerie) is used as a reference of a collection of individual objects that are brought together in the creation of a collection (B) Waldorf Tower in Miami is used as an architectural precedent for its formal and programmatic distinction between cubes within the building

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Graduate Thesis

Drawing of the Collection Tower objects separated and scattered across a plane highlights the moments where each object has its uniqueness and the moments where each object becomes a part of a greater hierarchy Page 9

Collection Tower

COLLECTION TOWER

RESIDENTIAL CHUNK

Punched Window / Balcony (Prism Bottom)

Solar Array (Prism Top)

Collection Tower Program 1BR Apartment 2BR Apartment Single Family House Retail Space Typical Core Residential Balcony Residential Park Retail Balcony Page 10

Graduate Thesis

Residential Park Single-Family House Object 242’-0”

Typical Core

Single-Family House

External Retail Space External Retail Object 60’-0”

Integrated Retail Object 60’-0”

Retail Park / Balcony

Typical Core

Integrated Retail Space

Apartment Housing Object 527’-0”

1BR Apartment Residential Balcony

2BR Apartment

External Vertical Helix Object 75’-0” Page 11

Collection Tower

(T) Photograph of an interlocking moment between two objects amid the collection (B) Elevational view of the physical model showing the articulation of the facade (R) An elevational view of the entire physical model, including the Collection Tower and Midtown site Page 12

Graduate Thesis

Photograph of the physical model showing the quartering-away view highlighting the contrast between extra-small profile and the extra-large facade and how they both interact with the buildings site in Midtown, Manhattan Page 13

Collection Tower

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Graduate Thesis

Elevational rendering of the Collection Tower from central park in Midtown Manhattan, NY

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PROJECT TITLE FATA MORGANA STUDIO TITLE FLAT OUT LARGE

cover image description Digital rendering of Fata Morgana creating a new Downtown Los Angeles Skyline with its house-of-cards massing

Flat Out Large is a design studio based on the concept of single-axis mega-scale architecture. Keeping twoaxis extra small and extending the third to an extralarge dimension offers a new form of architecture that isn’t commonly seen or discussed today. This studio discusses questions around the capabilities that megascale architecture has on the urban environment and how it can be implemented to heighten the urban fabric and allow it to be sustainably effective.

Fata Morgana is a project that utilized a house of cards approach to the Flat Out Large brief. Through its simple massing and “house-of-cards” massing, the mega-scale architecture can incorporate vertical and horizontal elements while inhabiting a large swath of Downtown Los Angeles. Consisting of vertical residential towers and a public university lifted hundreds of feet into the air, the project aims to reinvigorate the Downtown Los Angeles area by injecting the younger generation and generating the area’s needed infrastructure.

The urban fabric is completely adapted for the introduction of Fata Morgana. With the introduction of the vertical residential towers occupying the previous roadways, the automobile circulation is dropped into a tunnel network beneath the city’s surface. Exits are offered at every intersection, bypassing the entire building. Along with this, the interstitial space is given back to the inhabitants of the downtown region in the form of parks, plazas, restaurants, retail, etc.

Cladding the entire usable south-facing face is a solar array accountable for over 1.5 million square feet of solar cells. With the capability to generate enough solar for the whole of the Downtown Los Angeles region, an argument could be made whether the architecture is a university, residential array, or an power plant.

This project aims to open conversations about dealing with the present problems and the fact that external and thought-provoking ideas are needed, such as Fata Morgana.

Semester : Spring 2021 Instructor : Tom Wiscombe Site : Downtown Los Angeles Scale: XXL

Fata Morgana

Rending of the midterm “Bento Box” including different mat forms, surface treatments, and the outcomes of different formal combinations. This strategy aimed to create interesting formal relationships that was used later when siting the building in Los Angeles Page 18

Flat Out Large

(T) View of the Northern facade of the residential towers of the Fata Morgana model (B) View of the Southern solar-cladded facade of the Fata Morgana model (L) Photograph of the entire physical model showing the Fata Morgana building located within the Downtown Los Angeles site Page 19

Fata Morgana

FATA MORGANA

GODZILLA DRAWING

1A . Chunk

Resiential Metrics

University Metrics

1 BR:

Units per Tower: Total Square Footage:

540 units 153,900 s.f.

Total Student Union Buildings:

4 buildings

Total Campus Buildings:

35 buildings

2BR:

Units per Tower: Total Square Footage:

432 units 236,736 s.f.

Total Recreational Fields:

2 Fields

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大きく平らにする ゴ ジラデッサン Flat Out Large

1A. Lower Residential Tower Chunk

Solar Panel Array

Sports Fields Submerged Plazas Exterior Staircase Circulation

University Buildings

Student Union Buildings Public Plaza Elevated Metro Submerged Roadways

Total Number of Units: Total 1BR Area:

5,400 units 1,539,000 s.f.

Solar Metrics

Total Number of Units: Total 1BR Area:

4,320 units 2,367,360 s.f.

Annual Energy Creation: 257,656 MW

ex. Topaz Solar Farm energy creation: 580 MW

Total Residential Area:

3,906,360 s.f.

Total Solar Area:

Projected Solar Budget

1,540,771 s.f.

132.6 M Page 21

Fata Morgana

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Flat Out Large

Photorealistic rendering of the Fata Morgana building and the new Los Angeles Skyline

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CONVERSATION PROJECT TITLE STUDIO TITLEHEIGHT RETHINKING

Elevation rendering of ‘Conversation’ cover image highlighting description the relationship to the surrounding buildings and the transparency of the newly envisioned sky-rise

Rethinking Height is a design studio based on redesigning the U.S. Bank Tower in Downtown Los Angeles. Amid the Covid-19 Pandemic, the US Bank Tower was sold at a fraction of the predicted price, ushing in the question: Has the necessity on urban buildings and skyrises shifted due to safety amid the pandemic? Attempting to answer this question, this studio set out to redesign the tower, rethinking what the contemporary high-rise might look like.

Conversation is a project that aims to rethink the modernday skyrise by attacking the building core. Contemporary high-rises have centrally located cores that serve as the central vertical circulation to each building floor. Skylobbies, part-way up the building, offer areas of refuge and transfer but also serve as bottlenecks where different paths cross. Removing the cores mitigates this behavior and keeps circulation paths as free from bottlenecks as possible. As a result, by fuzing the elevators with the facade, the building mitigates the short-comings of centralized cores while serving the buildings circulation needs.

In an automobile-dominated city, the pedestrian has been stripped of power and not given any room to exist, celebrate, or explore. Conversation aims to be a catalyst stripping the automobile of its power and giving the urban fabric back to the pedestrian. The plinth seeks to give the ground plane back to the pedestrian rather than the automobile by stepping up the three-story grade difference located on-site. The building is lifted from the twisted site, making a point of interest with covered and open air spaces.

Wrapping the facade is a secondary panelized glazing system, disconnected from the building as it is vertically tourqed. With each panel’s ability to rotate, the entire skyrise can reflect its surrounding context and the sky, becoming transparent and falling into the background.

All projects from the Rethinking Height studio were submitted and premiered at the Seoul Bienalle in the Fall of 2021.

Semester : Fall 2020 Instructor : Elena Manferdini Site : Downtown Los Angeles (U.S. Bank Tower) Scale: XL

Conversation

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Longitudinal section cut showing the internal torquing splaying the edges of the building at the top on bottom of the sky-rise Page 26

Sky-rise Program 1.

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Underground Parking Occupiable Plinth Retail Space Office Space Residential Space Occupiable Rooftop Green Lobby Mechanical Space

Rethinking Height

(T) Rendering of the plinth condition after the entire building is lifted free from the site, giving the urban fabric back to the pedestrian (B) Detail facade rendering highlighting the movable panel assembly (L) Physical Seoul Bienalle installment for the Rethinking Height studio in South Korea Page 27

Conversation

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Rethinking Height

Axonometric renderings keying into the movable panelized facade system (based off of installments by Daniel Rozin) that reflects the sky-rise’s surrounds, allowing it to blend into the surroundings

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(IN)FLUX PROJECT TITLE STUDIO IMAGINAIRE MUSEÉ TITLE

Elevation rendering showing the luminance cover image of the description external facade aggregate and the moment when the building meets the ground creating an artificial landscape

​​ Museé Imaginaire is a design studio redesigning Le the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The museum complex is currently undergoing renovation/ construction of a new main building that architect Peter Zumthor designed. This studio will work on answering the questions: what are the bounds of the contemporary museum? How should artwork be presented, displayed, and viewed? And how is the expansive collection of LACMA stored and removed from storage for viewing purposes?

(In)flux is a project that attacks the contemporary museum’s method of organization and aims to create a new hierarchy: randomness. The museum is constructed through this randomness. Forms are suspended in the air, breaking free from the hierarchy of museums, colliding with one another and creating exhibition spaces, galleries, classrooms, and storage spaces. Through this randomness, the artwork is organized through viewing typologies rather than chronological or alphabetical order.

Storage of the expansive LACMA collection is offered within the suspended forms. Connecting each of the forms is a circulation path that offers human circulation and artwork circulation. Located beneath the circulation pathway is a railway system that connects all the galleries to the storage forms. Finally, within the storage forms is a hyper-cartesian storage facility that stores all of the nonshown artwork at any specific time.

The facade system is a representation of the internal break from a hierarchical system. The facade is digital and physical, created from an aggregate of shapes, offering containment of the internal shapes and aesthetic lighting and movement.

Located beneath the building mass, sunken into the earth, is the synthetic landscape. An environment contaminated by the aggregate above, and occupied by artwork and nature elements, offers a transition space for the visitors of the museum.

Semester : Spring 2020 Instructor : Damjan Jovanovic Partner : Jordan Scheuermann Site : West Hollywood (LACMA) Scale: L

(In)flux

Renderings highlighting the different experiences through the different gallery typologies and methodologies in the ways a visitor can experience and view the LACMA collection

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Museé Imaginaire

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1.3 L.A.C.M.A. Program 1 Galleries 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4

Immersive Gallery Landscape Gallery Normative Gallery Transition Gallery

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2 Theater 3 Retail 4 Office 5 Classroom 6 Storage Level two and four floor plans highlighting the randomness of the internal building structure Page 33

(In)flux

Chunk model renderings of different key areas and circulation relationships between programmatic types.

(L) Theater space located beside circulation and garden space (C) Storage spaces located beside circulation, garden spaces and interconnected with railways (R) Gallery spaces located beside and intersecting circulation and garden spaces

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Museé Imaginaire

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(In)flux

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Museé Imaginaire

Artificial landscape rendering of the environment surrounded by the aggregate creating a new and interesting space

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KALEIDOSCOPE PROJECT TITLE STUDIO SLICE IT!TITLE

cover image descriptiona

Slice It! is a visual studies course that focuses on creating an visually aesthetic project, both physical and digital, utilizing a variety of different resources. The course was split into two parts, a digital exploration, and a physical, robotic exploration.

The course started digital, created two-dimensional animations through custom written grasshopper scripts.

The logic was derived through a issometrically viewed contour command through primitive geometry. By playing with color, line weight, texture, and overlap, the result could be massaged to a desired result. Working in teams of two, the midterm deliverable was creating a looping animation of the final video, and two still frames that would be large-format printed as stickers for the gallery installment. The gallery exhibited a single screen playing the studio’s animations and the stickers placed on the floor and all walls. Projectors were used, heightening the digital experience, also outlining and highlighting each of the stickers.

Finishing the second half of the course, the focus was predominantly on the physical. First, utilizing the still frames from the first half of the semester, canvas prints were laser-cut into a chosen repeatable pattern (this project worked with a modified hexagonal shape). Next, playing with color, overlap, depth, and reflection, physical panels were constructed using MDF, printed canvas, plexiglass, and custom robotic fasteners. Utilizing a premade grasshopper script, the panels were then used in the process of recording photographs that would later be superimposed on each other in the creation of a singular paneled wall. For the final exhibition, this superimposed photograph was used to create a kaleidoscope image that would be printed onto MDF and combined with other students in the result of multiple columns.

Overall, this semester introduced multiple levels of visual aesthetics in the usage different resources to create visually compelling work.

Semester : Fall 2019 Instructor : Andrea Cadioli + Curime Batliner Partner : Peter Kluzak Site : SCI-Arc Gallery Scale: XS

Kaleidoscope

(C) Midterm gallery installment featuring a single screen airing the animations and the virtual and physical stickers surrounding the gallery on the walls and floor.

(R) Exploded axonometric diagram highlighting the construction of the physical panel

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Photograph superimposition of the different photos taken throughout the repeating robotic script

Kaleidoscope

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Slice It!

Kaleidoscope pattern texture that was created from the repeated panel pattern and installed for the final gallery installation

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THANK YOU! Thank you for your time and consideration in looking over my work.