Mathieu Letendre Portfolio

Mathieu Letendre

To the kid who drew floor plans with his crayons

Stations & Skylines

Inverted Courtyard

Theater of Water

Common Paradise

Stations & Skylines

Transit Integration Catalyzing Urban Densification

Midtown, St. Louis, MO

Spring 2024

Degree Project

Studio Critic: Wyly Brown

Visitors of the 1939 World’s Fair view ‘Futurama’ in the General Motors ‘Highways and Horizon’s Pavillion. Senses Atlas, “Futurama, the Prototype of the American Highway-City - Senses Atlas,” Senses Atlas, December 9, 2020, https://www. sensesatlas.com/futurama-the-prototype-of-the-american-highway-city/.

Stations and Skylines is an architectural response, 90 years later, to General Motors’ Highways and Horizon’s pavilion at the 1934 New York World’s Fair. The pavilion showcased a ‘city of the future’ with elevated trackways for cars, allowing motorists to fly above congested urban areas in the newly invented ‘highways.’ Stations & Skylines subverts the architectural propaganda that galvanized the American public and led to the creation of the Federal Highway System.

The proposal is a monumental beacon of transit access in the Midtown Skyline. A proposal for the future of urban transit. An assertion that transit integration will catalyze urban re-densification.

St. Louis is a particularly charged location for this intervention, as it’s the only city to fully implement its original interstate highway master plan. The extensive highway network has blighted many neighborhoods, destroying our robust network of streetcars and pedestrianfriendly urban fabric. Midtown St. Louis exemplifies this encroachment. Here, I-64 transitions from a single-stack to a double-wide configuration, extending westward through the county.

Recent developments nearby, including the Foundry’s adaptive reuse and Phase Two, have added 250,000 sq ft of retail, 100,000 sq ft of office space, and over 300 residential units to a pedestrian-focused urban area.

The main proposal is a vertical form, rising well above the domain of the highway, to invert the previous car-dependent hierarchy of the site.

Programmatically, the tower features exhibition and office space, with an occupiable roof for an observation deck. The office space consolidates St. Louis non-profits advocating for enhanced transit access, directly embedded within the metro transit network. Offering them direct engagement with their advocacy work. The interwoven exhibition space showcases future transit plans, fostering community interest in expanded transit infrastructure.

Massing I: the two blocks

Massing III: the cantilever

Massing V

Massing II: the tower

Massing IV

Massing VI

1/32” = 1’ site model with final massing

The expression of the structure on the north and south facades comprises Glu-Lam columns that bear the structural load, with layers delaminating to cross-brace as they descend. Hallow-Core mass timber slabs, in conjunction with shear walls surrounding the vertical circulation, address the shear loads of the project. This design allows for the extended vertical form while keeping east and west facades mostly unobstructed for views of the transit corridor. Louvers on the south and east/west facades shield the triple-glazing from direct sunlight in summer, with varying density based on internal program.

1/8” = 1’ structural model

Longitudinal section through tower core

At the urban scale, the project offers two approaches. The northern side repurposes an abandoned industrial building and adds an auxiliary infill expansion under the highway, creating 18,000 sq ft of commercial space for travelers. Repaving the industrial access road off Vandeventer serves to expand the pedestrian superbock, now running eastward to the Armory.

The southern approach transforms an overgrown postindustrial lot into a park. A sloped shed rises from the south, accommodating the spacial demands of the bus station and parking below, while crossing the tracks to arrive three-stories above the urban plaza below.

Inverted Courtyard

2022

Studio Critic: Julie Bauer

Within a restrictive 65-foot square footprint, the project re-imagines the historic altbau apartment block into a mid-rise tower through the inversion and internalization of the standard Berliner courtyard. Inverting the courtyard from an interior to an exterior space, and internalizing it from the scale of the block to the unit, the tower encompasses the green exterior space to which Germans are accustomed as a denser, vertical typology. When aggregated, the units encircle a central structural core and circulation. Berlin code prescribes one central stair and one elevator for this residential typology and size.

Aggregation of unit module

Final aggregation plan

Situated along the monumental Karl Marx Allee development in former East Berlin, this 16-story tower stands to propose a colorful, high density housing typology to the otherwise lackluster soviet-era blocks of its surroundings. Sited directly east of a major metro stop and surrounded by walkable amenities, residents are empowered to live a

car-free life. Tree-lined promenades and numerous parks integrated into the pedestrian approach embed residents within these cherished public spaces. Large reinforced concrete columns hoist the building’s program above the tree line, allowing pedestrians to pass freely under the project, connecting the green way and local park.

North elevation

Concrete thermal break detail

Window and louver detail

1/2” = 1’ scale ‘dollhouse’ model threshold image

Theater of Water

Himalayan Thermal Bath

Langtang Valley, Nepal

Fall 2023

Studio Critic: Gia Daskalakis

‘Theater of Water’ rendering

Screens of falling water are layered to leverage water’s ability to erode vision and sounds ahead, enticing visitors to press forward into the pool.

plan mapping fluid computation

fluid mapping computation script

By designing a fluid mapping computation in Grasshopper, site topography could be processed to arrive at the first analytical plan produced for the project. In the above abstracted site plan, each line represents a single hypothetical drop of water, with the line tracking the route in which it flows down the mountainous peaks and arrives at the central lake, a sacred space for the local people. The siting embeds itself at the ultimate confluence of the watershed to dam, divert, condense, and channel the natural mountain water into the submerged caissons of the thermal baths, activating the various pools below.

Site

Grasshopper

Insertion of land bridge to span trailheads

Insertion of three submerged caissons

Programming of submerged caissons from cold to hot, from communal to solitude

Plaza level oculi puncture water surface to bring in light, heat, air and water below 22

Transverse section A showing procession of solitude spas

Transverse section B showing ‘theater of water’ sequence to lower lake

1/32” = 1’ model showing site topography and bridge approach

1/8” = 1’ model showing plaza conditions

Thesis drawing presents three ‘layers’ (plaza, water surface, and submerged) interlaid to highlight interactions between the three

Common Paradise

Community Center and Garden

Barcelona, Spain

Spring 2023

Studio Critic: Ramón Bosch

Entrance rendering

This project proposes a community center and garden for the interior courtyard of a preexisting housing block in central Barcelona.

This intervention approaches its form as a series of relationships with the surrounding site. The project presents the dichotomy of the slope and the slab, two juxtaposing elements, which solve the relationship between the descending topography and the built conditions. The installment of an amphitheater at the entry leverages the elevational difference across the site to its programmatic benefit. Utilizing the gray water produced from the surrounding housing block to feed rooftop gardens, a ‘common paradise’ is created in a reciprocal relationship with its neighbors. Access from the North/South poles runs parallel with the site’s sloped topography and buffers the community resource from the touristy Avinguda Gaudí. The project utilizes gradient levels of control as its internal order in plan and section to define program and form.

Neighbors

Entering from the northern axis, one tunnels through the low ceilings of the existing housing block before arriving into the central courtyard area. Immediately, one is presented with the face of the seven foot fall roof slab, yet, elevated only four feet above the ground, the slab denies forward circulation, but still allows for site lines directly down into the amphitheater space or up to the roof gardens. Circulating to either side around the slab, one is presented with ramps which slowly descended into the core of the project. Arriving from either side, one can enter into the main exhibit space, or turn back to a second downward ramp into the

amphitheater. Following the ‘gradient of control’ internal order, the amphitheater space sees little more than grading work, while the middle hybrid space, defined by collapsible glass panels which open and close to solve various programs, leverages curtains to support the flexible program requirements. The south gradient sees the most compartmentalization, which allows for classrooms and labs, with pre-defined program, along with the project’s mechanical core and public services.

First floor plan

The three gradients of control manifest similarly in the construction of the project, which uses concrete, rammed earth, and timber in vertical ascension. Cast-in-place concrete comprises the foundational structure and gray water retention pools of the basement. Transitioning to rammed earth walls at the ground line of the original slope, one is always aware of the original topography while descending through the project. At the roof level, the project switches once again to timber construction, with GluLam beams and CLT panels supporting the monumental span above the exhibition and theater space, along with the increased dead load of the roof garden.

Structural detail highlighting stratification of concrete, rammed earth, and mass timber

Longitudinal section highlighting topographical solution with amphitheater grading