Architecture Portfolio

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M olly D alsin Architecture Works

TABLE of CONTENTS

01 07 11 21 25 29

CIVIC SPACE AND THE IMAGE OF THE CIT Y

INSTALL ATION AND INTER ACTION

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2015

2015

ADAP TIVE REUSE AND PUBLIC INTERFACING | 2014

PERFORMANCE AND URBANISM

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MEANING IN ARCHITECTURE

2014

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INFR ASTRUCTURE AND MONUMENT

2013

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2015

MOLLY

DALSIN

M.Arch Candidate 2016 The Universit y of Minnesota School of Architecture

ADDRESS 3233 Fremont Ave S #3 Minneapolis MN 55408

TEL. 651 270 9968

EMAIL dimo0026@umn.edu | molly.dimond@gmail.com

Civic Space in the image of the city

Nicollet Mall Minneapolis, MN Fall 2015

The civic conditions of downtown Minneapolis are becoming increasingly privatized and sterile. Based on a volatile market environment, these spaces are almost immediately outdated and quickly become irrelevant to the vibrant Minneapolis population. This project proposes civic space as a strategy of voids through which the city and its inhabitants can be represented and reinterpreted. At the scale of the site, the project responds

to the existing public library and skyway system by articulating events that permeate the block, condensing and releasing the image of the city.

A single building on the southwest corner of the site was chosen to be developed. The project seeks to create unique spatial conditions that promote activities, events, and scenarios rather than dictate uses through form. By embracing the fluctuating nature of urban

life, this project utilizes light, movement, and temporal materiality to create spaces that capture the variations of time, season, activity and events. Designed through unique experiential conditions, the interior generates a rhythm of stasis and movement. The facade becomes a mediator between the city, the civic site, and the intimate interior as events and experiences are ambiguously captured, projected, and collapsed onto the skrim.

Event | Heightened Perception

Event | Main Components

Event | Circulation

Section Looking South 1/8” = 1’

City | Nicollet Context

Section Looking East 1/8” = 1’

CITY SCOPE Interactive Installation Mill City Minneapolis, MN Competition |Design|Build 7-week studio Spring 2015

CityScope

City Scope was initially envisioned during a 3-week, group competition to design an installation for the 2015 Northern Spark festival.

Developed as a collaboration between Anna Mahnke, Katie Loecken, and myself, the winning proposal created a field of kinetic follies that invited social interaction and new ways of seeing the surrounding Mill City area.

While a central periscope projects

your view to the city, the periphery structures recall the mechanical histories of the site. Through a kinetic counterbalanced system, the cubes can be lifted and entered, creating intimacy amidst the spectacle. Looking in and looking out, the structures present a new lens of observing the built environment.

The project was the result of a partnership between thirteen graduate students and Minn_Lab.

1st + 1st office space + public space for knowledge trading Minneapolis, MN Adaptive Reuse, Fall 2014

The existing storage warehouse at 1st Ave and 1st St consists of two Cass Gilbert facades protected by historic preservation, and is centrally located in a booming Minneapolis neighborhood.

Because of its location and connection to an emerging professional and venture community, the shift in programming was to create an issue -based office space dealing with matters of urbanism. All professions, including urban planners,

psychologists, artists, transit experts, sociologists, and architects can perform their commissioned work utilizing the building’s office and resource space, but more importantly are connected to each other and the public through interfacing areas and public event spaces. Other community members working on urbanism may come for meetings and events creating a complex that is not quite academic, and not quite industry, but a third place where

work can be accomplished, shared, and studied.

The interfacing space intersects the workspace and is built tectonically to allow for unique interactions that the load-bearing masonry cannot afford.

Overall, the project catalyzes new kinds of urban activities, experiences, and human relationships.

E-W Section | Public + Interfacing spaces

Program Interfacing - Meeting rooms, lounges, workshops Public Space - Event space, auditorium, galleries Office Space Resources - Woodshop, Metalshop, Digifab, Printshop

B

01

B

02

C

N 1st St

A

N 1st Ave

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04

05

N-S Section | Public + Interfacing + Office spaces

N-S Section | Office + Interfacing spaces

Epoxy

Section

|

Slot for vertical mobility

Shim and grout pack behind plate

Double cantilever plate weld

Plan | Steel column meeting existing brick wall

Tension rod connection to truss #2 clevis hanger

Th e We s t B a n k S c h o o l o f M u s i c

The building forms a layered

building through a nuanced flow

composition

of

urban

flux,

performance in

an

architecture, music,

that the

neighborhood’s topography.

The

and

culminates

ever-changing

mimicking

Performance Hyper-Urbanism Spectacle

of

outside/inside,

and

views between levels. This path

mural

becomes more than circulation

surrounding

and destination, but becomes a

existing

place in itself, expanding the

experience

theatricality beyond ordinary

of a street is wrapped into the architecture and unfolds for

Minneapolis, MN: Fall 2013

views

spectacle/self-reflection,

visitors as they perceive the

performances.

THE QUESTION OF MEANING

This

project

the

creative

process

which

underlying

through Berlin, Germany: Spring 2014

philosophical

analyzed

meaning

is

explored, defined, formed, and expressed in physical 1966 “...richness of meaning rather than clarity of meaning...’bothand’ to ‘either-or’.”

form. The Dutch Embassy was de -composed to understand conceptual

organization,

then “redesigned” using a generative process guided by

Robert Venturi

knowledge of a theoretical

Complexity and Contradiction

agenda.

Berlin, Germany 2014

Berlin, Germany 1953

2001 “The beauty of Berlin - its opacity, complexity, its heaviness, the richness of its ghosts. The abundance of good intentions that somehow went wrong. The pressure of shame imposed by more and more monumaents. The obligation to remember, combined with surprising amnesia (where did the wall go?). How far it is removed from everything. How refreshingly German it remains. Its gray. Its stubbornness. Its lack of doubt. The meticulous mediocrity of its new substance. How old what was modern looks. How fresh what is ancient. How good what was communist. How Chinese what is new.�

Rem Koolhaas Content

Appropriating Infrastructure Recontextualizing public space Prospect Park Minneapolis, MN Spring 2015 7-week studio Developed in collaboration with Chris Massey and Anna Mahnke

The Delmar Mill complex is a site of historical and contemporary consequence. At the height of its industrial operation in 1920, its performance was one that prominently fueled the economic growth of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Now dormant in the service of grain, the colossal structures loom silently over the forgotten landscape, neither remote nor interwoven into

the fabric of the traditional city.

This contested terrain – although monumental in scale and material – is anti-monumental in its symbolism of the industrial past. Lurking above the city, the massive letters “United Crushers” are tagged as a symbol to an active counter-culture.

As a contested terrain, this complex neither belongs to everyone nor anyone. The role of

the architect is not to predetermine the future, but to allow for social agency to promote and provide for change and adaptation.

Thus, the intervention creates an infrastructural spine that provides access and resources throughout the complex. The spine further acts as an experiential path, selectively subverting or enhancing the physical conditions of scale, materiality,

and light. Spaces of gathering, introspection, performance, and learning are suggested through the selective carving of the existing structures and the construction of new scaffoldings. The intervention promotes a heightened awareness of the built environment, time, and the relationships among people.

1860 - 1920 Mass railroad growth (by 1920 - 29 railways)

Early industry supported lumber and flour milling, stored excess grain, and mills processed wheat into flour, barley into malt, and flax into linseed oil for paint.

1890 Minneapolis : 165,000 people

1913

Prospect Park Water Tower built

1870

1920 - 1950

Minneapolis : 13,000 people

Height of the industry

Began to diversify products to account for further growth MN pressing legislature for road construction (rail road monopolies)

U of M

Hamline University Augsburg College

Minnesota Transportation Museum Concordia University

St. Thomas University Hiawatha Mills

St. Catherine University

Macalester College

1925 - 1931

ADM “delmar” elevators built. then,one of the largest grain elevator facility in U.S.

1952 Glendale Housing Project – city’s first postwar public housing project

1960's Mills and railroad transport decline

Population businesses Demolition structures as parking

2000’s

UMN expand with TCF B Stadium an biotech bu

n s n s g

moves to suburbs, many leave the area of train tracks and begin. Empty spaces used lots

’s

ds east Bank nd uildings

2012 Solomon Atta: The Other Life of Silos Thesis GDIII Graduate Urban Design Studio Proposals

2014 Surly Brewery built adjacent to mills