Brandon Meinders | Graduate School Portfolio

Intangibles Brandon Meinders

Intangible / in-tan-juh-buhl / adj : impossible to touch, to describe exactly, or to give an exact value.1 The work featured in this portfolio examines intangibles, those unseen forces innate to the discipline of architecture. It is these concepts that add humanity to the cold indifference of structure and space. To understand intangibles is to understand how visible design creates something new, something unseen, which is arguably more valuable.

1. Intangible. INTANGIBLE | definition in the Cambridge English D i c t i o n a r y. ( n . d . ) . R e t r i e v e d D e c e m b e r 2 2 , 2 0 2 1 , f r o m h t t p s : / / d i c t i o n a r y. cambridge.org/us/dictionar y/english/ intangible

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De-Lineating Time Dynamic Sanctity Space and Ideology Portable Presence Build the Divide Graphic Essence Re-Inhabited

A r c h 3 1 2 | A r c h i t e c t u r a l D e s i g n I | I n s t r u c t o r : Yo j a i r o L o m e l i | F a l l 2 0 1 9

01 Delineating Time Exploring Visual Interaction and Movement While serving as an educational archive for dead, living, and painted plants, this project investigates the collective experience of space and time. A linear circulation is woven around the large vertical voids, visually connecting the moments of past and future that exist within them. The other inhabitants serve as visual placeholders for these other places in time, creating unity as the shared spatial and educational experience develop a sense of connection. In this sense, the architecture becomes its own microcosm, only the front facade serves as a brief interruption, allowing the world within to leak out to the sidewalk, inviting others to enter. The architecture is not about individual exploration, but rather a collective experience of space and time.

Model Development

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Longitudinal Section

6 A r c h 3 1 2 | A r c h i t e c t u r a l D e s i g n I | I n s t r u c t o r : Yo j a i r o L o m e l i | F a l l 2 0 1 9

In addition to being archived in the structure, the flora within serves to regulate movement. The structure works with the plants’ natural beauty to draw the viewer in and creates moments of pause in which the eye drifts around, creating accidental eye contact, resulting in a visual and experiential connection.

Cross Sections 7

A r c h 3 1 2 | A r c h i t e c t u r a l D e s i g n I | I n s t r u c t o r : Yo j a i r o L o m e l i | F a l l 2 0 1 9 8

The non-rectilinear planes that make up the architecture allow for fluctuating ceilings heights, creating an ever changing sense of compression and expansion.

This serves to push the inhabitants through each space, and allow contrast between the large vertical voids and tighter archival spaces.

Stem Model 9

A r c h 3 1 2 | A r c h i t e c t u r a l D e s i g n I | I n s t r u c t o r : Yo j a i r o L o m e l i | F a l l 2 0 1 9

In addition to a shared visual experience, the program invites the inhabitants to have a similar educational experience. Each space builds on the knowledge gained in the previous one allowing for a progressively deeper and more complex understanding of the plant matter in its various forms.

4 Floor Plan Sketch 10

3rd Floor Plan

2nd Floor Plan Sketch

2nd Floor Plan 11

Museum of Outdoor Art Design Competition | 2nd Place Winner | Summer 2020

02 Dynamic Sanctity Experiential Autonomy Prompted with the concept of “Art as Sanctuary’’, this competition encouraged design that would provide respite and contemplation.

Rather than impose a standardized set of conditions on the user, our structure creates a diverse set of conditions allowing each user to find their ideal sanctuary space. The mirrored “wings” allow fluctuating auditory and visual conditions serving as a test of preferences.

Once in the final space, the voronoi cell pattern roof creates varying lighting levels in the x-axis while the bell shape creates varying auditory levels in the y-axis. This results in a modulating phenomenological experience dependent on the user’s movement and time of day.

All group work distributed among members Mitch Mead, Natalie Fox, James Sotiroff, and myself Renders

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Plan/Axon

14 Museum of Outdoor Art Design Competition | 2nd Place Winner | Summer 2020

The phenomenological experience within becomes exaggerated by the environment in which it sits.

Embedded in a cliff facing the ocean, the sound of crashing waves and whistling wind provide an auditory constant to be modulated.

Auditor y/Visual Diag rams 15

A r c h 4 4 2 | Wa l l e n b e r g S t u d i o | I n s t r u c t o r : D a w n G i l p i n | W i n t e r 2 0 2 1

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Space and Ideology The Impact of Space on Discourse This thesis examines the role of architecture in an increasingly unproductive cultural discourse.

While fixing the nature of discourse requires collaboration among many disciplines, architecture plays a key role of reflecting societal values, serving as a visual reminder of the power of unity. In the imagined world of this work, several cultures live independently but must co-exist in public spaces for their survival. This results in an architecture that formally implies strength, inclusivity, and other societal values while still reflecting the diversity of each culture. The library shown on the right does so by using a symmetrical and imposing facade to reveal it as an important structure while still incorporating elements that each culture values such as harmony with nature or technological capability.

Library Section

Thesis Diagram 16

Librar y Elevation 17

Ideology Housing 1

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Ideology Housing 2

A r c h 4 4 2 | Wa l l e n b e r g S t u d i o | I n s t r u c t o r : D a w n G i l p i n | W i n t e r 2 0 2 1

While individual spaces will become dominated by the architectural preferences of the ideology that inhabits them (ie verticality, refined materials, proximity to nature).

When it comes to public spaces, the architecture should reflect the interaction above all else. It should prioritize the individuals and their culture, allowing the exchange to yield empathy and mutual respect, both important aspects of productive discourse.

The Market

The School

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Personal Project | Funding Provided by the Ginsberg Center | Spring 2021

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Portable Presence Increasing Visibility Groundcover News

for

Groundcover News is a community based Ann Arbor organization that sells newspapers to low-income individuals who can then resell them for a profit. In an effort to increase visibility, I proposed the development of newspaper carts that would create a more professional appearance. Working with the Groundcover staff, we determined some design constraints and budget. Through multiple iterations, I was able to modify an existing wheeled cart to satisfy their needs. The resulting cart is light, portable, durable, and easy to repair. These features allow the vendors to occupy more space and establish legitimacy, both important to creating trust with Ann Arbor residents, therefore selling more newspapers and building a sense of community.

Model Photographs

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San Fransico Affordable Housing Design Competition | Summer 2020

05 Build the Divide Division as a Unifying Force This competition proposed the design of affordable housing in a currently vacant lot in San Francisco.

Our solution split the structure into two large forms, creating a boulevard lined with stores on both sides. This served to integrate the public into the structure to destigmatize affordable housing as well as provide jobs for the individuals who lived within.

The project also uses smaller scales of social connectivity such as the laundry room which sits adjacent to the children’s play room with floor to ceiling windows, allowing the act of doing laundry to become a means of bonding and socializing without sacrificing visual security.

All group work distributed among members Maria Garcia Reyna, Natalie Fox, and myself

Perspectives

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4th Floor Plan

24 San Fransico Affordable Housing Design Competition | Summer 2020

Site Plan

The building’s plan encourages the development of a community with the circulation pushed to the outside allowing for informal spaces of socialization. Units share a collective living room and balcony, and each floor shares a kitchen and living room creating levels of connectivity and relational responsibility to yield greater social mobility.

Unit Diagram

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Personal Project | Advised by Dawn Gilpin and Melissa Har ris | 2017 - Present 26

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Graphic Essence Representation to Capture Visual Fragments The drawings shown express a desire to better understand how a graphic language can evoke more than what is shown. Whether that be the implication of sound, texture, smell, emotional state, or simply more space. To successfully accomplish this is to achieve the production of intangibles, or rather to understand the factors that led to the assumptions made about the drawing. Doing this in two dimensions opens the door for these ideas to translate into three dimensional space allowing similar effects to be accomplished in the built environment.

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Interior Perspectives 28

This particular study was of Adolf Loos’ Müller House, examining how his idea of Raumplan creates complex spatial compositions.

These compositions allow for a dramatic progression through the spaces in which each individual moment pulls the eye towards a particular element, experience, or material. Creating an architecture of intense awareness.

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Arch 432 | Architectural Design III | Instr uctor : Christian Unverzagt | Fall 2020

07 Re-Inhabited Utilizing Time as a Design Element Re-Inhabited is initially designed as a training camp for the electrification of the grid, but it acknowledges its own inevitable deterioration, allowing time to transform the structure.

Historically the process of deterioration results in a lesser version than the original, but by utilizing a more durable skeleton that gradually becomes exposed and repurposed, the project receives a second and third life.

As a result, it becomes an active participant in the environment rather than an imposing presence.

Therefore avoiding unsuccessful fights against the forces of nature and living in harmony with them instead. This introduces a means of living that is not combative of the environment, but rather responsive.

Sketches of Planned Deterioration

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Housing Perspective

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Arch 432 | Architectural Design III | Instr uctor : Christian Unverzagt | Fall 2020

As a means of forcing an awareness of a changing environment over time and humanity’s place within it, the structure primarily uses roofing systems with slanted sharp angles. This serves to frame the landscape and provide a series of reference points to understand how human movement and development affect the terrain.

We s t E l e v a t i o n 33

Arch 432 | Architectural Design III | Instr uctor : Christian Unverzagt | Fall 2020

Re-Inhabited exists in Bisbee, Arizona, a city known for its art community. As this project begins to deteriorate, it becomes the perfect location for artists to look out over the city as well as frame the landscape that stretches out in front of them. Furthermore, the structure becomes the ideal habitat for many endangered birds, bats, and small mammals in the area.

P e r s p e c t i v e : Ye a r 1 34

P e r s p e c t i v e : Ye a r 5 0

P e r s p e c t i v e : Ye a r 1 0 0

P e r s p e c t i v e : Ye a r 2 5 0 0 35

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