Michael Heller Portfolio 2020

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MICHAEL HELLER

PORTFOLIO

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Dissemination 10”x10” Collage

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MICHAEL HELLER MHELLE01@SYR.EDU | 415-815-9890 I am a California based architecture student interested in design theory, geopolitics, and emerging mediums in design, fine arts, fabrication, and film.

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SELECTED WORKS 6.

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FORM + FORMLESS Terracotta Production Facility

PIXEL

Design Center/Digital Archive

20. PIONEERING FOLLIES

Public Space Intervention

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[UN]JUSTICE

International Court of Jusitce

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STATE AS ABSTRACTION Supportive Housing Complex 32.

BRONX CONTRAPOSITIVE Supportive Housing Complex

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01 FORM + FORMLESS .

Terra Cotta Facility/R&D | Syracuse, New York, USA Instructor: Molly Hunker | Course: ARC 208_Architectural Studio

Form + Formless is a developing architectural language formulated by the actions of addition and subtraction of constructed forms.

The language derives from natural landscapes and how they are products of geological addition (tectonic shifts, volcanic eruptions) and subtractions (erosion, carving, cracking). The building is a representation of these constant natural shifts in the earth’s crust, but also takes into account the anthropogenic interference that takes place in industrial manufacturing processes. The building typology, a terracotta manufacturing plant and R+D lab for the Boston Valley Terra Cotta Company (Buffalo, New York) utilizes the surrounding environment in order to manufacture terra cotta. The building is situated on a decommissioned quarry in South Syracuse, NY. Built atop a large runoff pond, contaminated water is sucked through an external tubing system for use in the terracotta manufacturing process. Industrialism is not a closed system, it must take into account the resources it exploits, the product it creates, and its imposition on the world.

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2019 SPRING

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SECTION 2

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Sec�ons Scale: 1/8” = 1’ 0”

ARC208: Project 02_Michael Heller E

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Sec�ons Scale: 1/8” = 1’ 0”

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ARC208: Project 02_Michael Heller

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Roof Terrace

Clay Extraction

Parking

Clay Extraction

PLAN OBLIQUE

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BATCHING + RECYCLING

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FIRING ROOM

HIGH BAY SHED

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TOOL STORAGE PARKING SIZING ROOM

FINISHING ROOM

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CLAY ECTRACTION OFFICES

GALLERY MAIN ENTERANCE CAFE

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9 Plan, Plan Oblique Scale: 1/32” = 1’ 0”

ARC208: Project 01_Michael Heller

MOISTNESS

DRYNESS

MOISTNESS

DRYNESS

PIPES

CRACKS Perspec�ves

Form + Formless ARC208: Project 02_Michael Heller

PIPES

CRACKS Perspec�ves

Form + Formless ARC208: Project 02_Michael Heller

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02 PIONEERING FOLLIES .

System of Public Interventions | Syracuse, New York, USA

In Collaboration With: Andrea Herrada and Morgan Noone Professors: Ifeoma Ebo and Nathan Williams | Course: ARC 408_Visiting Critic Studio

Pioneer Homes is one of the earliest government public housing projects in the United States. The area, Ward 15, was once a thriving black enclave with businesses and single family homes. However, during the mid-1900’s red lining, block busting, and white flight made the community seem dangerous. Today, the area is one of concentrated minority poverty and stands in stark contrast to the flourishing black community that once was. The goal of this project was to create a system of spaces that bridges the past, present and future of the black enclave in Syracuse by providing safe and joyous community-oriented environments for the members of Pioneer Homes to thrive within. This was achieved by using 1920’s era Sanborn Insurance maps and isolating footprints of homes and businesses that once stood on, what is now, the grounds of Pioneer Homes. The historical footprints are used as the bases for nine interventions that provide a variety of programmatic functions for recreational, educational, and health activities, but also act as functional memorials to the members of the community that once lived in these homes as well as the history of redlining which these maps were used to further segregate black and white communities. The system of interventions attempts to reach as many parts of Pioneer Homes in order to provide spaces of joy, play, growth, and memory for the community.

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2020 Fall

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Sanborn 1928

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Google Maps 2020

Pioneer Homes 1938

Foot Prints

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03 PIXEL Design Center/Digital Archive | Cincinnati, Ohio, USA Instructor: Ted Brown | Course: ARC 207_Architectural Studio

Cincinnati’s Over the Rhine neighborhood is an up-and-coming neighborhood with a storied past. New companies, businesses and homeowners have been moving to the area due to its proximity to down town Cincinnati, and the University of Cincinnati. The focus of this project is to create an archive of the community, its history, and its appearance in the present before it is inevitably changed through processes like gentrification and reverse white flight. Preserving the past of the present through the images of Google Street View, individual community member testimonials, and visual representations of the community, the archive of the community is meant to preserve history as well as provide a space for the art and the history of the community to be accessed. Programmatically, the building houses server rooms, computer labs, offices, and exhibition spaces. The main action of the building is to archive and collect the local context, culture, and environment in a hermetically sealed space that stands out from the surrounding neighborhood as a monolith of memory.

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.2018 FALL

Issues of Violence in Streets Involve Motorists and Guns

Street Corners and Locations of Influence

Grid of Streets as Well as Fascade of Brick Buildings

Human Movement Becomes Playful and Unpredictable

Movement in Transit System

Repetition In The Streets

Glitches in Technology Inluence Visual Appearance of Buildings Facilities

Movement and Play in Public Spaces

Tectonic Systems Located Near Site

Degradation of Local Housing Especially to The North-East of Site

Findlay Market Near Site: Food and Meeting space

Input + Output A Focus on Industry and Manufacturing

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04 [UN] JUSTICE International Court of Justice | The Hague, Netherlands Instructor: Richard Rosa | Course: ARC 307_Architectural Studio

“To be in chains is sometimes safer than to be free� (Kafka, The Trial). This follows the existentialist idea that men fear the responsibility of having to make choices - they prefer to be led. They prefer tyranny to the potential chaos resulting from freedom. From those chains we gain purpose. The United Nations is what (at the moment) tethers each country to each other and a set of guidelines. For every state there is a governing body who oversees violence, tyranny, human rights, and conflicts. But these chains are loosening. States are becoming more and more polarizing, and the world, it seems, is at a perpetual inflection point. The International Court of Justice, a branch of the United Nations, is tasked with punishing states and solving conflicts. What this building investigates is: is the ICJ too lenient or not lenient enough? Should states even have oversight?

Is a system, laden with bureaucracy and traditionalist views on politics, able to effectively solve disputes between global powers?

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.2019 FALL

Stills Taken From “The Trial” 1962.

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05 STATE AS ABSTRACTION .

Cover Concept: The State as Abstraction

In collaboration with Natalie Koch Instructor: Natalie Koch | Course: GEO 500_Mapping Desert Geopolitics

From the theoretical starting point that the state is an abstraction, this cover image abstracts our world borders by rotating, reflecting and repeating regions of the earth so that the geographic landmarks are illegible. This was done by sectioning the Mercator projection into a grid of equal rectangles, rearranging each of the rectangles and changing their orientation. This allows the highly recognizable shapes of the Earth’s geography, to instead become something unrecognizable and new. Doing so sheds light on the highly political practice of defining state-based geopolitics through arbitrary lines imposed on our world maps. This delineation often disregards natural habitats, divides people groups and fractures landscapes. On a macro scale, our view of the world map is flawed; as many projective maps skew reality, this cover skews it even more. The image also conjures up the impression of viewing the world state system from behind bars – or what we might understand as the geographer’s traditional grid-making tools – which highlights how we, as citizens and scholars, are prisoners of our culture, tradition, canonized thoughts, as well as of the will to order this messy world we call home.

With the assistance of colleagues in Syracuse University’s Fall 2019 course, ARC/GEO 500: Lawry Boyer, Anthony Bruno, Aaron Cass, Erin Doherty, Joao Ellery, Demitri Gadzios, Ali Harford, Ava Helm, Emily Hu, Mason Malsegna, Alex Michel, Jason Moline, Kyle Neumann, Miguel Roman, Patrick Smith, Isabel Sutherland, Jan Terwiesch and Ben Wang.

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2018 FALL

HANDBOOK ON THE

Changing Geographies of the State

HANDBOOK ON THE

Changing Geographies of the State New Spaces of Geopolitics Edited by Sami Moisio • Natalie Koch • Andrew E.G. Jonas Christopher Lizotte • Juho Luukkonen

Sami Moisio • Natalie Koch Andrew E.G. Jonas Christopher Lizotte Juho Luukkonen 29

06 BRONX CONTRAPOSITIVE .

Supportive Housing Complex | Mott Haven, NY, USA

In collaboration with Rachel Ly Instructor: Angie Co, Nadine Maleh | Course: ARC 408_New York Studio

A contrapositive is defined as a switch between a hypothesis and result, negating the impact of the statement by presenting it as banal. Within these parameters, the Bronx Contrapositive aims to be supportive housing designed for the transitional stage of recently incarcerated individuals, as well as providing social services for local citizens in the Mott Haven area. As it is the planned site for the upcoming relocation of Rikers Island inmates, The Bronx Tow Pound site must not just seal people up but also support the community in which it is forever changing. While the new building, a residential apartment complex that will go next to the borough jail must support the community, it must not ignore the levels of social injustice for both those incarcerated, the family of those in-mates, and those in the community surrounding the jail. The statement we considered is: “If they are in jail, then they are not free.”

“If they live freely, then they are not in jail.”

While we consider this condition to be generally true, we critique the statement for being in many ways a logical fallacy. For many family members of those that are incarcerated, there is constant tension between the governing body, themselves and their loved ones who are being held. For those that are released there are still many strings attached back to their lives in jail causing recidivism to reach 43% in the US in 2011. We desire to limit this tension by giving services to those who have family members in jail, and for those who are being released to have a support system near the jail.

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2020 SPRING

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SECTIONAL ELEVATION E

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7TH FLOOR PLAN (1’-0” = 1/16”) 7TH FLOOR PLAN

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ELEVATOR CORE

BUILDING ROOF +112’-0”

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4TH FLOOR +52’-0” 3RD FLOOR +40’-0”

2ND FLOOR +20’-0”

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TRADE TOOLLEARNING SHED 8. MEETING AREA 7. HANDS ON TRADE LEARNING 9. MANAGEMENT 8. MEETING AREA 10. INDOOR GARDEN 9. MANAGEMENT 10. INDOOR GARDEN

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Syracuse University School of Architecture. circa 2020

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