Building Discourse: M.Arch Thesis Projects, 2008-2013

30 mm spine

George X. Lin Design for Reuse: Post-Occupancy for Olympic Stadiums

Nadya Volicer Life in the Woods: Production and Consumption in the Urban Forest

Carolyn Jenkins East Boston Buffer: A Transferable Urban Framework for Adapting to Sea Rise

Natsuki Maeda Future of the Past: Augmented History, Preservation as a Catalyst for Transformation

Alexander Marshall Exodus Industrious: A New American Dream For The Next Industrial Revolution

Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi Reinventing Flexibility: A Hybrid Paradigm for Thai markets in Bangkok, Thailand

Kelly Shaw HYPERsensarium: An Archive of Atmospheric Conditions

Lisa Pauli Containment Building: Architecture Between the City and Advanced Nuclear Reactors

Sasa Zivkovic Towards the Anthropocene: Colossal Naturality in Disordered Territories

Pamela Ritchot Tuktoyaktuk Responsive Strategies for a New Arctic Urbanism

David Costanza 100% Petroleum House

Buck Sleeper Last Resorts A Tour Guide to Territorial Protection for the Republic of the Maldives

Yushiro Okamoto Weathermart

Charles Curran Retrofit + Shrink Wrap Dubai: An Urban Recovery Plan

Rafael Luna A Flexible Infra-Architectural System for a Hybrid Shanghai Duncan McIlvaine The End of the Times: A Proposition for Transitional Journalistic Architecture ­John Pugh Megaform: A Frame of Opposition Andrea Brennen Arctic-tecture for the Global Commons James Graham UN2: Reconfiguring the World City Mary Hale Send My Love to Tijuana | Tijuana Sends her Love The Transcendental Tijuanense Telecommunications Bridge to Everywhere Simon Schleicher Adaptive Toldo Systems John Snavely Pastiche As Technique: Inside an American Palace

Building Discourse

Curtis Roth Acid Ecologies: Or the Secret Lives of Spanish Tomatoes

MIT Department of Architecture Irene Hwang, Editor

Dennis Cheung Covert Resistance: An Embodiment of the “One Country, Two Systems” Principle in Hong Kong

Building Discourse Proposition & Proof MIT Department of Architecture Master of Architecture Thesis 2008-2013 Irene Hwang, Editor

003

It’s hard to say whether this book provides you with the “best” architecture thesis projects: what it does instead, is provide you with a compelling look into that moment where chaos and disorder are transformed into the absolutely sublime.

If the work of the thesis is to propose, advance, and argue an unproven hypothesis, then the material outcome of the project asserts its influence beyond its maker and the institution in which it was cultivated. At times the process of architecture is messy: full of inherent unpredictability with too much to do, never enough time, and the insatiable drive to create that accompanies such an ambitious undertaking.

Thesis is the place where young architects are first able to fully commission their own architectural project. The thesis is a convergence of interests, invention, fear, and risk-taking; it demands the demonstration of judgment, critical evaluation, and most importantly, proof.

Building Discourse examines the origins and consequences of each of these thesis projects (themselves the culmination of two to three years of graduate research) probing further into the “before and after.” In some cases, the thesis project greatly influences the first years of practice; in others, the thesis is the conclusion to a particular set of curiosities and agendas. Built around individuals instead of projects, this publication outlines the many unique paths that begin with learning and move towards the creation of scholarship. Featuring twenty-four projects completed from 2008-2013, this volume of Building Discourse draws from the M.Arch degree program at MIT Architecture.

Introduction

005

The MIT architectural thesis has undergone significant changes over the past four years, not only under the direction of Arindam Dutta and Ana Miljački, both of whom have brought their respective intellectual rigors to the students in the preparatory period, but also through the will of the students who have developed their own agendas responding to the changes of architectural culture, global imperatives, and disciplinary shifts over the years. Through the launch of key changes in the curriculum a few years ago, we established a set of agendas for both the core and thesis years. In the core years, the mission has been to establish a common ground with a focus on bringing an alignment between sophisticated technical skills and a deeper critical awareness of both disciplinary and worldly issues. In the advanced years, students are encouraged to use the resources of MIT (at large), keeping in mind that their collaborations with the Media Lab, Material Sciences, Engineering, Urbanism, and the Arts, among other disciplines, may offer a wider lens from which to view Architecture.

In this sense, while we are dedicated to refining discourses within architecture, our aim has also been to widen the boundaries of our field.

Through the refinement of the thesis program, we are deeply aware that the idea of a ‘school of thought’ in this Internet Age is all but obsolete—with ideas, forms and techniques being shared across a global culture. For this reason, it is important to identify discourses that not only communicate far and wide, but also to draw out the cultural specificities of MIT in a way that no other school could articulate. The theses included herein are not a reflection of a single school of thought, nor of the head of the department, but rather of a collective discursive space framed by the idea that the work may be able to bridge those disciplinary traits that are deemed autonomous with the social, political and economic phenomena that is impacting the world today.

The students, of course, are not a benign part of this process—quite the opposite!

What they demonstrate through their projects is the urgency and seriousness with which they consider world transformations—in viewing the environment, the speed of urbanization, protocols of manufacturing, and a range of other themes that are impacting us all today. At the same time, the students have a deep awareness of the artifice of the design project: as research, polemic, and a Petri dish for future intellectual development. The merging of these two interests marks the importance of this educational threshold—a symbolic end of the graduate studies, but in actuality a launching point for future studies. These theses, if measured by the tracks of previous students, will take this next generation beyond the traditional role of the architect, expanding our terrain, and challenging the very cultures that produce our disciplinary closure.

Nader Tehrani April, 2014

Contents

2013 008–025

Dennis Cheung Covert Resistance: An Embodiment of the “One Country, Two Systems” Principle in Hong Kong

026–049

George X. Lin Design for Reuse: Post-Occupancy for Olympic Stadiums

050–061

Carolyn Jenkins East Boston Buffer: A Transferable Urban Framework for Adapting to Sea Rise

062–093

Alexander Marshall Exodus Industrious: A New American Dream For The Next Industrial Revolution

094–111

Kelly Shaw HYPERsensarium: An Archive of Atmospheric Conditions

112–131

Sasa Zivkovic Towards The Anthropocene: Colossal Naturality in Disordered Territories

2012 132–149

David Costanza 100% Petroleum House

150–167

Yushiro Okamoto Weathermart

168–193

Curtis Roth Acid Ecologies: Or the Secret Lives of Spanish Tomatoes

194–209

Nadya Volicer Life in the Woods: Production and Consumption of the Urban Forest

007

2011 210-229

Natsuki Maeda Future of the Past: Augmented History, Preservation as a Catalyst for Transformation

230-249

Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi Reinventing Flexibility: A Hybrid Paradigm for Thai Markets in Bangkok, Thailand Lisa Pauli Containment Building: Architecture Between the City and Advanced Nuclear Reactors

250-271

272-299

300-335

2009 402-419

Andrea Brennen Arctic-tecture for the Global Commons

420-439

James Graham UN2: Reconfiguring the World City

440-457

Mary Hale Send My Love to Tijuana | Tijuana Sends Her Love: The Transcendental Tijuanense Telecommunications Bridge to Everywhere

458-475

Simon Schleicher Adaptive Toldo Systems

Pamela Ritchot Tuktoyaktuk: Responsive Strategies for a New Arctic Urbanism T. Buck Sleeper Last Resorts: A Tour Guide to Territorial Protection for the Republic of the Maldives

2010 336-353

Charles Curran Retrofit + Shrink Wrap Dubai: An Urban Recovery Plan

354-373

Rafael Luna A Flexible Infra-Architectural System for a Hybrid Shanghai

374-387

Duncan McIlvaine The End of the Times: A Proposition for Transitional Journalistic Architecture

388-401

John Pugh Megaform: A Frame of Opposition

2008 476-495

John Snavely Pastiche As Technique: Inside an American Palace

496

Credits

Building discourse

Dennis Cheung

009

Dennis Cheung

Covert Resistance: An Embodiment of the “One Country, Two Systems” Principle in Hong Kong M.Arch Thesis 2013 Advisor: Antón García-Abril Readers: Cristina Parreño Alonso, Jonathan D. Solomon

Architecture is always political. Always. Society shapes the built environment and architecture impacts the social systems. Yet how far can architects push in changing society? Is architecture the passive one or the aggressive one? Can architecture resist an authoritarian regime? This thesis inquires into the role of architecture and its potential influence in a politically unstable environment.

In the context of Hong Kong, fierce conflicts arose between the locals and the visitors after fifteen years of reunification with China. The distinction between the Hong Kong Chinese and the mainland Chinese was a result of the systemic differences across the border. The “One Country, Two Systems” principle allowed the capitalist and democratic systems of British colonial rule to remain unchanged in Hong Kong, setting the city apart from the rest of the communist Chinese cities. However, Beijing’s overt interference of the supposed autonomous territory has caused contention in all levels of society. This discontent against the Chinese system is then released in the daily contacts with mainland Chinese visitors. Hong Kong, charged with enormous resentment, is facing an unprecedented instability.

Opposite: Section of tower Above: Arc segment models

This thesis proposes a passive-aggressive solution for the city. It tests the possibility of designing an architecture with dual readings: an architecture that has an apparent program and function while at the same time secretly holds a hidden agenda.

This hidden agenda is neither desired by the local government nor the Beijing government, but the general public. The hypothesis is, for the context of Hong Kong, if there should be any solutions to change, they should be pursued under the guise of a Beijing-government-favoured story. Only then can an attempt flourish before it gets outmaneuvered. It is an opportunistic architecture for the complex political situation of Hong Kong.

Building discourse

A colonial history: Hong Kong (1840-2012)

Historical Background of the “Two Systems” Hong Kong, a fishing village in the South region of China, became a colony of the British Empire in 1842 after China lost the first Opium War. Hong Kong then became an important trading post for the British for more than a hundred years.

In the 1980s, negotiations regarding the city’s future were made between the British and the Chinese government. Deng Xiaoping, the Paramount Leader of the People’s Republic of China, rejected any form of Britain’s continuing rule over Hong Kong beyond 1997. The British flag and governor would have to go. China alone would decide the future of Hong Kong.

On the other side, Margaret Thatcher, then British Prime Minister, believed that the primary concern of Britain was to maintain the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong. It was thus

crucial for them to maintain administration of the territory. She believed that “only continued British administration - British ‘rule’, could guarantee Hong Kong’s well-being beyond 1997.”

Deng stressed that no compromises would be made and the sovereignty of Hong Kong shall be returned to China, including administration.

Realizing there was actually no room for negotiation, Mrs. Thatcher backed down two years later and the Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed in 1984. The city was returned to the People’s Republic of China in 1997 under the “One Country, Two Systems” principle.

Dennis Cheung

011

The Predicament If architecture symbolizes order and power, can the physical representation of the collective seize control over the authority? What resistance can architecture give to the city which is undergoing an accelerating assimilation into one of many developing cities in China? What can architecture contribute to the empowerment of the Hong Kong people, who may be the last group that can take to the streets and protest against the country? The predicament of the current condition lies in the incomparable negotiation position of the Hong Kong people; a dilemma between the outrage and eagerness to demand changes vs. the fear towards any further repressive interference from the sensitive Beijing government.

The Solution, A Dual Narrative This thesis proposes a passive-aggressive solution for the city.

It tests the possibility of designing an architecture with dual readings; an architecture that has an apparent program and function while at the same time secretly holds a hidden agenda.

This hidden agenda is not desired by the local government nor the Beijing government, but the general public. The hypothesis is, for the context of Hong Kong, if there should be any solutions to change, they should be pursued under the disguise of a Beijing-government-favoured story. Only that can an attempt be flourished before it got outmanoeuvred.

This page: Site map, Hong Kong Opposite: Physical juxtaposition

Can architecture be simultaneously designed with two or more sets of ambivalent parameters and antithetical intentions?

The act of design intrudes the space with desires and the physicality is experienced and reacted by the subject. Is it possible to have a space designed conventionally and yet secretly carries a hidden agenda where the space can be hijacked and be experienced by another group of people for a different purpose?

The Juxtaposition The thesis explores the potential of creating an architecture that houses the “One Country, Two Systems� principle. The thesis will test a perverse programmatic juxtaposition of two kinds: a shopping mall that pushes consumerism to the extreme and a privatized public space that allows protests to happen. It consists of luxurious globally branded flagship stores for the mainland visitors and circulator spaces for the fractured society to experience the same space in radically different ways. On one hand, the glamorous shopping mall creates another touristic icon and makes perfect sense to the economy-minded governments. On the other hand, it provides a space for events to happen within and between the two groups of users, becoming a tool for projecting the people as a spectacle to the government and the city.

Building discourse

Above: Political situation of Hong Kong Bottom: Protest forms

Dennis Cheung

Above: Analysis of new Government Headquarter and July 1st protest Bottom: Protest forms

013

Building discourse

Above: Exploded axonometric of shopping tower

Opposite top: Site model

Opposite bottom: Detail view of scale model of tower

Following Spread: View of Atrium from above, View of Atrium at arrival from subway

Dennis Cheung

015

Building discourse

Dennis Cheung

017

Building discourse

Dennis Cheung

019

Building discourse

Above: Ground floor plan

Bottom: Interior perspective

Dennis Cheung

Above: Eleventh floor plan

021

Bottom: Interior perspective

Building discourse

Dennis Cheung MIT / Master of Architecture 2013 University of Hong Kong / Bachelor of Arts (Architectural Studies), 2009

What have you been doing since thesis?

After my thesis defense, I spent my time briefly in an old Italian city working in an architecture firm and enjoying fine wine from local wineries. I then moved back to Hong Kong and have been working on my license as well as a project that will redefine the role of technology and design in the food and drink industry.

What was the most important thing you learned from thesis?

When I published part of my thesis in the local media, I was surprised by the feedback I got from audiences. The fact that the thesis was grounded on a solid political background and the proposed design was practically feasible allowed the general public to really relate the ideas with the unstable reality and stirred-up constructive debates. The more a thesis is rooted in the real world, the more it contributes to society and challenges our industry.

Thinking back on your thesis, how do you feel it has or has not influenced your career?

The thesis was a good transition for me in bridging school and practice. It has pushed me in getting my license as soon as possible in knowing the obligatory and statutory requirement of the local built industry. Once on board, I can then design with and within the parameters.

I believe that apposite and persistent changes to a place is only possible through realizing designs with actual objects.

What is the one thing you would have done differently or what do you wish you had known in advance?

I would have revised the method of presentation on the day of defense, perhaps into a more dramatic one that could present the whole story of the thesis better, although that would require much earlier preparation which was impossible back then.

What was the biggest advantage for doing your thesis at MIT?

Both the faculty and hardware at MIT were exceptionally valuable in shaping the whole thesis. The departmental support for individuals was tremendous.

What was particularly timely about your thesis? Was it technique or topical?

The thesis could be considered the beginning of my voyage in shaping my hometown into a better place to live. The way of parallel thinking with hidden agendas tested the alignment of oppositional strategies in architecture.

I believe it served and will continue to serve as a methodology for probing into soci0-political issues and tackling design problems for myself.

Dennis Cheung

023

Translating Discipline A Departure Point to Nature Options Studio 2012 Instructor: Maria Alessandra Segantini

Above: Perspective showing the design of the light band that connects the exterior landscape with the interior space Bottom left: Plan showing the buffering role of the pavilion cluster at an urban scale Bottom right: Sectional axonometrics of various pavilions

Building discourse

Art Bikeground Options Studio 2011 Instructor: Gilles Saucier

Left: Perspective showing the art complex intertwined into the biking neighborhood Below: Diagrams of landscape manipulations for biking activities and perspectives at different levels of the public zone for bikers

Dennis Cheung

025

Project Eva Recent Works September 2013 - present

This project explores the 3-D printing of food and beverages.

Top: Self-assembled printer for the investigation of 3-D printing foods and beverages Bottom: A result from the ongoing experiment

Building discourse

This page: Entrance during Olympics Opposite: Market after Olympics

GeorGe X. Lin

027

George X. Lin

Design for Reuse: Post-Occupancy for Olympic Stadiums M.Arch Thesis 2013 Advisor: Ana MiljaÄ?ki Readers: Arindam Dutta, Miho Mazereeuw

On the surface, the spirit of the Olympic Games is about the competition for medals. Underneath the surface, however, lies a series of political, economical, and social agendas. Individual Olympians represent their Nations. Rising modernity, stabilization of economy and social cohesion of nations are represented by the contemporary architecture of the games. Every Olympic game has resulted in a significant change in the host city and presented the host country with a unique opportunity to shed a new light on itself in front of a global audience.

In anticipation of presenting a brilliant, dynamic image to the world, Olympic cities often build contemporary sporting arenas that follow similar design patterns of generating iconic and autonomous buildings with relatively fixed programs. In order for a city to accommodate such a large number of newly constructed sporting venues, a trend has emerged whereby cities shift the games from the urban core to outlying peripheries, scattered throughout the suburbs. After the 17 days of international use, the venues return to serve the host city’s needs.

But the stadiums are largely freestanding objects that compete with pre-existing residential fields for the occupancy of local

teams. These local teams often favor smaller arenas that are less maintenance-intensive and are more widely accessible due to their greater proximity to the city core. As a result, Olympic stadiums become underused, labeled as white elephants and in some instances even abandoned.

The next Olympics will be held in Rio, which has the 5th largest economy in the world as well as one of the world’s lowest GDP per capita. This thesis explores the possibility of exploiting the flamboyant nature of the Olympics to create a dual purpose field hockey stadium, the design of which is flexible enough to adapt to a post-Olympics transformation into a vocational school.

Building discourse

In 2008, the Chinese government saw the Olympics as a chance to firmly establish its identity as an established economy in the world. The architecture, however, is often deprived of human, cultural, and regional identity and remains forever alien to the locals. Hutongs are traditional courtyard houses that date back as old as 800 years. In the last decade in Beijing, modernization has removed nearly 70% [1] of hutongs while displacing 1.5 million inhabitants in preparation for the latest skyscrapers and 18 new 2008 Olympic summer games venues. Peng Peigen, an architecture professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, describes the games as an opportunity where “[international] architects are doing things in China they wouldn’t dare do at home. They’re using China as their testing grounds.”[2] The fact is that many Olympics stadiums around the world are designed by international architects: Calatrava (Spain) for Athens, Roger Taillibert (France) for Montreal, Herzog and de Meuron (Switzerland) for Beijing, HOKSport (USA) for Sydney,

Image sources: Left: http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2007/ impossible-is-nothing-inchina/

Right grouping: photo source: http:// www.theblaze.com/ stories/2012/07/13/ decrepit-four-years-after-hosting-the-beijingolympics-this-is-what-chinas-40b-investment-lookslike/

and the list goes on. Designs are bold and built fast to meet the tight schedule of generally 7 years between announcement and opening. While some argue that China has provided the best opening and closing ceremony yet [3], the games only lasted 17 days. When the games end, the athletes and architects go, and after the doors close, it is the host city and its inhabitants that are left to deal with the foreign carcass left behind. Almost every sports arena has similar design patterns of generating iconic and autonomous buildings with relatively fixed programs.

GeorGe X. Lin

029

The Numbers 1964 represented the year when the Olympic Games were first broadcast internationally. Since then, the Olympics have become bigger: more athletes, more nations represented than the United Nations, and ever rising costs. Currently, it takes at least $14 billion dollars to host the Olympics, not including the application fees. The cost shadows the GDP of some nations such as Iceland, Senegal, or Haiti. Every city attempts to outdo the last. When it comes to mega events, there is nothing greater in a span of just 17 days. During the Games, nations are represented by individuals. And rising modernity, as well as the stabilization of economy and social cohesion of nations are represented by the contemporary architecture of the games. Every city that hosts an Olympic game hopes to shine a new light on its nation’s image. While every city falls into serious debt after the Olympics, the public is still easily misled to support the hosting of the Olympic Games with perceived benefits of increased jobs [4] (often in reality just temporary and affected by volunteers) and subsequent increased tourism (statistically not supported). [5]

The Venues: While Rio de Janeiro’s residents live active lifestyles and the city already has many existing venues from hosting the Pan American Games (2007) and the World Cup (2014), there remain a large number of sports venues to be built, some of which are for sports

that are generally unknown and yet established within Brazil. Among them, the largest venue to be built in Rio de Janeiro will be the field hockey stadium.

There are currently no field hockey teams in Rio de Janeiro.

Building discourse

Rio and the Games Rio de Janeiro will host the next Olympics. It is home to 6.5 million people, 27% of which live in high density slums known as favelas. Favelas occupy steep hillsides of areas with high economic activities. While favelas are an impressive characteristic and part of the identity of Rio de Janeiro, the Olympics Delivery Authority (ODA) of Rio ignores them and tries to paint a new picture of Rio. In its efforts to display a dynamic image to the world, Rio is desperately trying to gentrify, [6] hide the ongoing violence and lack of infrastructure in it poverty stricken favelas.

The games will be located in four clusters: Barra, Copacabana, Deodoro and Maracanã connected by a high-performance transport ring. Copacabana, and Maracanã will be hosting events in existing venues while Deodoro will use its open fields

for the equestrian events. The majority of the new venues will be built in the Olympic park in Barra in the periphery of the city.

The renderings show the venues next to beautiful mountains to the north and oceans to the south. However, the ODA chose to overlook the Olympics as an integrated effort to address Rio de Janeiro’s long standing issues of urban poverty and social exclusion. Evidently the site chosen for the park is far from the city center, and closest to the richest inhabitants that live near the south in the beaches of Barra. The legacy plan is to let the Olympic park become a residential community in the form of a sports city. The sporting facilities will be beneficial to about 13% of the population that live close by. There are possible alternatives that can be more beneficial to more of Rio’s residents.

GeorGe X. Lin

031

San Carlos Morro (mountain) São Carlos is in a cluster of favelas located in the Estácio district of the city. It is east of downtown, west of the Marcãna stadium, the world’s largest soccer stadium by capacity, and adjacent to the Sambradrome by Oscar Niemeyer.

It is culturally significant as the birthplace of Samba. The community is composed of industrial workers, their families, and many artists. The adult population work either directly north of the site in the industrial district, the government center, or elsewhere via the subway or bus. In this thesis, this site has been selected for the Olympic field hockey stadium. Currently it sits empty, but for the last 30 years it has been a prison, creating a barrier between where people work and live. Even though the prison has been demolished, its walls remain. As a result, São Carlo lacks access to amenities such as transportation, public space, and schools. Even though the inhabitants live fairly close to their work, they are forced to take non-direct routes to get to the industrial factories, bus, rail, or subway stations. Because of such isolation, unemployment and illiteracy are high, resulting in higher crime rates than the rest of Rio de Janeiro.

Morro São Carlos Image Source: http://www.rioeduca.net/admin/_ m2brupload/fckudas/20110724155542.jpg

Building discourse

Left: Parking/ Manufacturing. The roof will provide for continuous shading from parking to seats. It will later serve as water collection and ventilation exhaust. Cen-

ter: Observation/School Courtyard.

Provide views to the favelas, but also serves as a courtyard providing the favela Sao Carlos views into the school. Right: Entrance/Market.

Seats during the Olympics. Solar power station after the Olympics for the market.

Strategy In order for a stadium to differ from a prison, it must be accessible and porous, yet provide adequate security. The stadium will be divided and organized by the infrastructural bars. Inside the bars are circulation spaces with a few Olympics-specific programs. Programs include: stairs, escalators, elevators, media recording rooms and VIP lounges/rooms. The bars will provide the infrastructure to move vast quantities of people across the site and to their seats. The bars set up the post-Olympics logic of treating the stadium as zones: Manufacturing, classrooms/ lecture halls, public field, and market. The same infrastructure that allowed people to get to their seats during the Olympics will then be used to provide direct access to homes in the favela.

This will create a link between the favela and the adjacent industrial area. Additionally, large open areas in the circulation will allow programs such as a market to exist and provide jobs and access to food for the neighboring favela.

GeorGe X. Lin

033

Top: Site plan during the Olympics in 2016 Center: Site plan after the Olympics in 2020 Bottom: Project Phases

Building discourse

Top: Sections, During Olympics Center: Sections, post-Olympics, structure transformed into a vocational school

Above: During Olympics

GeorGe X. Lin

Above: Post-Olympics

035

Building discourse

GeorGe X. Lin

037

99

NOTES 1 http://world.kbs.co.kr/english/ event/beijing_2008/multimedia/multimedia_beijingReport htm?No=107&lang=e 2 http://www.china.org.cn/china/ features/content_17458714_2.htm

3 http://blogs.reuters.com/ china/2008/08/24/beijing2008-werethese-the-best-gamesever/ 4 http://www.ajc.com/opinion/beware-promise-of-sports-608689

5 Perryman, 54.

6 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ worldnews/southamerica/brazil/8887389/Police-seize-biggestRio-slum-as-World-Cup-clean-upbegins.html

Building discourse

George X. Lin MIT / Master of Architecture, 2013 University of California, Berkeley / B.A. Architecture, 2007

Upon finishing thesis, I moved to New York to pursue a few personal photography projects. One of them was an extension to the time-lapse work I did at MIT through ACT as part of a series called Image of Architecture: Finding Transience. I wanted to study the Public Spaces of New York through time-lapse photography. Afterwards, I took a typical architect’s vacation to Italy to see the works of Michelangelo, Bernini, Bramante, Brunelleschi, Scarpa, Nervi, and Zaha Hadid. It was eye-opening to see how vibrant and connected large public spaces are to pedestrian streets in Europe.

In contrast, the public spaces in the United States are usually surrounded by lower-density blocks, and cities are often designed with multi-lane streets that give priority to vehicular access. As a result, open public spaces are often void of human interaction in the absence of large events. I then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to begin my post- grad school career at Studios Architecture. At the time, I was interested in firms that had projects that varied in scale and were getting built. Long before I knew about the firm, I knew their architectural and urban design work. While studying at UC Berkeley during my undergraduate years, I was fascinated by Studio’s approach to Foundry Square, a midrise multi- block commercial complex that spans and occupies all 4 corners of an intersection. Studios deliberately pushed all 4 buildings away from the intersection, creating 4 small squares that together made up a larger square. In doing so, they transformed the intersection into a very vibrant public space, often filled

with commercial vendors as well as food trucks.

Since joining Studios Architecture, I’ve been working on various commercial projects throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, one of which is the masterplan of Fremont’s Civic Center. This project aligns with my observations during my travels and my thesis in that the project involves phasing and creating vibrant public space in a city that is emerging from its low density and car-oriented roots.

What was the most important thing you learned from thesis?

I recognized that the Olympics presented an opportunity to develop a longterm design solution for societal issues in Rio de Janeiro. The idea for “design for reuse” was first developed when I was thinking about the sustainability paradox presented by buildings that outlive the largely single and short-lived purposes for which they were designed.

My thesis, “Design for Reuse,” focuses on the importance of designing the 2016 Olympic Stadiums in such a way that they do not become white elephants after the games. Instead, I believe the design of these buildings should contemplate their continued usage well after the games. Thesis taught me the political and economic issues at play. In doing so, I refined my ability to question whether or not my designs exploit these constraints such that the design of each project is vibrant at every stage of its existence. Oftentimes those fund-

ing buildings have very different ideas of how the spaces should be used. Over time, different user groups will occupy a space and use it very differently from what was originally thought to serve their varying and evolving needs. Buildings change at glacial speeds when compared to changing technology and economies.

So instead of designing for any singular use, buildings today must incorporate many types of programs and thereby be progressive enough to sustain long-term, ever-evolving usage; transform what may at first appear to be a dichotomy between programs into a harmonious and complementary synergy in which the programs, when combined, produce a total effect that is greater than the sum of its individual parts.

Thinking back on your thesis, how do you feel it has or has not influenced your career?

My thesis was primarily urban design and had an open-ended interpretation of whether or not its final state was the final design. It opened me up to designing for flexibility in a city and providing for projects to be expanded upon if ever needed. While most architects hope to design buildings with clear use and form, my thesis was more so an urban design project that explored uncertainties of the future. I have since come to realize that most projects at my current firm, Studios Architecture, are built with ambiguity as to who the end users will be.

While working on the master plan of Fremont’s civic center, I discovered many

GeorGe X. Lin

layers of project uncertainties. A multiphase strategy was used to safeguard the plan from inevitable administrative changes and ensure ample public space at each phase. My thesis provided a preamble to real life design issues in the field.

Would you change anything?

Because my thesis was about providing for the community after the games, I found it difficult to identify the future programs that would eventually inhabit the design. That was in part due to the fact that I had not chosen a site before thesis started. As my understanding of the social, economic and political context of my Olympic site grew, my project emerged as a design proposal for field hockey stadium which would be flexible enough to serve after the Games as a vocational school empowering Rio’s San Carlos residents for years to come.

Beyond simply benefitting the Olympic athletes and guests, the design would also empower the local inhabitants and public to shape the purpose and outcome of the public space. But because I discovered the site a few weeks into thesis, the research of programs came rather late, and the project never matured beyond the urban design scale. Whenever I came up with a form, I would test it until it failed, and it took lot failure to find a successful form.

My hesitation cost me the time needed to refine and further delve into the details of my project. In hindsight, I should have researched the city more comprehensively to identify possible site locations earlier.

What was the biggest advantage for doing your thesis in the MIT Architecture department?

MIT students, myself included, are given the opportunity to see how MIT’s five different departments within Architecture contribute to the field as a whole.

Likewise, my educational background at MIT has encouraged me to incorporate a variety of disciplines—Urban Design, Architecture, Fabrication, and Photography—into the process of informing my approach to each architectural challenge. While these disciplines operate in radically different scales and mediums and are therefore are often perceived separately, I believe they reinforce my approach to projects by allowing me

039

to zoom in and out so that I can gain a complete perspective. Beyond that, MIT’s faculty is also heavily invested in the different aspects of architecture. My thesis committee was composed of Ana Miljački, Arindam Dutta, and Miho Mazereeuw. Between the three, they covered extensive knowledge in architectural, landscape, and urban design as well as a focus on theory and understanding of the developing world. My committee was so knowledgeable that oftentimes my thesis pinups would result in discussions that prompted me to research questions I may not have had answers to immediately, and consider the relevancies brought about by my findings. In the end, I felt that there was no question to which I could not find an answer.

What was particularly timely about your thesis?

Mega-events are increasingly hosted by developing countries where the disparity between rich and poor is widening.

Every city that hosts the Olympic games hopes to shine a new light on its nation’s image. Therefore, each city attempts to outdo the last, even as every city falls into serious debt that remains long after the Games. The public remains easily misled into supporting the hosting of the Olympic Games with the perceived benefits of increased jobs, which are often only temporary. My thesis explores the possibility of using good long-term planning, urban design and architecture as a catalyst to restoring vitality and mobility to the communities bearing the costs of the Olympic Games. With the ever-increasing size and spending of these events, it would be a shame to see them continue to come and go without attempting to change host cities for the greater long-term good.

Building discourse

GeorGe X. Lin

041

MIT Campus Photography Independent Work Photography

This page: MIT Chapel Interior Opposite: Baker House

Building discourse

Kresge Auditorium

GeorGe X. Lin

043

Kresge Auditorium

Building discourse

Fully Operational Civic Center Masterplanning for a Bay Area Suburban City Case Study, 2014 Studios Architecture

This project is a case study on how a civic center can be created on the same site as the existing civic center. The site is currently also occupied by retail stores that are set to be demolished.

While research, surveys and assumptions identified the public users of this site and how to best suit their needs, political uncertainties over whether the current government group occupying the site would stay or move during construction led to a more innovative design.

To better allow for flexibility, a multi-phase strategy was developed to allow the existing user groups to stay on the site and remain fully function until new administrative buildings are constructed. However, with the constraints of changes in office (of elected officials) and funding reallocations, there is a possibility that all the phases may not be completed. In response,

each phase is a project on its own that aims to create vibrant public space, even if it is ultimately left as the permanent state.

GeorGe X. Lin

045

NADP Options Studio 2012 Instructor: Andrew Scott

“NADP” explores the possibility of alleviating Barcelona’s water shortages and dependency by integrating Greenhouse Desalination plants into neighborhoods. Research on Barcelona’s major water shortages after a 2008 drought inspired an alternative solution towards providing water. To sustain its population, Barcelona spent €21M a month to import 63 shipments of water from other parts of Spain and France and constructed 6 energy intensive desalination plants. I contemplated, as an alternative solution, an energy efficient Greenhouse Desalination plant

that would, in addition to producing fresh water, also serve as a habitat for a more favorable production of food. By educating and evoking public curiosity, this project fuses water desalination and food production with cultural and public amenities for a neighborhood, much like the Ferns in the Back Bay or the Eden Project in Cornwall. Ultimately, it seeks to inform the public of their water use and water generation through architectural design.

Building discourse

GeorGe X. Lin

047

Building discourse

Urban Archive The Contemporary Library Core Studio, 2010 Instructors: Ana Miljački, J. Meejin Yoon

“Urban Archive” attempts to redefine the library so that it can move forward contemporaneously with the evolving usage and relevancy of traditional books in modern society. Most Americans now get their information from the Internet and books are becoming increasingly digital. In the traditional sense, the library as a space was dedicated towards housing a collection of books—an interface between an organized, authoritative collection of knowledge and the readers who sought it out. However, in the contemporary scenario, users have begun to perceive libraries more so as social centers; they visit for specific services and information (e.g. digital media, maps, children’s collections, tax aid, job training, and even cafes). Considering the possibility that books will become even more obsolete than they are today, perhaps even reaching the status of relics, this project relegates the book to the archive.

The purpose of this maneuver is both to acknowledge the reality of the contemporary library and to elevate the book anew as an object. Through their symbolic presence in the archive, books are simultaneously presented as a towering mass and as fragile objects to be handled with special care, while the rest of the library is dedicated to streaming information to its visitors in the form of a media market more catered to their ever-changing needs.

GeorGe X. Lin

049

Roof / Skylites

3rd Level Study Spaces

Mesh Facade Glazing Outer Truss Media Market

White Glove Reading Rooms Art Collection

Admin / Support Spaces

Small Media Pod Cluster

Portuguese Rare Book Collection

Inner Truss

Small Media Pod Cluster

Oversize Art books

Inner Truss

Newsprints Admin / Support Spaces

Children's Library Rare Book Archive

White Glove Reading Rooms

Large Media Pod Cluster

Lobby Entrance Stairs

Outer Truss Glazing Mesh Facade

Conference Area

Building discourse

Above: 1:500 scale model of waterfront complex

Opposite: Exterior perspective of dynamic wetlands & community garden facing East Boston

Carolyn Jenkins

051

Carolyn Jenkins

East Boston Buffer: A Transferable Urban Framework for Adapting to Sea Rise M.Arch Thesis 2013 Advisor: Andrew Scott Readers: John Fernandez, James Wescoat Urban vulnerability to climate change is constantly increasing.

Many coastal cities will need to begin sea rise mitigation efforts soon, and now is a critical time for architects to intervene in this process with good design that takes on the issue of sea rise in the city, not just as a problem but as an opportunity and catalyst for change.

Data published in August 2012 revealed that the U.S East Coast is experiencing a rate of sea rise that is four times the global average. The city of Boston in particular has a high percentage of flood-prone areas due to the city’s dramatic history of land-making. Of all the neighborhoods comprising Boston, the often-overlooked neighborhood of East Boston is the most flood-prone. The project is site-specific in that it is sited in the context of East Boston, but the design methodology and synthesis of technologies serve as a prototype to be applied to any urban waterfront.

This thesis project addresses the issue of sea rise in an urban context as a unique condition related to the construction of a sustainable environment. In order to meet seemingly contradic

tory needs for sea rise defense and capacity for future urban growth, the project reconsiders waterfront architecture as a new hybrid of architecture plus infrastructure as a means of building resilience and addressing scientific uncertainty.

The project establishes a systematic approach to a layered buffer zone that mediates between the sea and the vulnerable urban fabric of East Boston. The buffer is conceived of as a framework for future development that balances energy collection, environmental enhancement, and social enrichment through the allocation of productive, inhabitable, and recreational spaces within a defensive landscape. Through careful orchestration and layering of multi-disciplinary sea rise mitigation tools, the designed framework projects a new future for the urban waterfront—one that promotes social as well as physical resilience and adaptability in an ever-changing coastal environment.

Building discourse

Urban Sea Rise Vulnerability

Criteria for Resilience & Adaptability

The stakes are too high for trial and error sea rise mitigation tactics. Coastal cities need a framework for long-term resilience that provides some continuity between the city and the sea. The public right to waterfront access as well as safety is long-valued and too precious to throw away in the face of climate change. In the book Disasters by Design, Dennis Mileti argues that we need to move beyond current dichotomous measures for mitigation, like those used in the Maldives, which have a pattern of (1) staggering monetary losses from disasters still increasing, (2) simply postponing losses that will be more catastrophic when they do occur and (3) result in even short-term or cumulative environmental degradation and ecological imbalance, which, besides being detrimental to society, also contributes to the occurrence and severity of the next disaster. [1] There are three main reasons why urban areas are particularly vulnerable to sea rise. First, historic development has led to large ares of low-lying ground. Second, the dependence of buried and centralized infrastructures—the hazards of which were recently seen in New York City when Hurricane Sandy hit. Third, the lack of a physical buffer or capacity for flooding.

There is nowhere for the water to go, so when a flood occurs, it is never welcome.

There are multiple and contending definitions of what resilience and adaptability are in the context of sea rise and climate change. This chapter will define these terms as gradients of performance with regards to climate change (gradual sea rise) and storms (sudden inundation). The assumption is made that existing sea rise mitigation tools, like those used in the Maldives, are all striving to achieve resilience and adaptability, and that they can be characterized as achieving some level of each.

The hypothesis of this thesis is that when these usually independently employed mitigation techniques are used together to create a sectionally layered approach, the resulting performance is greater than the sum of its parts. By partnering with other sea rise mitigation measures, architecture can contribute to sea rise adaptability and resilience by addressing the need for development and infrastructure stewardship by occupying waterfront zones.

Physical & Social Vulnerability Especially within these low-lying territories, mitigation strategies need to address the ramifications of hazards including land loss, disrupted linkages in transportation networks, and the increasing threat of storms to private and public property due to climate change. As seen in NYC during Hurricane Sandy on October 28, 2012, underground public infrastructure systems like the subway become very vulnerable to flooding and dependent on effective local scale flood defense strategies. Without the investment of sea rise mitigation infrastructures, cities will find themselves repeatedly paying for disaster cleanup. [2] Similar to complex infrastructure networks, interwoven economic and social ties make cities more vulnerable to sea rise than less densely populated areas. The success of cities is measured by economic growth. Agglomeration benefits due to the proximity of activities to one another in a city create a complex web of interrelationships that extends into current and future flood-prone areas. If unaddressed, sea rise could result in productivity decline and negative economic repercussions of land use shift. In addition to high economic cost, urban population growth is anticipated to add pressure on cities to continue to allow development in vulnerable waterfront areas.

Urban Resilience Resilience is the ability of a system to maintain its structure, identity, feedback, and function when subject to disruptive forces. [1] A few synonyms of the word ‘resilient’ are: bouncy, buoyant, effervescent, elastic, hardy, plastic, pliable, rebounding, springy, stretchy, strong, supple, and tough. The definition of successful urban sea rise resilience as ‘bouncing back’ does not accurately reflect the realities of post-disaster scenario. After a disaster has taken place, a hurricane, Nor’easter, etc., the affected community rebuilding activities undertaken present community members with a new reality that differs in several fundamental ways from prevailing conditions pre-disaster. [4]

Urban sea rise hazards

Carolyn Jenkins

053

Homeostasis Principle

Flatness Principle

High Flux Principle

Omnivory Principle

Buffering Principle

Redundancy Principle

Principles of resilient systems (on site)

Building discourse

Resilient Waterfront Complex The final step in the process of building urban resilience is activating the waterfront zone through architecture. The public location of the waterfront focus site demands a building that demonstrates the effects of climate change, sea rise and aspects of the waterfront to a wide audience. Thus, the main formal driver for the project is a public path that weaves pedestrians or bikers through the unique environments created by the infrastructure. The building serves as a lens for experiencing these environments.

New types of urban experiences can be cultivated through the proposed approach to waterfront infrastructure. The buffer system’s three edge typologies can be combined at different sites depending on existing conditions and varying development demands. This design is a prototype of a catalyst building that might occur along such a buffer system. It is not being proposed as the only building solution for this environment. Just as there have been many edge typology studies, there are multiple versions of the waterfront complex in this project.

Carolyn Jenkins

Opposite, above: 1:100 Scale section model through dry dock, navigable channel, fixed residential and floating school buildings This page: Complex Components

055

Building discourse

The East Boston site sits in the midst of a long redevelopment process as well as political tension.

This often overlooked neighborhood has the most risk prone waterfront and

yet the least developed relationship to the water of any coastal Boston neighborhood. Now that South Boston’s redevelopment project is winding down, East Boston is again

a strong candidate for city investment. It is important to understand the local political climate in addition to the physical site characteristics for a full understanding

of project context. The photo collage below maps the authorities and actors at play relative to their relationship to the local waterfront focus site.

Above: Various programs within the complex

Bottom: Rendering diagram with complex centrally located. Diagram to show general density of waterfront construction and building locations.

Opposite top: 1:100 Scale section model through dry dock, navigable channel, fixed residential and floating school buildings.

Opposite center: Recreational circuit Opposite bottom: Working navigable channel

Carolyn Jenkins

057

NOTES 1 Dennis S. Mileti, Disaster By Design: A Reassessment of Natural Hazards in the United States (Washington, D.C: Joseph Henry Press, 1999), 24.

2 Transit systems struggling to restart. Marnie Hunter and Katia

Hetter, CNN. Accessed online Nov. 5 2012. http://www.cnn.com/2012/ 10/28/travel/tropical-weathertransportation/index.html 3 Brian Walker, et al., “Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability in Social-Ecological

Systems,� Ecology and Society 9 (2004).

4 Douglas Paton and David Johnson, Disaster Resilience: An Integrated Approach (Springfield: Charles C. Thomas Publisher Ltd., 2006).

Building discourse

Carolyn Jenkins MIT / Master of Architecture 2013 University of Virginia / Bachelor of Architecture

Before attending MIT, my architecture world-view was shaped by my undergrad experience at UVA. My studies and professors emphasized sustainable/ green/environmental design. Sustainability wasn’t considered something additive or trendy, but an inherent part of the design process—like gravity. I learned that architecture is always a dialogue with the environment.

I worked in D.C. for two years and then in Boston for a year. During thesis prep, I took two other classes that directly fed into my thesis: the ‘Barcelona Studio’ with Andrew Scott and ‘Sustainable Urban Futures’ with John Fernandez. These subjects were an MIT spin on my undergrad pedagogy. Fernandez’s urban metabolism class formed my thinking about the city as a system of energy flows occurring simultaneously at various scales. This enhanced my thesis project because I looked for solutions that addressed these multiple issues at once and gave me a list of categories of urban impact with which to evaluate my design.

In the Barcelona studio, I learned how to use metrics (time, volume or quantity of inputs and outputs) to help frame the problem for a project, inform the development of the design, and argue its success. The Barcelona Studio was also the largest project I had done to date.

Instead of designing everything on the project in detail (my personal tendency), it was more important to design an effective urban architectural system.

Was MIT’s mandatory thesis component an important reason why you studied here?

Yes. Even though I was anxious about putting myself out there vis-àvis my ideas and a project that I cared about (can’t blame the brief!), I knew I needed it as a testing ground for myself as a designer. In practice, there is no preprepared brief. It’s part of the architect’s job to create (or at least identify) and solve the problem.

It all seemed to fall together. I was apartment hunting in East Boston and found an article on high water levels while doing a little background reading on the area. I had seen and loved the projects for Rising Currents at MoMA, especially LTL’s project, and thought that there was a lot more territory up for grabs on the topic.

What was your relationship with your advisors and how did they influence you?

considerate of the East Boston context and the appropriately forward-thinking and planning opportunities of the intervention.

What did you get right, and what did you get totally wrong?

At the ‘end’ of the project, I got the front end of the problem right. Architects have GOT to think about the issue of climate change. I enumerated the ways we can be a beneficial part of the political/ planning process and provided a reasonably convincing proposal.

If I could go back, I would have accepted the messiness of it all. Nowhere in my drawings did I take on the super storm/ disaster/ destruction. I really wish I had done a drawing like Joseph Gandy’s drawings of the Bank of England, which depicted the Bank of England as a ruin 100 years after it had been built and used that way of thinking as a design tool.

Thesis Approach & Reflection

Andrew Scott: Keeping the big picture in focus. John Fernandez: So helpful in reminding me that this was my chance to do what I wanted with my time and the MIT resources available to me. He kept me from thinking small and reiterated what thesis really is: a fixed amount of time (which reassured me that it would pass) within which to position myself to produce something worth sharing. Jim Wescoat: Making sure it made sense.

Antonio DiMambro (informal adviser): Making sure it wasn’t too wrong. Fred Salvucci (informal adviser): Keeping me

Thesis was mostly a capstone to my education and a personal test. I didn’t feel particularly pressured by advisors and enjoyed the responsibility to take my own initiative.

I really wanted to cover the topic of climate change and sea rise. My decoy alternate topic was called, ‘Flippin Burbs: Reimagining the American Suburban Landscape.’ It was a Pop-Style topic inspired by one of Mark Jarzombek’s lectures.

I spent maybe too much time

Carolyn Jenkins

researching—Andrew Scott is probably nodding while reading this—but only ‘maybe’ because I still have so many questions. Part of my problem was redefining the role of architecture. In a typical building project, architects coordinate a predictable list of consultants. In the context of coastal urban design that anticipates sea rise, the cast is completely different.

I wish I had spent more time on design. Writing was helpful for me to make sure I was happy with the direction the project was headed. Each time before I presented the project (or at least after I presented) for a pin-up or review, I rewrote my project statement.

Thesis is like no other studio project.

It’s the first time you have to write the brief yourself. In setting up the problem, your also imagine the solution. Yet the question and the solution should still be distinguishable from one another.

I am unfortunately fortunate with the timing of my project. Right in the middle of the thesis semester, I was in the big scale master plan phase of design and Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast.

Initially it was even projected to hit Boston. Almost overnight, what had been perceived as a kind of creepy doomsday project, people started taking seriously.

I am currently working in an architecture firm in Boston, but my thesis has lived on as a side project. It was well received at the Holcim Conference in India and I still email with a couple of the attendees who are initiating the study of Urban Sea Rise in other universities around the world. Recently, the Boston Globe and the East Boston Times published write-ups about the project. That

059

has led to my involvement in a Sea Rise Mitigation committee in East Boston that is preparing a master plan to present to the city.

Building discourse

Barcelona, The Self-Sufficient Block: Architecture At The Intersection Of Networks, Resources, And Ecology Options Studio 2012 Instructor: Andrew Scott

APPEN BUILDING HIS

1864

Original building

Entrance

1967

M ag ill Librar y Co lle ge

KEY: Have rfo rd

1864 1898 1912 1941

Entranc e & De po s ito r y

1951 1967

AnnBehaArchitects

1864

ALUMNI HALL

After completion of Alumni Hall, Haverford College library m from Founders Hall.

AnnBehaArchitects

22

2014 MAGILL LIBRARY DESIGN STUDY - HAVERFORD COLLEGE 7

Carolyn Jenkins

061

Magill Library, Haverford College: Renovation / Addition Current Work: Ann Beha Architects

APPENDIX 1 BUILDING HISTORY

1864

O riginal building

1898

1912

M agill Librar y Have rford Colle ge

Entrance

M agill Librar y Have rford College

1864

Magill Librar y H averford C ollege

1864

1864

1898

1898

1941

1912

1967

Ma gi l l Li bra r y Col lege

KEY: H aver ford

1864 1898 1912 1941

E nt ra n c e & D ep osi tor y

1951 1967

AnnBehaArchitects

AnnBehaArchitects

1864

APPENDIX 1 BUILDING HISTORY

64

al b u ild in g

AnnBehaArchitects 1 89 8

Entrance

22

Ma g i l l L i b ra r y Haver ford C ol lege

1864

M agill Librar y Have rford Colle ge

AnnBehaArchitects

2

1912

AnnBehaArchitects 4

3

ALUMNI HALL

ADDITION TO ALUMNI HALL

‘THE NEW STACK’

ADDITIONS

After completion of Alumni Hall, Haverford College library move there from Founders Hall.

Haverford becomes a Government Depository Library upon completion of the South Wing of Alumni Hall in 1898.

In 1912 a northwest addition and new stack building were added to accommodate the growing library collection.

• In 1941, new stacks expa built. Haverford begins sharin • In 1951, the Rufus Jones St

2014 MAGILL LIBRARY DESIGN STUDY - HAVERFORD COLLEGE 7

1912

Mag ill Librar y H aver fo rd Co llege

1898

1941

1967

1864

1864

1864

1898

1898

1898

1912

APPENDIX 1 BUILDING HISTORY M agill Librar y Have rford Colle ge

M agill Librar y Have rford Colle ge

1864 1898 1912

1912 1941

Entrance & Depositor y

1941 1951 1967

rchitects

AnnBehaArchitects

1864

mni Hall, Haverford College library move there

N STUDY - HAVERFORD COLLEGE 7

1898

2

AnnBehaArchitects

1912

3

Total GSF: 77,000 SF Location: Philadelphia, PA Budget: $35M ADDITION TO ALUMNI HALL ‘THE NEW STACK’ Phase: Programming Haverford becomes a Government Depository Library upon completion In 1912 a northwest addition and new stack building were added to of the South Wing of Alumni Hall in 1898.

accommodate the growing library collection.

AnnBehaArchitects 4

1941

AnnBehaArchitects

1967

5

7

TODAY

ADDITIONS

FURTHER EXPANSION

LIBRARY MASTER PLAN

• In 1941, new stacks expansion, catalog room and staff room are built. Haverford begins sharing catalog cards with Bryn Mawr.

• In 1951, the Rufus Jones Study is built.

• In 1967, final expansions to the library are completed, and the building is renamed in honor of James Magill.

• In 1969, the C.C. Morris Cricket Library is built.

Ann Beha Architects is engaged for the library master plan study for renovation and addition to the existing library.

AnnBehaArchitects

23

Building discourse

Conceptual model

AlexAnder mArshAll

063

Alexander Marshall

Exodus Industrious: A New American Dream For The Next Industrial Revolution M.Arch Thesis 2013 Advisor: Ana Miljački Readers: Cristina Parreño Alonso, Miho Mazereeuw

Exodus Industrious is an architectural investigation of a new version of the American Dream. Prompted by the mass exodus of manufacturing production from the City of Detroit, and the urban fallout which followed, this thesis seeks to examine a new future for a city which has lost nearly two thirds of its population. By considering the effect of democratized production tools, such as open source 3-D printing technology, the assumption is made that manufacturing will cease to exist en masse. This new technology could offer the average citizen the opportunity to become an independent manufacturer, not controlled by corporate influence or practices such as ‘capitalist urbanization.’ Further, the City of Detroit possesses a certain latent potential in that it does not currently operate a municipal recycling program. Thousands of tons of refine-able 3-D printing materials (HDPE, ABS, Stainless Steel, etc.) are discarded annually, giving rise to a virtually free source of raw material. In order for a neighborhood to operate as an independent network of manufacturers, new building types must be generated in order to deal with refining, storing and printing raw material into new commodities. As such, this thesis investigates three new manufacturing typologies: A Recyclefinery, A Silo-Pavilion, and a Printer’s Cottage, all of which are linked together by a neighborhood facing probable relocation due to the interest of big business, and yet another failed urban renewal plan from the City of Detroit.

Exodus Industrious has many beginnings, but few endings.

Exodus Industrious is two parallel tales, told as one, which ultimately arrive at a critical moment in the history of Americanism. Exodus is the story of capitalism and industry, and its antithetical decline which destabilizes a nation. Industrious is the story of the American Dream, a prodigal tale of the excess of Americanism, which was once rooted in the belief that if one possessed the characteristics of hard-work and self reliance, they would ultimately reap the rewards of status, wealth, and power. Exodus Chronicles the rise and fall of the capitalistic state, while Industrious chronicles the industrious nature of the everyday American.

The intersection of American industrial decline and the American dream has prompted a new architectural vision of both, a vision which reacts to the failures of industry in solving societal problems, and the failure of the American Dream to

sustain livelihoods. The vision seeks to mix the two, Industry and Domesticity, and recast them as an architectural solution to the problem which both have created: a rampant foreclosure crisis and skyrocketing unemployment.

This new vision of the American Dream will be played out on a site in northeast Detroit, in the Kettering Neighborhood.

The Neighborhood is one of many which had been ravaged by the foreclosure crisis, as well as the departure of a major factory (The Packard Automobile Company) which would have once secured the livelihood of many of the residents of the Kettering Neighborhood, as well as, Detroit at Large. The proposal seeks to create an Anti-Capitalist Manufacturing Settlement, founded on the premise of Urban Revolution. The intention is to create four new Architectural Typologies—the Home, The Factory, The Warehouse and the Big-Box Superstore—which will attempt to confront the political and social injustices these typologies have arguably created and propose a new interaction between them, ultimately prompting a re-writing of the American Dream.

We live in a nation in which 80% of the wealth is controlled by the top 5% of the populous, leaving the rest of us with no other option but Revolution. Revolution cannot be simply taken up as an occupation, or protest. It must be embodied via rethinking the city, and re-assuming the right to the city through the establishment of new architectural typologies. Architecture and Urban Space have the power to organize the masses, means of production, and the re-production of culture through clever thinking; outside of the influence of capitalism, a new vision for the city can and must be envisioned.

The intention of the thesis is to consider a new history, or a re-writing of an old one as the grounds for an architectural proposal. The American Dream and the rhetoric which surrounds it is the founding basis for action. The thesis seeks to examine the relationship between the single family home, manufacturing production, the maintenance of surplus value, and the distribution of commodities to a wider populous, while operating at the scale of a neighborhood of 3,000 - 5,000 people.

Building discourse

East Elevation

North Elevation

the “Jubilee”

Manufacture At Home with...

3800 Square Feet

Starting at.. $575 per Month

South Elevation

West Elevation

Manufacture At Home with...

the “Jubilee” All New

61

2012 Model..

The Jubilee offers an unprecedented amount of manufacutring space complete with a loading bay and material storage nook, All within the comfort of your own home.This 3600 square foot Garage-Mahal has the capability to handle nearly all of your manufacturing needs. The Pattented saw-tooth roof offers ample daylighting, for the highest precision working environment possible. No other kit has it this good...Gauranteed or your money back.

Exploded Axonometric

63

AlexAnder mArshAll

065

IMAGE TITLE

IMAGE TITLE

50

60

Existence Optimum is the new ideal. What if the home was the factory? What if your living room was instead your livelihood room? What if the home had the capacity to generate nearly anyproduct? What would that home look like? The new American dream home must identify the necessities of domestic space, while ruling out the spaces which are often constructed to enhance the size, and therefore, the “fortress” effect of the American Home.

Existence optimum, in terms of a manufacturing household, may mean that the living space is optimized while the production space is maximized. Let us consider the first kit home of Reverietown, the Jubilee.

Opposite: Drawings of the Jubilee House Above: Postcard image of Reverietown

Post-Post-Modern home No. 0001, also known as ‘The Jubilee’ “The Jubilee is named in celebration of the birth of Reverietown, and the 81st anniversary of the birth of the American Dream.

The Jubilee extends its arm of production, to any budding Reverite, as the vehicle to acquiring the next American Dream.

The house is split down the middle, with as much living space as production space—approximately 3,800-sq.ft, a shy more than the average American Home. The Jubilee offers a patented, saw tooth to gable roof construction to offer occupants the characteristics desired in both a home and a factory, a well- lit manufacturing hall, and ample protection from the elements.

The main living space is open and un-regulated, allowing for a multitude of programmatic uses. The main common area of the home can be a den, a dining room, a living room, a kitchen or whatever else one pleases. The manufactory is only one type of room, though; it is called the “livelihood room” a new space in the American household, which ensures a constant source of economic sustenance.

The livelihood room offers Reverites an unheard of 15-ft ceiling height, making no job too small for the Jubilee. The space has no divisions, no columns, no obstructions, and the sawtooth roof makes a clear 30-ft span, to offer trouble free space for even the most complicated production lines. The Jubilee is the new standard in the At-Home-Manufacturing revolution. The plan offers a production hall of 1,800 sq.ft., and an adjacent storage area of roughly 400 sq.ft. The walls are constructed with rubble from the nearby “Defunct Packard Automotive Plant,” significantly reducing the cost of construction. And since this beauty is built on publicly held land (The Reverietown Public Trust), this home may cost virtually nothing at all. So pack your bags and say “bye, bye” to the old American Dream, and HELLO! to the JUBILEE!”

Building discourse

AlexAnder mArshAll

Opposite, top: Excessive expansion of American dream home This page: Disguised Production Facility

067

Building discourse

AlexAnder mArshAll

069

Building discourse

AlexAnder mArshAll

071

Reverietown, A New Vision For I-94 Industrial In an effort to re-employ thousands of laborers, the city planning commission has designated the I-94 neighborhood as an Industrial Renaissance zone. This means that all residential property in the zone must be vacated and leveled, leaving flat developable land, to be marketed to heavy manufacturing companies.

Since 1994, the City of Detroit has been attempting to relocate residents of the proposed I-94 industrial zone into “livable” neighborhoods. In return for their homes and property, residents are offered “fair market value.” But as more homes and small businesses are vacated, “fair market value” continually declines. Currently, only half of the neighborhood has been relocated, while the rest waits in limbo. The 800 Detroiters who still live in the I-94 neighborhood are now faced with a trichotomous future: 1. Sell their homes to the City for a few thousand dollars, vacate, and face demolition.

2. Sit back, wait for their property to be condemned and eventually be forcefully relocated.

3. Commit, in the words of Paulo Virno, “Engaged Withdrawal.”

I use the term “Engaged Withdrawal” here to define mass defection from the City of Detroit, in order to create a new form of community. “Engaged Withdrawal” is a full-fledged model of action, capable of confronting the challenges of unemployment, vacancy and relocation through collective models of ownership and communal manufacturing production. Through “Engaged Withdrawal,” there is the possibility for a new American Dream to flourish at 1-94 Industrial. Residents must look to a new model of ownership, or rather “public investment,” one which puts them in control of manufacturing production by democratizing the factory.

Up to 17 materials used in 3-D printing processes can be found in Detroit’s municipal waste stream. Through a process of grinding and mechanical separation, these elements can be refined into usable raw material. This material will fuel a new industrial revolution.

Given the promise of affordable technology and virtually free raw materials, the residents of I-94 will require three distinct architectural interventions. One. The De-Factory; Two, the Silo Pavilion; Three, a collection of Printers’ Cottages.

Detroit possesses an untapped resource. It currently lacks a municipal recycling program. The De-Factory will refine municipal waste into usable granulated materials for distribution to local Silo Pavilions for storage and wealth retention purposes.

The Silo Pavilion is an open, public space intended to serve as a monument to collective value. By stockpiling raw materials, the collateral, or economic stability of a neighborhood is defined by this structure. The Silo Pavilion stores granulated materials within its columns while simultaneously providing covered space for community events.

The Printers Cottage typology refills vacant lots in the neighborhood while simultaneously re-valuing the homes around it. At first glance, this cousin of the modern kit home blends into its surroundings. A second reading reveals the absence of certain domestic motifs such as shutters, shingles, and ship-lap siding. Inside its walls, one might find a wealth of production space, calibrated for additive manufacturing.

These three typologies are envisioned as a new manufacturing system, or urbanism, in which residents of a neighborhood

collectively possess the Means of Production, and it is used to generate a new type of economic and cultural stability. The project is envisioned as a new version of the American Dream, one in which hard work and persistence will actually result in a sustained livelihood for residents.

This new manufacturing urbanism is not intended to be a profitable venture, but rather one that has the capacity to rewrite the future of the urban fallout which has plagued Detroit for the last half of the twentieth century. In many ways, it is a proposition for a return to an agrarian model of community, one in which neighbors rely on one another and their specific trades as a means to sustain livelihoods. One can only imagine the new forms of daily interaction in a community that is simultaneously a place of domesticity and production. In order for a community of this nature to succeed, it must divorce itself from the traditional models of Capitalism which have left Detroit in ruin.

Building discourse

Site plan of I-94 Industrial neighborhood

The I-94 Industrial Renaissance Zone The I-94 industrial renaissance zone is located in northeast Detroit, along the Edsel Ford Freeway. It is considered to be part of the Kettering Neighborhood, one of the most economically and socially depressed neighborhoods in the city, and is located at a node point in the vacancy hot spot mapping.

In July 1999, the City of Detroit established the I-94 industrial park project, an industrial redevelopment project located in the area bounded by Mt. Elliot, Huber, Grinnell, St. Cyril and Miller streets. The plan called for the acquisition of privately owned property to be combined with the city’s ownership within the 189-acre site to provide land for a modern industrial park. The project is managed by the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation and the City of Detroit. Currently, the project site is occupied by two anchor tenants—TDS U.S. and Excel, both major suppliers to Daimler-Chrysler. Currently there are no other interested parties, and the land has remained entirely vacant since the initiation of the project. The neighborhoods on the bounding edge of the industrial park are over 50% vacant, a number which will continue to rise unless a new plan for the neighborhood is developed. The areas surrounding the I-94 site are considered a State of Michigan renaissance zone, meaning they are tax free lands for further commercial and industrial development. (Information courtesy of the City of Detroit).

The aerial photograph above shows the existing condition of the site. While heavily blighted and largely vacant, there are a few clusters of existing homes, housing roughly 800 inhabitants. The houses which still remain are well kept but maintain absurdly low real estate values, some valued at just $5,000 (Zillow). This low real estate assessment is causing the condition of existing homes to diminish, as repairs and renovations out value the homes. Residents seeking improvements are often deterred because improving these properties will have no effect on the actual value of the home. The only way to combat this problem is to develop strategies to refill vacant lots.

AlexAnder mArshAll

073

S A

5 3

Building discourse

6

8

41 I

H

42

B R 9 7

10

12

C

24

21

40 39

20

11

13

26

27

D

28 14

G

15

Q

J

19

18

E

29

16

30

38

37 36 F

17

L K 34 35

33

31

M,N,O,P

32

ENGINE BLOCK CORE REGISTER

A. CRANKSHAFT HOUSING A (1-4) B. CRANKSHAFT HOUSING B (5-8) C. CRANKSHAFT HOUSING C (9-12) D. INTAKE MANIFOLD CORE A (13-14) E. INTAKE MANIFOLD CORE B (15-16) F. LEFT BLOCK CORE (17-18) G. RIGHT BLOCK CORE (19-20) H. CASTING RESERVOIR CORE (21-22) I. BASE CORE (23-24) J. LEFT UPPER MANIFOLD CORE (26-29) K. LEFT PISTON HEAD CORE (30-31) L. RIGHT UPPER MANIFOLD CORE (34-37) M,N,O,P. CRANKSHAFT HARNESS POINT (32-33) Q. RIGHT PISTON HEAD CORE (38-39) R. FRONT CORE (40-41) S. REAR CORE (42-43)

THE ENGINE BLOCK, AS CAST

ASSEMBLED MOLD

AlexAnder mArshAll

075

Disruptive Technology 3-D Printing In A New Era Of Manufacturing Q: What do you get when you cross cheap, accessible, open source Manufacturing Technology with a pile of garbage?

A: Karl Marx might say: Means of Production.

Means of production, or the Factors of Production, are defined

by Karl Marx in Das Kapital in three broad reaching categories: Labor, The Instruments of Labor and The Subjects of Labor.

The instruments of Labor are the tools, machines, factories and infrastructure, while the Subjects of Labor are the Raw Materials which are manufactured into useful objects. Labor, is the Human factor and a Laborer is responsible for operating the Instruments of Labor in order to transform The Subjects of Labor into usable goods. Traditionally, Means of Production are owned by a privileged few, those who gain substantial financial benefits from their ownership. Laborers, as we know, are given little of the profits from a manufacturing operation.

But what happens to this model when low cost Open Source manufacturing technology enters the manufacturing sphere?

We could be witnesses to a pivotal moment in the history of industrial production. As 3-D printing technology gains a foothold as a useful production process, we could see a broad-acre change in the realm of manufacturing. It is no longer impossible to imagine a world in which the average Laborer could have the financial capacity to own Means of Production, rather than be owned by it.

In order to gain a deeper understanding of how 3-D printing or Additive Manufacturing could effect the physical scale of a production process, a series of drawings have been produced which take into consideration traditional and emerging manufacturing paradigms in the manufacture of the Engine Block.

The following text seeks to describe the drawings in this section: In a traditional manufacturing process, the engine block requires 42 cast iron molds which produce 23 zircon sand and epoxy cores. These cores are injection molded and assembled on an automated assembly line which requires 9 molding apparatuses and 15 robotic arms.

Once the mold is assembled, it is filled with molten aluminum from a jet furnace, and powered by a few thousand gallons of petroleum and pressurized oxygen. The block is then moved into a furnace where the mold is baked away and the aluminum is tempered.

In an additive manufacturing process, a digital model of an engine block is sliced into several thousand layers, roughly 20 Opposite: The Engine Block, an example of a ‘Traditional Manufacturing’ process.

microns thick, and sent into a direct metal laser sintering machine. The machine builds the engine by affecting a bed of powdered aluminum with a 400-watt laser, building it layer by layer.

This technology has the capacity to produce conformal cooling channels and other impossible assemblies which were not previously achievable with traditional manufacturing processes.

Additive manufacturing boasts fast turn-around times and cost benefits to manufacturers because it is not limited by a traditional mold-making process. Independent manufacturers can produce anything from end use commodities to parts for other products. This dexterity affords one the ability to simultaneously engage in multiple markets such as the automotive, aerospace and medical industries.

THIS IS DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY. Open Source 3-D printers are accessible, as plans for many types of machines can be downloaded for free from the Internet. Most of these machines can be made from common components found at your local hardware store, or Internet suppliers of electronic goods. Machine platforms such as REP-RAP, or “Replicating Rapid Prototyper,” can be built for a few hundred dollars. These systems offer manufacturers a fabrication process called Fused Filament Fabrication, or the additive layering of plastic, which is capable of producing durable plastic goods for general purpose use. The following drawings will attempt to establish the difference in scale between a traditional manufacturing process and an additive one, in order to begin proposing a smaller scale approach to contemporary manufacturing.

Building discourse

Drawing details the production of an aluminum engine block by means of a traditional manufacturing process. As noted in this drawing, a traditional manufacturing process requires an entire factory floor full of manufacturing equipment, ranging from injection molding aparatuses to robot arms, conveyors, and a massive jet furnace.

AlexAnder mArshAll

077

THE ENGINE BLOCK: ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING (DMLS) M.ARCH THESIS. ALEXANDER W. MARSHALL

ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING POTENTIAL: THE CONFORMAL COOLING CHANNELS ARE BUILT THROUGH A LAYERING PROCESS, RESULTING IN AN ENGINE WHICH WILL RUN COOLER, GIVING IT GREAT FUEL EFFICIENCY AND A LONGER LIFE SPAN .

TRADITIONAL MANUFACTURING LIMIT: COOLING CHANNELS ARE DRILLED INTO THE ENGINE BLOCK AFTER A CONVENTIONAL CASTING IS GENERATED. SUBTRACTIVE TOOLING PROCESSES LIMIT THE TECHNOLOGICAL POTENTIAL OF THE ENGINE, BY ONLY MAKING IT POSSIBLE TO CUT CHANNELS PERPENDICULAR TO THE CYLIDER HEAD. STRAIGHT CHANNELS LEAD TO UN-EVEN COOLING AND DECREASED PERFORMANCE OF THE ENGINE.

-MASS CUSTOMIZATION-

-MASS PRODUCTION-

UNIT COST OF COMPONENT

DISRUPIVE TECHNOLOGY: A NEW MANUFACTURING METHOD WHICH DISRUPTS OR OVERTURNS TRADITIONAL MANUFACTURING METHODS, MAKING THEM OBSOLETE. NEW MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY CAN ALSO BE EXCEPTIONALLY DISRUPTIVE WHEN IT OFFERS A METHOD TO FABRICATE COMMODITIES ONCE THOUGHT IMPOSSIBLE TO PRODUCE, DUE TO THEIR GEOMETRIC COMPLEXITY. ADVANCEMENTS IN THE REALM OF ADDITVE MANUFACTURING WILL UNDOUBTABLY ALTER THE FEILD OF MANUFACTURING, AND WILL EVENTUALLY DEMOCRATIZE THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION.

1986 2003 2006 2012

0

NUMBER OF COMPONENTS

ADDITIVE MAUNFACTURING INJECTION MOLDING, SAND CASTING DIE CASTING, COPE AND DRAG (ETC.)

The Engine Block: Two processes shown in three drawings. The drawing at left details the production of an aluminum engine block by means of an advanced, additive manufacturing process.

This process requires a single machine that is just slightly larger than the engine block itself.

Building discourse

The Silo Pavilion, A ‘Monument’ to Collective Value The following pages contain a selection of studies which were produced prior to the final Silo Pavilion Proposal. From the outset, the Silo Pavilion was imagined simply as a translation of a collection of typical storage silos into an architecturalized version in which a new type of covered public space could be produced below the storage basins. The original versions were a bit unconstrained, as the idea was for these inverted conic shapes to serve as bulk storage. Bulk storage of granulated material would mean that virtually any conic shape could be used as long as the mechanism for loading and dispensing material from the silo was consistent. The result was that many of the initial proposals took on much more random and unique forms.

The conic form was utilized in this project because it allowed for a wealth of storage space above the ground level, while leaving the ground plane open due to the tapering form of the cone.

The final proposal was constrained in a more interesting way than the original proposals. Rather than being a volume for bulk

Above and opposite: The Silo Pavilion renderings

storage, it was designed to be a volume which would take on the pyramidal stacking of sealed Print Basins. The geometry of the final form was dictated by the cubic form of the Print Basin, resulting in a building which used common elements and repetitive angles.

Further, the mass simpification of the building geometery produces a form which is ultra buildable using typical steel fabrication details. At the same time, this structure attempts to invert the classic warehouse design or storage typology in that the structural form of the roof becomes the location for bulk storage, leaving useable open space below.

The design of the Silo Pavilion went through many versions, some of which used an extremely custom and expressive deployment of storage cones; these early studies were omitted because it became clear that even the simplest of structures would be difficult for a penniless community to afford. This structure had two programatic requirements: 1) Store and Protect the granulated metalic and polymeric powders used in 3D printing processes, and 2) A Community center which could house a range of communal events. This building was intended as a sort of ‘monument’ to collective value.

AlexAnder mArshAll

079

Building discourse

AlexAnder mArshAll

081

Building discourse

This page and opposite: The Silo Pavilion renderings Below: Silo Pavilion concept diagram

AlexAnder mArshAll

083

Silo Pavilion, Storage Above, Public Open Space Below The Silo Pavilion is an open, public space intended to serve as a monument to collective value. By stockpiling raw materials, the collateral, or economic stability of a neighborhood is defined by this structure. The Silo Pavilion stores granulated materials within its columns while simultaneously providing covered space for community events.

This building is designed to be a community-owned storage facility, managing surplus raw materials produced in Reverietown. The inverted pyramid roofs form large inverted storage racks onto which sealed print basins are stored. This structure is an inverted warehouse of sorts. Rather than storing materials on the ground and covering then with a conventional roof, this structure attempts to produce a type of storage space within the structure of the roof to allow for an open covered public space below.

The open space below the roof of the Silo Pavilion could serve many potential community functions. It is very well day -lit by the large triangular apertures which make up the

facade of the pavilion. Service functions, such as bathrooms, storage and mechanical space take place within a series of service cones which take up the center of the plan. The main floor is left flat and un-programmed in order to suit a wide array of potential community needs, including a community maker space, a neighborhood gathering place, a reception hall, or a space for exhibition of the manufactured goods produced in Reverietown. It could also serve as the Neighborhood Exchange, a meeting place where local independent manufacturers deliberate on issues pertaining to community politics.

This multi-purpose storage facility is constructed out of a simple steel framing system, on a mat slab which is cast on trench footings to minimize site excavation. The building is then clad in sheets of perforated Corten steel panels and simple glazing.

Building discourse

Above: Models of the Silo Pavilion Opposite: The Silo Pavilion renderings

AlexAnder mArshAll

A Refinery For The Production Of Raw Material The Primary role of the De-Factory is to refine municipal recyclables such as plastic bottles, scrap metals, and glass into useable 3-D printable Material.

Up to 17 materials used in 3-D printing processes can be found in Detroit’s municipal waste stream. Through a process of grinding and mechanical separation, these elements can be refined into usable raw material. This material will fuel a new industrial revolution.

Detroit possesses an untapped resource. It currently lacks a municipal recycling program. The De-Factory will refine municipal waste into usable granulated materials for distribution to local Silo Pavilions for storage and wealth retention purposes.

The De-Factory typology is separated into three distinct processing areas. The upper level is reserved for the collection, separation and sorting of recyclables based on material type.

Materials are then ground into a small aggregate and moved into the second factory space, which is reserved for mechanical refining equipment. Plastics are extruded into new filaments for Fused Filament Fabrication 3-D printers. Metals are atomized into fine powders using a process called Gas Atomization, for use in metal laser sintering machines. Glass and other ceramics are loaded into ball mills, which use heavy steel balls to grind the ceramic materials into fine powders for use in laser sintering and fused deposition modeling machines.

The De-Factory is constructed with a rough aggregate concrete comprised of building waste from other abandoned buildings. The facades are made of recycled sheets of scrap steel, welded to produce light controlling apertures.

085

Building discourse

AlexAnder mArshAll

087

Building discourse

Printer’s Cottage, A Resident Owned Micro Factory The Printer’s Cottage typology refills vacant lots in the neighborhood while simultaneously re-valuing the homes around it. At first glance, this cousin of the modern kit home blends in to its surroundings. A second reading reveals the absence of certain domestic motifs such as shutters, shingles, and ship-lap siding. Inside its walls, one might find a wealth of production space, calibrated for additive manufacturing.

This typology is thought to be shared between groups of residents, so its form is one which cuts across blocks, connecting adjacent streets unlike the traditional home, which produces boundaries via lawns, driveways and picket fences. The plan shape of the Printer’s Cottage is formed because the structure is always negotiating between existing homes, while attempting to fill up vacant lots.

The Printer’s Cottage has an archetypal relationship to the traditional single family home, but it intentionally clouds the diagram of the household, as it is not a place of dwelling at all.

Giving this small industrial building certain traits similar to a

residential dwelling will help increase the neighborhood real estate values by eliminating some of the blighted lots which still exist in Reverietown.

The Printer’s Cottage is constructed with a light aluminum structural frame which can be assembled by one or two people.

It is then clad in a lightweight, but thermally performative skin that allows for daylight to fill the interior of the space. In plan, the Printer’s Cottage is laid out like a new hybrid version of an assembly line. A single corridor runs through the house from end to end, allowing for an efficient flow of material from intake to loading dock. Along the edges of the cottage’s walls, a series of 3-D printers and powder recovery units are built into the structural frame. The “Z” shaped plan is broken into three spaces—a small office, print room, and an excavation and finishing room.

AlexAnder mArshAll

089

PRINTER’S COTTAGE INTERIOR PERSPECTIVE OVERVIEW IMAGE SHOWING GENERAL ARRANGEMENT

221

Opposite and above: RenderingCOTTAGE of the PECHA Printer’s PRINTER’S KUCHA RENDERING Cottage SHOWING A BLANK VERSION OF THE CLASSIC HOUSEHOLD ARCHETYPE

229

Building discourse

Above: Axonometric drawings of the Printer’s Cottage

Opposite, top: Model of the Printer’s Cottage

Opposite, bottom: Drawing showing the evolution from colonial bungalow typology to Printer’s Cottage (Prism Cottage)

AlexAnder mArshAll

091

Building discourse

Alexander Marshall MIT / Master of Architecture 2013 University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee / B.S. Architecture , 2008

Currently I am a designer at Höweler + Yoon Architecture in Boston. I am both working on public art projects and small architectural projects, and helping to set up and run a small fabrication shop as an extension of the office.

Thesis is what you make it. In some sense, there are no rules. You can be as serious or playful as you like. I learned that it was really the first opportunity for me to explore architectural issues which fascinate me. It was also the first time as a student that I wasn’t caught up in a professors ‘architectural psychosis,’ which is enlightening after 7 consecutive years of design studios.

My thesis attempted to explore the impacts of cheap, small, and efficient means of production and how they might impact an urban neighborhood if they were to be deployed as a means to generate economic livelihood. This included, most importantly, the relationship between domestic life and manufacturing production, and how clean, efficient and inexpensive means of production might change the total operation of a neighborhood. In the end, it came down to Architecture. The only way to solve the problem was to deploy three highly specific architectural typologies.

All that said, the deeper more conceptual / political / architectural ideas presented in my thesis have not fully influenced me yet. I have certain aspirations to actually play out my thesis in real life. I fully believe that access to cheap manufacturing technologies and their smart deployment in architectural practice could result in an exciting new take on the profession. This is my own person-

al variant of my thesis. I’m not just talking about laser-cut models or 3-D printed surfaces. I’m actually interested how these new technologies and manufacturing practices could influence how we build buildings. I’d ask, is it conceivable for an architect to maintain and operate a production facility where there is a more direct and less convoluted relationship between design and construction?

This was in a way a central theme in my thesis. There was always a question of how new cheap manufacturing technologies (means of production) would affect the lives of those who formerly would not have possessed the means to actually own them. When a 3-D printer costs less than $500 dollars to build, and can produce highly specific geometries directly from a digital model (free software in some cases…), what then are the limits?

For the time being though, I’m working on becoming a licensed architect, and hopefully once I reach that milestone, I’ll be able to break free and develop my own model of practice which will undoubtedly take certain aspects of my thesis into account.

What is the one thing you would have done differently or what do you wish you had known in advance?

I would not have changed anything really. I could say that I wish I had spent more time the summer before my thesis researching and designing, but then again I’m glad that I didn’t. Instead, I built a kayak in my garage out of CNC-cut marine-grade plywood and fiberglass. I

then proceeded to launch said kayak in the Atlantic Ocean and spend the rest of my summer fishing for sharks, flounder and striped bass off the coast of Massachusetts. It was this little side project which helped me realize that making highly specific (designed) objects is a lot easier now than it was say 50 years ago.

All one really needs is access to digital modeling software, a means to translate digital design into a language that a machine can understand, and a machine to make the object. (Which isn’t a new process by any means; it’s just that this technology is becoming more accessible to the masses).

All of this, of course, made me wonder how micro-manufacturing might affect an urban neighborhood. Would your living room become your livelihood room? Would your garage become a factory? Sure, current zoning codes in any major U.S. city wouldn’t allow it, but it still begs the question of, what if? I also began to think about U.S. cities that need revolutionary thinking to solve basic urban problems. There are a handful of Rustbelt metropoli that need help now (St. Louis, Buffalo, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Chicago), but none have more economic and urban planning issues than the city of Detroit. The goal of the thesis then was to explore what might happen to a neighborhood if one re-thought the relationship between production and domesticity.

What was particularly timely about your thesis? Was it technique or topical?

AlexAnder mArshAll

It’s not surprising at all, but, it has taken a long time for 3-D printing to come into the public spectacle. Recently, MIT President Rafael Reif gave a talk about three innovation areas which will have major impacts on contemporary society, but are the result of research started in the 1960’s and 70’s. These three areas are Online Learning, the HIV Vaccine and 3-D printing. These three innovation areas are driving new start-ups and ventures that will undoubtably change the economic and social landscapes of education, health, and manufacturing.

During the fall of 2012, as I began to ease into my thesis project, there was an explosion of 3-D printing companies hitting the internet. I was a regular visitor to a number of open source blogs, which were sharing information on various machine designs (esp. REPRAP), parts, techniques, softwares, and even firmware for the open production of 3D printers.

Meanwhile, literally everyday brought a new startup or kickstarter posting for a new 3-D printing company. MakerBot went from ‘Open Source’ to ‘Closed Source’ the moment venture capital entered the room, and Formlabs was raising unfathomable amounts of money on Kickstarter while attempting to produce the first commercially affordable stereolithographic 3-D printer. I can only imagine during this time that the U.S. Patent office was bombarded by patent applications for new 3-D printer designs and processes.

Watching it all break loose gave me some new ammuntion to build upon my pre-thesis research, which hadn’t fully considered 3-D printing and its potenial

093

impacts on an urban neighborhood in Detroit. While many companies were in the process of striking it rich, I was more interested in the incredible simplicity of the technology.

So, convinced by the internet, I dropped $500 on 3-D printer parts, and embarked on the greatest disaster to strike my living room in as many years as I can remember. There I sat taking a crash course in building a 3-D printer, writing and calibrating firmware, and

by October, molten plastic was flowing from the extruder. I spent Friday nights 3-D printing calibration cubes, tweaking machine settings, and feverishly designing a thesis project in Detroit that revolved around this simple manufacturing process. Once I had proved that any person with a minimal sum of money and an internet connection could become a micro-manufacturer, my thesis argument was sealed.

Now, nearly two years laer, you really don’t have to look far to see how 3-D printing is becoming mainstream.

Many 3-D modeling softwares (Rhino 5, Solidworks, etc.) have begun to integrate a ‘print 3-D’ option in the drop-down file menu. 3-D printable filaments and resins are becoming available at local computer stores, such as Microcenter in Cambridge, MA. Just a simple google search for ‘3-D Printer’ will yeild countless start-ups and major players in the 3-D printing industry, all selling the next best machine.

And for the real MIT makers at heart, there is no shortage of open source designs for new machines, which can be fabricated for short cash. We now live

in a time where capitalist financiers no longer dominate means of production.

Starting a 3D-printing factory really only requires a few hundred bucks, and the old classic saying ‘mens et manus.’

Building discourse

Perspective: Approaching HYPERsensarium through Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden

Kelly Shaw

095

Kelly Shaw HYPERsensarium: An Archive of Atmospheric Conditions M.Arch Thesis 2013 Advisor: J. Meejin Yoon Readers: Caroline Jones, Joel Lamere, Christoph Reinhart

HYPERsensarium proposes a tangible interface of atmospheres for public experience through an archive of historical and projected weathers. While architecture’s purpose has long been to act as the technical boundary between the body and nature’s elements, this thesis seeks to re-expose the body to conditions society has disengaged itself with both physically and socially.

Despite scientific data showing rising surface temperatures, increasing carbon dioxide levels, rising sea levels and extreme weather occurrences, environmental issues occur on scales of time and space too broad for human understanding. Air is invisible and thus uncontested.

HYPERsensarium is an experiential museum of weather chambers, de-neutralizing the weather for public immersion. Architecture becomes the medium through which the

senses are isolated and then re-exposed to the archived weathers. With the majority of the project submerged within the grounds of Washington, D.C., visual, acoustic and thermal conditions reach stasis before visitors emerge into one of the archive’s chambers. The environments within the chambers are mechanically driven, juxtaposing the visitor’s “natural” views of D.C. with an artificial atmosphere absorbed through other sensoria.

The thesis seeks to rethink the archive as a physical and digital system collecting and accumulating data. Accumulated data no longer sits dormant within traditional archival typologies, but can be used to recreate physical conditions with which to finally ground our relationship to our surrounding atmosphere.

Above: Weather chamber components

Building discourse

“Hmmm...What #Frankenstorm-inspired beverage can I create with Three Olives Cherry vodka and Diet Mtn. Dew?“ —Tweeted by renaerenae7134 7:55 PM, December 15, 2012

Earth’s atmospheric composition

High and low emission scenarios [Union of Concerned Scientists, a report of The Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment (NECIA, 2007)]

Like many other #Frankenstorm-handled tweets, renaerenae7134 illustrates how quickly weather and extreme climatic events can manifest themselves into our cultural psyche, evolving from the catastrophic event itself to Urban Dictionary status. The term “Frankenstorm” evokes an exquisite corpse of weather phenomena, suggesting that this “freak” weather event was somehow “created” by man. Just as Frankenstein was the fabled monster created by man’s obsession with control over mortality, Hurricane Sandy’s moniker alludes to society’s own role in bringing about the storm. In the aftermath of the October hurricane, The Wall Street Journal reported that Sandy cost upwards of $20 billion. [1] Concurrently there was an intense rush to use Hurricane Sandy for didactic purposes: to refocus public engagement on the buildup of greenhouse gases and their direct relationship to global warming.

Following extreme summers, intense droughts and events such as Hurricane Sandy, there are many who believe that these events would push public opinion to act on climate change agendas. However, these events trigger more social and community-driven actions than any long-term momentum towards climate change. There is a disconnect in the way humans struggle to understand atmosphere and our place in it. When extreme weather events or particularly haze-filled days arise, we may acknowledge the suggested impact of our industrial activities and carbon footprint. Yet on the next clear day, the thought vaporizes into the atmosphere along with any sensorial impact we may have previously experienced. Humans have existed in this proverbial “bubble” of Earth’s atmosphere for so long that it is still controversial how much human activity can be blamed for such Frankenstorms, thereby creating no urgency for us to change centuries of behavior.

We live within a space of air which we can never quite hold onto or control and in that sense, it can be considered one of the few untamed natural resources left in our world. Paradoxically, we have attempted for centuries to utilize and control the atmosphere and its conditions for both personal and collective gain. This thesis questions the ways in which we have historically struggled to understand, capture and condition ourselves from atmosphere through architectural means. It proposes an architecture that acts not as a protective barrier from nature, but as a platform where we can confront our relationship with atmosphere.

If the goal of architecture was once to meet humankind’s fundamental need for shelter, HYPERsensarium seeks to reengage the public body with space, by removing architecture’s role as barrier and re-imagining it instead as mediator.

Kelly Shaw

Augmenting the air around the human body

097

Building discourse

Top: Site plan, Washington D.C.

Bottom: Site plan, Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden

Opposite top: Experiencing the sculpture park and HYPERsensarium at dusk

Kelly Shaw

HYPERsensarium is sited on the western half of what is now the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. The Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden is one of a series of plots located along the National Mall, which is a monumental green space symbolic of the American national and cultural collective. Stretching nearly two miles from the U.S. Capitol building on the East to the Lincoln Memorial on the West, the Mall is a literal collection of museums, most of which belong to the Smithsonian, the world’s largest museum and research complex.

HYPERsensarium’s landing between the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum, National Museum of Natural History, National Archives and the Hirshhorn Museum shown in grey in the opposite site plan serves to strengthen the connections with the Mall’s existing orthogonal plans. The Smithsonian was established in 1846 with the mission towards “the increase and diffusion of knowledge.” In the last 100 years, the Smithsonian has amalgamated a large collection of free, publicly accessible museums on the Mall. These and other public institutions and monuments are shown in black.

The objects and artifacts found in these museums have been curated and presented by the museum as an institution, thus representing a consensus on not only what is deserving of cultural, historical or scientific preservation, but also how the public engages with what is being displayed.

In contrast to the site’s existing collection of museums is

099

HYPERsensarium’s position as a new typology of interactive, experiential space. The National Mall is a site pre-loaded with the production of the American national psyche by its proximity to other institutions charged with creating our nation’s environmental policies. The Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden is within a five mile radius of at least a dozen other environmental policy and research organizations.

HYPERsensarium’s archived weathers and changing exhibitions are the result of the realization that our atmosphere is a dynamic condition warranting study and preservation.

The Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden is a one-and-a-half acre recessed garden, currently displaying over 60 works of sculpture throughout the year. The center of the garden features a central reflecting pool which is converted into a public ice rink during winter months. HYPERsensarium’s proposed strategy reveals only its four atmospheric chambers from the viewable garden level on Madison Drive. Entry into the museum is from an excavated entrance across the sculpture garden along Constitution Avenue.

HYPERsensarium’s visible chambers are minimized formally to act as distilled atmospheric moments within the garden, belying the more complex subterranean exhibition program beneath.

Building discourse

Redesigning The Airlock HYPERsensarium mediates the movement of the public through a constantly changing outside environment, a stringently controlled museum interior and finally the exhibited atmospheres within each of the four weather chambers. Such parameters guided the design of an architecture which could conceptually and physically support such an organization and sequence. In examining various devices used for environmental control ranging from the gas mask to the ubiquitous revolving door, the fermentation lock became the parti for the thesis as it spatially produces a circulation route which can provide the attenuated exhibition experience to isolate, neutralize and then re-expose the senses to changes in air temperature and humidity.

The general principle behind the fermentation lock seen on the right page is that it allows for carbon dioxide to be released through a “lock” made of water. The medium of the lock allows for carbon dioxide to escape due to the buildup of air pressure on one end of the lock without allowing oxygen to pass through from the other side. Restricting the movement of air to the release of carbon dioxide ensures that the environment on one end of the lock is free of exterior contaminants.

In HYPERsensarium the museum itself acts as the lock. The public’s sense of light, temperature and sound are controlled by

Kelly Shaw

101

passage from the exterior D.C. climate into that of the underground museum. HYPERsensarium’s subterranean concrete architecture acts to acclimate visitors to the museum’s hermetically sealed interior temperature, lighting conditions and sounds. Each of the four atmospheric chambers is accessed individually through a hydraulic elevator lift.

The attenuated ramp acts as the program space housing the exhibition explaining the environmental conditions for each chamber. Each coil of the ramp terminates at a platform from which visitors can then take a hydraulic lift into the weather chambers above ground level. The hydraulic lifts necessitate an excavation of ground deeper into the earth in order to compensate for the mechanical space needed to house the piston’s full range of motion. Visitors walk onto the lift platforms which are flush with the rest of the exhibition hall’s floor plates.

Once visitors enter a chamber, the platform on which they stand acts as the locking mechanism sealing off the weather chamber. As visitors are taken back down, they experience each chamber and exhibition space in sequence, becoming acutely aware of how many chambers are left with each descent. The exhibition terminates when the public re-ascends up a more expedient escalator back to the archive entrance.

Opposite page, top: Sectional exhibition and chamber model Opposite and this page, bottom: Long section and plans Above: Airlock studies, from top: Fermentation lock, CO2, and O2

Building discourse

Organization of weather chambers

Weather Chambers The design of the weather chambers privileges the view. As the archive’s dark underworld isolates the public’s understanding of the exterior environment, their re-emergence into each of the glass chambers presents a moment to create a new view or understanding of their environment.

Each chamber organization tests the limits of providing entry and exit, views onto the other chambers, and views of the outside D.C. grounds. These views create the condition where visitors can thermally experience one environment while looking into another. This activates the visitor’s curiosity with regards to the other chambers while juxtaposing the senses. The resulting organization contrasts what visitors may feel through temperature and humidity changes with a view of the future or historical “exterior” generated through the chamber’s HVAC systems.

The use of glass as the chamber envelope serves two purposes. One, in conjunction with the system of thin, steel members, is to create an invisible, contained environment from which visitors can view the exterior and through which they themselves can be viewed. The second is to create the poché space for regulating the particles and aerosols which may be pumped into the first layer of the chamber to create the visual effects of the chamber. The exterior chamber’s HVAC system

is closed, circulating the dust, smog or moisture impacting the chamber’s depth of vision. This poché also acts as the insulation layer for the tightly controlled temperature and humidity occurring within the interior chamber layer.

As with all modern building systems, the temperature and humidity is controlled through HVAC. However, in HYPERsensarium, it is the forgotten and future exterior conditions which are inverted for public experience. What once were considered “outside” conditions have become interiorized phenomena.

Kelly Shaw

Top, left : Weather Chamber system components Top, right: 1/16� initial study model

103

Bottom: 1/4� sectional model of one exhibition sequence

Building discourse

Exhibition Space Section

ExPERIENCING THE HYPERSENSARIUm Key to axonometric (Below) and perspectives (opposite): 1. The public begins at the entrance of the museum where most of the thesis is entirely hidden from view.

Only the appearance of the glass chambers on the far end of the park indicate that there must be an entry nearby.

2. As they descend into the narrow, underground tunnel, the public slowly loses sense of orientation, form, scale and dimensions normally associated with above-ground architecture.

The tunnel is illuminated by slivers of lighting embedded into the concrete railings of the tunnel and terminates in an illuminated doorway.

3. The tunnel opens into an expansive concrete exhibition space. As the public descends down the ramps, they stop to view snippets of information being presented from angled LCD displays.

4. The exhibition space is lit by light wells formed by glass elevator shafts.

As visitors move between the elevator shafts, they can see movement within them as passengers ascend and descend from the

NOTES 1 Erik Holm and Leslie Scism, “Sandy’s Insured-Loss Tab: Up to $20 Billion,” The Wall Street Journal, 16 December 2012, <http:// www.online.wsj.com>.

weather chambers.

their own chamber.

5. Each ramp sequence terminates with the opportunity to ascend into the accompanying weather chamber via a hydraulic elevator lift.

8. Visitors can also view into adjacent chambers where the temperature and humidity may cause inhabitants in another chamber to react very differently physiologically despite having shared views based on the season, clothing and interior conditions.

For example, a chamber may feel even warmer due to the visitors arriving in their winter clothing in December.

6. As passengers ascend the glass elevator shafts they are able to see other visitors moving in adjacent elevators. Each lift contains glass railings which lock into place when the lift is in movement.

7. Once in the weather chamber, visitors can see views onto the surrounding D.C. grounds. Their view of the exterior may be influenced by haze, fog, dust, etc., filtering the view in

9. Upon descent from the lift, the public circulates through the rest of the exhibitions before reascending into the entry building via escalator.

Kelly Shaw

105

Building discourse

Kelly Shaw MIT / Master of Architecture 2013 Stanford University / B.S. Product Design, 2006

The spring after completing the thesis I was contacted to interview for an internship with the Environments Group at Continuum Innovation. I believed the thesis to be a dream project dealing with creating an architecture capable of inspiring a visitor beyond the physical walls. However, I came to realize through presenting my work that the design mission to actualize the environment for didactic and motivational purposes was a very real goal, and one that is actively pursued by those in education, retail and marketing sectors.

I spent the summer working on a design for a public institution interested in proposing a re-design of an outdated educational entertainment space.

The following fall, just after I left for a job in San Francisco, Continuum made a very successful presentation to the client, which not only resulted in our client filing for a design patent, but also pursuing building a scaled mock-up of the proposal.

I moved to San Francisco for a position at Hart Howerton. While a traditional practice, the firm is a multidisciplinary architecture and planning firm with projects all over the U.S. My work there thus far has allowed for me to engage with planners, architects, landscape architecture and interiors, experiencing Hart Howerton’s sitespecific approach to designing complete environments. San Francisco may not strike most young architects as a place to pursue progressive architecture, but it’s a city where new ideas in all design disciplines are supported by an energetic population constantly trying to push the envelope on improving culture via design and technology.

produce the things you need to generate the right questions and conversations.

One of the most daunting things is realizing that there are no syllabi or design exercises generated by a studio instructor that will direct you to your thesis. If you want to be responsible for your own design and thesis, you have to be willing to take risks and produce what’s necessary to move your work in the direction you want your work to go.

Thesis and Career

Thesis was this one scary-fun experience where we as students could pursue an agenda of our choice. Even after just under a year of “real-world” architecture, I realize how exciting and rare the design freedom was. I think it’s that simultaneous sense of control and freedom in creation that I’m still hoping to achieve in my own career. Having only recently started at my current firm, I know I have a long way to go, but even knowing that there were some interesting ideas brewing in my work vis-à-vis my summer at Continuum gives me the confidence that I’ll figure it out.

In Hindsight

I wish I had seen thesis more as a series of critiques rather than looking for that one elusive moment of thesis design clarity. I was probably too impatient about finding some non-existent perfect solution that I could spend all semester refining and that created a lot of unnecessary anxiety and stress. Seeing each week, pinup and critique as its own opportunity to figure something, anything, out would have helped me to focus my energy more productively.

Advice for Thesis

Ask more questions. Or at least

Why mIT?

Only at MIT could I have proposed an environmental museum driven by 90’+ hydraulic elevators buried in grounds of the Washington, D.C. Mall.

The biggest advantage of doing thesis at MIT was the awesome support of my very opinionated and diverse thesis committee, most of whom I could only have met through MIT’s curriculum. I had Meejin and Joel pushing the design and architecture, Christoph helping me understand how the technology and mechanisms I was proposing could work together, and Caroline making sure I didn’t forget to take into account precedents while developing my own arguments. While working with a committee this diverse was challenging because everyone had their own agendas and biases, it also constantly forced me to ground my own thesis deeper.

What was particularly timely about your thesis? Was it technique or topical?

In hindsight, two words: POLAR VORTEX. It seems redundant, but we’re always talking about how to make an environment more immersive. What’s more timely about my thesis is that in the last 10 years due to technology, media and good old climate change, we’re experiencing environmental change at greater and faster scales. The ability to bring the immediacy of climate change to an ADD public causes us to rethink what it means to preserve or adapt our architectures.

Kelly Shaw

107

String Tunnel MIT +150 FAST Arts Festival Partners: Yuna Kim, Travis Williams Spring 2012

String Tunnel(s) is a path finder that connects the Kendall subway station to MIT’s Infinite Corridor. In order to activate the pathway as an extension of the infinite corridor and give visual connections from the T-Station to the campus’ main buildings, the tunnel(s) allow for an episodic, three-dimensional spatial sequence along a conceptualized extension of the infinite corridor. The plan called for a series of overhead nylon threads used to create a vault-like canopy flowing from two pieces of existing infrastructure on campus: the pedestrian bridge of the Dreyfus Building and the Wiesner Building Sculptural Arch.

The strings themselves are configured as six horizontal layers that each transition to the same singular vertical line. The installation is thus a translation from a two dimensional grid of points to a one dimensional line of points. From a distance, the overall form is apparent while the layers promote the reading of

This page: Dreyfus and Wiesner building sections and axons

individual strings moving past one another from directly below the tunnel. While walking underneath, visitors can look up and see that their movement through the installation creates visual movement due to parallax. The resulting ruled surface reinforces the notion of a tunnel vault by creating a “curved” surface made up of straight lines.

Following spread: Photo credits George x. Lin

Building discourse

Kelly Shaw

109

Building discourse

TenCo House 10K Housing Studio, Fall 2012 Instructors: Yung Ho Chang, Nick Gelpi Partner: Dennis Cheung

The Tension + Compression (TenCo) House reinvents the notion of low-cost housing by embedding the dwelling’s furniture within the home’s structural system. Using basic principles of tension and compression acting on beams arrayed in a gridded system, TenCo is a simple structure where thin steel columns are held in compression by the roof, thus acting as a compression core. The lightweight, inflatable envelope is held in place on the periphery by tension cables resisting the roof beams’ deflection. TenCo maximizes the small living quarters found in

traditional Japanese housing by maintaining both an open and closed floor plan system. These living conditions are facilitated by the furniture configurations which slide along the columns via a tracking system. The movable furniture design gives homeowners the flexibility to create both private and more open eating, sleeping and living conditions.

Kelly Shaw

111

Building discourse

Towards the Anthropocene . Sasa Zivkovic . MArch . MIT Drawings and Discourse

SaSa Zivkovic

113

Sasa Zivkovic Towards the Anthropocene: Colossal Naturality in Disordered Territories M.Arch Thesis 2013 Advisor: William O’Brien Jr. Readers: Ana Miljački, Joel Lamere

Terra Anthropocena The ‘death of nature’ and the establishment of ‘society-nature’ hybrids are in concert with a broader paradigm shift in the discipline of geology. Since 2008, ecologist Eugene Stoermer and Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen have advocated for instituting a new geological cycle: the current Holocene is presumed to be replaced by the Anthropocene (anthropo- meaning ‘human’ and -cene meaning ‘new’) [1] to reflect that humans have become a measurable geological factor in Earth’s history. Today, climate change, loss of biodiversity, sea level rise, intensive agriculture and changes in the atmosphere are all registering in Earth’s geology. Yet, modification of the environment by humans is not a novel or uniquely modern phenomenon. Some geologists argue that the Industrial Revolution marks the beginning of the Anthropocene, while others advocate for the Agricultural Revolution which started about 8000 years ago. Either way, the Anthropocene has already begun, although is has been manifested only recently.

If one considers architecture to be “situated between the biological and the geological—slower than living beings but faster than the underlying geology” (Stan Allen) [2], the conceptual implications of an anthropocene age for the discipline of architecture are substantial. The last citadel of ‘Nature’ has fallen as humans are now in control of the ground; transformation towards a hybrid state of anthropocene logics has begun. [3] Novel definitions of formerly familiar holocene categories such as ‘biological’, ‘natural’, and ‘geological’ will require an architectural paradigm shift to accommodate hybrids or collectives. In the Anthropocene, the relationship between the ‘man-made’ and the ‘natural’ will be questioned and challenged radically: in the end, anthropocene territories will require anthropocene architectures.

OppOsite: BOard 01 “Geologists are divided by disagreement: do current levels of human interaction in earth’s geology justify the proclamation of a new geological age or era: the anthropocene? entering a realm of scientific uncertainty and discourse, this thesis argues that the conceptualization of the anthropocene (as a product of human ubiquity) yields the premise to summarize and critique a whole number of recent influential paradigm shifts and theoretical frameworks in architecture, which, in essence, address the

relationship between the “man-made” and the “natural”. On a broader scale this debate includes, but is not limited to, contemporary turn(s) towards biology, cybernetics, chemistry, nature, sustainability, meteorology, environment and ecology.

Not all of those are the interest of this thesis project—but the anthropocene as a meta-concept is a quite broad idea.

Building discourse

SaSa Zivkovic

115

Opposite: BOard 10 the international atomic energy agency building is located in the abandoned city of pripyat at the former Hotel plaza. the iaea research station is supposed to prepare future generations for future exclusion Zones around the world. those might serve other exclusion Zones which are not necessarily related to nuclear contamination. the iaea research station is supposed to work on proposing remediation strategies for the Chernobyl exclusion Zone. it is an institution that can map and monitor radiation development within the zone. the research station will contain a small nuclear test reactor within its courtyard for further experimentation with nuclear power and its future development.

Thesis Premise Geology is in a state of perturbation! Do current levels of human intervention on Earth justify the proclamation of a new geological era: the Anthropocene? “Can toxicity be measured in most layers of bedrock on the planet? Is declining biodiversity a geological concern? Don’t we humans need more substantial intervention to be declared as geological force? What about earthquakes, volcanoes and meteorites?” Presently, geologists cannot find consensus regarding the validity of the made claim, yet, even without scientific validation, the idea that, now, after biology, ecology and the environment, even geology is about to lose its virginity and aura of purity is indeed (mildly) shocking.

Entering a realm of scientific uncertainty and discourse, this thesis argues that, the conceptualization of the Anthropocene (as a product of human ubiquity) yields the premise to summarize and critique a whole number of recent influential paradigm shifts and theoretical frameworks in architecture, which, in essence, address the relationship between ‘man-made’ and ‘natural’ systems. This includes—but is not limited to— contemporary ‘turns’ and ‘return(s)’ towards biology, linguistics, cybernetics, digital production, chemistry, landscape, nature, sustainability, meteorology, environment or ecology. This thesis does not state to address all of the above concerns but will attempt to focus on landscape, ecology, cybernetics and environment (whether such categorization makes any sense at all has to remain undecided at this moment—I am also aware that the shortened list is, in itself, ridiculous). In the process of interpreting architectural implications of anthropocene mechanisms, past assumptions and ideologies will be questioned, revealing that new organizational consequences result from rethinking former ‘Holocene principles.’ For example, hybrid orders between ‘natural’ and ‘man-made’ systems will become common ground, architecture will regain autonomy over ‘environment’ and ultimately—to paraphrase Bruno Latour—“‘Nature’ will give up the ghost.”

The main hypothesis of this investigation is based on the assumption that principles of contamination (states of disorder) will replace principles of natural preservation (seemingly ordered states) as the new “primary vessel of meaning,” [4] for the production of anthropocene environment, architecture,

ecology, society, and culture (“nature-culture collectives”)[5].

Adapting processes of contamination as new architectural designators will prompt a redefinition of architectural ephemerality towards acknowledging the role of hybrids and collectives in the formation of temporal processes. As the boundaries between the ‘man-made’ and ‘natural’ begin to blur, the ‘temporal’ will become a state of being for the new synthesis, revealing a strong reciprocity between formerly disconnected systems. Ephemerality becomes a colossal task: it sets the common ground for all nature-culture collectives. Within temporal processes of exchange, conflicting agendas meet, clash and overlap. The ephemeral is the playground of the anthropocene architect!

The architectural exploration which will be conducted as part of this study borrows ideas from cybernetics, extending the potential of feedback into the formation of temporal relationships between geometries (‘buildings/algorithms’) and milieus (‘natures/environments’). Growth processes, the result of a coupling of ‘milieus” and ‘algorithms’ will be utilized to enhance, modify, alter and control reciprocity between ‘man-made’ and ‘natural’ systems.

While the ambiguity and ubiquitousness of contamination might not necessitate an idiosyncratically toxic site, there yet exist certain tempting places which, in their ability to condensate and enhance anthropocene paradoxes and conditions, manage to overcome their own predicaments, such as political ‘loadedness’, extreme environmental hostility, or ‘cultural overuse.’

I think that Chernobyl yields great potential for exploring the anthropocene paradigm, precisely because of its predicament of being a catalyst for all things ‘(un)cultural’ and ‘(un) natural’. This thesis advocates to take advantage of the planned revitalization of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone by proposing a visitor center, animal shelter, research station and anthropology institute worthy of new geological times!

Building discourse

SaSa Zivkovic

117

Ideology of ecology. Non-Natures Contemporary philosophy has long declared the “Death of Nature” [6]—the conception of ‘Nature’ as a pristine, organic, un-touched and balanced entity (threatened only by human exploitation) should have been rendered altogether obsolete by now. While there seems to be consensus that most places on this planet are influenced and altered by human activity, the ‘Myth of Nature’ (nature as pristine and balanced entity) continues to survive. A spectre is haunting the debate—unwaveringly persisting that ‘Nature’ is the pure, green, good and happy counterpart to our obscene, dangerous, gray and destructive society. Slavoj Žižek labels this thinking a “mystified, false and dangerous ideology of ecology” [7]: A quasi-religious obsession

with a fictitious image of nature. Thinking about the current ideology of ecology, Žižek declares the death of nature:"There is no nature. Nature is not a balanced totality which we humans disturb; nature is a big series of unimaginable catastrophes..."

[8] Žižek is not alone with his assessment, for Bruno Latour states: “When the most frenetic of the ecologists cry out, quaking: ‘Nature is going to die,’ they do not know how right they are. Thank God, nature is going to die. Yes, the great Pan is dead. After the death of God and the death of man, nature, too, had to give up the ghost. [9] A mystified reading of ecology and nature has ‘contaminated’ contemporary debate in architectural practice and academia.

The disciplines’ mainstream reactions to climate change and global warming are based on a backward ideology of natural preservation. Falling into the spectre’s trap of natural preservation are ‘feel good basics’ such as ‘sustainable design’ environmental friendliness, LEED Platinum certificates, or elaborate ARUP energy concepts. The problem here lies in the initial assumption that ‘Nature’ (the mythical kind with a capital N) has to be preserved and protected in all its pristine greatness.

Yet, the belief in a pristine and great ‘Nature’ constitutes a fallacy—such nature does not exist; it never has existed anywhere other than as a myth. There is a new common ground; we have to break away from past nature-ideology. In architectural discourse, ‘decontamination’ of past nature-ideologies is beginning

to pick up speed. Architects and theoreticians are dismantling ‘Nature’ on all fronts: from Mark Jarzombek’s cultural critique “Eco Pop” [10] to David Gissen’s obsession with “Subnatures” [11], nature and the ideology of ecology are under close scrutiny.

Hybrid natures. Hybrid territories In We Have Never Been Modern, Bruno Latour places the split between nature and society at the core of the “modern constitution.” [12] According to Latour, the base for all Moderns is an absolute distinction between ‘Nature’ (even though we construct nature it is not our construction) and ‘Society’ (even though we do not construct society it is our construction). Living comfortably with this divide was possible until suddenly, “[...] we find ourselves invaded by frozen embryos, expert systems, digital machines, sensor equipped robots, hybrid corn, data banks, psychotropic drugs, whales outfitted with radar sounding devices, gene synthesizers, audience analyzers, and so on, when our daily newspapers display all these monsters on page after page, and when none of these chimera can be properly on the object side or on the subject side, or even in between, something has to be done.”[13] Latour suggests the development of a new constitution in which “Nature and Society are not two distinct poles, but one and the same production of successive states of societiesnatures, of collectives.” [14] This idea takes into account that half of politics is in fact constructed in science and technology while the other half of nature is constructed in societies. In the end, nature is not only dead, it is replaced by a collective societynature, a hybrid, in which everything ‘natural’ comes equipped with the matching ‘cultural’—and vice versa. (The bird comes equipped with its ornithologist, the weather with its meteorologist, the melting pole ice cap with its Nobel Prize winning politician, etc.). In architecture, nature-culture hybrids like Gage Clemenceau’s “Bio-prosthetics” [15], Liam Young’s “Specimens of an Unnatural History” [16], or R&Sie(n)’s “Mosquito Bottleneck” have revived debate about collectives. It seems that in contemporary practice, the interest in hybrids parallels the rise and advancement of digital technology, making it easier to visually simulate natural complexity. The supposedly new ‘avantgarde’ has yet to prove that it is able to move beyond a semiotic, ‘gimmicky’ reading of hybrids. To un-gimmick hybrids might require a stronger shift in scale towards hybrid territories as well as a more expansive elaboration of hybrid cultural effects.

Opposite, above and next spread: Model photos

Building discourse

SaSa Zivkovic

119

Building discourse

Left: Conceptual board Opposite: Final review installation of work

SaSa Zivkovic

121

Building discourse

above: site model Opposite: Conceptual image and model photo

SaSa Zivkovic

123

NOtes 1 “anthropocene.” last modified 4 January 2012. http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/anthropocene 2 stan allen, “From the Biological to the Geological,” Landform Building: Architecture’s New Terrain (Baden: Lars Müller publishers; princeton: princeton architectural press, 2011).

3 in Living In The End Times (London: Verso, 2010), slavoj Žižek refers to the 2010 earthquakes in China and the role the construction of the three Gorges dams played in it: “something as elementary as an earthquake should thus also be included in the scope of phenomena influenced by human activity.”

4 rem Koolhaas in Felicity d. scott, Architecture or Techno-Uto

pia: Politics after Modernism (Cambridge: the Mit press, 2007), 263.

5 Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge: Harvard University press, 1993), 49-50.

6 slavoj Žižek, “examined Life,” last modified 10 October 2009, Zizek, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=iGC!v1 xtoU 7 slavoj Žižek, “Living in the end times according to slavoj Zizek” last modified 11 March 2010.

8 Žižek, “examined Life.”

9 Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University press, 2004), 26.

10 Mark Jarzombek, “eco-pop,” The Cornell Journal of Architecture 8 (2011).

11 david Gissen, Subnature: Architecture’s Other Environments

12 13 14 15

16

(princeton: princeton architectural press, 2009).

Latour, 26.

Latour, 49—50.

Latour, 139.

Gage Clemenceau architects, “Bio-prosthetics,” last modified 2011, http://gageclemenceau.com/ home/?cat=31.

Liam Young, “specimens of an Unnatural History: a near Future Bestiary,” Kerb Journal of Landscape Architecture 19 (2011).

Building discourse

Sasa Zivkovic MIT / Master of Architecture, 2012 University of Stuttgart / Vordiplom , 2008

After a brief stint at NADAA in Boston, I left the U.S. and relocated to Germany where I co-founded HANNAH, an independent and interdisciplinary practice, in collaboration with Alexander Chmarin, Alexander Graf and Leslie Lok. HANNAH is licensed in Germany, working on small renovation projects, architecture competitions (mainly in Switzerland—which means that HANNAH is now an expert on designing Helvetic bomb shelters) and whatever else she finds interesting. HANNAH loves palindromes and internationally collaborates with other young practices in Asia and North America. HANNAH members currently teach at McGill University (Lok) and at Cornell University (Zivkovic).

Besides starting HANNAH, I began getting involved in academia and am currently a Visiting Critic at Cornell University’s Department of Art, Architecture, and Planning. At Cornell, I co-teach a vertical studio with Frano Violich from KVA MATx that investigates the convergence of conflicting social, cultural, economic, political, environmental, and ecological conditions relating to the fishing industry along Croatia’s Adriatic coast. The studio addresses a truly anthropogenic—I prefer to say anthropocene—Croatian moment and I find it exciting to imagine the various possible pedagogical implications of this paradigm shift. In addition to studio, I teach a speculative seminar class titled “The Invention of Anthropocene Order” which is interested in exploring alternate narratives and realities for outdated enlightenment-concepts commonly referred to

as “Nature” and “Culture.” The seminar course aims to rethink and de-familiarize the classical facade and its well-known tectonics of column, entablature, and pediment within the sociocultural context of the Anthropocene.

Thesis allowed me to explore, test and develop a rather complex and independent research project. My thesis research is still ongoing to this day (it took on a different academic format) and involves the development of a project-idiosyncratic design methodology, narrative and representation. The use of computation and digital fabrication methods plays an important role in my research. However, I would claim that for me, the importance of thesis has nothing to do with either learning from content or technique.

During and after thesis, I developed an understanding that criticality can only become meaningful when it manages to relate to architecture’s disciplinary discourse on a fundamental level. And with this I mean: building—with all its predicaments. In that sense, I acknowledge that my thesis was about creating a framework, a backdrop, a vessel for future theses which yet have to materialize in built work. thinking back on your thesis, how do you feel it has or has not influenced your career?

Thesis has certainly played a role in securing my current academic appointment at Cornell as well as in making a decision to start HANNAH in order to operate independently. I find it difficult

to make sense of the meaning of the term “career” within this context-but that might simply be due to the relative recency of thesis. It might not yet be time for me to critically look back at a career; therefore I will try to describe the influence of thesis on this present moment— spring 2014.

At Cornell, my thesis took on the format of a weekly seminar class that builds on the Anthropocene as a backdrop for a rather wild and somewhat absurd design speculation. The Visual Representation course has a substantial theory component and presents itself as a hybrid between “design making” and “design thinking.” The class re-conceptualizes the classical troika of column, entablature, and pediment—updating the broad paradigms of classical orders to reflect new nature-culture realities by developing an “Anthropocene order” that addresses contemporary questions of resemblance, performance, technology and narrative.

Within the academic context, there exists a direct relationship between interests developed during thesis and what one might call a developing “career.”

HANNAH is undergoing a much more difficult process and struggle with the aim to address research—or thesis— within the context of building practice.

I consider this to be our most important “work in progress” at the time.

I sometimes wonder what my thesis would have become had I put more emphasis on tectonics, materiality, program, structure, construction and economics.

I also tend to ask myself if I should have narrowed down the focus of my research in order to create a more manageable,

SaSa Zivkovic

more “architectural” scenario. This could have led to something more of a building and something less of an abstract architectural sketch.

Yet, I also feel that only by freeing myself from the constraints of delivering a “project,” I was able to set up and manage a substantial enough research agenda with the potential for becoming a long-term investigation within academia and practice. So, is there something that I would have done differently? The general answer, I think, is: “No”—and I say this acknowledging all flaws and shortcomings of my actual thesis project. I am quite happy having raised more questions than having delivered answers—as I feel that this allows me to continue exploring ideas.

What is the one thing you would have done differently or what do you wish you had known in advance?

There is something that I would have wished to know in advance, though: MIT’s spirit somehow managed to eradicate all my doubts regarding self-made technology and for a brief moment my attitude towards machines was so positivistic that I fooled myself into believing that a RepRep 3-d printer can save time and produce models for my thesis 24/7 with very little maintenance. It can’t.

My time at MIT is best characterized as a process with multiple moments of “rupture” that forced me to step out of my “comfort zone” in order to challenge what I thought “architecture” should really be about. In that sense, the biggest

125

advantage for doing my thesis at MIT was having gone through the M.Arch program—starting from core level one. At that time, I was not exactly enthusiastic about having to start from scratch. I did not want to fold paper, I wanted to design buildings.

It was the M.Arch program that put me on a path towards thesis. Without having had the chance to talk to a highly diverse and interesting body of faculty— three times a week for studio—I would have ended up with very different graduate thesis project. Without the strong intellectual influence that my teachers had on me, thesis would have become a much less challenging undertaking. Without the discussions, reviews, and sometimes obsessive and overwhelming degree of intensity at MIT, thesis would have probably been a lot less significant and relevant. I see thesis as an attempt to—in a very small way—advance the discipline—or at least the discourse around the dome of 77 Massachusetts Avenue.

This presents itself as quite a task at a place like MIT—in the end, the challenge for thesis becomes to live up to the place that helped to foster its development.

What was particularly timely about your thesis? Was it technique or topical?

I think that my thesis situates itself in a moment of “monumental contemporaneity”—making it difficult to judge the effects of “timeliness” when juxtaposing them with almost inconceivable ephemeral cycles such as geological ages, epochs and eras. My thesis certainly hap-

pens in—and adds to the narrative of—a contemporary disciplinary moment of reflection about landscape, nature, culture, ecology and environment. It addresses and investigates potential role models for computation, process, materiality, and digital fabrication to operate within that context. Yet, by its very nature, it presents itself as an anachronistic operation, a collage of past conditions that requires the development of a retroactive manifesto in order to acknowledge its very existence.

It is therefore both, incredibly timely and un-novel from a topical standpoint.

Technique might have played a role in my thesis, but more in the context of what others have described as a post-digital approach towards design in architecture. I do not think that my project is concerned with technological notions of technique. Computation and digital fabrication sometimes tend to have the unfortunate tendency to become a means to their own end. I therefore want to make the claim that my thesis has no technique in the contemporary meaning of the term. It is a biased piece of research. It is idiosyncratic, formal, subjective and unapologetic. It does not attempt to justify its modes of operation.

Even though I have set up a seemingly rigorous design methodology, the project does not make the claim to be scientific.

It tries to escape timely notions of an architectural rationality based on scientific technique. My thesis is, after all, a completely irrational project.

Building discourse

SaSa Zivkovic

127

Archi-Punk Options Studio 2010 Instructor: Marc Tsurumaki

This is the design for a business incubator in close proximity to the ICA: ‘Fun Palace’ vs. ‘Biblical Flood.’ The utopian bio-tech edge incubator at the Boston waterfront is doomed by dystopian scenarios such as global warming and sea level rise. The studio faces a complex web of local and global interactions —most of which form conflicting, opposite agendas. Some dichotomies were translated into architecture: the urge to protect the city from the water (bunker) vs. the wish to connect to the waterfront (field), the anarchy of the post-industrial wasteland (urban hair) vs. the new corporate program (incubator), the cleanness of the waterfront (wooden decks) vs. the dirtiness of the hairy marshlands (urban hair), the “corporateness” of business (incubator) vs. the anarchy of innovation (incubator)...” This building is an inherently cynical proposal but at the same time, beyond its surface and contained within its cynicism lie spatial opportunities for a new type of waterfront architecture.

Building discourse

6(&7,216

&$)(6 5(67$85$176

/$5*( $8',725,80

75$,1 9,67$6

6(&5(7 *$5'(16

',3 6($7,1*

1$785$

SaSa Zivkovic

129

Inter-Urbia Options Studio 2009 Instructor: Nader Tehrani

<285 /28'63($.(5 LQ 48,1&<

3$5.,1* *$5$*(

3$5.,1* *$5$*(

+,''(1 &2857<$5'

6725$*(

'(/,9(5<

1$785$/ $8',725,80

A Noncritical Suburban Mini Manifesto “We are facing a modern nowhere land, a man-made urban desert, an empty plot within the fabric of the suburb, connected to the city by traffic infrastructures—a place that belongs neither to the city, nor to the suburb. The nowhere state of the site could possibly re-formulate existing modes of urbanity: At the intersection of city and suburb, a new type of infrastructure can create an alternative urban condition. A new urban order—a place which is neither possible in the city nor in the suburb: Inter-Urbia.”

A large scale infrastructural wall will be used to manifest the existence of Inter-Urbia. It will spatially define a place within the meaninglessness of the surrounding suburban fabric and will allow for an alternative reality to emerge out of architecture: City air makes one free—the enclosure and restrictive force of the wall will liberate its interior similar to how medieval city walls liberated country serfs.

Inter-Urbia will combine the possibilities of cities with those of the suburb. City functions and characteristics will inhabit

the walls of Inter-Urbia: public space, density, pedestrian scale, small and aggregated programs, nightlife, speed, diversity, cultural mixture, and privacy. On the other hand, city programs will be enriched with the possibilities of the suburb: emptiness, vast space, slowness, surveillance, taboos, and cultural homogeneity.

By purchasing space within the walls of Inter-Urbia, every programmatic inhabitant is allowed to use its public infrastructure in order to host public events on the central ground. The purchase of one container gives access to a gigantic public arena and potential spectacle. The conflict potential within the void is high: one day used as a green energy fair exhibit, the void can turn into a fascist assembly arena the next day.

This tension will generate discourse contained within InterUrbia’s public space. Its void will eventually turn into a new agora, a democratic, utopian public arena and battlefield for moral and culture within society. Or—all that green grass will solely provide for a good sheep meadow.

Building discourse

SaSa Zivkovic

131

Building discourse

Above: Building section Opposite: Interior view

DaviD Costanza

133

David Costanza

100% Petroleum House M.Arch Thesis 2012 Advisor: J. Meejin Yoon Readers: Brandon Clifford, Dennis Sheldon

I am designing a Case Study House to be sponsored by Royal Dutch Shell which utilizes the by-product of oil extraction, petroleum gas, to produce a zero waste, 100% petroleum based house. The motivation of the Case Study House is to address the housing shortage in Iraq and demonstrate the capacity of petrochemicals as a building material.

In the Western hemisphere an abundance of trees provides wood, an easy to work with construction material. In contrast, Iraq currently lacks a pervasive natural resource for construction. However, Iraq does boast one of the largest reserves of oil in the world.

During the oil production process, natural gas is trapped underground with the petroleum. Because of the pressure change during extraction, natural gas will surface with the crude oil. This type of natural gas is known as associated petroleum gas; it is released as a by-product or waste product of petroleum extraction. With the right facilities in place, these associated gases can be harnessed for energy and become a feedstock for petrochemical industries.

I am interested in using Basra, Iraqâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s second most populous city, as a case study for improving the housing need in Iraq.

There are several key reasons why Basra will serve as both a strategic and necessary site to develop this idea. Basraâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s crucial location on the southern tip of Iraq, and at the intersection of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, has made it Iraqâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s main port and a gateway into the country. This access to various kinds of transportation through primary ports, as well as rail lines to Baghdad, coupled with a rapidly growing economy stemming from oil and downstream petroleum-based industries, makes Basra an opportune location for a housing intervention.

In conclusion, Iraq has the capacity to produce vast amounts of building material domestically from petroleum gas, a by-product of oil, its primary export. With plastics beginning to emerge as viable building materials in the construction industry, Iraq could likely be on the forefront of making the use of plastics as building materials mainstream.

Building discourse

Location, Site Iraq, the cradle of civilization and birthplace of the world’s Abrahamic religions, abandoned in the despair of destruction with the people left wandering as was once common among their nomadic ancestors. A country with abundant resources, yet incapable of restoring the conditions of return. An imagined utopia of black-gold riches for Western petroleum companies with the ability to restore stability to wandering and displaced Iraqis. A bridge of opportunity between the investment drawn, and those who seek return—the Monsanto phenomenon in contemporary Iraq—petrochemical redemption for millions of displaced Iraqis.

The “Monsanto House of the Future”, illusionist in scope but innovative in impact. With the intention to demonstrate the potential of petrochemicals as building materials, Goody and Hamilton breached the wall of what was common in construction. Premature in development, its manually intensive nature led to its disregard. Yet, the time to reconsider petroleum based materials in architecture is now.

On Sunday, December 18th, 2011 the last convoy of American soldiers was pulled out of Iraq, marking the end of an eight year war between the United States and Iraq. This war, known as the Third Persian Gulf War or Operation Iraqi Freedom (20032011), was one of three large scale wars which took place in Iraq over the last three decades, the other two being the Iran-Iraq war, also known as the First Persian Gulf War (1980-1988), and Operation Desert Storm, also referred to as the Second Persian Gulf War (1990-1991). During this time, Iraq also saw many smaller conflicts, revolts, and acts of sectarian violence.

Altogether, the various wars and conflicts have left Iraq in a state of complete disarray, characterized by war torn buildings, piles of rubble, lack of infrastructure, and outdated social services.

The post-war destruction of the housing sector, coupled with a preexisting need, has created an extreme housing shortage in Iraq. Baghdad, as both the capital and largest city in Iraq, has been the main target of international aid and reconstruction efforts. Though Baghdad has seen mild improvements in the need for housing, the rest of the country has been largely neglected, with very few improvements in the housing sector.

According to the Internal Displaced Monitoring Center, Iraq has over 2.3 million internally displaced peoples (IDP) currently within its borders, with 900,000 of those coming from conflicts before the 2003 war. [1] Initial reconstruction efforts have been made, yet they have largely targeted high income, wealthier classes, which make up a minority of the Iraqi population.

According to the Republic of Iraq Ministry of Construction and Housing, over two million dwellings are needed by 2016 predominantly to serve the lower and middle income communities (UN Habitat 2010). [2] In addition to IDPs, many refugees are returning to Iraq following the conclusion of the war, adding another community in dire need for housing.

DaviD Costanza

135

Opposite: Site plan Top: Conventional housing typologies Left: Case Study House

Building discourse

Basra, Iraq From a sociocultural aspect, the Case Study House must address issues of Iraqi domesticity, environmental constraints and cultural traditions in order to meet the housing need in Basra.

Basra is Iraq’s second most populous city and a major port city between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Surrounded by some of the largest oil reserves in the world, Basra will serve economically as the backbone of a recovering nation; therefore, it is both a strategic and ideal site for testing the Case Study House.

Among the many housing challenges facing Iraq, the most formidable are: the absence of a department of housing and urban development, infrastructure and service backlogs, and the deficiency of building materials. [3] The lack of building materials has tremendously hampered the reconstruction and housing development efforts. In standard Western construction, there is an abundance of trees and sustainably certified forests, which provide a renewable, easy to work with construction material. Wood frame homes can be constructed within weeks and require very little equipment. In contrast, Iraq currently lacks an abundant natural resource for construction. In a survey conducted by the United Nations Habitat, called the Iraq Market Housing Study (IMHS) Builders Survey, contractors were asked to cite three primary problems with the housing market. Of those interviewed, “roughly 81% of the builders indicated that availability and high prices of building materials caused them the greatest problem.” [4] Most buildings in Iraq are made from concrete and concrete blocks. However, the use of concrete in Iraq has faced many challenges over the last decade. From the 1970s to the 1990s,

Iraq was a large exporter of cement; unfortunately, most of the cement manufacturing plants were destroyed during the war.

Currently, Iraq is being forced to import large amounts of its cement from Turkey and Iran in order to supply the only building material used in Iraq, concrete.

In addition to the shortage of concrete, constructing homes from concrete blocks is a slow and laborious process. Building with relatively small, heavy unit concrete blocks (0.2m x 0.4m x 0.2m) which require additional concrete for infill, as well as steel rebar in order for the wall to be load bearing, has resulted in homes that take months to construct. In order to avoid cracking, concrete block homes require very large foundations to minimize movement. Lastly, all insulation and services such as electrical and plumbing, must be added outside the wall cavity because unlike wood stud construction, they cannot be embedded into the wall system.

Although Iraq lacks the forests which allow for the rapid stick frame construction common in the West, Iraq boasts one of the largest oil reserves in the world. In recent years, oil production has surged, quickly becoming the country’s largest commodity, a trend that appears to be increasing. In fact, Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani, wanted to boost “oil production from its current level of some 2.4 million bpd to 10-12 million within the next decade,” which would exceed what both Saudi Arabia and Russia are currently producing. [5] Because of the destruction associated with the war, as well as decades of conflicts and sanctions, Iraq has yet to fully capitalize on its natural resource and lead the oil market.

DaviD Costanza

137

Increased Capacity We have always been bound by the limits and capacity of our materials. Due to material limitations, traditional dwellings range from two to three stories in height. With composite materials, however, the same limitations do not apply. Wood joists have a certain span in which they are efficient, and plywood has a certain distance upon which deflection is negligible; with composites these spans are greatly expanded. Twelve-inch wood joists and eight-inch-thick concrete slabs can be replaced by a four-inch-thick composite.

The result of these various advantages is a case study house that will have a one hundred year life span. Using parts that will be delivered to the site at one time, the home can be assembled in one day, by four people, and with no large equipment. This will challenge traditional understandings of heights and spans, and where the interior and exterior skin align and diverge in order to anticipate apertures, stress loads and program.

As Iraq struggles to come to terms with a housing crisis that has plagued the country since before the 2003 American invasion and concluding war, the country’s immense oil reserves hold the key to restoring balance. By utilizing associated gas, the by-product of extracting crude oil, as plastic, Iraq can domestically produce and construct 100% petroleum based homes, and eradicate the displacement of 2.3 million Iraqis.

With Royal Dutch Shell already committed to capturing around “700 million cubic feet of associated gas” with the intention of also “utilis[ing] the gas surplus” and the aforementioned housing need, it is a ripe time to reconsider the importance of the “Monsanto House of the Future” and explore the potentials of composites within architecture.

By using plastics as a building material, many new potentials come into play including a long life span—possibly one hundred years or more— and an extreme strength-to-weight ratio that allows for the prefabrication of a number of intelligent parts that can be easily transported and rapidly assembled on site. Plastics also allow for an increased capacity to facilitate a much taller dwelling, radically reducing the required land needed to construct a home.

Plastics coupled with Iraq’s unique form of domesticity as well as cultural and religious factors shape a new type of dwelling. Made up of four petrol-based tubes, each is molded with plugs and sockets that incorporate quick, intelligent assembly, and capped with shaded courtyards that double as light wells, serving to blur the boundaries between interior and exterior and effectively doubling the livable space. The dwelling presents an alternative way to conceive of the reconstruction needed to rebuild the country. Utilizing what is in its own soil, Iraq can allow millions of Iraqis to finally return home to their families, communities, and lives.

Opposite: Scale models of housing units Above: Rendering of Case Study House facade, view from street

Building discourse

WALL SeCTIOnS In order to understand how a 100% plastic/composite house would work, I began by drawing typical residential wall sections. I considered both a load bearing CMU wall with concrete slabs, and a wood stud wall with a brick facade, and compared these with a potential composite wall section. I chose to focus on three comprehensive conditions: the wall to foundation, the wall to floor slab and the wall to roof condition. My understanding of these three conditions in terms of waterproofing, as well as various load transfers, helped inform the design of my Case Study House.

Left: Theoretical composite wall section

DaviD Costanza

ReCOnfIgURABLe MOLdS Molds have been a large inhibitor to the integration and deployment of composites, particularly at a large scale, due to high costs and slow production times. However, as a result of digital manufacturing, molds are becoming cheaper and faster to produce. Innovation in mold production has been the deciding force on whether composites can become mainstream.

One innovation that is beginning to emerge is the potential for molds that are reusable and even reconfigurable. This opportunity or possibility to produce multiple composite parts from the same mold has been crucial, as seen by the Monsanto House experiment.

However, this possibility has only just begun to emerge. If we can begin to program molds and automate this aspect of composite production, they will become much cheaper and faster to produce.

This notion of a reconfigurable mold has few precedents. for example, in nevada, massive molds that are digitally programmed are producing yacht sails in which the geometry and fiber placement of each sail is custom to the racing yacht. All sails are very similar in geometry and size, but still vary in dimensions and depth.

Top: Traditional manufacturing Bottom: Traditional process

139

Building discourse

DaviD Costanza

dWeLLIng In an effort to transition these concepts of materials, construction and cultural constraints, I began by critiquing the traditional dwelling. Iraqi dwellings are characterized by a strict adherence to the division of private from public; both cultural and religious beliefs reinforce this separation of male and female territories within the house. This division of public and private has architectural implications, resulting in overly compartmentalized plans, made up of vast amounts of corridors and doorways.

The case study house hopes to challenge the traditional notions of division and separation, while respecting the culture and religion. I began rethinking the plan through the geometric development of the dwelling, reorienting the building on site and creating a new vertical directionality. This verticality is made possible only through exploiting the many potentials provided by the use of plastic materials. The result is a smaller footprint, and a much taller dwelling in which the program is stacked, with the most public on the ground and the most private on the top.

In addition to the reorientation, I conceived the building as a series of tubes, rather than as one monolithic structure. It is broken down into four carefully-sized tubes, and dimensionally amounts to the size of a truck in width and the length of the truck bed in height.

These tubes would be prefabricated nearby, brought to site and assembled; the discretization would make the transport to and on site easier. These tubes are then formed and shaped based on various require-

141

ments. While the backside of the house is tapered to eliminate unneeded floor space on the lower levels, half of the house is lifted and cantilevered, creating a forecourt, as well as sheltered parking. In addition, the tops of each of the tubes is carved out to create light wells, and pulled down to open up these light wells into a courtyard, with a direct view outward. In terms of their relationship with the environment, these light wells are derived from the traditional dwelling. Traditionally, courtyards, light wells, roof decks, and verandas serve to blur the boundaries between interior and exterior.

In Iraq, courtyards serve not just as a means for privacy, but also become inhabitable spaces.

Because of the climate, shaded courtyards are frequently furnished with tables and couches, and in some cases more actively used than interior living spaces. The deployment of these inhabitable light wells/courtyards serves to effectively double the livable space.

RApId ASSeMBLy One of the most important driving forces behind the case study house has been the assembly sequence on site. for it to be assembled in a single day, the case study house must be composed of the fewest number of parts possible and come together in a simple, unobscured way. To accomplish these goals of rapid construction, the dwelling was conceived as a series of plugs and sockets, which could be molded into the tubes.

This composition would allow for them to be simply plugged in to one another on site.

The assembly sequence would begin by embedding a

prefabricated foundation into the ground. next, the primary tubes would plug together, be tilted up and then plugged into the foundation. Mechanical fasteners have been replaced with adhesives which are capable of transferring loads uniformly across the skin.

The secondary tubes would then be tilted up, plugged into the primary tubes, and adhered and strapped together until set.

STReSSed SkIn The structure is composed of an interior and exterior load-bearing skin. The interior and exterior skin are tied back using kissoffs, a technique commonly used when creating lightweight hollow plastic parts. The interior and exterior skins are connected by an inner foam core across which loads are transferred. When the stress in the skin is above a certain range, the kiss-off serves to create a more rigid, structural connection between the two surfaces. Through mapping the stress in the skin, a clear relationship can be developed between the max stress levels and the placement of kiss-offs.

A pattern emerges as the density of kiss-offs increase in relation to higher stress levels in the skin. The exterior of the dwelling reflects the gradient of structural loads and load transfer throughout the skin.

Sometimes the two surfaces meet in the middle just barely touching off, while in other conditions, the two surfaces will intersect, cutting through and creating an opening.

CIRCULATIOn After parking, you enter the dwelling from a shaded forecourt where the building funnels you inside. directly upon entering the dwelling, you are pre-

sented with the option of entering the living room or going up the staircase.

The living room is the most public space in the house and primarily serves the guests of the family.

As you ascend the stairs and reach the second level of the house, you are presented with a choice to go left or right. To the left is the dining area which welcomes guests and family alike, and to the right is the more private kitchen.

Across from the stairs is a light well/courtyard that is accessible through both the dining and kitchen spaces, which allows for the possibility to open up and reconnect these two spaces.

Before entering the more private kitchen zone, a staircase leads up to the third floor. In the gradient from most public to most private, the third floor falls in the middle. The childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bedrooms are strictly family spaces; there are two bedrooms each with two beds, and potential space for up to four children.

The bedrooms share a common bathroom as well as a light well/courtyard.

Moving up the now stacked staircases, the most private room in the house is the parentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; room on the fourth floor, with its own bathroom, seating area, fifth level roof access, and light well/courtyard.

All of the spaces in the house are conceived with the idea of a relationship to an open courtyard. The light well/courtyard assists with bringing light into the space while also maximizing privacy.

Building discourse

DaviD Costanza

Opposite: design evolution of Case Study House

143

Top: Construction detail Bottom: Interior view

nOTeS 1 Unknown. Internally displaced population. Internal displacement Monitoring Centre. 2011. Web. 2012.

2 Republic of Iraq Ministry of Housing. Iraq national Housing policy. Un Habitat. 2010. Web. 2012 3 The third aspect of the hous-

ing challenges is the only one that can be addressed through an architectural solution and therefore will be at the heart of the thesis.

4 Republic of Iraq Ministry of Housing and Construction .Iraq Housing Market Study. Rep. pAdCO. 2006. Web. 2012.

5 Unknown. Iraq eyes OpeC Top Spot, Seeks India pact. United press International. 2011. Web. 2012.

Rio-slum-as-World-Cup-clean-upbegins.html

Building discourse

David Costanza MIT / Master of Architecture, 2012 University of Utah / B.S. Architecture, 2009

What have you been doing since thesis?

Since I completed my thesis in January of 2013, I have begun another degree here at MIT. I started in the SMArchS Building Technology program under John Fernandez. Applying to the SMArchS program and doing an additional masters degree in architecture was an opportunity to have more authority over the direction of my degree. I found the M.Arch degree to be invaluable to shaping me as an architect. However, in the three and a half years of the program there was not enough time for me to accomplish all I had set out to do; time sometimes moves too quickly. Going into my thesis prep semester at the end of year three, I found I was finally starting to have control over my classes and direction of my degree, but within months I was graduating.

In addition to beginning the SMArchS degree, I have also been working at Höweler + Yoon Architecture under Meejin Yoon. This combination of academic research and professional experience throughout my M.Arch and SMArchS degrees created a balance between research and reality.

As a first step into the SMArchS research, I have been working with Joel Lamere and funded by my advisor John Fernandez, for a design installation that comes underneath the umbrella of the International Design Center (IDC) here at MIT. The work with Joel has allowed me to push my own interest of materials, specifically composites and plastics which evolved from my M.Arch thesis work, in

tandem with Joel’s work on the fabrication of complex geometries.

What was the most important thing you learned from thesis?

In my experience, the M.Arch thesis has proven to be what you make of it. I believe the thesis is an opportunity to prove to yourself what you are capable of. It provides the experience to push the boundaries of your knowledge and allows you to begin to establish ‘expertise’ in a topic you are passionate about.

Has thesis influenced your career?

I think my M.Arch thesis emerged from a reflection of my own work up until that point. I looked back at my work, both academically and professionally, and started to notice trends and biases within my own designs. These biases were towards materials and tectonics, as well as towards manufacturing and construction and the resulting influence on design decisions made by architects. I learned a lot about myself in that reflection. I think this recognition of internal trends and biases allowed me to piece together a narrative of my work from many years ago, as an undergraduate in architecture, to my current work both academically and professionally.

What is the one thing you would have done differently or what do you wish you had known in advance?

I am happy the way things have turned out. I am not sure I would change very much about the process. My M.Arch class was fortunate to have Ana Miljački as our thesis prep professor. The thesis prep class with Ana really did prepare us very well for a successful thesis, pushing us to articulately flush out our thoughts.

In addition, the M.Arch thesis is a design thesis, not a research thesis, and this was really important to me in narrowing and focusing the role of the thesis within the M.Arch program.

What was the biggest advantage for doing your thesis at MIT?

MIT provided me enough freedom and support to develop my thesis. I was led by my M.Arch thesis advisor Meejin Yoon, coupled with my thesis readers, Brandon Clifford, who was a recent addition to MIT at the time of my thesis, and Dennis Sheldon, in my perspective one of the most amazing minds in MIT architecture. The diverse and strong collection of advisors I had helped me in the development of my overall thesis.

145

What was particularly timely about your thesis? Was it technique or topical?

I think we are at a point in architecture where the materiality and constructability of a design have a significant influence over the design decisions we make. I also believe that focusing on the unit of the dwelling is and will always be one of the primary roles of an architect. Across the world, the demand for housing has never before been so high; millions of homes are needed every year. This challenge is a global issue and should be considered as a foreground problem for architects.

In addition to the material resources required in housing, we as architects have environmental and ecological issues to address. The reuse of the by-product of oil extraction provides a chance for architects to use a different type of material to design.

In my thesis, I designed a Case Study House that utilizes the by-product of oil extraction, petroleum gas, to produce a zero waste, 100% petroleum based house.

The motivation of the Case Study House is to address the housing shortage in Iraq, and demonstrate the capacity of petrochemicals as a building material.

In the Western hemisphere, an abundance of trees provides wood, an easy to work with construction material. In contrast, Iraq currently lacks a pervasive natural resource for construction. However, Iraq does boast one of the largest reserves of oil in the world.

During the oil production process, natural gas is trapped underground with

the petroleum. Because of the pressure change during extraction, natural gas will surface with the crude oil. This type of natural gas is known as associated petroleum gas; it is released as a by-product or waste product of petroleum extraction. With the right facilities in place, these associated gases can be harnessed for energy and become a feedstock for petrochemical industries.

My thesis sought to demonstrate Iraqâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s capacity to produce vast amounts of building material domestically from petroleum gas, a by-product of oil, its primary export. With plastics beginning to emerge as viable building materials in the construction industry, my thesis poses that Iraq could likely be on the forefront of making the use of plastics as building materials mainstream.

Building discourse

DaviD Costanza

147

UNI Open-Air Reading Room With Eric Hรถweler, Meejin Yoon & Alex Marshall Public Space, 2011 New York, NY, Boston Street Lab

The UNI Project aims to do one thing and do it well: temporarily transform almost any available urban space into a public reading room and venue for learning. We start with the conviction that books and learning should be prominent, accessible, and part of what we expect at street-level in our cities. The UNI structure is based on a system of 144 open-faced cubes. The cubes stack and lock together, and can be installed in different configurations or heights to create an inviting space for people to gather in public. Each cube also has a cover element [plug] that can be used as a bench, a table, podium, or a display surface. (Text from www.theuniproject.org) Primarily working with one other student, Alexander Marshall, we were responsible for the design, prototyping and construction of the UNI under the instruction of Meejin Yoon and with the help of everyone from HYA. The design was informed through a number of extensive constraints, ranging from the need to be extremely lightweight and portable to the need to be

Lightweight deployable library

completely weatherproof. These constraints pushed the use of new materials such as PVC composites and urethane resins and the invention of a roto-molding machine that was used for testing and prototyping our designs.

Building discourse

DaviD Costanza

149

Relief Housing for Haiti Options Studio 2010 Instructor: Mark Goulthorpe

To begin designing in Haiti, I developed a list of design constraints that inform what a dwelling built in Haitian culture and climactic conditions would consist of: 1-Smart dwellings that can sleep 8 people with an open floor plan.

2-Rapid construction.

3-Earthquake and hurricane resistant with the ability to withstand 155 mph winds.

4-Each dwelling does not have a bathroom, as it is expected that water will not be available in many areas.

5-Incremental approach: getting people immediate basic shelter, while also allowing it to grow and be added onto.

6-The rainy season commences in June, with hurricane season just behind.

In this context, the tarps, tents, and rickety housing which have been thrown up start to become life-threatening. High quality design and construction could have saved many lives, as is evident with the Chilean and Japanese earthquakes.

I negotiated all of these constraints in my design, while creating a simple yet durable structure that can be customized to fit a variety of needs. The geometry was developed to limit the necessary amount of material while maximizing the dwellingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inhabitants. Material choice consisted of thin glass reinforced concrete cladding and an extruded polystyrene foam and fiberglass sheet composite, a perfect material for Haitian climactic conditions as it is resistant to moisture, mold, and insects.

BUILDING DISCOURSE

Above: Sprinkler and Rai, conceptual image merging together artificial and natural weathers

Opposite: Scale model of WeatherMart.

YUSHIRO OKAMOTO

151

Yushiro Okamoto

WeatherMart M.Arch Thesis 2012 Advisor: J. Meejin Yoon Readers: William Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Brien Jr., Sheila Kennedy

WeatherMart reinvents the supermarket by questioning the generic big-box typology, where produce is placed in the same way in a hermetically sealed environment. Supermarkets now consume excess energy by heating and cooling in one giant open space. I am proposing a new typology of the supermarket that is organized thermodynamically into small chambers of different temperature zones to both mediate energy loss and enable external conditions to participate in the energy dynamics of food storage and consumption. Excess heat generated from cooling is used to heat cooked foods or warm up one of the adjacent spaces. The project utilizes 3 strategies: 1) creation of smaller active and passive chambers, 2) introduction of external chambers adjacent to the passive chambers, and 3) the inhabitation of the pochĂŠ spaces.

In this new thermally activated market, seasonal climates of the region participate in the energy exchanges between inside and outside. Gradational spectrum of heat and moisture begin to become part of a greater external spectrum of nature as it starts to expose its boundaries. WeatherMart proposes a new environment between inside and outside, controlled and uncontrolled, permanent and temporal. During winter, it utilizes chilled air from outside to keep fresh fish cold; in the summer, it keeps the temperature moderate for selling ripe fruits and vegetables. Relative locations from cold chambers to hot chambers will have different relationships to its environment as it migrates across the U.S. WeatherMart acts like a sponge, breathing in and out weather cycles.

BUILDING DISCOURSE

Walking through a food market is an experience. You pass through different atmospheres of varying smells, temperature, humidity and scenes. Whole Foods in Cambridge is no exception. Inside a big box, under a giant shed, they are usually placed on a universal plane. Multiple climatic conditions are packed one next to each other.

WeatherMart proposes a new typology of a food market, where different climates and atmospheres are contained in different environment chambers. In this new thermally-activated market, seasonal climates of the region participate in the energy exchanges between inside and outside. Hot or cool, humid or dry, dark or bright, ventilated or sealed, each individual chamber will have unique combination of climate and weather according to the climate the foods produce and need. Shopping at a food market becomes a whole new experience. Your skin, nose, and eyes will have a dramatic change of contact with the environment every time you pass through a different chamber.

By isolating each food region in semi-enclosed chambers, the

Above: Concept images

supermarket would save a lot of their annual energy consumption. The energy spent on controlling the ambient air temperature will no longer be needed and will instead be controlled locally. The waste energy generated from one chamber could effectively be transferred to another chamber as a by-product.

Starting from the basic packing of spherical voids, the climatic chambers could begin to deform itself according to the spatial requirements of the products housed, the atmospheric quality of humidity and the temperature. Some chambers would need to be completely hermetically sealed, while others would be exposed to open air. We could start to imagine a mapping of external relationships.

Also, WeatherMart could begin to expand its program, like in the case of the Roman Bath. There could be extensive program additions around the original circulation of shopping foods, such as lecture halls for cooking classes, farms to grow your own food, kitchens to cook what you bought, and others. WeatherMart centers around the culture of food, eating and health.

YUSHIRO OKAMOTO

Process diagrams showing the configuration and organization of climate zones where food is stored.

153

BUILDING DISCOURSE

A supermarket organizes all different kinds of food and everyday needs in one big space. The sequence from taking the cart, circulating around the giant space and checking out is very systematic and efficient. However, “efficiency“ has made all supermarkets and grocery stores around United States very similar. Existing typology of a supermarket is packaged inside a “Big Box“ placing cold environments on the perimeter and dry goods in the middle under fully controlled environment.

The charts on the below show the percentage of different energy consumed in a supermarket in different climate zones in United States. The blue shows the cooling energy and orange shows the heating. You will realize that the energy consumption balance of cooling and heating is almost the same between supermarket in Massachusetts and Texas. This brings out the fact that supermarket environments are isolated from the regional climate of the place.

WeatherMart will be located at different places throughout the U.S. They will have different layouts, with different cycles of produce. The design of the first WeatherMart is sited in Boston and attempts to replace the Haymarket, together with

a supermarket and a farmers market. However, aside from the basic organization of WeatherMart, each site will have its own idiosyncratic condition which will affect the generation of WeatherMart.

WeatherMart imagines a new access to food culture. Supermarkets pay an average of $36/sq.m in natural gas consumption, which accounts for 42% of the energy bills. People usually go supermarket shopping with their jackets on. They don’t consider it as “inside.” We will demolish human comfort from supermarkets, where gas is mostly consumed. Then we could substitute all natural gas consumption by effectively harnessing the waste heat produced from cooling appliances. People will feel hot, people will feel cold, but the act of shopping will become an experience through different chambers of climates.

“Breathing of weathers” is about the fluctuating rise and fall of atmospheric conditions between spaces. When the heat rises outside, the inside rises as well after a delay; when it rains, the moisture level subsequently rises inside to match. The wall controls the atmospheric relationship between inside and outside.

Climate zones

3% Miscellaneous

Zone 1

Heating 17% Cooling 3% water heating

Refrigeration

53%

1%

Cooking

Heating

1%

4%

2%

Cooling

Miscellaneous

ventilation 1% water heating

Office equipment

5% 19%

Lighting Refrigeration

57%

Zone 3

3%

19%

Lighting

Zone 2

ventilation 1%

Cooking

3% Miscellaneous

Heating

7%

16%

Cooling 5% ventilation Refrigeration

water heating

44 % Cooking

1% 12%

Lighting 15%

4%

MA

Zone 4

1%

3% Miscellaneous Office equipment

Heating 1% Cooling 8%

ventilation 2% water heating

Lighting

3%

21%

Refrigeration

55%

Cooking

6%

3%

Heating

2% Miscellaneous 1% Office equipment

Zone 5

Cooling 1% ventilation

4%

water heating

Lighting

TX

12%

15%

Refrigeration

62%

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration

YUSHIRO OKAMOTO

155

Top: Site plan Center: Energy consumption comparison between gas and electricity Bottom: seasonal temperature cycles shifting along the climate zones of WeatherMart

BUILDING DISCOURSE

Top: Axonometric site plan Center, right: Photograph of site Below: Birdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s-eye view of model Opposite: Wireframe perspective and floor plans.

YUSHIRO OKAMOTO

157

ION

LAT

AR

YM HA

R/ ME

FAR

CU CIR KET

ION

LAT

U IRC SC

D OO

LEF HO

A AY M ER/H

W

U

IRC

EC

VIC SER

ION LAT

CUL E CIR

OD

ON LATI

L RCU

T CI RKE

A AY M ER/H

FARM

LE WHO

IRCU

ICE C SERV

ON LATI

CU S CIR

ON LATI

IRCU

DS C FOO

IC

SERV

N ATIO

FARM

LEFO WHO N ATIO

L RCU

T CI RKE

N ATIO

BUILDING DISCOURSE

WeatherMart Boston The distinction between active chambers and passive chambers starts to organize the thermal gradient of produce and its degree of contact with the outside. By merging together two scales of loops, the first is offset inwards from the site boundary, and the second is offset outwards from the active chambers. The perimeter loop divides the inner Whole Foods market and the outer farmers market. The internal loop is offset from the active chambers, creating a chain of passive chambers. The passive chambers bridge the Whole Foods market and farmers market, stitching the two systems together.

The overlap of the two loops creates three different boundary conditions: the first between Active and Passive, the second between Passive and Passive, and the third between Passive and Exterior. This leads to three different envelope strategies which each have different thermal transparency qualities. The initial placement of the four Active chambers on the roof surface generates a linear pathway for farm tractors to navigate. The overlapping relationship between the farm geometry and market geometry creates a sectional logic between the roof and the ground.

jan

feb

dec

mar

nov

The Whole Foods entrances are on both ends of WeatherMart. Instead of the typical loop circulation of supermarkets, the Whole Foods in WeatherMart is linear, starting on one end of the thermal gradient and ending on the other. You will weave through active and passive chambers, experiencing the climatic shift from one space to another. Instead of looking across the supermarket for signs of where things are, your body and senses will navigate you through the WeatherMart.

Wrapping the Whole Foods circulation is the Farmers and Haymarket circulation on the perimeter. During the weekdays, many local vendors of farmers markets fill in the loop with seasonal produce. On weekends, Haymarket vendors take over the space. There are 3 service entries on both sides of the long facade. Since WeatherMart is a â&#x20AC;&#x153;packing of atmospheres,â&#x20AC;? entries into the market are unconventional. You will enter from a slit embedded in the thickness of the wall.

apr

oct

may

sept

jun

aug

jul

season -18 produce segments 10

-6

-4

-2

9

0 8

7

2

4

6

active chambers

6

8

5

10

4

12

14

16

3

18

20

passive chambers

VENT CHAMBER GREENHOUSE CHAMBER

22

24 2

26

28

30

active chambers

VENTILATION HEAT

COOLER CHAMBER FREEZER CHAMBER

A

FREEZER EXAUST

A WHOLE FOODS

P A

A FARMERS MARKET

HYDRO MOISTURE

SEQUENCE OF MICRO CLIMATES FREEZER EXAUST

shared grid system

Above: Produce Segments Below: Plan organization of market

tractor looping circulation

paired weather wells

water shed + soil depth

60 1

YUSHIRO OKAMOTO

Facade of WeatherMart during the night and day

159

BUILDING DISCOURSE

Top: Fish market during winter in Passive Chamber 2 Bottom: Vegetable market during summer in Passive Chamber 2

YUSHIRO OKAMOTO

161

Left: WeatherMart is a filter. It absorbs and filters elements of the weather, such as sunlight, rain, snow, through the roof and sends it down into the ground, and vice versa, ventilating the interstate highway through the WeatherMart and releasing it into the air. By harnessing the heat from ventilated air, WeatherMart utilizes another source of heat.

Above: WeatherMart elevates

Above: Green roof of WeatherMart

the datum 7 m above ground and creates a productive depth for growing crops. The shape of the planters funnels water through the roofscape of the market, feeding filtered clean water to hydroponic farming systems inside the market. The funnels are located at places used for air ventilation from the Big Dig roadways.

BUILDING DISCOURSE

Top: Long section through WeatherMart

Center: Perspective view of WeatherMart

Bottom: Cross section of WeatherMart

YUSHIRO OKAMOTO

Top: Long section through WeatherMart

163

Center: Scale model, birdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eye view

Bottom: Scale model, facade at street level

BUILDING DISCOURSE

Yushiro Okamoto MIT / Master of Architecture, 2012 Keio University / B.A. Environmental Information, 2007

I’ve finally been living a real life. I wake up in the morning, I eat lunch during lunch hour, and I sleep well every day.

Other than that, I have relocated to New York City and have been working at Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

What was the most important thing you learned from thesis?

I think that during thesis, you learn more about yourself than learning new architecture. That’s really important. It was about asking myself what I wanted to think about, and what I was interested in. Not only did I learn about myself, but also about my colleagues through the full exposure during thesis.

Thinking back on your thesis, how do you feel it has or has not influenced your career?

On the one hand, yes, it has influenced my career. MIT was about experiments. It was the best place to test your ideas at different scales, and you were always encouraged by professors to test it out, fail, test and fail. That culture gradually led me to where I am right now.

On the other hand, the work I’m doing now is not directly related to what I was thinking during thesis, but I feel that’s OK. MIT was like one selfcontained mash-up of awesome thinking, and hopefully, that will come back later in my professional career.

What is the one thing you would have done differently or what do you wish you had known in advance?

To be honest, I wish I had been more productive during my thesis prep, doing useful research and reading every single book I wanted to read. But that did not happen because I did not know what I wanted to do until the last 2 weeks when

everything started coming together.

I wish it could have been better, but at the same time I learned that it’s something that just takes a long time. I appreciate my professors because they never pressured me in making decisions and coming up with a topic.

What was the biggest advantage for doing your thesis at MIT?

I think the biggest advantage is that you are free to think about anything, come up with anything and make anything. You are on your own to test out ideas at different scales, not necessarily tied to architecture, and I find that really interesting. When I look around, everyone is doing totally different things directly tied to their own interests, which goes back to the second question. You learn so much about your classmates because everyone is free to think about what they’re interested in.

YUSHIRO OKAMOTO

165

Køge Kulturhus Cultural Center, Køge, Denmark Professional work with Diller Scofidio + Renfro 2013

This page: Rendering and model images courtesy of Diller Scofidio + Renfro Project credts: Princpalin-Charge: Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, Charles Renfro. Project leader: Ben Gilmartin

BUILDING DISCOURSE

Icewall Options Studio 2011 MIT +150 FAST Arts Festival Instructor: Tod Machover

MIT+150 celebrated the instituteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s past innovation and achievement while serving as a catalyst for the next generation. In this spirit, ICEWALL plants a new future, even as its own seemingly fades away during the FAST Arts Festival. The installation consisted of blocks of ice stacked on each other, creating one continuous surface facing the Charles River. Each block had flower seeds frozen inside, visible throughout the Festival. The wall was lit at night to create a new face for MIT from across the river in Boston. As FAST concluded and Icewall melted

away, the seeds were left behind on the ground to germinate and bloom, extending the celebration of MITâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sesquicentennial into the spring.

INTERNAL INVASION | Unearthing the Galapagos Lavascapes page 06/// Plan

PLAN +0M

+03_m +02_m +01_m +00_m -01_m -02_m -03_m -04_m -05_m

YUSHIRO OKAMOTO

167

Galapagos Internal Invasion Option Studio 2011 Instructor: Andrew Scott

of Puerto Ayora where the city’s grid system does not apply, resulting in a weird parceling of houses and unused land. By applying a non-directional grid and allowing vertical growth, the new habitation can better adapt to the complex and extreme undulation of the lavascapes along with the soaring rise in population. The new urban housing typology in Galapagos will become the new social condenser for local residents, tourists, and the natural habitat.

The city of Puerto Ayora is structured by an overlaying grid which covers entire landscapes in the Galapagos. Inside each block, however, in the back of each house, raw lavascapes are left abandoned and unused, overgrown with wildlife. Internal Invasion proposes to take use of this raw lava to trigger a new inhabitation between human and nature.

Instead of extending the island’s outer boundaries to allow for more inhabitants, I propose a new habitation, one that densifies the abandoned city center. The site is at the very center

PLAN +9M

3 8 9 9

2

1

10

6

6

13 10

10 7

7

4

11

2

1

12

12

5

5 12

5

scale = 1:2,000

+03_m +02_m +01_m +00_m -01_m -02_m -03_m -04_m -05_m

scale = 1:1,200

1. LIBRARY 2. SWIMMING POOL 3. CAFE GALAPAGOS 4. CAFE TORTUGA 5. MINI GALLERY 6. CRAFT WORKSHOP 7. BOTANICAL GARDEN 8. RESEARCH CENTER/ MUSEUM 9. FOOD MARKET 10. PRIVATE LOUNGE 11. AMPHI THEATER

Building discourse

The Almerian Miracle Urbanized Territories The Road to Europe Ecological Preserves Export Infrastructure

The

Artisinal Greenhouse (62%)

Vented Greenhouse (31%)

Sea of Plast ic

Arched Greenhouse (7%)

Curtis roth

169

Curtis Roth

Acid Ecologies: Or the Secret Lives of Spanish Tomatoes Master of Architecture Thesis Advisor: Ana Miljački Readers: Miho Mazereeuw, Alexander D’Hooghe

This thesis seeks to unpack the nature of ecology within architecture, not as a neutral science, but as a legitimizing construct, building a future and transforming the ethics of the present towards very deliberate ideological ends, and contingent on certain practices of alienation which themselves have historically laid the groundwork for later environmental and social crisis.

The thesis asks the question: what do we mean when we call an architecture ecological, and what sort of reality are we advocating within that practice.

The project is not staged explicitly as a critique of ecology, but rather a challenge to the overwhelming neutrality with which the ecological project is entertained within architectural discourses, under the premise that an ecological awareness must first entail an awareness of the means by which ecology constructs unreal realities in order to work for us.

The project takes place in Almeria, Spain, which in the last forty-five years has gone from the poorest region in Spain to one of the richest, through the wide-scale application of greenhouse urbanism. Almeria is currently the largest intensive agriculture site in the world (80,000 acres) and supplies the majority of winter produce to Europe.

But Almeria is also, in many ways, an accelerated microcosm of larger contemporary ecological paradigms, what Keller Easterling called an autonomous world. Almeria is a place in which the apparent neutrality of ecological ideologies are consistently leveraged towards technological transformations of the landscape, precipitating widespread environmental and social fallout conditions. In Almeria, ecological ideologies consistently serve as the legitimizing platforms by which transformation after transformation (each promising an ideal future) com-

pound the effects of peripheral disaster, all under the guise of a seemingly neutral science.

The thesis argues that within a condition in which neutral ecology is leveraged to legitimize specific ideological and economic positions, it may actually be the task of an ecological architecture to irrigate radical alternatives, not as ideal futures, but as provisional presents, alternating ecological life rafts within contested environmental conditions.

The thesis proposes one such alternate present. It interjects itself within the most recent techno-ecological shift from chemically applied agricultural practices to the promise of a genetically engineered future, a ‘clean’ Almeria in the wake of widespread chemical fallout.

The alternative is formed from a seemingly simple premise, to merely doubt that Almeria’s genetic turn won’t precipitate alternate forms of fallout equal to its chemically contested state.

Building discourse

2050: The Ecological Age: A Plausible Eco-Future Crises never last. We moved on, although onto what was never clear, but the evolution was certainly televised. Green seas, warmed into breeding grounds for mutations of algae, at first the object of public pandemonium, led to the green gold rush of the mid-21st century. Previously un-territorialized oceans were parceled into energy-producing leviathans. Strange creatures, the products of climatic cataclysm survived too, and while at first became the poster-children for Al Gore’s 2022 Powerpoint sensation entitled "I Told You So, F*ckers," eventually made their way into feature films as the new objects of public hilarity. The emerging industrial de-alienation of the mutant, the monster, and the accident led us to the discovery of new categories of aberrations: spiders who had evolved to survive on the rooftops of skyscrapers, bacterial parasites operating as configurative mechanisms within our DNA, or urban wildcats, re-inhabiting the abandoned homes evacuated after the housing collapse of 2035. Mutation was put to good use, and the ‘happy accident’ became the mantra of the age. But this retrospection on mutation also led us to the realization that while we had been worrying, the ecological (read: enlightenment) engine had been rolling up its sleeves. Air was no longer natural, but a fully-fledged tradable commodity since the 1980s, weather had been synthetically orchestrated over our airports since the 1960s, and ‘homegrown’ came in single application spray form. The catastrophe wasn’t so hard after all; in fact, most of us never even noticed.

2011: The Age of Insidious Neutrality But in my own environmental memory, green was only briefly the new green, to be replaced by the more inclusive blue, then the compromised brown and most recently the properly elegiac black. But the oddest thing about the way the environment has infiltrated architectural discourse within the last fifteen years is that it does so under the urgency of an absolute apocalyptic imperative, while simultaneously obscuring the most basic questions of an environmental practice, namely, what are we protecting and who are we protecting “it” for? “X is the new green” will certainly continue to change, but the prevailing, and unquestioned, environmental logic in both architecture and society at large seems doomed to be perpetually predicated on the idea that (to use Clinton’s gem of political wisdom) we’re always unquestionably sure what the definition of is is.

What sort of implicit positions (political, economic, social, architectural, religious?) are we unwittingly advocating for when we invoke the is with cool assurance to claim that such-and-such a color is green (read: natural), and is therefore good?

The neutral is is a residue, not of the environmental movement itself, but of the ecological platforms which sustain environmental discourses. Ecology, as a discipline, is in the business of producing the is (right under our noses no less), the organizing logic by which reality itself can be systematized and moralized into an alternate unreal-reality and productively acted upon. Ecology instrumentalizes reality by converting it into an unreal version of itself. But if all ecologies, from the techno-utopian to the romantic, function as the meta-constructs which structure debates on nature and society, which entertain environmental discourses in architecture, politics and other social practices, and condition our most basic positions towards the natural, then one must also be suspicious of the overwhelming neutrality with which the ecological-project is undertaken.

Or in other words, why have we, a group of well-educated, critically-thinking students, allowed ourselves to be so easily convinced of the force-fed is, without ever asking what this is stands for? Without wondering if the is I’m talking about is the is she’s talking about, or if any contemporary is is merely an is soup of ises (sp?) past.

Or in other-other words, what are we talking about when we describe something (anything) as ecological? And aren’t we being a little naïve when we invoke that phrase with such authoritative confidence?

“If today, human relationships with the socius, the psyche and ‘nature’ are increasingly deteriorating, then this is attributable not only to objective damage and pollution but to the ignorances and fatalistic passivity with which those issues are confronted by individuals and responsible authorities.” —Felix Guattari Slovenian-born cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek points out the problematic (read: insidious) neutrality of the ecological-project, rephrasing Marx’ 1843 edict that "Religion is the opiate of the masses," by calling ecology the masses’ opiate in the 21st century.

He goes on to argue that, like Marx’ conception of religion, ecology functions as a neutral opiate precisely by orchestrating the misreading of its ideological platform as reality itself (unrealreality confused with reality). And architectural discourse is certainly not immune to this misreading of ecological ideology as reasonable reality. One merely has to examine even the most ‘cutting-edge’ architectural discourses and count the number of times the ecological-project is invoked without anyone ever questioning what kind of ecology we’re talking about and what kind of world that ecology is building.

Perhaps a more ornery student than myself might question ecology’s apparent neutrality by putting forth the somewhat simple observation that the 19th century development of ecological thinking has gone hand-in-hand with what Paul Virilio calls the radical acceleration of an age of ecological catastrophes, and a global ‘reality’ in which a consciousness of often horrific environmental crises has become a daily norm. Or in a review, one particularly frustrated reviewer might bring up the fact that it's not only the GSD but the National Socialist Part (read: Nazis) who published books on ecology and perhaps it’s high-time we begin to ask ourselves for a bit more self-conscious application of this seemingly neutral term.

Ecology as Totalitarian Enterprise “The notion of ‘environment’ began to occupy public consciousness precisely when it was realized that no human action could count on an outside environment any more: there is no reserve outside which the unwanted consequences of our collective actions could be allowed to linger and disappear from view.”

—Bruno Latour One might begin to examine the properties of this strange neutrality-observation in greater depth by recognizing the operations ecology has to perform in order to maintain its insidious neutrality. As a particular rationalization of the relationship between nature and society for unlocking natural systems to acts of social manipulation, it is perhaps the most basic operation of the ecology-as-unreality-construction to resist the presence of pluralities. After all, my own personal fantasies seem pain-

Curtis roth

171

24 Harvesting

18 Milking

8 Pollinating

2 Soil Prep

Border Tampering

4 Planting

White-Washed Claustrophobia

24 Harvesting

18 Milking

8 Pollinating

4 Planting

2 Soil Prep

Transparent Tampering

International Claustrophobia Global Tomato Market Primary Export Markets Migration Routes 15,000,000 Tons of Tomatoes

CID

E APP

TION LICA

PHO SPHORUS APPLICATION 2010

PESTI

2005

2000

1995

1990

1985

2000

1990

1980

1970

1960

1950

ON LICATI EN APP NITROG

GB (63%)

GER (52%)

FR (74%)

2010

2000

1990

1980

1970

Almerian Economy

SP (86%) Second Richest Region in Spain

Second Poorest Region in Spain

fully implausible only when pulled out of their isolation and made to rub against everyday reality (or worse, someone else’s fantasies!) From Haeckel’s cataloging of life past-and-present to Buckminster Fuller’s Inventory of Global Energy Resources, or OMA’s Roadmap to a European ‘Enertopia’ in 2050, each new ecological-era seemingly begins like every era before it, by producing a total-reality vacuum (quite literally a utopia) within which the logics of ecology can unfold, uninterrupted with the messy contamination of reality. A catalog of everything, an all inclusive map, or a 1:1 equation for the future. As Bruno Latour points out, the production of totalities is a character trait ecology owes to its modernist parents, who for centuries have been particularly “good at displacing, at migrating in various utopias, at eliminating entities, at vacuuming, at breaking with the past, and at claiming to go outside.” If ecology is the construction of a productive unreal-reality, then its very existence is dependent on being perceived as a totality, not as a construction but as reality itself. Or in other words, uncertainty is inherently unecological, and should be avoided at all costs.

But if it can be called the fundamental property of ecology to operate within a total-reality vacuum, then it should also be recognized that the construction of any plausible realityvacuum is contingent on acts of radical alienation from reality.

The stability of any ecological agenda relies on the ability to convincingly erase the monstrosities caught between its ruth-

less categorization of reality. Darwin himself, recognizing the dangers of a vacuumed ecology, argued for a radical incubation of uncertainty, claiming that all life falls into one of three categories: a species, a variant or a monster. These three categories function reflexively, meaning that one is only defined through its relationship to the other two; and perhaps most importantly, their definition can only be declared retroactively. Meaning for the present, as Darwin himself put it, “A great door for the entry of doubt and conjecture is opened.” But of course, doubt is any unreal-reality’s worst nightmare.

“The way we approach ecological problematics is, maybe, the crucial ideology of today. And I use ideology in the traditional sense, as illusory, wrong ways of thinking and perceiving reality” —Slavoj Žižek An understanding of ecology’s historic operations of alienation has the potential to expose what I believe to be the crucial paradox facing contemporary ecology in an age of intense ecological anxiety. As Hannah Arendt aptly points out, “progress and catastrophe are two sides of the same coin.” The unreal-realities of ecology make the nature-society duality work towards particular ends, but are contingent on alienating certain forms of reality which never truly disappear and ultimately lay the foundations for eventual ecological catastrophe. It’s worth

Building discourse

noting that catastrophe always occurs as unconsidered sideeffects of progress itself. It’s not the combustion engine, but the engine’s exhaust which now heats up the atmosphere; it’s not the tractor, but the tractor’s unintended effects on soil erosion that lead to mass desertification. Virilio’s concept of Grey Ecology reinforces the notion that inherent to the formulation of any ecology of alienation is the formulation of ecological disaster (environmental alienation = environmental crisis). Progress produces its own catastrophe: the invention of the plane is the simultaneous invention of the plane crash, the invention of the nuclear reactor is the invention of the catastrophic meltdown, and the invention of ecologies of alienation is the invention of the ecological crisis.

An alternate ecological approach to architecture must realize that while ecology is perhaps the most effective construct for instrumentalizing our relationship to the environment, it’s also an inherently unsustainable enterprise in and of itself. The paradox of ecology is that its promise to save us is contingent on the fact that it will eventually kill us. This thesis seeks to put forth the notion that it is within the radical incubation of contradictory ecological alternatives, accidents, and monstrosities, that ecological architecture can not only consciously operate within this ecological paradox, but allow the paradox itself to serve as a platform by which active political choice between contradictory alternate-realities can enter ecological discourse. As Virilio later suggests, “consciousness only survives through the awareness of accidents.” Or as Guattari argues, “the implications of any given negative development may or may not be catastrophic; whatever the case, it tends today to be simply accepted without question.”

Alienation as Architectural Operation Architecture has long been complicit in the erasure of ecological monstrosities; the predicament of the monster’s relationship to society saw its most perfect encapsulation in architecture through the short-lived emergence of a Victorian public institution typology, known retro-actively as the Evolutionary Accumulator. The simultaneous emergence of Darwin’s theories on species developments, chemical breakthroughs in the practice of taxidermy and the emerging Victorian principles of a neo-liberal self-governing society led to the production of a new type of ecological control. Unlike the traditional humanities, in which the stories of civilization were archived and interpreted in the objects of cultural production, the Evolutionary Accumulator allowed for a new archeological conception of the corpse itself.

These accumulators functioned as cultural memory machines, laying out all geologic time through the bodies of the past to be consumed at a glance. It was through the arrangement of history’s bodies in slow, evolutionary successions that accumulator curators classified a kind of nature which was inherently rational, occurring in glacial progressions from the lowliest of creatures to the Victorian male (the ultimate instantiation of rational civility). (Read: neo-liberal politics mis-recognized as ‘natural’ law).

But the accumulator’s architectural section reveals that behind the scenes, evolutionary progress was never quite so rational. Large archives in the accumulator’s back of house were

devoted to the storage and sorting of monsters, mutants who brought crisis to the Victorian social agenda. Monsters were defined as organisms which didn’t fit into the rational presentation of species development. They were aberrations, freaks which deconstructed the rational lineage of civilized nature. The monster brought the curators a kind of category crisis, and with it, the very real potential for social crisis.

In recent years, the same processes of alienation have re-infiltrated architectural discourse with a new vigor, not least of which came under the guise of ‘ecological urbanism’ (canonized by the recently published bible for considering issues of architecture and ecology). Felix Guatarri’s “The Three Ecologies” (perhaps the seminal text in provoking ‘ecological urbanism’) rather convincingly advocates for the idea that any component of subjectivity has the potential to create its own alternate reality, developing far beyond their ordinary state of equilibrium. Claiming that a “mental ecology demands rather that we face up to the logic of the ambivalence of desires wherever it is found...that we re-evaluate the ultimate goal of work and human activities in terms of criteria other than those of profit and productivity; that we acknowledge the need to mobilize individuals and social segments in ways that are always diverse and different.” In an ecological urbanist approach, it’s precisely this equilibrium which is maintained.

Ecological urbanism downgrades Guatarri’s revolutionary disruption of reality (as cognitively perceived, and socially maintained) to what Mohsen Mostafavi describes as “a set of sensibilities and practices that can enhance our approaches to urban development.” Seen in this light, even the most forwardthinking of ecological urban approaches merely augments existing paradigms of alienation, re-articulating modernity’s nature/society duality while apologizing for the apparent brutality of the duality itself (read: ecological urbanism = apologetic modernism). If architecture is to engage questions of ecology, it must be willing to re-conceive the nature of collectivity itself, and be inventive enough to put unpredictable sections through modernity’s nature/society duality.

Perhaps more hopefully, architecture’s complicit role in ecology as a regime of alienation has not only been recognized but critiqued through the inventive collective in recent research projects such as David Gissen’s Subnature, which develops a catalog of social/nature hybrids historically erased from architectural discourse. It is also present in the work of architects like R&Sie(n) who have defined their over-arching project as an attack on the alienating tendencies of contemporary ecology by developing uncomfortable, oddly productive relationships with ecology’s marginalized monstrosities like dust, insects, pollution and infection—described by Stanford Kwinter as ‘Eco-Noir’ (incidentally, an unacknowledged ‘borrowing’ by Kwinter from literary theorist Timothy Morton).

While this work has challenged the alienating tendencies of ecological discourses, it has also done so merely through small scale disjunctures, discomforts and the organization of strangebedfellows. But an additional conceptual leap from the work of these ecological disjunctures—one this project sees as an absolute imperative—would entail that if ecology pieces together a world through categorization and alienation, it simultaneously

Curtis roth

173

excludes an infinite number of alternate possible worlds. Acid Ecologies doesn’t advocate for a ‘return to reality,’ ideology’s age-old red herring for legitimizing unreality, but instead argues for the feverish construction of simultaneous alternate realities.

Meaning ecological architecture might be framed not merely around the advancement of a particular ecological project, but in the irrigation of possible alternate projects, entire ecosystems formed out of the contested monstrosities of status-quo ecology, each championed by its own group of constituents.

Acid Ecologies “What political ecologists should have done was slow down the movement, take their time, then burrow down beneath the dichotomies like the proverbial old mole. Such, at least, is my argument. Instead of cutting the Gordian knot, I am going to shake it around in a lot of different ways. I shall untie a few strands in order to knot them back together differently.”

—Bruno Latour The concept of Acid Ecologies, a simultaneous play on Gregory Bateson’s ‘High Ecology’ and the genre of Acid Westerns sparked by Sergio Leone’s Almerian-filmed westerns (both products of the 1960s) entails, a bit like an acid trip, the reappropriation of ecological reality’s constituents towards alternate ends, believing that each piece of reality might be equally at home in an alternate reality, a reality with a radically different future. It relies on Guy Debord’s concept of detournment, along with Rem Koolhaas’ well-worn advocation that critical architecture can be as much a critique of given systems as it can the fanatical postponement of judgement, and the maintenance, articulation and even nurturing of constant alternatives to any present reality.

The articulation of simultaneous alternate ecological platforms that this thesis is arguing for is both a de-mythification of the ecological promise of perfect-progress, and a re-stating of the ecological task as the perpetual construction of uncertain life-rafts away from singular (mythical) ecological ideologies towards ecologies of contested multiplicity. The project is contingent on three interrelated architectural and urban operations.

Articulating the Alternate Like Virilio’s Museum of the Accident, which seeks a new consciousness through the awareness of ideology’s alienated side-effects, alternate ecological platforms must re-assemble monstrosity into the foundational elements of their unreal-realities.

Alternate ecologies will gain their social and political leverage by re-assembling the aberrations erased by traditional ecologies.

This will be, in part, a continuation of Gissen’s Subnature project or R&Sei(n)’s radical de-alienation, or in other words, the reincorporations and, more importantly, re-instrumentalization of erased natures into architectural, urban and economic scenarios. But it will also require this work to move beyond a mere aestheticization of monstrosity towards new cultural constructs, institutions or technologies which take monstrosity not as an alternative but as a foundational organizing component.

This portion of the thesis’ agenda can be read into the work of architectural projects like Eva Franch I Gilabert’s Ecologies of Excess studio at Rice University, which re-conceptualizes the excesses of traditional urban scenarios as the foundational grounds for new social and political ecosystems. Franch I Gilabert theorizes an ecological movement for the 22nd century in which sociopolitical transformations shift ecology away from the modernist utopian ideals towards the radical incorporation of the monster: “The Ecologies of Excess movement introduced a radical epistemological change in relation to the 21st-century sustainability movement or the 20th-century Modern movement: there were no principles to follow, no ideals to fulfill. While in the past architecture had been built according to certain ideals, models of efficiency or control systems, Ecologies of Excess provided us with a guide to thinking, designing and building based on what we, as simple human beings, are and produce: excess.”

The Simultaneous Alternative Unlike Ecologies of Excess however, this thesis does not explicitly seek the grounds for a new ecology, but the continual incubation of simultaneous ecological (read: reality) alternatives. Contingent on the concept of the alternative is the concept of the local. Alternate ecologies will not emerge from the ‘res extensa’ of modernity’s ecologies but through the fallout of ecology in highly contested localities. It’s precisely at the point where the grand narratives of eco-utopias rub against the messy conditions of everyday reality that ideological platforms can be contested with their radical alternatives.

Latour theorizes the relevance of the local in reevaluating ecology through actor-networks by claiming, “The great paradox of our [Bruno Latour and Peter Sloterdijk’s] two enterprises is that spheres and networks are ways first to localize the global so as, in a second move, to provide more space in the end than the mythical “outside” that had been devised by the nature-andsociety mythology.” The thesis will advance the position that ecological alternatives will emerge from the contested particulars of individual, local networks, as opposed to over-arching ideological platforms. Acid ecologies will find happy accidents in hegemonic ecology’s monstrosities, its waste, its disenfranchised ‘natures,’ its risks and fears, not as new singular agendas but as multiple, fragmented ecological platforms.

Assembling Non-consensual Constituents The final component of incubating acid ecologies is the articulation of the alternate as a symbolic political fragment.

Alternate ecologies are supported by constituents, both human and non-human, but exist only within a contested landscape. It thus becomes necessary to articulate not an ecological consensus, but the impossibility of consensus as the grounds for an open ecological playing field. In a formal sense, this operation owes much of its thinking to the work of Bernard Tschumi in Architecture and Disjunction, where he attempts to theorize the reconstruction of urban constituencies among a condition he describes as “madness,” or the over-arching disjunction between

Building discourse

33,600 Cubic Feet of Compost: Burn-Off Week 1 (+130 Degrees F)

67,200 Cubic Feet of Clay: Burn-Off Week 24 (-9 Degrees F)

30,000 Cubic Feet of Sand (Stolen): Burn-Off Week 30

Curtis roth

175

Building discourse

1. Contain Dust Flow

2. Re-Route Clean Wind

3. Occupy Clean Air Corridor 4. Launch Dust Sectionally

5. Channel Escape Valves

Announcing the Migrantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Presence

Design evolution diagrams

Curtis roth

177

Concealing the Migrantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Presence

Above: Interior view

Building discourse

Bacteriological Quarantine Zones Urbanized Territories The Road to Europe Flash Flood Corridors Ecological Preserves Export Infrastructure

Fla

Flood Corrid or sh s

Scale of Flooding Event Flooded Greenhouses Copyright Seed Run-Off Chemical Run-Off Engineered Ecologies 1.600.000 Gallons 203 Greenhouses 14.5 Tons of Seed 32.5 Tons of Chemicals 49 Ecologies 660.00 Gallons 124 Greenhouses 11 Tons of Seed 25 Tons of Chemicals

Flooding Trenches

37 Ecologies

1/Decade

660.00 Gallons 124 Greenhouses 11 Tons of Seed 9.5 Tons 12.5 Ecologies

Accumulation Pools

Circulation Routes

1/Month

1/Year

Staged Flooding

Curtis roth

179

use and sociopolitical value (a bit like ecology no?): “Our contemporary ‘mad’ condition inevitably suggests new and unforeseen regroupings of its fragments. No longer linked in a coherent whole, independent from their past, these autonomous fragments can be recombined through a series of permutations whose rules have nothing to do with those of classicism or modernism.”

More recently, the project of non-consensual constituencies has been taken up by Alexander D’Hooghe in his work on the liberal monument, in which the insidiously neutral condition of urban sprawl is re-conceptualized into contradictory groupings of specific ideological enclaves, “screaming their own desires into the surrounding emptiness.” D’hooghe resuscitates Umberto Eco’s concept of the open work, in which multiple, even contradictory political positions are concretized through the open interpretation of multiple simultaneous realities in a shared field.

In short, 1: Acid Ecologies seek to re-instrumentalize the alienated fragments of existing ecologies into new alternateecologies. 2: to incubate contradictory alternate-ecological positions as the mechanism for perpetual ecological consciousness.

And 3: to build constituencies around these positions as plausible interpretations of the now hegemonic ecological unreality.

Constructing Alternate Publics Almeria’s defunct miracle, an 80,000-hectares enclave of intensive greenhouse urbanism on the southern coast of Spain, operating on the now-normalized cusp of chemical catastrophe, has been reinvigorated through the promise of a genetically engineered salvation, where measurable chemical disasters are neutralized through the production of contamination on an immeasurable scale. Acid Ecologies imagines the possibility to doubt Almeria’s cleaner future through three hallucinogenic permutations of the miracle’s existing catastrophes: bacteriological infection, contaminated flash-flooding and corporately controlled seed migrating dust-storms. The project attempts to uncover alternate forms of agency in a landscape where the production of disaster has become the norm.

The miracle has always been made manifest through processes of multiplication, from one loaf to a thousand, or in Almerian terms, from one harvest to a miraculous two. The first harvest, engineered through the transparent sheen of polycarbonate, tampering with the approaching effects of the winter sun; the second paints the plastic white in a desperate attempt to reverse the effects produced by the first and control the rapidly escalating heat of the Mediterranean summer. If the first harvest is defined by a transparent mediation with its surroundings, the white-washed harvest sees the last tomatoes of the year produced through a claustrophobic battle with the very conditions that facilitated the first.

Like a territorially-scaled greenhouse, Almeria’s recent history has macro-cosmically mirrored the phobic transition from transparency to claustrophobia. If the first decades of the miracle were characterized by the exploitation of southern borders for the endless supply of migrant labor and the taxing of northern borders into richer European produce markets, recent decades, carrying with them widespread outbreaks of tomato contamination, racial violence, and competing sub-fruit harvests in the very same regions where Almeria once cultivated cheap labor, have transformed Almeria from the world’s richest tomato middle-man into a provisional city of plastic, operat-

ing in the extremes between their own ideal futures and their impending obsolescence.

But unlike your everyday supernatural event, the plastic miracle, in its last throws of optimism, has given birth to an alternate miracle, through the promised salvation of genetic modification. Under the messianic guarantee of a cleaner tomato, Almeria has been transformed into the global capital of applied genetic engineering, a cleaner cure for claustrophobia in which increasingly obscure scales of transformation compound the effects of peripheral disaster by casting catastrophes into further realms of immeasurability. But what if it were possible to leverage doubt in Almeria’s salvation, not as resistance, but as the vector of desire from which Almeria’s latent, but unconsidered, alternate trajectories might emerge?

Genetic Almeria has become the unplanned pregnancy of the dromospheric turn from the chemical to the biological, from reduced sperm counts in German vesicular glands to defective infants in France, from planned-poison to sequencedengineering, where terrified Europeans with rapidly enlarging prostates increasingly prefer the unknown-unknown to the known-unknown. But Almeria’s genetically engineered turn can also be seen as one of modern ecology’s inevitabilities, trading calamity for uncertainty: Pyrethroids replaced with transgenesis, contaminated groundwater and chemically induced madness among the Moroccans, replaced with the brilliant shine of softball-sized tomatoes and white lab-coats imported from Switzerland.

However, Almeria’s genetic-turn also briefly exposes the often camouflaged, totalitarian nature of progress, and with it, the possibility to doubt, not as a form of disbelief, but as a hallucinogenic questioning of the processes by which the agents of progress, under the guise of ecology, conceal their hegemonic conviction. In the moment of Almeria’s genetic-turn, it may be precisely through the fanatic championing of the latent possibilities of a chemically-poisoned-present that Alternative Almerias may emerge. Acid Ecologies attempts to uncover alternate futures within Almeria’s problematic contemporary, harnessing chemical catastrophes towards contradictory ends through the construction of three enclaves of doubt within a landscape of blind-optimism in a now-ubiquitous eco-utopiangenetic future.

Building discourse

Curtis roth

181

Building discourse

By harnessing the topography to orchestrate the flow of Almeriaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s catastrophic run-off, over time, each striation within The Evolutionary Accumulator curates alternate strains of toxins, genetically-modified seed supply and parasitic ecologies. An enclave for the production of uncensored tomatoes within a landscape of genetic control.

Curtis roth

183

Building discourse

Curtis Roth MIT / Master of Architecture 2012 Portland State University / Bachelor of Architecture 2008

In the months following the completion of my thesis, I participated in the research and early design work for Höweler + Yoon Architecture’s entry in the 2012 Audi Urban Futures Award. It was a large scale research project which looked at the history of transportation technologies and how they have shaped the I-95 corridor from Boston to Washington DC. Since then, I have been teaching design studios and theory seminars for the past two years at the Knowlton School of Architecture at the Ohio State University, first as the Trott Distinguished Visiting Professor and currently as the Lefevre Emerging Practitioner Fellow. Along with my teaching, I’ve been conducting a number of long-term research and design projects which have been lectured on and exhibited here at Knowlton.

For me, both the challenge and the pleasure of thesis was in attempting to negotiate the gap between a project, in the most expansive sense, and a brief, perhaps in the most restrictive sense.

The thesis really requires you, not only to articulate a specific agenda for architecture, but really to argue for that agenda or set of ambitions by situating them amongst a self-curated archive of disciplinary debates. This is on its own an almost impossibly huge task, and will almost necessarily produce more questions than you can feasibly hope to probe in a semester. So while you’re attempting to tackle something impossibly large, you also have to look at something almost impossibly small in the form a brief, a typology, a site, a story or the like, as a way of finding those large agendas in specific circumstances. So I suppose that the most

important thing I learned, and the thing that I’m still continuing to learn, is how to locate a good version of something small inside something impossibly large, and conversely, how to not lose faith that there’s something large inside of the tiny thing you’ve been staring at for a year.

Thinking back on your thesis, how do you feel it has or has not influenced your career?

Perhaps I haven’t yet defined my career enough to answer that question properly, but in terms of my current work, it would be impossible to do what I’m now doing had I not done gone through the process of producing a thesis project, precisely because of my answer to the previous question. To teach a studio is effectively to formulate a thesis for a group of students to work through; you’re forced to decide that working in a particular way or on a certain set of questions is somehow relevant, both for someone’s individual education and simultaneously relevant for the discipline at large. I think this requires you to be extremely confident in finding productive uncertainties, to be able to locate interesting issues and know how to formulate architectural briefs as a way of engaging those issues, even without necessarily being able to see the work that those investigations will produce. I don’t think I would be able to do that today had I not had to do that personally with my own work. In perhaps a more literal sense, many of the discourses and histories that I explored through the initial formulation

of my thesis proposal have led to further research and figure prominently in some of the history seminars I have been teaching over the last few years.

What is the one thing you would have done differently or what do you wish you had known in advance?

If I had to do it over again I think I would loosen my preconceptions about what the products of the thesis should be.

Developing a thesis is really a year-long process, so as you’re initially working through your ideas and figuring out how to set yourself up with an interesting collection of questions, it’s natural to begin to see the work before you’ve made it, or at least to have a certain feeling about what the end product should be like. This is actually a really peculiar thing within the architectural studio environment because as a student, I was totally comfortable showing up on the first day of studio with absolutely no idea what I would have at the end of the semester; that is part of its appeal. But when I began the thesis design semester, I’d already seen the project in my dreams for a year and attempted to conjure its not-yet-existing atmospheres in thesis prep reviews and written pieces. So I knew the project long before I’d made it. This is both a productive and potentially problematic thing, because while it provides you with an ability to focus on the aspects of your project you know are absolutely critical, there were also many moments in the thesis process where I ended up missing really interesting things that were right

Curtis roth

in front of me because I was trying to design a far less interesting vision I’d had six months previously.

What was the biggest advantage for doing your thesis at MIT?

Definitely the people you are given the chance to work with, both in terms of faculty advisors but also your classmates.

Because MIT’s classes are so small, you are developing your thesis with roughly twenty other classmates, meaning you know very well what everyone else is working on and how they are approaching their own projects; this results in a very intense and productive environment. At the same time, the thing I’m most grateful to MIT for was the chance to work with advisors who, by that point, knew me very well either through previous classes I’d taken from them or independent research work. This was absolutely invaluable because they already knew my proclivities as well as my weaknesses, so they could both read some of my mid-thesis shorthand but also knew what aspects of the project I was, perhaps problematically, avoiding.

What was particularly timely about your thesis? Was it technique or topical?

It is a bit of a strange thing actually, because while doing my thesis I certainly would have argued it was a topical project, particularly because it was so intrinsically built on the peculiarities and protocols of a very specific region

185

and dealing with a somewhat obscure set of conditions. While I’m certainly still interested in the topics that my thesis was exploring, it has really been the methodologies and techniques that the thesis relied on, in terms of its ambitions, its use of history as a form of narration and the techniques of representation which are the things that continue to both frustrate and excite me today.

Building discourse

Above: First Project, Graphic fictions

Curtis roth

187

Past Perfect Three Islands in Peru, Reconstruction Through Three Acts Ohio State, 2012-present KSA Trott Visiting Professor, 2012

The imaginary voyage, a European realist genre of the novel, popular from the seventeenth to early nineteenth century, historically depicted voyages which culminated in cross-cultural encounters between European travelers and the people of the antipodes. A popular way to narrate and disseminate utopian fantasies of colonial expansion to the new world, the imaginary voyage genre worked to normalize the politics of colonialism by presenting European cultural domination as beneficial, welcome, and inevitable. But the peculiar thing about these tales is that they weren’t altogether tales; in fact, they were hybrid forms of literature often comprised of pure fiction, mixed indistinguishably from actual travelogues made by European seamen traveling the coast of Peru. And it was this hybridization of the author with the documentarian which often conditioned European desires for exotic commodities, from fruits to craftwork arriving from the recently conquered New World, by investing these objects with an only partially fictional magic.

The last bit of magic to be squeezed from an increasingly closing New World was bird shit. In the mid-nineteenth century, guano, or bird feces and the disintegrated bones of seabirds, was the most concentrated form of phosphorous and nitrogen readily available on earth, rendering it a potent crop fertilizer whose powers bordered on the magical. Guano accumulated primarily on a constellation of desert islands off of the western coast of Peru, the driest place on earth. And while instrumental in the rise of both the Incan and Aztec Empires, these islands would lay barren for the next three hundred years, with colonial occupiers having no knowledge as to the chemical potency of guano. It wasn’t until 1802 when, in preparatory research for his five volume geographical treatise Cosmos, the Prussian geographer Alexander von Humboldt rediscovered the efficacy of phosphorus-rich guano as a growing fertilizer. The samples he would send to a chemist in Western France were quickly leaked to the general public, sparking the nineteenth century’s White Gold Rush, the final thrust of European pacific expansion which entailed the parceling of the ocean itself and its attendant desert islands into discrete guano collecting territories. But the fetishized commodity of guano not only cultivated real crops at an exponentially increasing magnitude, but a collection of utopian dreams as it was promoted in literature and political discourses as an agricultural salvation, from such diverse ideological sources as the southern slave states to Frederich Engels.

So while guano’s efficacy would prove to be over-inflated, it was here, not in chemical fact, but political fiction, that the fertilization of guano really took hold.

But while these utopian dreams, inspired by the exotic nature of this putrid off-white powder inspired diverse narratives of salvation in the import countries, the condition on the ground was in fact dramatically different. The islands were mined extensively through the second half of the 19th century, almost exclusively by tens of thousands of slave laborers who worked with little to no food and water in toxic environmental conditions, resulting in the deaths of over fifteen thousand laborers over the course of the White Gold Rush. By the beginning of the twentieth century guano survived only as a fiction, its price perpetually increasing along with the acquisitions from guano speculators despite the fact that usable concentrations of it had all but disappeared from the surface of the earth.

But recently guano’s utopian dream has been revived as a new type of political fiction, not chemical but historical, as part of Peru’s attempt to remake its global identity through the reproduction, packaging and presentation of its own architectural and landscape heritage, a peculiar form of narrative historiography in which practices of architectural history are increasingly conflated with contemporary political and economic agendas.

In 2009, Peru announced the sensationalist, and again, perhaps fictional, plan to preserve the twenty-one desert islands historically associated with guano mining through the construction of an archipelago of island-based cultural centers. But where conventional acts of architectural preservation focus on disclosing a significance presumed to be already embodied in the material content of the site, the preservation of the guano islands raises the quite peculiar question of how to preserve a barren island which was only ever half real to begin with. Preservation here works in the past-perfect tense, where historic fictions operate as contemporary political currency and the question becomes not which facts are best to be disclosed, but which fictions are most useful to be reanimated. Past Perfect was a six month long research project exploring the role of the architectural historical archive as a political instrument for reshaping the heritage of three desert islands within Peru’s constellation of bird shit fictions. The project consisted of two parts: first, the collection of a historical archive related to the divergent and incompatible historical and political narratives associated with the islands.

And second, three acts of preservation which use the archive to simulate a collection of circumstances that never precisely took place, imagining architecture not only as the production of objects, but the rewriting of aesthetic narratives which provide them with sense.

Top: Second Project, Phosphorescent Paintbrush Expanding Section Above: Second Project, Painting Ica Centroâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Doppelganger

2035

2025

2013

Building discourse

Curtis roth

189

Above: Third Project, Re-Packing the Colonial Plan

Reorganizing the Plan Towards the Fake Geoglyph

Below: Third Project, Thatch as new strutural typology

Existing Colonial Ruins Packed Thatch Monsters Circulatory Excavations

Building discourse

Curtis roth

191

Archival Architecture Architectural Heritage as a Form of Political Discourse Ohio State, 2012-present KSA Trott Visiting Professor, 2012

Building discourse

Curtis roth

193

Building discourse

1:200 site model

Nadya Volicer

195

Nadya Volicer

Life in the Woods: Production and Consumption of the Urban Forest M.Arch Thesis 2012 Advisor: Sheila Kennedy Readers: Andrew Scott, Mark Jarzombek

=

The use of wood is fraught with paradox.

Wood as a building material is embraced for its naturalness, while the cutting of trees is indicted as a destruction of nature. Wood is lauded for its structural properties and visual appearance, but challenged for its lack of durability and dimensional stability; all traits tied to the original tree. The controversial field of transgenics further complicates matters as scientists now work to genetically modify trees for improved yield and performance. Many environmentalists argue that the risk of infecting native tree populations is too great, while others see potential for sparing native populations by using purpose-grown alternatives.

Both camps claim to be working to halt global climate change. How can we locate today’s wood industry within this disparity? Dilemmas inherent to wood use are entangled with conflicting attitudes towards nature. The urban forest is uniquely poised to address this debate through an opportunity to intersect nature and industry within the public realm.

Phasing phyto-remediation, timber and biomass production over time, the strategy of this thesis is to co-opt a network of under

=

utilized and contaminated parcels in Boston’s developing Innovation District as a system of productive landscapes. Transgenic trees are here considered as a means of stretching a given species’ function and yield, and offer new opportunities for design. Initial years of tree growth provide plots that double as public green space while improved parcels are open for future development. On one such plot, the project envisions a wooden architecture that accounts for its own material, energy, and even the soil upon which it is built. By integrating systems of production and consumption into the public life of the city, the relationship between people and natural resources can be reestablished; the paradox made public.

William Cronon, Changes in the land, 1983 “By drawing the boundaries within which their exchange and production occur, human communities label certain subsets of their surrounding ecosystems as resources, and so locate the meeting places between economics and ecology.”

Wildlands and Woodlands, harvard Forest, 2010 “managed woodlands forge important connections between people, nature, and responsible resource use by offering citizens the opportunity to be involved in their own sustenance, to understand the connections between patterns of consumption and their environmental consequences, and to witness the link between forested habitats and biodiversity.”

Building discourse

left: Forest cover in massachusetts, 1830 and 1999. after Foster and aber, 2004. opposite, top: Per capita wood consumption and harvest per forested area. after Berlik, Kittredge and Foster, 2002. opposite, bottom: Per capita wood consumption and harvest per forested area. after Berlik, Kittredge and Foster, 2002.

A Brief Forest History Along the Mass Pike beyond the inner belt lies Woody Guthrie’s “ribbon of highway,” flanked by an impenetrable carpet of green.

To the unwitting observer, it appears entrenched and ancient.

This is not unlike the misinterpretation by early European colonists who imagined they had stumbled upon “an untouched Eden,” as Shepard Krech explains in The Ecological Indian.

“North America was a manipulated continent. Indians had long since altered the landscape by burning or clearing woodland for farming and fuel...this nature was cultural not virgin, anthropogenic not primeval.”[1] As the settlers misunderstood, we too fail to fully comprehend the extent to which we live in a constructed landscape. Though the forests colonists confronted were not unaltered by humans, they were extensive and covered nearly 90% of the land in Massachusetts. This bounty overwhelmed Europeans who were fleeing, among other things, timber famine. While the early colonists did view trees as an abundant resource, they also came to identify the forest with darkness and fear. “Colonials viewed the endless woodlands as an impediment to cultivated agriculture and to the building of transportation arterials...forested land symbolized savagery— the antithesis of civilization. Clearing the forests, therefore, meant progress and obedience to the biblical command to subdue the earth.”[2] By the mid-nineteenth century, nearly 70% of the land in Massachusetts had been leveled. [3]

Voices of warning were heard soon after colonial settlements took root. But it was not until 1864 that George Perkins Marsh published Man and Nature (or Physcial Geography as Modified by Human Action), a book credited with launching the conservation movement in America once and for all. In subsequent years, this movement would prove to embody the tension Henry David Thoreau had identified at Walden two decades earlier: “nature for itself versus nature for humans.” [5] This tension holds particular significance for the state of Massachusetts. Currently the third most densely populated state in the U.S., [6] Massachusetts now enjoys 62% forest cover, 85% of which is classified as timberland (capable of growing more than 20 cubic feet per acre per year). Though an affluent state with one of the highest wood products consumption rates in the U.S., tree harvesting rates are relatively low. The effect is a heavy dependence on imports, leading to the extraction of trees from ever distant forests, where perhaps environmental oversight is more lax. This paradigm is known as “the illusion of preservation,” as identified in a paper published by the Harvard Forest.

[7] Sites of resource production are far from sites of consumption, eroding the relationship between people and natural resources.

Nadya Volicer

Per capita wood consumption and harvest per forested area. after Berlik, Kittredge and Foster, 2002.

197

Building discourse

edge

City park

greenway

Boulevard

Courtyard

Cabin in the forest

City estate

roof garden

Forest ring

mosaic

street trees

Watershed

City in the forest

island

this page: Forest types

Buffer

Nadya Volicer

199

The Urban Forest The definition of an urban forest ranges from an actual forest growing in close relation to a city or town to a collection of trees or woody plants found in or among human settlements.

In The Forest and the City, Cecil Konijnendijk defines city forests as “cultural forest landscapes that are social and cultural constructs, created at the meeting point of culture and nature, of the human and non-human.”[8] Locating urban forests at such cultural intersections offers opportunities for engaging the public in a broader discourse about non-urban forests, trees and the wood industry.

arBoretum, landsCaPe laBoratory, and Postindustrial historically, the arboretum was a garden within the city into which exotic species were transplanted for the purposes of botanical research and experimentation. Foreign plants were tested against local climates and hybrid species developed. results were then shared with the public as means of education and entertainment. the oldest public arboretum in north america, the arnold arboretum of harvard university, continues in this tradition. it consists of 265 acres of a vast number of trees, plants and shrubs, and an on-site research facility. the arnold arboretum’s stated mission is to “examine plant diversity—from genomic, developmental, organismic, evolutionary, and ecosystem perspectives—in order to foster greater understanding and appreciation of plant life in its full complexity.” this mission is public through free and open access to the arboretum every day of the year. the landscape laboratory is a relatively new model of urban forest in scandinavian countries. the idea is to create full scale studies of different landscape systems that double as outdoor recreational spaces with goals from education to research to communication. research is aimed at afforestation, testing both traditional forest management techniques and innovative methods side by side. housing is situated in and amongst the test forests so that the experiment becomes a platform for public discourse. in post-industrial landscapes, many opportunities arise for appropriating derelict structures towards a new end. in some cases, vegetation will quickly take over a once inhabited area without need for encouragement. the urban-industrial Woodland model is an

example in which designers work alongside the re-encroachment of the forest in order to create a new kind of hybrid. no longer industry, not quite considered nature, this typology offers the public something in between. the Zollverein Coal mine industrial Complex in essen, germany is an oft cited example. once a coal mine, now an architectural showcase for the likes of oma and sanaa, it is now a World heritage site under unesCo and is included in the european route of industrial heritage.

Forested infrastructure is another model whereby trees and plants are placed in relation to existing infrastructure, whether operational or defunct. the city of Boston has several examples of this, including the southwest Corridor, the rose Fitzgerald Kennedy greenway, Frederick law olmstead’s emerald necklace and the Charles river Way. these greenways offer pedestrian or recreational access along designated transportation arterials, such as the mBta railway in the case of the southwest Corridor. they take the place of demolished infrastructure, such as the Big dig. in this instance, the rose Kennedy greenway echoes the form of the Central artery which now flows beneath a system of parks and planted islands. the emerald necklace consists of a series of green parcels that follow bodies of water as they wind throughout the city. in this way, rivers and streams become the infrastructure around which to organize the parks. more recently, the high line in manhattan, designed

by James Corner of Field operations (Project lead), diller scofidio + renfro, and planting designer Piet oudolf, is a stunning example of how derelict urban infrastructure can be renewed and given to the public as green space in an otherwise paved over area of the city.

Building discourse

Phase 1: Plant 94 acres in underdeveloped and contaminated parcels. year 1,2: Plant 94 acres in 10-foot rows, 436 trees per acre (47 loblolly timber pine, 47 acres of hybrid poplar for remediation, 40,984 trees total).

Phase 2: year 15, harvest trees from 75 acres and open remediated parcel for development. harvest all loblolly timber pine and harvest hybrid poplar from 75 acres leaving 19 acres planted. timber yield for construction of live/work community.

Phase 3: year 16, maintain biomass crop on 64 acres to power live/work community. Plant 45 acres of freeze-tolerant eucalyptus in 10-foot rows with 5 feet between trees (871 trees per acre).

Plant 19 acres of freeze-tolerant eucalyptus between existing hybrid poplar rows with 10 feet between rows and 5 feet between trees. remediated parcels open for development.

Nadya Volicer

201

this page: urban seawalls

Big Dig 1993 - 2007

Big Dig parcel remnants 2007 - present

Trucking route 1993 - present

Train route 1845 - 1997

Industrial wharfing 1805 - 1919 Industrial dereliction 1919 - present

Site The South Boston Waterfront, slated to become the new Innovation District where “groundbreaking technology” meets “environmental leadership” meets “ideas economy,” is an ideal location in which to situate the project. The designated district shares an edge with historic, residential South Boston to the southwest and is bounded by water on the remaining perimeter.

Due to its elevation and location, the site is under threat of inundation in the event of sea-level rise caused by climate change, a result of increased greenhouse gas emissions. This is in part because the area is an entirely constructed landscape, as it was land-filled in the late 1800’s, beginning with a series of industrial wharves reaching out from residential South Boston into salt marshland. Industries from foundries to rail yards to wool

factories came and went, leaving numerous parcels of underdeveloped, post-industrial land. Development on what could be prime Boston real estate has progressed in stops and starts and has effectively resulted in a permanent state of construction, or deconstruction. Residential areas such as the historic Fort Point neighborhood plead with would-be developers for more public green space to no avail. Meanwhile, large, vacant, and often contaminated lots lie fallow. These urban spaces have the potential to house a new industry, one that serves the public as it develops and provides a renewable yield: the urban forest.

Building discourse

Buildings developed as “logs” with a multilayered exterior bark and interior.

Live/Work in the Woods The specific site selected as the location of the live/work community is the former South Boston Railyard, a neighborhood hinge point and currently contaminated parcel. It is the very beginning of Dorchester Hill, rising one story from the northeast end of the site to the southwest, and the site at which early wharfing began. The massing was conceived as a jumble of “logs” laid down in the orientation of the original South Boston grid in order to channel the public from the residential neighborhood into the new Innovation District. The stacked log crossing at a diagonal provides intersection points within the packed logs for community program. Wooden boardwalks connect logs and adjacent public circulation, crossing into the public forest. The main spur of the railway, still operational, will

serve to transport biomass to the community by way of handcart from the productive forest. The abandoned spurs on the site serve as secondary pathways among the shade of trees on site.

Nadya Volicer

this invented wall section springs from the structural concepts of Brettstapel construction, namely a series of solid load bearing walls and perpendicular shear walls. it rethinks common insulation through the lens of genetically modified lumber, using an insulating box set between extensions of the Brettstapel stack. the box, built from de-densified wood, is ultra-light but hyper-insulating, and encloses a cavity into which wood chips, an industry by-product, can be placed for increased r-value. elongated shingles of super durable wood thinly clad the exterior, pinned in three places so that as

203

the humidity in the air shifts, so the cladding will ripple, reflecting the outside environment. the wall unit is pinned together with wooden dowels, leaving the paper air barrier sandwiched between the Brettstapel and the insulation box without punctures.

Building discourse

top: intersection plans Bottom: interior view opposite top: unit section opposite bottom: interior view

Nadya Volicer

205

At the crossroads of wood use and forest resources, the choice is hazy at best. Alternative materials abound yet are associated with other shortcomings. Solutions in science are attractive, but complicated by enduring disputes over the role of humans in

relation to nature. Strict preservationist positions too often favor a nature unadulterated by humans, while blatant disregard for the complex relations of ecological cause and effect are equally problematic. Though deeply embedded, these dilemmas reflect a culture that is continually unfolding. A history of deforestation and forest misuse in New England has shown that a cultural shift accompanied and precipitated the conservationist sea change. Massachusetts preservationists have re-established abundance, yet sit atop the riches like a dragon. Meanwhile, a culture of consumption reigns. The irreconcilable nature of current ecological paradigms must be addressed. The urban forest is poised to provide a platform for debate. As Konijnendijk writes, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Modern relationships between nature, forest, people and culture have mostly been shaped in our cities.â&#x20AC;? By engaging the urban forest as visual barometer, alternative time keeper, and intersection of natural resource and industry, culture may yet step up to the challenge of not only meeting the needs of current and future generations, but of defining the scope of those needs.

notes 1 shepard Krech, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (new york: W.W. norton & Co., 1999).

2 William g. robbins, American Forestry: a History of National, State, and Private Cooperation (lincoln: university of nebraska, 1985), 20.

3 mary m. Berlik, david B. Kit-

tredge, and david r. Foster, The Illusion of Preservation: A Global Environmental Argument for the Local Production of Natural Resources, Working paper no. 26.

(Petersham: harvard Forest, 2002), 10.

4 Charles h. W. Foster and robert s. Bond, Stepping Back to Look Forward: a History of the Massa-

5 6 7 8

chusetts Forest (Petersham ma: harvard Forest, 1998), 266-267. ibid., 258.

2010 Census. 2010.census.gov.

Berlik, Kittredge, and Foster.

Konijnendijk, 13.

Building discourse

Nadya Volicer MIT / Master of Architecture, 2012 Massachusetts College of Art and Design / B.FA Fine Arts, 2001

What have you been doing since thesis?

Before architecture school, I was a practicing artist. I saw going back to school as a way to expand my resources in working on future art projects. The deeper I got into MIT’s program, the more I realized that this was a pivotal experience. I was intrigued by the prospect of becoming a hybrid artist/architect, but I didn’t know what that would look like.

I’m beginning to find out. I work at a company called Ab Initio where teams of physicists, engineers and mathematicians work alongside artists, designers and project managers, as well as metal and wood workers, filmmakers, and a seamstress. Collaboratively and individually, we work on projects ranging from apps to big data, furniture to fashion, sometimes at the scale of a building and sometimes at the scale of a drawer pull.

What was the most important thing you learned from thesis?

I learned that all of my previous assumptions and assertions about nature should be called into question. I think I spent thesis prep resisting this kind of self reflection and trying desperately to finally say something. I found I was able to say more by asking questions. thinking back on your thesis, how do you feel it has or has not influenced your career?

I’m not sure yet. The topic is not something I currently think about on a daily basis. But there are themes in my thesis that stem from pre-MIT work and still resonate.

What is the one thing you would have done differently or what do you wish you had known in advance?

If I could relive thesis, I would define the scope of the project from the very start. I did not originally intend to make an urban proposition, a wall component of a housing unit, and design every scale in between. In hindsight, I realize there simply was not enough time. I got tangled up in site research or pseudoscientific investigations into properties of trees. All of these tangents left me scrambling for time when it came down to design. But in a way, the process of the thesis, this open exploration, while not necessarily efficient, led me down some exciting paths. I think the ideal process would have been to to set up a framework within which a looser investigation could have played out. Compiling the thesis book itself, well after the final presentation, was really a luxurious time to be able to pull together all of the peripheral research that had captivated me over the course of my thesis.

What was the biggest advantage for doing your thesis at mit?

At MIT, I felt like I was surrounded by people who were searching. Students

and faculty seemed driven by curiosity.

This made for an incredible atmosphere in which to do a thesis.

What was particularly timely about your thesis? Was it technique or topical?

One luxury of a thesis is that it can be speculative. I was able to ground my thesis in a current reality—urban forestation and trees as natural resource—while describing a somewhat imagined future —GMO forests and the specialized wood they produce. I think this way of looking backwards and forwards at the same time helped me feel there was a certain relevancy to the project.

What has your early career looked like since graduation?

As I was finishing up my thesis book, I began work on an art installation for a cafe in Salem, MA. I had previously done similar works for the same cafe in other locations so it was easy enough to jump back in. But for the first time, I got involved with more of the overall design scheme of the restaurant retrofit than I ever did before. It was a small thing but allowed me to feel like something had changed. I completed one more artwork for a retirement community in Wellesley, MA, and then began my current job at Ab Initio. There, I’m involved in everything from schematic design to full scale mock ups. I also bought an old house in Roxbury and have been slowly gutting and rebuilding. The house is an outlet

Nadya Volicer

for my love of building with my hands and provides opportunities for design.

I’d like to say I’ve been testing ideas, but so far we’ve mostly been making sure the thing still stands up. This fall, I also got involved in designing an addition for a private residence that has become my new nights and weekends passion.

What do you think are the strengths of an march degree given the work you have done and are doing?

Iteration and tenacity. Before going through the MArch program, I don’t think I was as comfortable with the process of iteration. In my current design projects, this feels like such an essential part of the process. And having the tenacity to stick with a problem through many rounds of design is a thing I attribute to my time at MIT. There was also something I took from this design degree that perhaps was not intuitive for me coming from an arts background. I learned to hold first and foremost the idea that’s trying to be expressed rather than a personal expression on my part.

Since school, this has proved incredibly useful both in working with clients and working collaboratively as part of a team.

Please describe your biggest school challenge and your biggest work challenge.

What I grappled with most at school, aside from the lack of sleep, was reconciling my former life with the new one. It was more of a rupture than a seamless

207

transition. I was overwhelmed much of the time in school, juggling the need to acquire new technical skills and conceptual understanding with a desire to continue on the path I’d been on when I started. This proved impossible for me and I discovered things were much easier once I let go of that and just soaked in as much as I could. The transition from school to work was much smoother.

Partly it’s that I work in such a great environment; there really is room to pursue all of my interests. But I also think that experience in grad school helped me see everything as an opportunity to learn something. What’s challenging at work is there’s still so much to learn! And there still aren’t enough hours in the day. are you working toward licensure?

I am working toward licensure, slowly. While I do work alongside architects, I am not working for a firm so my path towards licensure may be somewhat meandering. do you consider yourself a traditional architect?

I don’t think so, but it seems that categorization is expanding. I’m as likely to be working on something well outside the realm of architecture as I am to be working on a building. But I do feel like there is a way of thinking, and a process of approaching a given site or subject, that I experienced in architecture school and it stuck with me.

Building discourse

Productive Encroachment GALAPAGOS: Architecture at the Intersection of Biodiversity and Encroachment in the Ecuadorian Galapagos Options studio 2011 Instructor: Andrew Scott Productive Encroachment growing Puerto Ayora one mangrove at a time

The city of Puerto Ayora is nestled in Academy Bay on the southern side of Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos. A coastal town, Puerto Ayora has been expanding northward in the direction opposite the sea, sandwiched between two multi-story high cliffs to the east and west. Tourism, however, has predominantly existed in the form of yachts and cruise ships docked offshore.

As this lucrative industry grows, so will the number of hotels built within the city limits, thus pushing residential habitation into protected inland habitats. Although sensitivity to wildlife and valued vegetation remains a central issue no matter where development occurs, expansion towards the ocean can be viewed as an interesting alternative.

One major feature of the native coastline of Santa Cruz Island is the mangrove swamps, few of which remain in their entirety on this particular island. Touristic and urban development is one of the leading causes of mangrove destruction worldwide, along with large-scale shrimp farming, which has devastated large swaths of mangroves on mainland Ecuador.

The mangrove, however, in its ability to inhabit the space between land and sea, is an extremely beneficial tree both on the local and global scale. It provides a nutritious and protected habitat for young organisms, such as shrimp, slows wave energy and buffers against tsunamis, thereby assisting with erosion control, and mangrove swamps sequester carbon at a rate of 1.5 tons of carbon per hectare per year. Most interestingly, due to the natural propagation cycle of mangrove, they accrete sediment beneath their root structure, effectively producing land.

Tourism is the single largest industry on Santa Cruz and also the most sought after means of employment. Other industries such as farming and construction are less desirable as

tourism is considered the most profitable. But local industry is sorely in need of reconsideration in light of how dependent the Islands are on imports from the mainland. Looking at hybrid models, there could be a way to combine industry, such as farming, with tourism to provide another option entirely. This project proposes such a hybrid condition in combining a small-scale shrimp farming facility with an agro-tourist resort. In this way, housing could be developed for farmers who are also employed in tourism to provide the agro-tourist with a unique experience in the Galapagos Islands.

Productive Encroachment Is A Temporal Integration of Mangrove And MANgrove Locating itself as an extension into the ocean of Seymour Street, MANgrove Agro-Resort anchors to the shore with a restaurant and reception hut that is open to not only tourists staying at the MANgrove, but also those visiting greater Puerto Ayora. A boardwalk continues into the water with a small distribution of both tourist huts and shrimp farming pens. Integral to this concept is the notion of mangrove cultivation, which will occur in and among the structures. Over time the integration of mangrove and the MANgrove will produce a new kind of experience for both tourist and inhabitant.

Nadya Volicer

209

Two Building Blocks cantilever to overhang boardwalk, facing north or Two Building Blocks

south, cladtoaccordingly cantilever overhang boardwalk, facing north or narrowclad block oriented vertically for building depth south, accordingly or horizontally as additional story narrow block oriented vertically for building depth Two Building Blocks all horizontally units floating, tide or asadjusting additionalwith story cantilever to overhang boardwalk, facing north or boardwalk is fixed all units floating, adjusting with tide south, clad accordingly boardwalk is fixed

narrow block oriented vertically for building depth or horizontally as additional story all units floating, adjusting with tide boardwalk is fixed

Tourist Hut units varyHut for occupancy Tourist

couple, family, group or larger party units vary for occupancy Tourist Hut third story access for or ocean views couple, family, group larger partyover growing units vary for occupancy mangrove and marine life observatory third story access for ocean views over growing couple, family, group or larger party mangrove and marine life observatory

third story access for ocean views over growing mangrove and marine life observatory

Shrimp Farmer Hut Shrimp Farmer Hut

units vary for occupancy single, couple or family units vary for occupancy potential to expand to additional stories single, couple or family pen fixedto in expand seabed,toanchors floating hut potential additional stories shrimp pond access via interior pen fixed in seabed, anchors floating hut shrimp pond access via interior

Shared Public Program restaurant,Public kitchen for shrimp cuisine Shared Program front desk for touristfor huts restaurant, kitchen shrimp cuisine administrative offices, maintenance front desk for tourist huts water level viewing platforms administrative offices, maintenance water level viewing platforms

Shrimp Farmer Hut

units vary for occupancy single, couple or family potential to expand to additional stories pen fixed in seabed, anchors floating hut shrimp pond access via interior

Shared Public Program

restaurant, kitchen for shrimp cuisine front desk for tourist huts administrative offices, maintenance water level viewing platforms

Building discourse

Natsuki Maeda

211

Natsuki Maeda

Future of the Past: Augmented History, Preservation as a Catalyst for Transformation M.Arch Thesis 2011 Advisor: Andrew Scott Readers: Gediminas Urbonas, James Wescoat

Preservation today focuses on the historicizing of events and the objectifying of historic artifacts, taking away its ability for further change. It becomes a single artifact, distancing itself from contemporary discourses. This thesis is about preservation, and the role of architecture in preserving historic sites. It is a thesis where the main objective is not a final project or artifact, but to provoke a discourse, one where we are confronted with the core meaning of preservation. The field of preservation has existed for thousands of years, but we have not truly reexamined the role of preservation. Preserving must mean more than just to sanction off the site, killing any further transformation, but to allow it to partake in the contemporary discourse, and to give it a future. There are many questions at hand: Why do we preserve? What do we preserve? How do we preserve? But in the end, the question this thesis seeks to answer through its design is how preservation can become a catalyst for further growth. In the struggle to find answers through architecture, it was in the discourses which rose from each standpoint that gave this thesis meaning.

Introduction When we look around the field of architecture, and what is being built today, we see a lot of shared references and a lot of borrowed/copied styles.

There is so much information we are able to take from magazines, the internet and other types of publications that contemporary architecture is often referred to as Mash-Up. It has become a given that there are no ingenious new styles coming out today; everything is a hybrid of something else. We build on something; we share elements with something else, and so on and so forth. We see a certain type of architecture that collides into another, which creates something new, something that is a growth from one to another. But why then, when we deal with historic buildings, are we still stuck on the two main notions of preservation and restoration which have not changed?

Why have we not initiated more daring ways of preserving old buildings? This timid manner in which we deal with historic buildings is, in a sordid way, killing them. We treat them so delicately, but as if we were scared of them, as if by making the wrong move, history would erase itself. BUT by putting them in

vacuum-tight glass boxes, aged and ageless all in one, are we not slowly suffocating it as well?

We now find ourselves surrounded by prominent historic buildings, armed with the resources to know how to work with the material properties. Technology has advanced enough to be able to test out the old materials, for us to know how to treat them so as not to destroy them, but we are without the will to work with them now. There needs to be more daring attempts of working WITH these historic buildings instead of the mentality of working FOR them. Without making larger claims, they become merely a single historical object, which is no longer a part of our fabric other than as a museum piece; but it can be so much more! It needs to be so much more in order to propel the discourse of preservation further. In order to take on a historic building requires, of course, a deep long look through the history of the building itself, to see how its history can shed light on its future design. What was at stake during the buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s original construction, and what is its role for our contemporary society? This needs to be there in order for the building not to have a Disneyland effect on the city. But the real struggle for such projects is to know what its historical past means in terms of architecture. How do the power struggles which inhabited the building give spatial implications? How do we deal with ruinous walls or bombed out structures which give unique tectonic effects to the building envelope?

This comes back to the idea of the mash-up architecture we see today. If we are able to make astounding mash-up and call it contemporary, we need to take on historic buildings with the same mentality in order for them to contribute to todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s architectural discourse. This in no means is belittling the history of these buildings; on the contrary, it gives it the necessary life and movement. This thesis will look for new and contemporary ways of viewing historic buildings, to put a stop to the traditional methods of glass boxing or rebuilding, to make it a time piece. But unlike the mash-ups we see today, there needs to be a more delicate look at smaller details to larger historical implications. What would it mean to transform the void where Bamiyan Buddhas used to be into a library? What are the implication of a carbon fiber addition to a one-hundred-year-old masonry building sucessively bombed throughout history? These are the types of mixing and matching, of touching and leaving it

Building discourse

Natsuki Maeda

213

The SiTe Bamiyan Province in Afghanistan is one of the thirty-four provinces, located northwest of Kabul, with a population of about 62,000. it is located at an altitude of nearly 2,800 meters, where the majority of the population is hazaras. This is where the early Buddhist monasteries were built, with many of the famous statues of Buddha carved alongside the cliffs. This is where the largest carving of the Buddha used to be before it was dynamited in 2001. historically, Bamiyan lay on the Silk Road in the hindu Kush mountain region, where it served to link the market of China with Western Asia. ever since the second century, many monasteries have been built within their cliffs.

The Buddhas were made in

the sixth century by the Kushans; the first statue in 507, and the second later in 554, measuring 55 and 37 meters respectively. The main bodies of the statues were carved directly from the sandstone cliff, where the details were first modeled in mud and mixed with straw, then coated with stucco for finishing. The lower parts of the statues’ arms were constructed from the same mud-straw mix while supported on wooden armatures. it is believed that the upper parts of their faces were made from great wooden masks or casts. Due to its location, Bamiyan has always been in the middle of many changes in leadership. The city of Bamiyan was first a part of the Buddhist Kushan empire in the early cen-

untouched, of building onto and erasing, that I am interested in delving further into.

All historical buildings come with memory, which asks us how to work with memory through architectural interventions; memory that moves with time, without stopping time altogether. Each and every built form comes with memory, but how do you work with this while not making it into a memorial or a museum? It is important to keep in mind that this project is not trying to memorialize, but to reactivate these buildings, which are very different. While one takes the visitors to the past in the present, the other hopes to leave them in the present in memory of the past.

There must be a very delicate balance here that cannot be done in a matter of a paragraph or two, but through research of how such spaces are designed, what it means to make one or the other. How do you hold onto the essence of the past without being enslaved to its every whim? How do you keep yourself in the present with momentum for the future when working with history? What is the right balance between the old and the new?

These are some of the questions which will be raised through the process. To embrace the past, be it defeat or victory, but not being married to it...

After looking through many different historical buildings— those abandoned, without a clear future, and in need of a decision one way or another—I ended in Afghanistan, a country with a very rich past and a troubled future. Perhaps they need more than an architectural intervention, or they do not have the time to be thinking of what or why to preserve; their present is at stake, more than any past, however influential it may have been. THIS is why I want to take on endangered buildings in

turies of the Christian era, but after the Kushan empire fell to the Sassanids, Bamiyan became a part of the Kushansha vassals.

Afghanistan now. It is easy to put these things in the back shelf, for tomorrow, but what if tomorrow, there is no artifact left to debate? What if we were able to design a space that is able to reflect its history, its past, and shed light on a future of uncertainties, even for a country in turmoil?

The Buddhas of Bamiyan have had an extremely iconic presence in our world dating back to the second century onwards; their tremendous scale of 58 meters and 38 meters, encompassing a cliff face of roughly 1500 meters have always brought wonderment to the world. However, in early 2000, radical groups in Afghanistan started a campaign which sought to erase all references to non-Islamic forms in Afghan society. On March 2nd, 2001, and continuing on for several weeks afterwards, the Buddhas were dynamited by the Taliban, an act which the Minister stated was a purely religious issue, and not retaliation against the international community for economic sanctions. A significant part of Buddhist history was destroyed by this act. This is not a thesis discussing the ethics of this destruction, but a further investigation into post-disaster interventions that could be put forth on such sites. A Taliban Information Minister said, “This work of destruction is not as simple as people might think. You can‘t knock down the statues by shelling as both are carved into a cliff they are firmly attached to the mountain.” These words from the minister are perhaps the key idea to this thesis, where we are looking at the historic nature of the site not purely through the artifact’s value, but the site as a place of remembrance, that has gone through a disaster, but understanding the ways in which it can be revitalized once more.

The Bamiyan cliff in its present condition needs to address

Building discourse

Above: Bamiyan Valley chronology of evolution

several key issues: first, the preserving of artifacts which may still be left within the cliff path, and second, the need to resolve landslides that have come to the forefront since the dynamiting of the niches. Since the bombing, the rock face has become too weak in its large openings, and, along with the heavy wind conditions in the Bamiyan region, is causing the cliff face to erode faster than predicted. The way in which the site has been sanctioned off by UNESCO for preservation work has also caused major problems for the people of Bamiyan; before the sanctioning of the site (from the Western Buddha to the Eastern Buddha), 40% of the caves were occupied by Hazaras as homes.

They have since been relocated nearly 3 hours outside of the town, which does not give them sufficient resources for them to live. Although it is true that we cannot divide post-disaster interventions into separate categories, it helps in defining the problems and proposals into two main categories: cultural solutions, and more social solutions, although both speak through technical and architectural solutions. In order to understand the overall proposal or potential solution to this disaster, we need to take a deeper look at the two elements of the solution/problem to derive an overall solution.

The proposal is to understand the relationship between disaster prevention and a well-known historic site, which exists in a very fragile state from its long history.

I want to address how we touch an already vulnerable site,

and how we integrate between the historic and the new post/ pre disaster interventions. How do these set of moves affect the surrounding context, and how do we find meaning from disasters? What has begun to catch my interest is the idea that post-disaster reconstruction is the act that begins to put meaning to disasters. David Alexander writes on this topic in his essay “Nature’s Impartiality, Man’s Inhumanity,” where he leads the discussion of disasters not only in the realm of the disasters themselves, but how society learns to give meaning to the disasters, which can only happen after the fact. The interesting idea that comes out of post-disaster reconstruction is in the fact that the society is able to choose what is to be reconstructed, or what is to be demolished. It is a way of thinking of the reconstruction process as a new beginning to the society, which now has the choice of suppressing traumatic events of a disaster or to keep its memory alive in the area.

At the end of the day, this type of disaster raises two large issues: one, which addresses the importance of history and the delicate nature of preserving a historic site, understanding how we touch the past, where we intervene, and what methods we use to protect it from further damage. The other, is of a larger, more social question, and addresses problems that arise from sanctioning sites as historic, and in protecting the site, clearing it of all present-day activities. Both issues raise independent questions of their own as well as shared questions: how much of

Natsuki Maeda

Above: Diagrams showing various methods of preservation

215

Building discourse

the present are we willing to destroy to give it a future, and how much of the past are we willing to forego for a more promising present? How much of the future are we willing to compromise to save the past? The questions of the past, present and future do not form a simple answer, nor do they come to one singular answer at the end. Both of these issues are an investigation into the different types of touch, and how we go about developing the different methods in which we make contact with both the physical artifact of the historic site in danger, and how we contact the people of the area so that the act of preserving the site does not become a barrier between them and the site they have known for a long time, but acts as a more interactive mediator between the two.

The design proposal I am interested in pursuing is a piece of architecture which not only deals with the prevention of landslides through pure infrastructural interventions, but which also serves as a more public interface to the site through architecture. The questions I am interested in are two-fold: How do we deal with landslide preventions on a site like Bamiyan Valley, which holds tremendous amounts of historical artifacts, where we are limited in what we can and cannot touch? How do we go between the extremely delicate natures of a site in crisis with extremely large interventions, which must be put into place? How do we preserve this site from landslides without isolating it from the public, and without making it a completely untouchable mu-

seum? Is there a way of working through the post reconstruction of this type of disaster site which spans through the past, present and future, and balance the cultural and social issues that have emerged? The thesis is divided into three sections: the understanding of the site, a discourse of preservation, and the social and cultural issues which are present, as well as proposals and solutions to the two elements. This is in hopes of finding the bridge that will bring the broken site into the present and take on the needs of the Hazara culture of today.

Natsuki Maeda

The FiRST DiSASTeR: The DeSTRUCTiON The destruction of the Buddha cannot be easily summed up into a single page, for this act represents a deep historical struggle within the people of Afghanistan. What i need to point out is that the Taliban destroyed the past monuments to protect the present. The demolition of the Buddha by the Taliban in 2001 was not against history or culture, but religion.

They destroyed the Buddha, because the Buddhist statues stood for something against islam. Before the 2001 destruction of the monuments, there were talks back and forth between protecting the monuments to destroying them. in 1999, the Taliban stated that the Buddha will not be destroyed but

217

protected, but soon after, they said that the statues were against islam and that for this reason, the Taliban regime can justify the destruction as being in accordance with islamic law. in the end, in March 2001, the statues were destroyed with dynamite over several weeks.

United States government to bring support to the reconstruction efforts.

Their three main objectives were: to improve security, to extend the authority of the Afghan central government, and to facilitate reconstruction.

The PRT in Bamiyan were led by New Zealand troops.

There are many traces of such actions in the past, to destroy the remnant of a culture deemed a threat to the new dominance. We have seen it happen in the 16th century in the New World civilizations, in Julius Caesar’s Rome, and in the dynasties of egypt and China. This raises the earlier question of, “at what cost do we protect the present, the future?”

Since 2002, the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) was introduced to the area, an effort by the

First on the agenda was the preservation of historic artifacts, destroyed in the bombing of the Buddhas. Although not a natural disaster, the scale of this act is comparable to some natural disasters, and the impact this had on the world is significant.

This is where the question of what we choose to preserve, reconstruct or erase becomes very important to this project.

Several different camps have formed in response to this question, some who

wish to reconstruct the Buddhas, bringing back what once was, and others who believe that the destruction itself is a part of history that cannot be easily erased.

Above: Site plan

Building discourse

Current condition of Bamiyan Valley

Natsuki Maeda

219

Building discourse

Natsuki Maeda

221

Building discourse

The SeCOND DiSASTeR: The LANDSLiDe The detonations of March 2001, apart from causing the collapse of the statues, produced a deterioration of the stability conditions, mainly in the shallower part of the niches. in the eastern Giant Buddha niche, apart from the collapsed statue, three minor rockfalls occurred in higher portions of the site. Also, the blasting produced a degradation of the backside of the niche's highest right part, where stairs are located inside the cliff, and the section between the stairs and the niche is quite narrow. This part is presently the most critical for future stability.

Due to an existing buttress, the left side did not suffer substantially. Only in the upper part did a rockfall occur and some instability is now evident. in the Great Buddha, the major damage was the collapse of the statue and the consequent instability of the backside of the niche. A small rockfall occurred on the top left of the niche. Probably, the large

thickness of section between the stairs going up into the cliff and the niche prevented the large propagation of the effects of blasting.

A large discontinuity is present in the corridor behind the head of the statue.

The bombing of the Buddhas not only caused physical damage to the site, but brought on social issues as well, like most disasters. however, unlike many natural disasters that require an evacuation of residents, the problem came through the sanctioning of the cliff face, which forced roughly 100 residents to leave their homes, made within the caves along the cliff. This raises the question of how much of the present condition we are willing to alter and modify to preserve history; do we prioritize history over present day conditions? This is an interesting issue that inevitably arises on such historic sites.

There is no right or wrong solution to such a problem, only answers that have a direct implication on the people of the area. This is a difficult case to address, perhaps

because the discipline of preservation is usually in the dark; we appreciate the final artifact that comes out, but we are fairly unaware of the process in which we arrive at the final outcome of the problem. Preservation of such a large site, especially now that it encompasses a far larger scope of the entire cliff face, brings with it teams of preservationists and offices that are fairly intensive. Currently, there are roughly 18 teams of preservation institutes on the site. This is the reason why residents have been forced to move to a different location, which is roughly three hours away from the Bamiyan town. Although the government ensured sufficient housing units, it is located in an extremely windy environment, more a test of survival than a healthy living environment. They are now a two hour walking distance from the nearest well, and as mentioned earlier, three hours from the Bamiyan Bazaar, where many of the residents buy and sell to maintain their lifestyle. There is a feeling of animosity within those displaced

Natsuki Maeda

223

towards the preservation institutes, which is understandable, but the proposal is to lessen that feeling and incorporate the displaced into the proposal, to think of preservation not only as a technical and specialized work on the cliff, but in providing shelter for the residents within the framework.

Top: elevation Above: Bamiyan Valley transformation Phase 1 (towers and pathways) and Phase 2 (sensors at night and during the day to create more awareness within the community.

Below: Scaffolding along the rock face acts as transformative preservation.

Building discourse

Opposite and this page: Renderings of scaffolding along rock face

Natsuki Maeda

Although the final design gives the most comprehensive design with all the parts put together, it was during the process wherein the most powerful ideas came into being. If preservation is indeed about erasing the distance between the public and the site through a transformative process, then it is interesting to note the amount of transformation the project itself has gone through to get to that final design. The array of different designs that came through during this process was all a representation of my understanding of preservation at different times throughout thesis.

First, there was the idea of architecture as a means of preservation, where the architecture itself was preserving the site. The preservation was embedded into the site, and the two coexisted within the cliff face. In each iteration, different methods of preservation were tested, whether it was insertions into the rock face or the braiding of the pathways; they were strengthening the cliff from inside out. But, when stepping back, this was still in keeping with the idea that preservation was denying the site from further growth by keeping it the way it was historically.

The architecture would always be an object, essentially producing two artifacts, and this was not speaking to the historic site as one of transformation.

Second, the idea of using the language of preservation to design the project became more prominent where scaffolding was looked at with great effort. Scaffolding is synonymous to every preservation site, yet it sits hesitantly on the site. What if the scaffold come become something more, if the spaces within could become the catalyst for further growth along the cliff face?

These were the sets of questions asked through these studies.

There were spaces within spaces within the grid of scaffold-

225

ing, and also the inhabitable scaffold, where the positive spaces within the scaffolding were more prominent, playing with the idea of camouflaging the cliff from the viewers, while within, you were brought closer up towards it. From there, the scaffold was lightened so that the structure could handle the ongoing deformation along the site. This idea of the net came in after studying soil movements along flash floods that occurred along cliff faces. The solution to these landslides is not to keep the cliff in place, but also to allow the soil to slide out from the cliff face.

This is where the insertion of the nets came in, allowing light fabric-like sheets to protect the public from any falling debris and allowing the site to deform in the way it needs.

The design of the thesis could have gone many different routes, and perhaps if there was a stronger idea of what preservation meant from the outset, the solution could have been a more thorough understanding. However, I believe that the biggest lessons were learned from these changing opinions, having to define and redefine preservationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s role. Without have gone through all the different design processes, each one bringing with them their own particular discourse to the table, this strong belief that preservation is about transformation would not have come about.

Building discourse

Natsuki Maeda

Above: exploded axonometric showing scaffold components

227

Center: Beyond the scaffold into the programmed space

Opposite and bottom: Perspectival sections showing the scaffold and interior spaces

Building discourse

Natsuki Maeda MIT / Master of Architecture, 2011 University of Waterloo / B.AS. Architectural Studies, 2006

What have you been doing since thesis?

What have I been doing since thesis… thinking of way to revolutionize architecture! Many days have been spent dreaming up ways to take the world’s breath away through architecture. It sounds very romantic, but in our discipline, I think we can be a bit more optimistic about the future. I believe that the reality of architecture is so much more beautiful than what we imagine it to be. The more I work, and the more doors that are opened, the bigger the realization that there is a great opportunity for architecture to really grow. People often tell you that once you get out of school, reality kicks in, but I am realizing that this “real world” holds so much more room for real change than I thought. But with that said, architects have to be very clever in where they place themselves in the bigger picture, let go of certain preconceptions of what architects should be, and start to look at how intelligently we can maneuver within it all.

What was the most important thing you learned from thesis?

Focus was the most important thing I took from thesis. This comes in many forms: it is sometimes about how to focus, about why we are focused on certain aspects, or what a particular drawing needs to focus on, or why, how and what the discourse wants to be focused on. I doubted that one could curate the topic and tone of the discussion after a 5-10

minute brief given at the thesis presentation, but I learned through the process of thesis that it is all absolutely within the grasp of the designer.

For a person who needs to have control over most things in life, this was very much a glorious and frightening realization, to know that up to a certain point, most things can be within your control with the right focus. But when the leg work has been done, and my obsessive tendencies have focused on the right questions, the sound of everything clicking is very exciting. The other great moment was realizing that some things will inevitably fall out of your control, and at that moment of realization, you have to know how to make the right mistakes.

This sounds contradictory, but even with everything planned out, things will go wrong, and what allows you to grow is to know how to fall when an obstacle comes your way, learning that sometimes you can’t fix all of it. These were the two most memorable things I bitterly and later happily learned from thesis.

Thinking back on your thesis, how do you feel it has or has not influenced your career?

I don’t think I had any real agendas as to what thesis could do for me later on, for better or worse. More than WHAT the thesis was, I think that HOW I went about it has been an important learning experience in my career. The process of thesis really pushed me to understand WHY I make certain choices. Sometimes it is so easy to produce; the renderings,

drawings and diagrams can be pumped out, but knowing why a certain rendering is made a specific way or whether it is even needed was the harder part.

On a larger scale, thesis solidified the fact that I really love what I do. You have to really like it in order to go through that much pain. In all seriousness, it really did make me want the next symphony, the next grand aria, and I think it’s the Kerouac moment of it. I was lucky enough to experience it through my thesis, and there has been, and always will be, a search for the next one.

What is the one thing you would have done differently or what do you wish you had known in advance?

I love this question because it is the clearest one for me to answer: Nothing.

What I love most about my thesis was that I was lucky to be able to run hard enough to the point where I don’t have “could-have-would-have-should-have” thoughts in hindsight. This is not to say that there were no challenges and giant mistakes made along the way, but that the thesis was what it desperately needed to be at that very moment. There is no way to really make the right move if you don’t make many absolutely wrong moves, and I am very happy that there were countless instances of this.

In a way, this isn’t just about thesis, but about everything we do. Since presenting thesis, I thought I knew about five times exactly what I wanted to do in the next steps of my life. They were not necessarily mistakes, but there have been

Natsuki Maeda

229

many meandering paths, and knowing myself, I expect there to be a lot of that to come! We can’t know what the future will be, but we still have to make certain decisions that will stay with us, and this is what makes it so addictive to work in architecture. The hopeless romantic in me still believes that some of the phenomenal architectural projects out there that make our hearts beat faster in many ways are slightly amiss, but they deliver a certain message from their willingness to fail.

tion. They are the kinds of classmates you wish for when you see that brightest star in the sky. I think the drive to want to be better is not something you can expect, but really just something you dream of, and when you’re lucky enough to have it within your grasp, you just run with it.

At the end of the day, no fantastic facility can ever match the group of great students who are producing earth shattering work, to propel the hunger to want to be better. It was truly the people at MIT that is the school’s greatest advantage.

What was the biggest advantage for doing your thesis at MiT?

What was particularly timely about your thesis? Was it technique or topical?

The small size of the school and the availability of many different arrays of expert opinions were definitely outstanding and great advantages. The group of professors on my thesis committee, along with the incredible array of other professors who, with their expertise critiqued the thesis from different point of view, really helped strengthen the thesis. With so many points of view, big decisions on where I wanted to position myself became very important. It forced me to abandon certain paths, and drove me to explore others more in depth. This is what makes for a great thesis, and I am very thankful for that opportunity.

And of course the brilliant students at MIT were truly phenomenal in how they were able to push me to work harder, design more critically, and be able to handle a few less hours of sleep. I will always be grateful for the ones with whom I had the most fantastic healthy competi-

In my mind, an architectural thesis is about answering “What is architecture” in our own words. So in a way, technique or topicality has no relevance to what a thesis really is. The topic on which we choose to base our thesis is a mere backdrop to how we place ourselves in answering this larger question. It is not merely choosing a thesis out of a list of trend-setting topics, but whether we are able to have a discourse about what is, was, and will be the role of architecture.

There is always an excitement with thesis presentation because it is no longer merely a design project studying a specific agenda, but an opportunity for design to become the catalyst of larger questions.

Maybe they are all timely because they answer what architecture is at that very specific moment in one’s career. I think there has been and will be many moments when we will have to ask ourselves this question: “What is archi-

tecture?” And each time it will be under different circumstances with different agendas. Even now, since writing this, I’ve been daydreaming about what my answer to this question would be today.

Building discourse

Re-designed Thai market

Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi

231

Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi

Reinventing Flexibility: A Hybrid Paradigm for Thai Markets in Bangkok, Thailand M.Arch Thesis 2011 Advisor: J. Meejin Yoon Readers: Joel Lamere, Nick Gelpi

This thesis asserts that the current form of the proliferating modernization of Thai markets in terms of economic growth and the incorporation of building technology to improve goods storage, attractive envelope, and shopping environment, is actually neither modern nor sustainable for the Thai socioeconomic system.

Despite the fact that Thai Markets have claimed to be modernized over time, they are merely heavily populated for a few hours each day, and otherwise remain barren. Recent reports of the declining state of the markets also exhibit the failures of the current model of Thai markets, which avow to be modern yet are not sustainable nor competent, creating a bigger crisis in Thai urban culture. My thesis argues that the temporal condition of underutilized space and the declining state of Thai markets are in fact architectural problems that need to be resolved spatially and programmatically. This thesis proposes that

a new breed of architecture for Thai markets is conceivable and necessary in order for Thai markets to survive while nurturing the rich urban goods distribution, consumption, and dynamic urban spectacles.

The investigation focuses on the possibilities of a new paradigm for Thai markets in Bangkok through the hybridization between Thai markets and street markets to create a model that is an ephemeral form of architecture, a new multi-functional space for market vending and urban activities resulting from the braids of streets networks.

This place will become a new civic building typeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a crossbreed between street and architecture, landscape and buildingsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to assemble the public around their common needs for commodities, leisure, and interaction.

Building discourse

Thai Markets : A Brief History, Components, and Functioning City dwellers have always depended on outside sources for food production and supply. For centuries, towns and cities have been shaped by and around the hustle and bustle of buying and selling activities. At the center of this trading activity is the Public Market—one of the oldest kinds of urban infrastructure which is often as old as the cities in which the markets are located. In Southeast Asia, even through to present-day, the majority of people in any country makes its living through agriculture and livestock farming. Most people live where they work and bring their produce to informal markets held on the grounds of their temple of in the center of the town. Public markets grew as centers of local activity and were an important feature of rural life.

Early in Thai history, Talad (the Thai markets) in Bangkok had two general forms: “Talad Bok” (Fresh Markets) and “Talad Nam” (Floating Markets). Talad Bok were markets where independent merchants could sell their products to the public, usually located on an open ground at the heart of the village.

Merchants would sporadically set up their vending spaces or simply lay out goods on the tables of the common ground in a temple area.

On the other hand, Talad Nam were markets which took shape through an assembly of merchant row boats. Rowing vendors or merchants travelled along the rivers, canals, and sub-

This page: Diagrams of the street market temporal activities and spatial articulation Opposite: Research analysis of Thai markets

ordinate waterways to sell their fresh produce and goods. Some merchants used rafts to set their floating retail along the canal side. In the old times of Bangkok, Thai markets defined many of the districts in the city and those areas are still recognized as the market districts today.

In 1916, during the time of King Rama VI, the public infrastructural system in Bangkok was largely upgraded using Western modern building construction methods. The government of Thailand set up regulations for newly constructed buildings along new constructed roads and streets. Reinforced concrete with molding details on facades was a common construction method widely used in the metropolitan area.

Presently, the Thai markets in Bangkok are typically composed of a market hall, commercial townhouses, and open lots for street vendors. The streets in Thai market complexes are provided for by bringing service and public access to the markets.

The vendor stalls form an interior grid system for circulation.

The main market hall takes up approximately 40% of the site, while the commercial buildings and streets take up 45% and 15% respectively. The main market hall is fully used for only a few hours in the morning while the surrounding commercial buildings are open 6-8 hours daily depending on the popularity of the market.

Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi

233

Building discourse

Bangkok Streets: Brief History, Components, and Functioning Streets are defined in an elemental way as: 1) A constitution of the outside.

2) Circulation to bring people from one place to another.

3) A negative space of buildings or void after buildings occupy a site.

Based on the width, scale and traffic capacity, street typologies in Bangkok can be largely classified into 3 categories: boulevards, streets, and alleyways.

Generally, the streets in Bangkok normally serve the public beyond their basic infrastructural functions. Because of their unique atmosphere of freedom and frankness, streets bring activity and energy to the city, attracting human interaction in a public space. Streets foster diverse human connections that are similar to those found in the temples or civic institutions.

At times, the street can be a place to be alone or to be with the public, a place to accidentally meet people or to observe other people, and a place to make political statements or to exchange political views.

Streets attract people from all walks of life for commodity exchange and trading. It is common to see the streets periodically transformed into marketplaces, or so-called street markets.

The innumerable cultural appeals between sellers and buyers making an effort to settle their differences at the street markets are alluring spectacles in the streets of Bangkok.

Street markets are flexible and expand from the sidewalk to the street depending on the vehicular traffic management. The flexible nature of the street allows different kinds of markets to happen at different times of the day. The time-sharing, simple settings, and low starting cost of vending space in the street markets make them more sustainable in the Thai economy than the common Thai markets. Basically, the vendors bring their own set-up inventories such as vending carts, tables and chairs for exhibiting their goods.

The street marketsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; temporal activities and spatial articulation profoundly depend on the width of the street, the allowable zone of the sidewalks/ streets for the market, and most importantly, the policy of those streets.

This page: Street and spectacles Opposite, above: Temporary programs of the marketâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s main street Opposite, below: Market configuration and additional analysis diagrams.

Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi

235

Building discourse

Site And City Context: Paak Klong Talad Paak Klong Talad Market is one of the oldest markets in Bangkok, located just southeast of the old city (Koh Rattana Kosin).

This thesis focuses on the market site next to the Chaopraya river which is the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life line, posing the challenge of integrating two public piers on both the west and east ends of the site and increasing public access to the water.

It is a Thai custom to put landmark buildings along the Chaopraya river. The landmarks in this area of the market include the Memorial Bridge on the east edge of the site; across from the river are Wat Prayoon, Sata Cruz Church, Wat Kalayanamitr, and Wat Arun; further up the river are Wat Po and the Royal Palace.

From the context of the city, the thesis challenges the idea of becoming a conciliator between the divisions of old and new city, water and ground, and the network of public transportation. Essentially, the proposed building not only has to be modern, but also monumental.

Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi

Opposite, top: Site in larger urban scale Opposite, bottom: Site in market scale

237

Above: Photographs of site as seen from river

Building discourse

Design Proposal

Above: Site and formal strategies

Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi

Above: Exploded axonometric drawing showing programs and organization

239

Building discourse

Top: Sectional perspective of market Bottom: Sections through market

Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi

241

Building discourse

Renderings of various uses and programs at various times of the day

Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi

243

Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi MIT / Master of Architecture 2011 Chulalongkorn University / B.LA., 2000

Learning from Thesis

Time management and being disciplined about meeting deadlines. As an MIT student, I used my studio projects and thesis to challenge myself to relate my work to other fields such as building technology, history, theory, planning, and, at times, artistic expression.

The whole process takes a tremendous amount of time. With strict self-discipline and time management, I was able to produce a thoughtfully crafted and carefully presented thesis.

Thinking back on your thesis, how do you feel it has or has not influenced your career?

My thesis has strongly influenced my career in two ways. The first is related to concept making. The MIT thesis is strictly research-based and concepts are usually derived from a “bottom up” approach to architectural issues in which one tries to truly understand architectural and urban problems from many different but related angles. Precedents, techniques, and strategies need to be identified and analyzed to find a unique answer for each project’s design problems. The second influence is discipline. The thesis demands a complex and comprehensive understanding as architectural problems need to be thoroughly investigated in the form of both conceptual diagrams and models.

To understand the complexity of one’s thesis topic completely and to produce a visual manifestation of that understanding requires a great number of hours of

solitary and collective study, research, and development.

If I could have done anything different, I would have asked for more help from fellow students on last minute production and I would have reached out to more professors and practitioners in practices related to architecture, urban planning, and landscape to get some different perspectives and a richer critique of my thesis.

MIT has great resources and support systems in place for the thesis process.

Courses at MIT address topics of international concern, ranging in scale from functional and infrastructural problems to the very granular detail of fabrication processes. MIT’s curriculum does not give its students the “easy answer” but rather teaches which questions should be asked. M.Arch students are able to engage with their thesis topic in a high-energy dialogue mediated by rigorous analytical critiques.

What was particularly timely about your thesis? Was it technique or topical?

At the beginning of the twentyfirst century, Thailand was in the midst of an emerging prosperous economic landscape, which led to an explosion of urban consumption and modernization.

This was followed by rapid changes in real estate speculation that gave birth to massive facilities catering to tourism, new wealth, new living quarters, and new urban identities focused on affluent lifestyles from Europe, the United States, Korea, and Japan.

For the past two decades, Thailand has witnessed rapid economic growth resulting in change that primarily involves replacing prevailing public institutions such as theaters, libraries, embassy buildings, schools, parks, and markets with commercial developments such as mega malls that focus primarily on generating greater wealth for their owners.

Thai markets have been one of the primary victims in this cultural evolution and changing values in Thai society that focus on hyper-consumption.

The cornerstone of my thesis engages the ongoing challenge of keeping Thai markets and similar institutions thriving.

The thesis investigates the phenomenon of rapid economic development as an architectural problem. I argue that, contrary to the belief that the depreciation of Thai markets is due to their lack of modern looks and technologies, the reason for decline is that Thai markets are still designed based on a dated and insufficient architectural paradigm which is not resilient in the face of rapid change in Thai culture. My investigation focused on how to help this dated architectural model thrive. My thesis proposed a hybrid architecture which borrows characteristics from streets and open space systems. It seeks to maximize the use of open infrastructure in an organic and informal manner—“Reinventing Flexibility”—to allow different cultural programs to be temporally superimposed in the same space as market programs.

Building discourse

Kalaasatama Waterfront Redevelopment Options Studio 2009 Instructor: Kent Larson

Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi

245

LAIC Church Redux Competition Proposal Bologna ,Italy

Our proposal aims to bring together a new array of contemporary spaces for leisure, culture, art, and production, and to create a unified campus that helps the 1960s industrial building designed by Pier Luigi Cervellati integrate into the urban fabric of modern day Quarto Inferiore.

Our design intent is to preserve and expose the existing factoryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s multi-storey, reinforced concrete framework with minimal structural alteration to house new programs for a Design and Fabrication Lab, Creative Makers Residence, and Community Rooms.

Like a three dimensional village, the LAIC Church Redux program spaces are interconnected and arranged around a multilevel courtyard, plazas, and grand public stairs. These series of public spaces form a continuous landscape, creating an open framework for leisure activities, exhibitions, and various festive

urban programs. It is a place for encounters and exchanges between various groups of users with different interests and expertises: local residents, tourists, and makers. Our design also features internal courtyards, colonnades, loggia, and porticos to resonate with Bolognaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s indigenous urban fabric and architectural style.

The Creative Makers Residence exhibits a housing project which is built with a modular system assembled on site at the Design and Fabrication Lab. In addition to reinforcing a live-work lifestyle in the LAIC Church Redux, the Creative Makers Residence strives to set a new paradigm for moderate to low income housing and apartments with lower construction costs and the ability to transport the modular units with ease.

The Community Rooms encourage a broad range of Bologna residents and tourists to visit the facility for activities of leisure, learning, and health. The Community Rooms offer spaces for urban lounges, exhibitions, library, multimedia center, and workshops.

V

ia

A

nt

on i

o

Gr

am

sc

i

V

ia

M

on t

i

The Design and Fabrication Lab gives local residents, amateurs, and start-up entrepreneurs access to the tools and platform necessary to launch their artistic pursuits in a creative working environment.

Building discourse

A House for Two Artists Competition Proposal Siteless

Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi

247

Building discourse

Portland Street Seat Competition Proposal Portland, Oregon

Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi

249

Building discourse

Top: Conceptual rendering of programmatic adjacencies

Bottom: New power plant siting criteria

Lisa PauLi

251

Lisa Pauli

Containment Building: Architecture Between the City and Advanced Nuclear Reactors M.Arch Thesis 2011 Advisor: J. Meejin Yoon Readers: Mark Jarzombek, Gediminas Urbonas

Since the inception of nuclear energy research, the element thorium (Th) has been considered the superior fuel for nuclear reactions because of its potency, safety, abundance and reduced waste. Cold War agendas broke from the logic of efficient energy production to establish a nationwide network of reactors designed to enrich uranium fuel for a nuclear arsenal.

Contemporary dilemmas of global warming, increasing fuel prices, carbon emissions, and anti-proliferation movements have brought the discussion of clean, safe nuclear power to the forefront of American energy policy; it is no longer tolerable or sustainable to rely on a uranium (U) nuclear network. The architectural typology of nuclear energy has not been addressed in America for 35 years and is one that belies the promise of clean energy’s progress through technology and public intervention.

Containment Building is an architectural response to nuclear technological advancement that challenges historical separation between nuclear power and the public. It is a self-sustained, thorium-powered nuclear plant sited in and powering New York City. It is a nuclear campus that programmatically and urbanistically engages the public and contains radio isotope labs, a nuclear medicine and imaging facility, a food irradiation center, a wellness hotel and spa, an electric taxi charging station, and a plug-in park along the Hudson River waterfront.

Timeline Nuclear power currently supplies 15% of the world’s electricity.

The United States leads with the highest ratio of nuclear energy produced: 19% of energy we consume (Nuclear Power). The commercial nuclear power industry skyrocketed after 1954 when the world’s first commercial nuclear power plant was created after nearly half a century of internationally competitive research in pursuit for superior nuclear warfare. The nuclear arms race began with the Manhattan project in 1942 as the Soviet Union became aware of America’s nuclear developments and began developing an atomic bomb of their own (U.S. Department of Energy, 2). The race spurred national investment in uranium, the only element, aside from pure plutonium, which when enriched and subject to nuclear fission (therefore producing plutonium), could be used to arm nuclear warheads. Here began a nationwide infrastructural network supporting the produc-

tion and testing of uranium-fueled reactors called the nuclear weapons complex (U.S. Department of Energy, 2). While nuclear weapon testing ensued, nuclear physicists researched ways to harness energy for power distribution. Researchers named the more abundant element, thorium, to be the most efficient energy producer, requiring less heat, needing zero enrichment, resulting in less waste, and overall safer than the uranium-fueled reactors (Chirkov, 650). However, with the Department of Defense’s investment in infrastructure for uranium enrichment and harvesting, nuclear energy was limited to only one fuel option.

As early as 1975, geologists predicted that if nuclear energy production continued at the same exponential rate, by 2010, the world’s then ample supply of uranium would be severely depressed (Chirkov, 647). Today, the adverse affects of uranium nuclear facilities have scarred America. With the decommissioning of nuclear weapons complex hubs, shortages of uranium, nuclear plant failures scares, and over 300,000 barrels of plutonium-contaminated radioactive waste buried throughout the country, the United States is in need of a major nuclear revision (U.S. Department of Energy, 2). We are amidst a new race: one for cleaner nuclear energy production. Nuclear development, research, and international testing labs are at the forefront of the news, and worldwide concerns for greener energy, smarter systems, and carbon reductions bring thorium back into the spotlight. Yet even with the world’s second largest deposit of thorium, the United States is reluctant to anchor implementation and sends researchers elsewhere to experiment thorium-based nuclear power (“Thorium,” 2). Scientists are utilizing technologies developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratories (TN), such as thorium rods, to retrofit existing power plants and new Molten Salt reactors that run solely on thorium in the United Kingdom, India, France, and Russia (“Thorium,” 5-7). Millions of dollars are being spent to ship thorium abroad and to reclaim foreign enriched uranium and nuclear by-products from hybrid reactors. The United States’ involvement in international moves to advance (and police) the nuclear industry are abundant, yet the government has done little to sever its own attachment to nuclear warfare. In fact, the United States has not financially supported any homeland nuclear power stations since the early 1970’s, until recently.

Building discourse

On February, 16, 2010, President Obama announced a new plan to invest $8.3 billion in the research and construction of two nuclear power facilities in Georgia (Wald). The first federal nuclear investment in over 30 years, the plan is aimed at spurring a nuclear resurgence and to create thousands of jobs. The revival of the existing American industry is key to advancing future nuclear technologies; after nearly 100 under construction reactors were abandoned between the 1970’s and 80’s, the first step in advancing nuclear technology is to reacquaint America with nuclear power (Wald). We must foreground nuclear research and education in America.

Situating a New Nuclear Facility Amidst a Historical Past The advent of nuclear power launched skyrocketing industry facilities across America, highlighting the 1970’s as nuclear power’s most prolific decade. After nuclear disasters like Three Mile Island and the meltdown at Chernobyl, waning sociopolitical support brought the nuclear plant-building industry to a halt. Thirty-five years later, America is once again investing in the industry, but what does this mean for new nuclear facilities?

Already, the existing nuclear plants are approaching the end of their lifespan, as most of the facilities built from 1950 to the late 1980’s are projected to last approximately 40-50 years (Openshaw, 1). Many of the existing facilities have already undergone decommissioning, leaving a strong infrastructural network with depleting nodes. Researchers are developing “fourth generation” reactors that focus on waste reduction, increased safety, and alternative fuels, among them: the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR). The development history of the past shows that it takes approximately ten years, from concept to facility completion, to build a nuclear facility (Openshaw, 15). With President Obama’’s current initiatives, the earliest starting point of this project would be around 2020. However, since this new nuclear facility will rely on alternative fuel sources, I project the implementation of this project between 2030 and 2040. Hypothetically, this allows a decade to establish a thorium extraction industry. By examining when power plants were built in comparison to their projected lifespan, one can surmise that by 2030, every existing nuclear facility in the United States will have reached the end of its projected lifespan. Whether or not these facilities continue to operate, a majority of them will certainly be decommissioned, leaving an underutilized network for the transport of fuel, waste, and electricity. The need for a new nuclear facility is more apparent than ever, and it is upon this network and situational urgency that Containment Building is grounded.

Decommissioning + Prospecting According to a convention set by International Atomic Energy Agency, it takes approximately 100 years to completely dismantle an existing nuclear power station (Barrie, 17). During the first ten years, the removal of nuclear fuel, uncontaminated buildings, and plant takes place. It takes the next 85 years for all remaining radioactive material, packaged into storage, to decay and five more years to dismantle reactors and send all remaining contaminated materials to a waste repository (Barrie, 17). While radioactive containment is underway, a vast area of land is available for alternative use, but prospects for the site will be both limited and contentious. Decommissioning is a very lengthy, expensive, and most notably wasteful process, but material waste volume is only a fragment of the concern.

Infrastructure for dispersing energy has a much longer lifespan than nuclear power facilities and can be fixed on a need by need basis (Barrie, 17). The connection to the electric grid is a powerful argument for siting new, cleaner energy generating facilities on these sites. Fourth generation nuclear reactors like the LFTR are only 2,000-3,000 sq.ft, 1% the area of existing typical nuclear power station which occupy 200,000 – 300,000 sq.ft of land (Martin). The small footprint offers two advantages: 1.) An abundance of land on every existing nuclear reactor site and 2.)

An opportunity for LFTRs to be placed discreetly amidst the American landscape.

By 2030, every existing nuclear facility in the United States will have reached the end of its projected lifespan, leaving an underutilized network for the transport of fuel, waste, and electricity. The lifespan of a typical nuclear power plant is approximately 30-50 years (Openshaw, 15). The end of its days are not due to the structure itself, but the limited run of reactor components before radiation breaks them down. Following the reactor closure, it must be contained and secured for a number of years before being disassembled (Openshaw, 15).

What opportunities does safer, cleaner, abundant nuclear energy provide for urban architecture? The advancement of nuclear fuel and energy production technologies provides an opportunity for large energy and nuclear by-product users to be in close proximity to nuclear energy production in the urban public.

Environmental Urbanism: Distribution Networks Employing advanced reactor technology, pairing advanced reactor technology with massive electrical consumers, requires a new approach to power plant siting.

According to environmental engineering specialist John Winter, the “three E’s of power plant siting” are engineering, economics, and environment (Winter, 63). (For the purpose of this thesis, I am taking the engineering for granted based on the reactor technology described and relying upon local and federal investment initiatives currently in place to cover funding.) Of the many factors that influence each of these, he identifies the most integral as fuel, water, and land, without which none of the above can be sustained. Winter subdivides each of these into a number of subcategories that assist in articulating the requirements for a new nuclear complex. Throughout the project, I remained highly conscious of these three factors and used Winter’s hierarchy as a framework for selecting a site.

Fuel and Waste Fuel delivery and waste collection are major determining factors in power plant siting (Winter, 79). Access to federal waste transportation routes, therefore, is one mandatory characteristic of advanced nuclear power plant siting. This is particularly crucial in urban siting situations where less routes are accessible. New York has a number of waste route highways in the outer boroughs and two on the island of Manhattan including Route 9A, along which this project is sited. Unlike uranium, thorium reactors can sustain production on one fuel delivery per year (Sorensen, Lessons). This means the need for fuel storage is fairly small and does not demand much supporting space, further supporting the argument for smaller footprints in cities.

Lisa PauLi

253

Site Analysis of Local Program

Water Winter states that the primary concerns relative to water supply in nuclear power plants are: 1.) The availability of water for steam generation and for cooling purposes and 2.) The specific needs of water within each reactor, and 3.) The proximity of natural bodies of water and meteorological patterns that may affect levels of groundwater on the site (Winter, 68). While water sources such as rivers, lakes, coastal regions, reservoirs, and groundwater are all viable, each must be analyzed in terms of their potential affect on the site. Fluctuations in groundwater height, availability, temperature, flow, direction, and possibility of contamination are all potential disadvantages to relying on bodies of water (Winter, 69).

Water is of utmost concern for traditional uranium-fueled Light Water Reactors. In these reactors, water is used as both

a moderator and a coolant where the resulting heated water produces steam that generates electricity. During the cooling process, much of the steam is condensed and looped back into the system, but excess process heat and steam is released through large cooling towers (Winter, 69-70). Cooling towers are necessary components of this system and play a primary role in the publicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perception of a nuclear power plant. Sending gigantic clouds of steam into the air, hyperbolic cooling towers are a signature instigator of nuclear apprehension.

Building discourse

west

east

north

Top: Site section looking North

south

Center: Site plan

Bottom: Figure ground of site

Lisa PauLi

255

Liquid fluoride thorium reactors demand far less water than uranium-fueled light water reactors. Using molten salt, an extremely efficient coolant instead of water, the reactor core becomes highly condensed and the need for large, complex piping and pumping systems is eliminated (“Molten Salt”). The diminished need for aquatic resources is an additional benefit to the area in which the plant is sited and ensures minimal disruption to the existing landscape and ecosystems. This project challenges the role of water in nuclear plants by using heated water and steam to engage and benefit the public while servicing the reactor.

Land and Accessibility Traditional nuclear power facilities (including the plant, storage, and auxiliary facilities) occupy 80-100 acres, 1/10 the size of conventional fossil-fired plants. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors are a factor smaller at only 2-3000 sq.ft (Winter, 63). The scale of the complex plays a key role in the siting of the project relative to land. Winter divides “land” into four subcategories: geology, topography / geography, demography, and accessibility (Winter, 77). In dealing with the landscape, particularly relative to these categories, surveying is key. From a geological perspective, one must be aware of the land beneath the surface. Manhattan is ideal in this category as its ground is comprised of Atlantic Shist, a very hard rock. Above the surface the plant must deal with demographics and accessibility. An understanding of population density and available manpower is imperative as there may be as many as 7,000 people working at the peak of construction, greatly affecting the local economy and availability of services (Winter, 78). Winter’s final category addresses site accessibility, which evaluates all the above mentioned agents relative to human safety and plant operation. The site must be accessible to multiple means of transportation for shipment and delivery of supply and waste. Redundant pathways need to be in place in case of plant shutdown or containment, especially for protection against negligence or terrorist attack, in which case monitoring is also a necessity (Winter, 81). Therefore, in addition to the siting requirement for 1.) waste route adjacency, I have required that the new nuclear plants must be sited 2.) on federal shipping channels, 3.) with access to train ways, 4.) in population centers, and 5.) with access to existing energy-dispersing infrastructures.

Power Plant Siting Requirements 1. Adjacency to federal waste route 2. Adjacency to federal waterway 3. Access to train ways 4. In population center 5. Access to existing energy-dispersing infrastructures Safety is a primary concern for siting a nuclear power plant.

Both technical and social concerns have established guidelines for the standard siting requirements of such a facility. The existing model for nuclear power plants in American requires a 14 mile radius buffer zone around the uranium-powered reactor (Winter, 66). This boundary can be mapped by drawing lines around the site plan of the reactor site, and possibly seen through development boundaries, building trends, or simply by tracing boundary fences. This boundary cannot be reduced to a singular line or identified by a material of structure, but is rather defined by a series of layers, ranging from the innermost

reactor core wall to the first plot of land owned and operated by another party. The LFTR, however, has self-regulating functions built within it, eliminating the need for a safety buffer zone around the plant (Sorensen, Lessons). This reduction of a boundary, from 14 miles to a few feet, requires a new conception of this buffer zone. How does one draw a line between a contentious facility that is typically mitigated by distance, to one that compresses these layers of separation (both physical and social) to one that can be measured in the span of a room or a wall? What happens to these layers in their compaction? This reduction of elements into a singular surface can be seen, in a sense, as a form of camouflage. Redefining a buffer zone at the scale of architecture is a core branch of this project. This calls to question distance, comfort, and disguise. What can architecture do to challenge this notion? How does it utilize the surrounding site to aid in this motive?

In “Towards a Thorium Economy,” David Walters outlines the many benefits of Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs) and Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs) in comparison to standard uranium-fueled Light Water Reactors (LWRs). In reference to scale, LFTRs are much smaller than LWRs per MW for a number of reasons. Firstly, LFTRs run at atmospheric pressure so the surrounding mechanical infrastructures and containment buildings do not have to be as “robust” since there is not any high pressure in the reactor itself. Walters additionally states that current proposals suggest placing the reactors underground or underwater to “further reduce [the reactors] above ground profile and reduce engineering costs.” By using inert gas instead of molten gas, the pipes and turbines will be smaller than existing models due to their higher thermal efficiency (Walters). The key component that makes MSRs safer is something called a freeze plug, “an open line where a frozen plug of salt is blocking the flow,” and is kept frozen by an external cooling fan (Sorensen, Lessons). Even in a total power loss, the plug would melt, causing the core salt to drain “into a passively cooled configuration where nuclear fission is impossible” (Sorensen, Lessons). Therefore, not only are the advanced reactors proven to be smaller, and use safer fuel, they are also not susceptible to nuclear meltdown.

Safety is clearly a priority for any energy generating complex. Historical precedents have shown what can happen to an environment when proper measures are not taken in plant operations, security, mechanical performance, or even poor employee performance. Assuming that the operational mishaps are at a minimum due to the advanced nuclear technologies outlined above, the nuclear campus must still ensure prime operational and structural capabilities. Measures must be taken to protect volatile materials, equipment, employees, and operations from foul play or environmental disaster. Traditional American nuclear power plants are separated from development by miles of land barriers and massive containment buildings. However, structural tests have shown that the walls of containment buildings alone are strong enough to withstand the impact of a jet. So how does one contain the mechanics and operations of an urban nuclear power plant to protect them from both individuals and environmental disaster while simultaneously providing access to those who need direct access?

Protecting architectures of power, whether energygenerating or political, have long informed the shape of the architecture. From concentric arrangements to earthen-bound structures, various protective intents have produced a wide array of formal responses. Containment Building employs a series

Building discourse

Above: Programmatic bundling and carving diagrams based on Voronoi geometry. Various dimensions and packing types tested.

Right, top to bottom: Program divisions within section; Reactors within program-specific bundles; Reactors within programspecific bundles; Program bundles through section; Reactors within programdivided bundles

Lisa PauLi

of eight LFTRs throughout the nuclear campus. In addition to providing electricity to the city, each reactor core is dedicated to a specifically catered nuclear program. Smaller tubes, containing more secure spaces, are concentrated around the core. As you venture further away from the core (planemetrically), the bundled tubes get larger and more public. Each of the cores is composed of its own, dedicated bundle. Each of the eight reactor-core bundles throughout the building are grouped again as a super-bundle to support the overall structure. Access to the reactors themselves is only achieved through the below-grade service floor, which in itself is a highly secured, single-entrance area. As the bundles protrude through the building, they are carved and hollowed to allow light and circulation through the building. The main hall is a grand public promenade, marked by an inverted conical carving of the bundles to produce large spans of open, public space. The thinnest line between the public and the reactor core may only be a few feet at any given time, but a connection beyond the thinness of that containment wall is an elaborate series of paths and security that prevents direct access. Containment Building is indeed a series of complex, secure juxtapositions that play upon traditional notions of concentric, secure stratification to obfuscate access while at times relying on the primal concrete and steel wall that not even a jet impact can budge.

While nodding to the precedents of physical, political, and environmental powers, Containment Building is a revolutionary typology that redefines the architectural language of both sustainable energy and political prowess. It is stubborn to protect its interior as well as the landscape around it, but dares to express its technological advancement architecturally. The power plant is a symbol of endurance, intelligence, and sustainable progression.

Site Strategy: Location, Location, Location Midtown West is an orphanage for the large architectural oddities of Manhattan. The Jacob Javits Convention Center, Madison Square Garden, the Hudson Rail Yards, and down to the water’s edge, the Lehigh Building all occupy an entire city block or multiple. These widespread architectural behemoths are contextually rare in the Manhattan landscape; skyscrapers flock around the dense Manhattan Schist of Midtown and Battery Park, leaving earthen densities and the urban masterplan to determine the height gradation between the dense center and the coastline. The Hudson area rests primarily upon coastal plain deposits, marked topographically by a drastic drop in elevation amidst a city that is primarily conceived of as flat. A drastic drop in elevation along 10th Avenue severs the development to the east from the west. Between the topographic schism and the once industrial river edge lies a series of large, commercial and industrial buildings and industrial lots. The architecture is marked by large, windowless boxes and heavy trucking traffic.

The expansive rail yard distances the pedestrian from both architecture and park; the sky is threateningly open above. The streets between the large structures and vast yards cavernously consume the pedestrian. It is a place where only bigness feels at home.

The water’s edge is activated by tourist and resident attractions alike. Large cruise ships, the Intrepid Museum, Circle Line tours, and Chelsea Piers all extend architectural bigness into the water, drawing crowds through the mega structurelittered landscape between Penn Station and the Hudson. Active

257

residents bike, blade, and jog up and down the dedicated paths that echo the edge of the Hudson and the West Side Highway.

This north-south activity further isolates the mega-lots between midtown’s 10th and 12th avenues.

The extension of the No. 7 subway line to 11th Ave. and 43rd St. and the Hudson Yard Redevelopment Project attempts to bridge the life of the city with the concrete devastation that stretches the two avenue blocks between the active waterfront and the heart of The City. Without an appropriate architecture, subway riders will be ejected onto the concrete sea of the trucklined 11th Ave. The 11th Avenue Station will be tied to a building activated by tourists, residents, and researchers alike.

Program The core of the project is a series of LFTR reactors that supply one fifth of New York City’s total consumed power. The layers that encase this project are filled with radiation-using, heatabsorbing, and power-consuming programs. The Containment Building’s nuclear campus is composed of a series of interrelated programs that promote the use and advantages of nuclear science and technology. Coupling Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping and contextual site data, I analyzed the categories of existing program on the site and their proximity relative to pedestrian walking distances. The mapping uncovered a series of patterns in development as well as a number of voids in supporting program. For example, there are a large number of tourist attractions along the West Side Highway, including the Intrepid Museum, Circle Line Cruises, the Manhattan Cruise Terminal, the High Line Elevated Park, and the Jacob Javits Convention Center. Many of these attractions are connected by the Hudson River Greenway (a landscaped bike and pedestrian path along route 9A), but the busy highway separates them from the rest of the city. Additionally, a number of industrial, manufacturing, and transportation buildings surround these attractions, proving difficult to traverse 10th through 12th avenues comfortably. Also lacking are public transportation connections, a park, restaurants or bars, and hotels. Based on this analysis, I chose a series of nuclear programs that filled the contextual programmatic gaps while facilitating nuclear wellness and technology.

In addition to the nuclear power plant, the assigned programs include: a nuclear medicine and imaging center, a food irradiation facility, nuclear testing labs, a wellness hotel and spa, a public bath house, a bar, restaurant, electric taxi charging station, and a Plug-in Park. As there is no single facility with the above program, precedents of the above programs in dedicated arrangements were cataloged in terms of adjacency, room and program dimensions, service requirements, and overall scale.

The building assigned program requirements based on these precedents.

Building discourse

The sole non-nuclear-specific program in the project is the electric charging station. Transportation is the second largest electricity consumer in New York City, so the charging station anchors the hub for real initiatives to change the New York City taxi system into an all-electric fleet (Ascher).

The charging stations proximity to the on-site electricity generation advantageously reduces some of the need for electric transport infrastructures. Taxis enter the charging station from the West Side Highway (route 9A) entrance onto the site. Three levels of parkingcharging stations are tucked below the main hall level. The site has a capacity to charge 200 taxis at any given time. As the city transitions into the all-electric fleet, the electric taxis are marked by a chartreuse paint job. As the fleet disperses into the city, it informs the pubic of the new, electric taxi era. In addition to the subway station, the electric charging station is one of two programs that do not rely on nuclear-specific energy production, but rather concentrate on the connection between a highly consuming electric program with a massive, transit-needing public.

This page: The eight reactors on the site are coupled to provide one fifth of New York Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s total

consumed energy. In determining the reactor model from the list of reactor models, the choice to produce an equal amount of electricity was between two larger reactors or eight smaller ones. Initial diagrammatic explorations investigated the benefits of either arrangement relative to programmatic access to the reactors as well as space on the site. In the two reactor approach, the footprint of each reactor was larger, but access to the reactors was limited. In the eight reactor scheme, by testing similar concentric arrangements, much more linear space could be extracted from the eight reactors than from just the two. Essentially, by breaking the production of electricity into a number of smaller pieces, more nuclear-reliant programs such as nuclear medicine, nuclear imaging, and food irradiation could be arranged around the reactors themselves. This in turn would not only benefit the nuclear programs, but separate the reactors from the public through a series of bundled programs. The Containment Building is organized around an extremely active section. On the broader scale, the vertical shift between the western and eastern extremities of the site allows west-access programs to slip below the main public way. As the building slopes up and down from west

to east, the ground below maintains a datum where the operational and mechanical activities take place.

The bundling of programmatic tubes around the reactors in plan, when cut orthographically, produces a striated section which forms the outer edge of the building. The interior public spaces, in contrast, are cut more organically. Inverted, tapering cones carve excess tubes from the bundle to allow large, vaulted spaces to span over the grand hall. Additionally, as the bundles are thinned, large volumes of light are permitted to enter the innermost section of the building.

One of the primary considerations in siting a nuclear power plant is access. During plant construction, operation, and decommissioning, it is imperative that large vehicles and machinery can carry out their assigned tasks safely and effectively. As outlined in the New Criteria for Power Plant Siting, three main adjacency requirements are: 1.) Access to federal hazardous waste transportation routes, 2.) Proximity to train lines and 3.) Federal waterways for ease of delivery of large equipment.

Containment Building is located on the Hudson River, adjacent to the Hudson Rail Yards, and straddles the Joe DiMaggio Highway (New York Route 9-A). Secure entry to the fa-

Lisa PauLi

cility is attained through a single entrance on 34th Street, just a few meters from NY 9-A on the north eastern edge of the site. The single trucking entrance discreetly slips below the main public level of the facility, which is flush with the eastern edge of the site.

A guarded station at this entry strictly controls traffic in and out of the secure area below. The arrangement of the seven reactors is structured to allow delivery

259

truck access, parking, and waste cask storage between them. Each reactor is protected by concentric arrangements of control rooms and support spaces such as offices, security, and parking buffer zones.

Waste from the reactors is securely handled in the below-ground areas and stored in sealed concrete casks. The casks may be removed incrementally or stored on site until further space is needed. The trucking and service area also pro-

vides a dedicated zone for larger equipment and deliveries to enter the nuclear campus without disturbing the public zone above.

Building discourse

Above: Interior perspective looking west towards pedestrian overpass from ground floor grand hall

Opposite, top: Perspective from Route 9A looking North

Opposite, bottom: Exterior rendering

Lisa PauLi

261

REFERENCES David Barrie, Power To Change: Architecture for a New Age of Nuclear Waste and Decommissioning (Britain: BBC Wales, 1995).

I.V. Chirkov, “Nuclear Power Engineering and Thorium Resource,” Soviet Atomic Energy 30 (1971): 647—654.

Stan Openshaw, Nuclear Power: Siting and Safety (Boston: Routledge & K.Paul, 1986).

Kirk Sorensen, “Lessons for the Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactor

(from history).” http://home. engineering.iastate.edu/~pjscott/ Sorensen_Google_LFTR.pdf Presentation, Mountain View, California.

July 20, 2009.

Thorium: http://www.world-nuclear. org/info/inf62.html October, 2009.

U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management. Closing the Circle on the Splitting of the Atom: The Environmental Legacy of Nuclear Weapons Production in the United States and What the Department of Energy is Doing About it.

Washington D.C: 1996 David Walter, “Towards a Thorium Economy: Draft Perspective,” http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/1/5/153348/5912/954/680446, January, 2009.

John V. Winter, Power Plant Siting (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1978).

Building discourse

Above: G+1 Plan (Ground + 1) is the sole level in the building that intersects all cores. It is the exchange floor of nuclear knowledge, by-products, and activity. Where security is necessary between programs, separation is treated with concentric layering, where services may pass through but goods and people may not. This floor is the most dense, highly packed with program, mechanical equipment, and structure. G+1 is primarily a nuclear medicine facility and radio isotope lab, but also includes areas of nuclear testing, food irradiation, and circulation.

G (GROUND + GARDEN) G level is the public thoroughfare through the building. To the east, it begins at ground level and marks the entry to the building. As one proceeds west on G level, the site below follows the natural topography and slopes downward. Nearing the westernmost edge of the site, G level rises to meet the elevation of the High Line and passes over the highway. Upon clearing the north-west freeway, G level slopes down again, passing over public baths tucked below and slips into the Hudson River. The moment where G level meets sea level is marked by the underwater reactor

research facility. This is the sole water-cooled reactor on the nuclear campus and provides heat and steam to the rest of the complex. The intersection of the G plane and the cooling pond provides clean, controlled hot water for the public to enter year-round.

relief to the massive structure to the north, allowing southern light to enter the building unobstructed.

The open space also recognizes the potential development to the south (the proposed site for the Olympic Stadium) and secures the landscape surrounding the nuclear complex.

A direct circulation path connects the end of the High Line at the south-western corner of the site to the new subway stop at the northeastern corner of the site, bisecting the city block between 33rd and 44th Streets along the hypotenuse. The Plug-in Park occupies the southern half of this division.

The large public area is activated by a series of paths around planted petals. Some of the larger shapes within the park are paved, opening the possibility of a wide variety of activities to occur in the open.

The horizontal petals register the change in elevation across the sloping paths of the site.

G+2

Two petals towards the south of the site are programmed cooling ponds connected to the infrastructure of the underwater reactor lab to the west. The cooling ponds maintain a constant temperature year-round, steaming in the winter months and cooling in the heat of the summer.

Urbanistically, the park offers

Nuclear medicine and imaging facility occupies almost the entire G+2 level. This nuclear medicine and imaging is the most space-intensive program on the campus. A dedicated drop off on the north-western corner of the site gives patients direct access to this floor. Just one level above the main, programintersecting level, G+2 has direct access to most vertically adjacent programs including radionuclide research labs, radioisotope labs, the irradiated food kitchen, the wellness spa (above) and directly connects to the pathways bridging over Route 9A. Located just above the structurally bundled floor below, the cores begin to merge and encase larger spaces.

Above G+1, the tubes can be removed to accommodate for larger equipment and programmatic needs. The medical and imaging facility, like the floor below, is composed of a se-

Lisa PauLi

ries of circuitous paths to obfuscate views between patients and to provide a more private experience for the patients.

G+3 G+3 is the top floor of the facility; it houses the wellness hotel lobby, bar, and hotel rooms.

Directly above the medical facility, patients have direct access to a more comfortable, more permanent stay. Upon entering the top floor through the direct-access elevator, visitors experience a breathtaking view of the city and the Hudson River. The hotel and bar are

263

alive with activity; visitors can hop from spa to sauna seamlessly as every public path is an area of repose and relaxation. Heat rooms, sun rooms, massage rooms, and steam rooms interrupt the traditional hotel arrangement to encourage relaxation and recovery.

Top: Interior view of heat sink, hot tub (spa) and underwater reactor testing beyond Bottom: Perspective from Route 9A looking North Next spread: Roof plan

Building discourse

Lisa PauLi

265

Building discourse

Lisa Pauli MIT / Master of Architecture, 2011 University of Texas at Austin / B.S. Interior Design, 2004

After I finished my thesis, I moved to LA and started working for Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects. While there, I worked on the renovation of a Rafael Soriano home, the first steel-framed house in California. As much as I liked the atmosphere of the small office, my graduate work really heightened my expectations for the scale of impact I could have, as an architect, on the built environment and for me; residential work was falling short of accomplishing that. I moved on to my current position as an Associate at Gensler, LA, where I have been working for the past two and a half years, working in the Mixed Use studio. The work is primarily developer driven and entails designing and coordinating residential, commercial, transit, entertainment, and office programs on large parcels of urban land. The graduation in scale was exactly what I was looking for; the diversity of the projects and the large-scale impact on the built environment provides opportunities to make a significant impact.

The projects incorporate a variety of programs, both public and private, and are utilized by a large, diverse public and involve the collaboration of countless disciplines to make real. In my tenure at Gensler, the smallest project I worked on occupied 14 acres of land in downtown Houston; I am currently working on a 80 acre development site outside of Dallas.

I am continuing my thesis-driven academic pursuits through my involvement in the California Polytechnic— Gensler Professional Studio. My most recent studio explored the pressing issue of water in LA. The outcome of the studio’s collaboration with engineering professionals and heads of the local water and power authority was a proposal re-conceceptualizing urban aquatic infrastructure that could be shared and conserved among adjacent buildings. I continue to

apply my academic pursuits by engaging local authorities and I aim to further the presence of design in the future of Los Angeles infrastructural development.

When I’m not working or teaching, my partner and I are developing a practice of our own. With our home as a test site, we have been demolishing, designing and reconstructing spaces within to experiment with formal and spatial compositions. These studies are used as precedents for clients and challenge given conditions with innovative arrangements for living. As I strive to balance a work day of large scale architectural and urban developments with after hours tests of human-scaled, hand-crafted design, I am only beginning to shape my professional career.

What was the most important thing you learned from thesis?

Of the many things I learned from my thesis, the most important lesson I learned is that there are many facets to the world’s problems, and many ways to approach them. Design is just one small step, but if you show initiative and ask the right questions, you will find the right people to help your cause. While teaching the professional studio on water in LA, many people warned us to “be wary” of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP). In direct contrast, I called the LADWP directly and arranged a studio critique with the directors of the municipality, and they were happy to participate.

Thinking back on your thesis, how do you feel it has or has not influenced your career?

My thesis has had a significant affect on how I evaluate my work as a professional. My thesis topic is pressing and calls for attention to real world problems that are well beyond the historic scope of an architect’s work. In my professional work, I think about the role of the architect in the world and how far I can push those limits; I question how great of an impact I can make on the world through strategic insertions of design. Infrastructure and limited resources are two topics that are at the forefront of my mind every day, I try to respond to those in my professional work and engage clients and coworkers in pressing issues at hand.

I also incorporate those goals into my teaching by engaging students in pressing issues and urging them to respond locally through design and interaction with other professionals in the community.

What is the one thing you would have done differently or what do you wish you had known in advance?

If there was one thing I could do differently with my thesis, I would have further pursued the “deployable” aspect of the project. In my initial studies, I considered developing a kit of parts prototype for compact reactors. Although my thesis went in a different direction, I would have liked to see how a Containment Building, as a prototype, would have morphed in a different climate, on a different terrain, for a more compact site, or for lesser amounts of power. This is more of a work in progress and is an idea I continue to pursue as I revisit my thesis years after.

MIT is an amazing place to work and be inspired. Aside from an outstanding faculty and infrastructure within the department, MIT as an institution is incred-

Lisa PauLi

ible. The resources available to students is really unlimited. For example, when my thesis topic was nascent, I scheduled an appointment with two nuclear physicists, Mujid Kazimi and Neil Todreas, from the Nuclear Science and Engineering department, to discuss the feasibility of alternative nuclear fuels and potential issues of siting nuclear facilities in close proximity to an urban population. I cannot think of anywhere else in the world where I would have had that opportunity; MIT is uniquely advantageous in having such wide breadth of world-renowned experts as a part of its core faculty.

What was particularly timely about your thesis? Was it technique or topical?

There are a few aspects of my thesis that made it particularly timely. To begin, the whole concept my thesis came from an article I read in Wired about a safe alternative fuel for nuclear reactors. I immediately jumped at the question of how a safe, energy generating infrastructure that has historically had such a powerfully negative association, could be designed and situated to break down those associations. Would it be beautiful? How would you site it? How would it engage a public? These were and still are very interesting and very timely topics.

I lived in New York and witnessed the PowerNow campaign where compact power stations were sprinkled throughout the city in very close proximity to residents and are virtually unrecognizable; I thought, “Why couldn’t nuclear power generation have those same adjacencies?”

Around the time of my thesis, there was a lot of talk about the future of nuclear power, and discussions of potential means of re-incorporating it into the American portfolio of substantial energy

267

generators. Shortly after I completed my thesis however, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster occurred. It was a horrible event, but it also resurfaced fear and negativity associated with nuclear power.

The results really tabled the discussion of nuclear power for the near future in America, even if it were to be generated by an alternative means.

The execution of the form of my thesis seemed quite timely in terms of technique as well. I employed computational scripting to organize program areas within the site and to generate structural forms. There was a unique play among the self-scripted physical form-finding, and site restrictions that I imposed. The geometries were so complex that every physical model was 3-D printed. That was a fairly unique approach at the time.

My professional work, both in and outside of the office deals with a constant shift in scales. My undergraduate degree is in interior design, so I have always had a passion for the human scale of space, materiality, and attention to detail. Before MIT, I practiced in New York for three years. I worked for a few small architecture firms, but most noticeably for Maya Lin. It was there that I first grasped a true understanding of scale variation. On a given day, I might have helped detail a residence, assemble a template for an installation, or help sculpt a plasticine model of an 11 acre earthwork. It was invigorating! I had never worked on anything so large or so impactful.

Over my time at MIT, I pursued the same sort of constant shift, but through the lens of building, infrastructure, power, and the environment. Under the instruction of Alexander D’Hooghe in particular, my interest piqued for landform buildings and expansive infrastructural projects, such as the network of Disaster Shelters I proposed for Long

Island. Again, these were balanced by studies in form, detail and assembly as seen in the Folded Plane exercise. My thesis, Containment Building, was no different. An urban and infrastructural mega-proposal to reformat the way New York City generates and interacts with power was balanced by fairly ornate drawings of clustered form and carved, vaulted spaces, perceived through detailed 3-D printed forms.

Over three years have passed since I completed my thesis and I find myself working in a similar pattern of shifting scales. My work in the office concentrates on projects that are so large, they take years to develop. Reshaping urban environments in which people live, work, and play is incredibly powerful, but I need the offset of tactile, manageable, and immediate to provide balance in my work. When we first bought our house, I was traveling to Houston during the week to work on construction documents for a 14 acre development site. Upon landing back in LA, I would gear up and go straight to work knocking down a wall, refinishing a floor, or installing light fixtures. As I am currently working on an 80 acre project outside of Dallas that is expected to continue for the next 15 years, I maintain a balance by working on immediately executable projects within my studio and pursue resource-driven initiative through teaching and involvement with local agencies.

Building discourse

Home Studio Independent Work + Academia Los Angeles, California 2011 - Current

Outside of the standard work day, Lisa and her partner, Marc work on developing a practice of their own. Their endeavor began when they bought their first home in Los Angeles. Both trained as architects; each with almost ten years of experience, they shared the goal of transforming space with simple, refined gestures. “The first steps simply involved cleaning up the space,” Lisa said. “We filled four full sized dumpsters the first month of owning the house.” By removing walls, they created a more open layout with flexible spaces for living, entertaining, working, and studying. The house is used as a test site for personal and professional projects. “Test sites” is a term Lisa started using while researching nuclear tourism for her graduate thesis at MIT. After visiting the Nevada Test Site, Lisa recalls, “I was inspired by the concept of an open grounds for doing virtually anything.” Their current home and studio is a grounds for testing material applications, custom forms, and custom designed aggregate systems, as well as making art. The two are currently working on a residential renovation and planning a home for a client in Texas. For Lisa, the small scale residential projects and material investigations keep her grounded in tactile, human-scaled applications while she

works on urban mega-projects during the day.

Her involvement in teaching a California Polytechnic— Gensler professional studio is keeping her academic pursuits active. The infrastructural obsession that grew from her influences and pursuits at MIT has stayed prevalent in her work. The California landscape is particularly plagued by water shortages and droughts, which is where Lisa is focusing her academic projects. Her academic studio incorporates professionals from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the Arid Lands Institute, and engineering practitioners to begin to help students rethink how to conceive of designing with and around water. Working with local professionals and municipalities empowers the students with knowledge, connections, and ambitions to make an impact with the work they produce.

As Lisa grows as a professional and as a designer, she aims to marry her ambitions of maximum positive impact on the built world with the sensitivity of her material applications, and her academic agendas into a firm that incorporates all of the above into a large, impactful, and informed practice.

Time lapse photos of the demolition and renovation of the main living space

practice, executing formal and material studies throughout their house.

in Lisa’s house. She and her partner use the house as a test site for their

Lisa PauLi

269

Maya Lin Studio Professional Work Maya Lin Studio 2006 - 2007, New York City

The foundation of Lisa’s architectural career was established in New York City, working in small firms where she was an integral part of the design process from day one. Working for Maya Lin offered a wide breadth of experiences that provided a perfect medium between Lisa’s material-focused, human-scaled undergraduate interior design studies and her ambitions for attaining a master’s degree in architecture. Working in Maya’s SoHo studio, Lisa contributed to both architecture and art works, including private residences, the Museum of Chinese in America, multiple Wire Landscape pieces, and the Storm King Wavefield. Maya’s versatile work inspired Lisa to approach every work simultaneously through the eyes of artist, designer, and architect. Managing extreme scalar shifts while maintaining a rigorous attention to detail flexed the dexterity if her design abilities. At any given moment, she may shift between detailing a seamless wooden box room to carving a plasticine model of an eleven acre Wavefield.

For Lisa, the scale of the work at Maya Lin’s Studio was not only about size.

The influence and inspiration Maya exuded on people ranged from political figureheads and academics to environmentalists and artists, reaching people across the globe with her initiatives. At Maya’s Studio, Lisa learned the importance of strong client relationships, clear design ideas, and cross disciplinary collaboration. Most importantly, she was inspired to make a large impact on the built world, at whatever scale it required.

Top, Middle: Photos of Maya Lin’s Where the Land Meets the Sea at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

Bottom: Exterior of the Museum of Chinese in America, by Maya Lin. Image courtesy of Maya Lin Studio/ Museum of Chinese in America.

Left: Photo of Maya Lin’s Wavefield at Storm King Art Center. Image courtesy of Leonard Nevarez

Building discourse

Gensler Professional Work Los Angeles, California 2011 - present

The seeds of Lisaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s academic ambitions to develop and realize large scale urban projects blossomed into her current role as an Associate and Project Designer at Gensler, Los Angeles.

The majority of her work focuses on large scale, transit-oriented, mixed-use developments where, through building, she challenges the way people historically live, work, and play. The scale and duration of her current projects are vast and time consuming; sites are measured by hectares, program areas measure in the millions of square feet, and project durations can easily span a decade. With this expanded metric, environmental, urban, and economic shifts significantly impact the direction of the projects.

Lisa followed her first major project at Gensler, River Oaks District, from late concept through its current stage in construction. The project is a 14 acre development in the heart of one of Houstonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most vital commercial districts and includes office, entertainment, commercial, residential, and dining programs. After years of riding in the wake of a fluctuating economy, and formally expanding and contracting in response

to financial outlook, the project resumed development in 2011. In addition to being a primary designer on the team, one of her most significant responsibilities was facilitating the transition from Los Angeles-based design to Houston-based construction documents. The pivotal role in the cross office collaboration was a valuable learning experience and exposed her first hand to the benefits of a global architecture firm. As she continues to develop professionally, she is focused on expanding and fostering cross-disciplinary collaborations across the firm and among other consultants.

Projects of this scale are relentless in their demands for designers to shift scales. Shaping roads and choreographing multiple buildings on a site is contrasted by detailing curtain wall systems. It is between the constant shift of these scales where Lisa finds herself most comfortable. The material sensitivity she gained from her work with Maya Lin is paired with an ambition for urban impact, which grew out of her work at MIT.

Lisa PauLi

271

2005

2007

2013

Building discourse

Pamela Ritchot

273

Pamela Ritchot

Tuktoyaktuk: Responsive Strategies for a New Arctic Urbanism M.Arch Thesis 2011 Advisor: Ana Miljački Readers: Nasser Rabbat, Pierre Bélanger

Given that global hydrocarbon discoveries are beyond their peak and current production accounts for only half of consumption worldwide, petroleum exploration has expanded into the deepwater reserves that belie the rapidly diminishing armor of the Arctic icecap. The largest discovered oil resource North of 60° lies in Canada’s Beaufort-Mackenzie Basin bringing the race for oil in ice to focus on the land and coastal communities that occupy the edge of the sea. These areas become targets for rapid urban expansion, most notably through the exploitation of their minimal resources and onshore facilities as well as their prime geographic positioning. As exploration licences increase in the Beaufort-Mackenzie Basin, Canada’s Arctic communities foresee the threat of unfettered gas urbanism and the typical boom-and-bust cycles of resource development. In the 1970s and 80s, the rapid development, exploitation and eventual retreat of the oil industry characteristically expanded the Hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk in the Northwest Territories, only to desert all operations when the hopes of offshore oil development were no longer economically viable.

The economic, ecological and territorial damage wreaked by this phase of development mobilized the ratifying of the Inuvialuit Final Agreement, which defined the local Inuvialuit land claims and strengthened the native population’s control over natural resources. Similar to the close attention paid by the oil industry, the Canadian government has established a national imperative through their 2010 Budget that seeks to acknowledge the growth of Northern territories through increased frontier development. In this imperative, a community like Tuktoyaktuk, which sits as the critical gateway to the riches of the Beaufort Sea, is seen as a crucial federal frontier—a community to be expanded, not abandoned.

Despite federal inputs, the Inuvialuit are operating from a recently empowered position from which they can enter into the current exploration agreements. As the owners and operators of the land within the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, they retain the final deciding factor on whether these offshore reserves will, in fact, be tapped. In their best interest, they will form a partnership for development with the oil industry and determine the provisions under which said exploration and onshore production will take place. “Reconstructing Tuk” will be their defining agenda, as they simultaneously siphon economic

and infrastructural inputs from both the Canadian Government and the oil giants. In the end, this strategic partnership with the oil industry will allow the Inuvialuit to mobilize and modernize their population. They will enter an era of defining the new Arctic frontier as one that is able to grow under its own agreements and contracts, and therefore free from full-fledged reliance on federal intervention.

Opposite: Tuk, Canada. Maximum sea level rise in the year 2050

Building discourse

Above: Tuk is the only permanent settlement on the low-lying Beaufort coast, a coastal frontier in a changing landscape.

Right: Lessons from past explorations and a history of land and resource disputes brought the signing of the Inuvialuit final agreement which will secure the economic flows from all offshore activities back into Tuktoyaktuk.

Opposite: Tuk is the northern most settlement on the Canadian mainland, the gateway to the Beaufort Sea.

Pamela Ritchot

Amid this geopolitical scene, lies the Hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk, the most northerly settlement on the Canadian mainland and the single permanent gateway to the riches of the Beaufort sea.

Typically covered by seasonal ice floes, the Northern coast is experiencing some of the most significant effects of climate change across the globe. These changes are seen in both a melting landscape and a marked vulnerability to an increasingly volatile sea. Tuk’s karst landscape sees drastic seasonal inundation as its ground plane becomes both eroded at its edge and melted to subsistence from within its permafrost foundation.

Compounding this crisis of Northern construction is the inadequate Tuk housing stock that is over capacity, abandoned, and in major need of repairs. Inadequate housing coupled with a 2.2% annual population increase requires that Tuk move forward with a new and strengthened housing strategy. This housing crisis is further fueled by the offshore oil development as transient shift workers serving offshore and onshore operations multiply the local populations, straining already strained resources. Importantly, more than 1000 transient individuals are expected to flow through Tuk over the next fifty years of oil development and production.

While Tuktoyaktuk’s economic and physical challenges already liken it to an “Arctic slum,” the situation will have far worsened by 2050 as rising sea levels and melting permafrost will significantly inundate the remains of this troubled hamlet.

Through storm surge and sea-level rise, it is predicted that 61% of the available landmass of Tuktoyaktuk will be lost to the sea. The majority of that land is currently being allocated to residential and open, cultural space—again raising the need for infrastructural solutions that combat this eroding, defenseless

275

edge and envision a new Arctic urbanism.

The premise of the project is to piggyback on the megadevelopments of the oil industry in order to set up large-scale infrastructures that both secure the present growth of the local community and strategize for the eventual retreat of the oil industry. For this to occur, the infrastructure—likely after about forty years of use in industrial production—must be turned over to the native population for the sake of local use and the cultural production of a modernized coastal community in 2050. At this time, the economy will transform from one based on resource extraction and industrial services, to one driven by a more highly-skilled coastal economy, poised for subsistence but also engaged in the global operations afforded by a strengthened marine infrastructure. This infrastructure will open Tuk up as an access point along the Northwest Passage and allow it to serve as an operable harbor for Northern logistics.

Industrial development will begin with the construction of a concrete caisson seawall to act as barrier, access and occupiable vessel as it reconstructs the coastline. From this foundation, a land-packing strategy behind the caisson structure will establish new high ground on which to continue construction. This ground plane will secure permanent housing and transform unused open, recreation and civic spaces for the local population. As a layered strategy, this defense mechanism constructs a harbor that registers changes in sea level, allowing the seawall to perform in gradients as an interface with the sea. Throughout the phases of oil production, rising sea level will weave together industry and community, creating a vital maritime economy from a functioning occupiable harbor.

Building discourse

Pamela Ritchot

This page: 2015: Conditions of Tuktoyaktuk exist largely as the result of oil and gas development of the 1970s-1980s.

Opposite: Climate change is destroying Tukâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ground plane due to rising waters, eroding coastlines and thawing permafrost.

277

Building discourse

Top: Conditions of sealevel rise predicted to occur in Tuk. Three maps of mean sea level for 2015, 2025, 2050, left to right.

Right: Zoom-in to northern spit reveals residential housing crisis predicted for 2015.

Pamela Ritchot

279

Building discourse

A concern for the Arctic commonly surfaces in a multitude of present-day debates and discussions that involveâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and yet extend endlessly beyondâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the discourse of architecture and urbanism. The Arctic has become a global concern of a highly complex nature, and is in the midst of experiencing the effects of several major overlapping crises, operations and opportunities. These are occurring across four streams of issues, which are documented in the timelines to follow. These four issues will have a drastic and marked effect on the urbanization of the Canadian Arctic in general and on the Hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk in particular. This community of the Northwest Territories at the edge of the Beaufort Sea is at a fork of the crossroads where its people, history and landscape will witness the unique confluence of the issues involved in this Northern crisis. These four issues are: the global crisis of climate change as it is rapidly reshaping a once-frozen land; the history of cultural and geopolitical struggles of the Inuvialuit in the western Canadian Arctic; the history of federal control over its northern population and northern development (or absence thereof) in their own Arctic lands; and finally, the influence of oil and gas development, particularly offshore, through the ability and willingness of the industry to reshape this Canadian Arctic frontier. A frontier indeed, but if played correctly. This thesis suggests that we are coming upon a uniquely aligned moment when these issues can be manipulated and strategized in relation to one another.

By monopolizing on the strengths of each, and by mitigating or lessening their weaknesses, we might be able to reduce the negative impact on the Arctic landscape and instead witness a future of monumental urban and architectural opportunity.

Tuktoyaktuk: Responsive Strategies for an Arctic Urbanism unravels more than a century of conflicts and events that have each helped to shape and construct the narrative of the North, thereby setting up this era of opportunity. By uncovering these contextual analyses, this project propels the Canadian Arctic into a period of strategic development that will reap immediate benefits and position the region for self-sufficiency well into the following decades.

With predictions of housing up to 72 billion barrels of oil, companies such as BP and Shell position themselves for exploration in this contested subterranean territory. Tuktoyaktuk will experience an explosion of oil and gas exploration seen through the construction of onshore facilities and support services.

Pamela Ritchot

GAS URBAnISM In TUk: A CASe Of The 1970’S And 80’S The viscous Arctic landscape is slowly slipping out from under its communities at the same time huge infrastructural projects for hydrocarbon extraction begin to construct a new Arctic urbanism.

As the world consumes two barrels of oil for every barrel discovered, the once-frozen Arctic is launched into hot pursuit of rapid gas urbanism and dropped into the center of the global gas economy.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the Arctic Circle holds an estimated 90 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. They claim that the Arctic accounts for about 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil, 30% of the undiscovered natural gas, and 20% of the undiscovered natural gas liquids.[1] As much of the world’s most easily accessible resources have nearly run dry, exploration shifts towards untapped resources in locations previously

281

avoided as either ecologically or politically sensitive territories.

In this way, both the high prices of oil and the thinning of the ice caps foster the ability to pursue more costly technologies required to access these resources. And they have begun to do so. examples of such rapid infrastructural pursuits occurring under the veil of oil and gas development already exist in Canada’s Arctic past. In the Mackenzie region, a significant leap has already been made towards the onset of exploratory drilling and processing. One can’t help but notice a rapid drilling lineage between 1900, when zero wells had been drilled in the ice off the shores of the Arctic, to 100 wells in 1950. With 394 offshore wells drilled in 1970, an exponential leap occurred in the next twenty years, seeing 1,165 wells in 1990 in the Mackenzie region alone.

While the history of offshore oil development in Tuktoyaktuk will be discussed in the following chapters, it is important to note here that with predictions of up to 72

billion barrels of oil, companies such as BP and Shell are positioning themselves for exploration in this contested subterranean territory. As such, Tuktoyaktuk is on the forefront of experiencing an explosion of oil and gas exploration. This surge will be witnessed onshore through the development of required services and facilities that support offshore pursuits.

Building discourse

The Canadian north: Strategizing an era of informed Arctic urbanism in the Canadian north.

Pamela Ritchot

“As long ago the Mediterranean was the most important Sea in the world because the ruling nations—Rome, Carthage and Egypt—were on its shores, so today the Polar Sea is gaining importance because the three big powers of the world—Canada as a member of the Commonwealth, U.S.A. and U.S.S.R.—are facing each other over this ice- and island-filled ocean....The growing importance of the Polar Sea air route is influencing the development of [the North].” (Canadian Department of Transport. Press Release, 1957.)

At 69°27°N, the northernmost settlement on the Canadian mainland, Tuktoyaktuk’s extreme location and lack of accessibility leaves it vulnerable to subjugation by the oil and gas industry. As Canada and the United States dispute the exact border between the northern limitations of Alaska and the Yukon, this zone of the Beaufort Sea emerges as a hot spot of

283

resource potential—a region of national concern. Crippled by the geographic and economic strife that accompanies such remote contexts, the survival of Tuktoyaktuk amidst this future development will rely on the thoughtful intervention of both federal and provincial planning strategies. It is therefore critical to highlight the strengths of the Federal government’s incentive for Northern development. Doing so reveals that Tuktoyaktuk stands as a prime site for federal intervention and development under Canada’s Northern Strategy.

Building discourse

Offshore Urbanism A dichotomy exists between such structures of permanence and the temporal lifespan of the extraction process, calling to action the resolving abilities of infrastructural innovation. Rather than subjugate a site to the impacts of the hydrocarbon economy, design is put to the test, mitigating the incidence of the urban corpse. Acknowledging the phases of temporal decommissioning of the rigs, the movement of infrastructures, economies, and the temporal shifts of the city, the phased transition of these complex infrastructures could support new opportunities at urban revitalization. In this way, its vitality and prosperity is allowed to thrive following an imminent change of life where the remaining population is left with an infrastructure on which it can be sustained. Design should address the long-term use of offshore oil and gas structures and provide a synthesis rather than a gap between the presence and operation of the gas economy and the condition of the city upon the retreat of its economic attractiveness.

Below: The evolution of offshore drilling vessels in the Beaufort Sea (with section of Continental Shelf).

Opposite, top: Offshore urbanism? 2050 fleet?

Opposite, bottom: By 2015, conditions of Tuktoyaktuk are largely the result of oil and gas development in the 1970s-1980s. next spread:The 2015 landscape in Tuktoyaktuk is threatened by rising sea levels.

Operating amongst the infrastructural prowess imminent to the industry, this thesis aims to resolve the incompatibilities of economy, environment, and infrastructure that lead to the urban corpse. Oil and gas operations require huge capital investment, especially as increasingly deep-water and technologicallyintensive practices and terrains are explored. The reality that these very structures soon lay abandoned, finding no future use or opportunity for re-occupation, presents both an economic and architectural flaw. Design innovation can be used to embed both flexibility and permanence within the infrastructures of Arctic urbanism, so that in their longevity, they facilitate a transition of occupation and programmatic use. By finding programmatic and formal syntheses between the needs of the oil industry and the future urban occupation of the community, there is great potential to maximize the entire lifespan of the massive infrastructures of gas urbanism.

285

180

150

S N D LA

50

E

U

T

IA

IS

N

A

L

hi!ARCTIC

KU

Bering Sea

North Pacific

sh

ipp

ing

lan

Kodiak

Provideniya

UNITED STATES

Macken

Rive r Yuk on

Sea

Sea

WAT ER

!

NORTH POLE

Northwest Passage

ge

sov

SEVERNAYA ZEMLYA

Rid

ono

RUSSIA Noril'sk

Dikson Kara

Qaanaaq (Thule)

FRANZ JOSEF LAND

n

GREENLAND

Sea

80

Nord

Barents Sea

(DENMARK) Kangerlussuaq rd) (Søndr

Pechora

Bjørnøya (NORWAY)

Greenland

70

Sea da

Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund)

Vyc heg

Nuuk (Godthåb)

NOVAYA ZEMLYA

Svalbard (NORWAY)

Longyearbyen

Greenland Davis Strait

Paamiut (Frederikshåb)

RUSSIA

Lom

Ellesmere Island

Bay

Jan Mayen (NORWAY)

Tasiilaq

Arkhangel'sk

Tromsø

ve

Se

Labrador

uy

ISLANDS

Arctic Ocean

Sverdrup 334 MMBO / 17.4 TCFG

2.3 TCFG

Narsarsuaq

r n ay a Dvina

Norwegian

Sea Denmark Strait

OIL PRODUCTION GAS PRODUCTION N o r t hAND A t l a n tGAS i c O c e aPRODUCTION n OIL OIL EXPLORATION

Lake Onega

Sea

Arctic

Circle

ICELAND

FINLAND

NORWAY

Reykjavík Faroe Islands (DENMARK)

Tórshavn

Oslo

N

Saint Petersburg

Tallinn

Stockholm

Moscow

EST. LATVIA

Riga Vilnius LITH.

Baltic North Sea

Belfast

PRESENT DAY SUBMERGED AREAS IRE. Dublin

30

Lake Ladoga

Helsinki

SWEDEN

NORWAY

SHETLAND ISLANDS

COASTAL SENSITIVITIES TO SEA-LEVEL RISE *numbers indicate the degree pf sensitivity

ona 60

60

Aldan

Yakutsk

a Len

Tiksi NEW SIBERIAN Laptev

EN

Repulse Bay Bay

Okhotsk

Oymyakon

Verkhoyansk

Sea

OP

QUEEN ELIZABETH ISLANDS

CANADA

Hudson

ma

Siberian

80

Cambridge Bay

150

Vily

R iv e r

Banks Island

CANADA

Rankin Inlet

S

East

average minimum extent of sea ice (as of 1975)

$1.2 billion

Yellowknife

Koly

Circle

Cherskiy

Pevek

Wrangel Island

Barrow

Prudhoe Bay

Great Slave Lake

Lake Athabasca

90 W

Arctic

$2.1 billion $585 million

70

Beaufort/ Mackenzie 1,016 MMBO / 9.7 TCFG

River

zie

ND

Magadan

Anadyr'

Arctic Circle

Chukchi

Eagle 12 MMBO / 0.8 TCFG

Southern NWT Colville Hills Hay 1.3 MMBO / 0.1TCFG 0.3 TCFG River Great Bear Mackenzie PlainLake Echo Bay 260 MMBO, 0.2 TCFG

LA

Sakhalin

UNITED STATES

Fairbanks

Pea ce

Bering Strait Nome

Anchorage Valdez

Dawson Watson

S L I

occupied by the Soviet Union administered by Russia, claimed

Sea of Okhotsk

60

Bethel

Gulf of Alaska

Juneau Whitehorse

Liard Lake 1.3 TCFG

120

RI

PetropavlovskKamchatskiy

es

Ocean

Sukh

Pamela Ritchot

U.K.

0

Sea

Copenhagen

RUS.

Minsk BELARUS Dnieper

DENMARK

Kyiv

Warsaw

UKRAINE

Berlin

POLAND

GERMANY

15+

30

803

5-14.9

Tuktoyaktuk

68 N

The Canadian Arctic is in a state of compounding crises that is changing shape and the structure of its Northern communities. With global tempe tures on the rise, the structural foundation and longevity of Northern com nities face destruction from the rising sea and a once-frozen ground plan is currently melting into the sea. Within this entropic landscape, the pol thaw has afforded access to the Arctic seabed that will bring about a new of hydrocarbon exploration and extraction. The construction of this indus landscape assumes that huge infrastructural megaprojectes will domina Arctic horizon and present a strong contextual dichotomy to the existing polymorphous landscape. For this reason, the offshore oil rig demands attention as a surplus structural opportunity for the critical invention of a Arctic Urbanism.

Acting within these temporal fluctuations demands an assertion of sever dominant certainties. The Arctic Manifesto ensues...

1. THE OIL WILL RUN DRY bringing Canada’s Northern communitie down from a period of rapid growth to reconstruct and refocus their position in the global economy.

2. THE ARCTIC ICECAPS WILL CONTINUE TO MELT and cause the opening of the Northwest Passage. This provides a unique opportu Zfor Canada to reposition its Northern territories as the central cros roads in the global hydrocarbons race while providing the world wit access to its Arctic economy through the expansion of tourism.

3. DESIGN WILL MITIGATE THE THREAT OF THE URBAN CORPSE a adaptable gas infrastructure will unify and revitalize the post-oil urb fabric and allow for a new territory to emerge as an Arctic frontier.

scape

solar scape

landscape

SKELETON

8’-6” / 7’-9.5” 90.75”

flat-pack comp

continuous seal

SMART SKIN

90” 8’-0” / 7’-7”

FROM VANCOUVER via Point Barrow - 2 weeks from Vancouver to PB where it sits in the harbour to await clear on ice conditions

OIL WELL GAS WELL OIL AND GAS WELL DRILL SITES INUVIALUIT SETTLEMENT REGION UNPAVED SURFACE ICE ROAD (3-4 MONTHS) BARGE ROUTE (NTCL) INTERNATIONAL VESSEL AIR ROUTE CITY / TOWN / HAMLET

19’-4.745”

container shipping

TO ASIA

EXPLORATION LICENCE PRODUCTION LICENCE SIGNIFICANT DISCOVERY LICENCE

V = 1,135 FT³ MAX LOAD = 40,000 TYP. LOAD = 5,300 lb

.

/ 19’-10

Building discourse

Pamela Ritchot

287

Building discourse

networked flows and logistics

Pamela Ritchot

Designing the strategy for a new Arctic Urbanism responds to a past, present, and future occupation of the Northern territories.

An understanding of the Inuvialuit people, their struggle to retain sovereignty over their land and resources is at the forefront of this design strategy. The accommodation of their needs, now and in the future, is the main directive for this work. Additionally, the Arctic climate demands that these infrastructures consider the nature of construction in a volatile climate. More so, the complexities of oil drilling operations, and the large, infrastructural demands of the industry as they forge into the Arctic frontier must be acknowledged as the primary economic opportunity that drives this work. Under the Canadian Government’s Northern Strategy, this project finds national imperative, as it seeks to operate within the needs of the industry, while establishing a stronghold of Arctic development that will provide a globally-recognized gateway to the Canadian North.

Developing The Harbour: The Future Marine Infrastructure Of Tuk The world economy relies on the offshore resources of the Arctic. A successful extraction process must be supported by the production and transportation networks that make the operations profitable. It has been proven that air transportation is ineffective and unprofitable for mineral payloads. Relying on the winter access of the ice roads would only afford a brief period of time when oil could be transported south, over land, and the conditions on this ever-thawing ground plane prove to be unstable and dangerous for oil transport. The proceedings of the Mackenzie Gas Pipeline have not yet guaranteed the overland transport infrastructure this high North, and even if the project were to go forward, there are no plans to take it as far as Tuktoyaktuk. In this way, the increasing of marine transport infrastructure to support offshore drilling is gaining significant importance in Tuk. The urbanization of Tuktoyaktuk will see to the strengthening and cooperation of existing infrastructures and logistics.

Through increased marine capabilities, the operation of Tuk as a seasonal harbour will allow it to function more successfully as a gateway to the North. Upon the retreat of the oil industry, the operations of the harbour will offer a flexibility of scenarios for urbanization itself and will complete the seasonal access to the community.

The harbour will change and evolve with the community itself; as the post-oil economy evolves, so too will Tuk transform into a distribution and production hub for the Canadian Arctic.

Acts of site remediation, vessel decommissioning and recycling, shipping, and food production and distribution will all be able to thrive and activate Tuk as a new and strengthened economy.

Utilizing the infrastructures set up during the oil operations, the community lives on while the figure of the ground plane around it and the operations upon this ground plane change.

The constants are self-sufficiency, connectivity, and growth.

289

By AnALyZInG TUkTOyAkTUk AS A STUdy On SUCh fORMS Of OIL-dRIven ARCTIC URBAnISM, ThIS TheSIS IS ABLe TO STRATeGIZe A fUTURe fOR A COMMUnITy In need.

the services required to function as a vital link within a global network of logistics, tourism and industrialization.

Through the investigation of existing conditions and failed operations on the land in Tuk, as well as an understanding of the needs, desires and fears of the Inuvialuit as they head into this phase of offshore drilling, the phased reconstruction of Tuktoyaktuk must deal with the following critical issues:

The project must address the need for housing for two population groups: the local population and the transient workers of the oil industry. A phased strategy that responds to shifting numbers of oil employees and possible increases in tourism and other transients should be seen as an opportunity to construct individual housing units. The project will allow for the cohabitation of the local population with the industry workers in a layered strategy that reconsiders the notion of the Arctic dwelling and the “man camp.”

The edGe The project will propose a defensive and adaptive edge strategy that is both occupiable and protective. It is this edge that will provide simultaneous access for the local community and the oil industry to the Tuktoyaktuk harbour. It will construct a new harbour for Tuk, in a layered strategy that creates a flexibility of occupation for its various users over time.

ACCeSS disconnected geographically from the rest of Canada, the project must address access within the Community of Tuk. As areas of the landscape melt away, the infrastructural motives of the project should retain the critical connections between and within new areas of development and the traditional, eroding settlement.

GLOBAL neTWORk Through the establishment of a successful marine infrastructure, the new harbour at Tuktoyaktuk will provide the community with

hOUSInG

hARveSTed LAndSCAPe Issues of food scarcity and the loss of open land for traditional hunting and harvesting practices should be addressed, along with issues of subsistence, land remediation and the ability to generate a sustainable landpacking strategy with which to deal with industrial wastes in a safe and constructive manner.

1 Building discourse

2

2

3

4 5 9

7

6 8

8

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Retreating summer ice sheet Local housing and productive greenhouse Tuktoyaktuk Market and Distribution Centre Canadian Coastguard Arctic Division Arctic char farming Existing water reservoir Arctic HAZMAT and breakbulk Packing Plant Wastewater treatment Landfill containment Indstrial waste processing and containment plant Vessel waste storage and packaging Repurposed caisson for ship-breaking, packing and recycling

Top: Site Plan Below: Scenario of Use (see following page for description).

10 11

N

12

Pamela Ritchot

291

defenSIve LAnd STRATeGIeS Coupled with the edge strategy for land reclamation and harbour occupation comes the need for defensive land strategies across the community in order to prevent inundation and loss of accessibility throughout Tuk. This will occur through the reconstruction and lifting of roads and certain patches of land to heights above the rising sea-level. Typical berm strategies utilizing geo-textiles and land-packing help to construct a reliable barrier throughout the community to defend it against the rising tides.

ChOReOGRAPhInG OCCUPATIOn By utilizing a layered edge strategy, this thesis aims to successfully weave the operations and flows of occupants on the site. The ability for the caisson seawall structure to retain land and also provide access to the water allows it to connect several modes of transportation within the section of the edge.

The edge is able to transition from dock to dike to dry land, allowing a multitude of occupations to coexist.

SCenARIO Of USe Opposite: Bottom, left: 2030: 1M Sea Level Rise. Oil occupation and harbor economy coexist as local production and distribution begin to fluorish Opposite: Bottom, right: 2050: 2M Sea Level Rise. Post-oil occupation finds the Arctic economy booming as an international harbour opens. This deep sea port allows Tuk to engage in food production, high Arctic distribution, scrap packaging and shipping, as well as brownfield remediation to fuel its local economy.

Building discourse

Top: Arctic Scenario 2015-2030 Bottom: Arctic Scenario 2050-2060

Pamela Ritchot

Top: Plan detail, permanent housing strategy Bottom: Plan detail, temporary housing pods

293

Building discourse

Above: Who;e Arctic Catalog Opposite: Scale model Below: Timeline

Pamela Ritchot

295

Arctic Scenarios : 2015—2030

Arctic Scenarios : 2050—2060

The development and occupation of the Tuktoyaktuk harbour takes advantage of the finite economic opportunity to secure land for future development and to secure housing for the local population. In its construction, it will see to the coexistence of the oil industry—as they maximize their use of the harbour and its housing facilities—and the local community. The local community, in this scenario, will both engage with the economy and business of the oil operations while maintaining their cultural practices of living within the complex ecologies of the land.

The structure and slopes of the harbour will provide access for boats, fishing and whaling, while securing new land on which to construct housing and the indoor greenhouse space.

Upon the retreat of the oil industry, the Tuktoyaktuk harbour will already be set up as a vital hub for Northern logistics and transportation. Assuming the rise of sea levels, the inundation of the harbour will provide the port with deepwater access that will facilitate many of the marine functions of the booming economy. As the oil operations gradually slow down and retreat over the past 10 years, the harbour will have seen the transition from an oil economy to a marine economy through the infrastructures already in place. The port once operated by the oil industry will be taken over to allow for the distribution of recycled wastes from the site. Among these wastes are HAZMATS from the drilling operations as well as recyclables from vessel disassembly from the Vessel Graveyard. The Tuktoyaktuk Materials Packing and Distribution Plant will be required to ship these materials via barge down south to be correctly recycled and given new life.

Other remediation tactic include the use of safe landfilling strategies as well as wastewater treatment ponds. These mechanisms help to repair the damages of the oil operations, while proactively giving back to the local landscape and community.

With increased access from the Northwest Passage that is actively open at this point, the presence of the Canadian Coast Guard will fill the harbour with service and monitoring vessels as well as Search and Rescue equipment. Many of the emergency response facilities can transition from some of the Oil Spill Response facilities and Harbour Management facilities set up by the oil industry.

Finally, at this point, the production of a harvested landscape will occur in the greenhouse spaces of each building.

This Arctic resource will couple with a large Arctic Distribution Centre, Market and Food Warehouse (including community freezer). Also supplying this economy is the active fish-farming taking place throughout the site. The capacities of this nutritive system serve the community of Tuktoyaktuk at first, but as the system grows, it can expand into a larger distribution center and marketplace for Northern communities to have access to more nutritious sustenance. nOTeS 1 United States Geological Survey, (USGS). 90 Billion Barrels of Oil and 1,670 Trillion Cubic feet of natural Gas Assessed in the Arctic. USGS. 27 July. 2008. Retrieved 24 Aug. 2010.

Building discourse

Pamela Ritchot MIT / Master of Architecture, 2011 University of Manitoba / B.S. Environmental Design 2006

After my thesis, I worked under Pierre Bélanger at Harvard University’s Landscape Infrastructure Labs as a research assistant, investigating urban issues related to the economic and infrastructure challenges— and opportunities—in estuarine regions around the world.

While at Harvard, I was approached by a multidisciplinary design and planning firm in Toronto, Canada, staffed by architects, planners, engineers, geographers, social scientists and community engagement specialists who serve resource sector companies and communities worldwide.

They were interested in the relevance of my thesis research to a new project in a northern Canadian mining region. I was hired as one of two Core Team members leading the Thompson Economic Diversification Plan in Thompson, Manitoba. The primary goal was to develop plans to diversify the economic base in a place where mining has remained the primary economic pillar since the middle of the 20th century. Successive dips in the resource sector highlighted the economic volatility that the City of Thompson, the region and community partners realized they must tackle head on. We formed a working group to spearhead this effort and improve Thompson’s capacity as the regional service center and diversified economic stronghold for Northern Manitoba. Along with my co-worker, I led the ten-member working group, liaising between various levels of government, aboriginal organizations and private sector interests.

With the help of stakeholders, we developed two streams of work involving architectural and planning solutions.

First, the region needed a new regulatory framework to ensure the city’s capacity to manage its own growth. This included an updated development plan and zoning bylaw, as well as a sustainable asset management framework. At the regional scale,

I led the development and design of the Thompson and Region Infrastructure Plan, which is a 30-year regional growth strategy for northern Manitoba. The four-phase plan coordinates both private and publicsector visions for infrastructure development in order to realize more cohesive and strategic growth for all communities across northern Manitoba. I presented the plan to the provincial government in Winnipeg, where it sits today as a guiding document Manitoba’s Department of Infrastructure and Transportation.

In our second stream of work, we developed Action Plans in the areas of alternative justice; education and training; housing; local and regional identity; and economic development to provide strategic direction on stakeholder-identified priority initiatives for economic diversification. In each action plan, we provided a baseline analysis for regional opportunities and developed plans, including, among other things, conceptual designs for future facilities.

While I worked across each Action Plan, my specific focus was on Alternative Justice and Education. When it came to justice, I designed the concept plan for a facility aimed at responding to specific challenges of northern alternative justice, restorative healing and remediation—all of which impact families in Manitoba’s remote communities and raise questions about corrections’ capacity to deal with aboriginal justice issues. As for education, I was the project manager leading the master plan for an Industrial Skills and Trades Training Centre in Thompson. I presented the master plan several times to the provincial government, including education ministers.

The plan now serves as the government’s primary guiding document for their own plans to develop and promote industrial skills training in Northern Manitoba.

I was also engaged in a range of other

projects in this office. Most notably, I led a regional concept plan for Greater Novosibirsk, the third-largest city in Russia.

Novosibirsk hosts the country’s largest concentration of post-secondary institutions, staking its claim as a growing academic and research region. This multi-scalar project focused on planning infrastructure and transportation networks that would support regional growth through three new planning areas: a 5,000-hectare satellite town at the periphery of Novosibirsk’s current city boundaries; a new Scientists’ Community that will host the influx of faculty and students and their families; and a 3.5-hectare parcel of land in Kemerovo, an industrial city in south Siberia, just northeast of Novosibirsk. Beyond the regional-scale planning, I also developed detailed community block plans for new residential communities, three new housing typologies, and plans for the proliferation of thriving public and recreation spaces.

My time at this office was also spent working on several housing projects, including a new development plan in Iqaluit, Nunavut, and a workers’ housing development in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia for an international coal mining company. As well, I managed and designed a multi-family housing development for tenants with special needs in Regina, Saskatchewan—a region in central Canada that is currently experiencing rapid growth thanks to its thriving potash industry.

What was the most important thing you learned from thesis?

My thesis taught me how to use the tools of design thinking, research and methodology to work across a range of platforms and address local, regional and global issues. As well, I learned how the design process can be enriched by the

Pamela Ritchot

incorporation and realization of the various external conditions that impact local conditions. Specifically, my thesis taught me that the design of our built environment exists in a symbiotic, or often dichotomous, relationship with issues of global and local geopolitics, territorial sovereignty, environmental challenges and resource development.

Most importantly, I learned a lot about myself as an architect and urban designer.

I learned that my interests lie not in architecture alone, but in other disciplines and bodies of work with which it interacts. I discovered a passion not only for creating buildings, but in the people, communities, landscapes, relationships and partnerships my designs affect.

My thesis gave me a broad knowledge base that enables my work to appeal to a diverse set of professional prospects and has given me the fluency and opportunity to pursue professional partnerships in areas I once thought tangential. These include the resource sector, regional and local governments, private development companies, planners, community engagement specialists and geologists. It has also allowed me to pursue writing. I was published twice in 2012 and await three forthcoming publications in 2014.

While I attribute my professional success to the academic foundation I developed at MIT, I have also come to realize the huge gap that exists between academia and the actual, practical “doing” of professional work. While my interest in academia could allow me, like many others, to spend a career thinking, researching, and writing, my time in professional practice has shown me the satisfaction I can glean from transforming thought into real-life, tangible products.

What is the one thing you would have done differently or what do you wish you had known in advance?

I wish I had resolved my final design solutions more eloquently and comprehensively. I found myself increasingly intrigued by the processes of research and discovery, to the point where I struggled with finding a single design solution that I could confidently develop and more fully resolve.

Instead, I became fascinated in developing a collection of possible solutions, potential construction systems and hypothetical responses. While this provided me with an encyclopedia of ideas, looking back, I wish I had obsessed over one design solution more fully.

297

At the time, I thought the high-level conversations were more important to me than discussions about a design detail, a typology or a building form. My final thesis review was an epic experience for me, as we discussed everything from global politics to global logistics,to shoreline protection and the question of “what is the meaning of rural urbanization?” While these provocations proved, in fact, to be very important to me and quite influential in my career, I wish I had realized at the time the importance of the unique chance to obsess over my own over-embellished, self-aggrandizing architectural project.

Why MIT?

I was drawn to MIT’s multi-disciplinary research platform. Coming into the institute, I knew I was not as interested in obtaining a typical architecture degree that would have me slaving over doorknob details and condo floor-plans—a novel career for those who enjoy it, but not something I’d enjoy. Instead, I hoped to cross paths with the various faculties, divisions, disciplines and schools that are affiliated with MIT’s architecture department—to take advantage of the institutional connections before me.

I made a schedule fine-tuned to my particular interests. I participated in several design workshops and seminars where international travel and academic partnerships led me to Japan, China, and El Salvador, to name a few. I took advantage of cross-registration at Harvard’s GSD. I used courses there to test thoughts conjured during thesis prep, relishing the opportunity to view the design world through different lenses and alongside diverse audiences.

I also benefited from meeting likeminded people at MIT; they shared a piece of their creative genius with me, and I’m grateful for that. I was inspired when Miho Mazereeuw lectured about her work on disaster mitigation along the Pacific Ring of Fire. I spent the next few years working with her on competitions and research projects and was seriously inspired by her dedication to research. Miho taught me how to develop a provocative research position and how to employ the investigative tools necessary to craft a strong and cohesive argument.

And of course, my thesis wouldn’t have been the same had the MIT stars not aligned me with Ana Miljački. Ana taught me how to be fierce, and that great projects can be smart and playful. She equally inspired and challenged me—the perfect

motivational cocktail, for which I am exceedingly grateful.

What was particularly timely about your thesis?

The topic. My thesis addressed infrastructure and community development related to resource sector initiatives. At the time of my research, I was interested in linking the related issues of sovereignty in the Western Canadian Arctic with the growing interest of oil and gas companies in the offshore reserves in the Beaufort Sea. There was also the Canadian government’s interest in northern development and strengthening communities in that region.

These conversations continue to develop today as the interests of oil and gas companies in the Beaufort Sea have led companies such as BP and Shell to position themselves for exploration in Arctic waters off the coast of Tuktoyaktuk. In 2010, a joint venture between Imperial Oil, ExxonMobil Canada and BP Exploration Operating Company led to their shared exploration and development. This is taking place across their multi-year exploration licenses covering over 1 million acres in the Beaufort Sea. The joint venture, along with the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, has stimulated ongoing press in Canada and abroad on issues of development, environmental protection, onshore operations, logistics and indigenous partnerships. It continues to raise questions about the impact this development will have on Tuktoyaktuk, the Inuvialuit people, and Canada’s northern and national economies. As such, a key tenet of my thesis stands: for best results, governments, local communities and private sector interests must align on resource development initiatives.

Climate change and contention over land rights continue to deeply impact the Arctic. Indeed, issues raised in my thesis, including settling land claims, strengthening local indigenous partnerships and finding smart architectural solutions to building in the North, remain significant challenges for development in Canada and across the globe.

Building discourse

Industrial Skills and Trades Training Center Master Plan 2012-2013 Thompson, Manitoba, Canada

This page: The Master Plan for the ISTTC was a comprehensive plan outlining the institutional operations, academic programming, capital funding strategy and conceptual designs for a three-phase build out of an industryled training center, in

northern Canada. Working in close coordination with program operators, industry partners and educators, the functional program for the ISTTC spaces was designed to grow on site, over time, as program funding and regional interest in the Center gained momentum.

FLOOR PLATE AND FAĂ&#x2021;ADE TO COMPLEMENT UCN PHASE 1 BUILDING

Pamela Ritchot

299

Restorative Justice Facility 2012-2013 Thompson, Manitoba, Canada

Left: Corrections Infrastructure Map showing Sheriff’s access and logistics in northern Manitoba strengthens the argument for a restorative facility in Thompson, closer to the communities of origin of many of the individuals either sentenced or remanded in the provincial corrections system.

Churchill L Brochet Lac

Brochet B

This spread: All images by Pamela Ritchot for rePlan / regionalArchitects.

Lynn Lake S South Indian Lake Fox Lake

Leaf Rapids Split Lake

Gillam

Shamattawa Nelson House e

ay t

oF r

THOMPSON

Wabowden

God’s River

Cross Lake

Norway House

God’s Lake Narrows

Island Lake

Van to Winnip

Opaskwayak Cree Nation THE PAS

eg Mon & Fr id

ay

Snow Lake d Flin Flon Mo n Van transpor twice daily

Moose Lake

Grand Rapids G

Sheriff’s Office Transport Logistics RCMP Detachment Provincial Sheriff’s Office

BRANDON

PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE

WINNIPEG

Community Pickup Points Sheriff’s Fly-in Access (Up To -35ºC) Sheriff’s Emergency Flight Routes Typically Due To Time Constraints (Up To -35ºC) Sheriff’s Daily Van Route To The Pas (Up To -40ºC) Sheriff’s Weekly Van Route To Outlying Areas (Up To -40ºC) Van / Passenger Trade-off Point

Building discourse

buck sleeper

301

Buck Sleeper

Last Resorts: A Tour Guide to Territorial Protection for the Republic of the Maldives M.Arch Thesis 2011 Advisor: Ana Miljački Readers: Mark Goulthorpe, Nassar Rabbat

A two meter rise in sea levels projected by the end of this century threatens the sovereignty of the Maldivian nation state.

While flight from the Maldives to establish a new homeland elsewhere has been proposed, the culture and economy of this country is inextricably entrenched in its geophysical environment. Although the Maldives is known for super luxury resorts, the nation’s government is poorly positioned to defend a population of 400,000 people spread across 1,200 islands. This thesis proposes a strategy by which the international resort operator, an autonomous and independently funded entity, can be mobilized as an agent of coastal defense.

Current rent structures commit resort operators to a 50year lease, with an annual rent related to the size of the island it inhabits. Last Resorts proposes that instead of payments in cash, operators pay the government with defense, both hard infrastructure such as sea walls and jetties, and soft infrastructure such as beach building breakwaters and artificial reefs. Prefabricated composite construction techniques facilitate modular building units produced from locally available resources.

The Maldivian Archipelago stretches 900 km from north to south, and is comprised of 1,190 charted islands. (An island is anything with at least one tree, thus differentiating between islands and sandbars). Of these 1,200, 200 are occupied, 42 are utilized for agricultural purposes, and 97 contain resorts. The rest are uninhabited. At present, the population is distributed throughout 27 atolls, although the majority of civic infrastructure is collected in the islands surrounding the capital of Malé in Kaafu Atoll. Following the 2004 tsunami, the government identified 14 tsunami “safe” islands to be fortified against future inundation. These islands are selected as they already have large populations and critical infrastructures such as hospitals, schools, and government offices. This map demonstrates the proposed shift in population distribution: today in pink, tomorrow in blue. As demonstrated in further chapters, the fortification of each island can be achieved by the integration of durable and defensive Last Resorts.

In 2009, over 279,000 tons of garbage was distributed to the island of Thilafushi: more than half came from resorts, and the rest from Malé, Hulhumalé, and the airport. Thilafushi is an island completely reclaimed from the reef by piling trash into shallow waters, producing an island of roughly 30 acres which is now used for manufacturing and natural gas storage. These strategies of land reclamation can be used locally on Last Resort islands: trash can be sorted and disposed of locally by filling composite sea walls, which will assist in the accumulation of sediment from seasonal monsoon action as well as the strategic redistribution of soil from one part of the island to another.

Opposite: Distribution solution diagram

Building discourse

buck sleeper

303

Building discourse

This page, top: Dense high-rise development on the 1-sq.m capital island of MalĂŠ This page, bottom: Daily flooding in MalĂŠ Opposite: Primary spending and civic infrastructure is constrained to the capital city. The government is spread too thin for action.

buck sleeper

305

Building discourse

buck sleeper

307

LOCAL MATERIALS:

IMPORTED MATERIALS:

Steel

2008: 942,000 tons of steel imported

Sand:

Most islands in the Maldives are comprised of calcium carbonate sand, a product of eroded corals.

Sand mining is illegal in the Maldives due to material scarcity.

Coral:

Traditional buildings in the Maldives are contructed from mined coral, which can be cut into blocks and ornately carved. Coral mining is now illegal due to the fragility of the local ecosystem, and the importance of the reef for tourism.

River Sand

Example: 85,000 tons of river sand 526,000 tons crushed aggregate from India

2008: 4,727,000 tons of mineral (sand, aggregate) imported

Hardwood

Cellulose:

Primarily palm trees and mango wood, used in traditional dhooni fabrication, roofing, and simple housewares. Trees are extremely scarce.

Trash:

All trash from Male’ and the Maldive’s 97 resorts is boated to Thilafushi, where it is used as fill or recycled. Of special note are plastics, which can be reformed into building units.

Example: all building materials for Soneva Gili resort imported from Thailand

2008: 884 metric tons of wood imported

Opposite, top: “We can do nothing to stop climate change on our own, and so we have to buy land elsewhere.” Mohamed Nasheed, former President of the Maldives, The New York Times, May 8, 2009 Opposite, bottom: In 2008, Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed proposed using income from the country’s tourism industry to purchase land in India, Sri Lanka, and Australia. Notwithstanding the political difficulties of inserting one sovereign nation into another, the Maldivian economy and culture is inextricably linked to its immediate ecosystem.

Top: Alternative resources can replace the dearth of local materials: monsoons, trash, and artificial reefs present opportunities for eco-infrastructures.

Left: Government, Housing Row 2: Waste, Airport Row 3: Prison, Fuel Depot

Building discourse

Regions captured by seawalls can be programmed either for high-density development or for a variety of productive and recreational landscapes.

These include ponds for aquaculture, pools for swimming, orchard groves, agricultural fields, operational infrastructure such as sewage treatment and power generation, and finally, perimeter blocks of housing and commercial buildings. Services can be shared by the local population and the resort; additionally, the economy of the island is supported by jobs at the resort and by visitors to local retail and cultural establishments.

buck sleeper

Infrastructure will be deployed incrementally, beginning by securing critical water treatment, energy, and communications services. As resorts expand their operational capacity, further seawalls can be laid down. Housing will occupy the base and the ends of piers, while other island functions can occur in the (now protect-

309

ed) core of the island.

As sea levels rise, the original shoreline will be obscured, and the new island perimeter will be defined by constructed beaches and sea walls that allow the island to expand to the extent of each reefâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shallow waters.

Building discourse

buck sleeper

311

Building discourse

The Breakwater Bungalow is a guest unit designed to occupy peripheral, artificial reef defenses. The units are shaped as tubes to break water coming from many different directions throughout the year, but are bundled for stability and angled to produce both communal and isolated spatial conditions.

The Breakwater Bungalow is the ultimate durable architecture, allowing the tourism industry to push further out into positions otherwise thought too vul-

nerable for development.

When grouped together and coupled with artificial reefs, this strategy can create a halo of coral around an island that will scatter wave action and increase biodiversity.

These reefs will also produce sediment that can be captured on shore using groynes and redeposited to raise critical portions of the island.

Above: Field Condition Below: Line Condition

buck sleeper

313

The following test cases are deployed on the island of Thulusdhoo, one of the 14 â&#x20AC;&#x153;tsunami proof â&#x20AC;? islands identified by the Maldivian Government. The Potted Palms strategy deploys composite sea walls across established island communities such that fill and soil can be strategically moved between adjacent parcels to produce wave and flood-proof land raised above the rising saltwater table. The landscape can be raised based on root depth for various crops: mangos and coconuts grow best with soil depths over 4 meters, while smaller varieties of pumpkin and pepper grow in depths of less than 1 meter. Excavated areas can be used for high density aquaculture. Larger and smaller areas correspond to municipal and residential parcels. Sea walls follow existing roads, reducing complications during implementation and preserving the basic parameters of established urban patterns. The existing perimeter block typology found on most islands can be maintained as space and scale require.

Sheet piling is implementable by small construction crews, and sea walls can be added incrementally to fully secure the islands. Strategic land packing and unpacking creates arable land for agriculture.

The expansion of islands through dredging and bleaching from rising ocean temperatures has compromised extensive parts of coral reefs in the Maldives, both in terms of their capacity to generate the sediment which is responsible for the creation of the islands, and the biodiversity which attracts tourism and industrial fishing. These reefs can be strategically rebuilt through the application of BioRock technology, a reef restoration process developed by Wolf H. Hilbertz in which calcium carbonate accumulates on steel once an electrical current is applied. For every kilowatt hour of electricity, one kilogram of limestone-like material is produced, and can grow with three times the strength of portland cement at a rate of 2 cm per year.

Young corals feeding off of this calcium carbonate are encouraged to grow up to four times faster than in typical situations.

In isolated instances, artificial reefs can be used as tourist attractions or seeds for environmental replenishment. In linear deployments, the reefs can be used to create defensive sills, or underwater breakwaters, that can defend islands from increased wave action, and will continue to grow upwards and become more robust as sea levels rise.

Before and after: Although initially destructive, sea walls are necessary to protect islands from flooding and rising salt tables in the ground water. These walls can be deployed to produce large and small internal pockets, either filled and used for housing or agriculture, or evacuated and filled with water for recreation and aquaculture. Extended piers capture beach material from rebuilt reef systems, creating a constructed

edge that can be used as tourist beaches or as a harvesting point for sediment to be moved inland.

Building discourse

3 m tsunami event

2 m sea level rise

Top: As seen in this section, the splayed arrangement of tubes produces discrete spatial conditions while providing a stable tripod base.

Primary living space is on the upper two levels, but the bottom zone (within the 5 meter flood zone) can be used for the bathing and storage of recreational equipment.

Bottom: Before installation of the tubes, circular sheet pilings are driven into the reef as footings. Each tube is then bolted onto this foundation and bundled with the structural collar. In some cases, such as the living room, a solar panel encrusted roof cap can rotate open, further opening the building spatially and facilitating natural light and ventilation.

buck sleeper

315

This page: The lower floor contains a single continuous zone with three partially distinct rooms: kitchen, lounge, and dining room. Access is achieved through the kitchen via a floating gangway.

Opposite: This configuration allows for two enclosed bedrooms with private baths on the upper floors, while the dining space is double height to act as a passive thermal chimney.

Building discourse

The Wet/Dry Villa is constructed using the same process as the composite panels in the Breakwater Bungalow, but is deployed in a horizontal position to facilitate its attachment to seawalls. The structural envelope allows the villa to cantilever from walls intended to shore up agricultural land and populated areas. Each villa is made up of one or more components, depending on accommodation require-

ments and amenity type. Individual building units can be assembled on Thilafushi, transported by barge or helicopter, and bolted together on site. Seams are then welded thermally to make the structure water tight. The rounded forms cause waves to refract up and around the units, dissipating energy into space rather than reflected against the structure itself.

buck sleeper

This page: After several years, the artificial reef foundations of the breakwater units no longer require an electrical current, and will have flourished into fully self-sustaining reef systems.

317

Building discourse

The extreme durability of these villas allows for the occupation of breakwaters and sea walls that would otherwise be too exposed to wave action, both increasing the total occupiable space of resorts, but also producing a new typology of housing type that gains value

through its position in sublime environments.

The villa is also designed to occupy edge conditions, allowing shored up agricultural parcels to be used as resorts without compromising their capacity to produce food. At right, the farm island of

Maamilgili is shown with 200 units deployed along composite sea walls that follow existing roads.

A central spine accommodates larger functions such as spas, dining, and support facilities.

buck sleeper

Above, top: Soft space for lounging and sleeping

319

Above: Section through Wet-Dry Villas

Above, bottom: Wet space for bathing and relaxation

Above: Section through Wet-Dry Villas

Above: Assembly strategies

Building discourse

Final Villa model

Typical floor plan showing sleeping space, bathroom, and central void

buck sleeper

Exploded axonometric of villa components

321

Building discourse

Buck Sleeper MIT / Master of Architecture, 2011 Middlebury College / B.A. History of Art & Architecture, 2005

What have you been doing since thesis?

My primary objective after completing thesis at MIT was to be involved in architectural projects moving toward construction. After 3.5 years of architecture school, I felt comfortable in certain areas of design (form, program, parametrics, representation), but lacked the technical and contractual experience required to actually realize a project.

Immediately after finishing thesis, I worked at SOM San Francisco on several commercial high-rise projects in Shanghai and Shenzhen that are now under construction. Upon returning to Boston, I served as project manager for the design and construction of the North Bennet Street School at Kennedy Violich Architects.

These projects supported a secondary objective, which was to finish the ARE so that I can actually call myself an architect. Finishing the requisite 5,600 intern development program hours (seriously, just do it) was straightforward enough, as accumulating time at the office is no problem for any designer.

Finding the time to study and sit for the exams has proven more difficult, and remains ongoing. They’ll be done this year, I think.

Recently I’ve taken a position at Continuum as an associate designer in their Space Group. This group specializes in scalable immersive environments, and draws upon my experience designing elastically and figuring out how to build it.

Thesis is scary, and at times, pretty

unstable. As the author of the problem and solution, you have the power to change one to support the other, and send yourself into a total tailspin in the process. Thesis underscored the need to establish smart parameters that will direct your design process without painting you into a corner: in my case this was manifested by a series of operational strategies, ranging in scale from the regional deployment of infrastructural typologies to the manner in which building materials are procured and produced.

Thinking back on your thesis, how do you feel it has or has not influenced your career?

The topic of my thesis was born out of urgency (rising sea levels, ecological devastation, poor living conditions), and so of course I’d like to test the strategies in a real world application. It would be cool to deploy the solution in the Maldives, sure, but I don’t feel driven to take this particular project further than the thesis itself. The strategies can be distilled to a single objective: integrate the constraints of occupation, infrastructure, and ecology into architectural form. This has proven a more productive project, which I have since applied at many scales across numerous endeavors.

I would have liked to have had a better handle on the specific programs I was interested in investigating, or, decided not to obsess over solving the problem credibly at the scale of individual buildings. At the time, a breakdown of

specific programs and areas seemed too conventional, and so I sort of winged it instead. Committing to certain metrics would have provided the direction required to roll out these strategies across a broader range of building uses and applications.

What was the biggest advantage for doing your thesis at MIT?

MIT is all about awesome people, and I can’t imagine my thesis without the support and guidance of my committee: Ana Miljački, Nasser Rabbat, and Mark Goulthorpe. Their insights were challenging and at times divergent, but offered the opportunity to work through the project from a number of perspectives. Furthermore, MIT was instrumental in securing support (thanks to the Schlossman Fellowship and the KPF Traveling Fellowship) to actually visit the Maldives for three really weird weeks.

What was particularly timely about your thesis? Was it technique or topical?

I hope that this thesis was timely both topically and technically. There is a real crisis in the Maldives and elsewhere; coastal settlements are increasingly overcrowded, flood infrastructure is insufficient or failing, and cities everywhere struggle with waste and food production. Last Resorts looked to address these issues through regional solutions, leveraging local economies

buck sleeper

and resources in an innovative fashion to support growth and stability. The strategies deployed build upon conventional techniques and attitudes toward the manner in which we are able to build land, recycle trash, and grow food, but through conflation produce hybrid technologies to combat an emerging condition.

323

Building discourse

buck sleeper

325

Pod Zero Plymouth Rocks Studios Option Studio, Fall 2009 Instructor: Mark Goulthorpe

Pod Zero proposes linking the disparate stages of film production—the shoot, the edit, and the premiere—into a single unitary and continuous building. Each of these buildings is conceived of as a series of structural bays running along the existing topography to minimize cut and fill, and utilize the ground’s thermal mass. Each bay is orchestrated parametrically through a generative components model that controls figure, span, structural depth, roof and wall slope, orientation to prevailing winds, and aperture for view and solar gain, responding plastically to the requirements of the programs encased within.

By twisting the building sectionally, a variety of structural and spatial typologies are produced, morphing from shear wall, to pitched roof, to moment frame. The sloping surfaces produce the raked floors of the auditoriums, provide sheltered outdoor areas, and permit light and ventilation into the central court.

The frames are manufactured in three or four components out of fiberglass in area nautical fab labs, limited in size by the 100×150 foot mills used by boat manufactures. They are airlifted or trucked into place as required.

Each unique element is created from a mold of milled polyurethane foam or through a reusable rubber formwork over a customized frame. Monolithic, cast fiberglass floor plates rest on shelves integrated into the primary columns. Each element is designed with stairs, seating, and infrastructural plugs pre-milled into their form, shifting labor and time from man to machine. Operable ETFE pillows negotiate the non-planar geometry between bays, with inter-layers for shading and thermal insulation when necessary. Each program has a specific relationship to the parametric model. The sound stages require a clear span of up to 150 feet, and are almost entirely opaque to reduce

Above: Cutaway axonometrics showing (from left): theater, sound stage, systems, and offices.

solar gain because of their heavy heat load from internal lighting equipment. The roof is deployed to open up to the north and west, capturing indirect light and ventilation. The sound stages are designed with an interior skin of rubberized acoustic gills, which, when opened between shots, can help quickly cool the space and reduce the need for artificial lighting. Each stage is served by a scene shop that contains all ancillary programs, such as costumes, electronics, and storage. These spaces are open directly to the structure, but maintain their orientation towards the North for passive lighting.

At the end of the building, the width narrows to accommodate a block of administrative and production suites. Connected underground to the primary sound stage, it is from here that each individual film is managed and produced. On the courtyard side, the structural bays rotate to define a series of private and shared office suites. On the forested side, the aperture contracts, blocking light and noise for a flexible galley of rendering rooms. Throughout the building, individual columns can be expanded locally to accommodate fire stairs and elevators. The hollow structure doubles as utility shafts and ventilation ducts.

Building discourse

buck sleeper

327

Building discourse

buck sleeper

329

BarterMart Local Food Depot, Grocery & Micro-Business Incubator Studio Fall 2008 Seaport, South Boston Instructor: Ana MiljaÄ?ki

BarterMart projects a future in which all food is local. As urban agriculture proliferates, grown within the city limits on rooftops and backyards, food distribution nodes must be reimagined.

BarterMart proposes a mega market integrated with Bostonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s subway system, person vehicles, and its port, creating a structure in which food can be bought, traded, processed and taught.

Three primary programs include incubator spaces for fledgling businesses on the ground floor, an open market with specialized cores for hot, cold, or frozen goods, and a bulk foods warehouse and grocery on the upper level.

Building discourse

buck sleeper

331

Void One Gallery, Library, Lecture & Cafe

Building discourse

Basement Storage and Mechanical

Super Coffer Proposal for a School of Architecture At the University of Melbourne

Detailed Section Scale 1:40

Shelf

Locker

Surface

Options Studio, Spring 2010 Professor: Nader Tehrani Group Meeting

Can architecture teach itself? Can a building, whose primary program is the instruction of architecture and design, itself become a pedagogical device? The design for a new school of architecture at the University of Melbourne engages this imperative through three primary strategies.

Radical Programmatic Clarity: The school is divided into horizontal cassettes, such that programs like labs, offices, shops, and teaching spaces with need for closure can be linked and clustered. This permits other programs such as auditoriums, studios, and building zones to occupy a radically open and flexible void. This is a zone with few set rules, and can flex to accommodate changing needs for class sizes, project work, and functions as the school evolves.

An Unrelenting Tectonic: Beginning with an ambition to maintain the orthogonal fabric of the city, a grid is applied at

multiple scales throughout the building and surrounding landscape. This grid is permitted to change size and material, but never shapeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;producing a tectonic that is at once relevant and artificial, but pushing it past the point of contrivance. The grid forms all the DNA for every building elementâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;pavers, solar shading, structural coffers, shelves, furniture. Large rectilinear voids are cut out in the floor plates, revealing glazed shelving which will be filled over time with architectural detritus like models and mockups.

Make the Rules, Break the Rules: The gridded matrix is permitted to break such that the multiple grounds can be perceived as a continuous surface, morphing to produce vertical circulation and topography rather than introducing foreign objects such as stairs and seating.

Seminar

Megadesk

Section Through Lecture Hall Scale 1:100

Section Through Entry Scoop Scale 1:100

LIGHTWELL

MEGA SHOP

FLEX

ATRIUM LECTURE Voids as Program

STUDENTS OFFICES RESEARCH CLASSROOMS STUDIOS Section Through Entry Scoop Scale 1:100

FACULTY OFFICES PUBLIC GROUND

Stratification of Program

Visual Porosity

LIGHTWELL

MEGA SHOP

FLEX

ATRIUM LECTURE Building as Lecture Hall

Voids as Program

Hot Desk

Conference

Bus Station

Modular Furniture, Bolted Connections

Bookshelves

Section Through Lecture Hall Scale 1:100

Building as Lecture Hall

Site Model

Kinetic Shelving Stacks

Display

S

Kinetic Bookshelves

Concrete Finish Floor

Concrete Retaining Wall and Foundation

333

Detailed Section Scale 1:40

Shelf

Locker

Locker

Surface

Surface Homosote Pinup Surface Group Meeting

Shelving for Drawings

Site Model

Hot Desk

Sit/Stand

Double Mini

Coffer as Shading/Shelving

Seminar

Conference

Workbench

Homosote Pinup Surface Hot Desk

Sit/Stand

ation

Double Mini

Megadesk

onference

Bus Station

Bookworm

Modular Furniture, Bolted Connections

Workbench

Open Storage for Models

Bookworm

Model Maker

Programmed Wallpaper At Cores

Bookshelves

Display

Event

Kinetic Shelving Stacks

Event

Elevator Machine Room & Utilities

Curtainwall Glazing Integrated Desk Suitcase Three Student Offices, Lounge Lookout over Campus

Void Three Research Space

Suitcase Two Workshops, Classrooms

Steel Grate Mesh

Glass Fin Glazing

Studio Desks

Rubberized Floor Void Two Studio Space Steel Coffering

Book/Light Shelves

Suitcase One Faculty Offices, Administration

Kinetic Bookshelves

Concrete Finish Floor

Void One Gallery, Library, Lecture & Cafe Concrete Retaining Wall and Foundation

Basement Storage and Mechanical

Detailed Section Scale 1:40

Shelf

Locker

Surface

Shelving for Drawings

Coffer as Shading/Shelving

Homosote Pinup Surface Group Meeting

Site Model

Hot Desk

Sit/Stand

Double Mini

Model Maker

Programmed Wallpaper At Cores

Closed Storage

ions

ay

Basement Storage and Mechanical

buck sleeper

Building discourse

LJZ Shanghai Shanghai, China Project with Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill.

2011-Ongoing

This three-tower development at the end of Century Avenue in Shanghai is for a mix of retail and commercial programs. Lower towers are positioned to maintain the boulevard edge while the highest tower is pulled back to produce an open, public plaza.

The rear end of the site is heavily gardened and contains two villas for potential restaurant use. A requirement for smallfootprint floor plates resulted in offset core typologies, which are oriented to increase exposure on Century Avenue and views to Century Park.

Tower facades are designed to fully integrate shading, engaging the mitigation of solar gain with occupation and use.

As the project is oriented at roughly 45 degrees, DIVA solar analysis revealed that both horizontal and vertical shading is required, resulting in an egg-crate grid deployed over each side of the towrs. The facade is unitized to follow a 1,500mm office

module, and detailed to respond to wind and seismic patterns.

In addition to reducing solar gain, the position of fins reduces visible glare on the interior, which, coupled with daylight sensors greatly reduces the buildings’ operational loads.

Project Team: Leo Chow, Angela Wu,Alexander Welsh, Qinghua Fan, Meehae Kwon, Lucy Ling.

塔楼设计 TOWER DESIGN 三栋建筑中的每一栋都是按不同租户类别的需求设计的，标准 模数的办公空间，可提供开放式办公大空间又能分割成几个租 户的平面布置。偏心核心筒的设计优先考虑最大化提供面向世 纪大道和世纪公园的景观。在每层都拥有饱览各方向景观的同 时, 塔楼2和3还提供了兩个完全不受阻,面向世纪大道的外立 面。每个塔楼的首层大厅由透明落地大玻璃围合，使室内外空 间融为一体。塔楼1位于地块中央, 总办公建筑面积是39, 716 平方米，共 27层135米高。塔楼2, 塔楼3沿世纪大道布置，塔 楼1往用地内部退缩从而创建一个宽广的入口广场。这样的布 置，既满足塔楼1和由由燕乔大楼之间40米的间距要求，又为 日后开发2-16-2地块创建了一个共同的中央公共空间。第二高 的塔楼2的总建筑面积是15, 039平方米，共13层72米高。塔楼2 的高度设置考虑了既强调塔楼1的高度，同时又能保证塔楼2高 区楼层面向世纪公园的景观视线通道。塔楼3位于世纪大道和 杨高南路交界处，其外墙面大致和相邻的上海国际金融中心及 世纪大道对面的东方希望广场拉齐，并把建筑高度控制在31.5 米，以符合规划要求。4层高的塔楼3总办公建筑面积是4, 768 平方米。 Each of the three buildings is designed to accommodate a range of tenant types, providing typical office modular spaces to permit a range of open office or multi-suite solutions. Each offset core is positioned to prioritize views to Century Avenue and Century Park.

While every floor will have views in all directions, Towers 2 & 3 provide two fully uninterrupted facades oriented to Century Avenue. Each tower is accessed through a ground floor lobby with fully transparent glazing to promote continuity between indoors and out. Tower 1 is positioned at the center of the site, reaching 135 meters with 27 floors for a total of 39,716 GSM of office space.

Although Towers 2 and 3 are situated to maintain the street edge of Century Avenue, Tower 1 is pulled back to create a broad entry plaza. In so doing, the tower respects the required 40-meter separation from You You Yan Qiao and creates a communal space which would also serve the development of parcel 2-16-2. The next tallest building, Tower 2, reaches 72 meters with 13 floors for an additional 15,039 GSM. The height of Tower 2 is carefully controlled to emphasize the height of Tower 1 as well as maintain views to the park from its own upper floors.

Tower 3, which holds the corner of Century Avenue and Yanggao South Road, is positioned approximately in line with the Shanghai International Financial Center and East Hope Plaza on the opposite side of Century Avenue, and is limited in height to 31.5 meters in keeping with planning requirements. Over the four floors, Tower 3 contains 4,768 GSM of office space.

b

Ac

Abd

bce

cdf

dge

Shanghai Lujiazui Finance & Trade Zone United Development CO. 上海陆家嘴金融贸易区联合发展有限公司

ehf

fgi

Shanghai Lujiazui Finance & Trade Zone United Development CO. 上海陆家嘴金融贸易区联合发展有限公司

ghj

hki

jil

47

jk

kl

13

26 kwh/m2 north 79 kwh/m2 east 93 kwh/m2 south 43 kwh/m2 west

30 25 kwh/m2 north 87 72 kwh/m2 east 104 89 kwh/m2 kwh/m2 south 50 43 kwh/m2 west

30 26 21kwh/m2 kwh/m2 87 79 64kwh/m2 kwh/m2 104 93 76 kwh/m2 50 43 36kwh/m2 kwh/m2

26 25 21kwh/m2 kwh/m2 79 72 59kwh/m2 kwh/m2 93 89 71kwh/m2 kwh/m2 43 43 41kwh/m2 kwh/m2

25 21 23kwh/m2 kwh/m2 72 64 59kwh/m2 kwh/m2 89 76 69kwh/m2 kwh/m2 43 36 29kwh/m2 kwh/m2

21 21 19kwh/m2 kwh/m2 64 59 57kwh/m2 kwh/m2 76 71 68kwh/m2 kwh/m2 kwh/m2 36 41 31kwh/m2 kwh/m2 kwh/m2

21 23 20kwh/m2 kwh/m2 59 59 54kwh/m2 kwh/m2 71 69 65kwh/m2 kwh/m2 41 29 39kwh/m2 kwh/m2

23 19 20kwh/m2 kwh/m2 kwh/m2 59 57 54kwh/m2 kwh/m2 kwh/m2 69 68 64kwh/m2 kwh/m2 29 31 38kwh/m2 kwh/m2

19 20 19kwh/m2 kwh/m2 57 54 51kwh/m2 kwh/m2 68 65 62kwh/m2 kwh/m2 31 39 34kwh/m2 kwh/m2

20 20 16kwh/m2 kwh/m2 54 54 49kwh/m2 kwh/m2 65 64 60kwh/m2 kwh/m2 39 38 32kwh/m2 kwh/m2

20 19 15kwh/m2 kwh/m2 54 51 43kwh/m2 kwh/m2 kwh/m2 64 62 53kwh/m2 kwh/m2 38 34 28kwh/m2 kwh/m2

19 16kwh/m2 kwh/m2 51 49kwh/m2 kwh/m2 62 60kwh/m2 kwh/m2 34 32kwh/m2 kwh/m2

16 15kwh/m2 kwh/m2 49 43kwh/m2 kwh/m2 60 53kwh/m2 kwh/m2 32 28kwh/m2 kwh/m2

42 kwh/m2 WEST FLIP

49 42 kwh/m2 WEST FLIP

49 42 34kwh/m2 kwh/m2

42 42 30kwh/m2 kwh/m2

42 34 38kwh/m2 kwh/m2

34 30 32kwh/m2 kwh/m2

30 38 28kwh/m2 kwh/m2

38 32 28kwh/m2 kwh/m2

32 28kwh/m2 kwh/m2

28 28 26kwh/m2 kwh/m2

28 28 23kwh/m2 kwh/m2

28 26kwh/m2 kwh/m2

26 23kwh/m2 kwh/m2

more solar gain

more solar gain more solar gain

less solar gain

考虑到上海地区 系列垂直和橫向 计。为了进一步 经过精心排列成 兩层楼高金属垂 与玻璃面平行设 于角落的办公室 范的70%玻璃面 的金属窗间墙。 楼外立面予人一 的感觉。由于建 能，这种遮阳板 视线不受影响。

l

In deference t Shanghai, the an array of sta regularly spac To further incr the direct sun saw-toothed 2-storey meta fins parallel to corner to crea the corner offi maximum gla each hood is the reading of the undulating 15 kwh/m complex impr 43 kwh/m significant po 53 from kwh/ms comes 28 kwh/m mitigate heat

23 kwh/m

less solar gain less solar gain

NOTE: RADIATION VALUES ARE ANNUAL AVERAGES, NOTE: RADIATION 9AM-6PM VALUES NOTE: RADIATION ARE ANNUAL VALUES AVERAGES, ARE ANNUAL 9AM-6PMAVERAGES, 9

Gemdale Shenzhen Shanghai, China Project with Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill.

2011-Ongoing

vice core to the east. An interest in shared exterior space drives the formal gyration of floors shifting back and forth to produce balconies and terraces.

The challenge of this project was to produce an exterior braced frame that balances structurally efficiency with the client’s desire to root the image of the building in historic Chinese architecture. The final design is based on the traditional Chinese garden lattice, revisited with finite element analysis and at the unlikely scale of a 36-story tower. The building is organized as a series of planes, containing a column-free lease span to the west and ser-

Project Team: Leo Chow, Angela Wu. Kirit Sedani, Brian Washburn, Meehae Kwon

考虑到上海地区高温日照的情况，每栋大楼外面都设置了由一 系列垂直和橫向凸出遮阳板重复组合形成的遮篷型外遮阳设 计。为了进一步提高塔楼自身遮挡直射阳光的效能, 这些遮篷 经过精心排列成一个锯齿型平面。每个遮篷都是由表面起伏的 兩层楼高金属垂直遮阳板和1.5米寬的橫向凸出遮阳板组成, 並 与玻璃面平行设置。遮篷有弯角可創造出全玻璃的转角, 让位 于角落的办公室或会议室可看到外面的观景。为了滿足上海规 范的70%玻璃面积上限要求, 每个遮篷顶上是能加强遮篷观感 的金属窗间墙。由于重叠和起伏的遮篷所产生的视觉效果, 塔 楼外立面予人一种既丰富又细致的印象,与邻近大楼截然不同 的感觉。由于建筑物制冷负荷量的很大一部分是来源于太阳热 能，这种遮阳板的的设计有助减少外墙面吸热同时可保持观景 视线不受影响。

l

从深南大道望的视景 View from Shennan Boulevard

1:500

5m

10m

20m

30m

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, LLP

WT-1

轴测投影展开示意图 Exploded Axonometric Diagram

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, LLP

12

WT-3

23 kwh/m2

ANNUAL 9AM-6PMAVERAGES, 9AM-6PM

Shenzhen Gangxia Parcel #1 Project

剖面2 Section 2

首层大堂平面 Lobby Plan L1

In deference to the high solar gains experienced in Shanghai, the exterior of each building is shaded by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, LLP an array of staggering “hoods” made up by a series of regularly spaced and repetitive vertical and horizontal fins.

To further increase the effectiveness of self shading from the direct sunlight, these hoods are angled to create a saw-toothed plan. Each hood is formulated by undulating 2-storey metal vertical fins and 1.5 m wide horizontal fins parallel to the face of the glass. The hoods turn the corner to create a glass corner to allow for views from the corner offices or meeting rooms. To meet the 70% maximum glazing requirement by the Shanghai code, WT-2 each hood is capped by a metal spandrel that augments the reading of each hood. Because of the staggering and the undulating hoods, the tower facades gives a rich and 15 kwh/m2 complex impression unlike other neighboring buildings. A 43 kwh/m2 significant portion of the buildings’ cooling load typically 53 from kwh/m2 comes solar gain; this articulation of the façade can 28 kwh/m2 mitigate heat gain while maintaining generous views.

Architecture

m2 m2

335

建筑

m2 m2 m2 m2 m2 m2 m2 m2

buck sleeper

Building discourse

Above: Map showing Dubai city-wide proposed retrofit & shrink-wrap planning directives

Charles Curran

337

Charles Curran

Retrofit + Shrink Wrap Dubai: An Urban Recovery Plan M.Arch Thesis 2010 Advisor: Nasser Rabbat Readers: Ana Miljački, Hashim Sarkis, Nader Tehrani

The 2008 collapse of Dubai’s high-end property market and subsequent population decline halted the unprecedented expansion of the city’s built footprint. Dubai’s economic engine, which quickly transformed huge amounts of capital into new architectural “bling,” had come to a grinding halt, revealing the underlying instability of a city built on speculation rather than foresight.

Large swathes of the city still remain incomplete and largely uninhabited, creating vast urban blights. Dubai risks damage to both its image and its ability to function. The city’s decline, however, presents a unique opportunity for immediate and sweeping intervention against urban decay. My thesis proposes a dialectical planning process of retrofitting and shrink-wrapping Dubai.

The retrofit strategy engages stopped building projects crucial to Dubai’s function and image. The technical goal is to generate corridors of urbanity that permit the city to operate while the population and economy recover. The theoretical aim is not to produce new models for planning, but to generate design proposals that overtly critique and improve upon the existing built environment. The shrink-wrap strategy repositions Dubai’s vast oversupply of real estate as an investment for the future. This directive removes redundant buildings or even whole developments from the market and preserves them for eventual redeployment. The goal is to create an image of progressiveness and anticipation, while also physically maintaining these built assets to prevent further economic losses.

These strategies create a clearinghouse for Dubai’s injured property market, improving or preserving individual buildings while simultaneously introducing comprehensive planning initiatives for transportation access and public amenities on the ground. The design interventions tested on the Dubai International Financial Center demonstrate a range of possibilities to induce economic and urban recovery within the development and its immediate context, and serve as a primer to retrofit and shrink-wrap other developments in this desert Emirate.

Assessment of Growth in Contemporary Dubai Dubai, just a few years ago, was heralded as a laboratory for new architectures and urbanisms. Architects and planners, followed by speculative real estate investors, flocked to Dubai to build and make a name for themselves. The excesses of the resultant unreflective development have left Dubai rife with many typical urban problems, including traffic congestion, over-taxed water and electrical grids, and low quality of life for a majority of its inhabitants. Rather than produce innovative new ways to design and experience the city, Dubai’s builders have simply augmented

these problems, continuing the pattern at a scale and pace beyond comprehension.

Recently, the economic engine that fueled Dubai’s real estate boom went bust, causing such a panic that the Dubai government made it a crime for media outlets to report “anything that might harm the economy.” The manifestation of the weakness in Dubai’s growth strategy provides a critical moment to reflect and improve upon what has been produced.

Dubai is a characteristically private city, consisting of a patchwork of exclusive gated communities and developments.

The city’s major growth spurt began in the late 1990’s. Development focused along the central thoroughfare, Sheikh Zayed Road, which runs parallel to the coastline, linking the city of Dubai with its main container port Jebel Ali and neighboring Emirates. This linear growth pattern caused extreme congestion along this corridor, and encouraged more recent radial development into the desert along Emirates Road and offshore with projects such as Palm Jumeirah. Since 1990, Dubai’s developed footprint has grown 400% (1287 km2) and is projected to reach 800% (2895 km2) of this in 2016. This rapid territorial expansion has greatly taxed the city’s ability to provide adequate infrastructure and delivery of services. The population has also grown exponentially, with the number of inhabitants doubling roughly each decade since 1970. The population peaked in 2008 at 1.5 million inhabitants. The current downturn, however, led to a population decline of 17% in 2009 alone, a loss of roughly 250,000 inhabitants. Dubai’s rapid rise over the past decade and immediate decline, due to economic factors, is without precedent. For example, the city of Detroit had a similar meteoric rise in the 1930’s, but its decline has unfolded slowly over multiple decades. Dubai’s population decline is more comparable with cities depleted by natural disasters, such as New Orleans, or filled with political conflicts such as Mogadishu. In Dubai’s case, however, the causes are its long-term growth and urban planning strategies.

To assess the scale and long-term implications of Emirate’s growth strategy, compare the floor-area of Manhattan (87 km2) with the floor-area completed and proposed to be constructed in the Dubai. Since 2006, the city has added the floor-area equivalent to 1.44 Manhattans (125 km2), with 1 Manhattan currently under construction, and an astonishing floor-area equivalent to 10 Manhattans (870km2) currently canceled or on hold. That these projects outpaced any reasonable projections of population growth is shown in the number of planned units versus population growth trends. Given the number of planned units for construction between 2010-2016, Dubai’s population

Building discourse

should rise from 1.5 to 4.5 million (300%) during that time. Even in the best-case scenario, however, Dubai’s previous growth rate would be restored in 2010 and reach 2.1 million in 2016.

The number of proposed units, however, would accommodate a population double that figure. This represents roughly a 2:1 oversupply of units in the city by 2016, turning vast swaths of an already sparsely populated new city into ghost-towns. In a city where image is everything, stagnation and urban decay will tarnish Dubai’s reputation as the most stable market in the Middle East; moreover, quality of life in the city will further erode, as financial resources to maintain its infrastructure and services evaporate with its reputation.

Retrofit + Shrink-Wrap Urban Planning Directives To assess the scale and value of at-risk development projects, a database of all building projects commenced in Dubai since 2006 was compiled. The database combines development information from authorities in global real estate, including Emporis and Zawya, with field research in Dubai conducted in the summer of 2009. The database indexes vital information about each building’s developer, size, value, use-type, projected inhabitants, location, and construction status. These data are then juxtaposed with a territorial analysis of Dubai in terms of development status, prominence, population density, and function to ascertain how each building fits within the context of the city.

Using this assessment database and analysis, I propose an alternative urban planning strategy to retrofit and shrinkwrap existing real estate assets. This process begins with an assessment of which areas to revise, with expanded pedestrian infrastructure and investment incentives, and which areas to decommission and preserve for future redeployment. Both strategies engage the buildings as well as the surrounding ground to create comprehensive planning directives that extend well beyond each building footprint. Major contextual considerations include construction status, population density, function, and prominence. The goal of the retrofit and shrinkwrap process is to stitch together Dubai, a city defined by disconnected development enclaves.

The recently opened Dubai Metro system can serve as a catalyst. The main line operates along Dubai’s central artery Sheikh Zayed Road, providing easy access between developments for the first time. The ground retrofit directive seeks to create easements for pedestrian access to metro stations and other urban amenities across and between developments.

These easements provide access across otherwise forbidding obstacles such as private building podiums, walls, and multilane roads. The shrink-wrap ground strategy infills and maintains unused sites within existing developments while also anticipating future pedestrian easements. The retrofitting and shrink-wrapping of the ground, therefore, amends existing independent private developments with cohesive urban planning directives. The objective of these directives is to improve and infill existing developments rather than promote growth by expanding Dubai’s already over-extended built footprint.

Dubai’s newest building stock is predominantly designed for the high-end market, which denies multiple entry points for real estate investment. Furthermore, the collapse of the luxury property market creates greater pressure for the city to diversify its real estate offerings. The tower retrofit strategy

engages redundant buildings near completion in relatively dense contexts and physically adjusts them to market conditions characterized by multi-class demand. The shrink-wrap tower directive decommissions built assets that are isolated, largely uninhabited and too costly to amend to suit market demands.

The objective of this process is to reposition these buildings as investments for Dubai’s future growth. Energy production and advertising are proposed as alternative means to generate income for property owners.

The retrofit and shrink-wrap dialectic operates like a clearinghouse of Dubai’s redundant real estate, directing when and where to intervene in order to maximize recovery efforts.

Each of the 866 at-risk development projects either commenced or completed in Dubai since 2006 has been indexed in terms of planning directive and time scale for intervention. Buildings and sites slated for retrofit will immediately be evaluated for appropriate amendments to suit market demands and overall planning objectives. This process will unfold over the next 1-5 years. Buildings and sites slated for shrink-wrap will be immediately decommissioned and repositioned to generate alternative incomes for their owners. After a period of one year, buildings directed for short-term shrink-wrapping will be reconsidered for their retrofit potential. Mid to long-term shrink-wrap directives will shutter properties for between 3-15 years before they will be evaluated for amendment and further investment. Given that Dubai’s property market remains quite volatile, the retrofit and shrink-wrap directives must be reevaluated on a regular basis to suit long-term market trends and urban planning goals.

At the urban scale, the retrofit and shrink-wrap planning directives operate to amend and preserve the overall image and function of the city. High-priority planning directives engage sites and buildings characteristically close to a metro station inside well-established developments. The planning process for these areas should begin immediately. These sites will be predominantly retrofitted; however, the shrink-wrap directive will play a pivotal role in preparing under-developed parts of these sites for use in the long term. Medium-priority directives engage relatively new developments near major corridors such as Dubai Creek, Gulf Coast, Sheikh Zayed Road, and Emirates Road. Many of the projects within these developments are still under construction and will require an extended planning period of between 1-2 years before these sites and buildings can be retrofitted. The shrink-wrap strategy will operate to temporarily decommission these buildings and generate alternative income for developers while the retrofit planning process unfolds. Low priority directives predominantly engage the least developed areas of the city, such as Dubailand, Dubai World Central and Palm Jebel Ali. These parts of the city will remain largely uninhabited for years to come, and the shrinkwrap directive will operate to decommission and preserve structures for up to 20 years while restoring natural desert ecologies where site and infrastructure work have commenced.

The retrofitting over the long term of these low priority sites will be pursued once the most critical areas of the city have recovered.

Top: Samples of database and analysis compiled for all 850+ mid to high-rise building projects in Dubai since 2005

Below: Diagrams depicting scale of 2008 downturn in terms of halted construction projects & population decline

Charles Curran

339

DUBAI CRISIS // VAST OVER-SUPPLY OF REAL ESTATE 4,500,000 INHABITANTS

POPULATION

D SE ITS BA N N GU TIO SIN A U L PU HO PO ED ED OS CT ROP E OJ P PR PON U

T REN 10 CUR N IF ED IN 20 ATIO R PUL RESTO O P IS ED W TH JECT PRO OF GRO E RAT

1,500,000

2016

2014

2012

PRESENT

2010

PROJECTED OVERSUPPLY OF HOUSING UNITS ROUGHLY 1-1.5 MILLION UNITS WITHOUT TENANTS

2008

2006

2004

2002

2000

2:1

2,100,000 INHABITANTS

CHARLES CURRAN, MIT SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

Building discourse

Charles Curran

341

Building discourse

PHASE 1- GATE DISTRICT

PHASE 2- PARK DISTRICT

NOT IN SCOPE (ROYAL RESIDENCE)

PHASE 2

ROSEWOOD DUBAI LUXURY RESI 65 FLOORS 160,000 SQM

CURRENCY HOUSE A LUXURY RESI 30 FLOORS 40,000 SQM

CURRENCY HOUSE B

Z

GRADE “A” 10 FLOORS 20,000 SQM

Z

Z

THE INDEX LUXURY RESI 60 FLOORS 100,000 SQM

PARK TOWER A

GRADE “A” 20 FLOORS 60,000 SQM

GRADE “A” 30 FLOORS 20,000 SQM

P

P

PARK TOWER B LUXURY RESI 30 FLOORS 20,000 SQM

PARK CENTRAL B LUXURY RESI 49 FLOORS 40,000 SQM

P

P RITZ LUX APTS

LUXURY RESI 15 FLOORS 10,000 SQM

LIBERTY HOUSE Z

P

P

P

LUXURY RESI 20 FLOORS, 40,000 SQM

P

Z

P

P

GRADE “A” 10 FLOORS 20,000 SQM

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

Z

Z

Z

Z

Z

Z

Z

EFT TOWER A

EFT TOWER B

LUXURY RESI 30 FLOORS 55,000 SQM

1

>

+

+ DUBAI METRO

GROUND RETROFIT

2

3

DEVELOPER

GROUND SHRINK-WRAP

GRADE “A” 30 FLOORS 55,000 SQM

>

P

Z

OWNERʼS ASSOCIATION

DIFC AUTHORITY

TOWER RETROFIT

4

GROUND RETROFIT

5

GROUND SHRINK-WRAP

6

TOWER SHRINK-WRAP

1_METRO CANOPY A 700 METERS 10 MINUTE WALK

1_METRO CANOPY B 650 METERS 9.5 MINUTE WALK

3_SOCIAL STRATA

4_PLEATS PLEASE

PALM CANOPY

1_METRO CANOPY C

1_METRO CANOPY D 350 METERS 5 MINUTE WALK

335 METERS 4.5 MINUTE WALK

2B_LAND PRESERVE

2A_ VOID SCAPE

EMIRATES TOWERS METRO STATION

FINANCIAL CENTER METRO STATION

Z

Z

Charles Curran

343

SE 2

Z

Z

Z

P

P

P

Opposite, above: 2009 conditions in DIFC Opposite, Below: Proposed retrofit & shrink-wrap interventions at DIFC

This page, above: Plan & section of proposed canopy design

Building discourse

GrOunD reTrOFIT DIreCTIve // MeTrO CAnOPy The Metro-Canopy system creates a semi-enclosed environment for convenient pedestrian access from the DIFC to the emirates Towers and Financial Center metro stations.

These canopies are to be installed over permanent public easements, introduced in PACKAGe 6. Funding and operation of the canopy system will require the cooperation of the Dubai rapid Transportation Authority and the DIFC Authority. Investment in the canopy system would not only greatly improve access to the metro, but also minimize the need for air-conditioned shortrange buses to service each metro station.

The canopy provides essential shading and ventilation through a lightweight structure and skin system.

A tensile fabric surface is fastened to columns (wind catchers) rising 3-5 meters above the ground.

The fabric is Teflon-coat-

ed and weather resistant.

The geometry of the canopies is both structurally stable and directs wind currents to ventilate the space below. All parts of the canopy are fully adjustable to orient with prevailing wind patterns at any point in the DIFC. The design addresses four typical conditions: linking with a metro station, building abutment, road crossing and terminus. A voluptuously vaulted space below fosters a public commons, viable even during the hot summer months.

Charles Curran

345

GrOunD ShrInK-WrAP DIreCTIveS // vOID SCAPe AnD LAnD PreServe The void Scape is an intervention intended for small plots along Sheikh Zayed road. A foundation anticipating a future project is dug, then filled with temporary (1-3 year) outdoor attractions to utilize the otherwise vacant site. The proposed design envisions a micro-beach environment for residents and visitors to the area. This activation of the site not only preserves the site from becoming derelict, but also provides potential alternative income for the property owner, with admissions and other charges to visitors. The Land Preserve effectively removes a large undeveloped site from the market in the DIFC, and preserves it

for use after 3-10 years.

The site is walled off, and a geo-textile ground cover stabilizes the sandy landscape within. Denying the site to the market for an extended time, a holdout strategy, makes the property more attractive for investment once it is re-commissioned. The wall is made of concrete blocks, originally intended to line the walls of a canceled portion of the Dubai Creek extension project.

Retrofit & Shrink-Wrap Case Study: Dubai International Finance Center Originally to be completed in 2011, the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC) remains largely unrealized. Continuous building podiums were envisioned to create a self-contained “city within a city.” Vacant building plots throughout the midsection of the development, however, impede the desired livework environment from reaching fruition. There are no plans to develop these sites. The resultant fragmentation of the development keeps many buildings isolated from amenities essential for the DIFC to reach its planning goals of being self-contained and self-sufficient. For example, residents and workers in these isolated towers have to drive 2-5 kilometers to nearby developments to use a grocery store or dry cleaning services. Littered with construction debris, vacant building sites also impede pedestrian access throughout the DIFC, increasing reliance on car transport in a development planned to be walkable. Two metro stations have been opened close to the DIFC, but lack of coordination with nearby developments prevents easy access to mass transit stations, with impediments such as major roads, walls and buildings. For the DIFC to become a viable place to live and work, significant long-term changes to the master plan must be pursued to improve access within and beyond the DIFC. The retrofit and shrink-wrap ground directives introduce permanent pedestrian easements that ensure access from the DIFC to nearby buildings and Dubai Metro Stations. The planning directives also decommission and preserve derelict, undeveloped building plots, making them more attractive for future investment and introducing temporary outdoor amenities for residents and workers.

All buildings currently under construction at the DIFC are targeted for the high-end real estate market; however, the prolonged decline of luxury property sales, beginning in 2008, has dried up demand for units in these buildings. An under-supply of multi-class residential units has created demand for

developments with more diverse property offerings. The retrofit and shrink-wrap tower directives physically revise the DIFC’s building stock to suit market demands. This process would unfold over the next 10 years, retrofitting buildings in more complete areas first. Isolated projects would be shrink-wrapped until sufficient demand necessitates that they be retrofitted.

The retrofit and shrink-wrap planning directives thus operate dialectally to provide an alternative DIFC master plan. These directives integrate the DIFC with the larger city and adjust its property offerings to a vastly changed real estate market. The following design interventions translate the retrofit and shrink wrap planning directives into built form, speculating on how these designs will look and be experienced in situ.

Tower Retrofit Directive: Social Strata Social Strata is a design intervention intended to introduce multi-class living in the Currency House Tower, a project originally designed for the luxury market. The building is mostly completed; however, portions of the façade and interior remain unfinished. Four living environments are proposed, each with varying degrees of collective interaction. Courtyard living is first introduced in the building podium, and requires the carving of 2 level voids for light and air to reach all apartments. Each apartment (50-150 m2) will share an outdoor commons with 2-5 other units. Lounge Living creates an enclosed version of the courtyard within the tower. Each resident would have their own apartment (35-100 m2) replete with bedroom, bath, kitchen, and share a larger living room space with 2-3 other units. Collective living is intended for residents interested in living with their extended family or friends, and offers shared living and kitchen facilities for between 4-12 apartments (25-75m2). The final living arrangement made available is most similar to pre-existing units

Building discourse

in the building: serviced apartments (35-150 m2). Each of the 4 living arrangements is designed on same the 7 x 7 meter structural grid, such that they can be inter-changed to suit long-term market demand. A performative façade with photovoltaic operable curtains is proposed to provide energy for common spaces throughout the building. This project will require the cooperation of the property developer and building owners to fund and maintain the retrofitted tower.

Shrink-Wrap Tower Directive: Pleats Please Pleats Please proposes a design intervention to provide a temporary façade for a pair of incomplete twin skyscrapers, Park Towers. Each irregularly shaped tower would require significant material to be wasted in tailoring the Teflon-coated fabric to fit its geometry; therefore, an alternative process of pleating (folding) the fabric to fit the tower is proposed. The material can then be removed once the tower is ready to be retrofitted and then used elsewhere in the city. Funding for the project comes from advertising applied to the temporary façade. Thin film photovoltaic panels can also be integrated to harvest energy during the day for lighting and advertising at night. These shrink-wrapped towers create a new performative landmark for the DIFC, clearly visible from the Financial Center Metro Station.

Combined Directives: Grid Pro Quo Together, these interventions actively improve the urban experience of the DIFC, while also making the development more competitive in a real estate market with more diverse tastes.

These interventions provide short and long-term design solutions that are economically viable to attract investment, while also improving quality of life in the DIFC and its surroundings.

The retrofit and shrink-wrap planning process operates over the next 10-15 years as a clearinghouse for Dubai’s injured property market, improving individual buildings and simultaneously introducing comprehensive planning initiatives for transportation access and public amenities on the ground. The design interventions tested on the Dubai International Financial Center provide a range of possibilities to induce economic and urban recovery within the development and its immediate context. These proposals could easily be adjusted to be deployed throughout the city. Each development would be assessed according to its immediate surroundings and overall importance to Dubai’s image and function. Retrofit and shrink-wrap strategies would then be tailored to be most effective within the given context. For example, the Dubai Marina will be predominantly retrofitted because the overall development is nearly complete and occupied. It is similarly compact and close to metro stations as the DIFC, and investment to alter under-performing buildings will be minimal in comparison to more isolated and incomplete developments, such as Jumeirah Village. This remote master plan development, located along Emirates Road, boasts only a handful of completed buildings, while a majority of the land area remains undeveloped or occupied by stopped building projects. The site is 10km from the nearest metro station. Given these conditions, Jumeirah Village would be primarily shrinkwrapped in the near to long term. Specific interventions for each development and its surroundings will require extensive research and planning to develop the most economically viable and urbanistically just solution. Thus, the retrofit and shrinkwrap planning dialectic is proposed as both a long-term strategy for investment in Dubai real estate and an alternative city-wide master plan.

Charles Curran

347

nOTeS 1 Amer A. Moustafa and Fatih A. rifiki, “Al Manakh,” Volume 12 (rotterdam: Archis, 2007), 29.

2 Claire Malcolm. ed. “Cityscape Dubai 2009 report,” (Dubai: nicholas Publishing International, 2009), 22-25.

Building discourse

Charles Curran MIT / Master of Architecture, 2010 Columbia University / B.A., Architecture, 2006

What have you been doing since thesis?

After wrapping up at MIT in early 2010, I have continued work in the discipline of architecture in the following trajectories: practicing professionally at Diller Scofidio + Renfro, teaching undergraduates at Columbia University & graduate students at University of Pennsylvania, pursuing independent work through collaborations with peers, and curating exhibitions of professional and academic work. I joined DS+R fulltime immediately after wrapping up my thesis book and have contributed to the studio as a project leader and designer.

I have led teams for the Hague Music and Dance Center Competition (2010), Bloomberg European Headquarters Competition (2010), Boom Palm Springs LGBT Community Concept Design (2011), Fire Island Pines Master Plan (2012), Winnipeg Art Gallery Competition (2013) and the U.S. Embassy in Beirut Competition (2013). Beyond working on these unrealized or more speculative projects, much time has been spent on building projects including the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive (under-construction), the Culture Shed, and 15 Hudson Yards Tower (commencing construction this summer). Beginning in Fall 2011, I started a three-semester stint at the Columbia|Barnard Undergraduate Architecture Program. I led a series of half-semester design workshops focused on digital representation, one of which was formatted as a school-wide design competition to re-imagine under-utilized public space on campus. Students were

led through an intensive charette process, helping them develop skills in design and representation. The workshop concluded with a public review and exhibition of the proposals, which led to a design build project over the following summer.

I have since started teaching studio as a lecturer in the Penn Design graduate program (Spring 2014). The topic of my first studio is Horizontality: Operations of Engineered Chance, co-taught with Professor of Practice Homa Farjadi.

Beyond professional and academic work, I have pursued design collaborations with former Columbia and MIT classmates focused on speculative projects of novel and dynamic public architecture. These projects and competition entries have been a good way to develop working relationships and cultivate ideas and designs independent of my work at DS+R. I have also had great opportunities to curate a series of design exhibitions, including Progress/Process: Alumni Show (Columbia 2012), Re-Imagining Altschul Atrium (Columbia 2012), and The Corset at Hudson Yards (Center For Architecture and Skyscraper Museum).

What was the most important thing you learned from thesis?

Through the pre-thesis and thesis semesters, I learned to develop and pursue an independent design process.

Previous undergraduate and graduate design studios each introduced a unique pedagogy to guide thinking and working through a design problem. Thesis offered a clear moment to reflect on these previ-

ous experiences/approaches and chart my own course: select advisors from a diverse set of backgrounds, formulate an independent research programme, and devise a series of projects to test the arguments proposed in the thesis.

Thinking back on your thesis, how do you feel it has or has not influenced your career?

I gained essential design and team management skills from doing Thesis at MIT, which immediately applied to my professional pursuits at DS+R. The thesis process cultivated independence in thinking and developing design ideas, and taught me how to manage a complex design project from start to finish. Additionally, added help from other students in the final stages of thesis taught me how best to manage the work of others to realize final drawings and models of the project. One month after wrapping up my thesis book and starting work at DS+R, I was asked by the partners to manage a design competition team for the Music and Dance Center at the Hague. The confidence and skills built during the thesis process enabled me to take on this challenge and become the youngest studio member to lead a competition.

What is the one thing you would have done differently or what do you wish you had known in advance?

I have few regrets about my thesis experience, except the final day before

Charles Curran

the presentation. The project was in good shape, and I should have gotten a good night’s sleep rather than keep the insane hours up until the end. The presentation went well without any major hitches; however, I was so exhausted I couldn’t really enjoy it until days later. A nice taper would have been a been a much better way to finish.

What was the biggest advantage for doing your thesis at MIT?

A great advantage of doing thesis at MIT is the faculty resources available to you throughout the process. Thesis was certainly not a solo endeavor, and consistently working with diverse and engaged faculty advisors was essential to evaluate the success and most importantly the failures of the proposal. My committee (Professors Rabbat, Miljački, Sarkis and Tehrani) came from very different backgrounds, which helped develop interesting debates and discussions surrounding the project. Learning how to seek, respond to and incorporate this advice was an important learning experience and something unique to MIT in terms of its small size yet many trajectories of faculty interests/backgrounds.

Furthermore, MIT had excellent funding opportunities for travel related to thesis, and I was lucky to benefit from two of them (Schlossman Fellowship and Aga Khan Award). My field research funding in Dubai was perhaps one of the most important experiences to help expand upon and test the concepts proposed in my thesis. MIT's faculty had myriad con-

349

tacts in local real estate, government and academia to interview and share/debate ideas proposed in my thesis.

What was particularly timely about your thesis? Was it technique or topical?

My thesis was timely in its engagement with a real world economic and urban issue tied to the 2008-present global recession. It focused on the real estate bubble in Dubai, and used this temporary lull in the city-state’s exponential growth to reflect upon and propose improvements to its urban development strategy.

The timing thus provided an alibi and space to develop my thesis, not only as an academic simulation but also as a potential real world solution to an urban design/architectural problem.

Building discourse

The Integrated Laboratory Core Studio, Fall 2007 Critic: Jeanette Kuo

this ascension, moving from public to private. The continuous volume of the spiral presents challenges in terms of providing service, containment and security. Vertical cores in the central atrium space provide essential services to the labs (see service diagram), while a second skin system provides essential enclosure of the labs (see section below). A structural skin provides lateral stability for the building, while its form and openings are calibrated according to light and ventilation requirements of adjacent program.

This proposal breaks with the opaque big box lab building typology and introduces transparency and integration of the buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s public and social functions. A continuum of lab and social program is organized formally in a spiral. The social program (regions sheathed in glass, right) bleeds into the laboratory spiral, providing key features for social interaction within and adjacent to the labs. The labs are arranged in ascending order moving from cell biology at the beginning of the spiral and reaching primates at its apex. The social program mirrors

Above: Physical model of the Integrated Laboratory made of styrene & acrylic

LOUNGE

CONFERENCE ROOM LIBRARY

KITCHEN + SUPPLY VENDOR

CAFETERIA + INFORMAL SOCIAL SPACE

OUTDOOR TERRACE

WET/ DRY LAB SOCIAL SPACE

MICROSCOPY LAB

TRANSPARENCY ENCODING ACCORDING TO PROGRAM ADJACENCY TO FACADE 70% OPAQUE 20% SEMI-OPAQUE 10% TRANSPARENT

60% OPAQUE 20% SEMI-OPAQUE 20% TRANSPARENT

50% OPAQUE 30% SEMI-OPAQUE 20 % TRANSPARENT

SKIN TYPES L O U V E R

O P A Q U E

S E M I

WET LAB

DRY LAB

WET LAB

DRY LAB

RECEPTION + EXHIBITION MECHANICAL ROOM

ENTRY

80% OPAQUE 20% SEMI- OPAQUE

LOUNGE

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE GALLERY

CAFE/ BAR

ENTRY

T R A N S P A R E N T

O P E R A B L E

50% TRANSPARENT 20% SEMI-OPAQUE 20% OPAQUE

60% TRANSPARENT 20% SEMI- OPAQUE 20% OPAQUE

70% TRANSPARENT 20% SEMI- OPAQUE 10% OPAQUE

80% TRANSPARENT 20% SEMI- OPAQUE

MEETING ROOMS

COMPUTATION LAB

WET/DRY LAB

WET LAB

WET/DRY LAB

WET LAB

OFFICE LIBRARY STACKS + LOUNGE

Left: Drawings of an unfolded section, unfolded diagram of facade light and ventilation requirements, and unfolded elevation WET/ DRY LAB SOCIAL SPACE

BIG BIG FIELD WET LAB

CLIMATIC LAB

SOLARIUM

AUDITORIUM

THEORETICAL LAB

PERIODICAL READING ROOM

OFFICE

OFFICE

WET LAB

ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICES + LOUNGES

RECEPTION + EXHIBITION

WET LAB

LOUNGE

SENIOR FACULTY LOUNGE

JUNIOR FACULTY LOUNGE

Charles Curran

351

Big Fields: Blocks 69 & 70 Entry for AIA Utah Competition in Salt Lake City 2013 With Rodrigo Zamora

BIG FIELDS ELDS

Salt Lake City was originally conceived as an utopian community with ten acre city blocks, each housing ten families.

Early on, farmers worked additional land to the south known as Big Fields. As a growing city replaced the original agrarian village, the direct relationship with nature was lost: the ten acre blocks were replaced by parking lots and Big Fields by sprawl.

Our design proposal seeks to reverse this loss by reintroducing nature into the urban fabric. Our proposal drapes over the existing context at the street edge and softens into lush rolling hills toward the center of each block. Sky-lit pedestrian passages link the many existing performance and art venues below the verdant landscape.

Based on the Plat of Zion, Salt Lake City was conceived as a utopian agrarian community. Each of the ten-acre city blocks housed ten families and provided enough farmland for their subsistence. Early on, farmers worked additional land to the south known as the Big Fields. As a growing city replaced the original agrarian village, however, the direct relationship with nature was lost. Small farms were replaced by parking lots and the Big Fields by sprawl.

Our design proposal, “Big Fields,” seeks to reverse this loss by reintroducing nature into the urban fabric and by activating the existing network of pedestrian passages, which cut across Salt Lake City’s uniquely large square blocks.

Above: Aerial view of proposed intervention of Blocks 69-70 of Salt Lake City

“Big Fields” drapes over 69 & 70, aligning tightly to the existing context at the street edge and softening into lush rolling hills toward the center. Each landscape is programmed to offer space for active and passive recreation: Block 69 consists of tree-filled peaks and valleys ideal for hiking and birding. Block 70 provides ample grassy lawns, anchored by commissioned sculptures. Vacant lots along the northern edge of 69 and southeast corner of 70 are re-imagined as mid-rise towers or peaks. Proceeds from the sale or lease of these development projects fund the construction and maintenance of “Big Fields,” while views and access to the landscape in turn adds value to these developments. Closer to street level, Valleys or entries to the landscape are strategically placed to serve as destinations or nodes to a network of pedestrian passages. These sky-lit passages cut across the large blocks beneath the landscape, linking the many venues of 69 & 70. Lined by small public and private galleries, the pedestrianways provide covered spaces for artists and performers to engage the public with sculptural installations, murals and ad hoc performances, thus creating a continuous and engaging cultural experience for visitors.

Below: Diagram of rural and urban landscape displacement concept

Constituting the artistic and cultural heart of Salt Lake City, Blocks 69 & 70 offer a rich array of performance venues, galleries and other civic amenities; yet, the pedestrian experience of this precinct is disjointed and therefore limited by a lack of interconnected open space: Where can you congregate before and after performances? How do you get between venues? What can attract locals and tourists to visit here time and again? What visually and physically distinguishes 69 & 70 from its surroundings?

“Big Fields” offersover an opportunity to stitch these “Big Fields” drapes 69 & 70, aligning tightly to the existing context Based on the Plat of Zion, Salt Lake City was conceived as a utopian disparate public amenities a dynamic and softening continuous experience draws agrarian community. Each of the ten-acre city blocks housed ten families and at theinto street edge and into lush rollingthat hills toward the center. Each While harkening to the city’s verdant utopian past, “Big Fields” envisions patrons to multiple venues and attractions, all in one visit.

At theforurban the a new green icon and fosters a rich and engaging sense of place for Salt Lake provided enough farmland for their subsistence. Early on, farmers worked landscape is programmed to offer space activescale, and passive recreation: Block project creates a verdant and iconic identity the city’s culturalideal hub.for hiking and birding. BlockCity’s additional land to the south known as the Big Fields. As a growing city replaced 69 consists of tree-fi lledfor peaks and valleys 70 burgeoning cultural heart. the original agrarian village, however, the direct relationship with nature was lost. Small farms were replaced by parking lots and the Big Fields by sprawl.

Our design proposal, “Big Fields,” seeks to reverse this loss by reintroducing nature into the urban fabric and by activating the existing network of pedestrian passages, which cut across Salt Lake City’s uniquely large square blocks.

Constituting the artistic and cultural heart of Salt Lake City, Blocks 69 & 70 offer a rich array of performance venues, galleries and other civic amenities; yet, the pedestrian experience of this precinct is disjointed and therefore limited by a lack of interconnected open space: Where can you congregate before and after performances? How do you get between venues? What can attract locals and tourists to visit here time and again? What visually and physically distinguishes 69 & 70 from its surroundings? “Big Fields” offers an opportunity to stitch these disparate public amenities into a dynamic and continuous experience that draws patrons to multiple venues and attractions, all in one visit. At the urban scale, the project creates a verdant and iconic identity for the city’s cultural hub.

provides ample grassy lawns, anchored by commissioned sculptures. Vacant lots along the northern edge of 69 and southeast corner of 70 are re-imagined as mid-rise towers or peaks. Proceeds from the sale or lease of these development projects fund the construction and maintenance of “Big Fields,” while views and access to the landscape in turn adds value to these developments. Closer to street level, Valleys or entries to the landscape are strategically placed to serve as destinations or nodes to a network of pedestrian passages. These sky-lit passages cut across the large blocks beneath the landscape, linking the many venues of 69 & 70. Lined by small public and private galleries, the pedestrianways provide covered spaces for artists and performers to engage the public with sculptural installations, murals and ad hoc performances, thus creating a continuous and engaging cultural experience for visitors.

While harkening to the city’s verdant utopian past, “Big Fields” envisions a new green icon and fosters a rich and engaging sense of place for Salt Lake City’s burgeoning cultural heart.

1. Developing sites generates value to finance “Big Fields”

1.

$ $

2. “Big Fields” increases value of real estate throughout blocks and attracts further investments

$ 1.

$

2.

$

1.

1. Developing sites generates value to

$

2.

Building discourse

Hague Music And Dance Center Competition Entry Professional Work with Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Our competition entry for the new Music and Dance Center at the Hague was organized with an axial parti defined by two major intersecting axes, framing four discreet performance venues.

In the Z-Y axis, the back stages of each venue hinge on a void, or technical atrium at the center of the site. The void is encased in glass, turning back of house spaces inside out for the public to enjoy. Bisecting the technical atrium in the X-Y axis is an elevated super lobby that serves as the social nexus, gathering visitors before and after performances while also serving as the front door for multiple conservatories and schools held in the upper reaches of the building. For this competition, I acted as project manager and lead designer with a ten-member team and multiple consultants.

Top: Section perspective depicting building parti and Axial Concept Diagram and Concept Image of Theaters held In Shells

right: Physical Model of Proposed Design and view Across Super Lobby

Charles Curran

353

Desert Waves Concept Design and Master Planning Professional Work with Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Conceived of as part of a larger planned LGBT retirement community, Desert Waves utilizes a single formal system of undulating and alternating ribbons of pre-cast concrete to form the commercial center and a residential district. The ribbons rise up and dive down into the earth, nurturing programs within their folds; peaks are dedicated to interior spaces and troughs cupping private or communal gardens. The housing units are customizable, reflecting the preoccupations and predilections of their owners: an oversized kitchen for the chef, a rooftop garden

Above & right: renderings of proposed commercial center and residences Images on this spread courtesy of Diller Scofidio + renfro

for the horticulturist, a structurally assisted vault for the S+M practitioner. Second and third bedrooms can be added under a double or triple high vault. Gardens can be opened to the adjacent pedestrian streets, blurring public and private space and inviting neighbors in for a visit. I acted as project manager/ designer for this project.

Building discourse

PAVILION

MEGA BLOCK

DEEP BLOCK

LINEAR BLOCK

VERTICAL BLOCK

This page: Hybridized typological systems within the urban context Opposite: Nanjin Pavilion, street view

41

RAFAEL LUNA

355

Rafael Luna

A Flexible Infra-Architectural System for a Hybrid Shanghai M.Arch Thesis 2010 Advisor: Yung Ho Chang Readers: Stanford Anderson, Julian Beinart, Mark Goulthorpe

The increasing migration from a rural to an urban setting has lead to a rapid expansion of metropolitan areas around the world (50% of the world population live in cities). The demand for living and working spaces inside the city has generated a rapid turnaround of building stock. In rapid developing cities like Shanghai, neighborhoods are replaced by higher density buildings every 30 to 40 years. Areas of extreme diversity in population and program have been replaced by high density residential towers that generate a monoculture and diminish

the richness of the hybrid city. Cities like Tokyo have generated self-conscious bad architecture as a result of the pressures of its high density and increasing land value. This culture of high density has responded with new hybrid typologies that efficiently optimize real estate into a continuous flow of the city through its buildings. In order for cities to maintain a steady growth with adequate living conditions, it is important to hybridize infrastructure with building stock to help generate a fluid metropolitan culture.

Building discourse

On Hybridity The concept of hybrid buildings has existed throughout history, always closely linked to density and land value. Walled cities demarcated the limits between civilized territory and the wild.

Limitations in transportation within the walls and area caused work related programs to be closely knit to residences, exemplified in the home above the shop. Stacking was a common effect generated by the physical confinements of the city. In his essay, “The Hybrid Vigor and the Art of Mixing,” Martin Musiatowicz links developments of mobility and defense mechanisms as one of the main causes that allowed the expansion of the city, leading it to a segregation of functions into single buildings. “City form became defined by a functionally determined planning in order to control disease, pollution, and importantly, land rates” (Musiatowicz, 2008).

At the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, new economic models lead by the growth in industry inside the city generated a large growing population and an emergent new social working class. “Bourgeoisie has created enormous cities, increased urban population. Agglomerated population, centralized means of production, concentrated property in a few hands” (Marx). The city’s growth was in direct relations with the growth of the industry. The new relationship of industry in the city rivaled architecture as the generator of urban fabric. Industry generated a condition of rivalry between architecture and machinery. This sets the condition for the growth of the metropolis, defined by Rem Koolhaas as the “simultaneous explosion of modern technologies and human population on a limited territory.”

Diagrams Of PrOgrammaTic HybriDs

In the United States in 1985, Joseph Fenton assembled a catalogue for hybrid buildings that had been produced as a result of the constraints of the American urban grid against the growth of the metropolis, and established these as models for revitalizing American cities. Although all of the hybrid buildings are multi-programmed, they differentiate with mix-use buildings by scale and form. Hybrid buildings generate a complex relation between its program, technology, urban context and society. With Fenton’s definition, a hybrid building also differentiates itself from mega-structures by delimiting itself to the city grid. The vertical relation was caused by escalating land values and horizontal restrictions. Hybrid buildings were largely developed in America at the end of the 19th century until the 1929 depression slowed all new construction. Shortly after, CIAM IV promoted the segregation of land use, supported by the Charter of Athens which categorized new buildings by single use. Hybrid buildings did not start again until after World War II, when renewed interests to reinvigorate American urban cores and zoning laws were revisited.

reinterpretation of diagrams from Joseph fenton’s and atelier bow Wow’s catalogues. in both catalogues, the hybrid relation is a programmatic one that hints at a particular way of life.

RAFAEL LUNA

357

growth of urban building activity in shanghai

Hybrid Expansion of the City The pressure of the growing city, in combination with program and architectural form, warp a pure building into an antitypology where functions are mixed, disparate uses combined, and structures are collected into a hybrid building. Steven Holl suggests that hybrid buildings are not caused by the pressures of density and the metropolitan condition, but as a response to the dispersion and frequency of deformed towns. Free standing corporate headquarters, industrial parks, shopping centers, malls, and suburban housing scattered throughout the countryside have dissipated town centers that strongly need revitalization. Hybrid buildings are physical architectural forms that concentrate activity to invigorate urban life. The hybrid building is manifested as an individual form that supports the underlying pattern of the city grid in order to clarify urban vs. rural contexts. Its architecture should be understood in terms of its programmatic diversion to reinstate the diversion of activity and essential components of city life.

In the Sociopolis Project by Vicente Guallart for the city of the future, the expansion of Valencia is investigated as a prototype for other European cities. Guallart calls it the ruburban project, a hybrid expansion that defines the condition between Urban and Rural. Instead of the city grid expanding like CerdĂ â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s plan in Barcelona, the Huerta (farm land) becomes the defining component for parceling the site. Each parcel represents a different crop, connected by a pedestrian running track. A matrix of the program of the city is divided into different parcels, which are then developed by different architects. This continuous combination between program and farming site creates a variety of hybrid buildings that respond to components of urban and social equipment, services, work, infrastructure, and private property. Sociopolis proposes a cohesion between a new urban culture generated by the hybridity of the site and its building components.

Building discourse

A Flexible Infra-Architectural System for a Hybrid Shanghai

Subway Line as Vertical Building: Proposal for Line 10

Metropolitan architecture has followed a lineage that started at the beginning of the 20th century and has generated four concepts: the reuse of the city’s infrastructure, verticality, hybrids, and autonomous settings. The population increase in Shanghai has generated a high density within the city’s inner ring. This effect produces high congestion within the city and a high demand for housing. One of the most important infrastructure work that is being done right now is the development of the world’s largest subway system. Even though this is an underground network, its stations are in direct relationship to the city’s fabric and can become an influential factor in the development of the neighboring blocks. In this case, the doubling of the subway system has the potential to provide much needed building stock.

A single subway line can be compared to a skyscraper, where each stop represents a level and the train becomes analogous to an elevator. Each stop in the city has its very characteristic program based on its surrounding neighborhood. In this case, Line 10 on the subway systems passes through two major universities, a national stadium, a national library, national zoo, tourist destinations, and transportation hubs (airport and railway station) that connect Shanghai to other cities and the rest of the world. Some of these stations can relate to one another and their programs can interconnect with the use of the subway. Universities can share resources with the National Library, tourists can arrive at the airport or railway station and be directly linked to attractions and hotels. The inter-connectivity of programs creates a mixture of distinct typologies that can be analyzed as a graft hybrid building with stacked programming.

Graft Programmatic Hybrid to Flexible Infrastructure The programmatic relations of a graft hybrid building are all visible in the architecture. The grafting occurs from known typological elements with distinct known programs. The growth of the metropolis is unpredictable and the idea of grafting together programmatic elements in order to produce hybridity becomes obsolete. In order to design for the unpredictable it is necessary to shift from directly programming a building to the study of a flexible infrastructure that accommodates the possibility of multiple functions within the building.

RAFAEL LUNA

Opposite: The city of shanghai is proposing to double its subway system by the end of 2010 and more than triple it by 2020. This generates an underlying structure and fabric within the city.

The diagram shows the network of a single new subway line. above: subway Line as a single Vertical building: Proposal for Line 10 right: graft hybrids express their program on the exterior in an apparent union between building types. far right: flexible infrastructure merge structure and services to allow for different environments.

359

Building discourse

Density by Compactness Shanghaiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population is currently growing at a faster speed than its building stock. The need for new housing and infrastructure has developed a flat slab typology that runs east to west.

This building stock is generating an urban fabric that lacks the hybridity it once had. New housing is been developed as gated blocks that ignore the street life and do not offer any other metropolitan program inside.

Infrastructure as Public Realm Infrastructure plays a larger role in the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fabric; it is not just a hidden framework. The current growth of Shanghai is altering the hybrid condition at street level. Large housing blocks segregate the street from the housing with a walled periphery.

Subway stations can be developed to address the housing density and break the block to allow for larger public spaces with services and amenities.

RAFAEL LUNA

361

Mega-Block Studies East to West Pattern: In order to maintain southern exposure on all units, large voids need to be created. This produces the need for additional circulation area, single views, and less interaction.

Chamfered Coffer: This configuration allows for less circulation, multiple views from a single unit and more additional units with the same area.

Grafting of Two Systems: Housing and Subway Non-standard serial modularity allows for the customization of mass production, addressing the rapid expansion of highly dense cities. This modularity strips away any historical and architectural references, allowing for an autonomous setting to occur within a single building and generate a new breed of metropolitan architecture. Hybridity shifts from programmatic to infrastructural flexibility. How can this flexibility be generated with new infrastructure for a growing city like Shanghaiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fast growing subway system in order to create urban nodes of hybridity?

Degradation of Program The grafting of both systems displaces program throughout the infrastructure. Housing is decomposed to the necessary minimum. Components such as kitchens are replaced by food retailers, restaurants, and kiosks that address a new urban nomad lifestyle.

Urban Acupuncture The grafted infrastructural systems would appear on the blocks of new subway stations. This will create an urban acupuncture of hybrid nodes in the city. The structures adapt to the different sites, adjusting to the surrounding typologies. The repetition of the system throughout the city becomes a new typology for the subway station, recognizable by the architecture instead of subway signs. The stations would range in scale from a pavilion to a high-rise.

Building discourse

SECTION

45

The structural logic is propa entire shell. The inner spine and the need for oppacities

Nanjin Road Pavilion Pavilion Stations follow in the spirit of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Pet Architecture.â&#x20AC;? They try44to generate metropolitan programs with minimum sizes.

They mostly address the vending world. In this case, the structure houses an elevator, ticket booth, ticket vending ma-

chines and escalators connected to the underground. The structure wraps around these components to generate a shell.

uctural logic is propagated throughout the shell. The inner spines adjust to sunangles e need for oppacities for privacy.

RAFAEL LUNA

Opposite top: section of Nanjin Pavilion Opposite bottom: rendering of interior view of Nanjin Pavilion

363

Top: structural and skin components of Nanjin Pa47 vilion shell

bottom: The structural logic is propagated throughout the entire shell. The inner spines adjust to sun angles and the need for opacities for PATTERN AND ORNAMENT privacy. The patterns that

are produced in the facade are directly linked to the function of the structural logic. Patterning is a byproduct, not the generator. Pattern, structure, facade, and ornament are parametrically linked by the same logic. This produces an autonomy of elements.

The patterns that are produced in the facade are directly linked to the function of the structural logic. Patterning is a by-product not the generator. Pattern, structure, facade, and ornament are parametrically linked by the same logic. This produces an autonomy of the elements.

Building discourse

Hongquiao Station: Intersection Between Linear Block and Deep Block Hongquiao Station lies at the border of the inner ring where lines 3, 4, and the future line 10 will meet. Lines 3 and 4 are on an elevated track and line 10 will be underground. The surrounding neighborhood has a population of students and staff from Jiaotong University and Donghua University. The Shanghai National Library is also in close proximity and the Shanghai City Museum of Sculpture is located a block away. This station should reflect the cultural value that triangulates amongst the institutions.

center Diagrams: station (Underground).

The vertical circulation components have been merged into the structure

to guide the space. On the lower level, the escalators generate a lobby space and circulation for train passengers and public theater.

above: Hongquiao station: Deep block

RAFAEL LUNA

HONGQUIAO STATION- Deep-Block

54

Top: Hongquiao station, street view bottom: Hongquiao station, site plan.

365

Building discourse

below: Hongquiao station, renderings above ground and interiors

OVE GROUND-

etition of the system out the city becomes the able typology for the stae entrance to the station is by the shifting architecture.

64

above: Plans of lower levels

LEVEL -5.00 Ticketing, Vending machines, retail Underground street information, subway Offices, Entrances, Public Toilets, food

LEVEL -10.00 Vending machines retail, media Tables, Public Toilets, Theater support spaces, food

LEVEL -15.00 Trains, Vending Public Theater, Public Toilets, support spaces,

machines Lobby, Theater, food

RAFAEL LUNA

367

below: Plans for levels +5.00, +10.00 and +13.00

above: Hongquiao station, renderings below ground

61

59

Building discourse

69

The upper section of the station comprises housing units, office spaces, retail spaces, and food retailers. The facade shifts with the sun angles, allowing for direct sunlight and the electrical and mechanical systems to filter through.

RAFAEL LUNA

369

Units: from top to bottom ascending, flat, Descending Program key: 1. bed 2. TV 3. Wc 4. Tub 5. storage 6. Entrance 7. Desk

Building discourse

Rafael Luna MIT / Master of Architecture, 2010 Massachusetts College of Art / B.F.A. Architecture, 2006

Thesis at MIT became a crossroad for me in my career. It was a point when I started clarifying my own ideas and making sense of a lineage of study that had been carried on by many architects in relation to my own interests. With this in mind, I wanted to make my thesis the starting point for my future studies as an architect, and not the culmination of my master studies. At the time, I had a very clear interest for big cities, density, and the architecture that responds to that setting that still intrigues me today.

This lineage was further clarified in Kazys Varnelis’s class, “Thinking About Architecture.” I was intrigued by the section on the “Metropolis,” which introduced the topic of Metropolitan Architecture. I interpreted this as: 1) architecture that mimics the metropolis (The Hague City Hall Competition by OMA); and 2) architecture that embodies the programmatic elements of the city within itself (Zeebrugge Terminal Competition, OMA). I found the second definition more interesting because of the programmatic relationships that could exist within a building, a condition that I wanted to explore further not as a “city within a city,” but as hybridprogramming, relationships between programs and building that generate a metropolitan environment. Atelier Bow Wow happened to come to MIT for the fall lecture series, and immediately I got drawn into their publication Made in Tokyo, which documented these hybrid-buildings that resulted because of Tokyo’s density. It was then that I took a Tokyo studio, and even though

my family had lived in Korea for several years and I was very familiar with big Asian cities like Seoul, I was amazed by the metropolitan condition of Tokyo, where infrastructure merged with architecture to generate an endless field of urbanity. This was in the spring of 2009, where I also took a Shanghai workshop and was introduced to the ferocity of the Chinese speed of construction. Shanghai was building at such a rapid pace that it wanted its subway infrastructure to double that of London’s within a decade.

This presented the perfect scenario and topic for me to explore hybrid architecture as a thesis topic.

That summer I went back to Tokyo and worked at the office of Toyo Ito. This was another changing moment, since Ito had just presented a lecture on “Beyond Modernism.” I started questioning not only this programmatic relationship, but what the language of architecture should be that responds to this metropolitan condition. I visited some of his works, like the Tama Art Library, and found it surprisingly enough to be my favorite building because its simplicity made sense in relation to understanding that term, “Beyond Modernism.” The continuous system of arches expanded and contracted based on the deformation of the site, becoming the spatial configuration, structure, ornament, facade, all in one.

At the time, Ito’s office was working on the Taichung Metropolitan Opera House, so I got to experience a lot of the work first hand and understand this relationship between an architectural system that was autonomous of histori-

cal reference and the intent of generating metropolitan events.

This was the background that lead to my thesis. Shanghai, as mentioned earlier, was developing its subway infrastructure, and connected with what I had learned in Japan. How can infrastructure be hybridized with building stock in order to create a continuous urban field? So I tested the idea of comparing a subway line to a horizontal highrise, where each stop could be compared to a different floor within a highrise, different programs per stop just as you can have per floor in a highrise. This would test out hybrid-buildings as a merger of typologies. The architectural language would be tested out with an autonomous system that could be repeated and modified based on scale and site.

I ended up developing both a pavilion and deep-block building typology. The deep-block typology became a hybrid between housing and subway in order to present the possibility of living within the transportation system. At this scale, the architectural system was made up of pods that became spatial, structural, ornamental, and facade, my idea of an Autonomous System devoid of historical architectural references that could be identified as the subway system throughout Shanghai.

Right after thesis, it was awarded second prize in the d3 Housing of Tomorrow International Competition, and I decided to really make it my field of study within architecture post-MIT. I ended up compiling the work into a hypothetical firm scenario, which I called MA.AS (Metropolitan Architec-

RAFAEL LUNA

ture of Autonomous Settings). This was a way of thinking about how my work as a student had developed throughout studios and thesis into a single body of work that explored an architectural language. This I did right after thesis while working on a couple of competitions as a design consultant at Machado and Silvetti in Boston, while still figuring out what I wanted to do. While at MSA, I met Dongwoo Yim, with whom I constantly discussed the topic and was also interested in understanding the contemporary language through a “Third Typology.” I had a 3 month contract at MSA that ended up extending to 6 months, and luckily the economy hit, the office had to downsize and my contract was up. With Dongwoo, we continued talking about my interest in the architectural language as a system and his interest in the massing of architecture as an urban artifact. Shortly after, at the end of 2010, we formed an office, incorporated in 2011 as PRAUD (Progressive Research on Architecture, Urbanism, and Design). We structured it with the intent of always having a research component as well as a practical architectural component to study the theory of Typology and Topology and applying it in built form. At the same time, our fascination of understanding the “Metropolitan effect” lead us to our first publication, “I Want to Be Metropolitan,” where we question the term itself, metropolis, as an outdated term that needs to be reevaluated in order to classify cities by their level of metropolitanism. We introduced Boston as a Mini-Metropolis, and we started ques-

371

tioning the types of hybrid buildings that should be occurring in these type of cities. This became the central question in a studio I conducted at RISD called Metropolitan Hybrids.

At the end, it was the whole transition from regular studio to thesis that molded what would be the platform of studies after MIT and for my professional career. This has become my focus and concentration in building up a specific body of work.

Building discourse

PRAUD Progressive Research on Architecture, Urbanism and Design Co-founders: Rafael Luna & Dongwoo Yim

As a research and design firm, PRAUD focuses on a contemporary approach to understanding the effects of urbanity and developing architectural process. PRAUDâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s research takes into account various scales in architecture and urbanism with key

topics such as hybridity, urbanity, density, and transformation.

Our architectural dialog is a synthetic gesture between contemporary vocabulary in architecture and urban research.

RAFAEL LUNA

373

Casa Periscopio PRAUD Built 2012 Costa del Sol, El Salvador

Although it has already been almost 20 years since El Salvador suffered from a civil war, the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s understanding of urban space and architecture has been strongly molded by the concept of security and enclosure that it is engraved in the psyche of its citizens, from the city as much as from rural areas. With this in mind, we worked in shaping the idea of the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Modernist fortress.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; This term is not only literal in the sense of creating an enclosed environment, but also in the sense of trying to escape from the fortitude of modernism. Our strategy is to treat the typology of the project as three independent masses that would enclose the required program while creating a third space and an open connection towards the nature. The aim of the project is to allow open events to occur between the inside and the outside by creating different builtscapes without segregating the possibilities of program. The interior living area is opened as a double height linear connection to dining and kitchen programs. Similarly, the exterior has the linear connection of cooking, eating and lounging by the pool that connects back to the interior. This generates the possibility of a looping action and interaction between inside and outside activities. Although

the horizontal windows and columns of the south facade reminisce a modernist logic, the counter facades reminds us of a battle between contemporaneity and modernism being fought through the massing rather than a plan strategy. Local methods of construction, CMU and concrete are also utilized in order to create a monumental permanence of the mass within nature.

Building discourse

Prototype of newspaper headquarters

Duncan McIlvaIne

375

Duncan McIlvaine

The End of the Times: A Proposition for Transitional Journalistic Architecture M.Arch Thesis 2010 Advisor: J. Meejin Yoon Readers: Ana Miljački, Rahul Mehrotra

This thesis proposes a new civic building type for journalism, playing out a scenario in which the production and maintenance of an archival record has become the primary function of the post-corporate professional journalistic organization.

The architectural proposal originates in a broader inquiry, asking: when culturally significant building types approach categorical obsolescence, how can architects formulate new, more relevant types to replace them?

Specifically, the thesis addresses the impending obsolescence of the newspaper headquarters building type through two complementary strategies. First, the thesis is founded upon a systematic study of architecture’s long-term engagement with the newspaper industry. Simultaneously, it seeks opportunities for architecture within the contemporary discourse surrounding professional journalism and news media.

Enabling narratives derived from these concomitant investigations are subsequently utilized as bases for the development of a conjectural civic + industrial + archival hybrid building type.

Historical Context During the 19th and 20th centuries, architecture served the news media industry—specifically, major U.S. newspapers—by mastering a fundamental process: the synthesis of physical identity from functional hybridity. Architects resolved the complex program of the specialized newspaper headquarters building, generating physical identity for a commercial enterprise. The newspaper’s self-professed adherence to codes of journalistic ethics, combined with the publication’s cultivated image as a locally-responsible authoritative record, elevated its cultural status to that of an impartial cultural institution and effectively transcended the political and commercial motives of its ownership.

A reciprocal relationship therefore existed between the public architecture of journalism and the professional journalistic program. In the case of 20th century newspaper buildings, a popularly ordained form of quasi-institutionality validated an architectural projection of authority. In the imagination of many architects, then, the newspaper headquarters building became an opportunity for sincere monumentalizing: a chance for the earnest pursuit of beauty with a clean political conscience.

Simultaneously, some architects dared to be critical of corporate journalism in their responses to the newspaper headquarters brief.

Paradoxically, the newspaper’s assumption of quasi-institutional authority coincided with the increased expansion of its

own commercial interests and speculative capitalistic ventures.

Not so surprisingly, the perceptual transformation of the newspaper from political mouthpiece to impartial institution also coincided with diversification of individual journalistic agendas within the newspaper—in other words, with the recognition of popular demand for credible, politically disinterested or “objective” independent journalism. The concept of the “newspaper of record,” originating in the 1920’s, evinces the newspaper’s emergent status as an unassailable and neutral cultural record, worthy of architectural monumentality (Okrent, 2004: 1).

The near-mythical status of the American newspaper as an ostensibly “truth-seeking” cultural institution, combined with the ever-increasing complexity of its architectural requirements, invited architectural innovation and resulted in an array of seminal projects and buildings during the first half of the 20th century.

As will be shown, the introduction of novel, formally malleable program elements—especially speculative commercial space during the early 20th century—simultaneously mandated innovation and propelled media architecture toward a monumentality that was validated by the newspaper’s self-proclaimed status as a civic institution. The public architecture of journalism shaped urban space in major American cities. It was an integral part of urban life.

The newspaper industry initially required architecture to synthesize a quasi-institutional physical identity from a complex hybrid program. However, architecture’s engagement with the news media industry was ultimately undone by forces of technical hyper-specialization of the newspaper building type, and by the real estate market-driven speculation that came to constrain the design of new headquarters facilities.

Building discourse

Top: Typological Timeline Opposite: Type Classification Matrix

This thesis undertakes the design of transitional architecture for the newspaper industry in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper industry, as an international enterprise, constitutes a systemic phenomenon to which the fundamental arguments of this proposal will be relevant, regardless of geographic contingencies. In pursuit of a fertile scenario for architectural design, the research presented here was structured around specific questions relevant to architecture. Based upon the foregoing case studies, it is possible to formulate some useful general conclusions, which complement the more specific findings presented within the typological analysis.

Study 1:Typological Evolution What factors—economic, pragmatic, social, or otherwise—have historically supported productive architectural engagement with journalistic programs, either by triggering increased demand for architectural design or by requiring architectural innovation?

Architects’ expertise in the organization of complex programs was pragmatically useful to the newspaper industry. More significantly, emerging corporate newspapers exploited architectural design for its potential to project quasi-institutionalism.

The de facto institutionalism of the newspaper, as an ‘objective’ journalistic enterprise, was a cultivated social construct that validated an architectural projection of authority. The pragmatic and symbolic utility of architecture to emerging corporate newspapers, therefore, initiated architectural engagement with the journalistic program. The most profoundly influential development enabling increased architectural engagement with the newspaper industry was the introduction of a malleable program element—speculative office space—to the rigid technical mandates of the newspaper headquarters brief. Emerging possibilities in building design (i.e., the advent of the skyscraper), combined with the addition of malleable program, mandated formal innovation and the development of new types.

As a corollary, what factors have eroded the architecture—journalism relationship,either by severely limiting architecture’s zone of operation or by rendering it entirely superfluous?

First, increasing focus on specialization limited the perceived utility of architectural design in the construction of newspaper buildings. Architecture’s critical role centered on its ability to synthesize identity from programmatic complexity and hybridity. The profession failed to redefine its expertise as programs became increasingly homogeneous due to external factors.

Second, the predominance of speculative commercial space in the newspaper headquarters brief, from the 1920’s onward, eventually came to constrain the design of newspaper buildings, limiting architecture the surface.

What factors enabled the architecture of professional journalism to shape public space in American cities?

Aggregations of newspaper facilities first arose in close proximity to urban epicenters. These ‘Newspaper Rows’ were integral parts of urban life, serving as public venues for the consumption of information.

As the newspaper industry consolidated, Times Square emerged as the fully privatized successor of Newspaper Row. After this period, the relationship between the architecture of journalism and the city was effectively dissolved, both through physical displacement (suburbanization) and as a side-effect of architecture’s diminished engagement with the journalistic program. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the newspaper headquarters building was no longer a distinct building type. Public space for journalism had contracted from a district to a square to a lobby to nothing, and the architecture of journalism had become external to the city.

Duncan McIlvaIne

What were the formal outcomes of these conditional factors?

The form of the newspaper building has been influenced by its siting, which has in turn been influenced by developments in communications technology and transportation infrastructure.

Additionally, both the volume of newspaper production and the changing status of journalism in the popular consciousness have influenced the monumentality and formal singularity of newspaper buildings. Fundamentally, the relationship between building enclosure and contents has oscillated between looseness and rigidity. Generally, the most productive opportunities for form-making occurred during periods of ‘loose fit’ between the journalistic program and building enclosure, brought about by the inclusion on geometrically indeterminate program elements (malleable bulk). During periods of formal rigidity, architecture was concerned primarily with the design of enclosure or facade. Recently, architecture’s engagement with the journalistic program has been exclusively on the surface.

Study 2: Contemporary Scenario and Discourse What opportunities for architectural innovation have arisen out of contemporary conditions within the profession of journalism, and which of these opportunities remain untested?

The most significant change to occur in journalism during the 1990’s and 2000’s has been a shift from physical to digital media.

Almost instantaneously, the newspaper industry’s most recently constructed and hyper-specialized (Type 4) facilities were rendered obsolete. There exists an unprecedented opportunity for architecture to define new building types and environments for emerging forms of journalism. The field is open for conjecture as to what constraints might inform the morphology and spatial organization of new types of journalistic architecture.

377

What architectural constraints have been loosened by ongoing changes in the practice of journalism?

Most critically, productive and distributive efficiencies are no longer the driving constraints in newspaper facility design.

The manufacture and distribution of physical news media is in decline, and is unlikely to inform the architecture of journalism in the future. Secondarily, the compartmentalized spatial structure of the conventional newspaper headquarters is obsolete. Recently, advertising revenues have ceased to sustain professional journalism as they did during most of the 20th century. Simultaneously, new forms of journalistic organizations are emerging which do not conform to conventional corporate hierarchies. Consequently, the advertising/corporate component of the newspaper building program can be considered a frangible or dispensable program element. The spatial segregation of corporate and journalistic functions (ostensibly to preserve ‘journalistic independence’) is no longer necessary.

What new architectural constraints might emerge that could give rise to new formal, spatial, and organizational approaches to the architecture of journalism?

First, emerging forms of participatory public journalism will likely demand more public forms of journalistic architecture.

Existing sites occupied by newspaper facilities will require adaptation and retooling to host the new public architecture of journalism. These sites, frequently situated in the peripheral industrial districts of cities and dominated by infrastructure, offer a range of architectural and geometrical constraints that could inform the morphology of new building types for journalism. Second, the volatility of the contemporary newsroom—a consequence of a fluctuating and highly mobile workforce—requires extreme flexibility. This requirement could inform the spatial organization of journalistic architecture: an architecture organized according to permanence or variability. The archival

Building discourse

Toward the Purpose-Built Newspaper Headquarters function of the newspaper as a regularly-produced informational and cultural record also holds the potential to become a driving constraint in the architecture of journalism. Following the obsolescence and abandonment of productive/distributive ‘efficiency’ as the primary design consideration,the rising curatorial role of professional journalism, combined with growing public demand for informational ‘raw material,’ could require a capacious architecture configured as an accessible informational repository or archive.

Above: View of archive access point from gallery.

The diversification of the daily newspaper’s audience was critical to the growth of circulation, a statistic that would drive the expansion of newspaper production facilities throughout the 1900s. Many vanguard newspapers of the 20th century were, during their early development, politically homogeneous and narrowly targeted at specific demographic or ethnic groups. The Washington Post (initially supportive of the Democratic party) and Chicago Tribune (staunchly Nativist during the late 1800s, and later supportive of the Republican party) both experienced vehemently political phases (Keefe 1975 et al.). As the first form of short timescale mass media, 19th century newspapers found a spectrum of audiences eager to consume politically aligned viewpoints on world events. However, the assumption of a neutral journalistic stance had the potential to further broaden the newspaper’s appeal—and its market—while simultaneously increasing the publication’s credibility.

The eventual emergence of large-volume, locally-dominant corporate daily newspapers, professing independence from any singular political agenda and formed through the assimilation of smaller newspapers, coincided with an increased demand for specialized architecture to house their larger-scale editing and printing operations.

Duncan McIlvaIne

379

Design sTrATegy enabling narrative 1: Contraction + Fragmentation of Public space for Journalism Abstracted diagrams illustrating the incremental migration of newspaper facilities toward peripheral urban areas.

Conjectural response 1: expansion of Public space for Journalism The building volume is organized into 13 discrete sub-volumes; each is a self-contained archival environment. structurally, each y-shaped volume is a freestanding building, supported by the densely cross-braced storage racks it contains. enabling narrative 2: Transition from Material Throughput to informational exchange Hyper-rational Type 3 / Type 4 newspaper facility sites. Preoccupation with material â&#x20AC;&#x153;efficiencyâ&#x20AC;? and plant operation over the past 50 years has led to a prolific site type, characterized by immediate adjacency to major transportation infrastructure, rectilinear site geometry, and peripheral urban location relative to the city.

Conjectural response 2: Civic Transformation of the Hyper-rational site The rectilinear building volume is cross-cut and organized into 13 discrete sub-volumes; each is a self-contained archival environment. Together these sub-volumes generate three public terrains, effectively multiplying the rectilinear site into a three-dimensional extension of public space.

enabling narrative 3: emerging Curatorial role of Professional Journalism Declining production volume, observed in all six case studies. Declining production volume, as illustrated in the chart at right, further substantiates the assertion that the role of the journalist is shifting away from conventional models and towards curation.

Conjectural response 3: Journalism in the Archive emergence of the archive as a programmatic driver for the architecture of post-corporate journalism. The design of this new architectural type is driven by the physical constraints imposed by the need to archive, preserve, and quickly access physical media. The physical archive becomes an architectural medium / material: space for journalism is literally embedded in the malleable bulk of the archive.

Building discourse

exPlODeD AxOnOMeTriC AnD siTe PlAn: Overall organization of enabling narratives and the conceptual journalism building type / architectural proposal.

The three primary enabling narratives are keyed into the architectural proposal to indicate the formal, spatial, and organizational possibilities that arise from each when applied to the design of a conjectural architecture for journalism.

Duncan McIlvaIne

Top three: sections Bottom: Aerial view, showing voids created by the interlocking of the

381

archival volumes and the buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s relationship to the adjacent elevated interstate (i-93).

Building discourse

View from the Harrison Avenue approach.

Duncan McIlvaIne

383

Building discourse

PArDOn Me, yOur PrOFessiOn is Dying Old people remember when it was relevant. Children are apathetic to its demise. Conservatives say: “These effete elitists have outlived their usefulness.”

Progressives say: “The people don’t need specialists – they can do it better themselves.”

Your product was once at the heart of culture.

Your product has now been rejected, replaced by surrogates offering more immediate gratification.

The symptoms are clear: declining quality, declining volume, declining demand for your services.

Some of you are in mourning.

Others hold onto hope: The Establishment says: “Technology killed our profession.” The Avant Garde says: “Technology will save our profession.”

Those on the inside are beginning to claw at the walls.

Those on the outside hear only muffled fumbling.

During the 20th century, print journalism was a respected profession. It was also a profitable business, a vital instrument of communication, and an expressive form of sustained cultural production.

Professional journalism today is facing an existential crisis.

Within a few generations, it might be history. New technologies bypass the established role of the professional, allowing consumers to become producers. The expectation of instantaneity favors highly distilled content and direct, ethereal delivery vectors over more substantial and enduring artifacts of exchange.

Novelty and expediency trump depth and integrity—and have become organizational priorities. Mired in nostalgic indignation, and at the same time awestruck by the zip-zap and flash of new technology, the profession has been slow to recognize the severity of the crisis it faces.

It’s not hopeless, though.

Duncan McIlvaIne

AuTOMATeD rACk-suPPOrTeD WAreHOuse & PHysiCAl ArCHiVe seleCTiOn CriTeriA 1. it is a standardized and widely-implemented system for the organization and warehousing of large quantities of small items that need to be accessed quickly and remotely. Computer-driven stacker cranes obviate the

385

need for human access to the rack space.

2. The racks are structurally redundant and present opportunities for geometric modulation when deployed in high volume / large scale applications.

3. The location of archive access points for the public is not constrained by

the physical location of the archived items. Conveyors and other mechanical systems can rapidly convey requested items to any part of the building, and subsequently return these items to the archive. This permits great flexibility in the public space of the building.

4. The system imposes structural constraints while providing a high degree of malleability. The automated rack-supported warehouse adds malleable bulk to the spatially non-specific contemporary journalism program.

Building discourse

Duncan McIlvaine MIT / Master of Architecture, 2010 University of Maryland / B.S. Architecture, 2005

Since finishing my thesis I have been working in architecture practices ranging from a handful of designers to hundreds.

I’ve helped design buildings in India, Switzerland, and New York City. My most recent design work was with the Hudson Yards team at KPF, designing a pair of super tall office towers on the west side of Manhattan. A little less than two years ago, I became an owner’s representative.

Now, I direct consultant teams, managing construction projects on a university campus.

As a search for alternative programmatic drivers for an established building type, my thesis required research into the relationship between industrialized journalism and the profession of architecture.

By the time I completed my thesis, I had gained an external perspective on architecture: I was able to “switch seats” and understand more profoundly the practical and political utility of architecture from a nondesign perspective.

Thinking back on your thesis, how do you feel it has or has not influenced your career?

Thesis fundamentally shifted my design aspirations from tactical to strategic. My role is not to design buildings.

My role as an owner’s representative is to design an architectural strategy for the university, and to execute that strategy at every level—from 1,000 sq.ft classroom renovations to 100 million dollar new facilities—by assembling teams of talented designers, specialists, and contractors and directing them throughout the process of design and construction.

Until designers have more deeply infiltrated the hierarchy of ownership, development, and project management, what hope do we have of promoting world class design in people’s daily lives?

In what small niche can great architecture survive?

What is the one thing you would have done differently or what do you wish you had known in advance?

As a passionate and earnest designer, I was a little too apologetic for my proposal’s implicit cynicism toward the future of both architecture and journalism. I wish I had been better prepared to tell the dark story that led to the new “building type” my thesis postulated.

What was the biggest advantage for doing your thesis at MiT?

The biggest advantage to doing my thesis at MIT was also the reason I came to MIT: the freedom to pursue whatever vein of research I found meaningful.

My thesis proposed a mutualistic survival strategy for two professions threatened with extinction at the dawn of the 21st century: architecture and print journalism. It is clear that these professions are already—by necessity —redefining themselves in response to the ongoing erosion of their historically‐ established roles. While my thesis was pessimistic about future demand for print journalism (i.e., newspapers), it was not all doom‐and‐gloom. It envisioned an emerging role for architecture that might give new life to the profession—positioning the architect as a generator of new programs and building types in response to institutional evolution, upheaval, and crisis.

Duncan McIlvaIne

387

Recent Projects Duke University Owners Representative

Building discourse

Urban Wall Building: 1st Floor

JOHN PUGH

389

John Pugh

Megaform: A Frame of Opposition M.Arch Thesis 2010 Advisor: Alexander D’Hooghe Readers: Rahul Mehrotra, John Ochsendorf

The city is no more, only an endless urban corridor remains.

As our cities have grown outwards over the past 100 years, civic identity has been destroyed and the public realm has been lost.

Inexpensive land values, the widespread adoption of the internal combustion automobile, government subsidies and propaganda have resulted in a homogenized and privatized city with no identifiable center or clearly defined boundaries. How might one establish identifiable civic landmarks in these conditions?

How could a novel technology, such as the electric vehicle, be employed to bring about an alternative urban reality?

To address these questions, this project interrogates the typological concepts of the Urban Core and the Megaform.

Through historical and typological research, this thesis establishes a lineage of both of these concepts and then speculates about the ability of these models to influence the city.

This thesis proposes 2 novel models: an Urban Core type and a Megaformal Urban Wall Building type. The Urban Wall Building typology creates an interiorized urban realm where a linear public promenade facilitates a new urban landscape that is best described by its radicalized sectional experience. This type is a piece of the larger urban core typology that strategically clips out a piece the urban fabric to define a space of opposition, civitas and ultimately, Metropolitan Urbanity. Through the design of enclosure types, overpass infrastructures and a novel public terrain, this project questions the potentialities for an architecture and urbanism of the electric vehicle.

This project proposes the construction of a simple wall, an “Urban Frame,” to demarcate the boundaries of an island, built for the preservation and cultivation of metropolitan culture.

We as Architects must call for a retreat and concentration within these frames of resistance, yielding the rest of the urban plane to enemy forces. To divide the city into those within and those without will establish a center for opposition to the mass homogenization and privatization of the city. These islands of culture will float on a sea of decay until (if) a time comes when the area outside the walls can be regenerated.

We as Architects must accept the futility of the architectural building to affect change in the city and should instead speculate about an urban building that is between the scale of an urban plan and an anomalous structure. As a vehicle of typological investigation, this project utilizes the Megaform, a contemporary model of J.L. Sert’s Urban Core concept. As the city has exploded out across the landscape over the past 100 years, urban designers and architects have speculated about strategies to organize this new condition: the endless urban plane. The “Core” project has been refined and developed by a series of great thinkers: Le Corbusier, J.L. Sert, Ludvico Quaroni, Vittorio Gregotti, Rem Koolhaas, Manuel de Sola Morales et al. As the project evolved, Kenneth Frampton identified a new type of Urban Core, the Megaform.

This project introduces the Megaform to the American Heartland, specifically the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, to imagine a new urban reality. This novel construct is based on two primary drivers: 1) the desire to create a platform for the preservation and cultivation of Metropolitan Culture; and 2) the ambition to create an interiorized urban realm that integrates the novel technology of the electric vehicle.

Building discourse

Site Strategy: interpretation + inverSion the Jeffersonian grid is ever present in the Southeastern Corridor of Michigan and throughout the american Midwest. as an organizational device it was derived from thomas Jefferson’s admiration for the French style of gardening. this approach visually emphasizes the dominance of man over nature through the strict imposition of geometric order, as can be seen at versailles, the tuileries et al. alternatively, the english garden which developed later as a formal response, focuses on the development of a “ramble” or winding path in an artificially “natural” landscape. the path, with its series of vistas and distant follies, allows for man to meditate on the beauty of nature. the first suburban single family home developments and their subsequent imitations were heavily influenced by the english

garden movement. Derivative forms of both of these precedents, the english and French garden are important elements of the contemporary city. this project interprets the Warren superblock as the French garden containing the english garden. as an inversion of this condition, the footprint and organization of the project is based on the formal concept of the english garden containing the French garden. the intention of this maneuver is to create an oppositional relationship with the surrounding landscape. the establishment of formal difference creates a moment of order in the chaos of the city and a recognizable civic landmark.

JOHN PUGH

391

vertical Delirium

Horizontal Delirium

programmatic Banding

F.a.r. Comparison - existing = 0.3 proposed = 1.2

programmatic Diversity index

existing = 4

proposed = 11

prograMMatiC organization the project is organized through formally banding the site. this strategy separates programmatic types and allows for the assembly of maximum difference and fosters cross-contamination. this programmatic banding organizes both the Urban Core and the Urban Wall Building. the linear automobile and pedestrian movement through the building creates an experience of horizontal delirium.

“the megaform may be identified as an urban nexus set within the ‘space-endlessness’ of the megalopolis.”

— Kenneth Frampton

Building discourse

A Formal Lineage The concept of the Megaform, first articulated by Kenneth Frampton in his Harvard University GSD Wallenberg lecture (1999), can best be described as “an urban nexus set within the space-endlessness of the megalopolis.” [1] In the lecture, Frampton defines a set of rules for identifying the megaform and its historical precedents. Overall, the lecture establishes the Megaform as a viable way for architects to enact meaningful change upon the urban landscape.

The historical lineage is clear: the Megaform project is an extension of J.L. Sert’s Urban Core idea. This is significant because they are both based on the importance of an identifiable civic space and the necessity of an urban scale. Other important characteristics include: a formal presence in the field condition of today’s city, public space with a civic quality, a combination

of programmatic types, a bounded figure, a form that both informs and is informed by its context.

The concept of the Urban Core was mostly developed after World War II. Further development by the likes of Ludvico Quaroni, Vittorio Gregotti and J.L. Sert after the widespread disillusionment with Functional Modernism further enriched the idea. Similarly, the Megaform concept, identified by Frampton in 1999, comes at a time of disillusionment with Post-Modernism and nostalgic “New Urban” interventions. Both of these historical milieus were tumultuous times of expansion and loss for the city. These visionaries recognized the necessity for dense, urban nodes within the ever-expanding field of sprawl.

JOHN PUGH

393

A Megaform Can Be Defined As: 1. A large form extending horizontally rather than vertically.

2. A complex form, which unlike the megastructure, is not necessarily articulated into a series of structural and mechanical subsets.

3. A form capable of inflecting the existing urban landscape as found because of its strong topographical character.

4. A form that is not freestanding but rather insinuates itself as a continuation of the surrounding topography.

5. A form that is oriented towards densification of the urban fabric.

6. A form that contains more than one type of program.

7. A size greater than one Manhattan block or 900 feet long and 250 feet wide.

Kenneth Frampton - Original (1999) John T Pugh - Additional Rules (2009) this page: plan of 3rd Floor public promenade Sequence of sections through public promenade opposite: Site plan

Building discourse

above: exploded axonometric drawing showing Urban Wall building typology organization

opposite: rendering showing Urban Wall facade next spread: rendering showing interior view

right: Civic entry hall view showing multi-layered, electric vehicle and pedestrian circulation on the interior of the proposed Urban Wall building.

JOHN PUGH

395

MEGAFORM

MArch Cand

noteS 1 Kenneth Frampton, “Megaform as Urban Landscape,” (the raoul Wallenberg Lecture, Harvard Uni-

MEGAFORM AS SUBURBAN CORE

versity gSD, Cambridge, Ma, MArch Candidate: John T Pugh 1999).

Thesis Advisor: Alexander D’Hooghe

Building discourse

John Pugh MIT / Master of Architecture, 2010 Fordham University / B.S. Business Administration, 2000

What have you been doing since thesis?

Since I finished my thesis, I have been working, teaching, and serving as a critic on various design (architectural/ urban design) juries in the area. I worked as an intern architect for about three years, two years at ORG, MIT Professor Alexander D’Hooghe’s urban design and architecture firm. It was a great experience as it allowed me to follow through on some of the thinking around my design thesis. During that time, I also served as a guest lecturer and critic for a design studio in Detroit, with a focus on the Suburban Megaform. This of course was the focus of my thesis, so I presented my thesis research as an introductory studio lecture and then reviewed and critiqued student projects. This experience allowed me to see how others could think through some of the challenges that came up during my thesis—particular issues like infrastructural connections, circulation challenges (both vehicular and pedestrian), scale shifts (how to embed human scale spaces within a giant urban building), etc.

While at ORG, my focus was on the design of a reconfigured suburban big box that is now under construction in the suburbs of Brussels. This “urban building” is a regional fire and safety center combined with a teen community center, the combination formed by wrapping the two buildings with a conceptual steel veil. The veil unites the composition, connects the two disparate buildings and creates a public space in between on the edge of the suburban sprawl.

So, after working for two years at ORG, from the early stages of schematic design through the end of the construction document phase, I worked with Professor D’Hooghe and a team

at ORG on a research paper, sponsored

by NAIOP and MIT, that explored the creation of a model for “suburban core” development. Our case study looked at the Boston suburbs, so we gathered GIS and census data, created a rigorous geographic and demographic approach to identifying zones of opportunity for developers, interviewed key stakeholders, and proposed a model. I had the opportunity to speak with real estate developers, government officials from Boston and surrounding communities, and other architects involved in this type of work.

It was really a fascinating experience. The paper’s conclusions were published by the NAIOP Research Foundation, and presented at their annual conference.

Following my research work at ORG, I moved on to begin doing architectural design and consulting projects on my own. A collaboration with my architectural mentor on residential design projects evolved into the creation of a design for a friend’s vacation home in Stonington, CT, recently completed. It is such a rewarding experience to see something you drew and 3d modeled actually constructed. What a thrill. Other small addition projects for single family residences have followed. Last year, my firm designed a spa and community center in Southern Maine. The project creates a community center that serves as a restaurant and health spa for members of the public. It was challenging in that the scale of the community and functional design requirements were not easy to pin down. Programming can be a huge challenge, especially when there are multiple users, but that is part of the fun.

As I began working on some of my own projects, I also started to explore the real estate industry. It seemed like a natural fit, as I have a degree in finance and worked in business for five years prior to

going to MIT for my M.Arch degree. For two years, I worked on a consulting basis with the planning department at UMass Lowell. My focus was on real estate: acquisition, disposition, and portfolio management. While working on these pieces, I was also involved with planning long and short term departmental moves and renovations. While working there, with some other great MIT alumni, I began working on a contract basis with a boutique real estate management consulting firm. The focus of that firm was to help large-scale occupiers of real estate— Oracle, GE, the GSA—to optimize their real estate portfolios. The firm would analyze a firm’s portfolio, go through all the leases, the owned assets, etc., look at the rental rates in that area, whether they were rising or falling, forecast to continue rising/falling etc., and then gather long-term business strategy priorities from key stakeholders. We would then crunch all the numbers and look at the qualitative data to create portfolio options that would then guide company and government executives in their real estate decision making processes. The experience was a great introduction to real estate and how corporations make real estate decisions.

Recently, I started working with Samuels & Associates, a real estate development firm. I’m also working with other MIT alumni on some really exciting projects. At the moment, my main focus is the redevelopment of the Landmark Center property in Fenway. The property is currently about 1 million square feet of space, office, retail and cinema. My colleagues and I are working to create a new 1.7 million square foot complex with a grand concourse through the building, grocery store, four residential buildings (550 units), an additional 110 k.sf of retail space, and 650 k.sf of repositioned office

JOHN PUGH

space. This type of highly complex project is exactly what I have wanted to focus on since I first developed an interest in large scale projects during my thesis work. The experiences that I had at MIT helped me define my focus and provided me with the foundation to work across disciplines successfully.

What was particularly timely about your thesis? Was it technique or topical?

My thesis was based on Kenneth Frampton’s concept of the Megaform, combined with J.L. Sert’s Urban Core and my interest in designing the space in between (the suburbs and low density cities). The timely question I sought to answer was, “How can we create culture and density within vast and empty suburban sprawl?” Does that still matter?

Of course it does. As migration back into the city intensifies, what will we do with our hollowed out suburbs? How can we densify our suburbs in a punctual and strategic manner? I could go on, but if you are interested, then you should read my thesis.

The most important thing I learned in the process of doing my thesis was to believe in my own ideas and not be afraid to fully embrace the ideas of others while making them my own. It takes a lot to get through architecture school: focus, determination, stamina, a love for the building arts, great classmates. The bolder the idea the more likely someone is going to pay attention to what you are doing. If you challenge yourself and others, novel opportunities will arise. thinking back on your thesis, how do you feel it has or has not influenced your career?

I’m not sure if I can define my work thus far since graduation as a career, but I have always been interested in largescale architectural interventions. The thesis provided an avenue for me to explore that, while also integrating and discovering along the way some historical and contemporary discourse. As I mentioned, I worked for my thesis advisor for two years after graduation. We worked on an “urban building,” now under construction. The design challenged and allowed me to learn what it is like to work on a building from the conceptual phase through to construction documents.

397

Thesis allowed me to realize what was possible. Sometimes I hear people, even today, who say I worked all night—I had at least one all nighter every week for the entire semester during my thesis.

That intensity, that drive, that focus, is hard to sustain, but it also results in the recognition that your ideas matter when you stand in front of your peers and professors. Maybe not everyone likes them or finds it interesting, but you realize your opinion and ideas matter and that those who question and challenge your ideas only matter in that they provide more room to expand your thinking on a subject. During my thesis semester I took a class with Mark Jarzombek, probably one of the school’s most widely loved professors. During the semester, we had to do a debate and take on someone’s persona; I portrayed an architect who was totally a Nietzschean guy who was all about imposing his will through top down form-making... and I loved it. That class introduced everyone to Heidegger, Nietzsche, Plato...and connected those philosophical giants with the contemporary discourse. The way he taught the course allowed everyone to find a place for their work in the larger field of architecture. No points of view were invalid, unless you didn’t have a point of view; then you were just lame.

Having not come from an architectural background, it took me awhile to find my voice as an architect. That class was absolutely crucial in bridging the conceptual divide between my work and the theory discussed in studio. I could hang out and talk theory all day long... it was so much fun. Well, I did study art history as well as finance.

What is the one thing you would have done differently or what do you wish you had known in advance?

When I started thesis I, like everyone, took thesis prep. Most of the class was frustrating, a long slog. The most useful element was a kind of a speed dating setup, where you pitched your concept to a professor for 15 minutes and then you did it again. Of course, somehow, no one liked my idea. But at the end of the session, a professor recommended I reach out to Alexander D’Hooghe, as my idea was very much aligned with his research focus.

If I could have done it over again, I would have spent less time assembling a

huge panel of reviewers. After my initial rejection by most of the professors that I presented to during thesis prep, I decided to just approach all of my favorite professors over the previous three years.

That worked in getting them onboard.

The challenge was finding what the real focus of my project was going to be and not getting distracted by all of my other digressions.

Three months is not a lot of time to design a 2 m.sf (1 mile long) building complex while simultaneously writing a dissertation. I’m an ambitious person, but I bit off more than I could chew. The written portion of my thesis was part of my Contemporary Urban Forms research term paper on the Megaform building typology.

What was the biggest advantage for doing your thesis at Mit?

The resources at MIT cannot be compared to any other school. The huge support for design research is amazing.

MIT professors live and breathe architecture and design. Not only that, when you have a question or want to engage people outside of the architecture department— structural, material, civil engineering, the arts program, etc.—the whole institute is open and available and excited to collaborate. Nowhere else can you find a better group of people that will support and challenge you every single day. You are surrounded by the best professors, the best students, and the best ideas. You have to constantly refine your ideas. I am so profoundly honored to have had such an amazing 3-½ year experience.

It defined who I am today and what I wanted to do after I was released back into the wild.

Building discourse

Urban Building: Community And Safety Center Professional Work At ORG (Organization for Permanent Modernity) Brussels, Belgium (2010-Present)

above: 2nd floor courtyard between living volumes.

Left: exterior walk-way connecting deconstructed big-box volumes. Firetruck and emergency services garage located below living area.

The Community & Safety Center in Asse, Belgium is a 160,000 sf. regional fire and emergency complex that is connected via a newly created public square to a teen community center. Architecturally, this urban building is wrapped in a veil that organizes and combines the spaces into a visual and architectonic composition. The fire and emergency complex is a big box strategically sliced and separated. These operations create “living volumes” above the bent garage floor plate. Courtyards between the living volumes are opportunities for relaxation and respite for fire

Below: Construction image of building looking south along the front elevation.

Foreground shows firetruck and emergency services garage; practice fire tower is shown at left. towards the right is the “public room,” a newly created public square, with a teen youth center at far end.

fighters in between battling blazes in the surrounding area. A desire for poetic intervention coupled with the functional challenges of integrating a firestation, emergency services center and teen community center at an urban scale drove the configuration both in plan and section.

This public complex is a civic presence near the existing rail connection to downtown Brussels and serves as a monumental event within the vast suburban sprawl.

JOHN PUGH

399

Vacation Home Stonington, CT Professional Work with Hyperion Design & Development, LLC Boston, MA (2009-2013)

Hyperion Design & Development is a multi-functional firm that provides design, development and real estate consulting services. The company began with a focus on architectural services when a friend requested design work on a vacation home for him and his family in Stonington, Connecticut. The firm serves as a vehicle to explore my design and real estate investment ideas. It has evolved over time and expanded to include contracts with real estate consulting firms, defense contractors, and private clients. The design side of the firm has worked

across many scales, from projects as small as a front porch addition to large-scale, mixed-use residential developments.

Real estate consulting contracts have focused on planning and market analysis performed while partnering with institutional clients. The development side of the firm has focused mainly on residential work. These experiences have provided a platform to work on larger-scale, urban mixed-use development projects.

VIEW CORRIDORS above, left: east elevation of Stonington home illustrating family deck and cantilever viewing hall. above, right: South elevation of a single family home in Stonington, Ct constructed in 2013.

Left: Stonington, Ct project view corridors diagram illustrating preferred views from second story of the home out towards the harbor and atlantic ocean. views and leisure space were major design drivers.

SECONDARY

DARY

SECON

PR

IM

A

RY

Building discourse

This page: Site Plan Opposite: Proposed Interior

SITe This thesis involves four programmatic componentsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;hotel, clinic, lab space, and biological vaultâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;distributed over three sites on the continent. The interventions work together, operating as a cohesive functional, financial, and logistical system to enable a new era of Antarctic tourism and scientific research.

AndreA Brennen

403

Andrea Brennen

Arctic-tecture for the Global Commons M.Arch Thesis 2009 Advisor: Ana Miljački Readers: Mark Jarzombek, John Ochsendorf

Antarctica was the last continent to be explored and remains the largest unclaimed area on earth. It has no indigenous population and today is inhabited only by transient scientists and support staff. It is the closest thing to a “pristine wilderness” that exists on earth. Although the continent is larger than the U.S. and Mexico combined, represents 10% of the world’s landmass, and holds 65% of the world’s fresh water frozen in its miles-thick ice sheet, [1] it is represented on most world maps as a marginalized fringe at the bottom of the page.

Long dismissed as an ‘out of the way’ wasteland, Antarctica might seem like a strange site for an architectural thesis.

Antarctic buildings don’t typically make it into the canon of architecture history, and most people tend to think of Antarctica as a vast expanse of nothingness—no cities, no culture... no architecture.

However, architecture (or at least the act of building) has played a surprisingly prominent role in Antarctica’s brief history. Over the last century, nearly fifty national governments have sponsored the construction of a variety of scientific research facilities and associated infrastructure (airstrips, roads, etc.) on the continent. In addition to allowing for the extraction of scientific information (which has been called Antarctica’s “main export,”) [2] these facilities have provided a means for various nations to assert their sovereignty over this southernmost continent, a land rife with contested territorial claims.[3] Antarctica is legally designated as a Global Commons, a term used to refer to “areas or resources that do not or cannot by their very nature fall under sovereign jurisdiction.” An international Antarctic Treaty, ratified by the governments of 12 signatory nations in 1961, established this commons status and today, representatives from 46 nations regularly attend Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings, at which the future of Antarctic activity is debated and determined. Voting power, however, is limited to representatives from 28 nations—those whose governments have been deemed (by their peers) to have demonstrated “substantial interest” in the continent. According to the origingal 1961 treaty, a government can demonstrate “substantial interest” only by constructing and continually operating a scientific research facility on the ice. In other words, the only way for governments to claim their piece of the Global Commons is through architecture.

Environmental agendas in architecture have enjoyed an increased attention recently as a result of the emerging ‘sustainable’ design ethos. This framework of sustainability initiates a rethinking of the scale of an architectural site—a building must be understood as situated not only in a specific territory, but

also in relation to a much larger and more abstract global environmental system. With this new systemic understanding of “site” comes the opportunity for a different mode of architecture, one in which the architect has a hand in designing not only the architectural object, but also tactics for and potential effects of its implementation.

Operating in the spirit of Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog—a 1970s counterculture bible for “whole systems” thinking—this thesis examines Antarctica as a testing ground for an expanded mode of architecture. Antarctica, with its extreme environment, scientific value, and legal status as a Global Commons, is a site that cannot be understood in any way other than through its relationship to a larger global environmental system.

This reality, when combined with the continent’s mystique, creates an unparalleled opportunity for architectural innovation.

Building discourse

Site Strategy Site 01: Whaler’s Bay, Deception Island, Antarctic Peninsula-hotel, clinic The most popular and frequently visited Antarctic destination, this region has the greatest need for a centralized tourism infrastructure. This facility will accommodate 50 tourists (the average number of passengers on a small Antarctic cruise ship); it will also house a medical clinic that will service this as well as other popular peninsula sites.

Site 02: PIG Field Camp, Pine Island Glacier, Marie Byrd Land-lab space, glacier monitoring station Never officially claimed by any country, this truly is no-man’sland. This station will make laboratory space available for scientists to lease. Additionally, a way station here will handle processing and temporary storage of items en route to the biovault. Shipments can arrive here from Station 1 on the Antarctic Peninsula (taking advantage of the tourism transport infrastructure already in place) or they may arrive from elsewhere. The facility will accommodate a much smaller number of temporary inhabitants—tourists, scientists, or people travelling with seed shipments, detained due to inclement weather.

Site 03: The South Pole-international meeting hall, biological storage vault Locating the international bio-vault at the south pole will allow the facility to utilize the 2-mile thick polar ice sheet for refrigeration of the facility. The logistical difficulties associated with travelling to the location will provide a degree of security; however, locating the seed bank near the pole will provide several means of access. There is a U.S.-operated airstrip at the south pole as well as an ice-highway that runs from the pole to Ross Island. An existing compacted-ice road will be extended to connect the pole facility with Station 2. This location will also allow scientists who lease laboratory space in this facility to have access to the unique geophysical conditions at the south pole.

There are benefits to a coastal location—any (seaworthy) ship can reach the location to deliver biological specimens.

However, Antarctica’s coastal ice shelves are notoriously unstable; the sea ice undergoes alternating periods of thickening and calving as the seasons (and ocean temperature) change. The instability of this condition is expected to increase due to rising global temperatures. A facility located on the ice shelves of Marie Byrd Land must have a flexibility that can accommodate changing foundation conditions. This sort of instability does not allow for the necessary permanence associated with the bio-vault program.

BenefITS Of WhalerS Bay lOcaTIOn Whalers Bay is one of the most popular and frequently visited tourist destinations. It is located in close proximity to other popular peninsula sites. The area is of exceptional botanical and limnological importance

(it is a breeding site for Kelp gulls, antarctic Terns, and cape Petrels).

There are currently no active scientific research facilities at Whaler’s Bay (a new facility here would create minimal disturbance to ongoing antarctic science). The shape of the Island creates a naturally safe harbor.

AndreA Brennen

405

Building discourse

AndreA Brennen

407

Building discourse

Programmatic Strategy One programmatic and material strategy is developed and deployed across all three sites. The architecture is composed of a series of nested inflatablesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;independent, pre-fabricated units located inside a larger structure. The program is organized according to specific temperature requirements, with warmer program components nested within cooler ones in order to maximize the amount of insulating airspace between warmer spaces and the exterior environment. This strategy combines multiple solutions used in the antarctic precedent projects consulted. The thermal benefits of one contiguous structure (with an optimized surface area to volume ratio) is combined with a plan for emergency preparation. In the event of an emergency, independent units can be closed off to isolate the problem while people are evacuated to another part of the structure. This same tactic doubles as a heating strategy; since self-contained spaces have independent temperature controls, unused spaces can be temporarily deflated or closed off, and need not be heated.

Inflatables are extremely lightweight to ship, take advantage of the high insulation value of air, and can be easily moved.

Nesting programs and organizing them according to temperature variation allows for more efficient use of the heating system. For example, much of the circulation and storage space happens in colder areas. This nested organization prioritizes an awareness of both the internal environment of the building as well as the external environment of the site. It also choreographs a sequence of putting on and removing clothing that happens as occupants move from colder to warmer spaces. Spaces are dimensioned with this in mind based on a new graphic standard developed for clothing removal.

AndreA Brennen

This page: roof structure Opposite: Programmatic diagrams

409

Building discourse

Structural System All three of the facilities share a common cross section—a curved inflatable wall and a superstructure (a spine of trusses constructed from aluminum tubing) to anchor the inflatables in place. Typically, inflatable architecture relies on differential air pressure for structural support; an air pump runs continuously to elevate the internal air pressure above the external. However, this practice is not very energy efficient, since the air pump(s) must be running at all times. The inflatable system designed for this project—a modified version of the technology employed in the Eden Project (Cornwall UK) is a better solution. Individual inflatable pillows made of ETFE are suspended within a hexagonal lattice frame, built from 3-inch aluminum tubing.

Each of the ETFE pillows is inflated separately and sealed, so a continuous air pump is not required; additionally, damages to the inflatable surface are localized within an individual pillow, so the structural and thermal integrity of the entire structure are not compromised. Due to the extreme climatic conditions of the site, two layers of inflatable pillows are used. The exterior

is hexagonal only; the interior is a combination of hexagonal and triangular pillows. The interior layer is used to avoid the existence of a thermal break at the connection point between the inflatable system and the spine. This design inscribes a diurnal cycle during the austral summer (during which there are 24 hours of daylight). For roughly 12 hours per day, the facility receives direct sunlight; solar radiation comes in through the ETFE pillows and is reflected off the back wall (SIPS panels with a reflective coating are hung from the truss-spine), maximizing the potential for solar heating.

Building facilities and mechanical equipment are localized in the spine. Three different modular units based upon the same truss-frame—an entrance module, a snow melt and water collection module, and an energy generation module (with a vertical axis wind turbine)—are distributed along the spine; their locations correspond to the water and energy needs of various program modules within the structure.

AndreA Brennen

411

Logistical Strategy The logistical strategy attempts to make use of whatever is already available on site in an effort to minimize the exorbitant cost of shipping construction materials to Antarctica. The building foundations are all made out of compacted ice that is mined on site and formed into large blocks. This same ice-masonry technique is used to construct the Biological Storage Vault at Station 3. Ice and snow are also used in the structural spine to add mass to the trusses. As precipitating snow accumulates, it fills the spaces between the snow fins on the backside of the trusses, acting as a structural counterweight. (On the other side of the building, the shape of the exterior inflatable skin will help to minimize snow accumulation; that which does accumulate can be blown off by a low-flying helicopter.)

Aaterials that must be imported from elsewhere are lightweight and require minimal assembly on site. The trusses and hexagonal lattice, made from hollow aluminum tubing, are built from a standardized kit of pre-fabricated parts, all of which are small enough to stack in standard shipping containers. ETFE is also very lightweight to ship, and the inflatable pillows make use of the only other building and insulation material natural occurring on site: air. In the vault, biological contents are stored in custom designed cylindrical shelving units that fit into holes drilled into the ice floor using a standard ice corer (machinery which is already on site). This way, the facility takes advantage of the site itselfâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and the 2 mile thick ice sheet underfootâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;as a means of cooling the vault contents.

Building discourse

AndreA Brennen

413

nOTeS 1 Keith Suter, Antarctica: Private Property or Public Heritage? (leichhardt: Pluto Press australia, 1991), 4.

2 clive h. Schofield, “Introduction,” in World Boundaries—Volume 1, ed. Schofield (new york: routledge, 1994).

3 Perhaps because of antarctica's lateness of discovery, mechanisms of claiming territory such as "discovering," or formally taking possession of a place—common in a previous colonial era—were contested in antarctica from the beginning.

Building discourse

Andrea Brennen MIT / Master of Architecture 2009 Grinnell College / B. A. Mathematics, B. A. Studio Art, 2004

What have you been doing since thesis?

I finished my thesis in early 2009— not exactly the best time to be job hunting in the building industry—but I was lucky enough to get some funding from the Sloan Business School and the MISTI Israel Program to continue my thesis work in the Middle East. The idea was to take what I’d learned about designing architecture for the extreme environment of Antarctica and apply it to a site in Southern Israel’s Negev Desert that was equally extreme, but opposite in temperature.

Looking back, I guess the idea of extreme environments was trendy at the time. With so much media emphasis on climate change and a shifting focus towards sustainability in the building industry, looking at architecture in extreme climates seemed like an edgy way to approach issues like energy, efficiency, material footprint, etc. But I also liked extreme environments because of their overwhelming technical constraints.

It was a challenge to try to satisfy all of the necessary climatic and logistical requirements and still negotiate space for design decisions that weren’t just about engineering.

After several months in the Middle East, I went to South Africa to collaborate with Partizan Publik on a project that was about documenting alternative stories of Cape Town. Our motivation was to supplement (or counter) the mainstream messaging about development that was associated with the World Cup soccer tournament. In all of these places—Ant-

arctica, Israel, South Africa—I think I was looking for ways to use both design and the rhetoric surrounding it to try and understand the very complex geopolitical contexts. I wanted to think about the implications of building in the global commons, or in the context of the Arab Israeli conflict, or in post-apartheid urban South Africa....

After I came back to the U.S. in 2010, I started doing some design consulting work for a tech startup in Cambridge: branding, graphics, messaging, etc. The emphasis on a big picture vision felt familiar (coming from architecture) and I realized that what I had learned from presenting concept drawings at pinups was surprisingly good preparation for developing and pitching entrepreneurial ideas (to potential collaborators, to VCs, etc).

I also started paying more attention to the emerging fields of data visualization and information design and I thought there was a lot of room to apply ideas about representation and drawing complex systems that I had learned from studying architecture. As with my thesis, I liked the challenge of navigating design from within a technical context (this time, data analysis). I was also interested in the ethical implications of experimenting in this new practice of data collection, privacy, and surveillance.

I started working at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory in 2011. My research focused on the application of information design techniques to data visualization tools.

More specifically, I worked on designing and developing software that helps researchers leverage “visual analysis” to

understand how complex networks (of people, things, and devices) are interrelated.

In some ways, I see this experimentation with data visualization as an extension of the work I did on campus with Ole Bouman and several other students on a discursive project called the Office for Unsolicited Architecture. We were trying to challenge conventions of architectural practice, invent new business models for design, and seek out new territories for architectural intervention.

I think I’m still trying to do that now, applying architecture to the “new territory” of “big data.”

What was the most important thing you learned from thesis?

I double majored in math and visual arts as an undergraduate and part of why I went to architecture school was to try and resolve these two very different approaches to producing knowledge—the rational, hyperlogical world of theoretical math and the more personal approach of the visual arts.

During thesis, it was great to have time to focus on this tension and try to turn it into a design project that other people found interesting. The pressure of not only having to produce something, but also to tell a compelling story about that thing was a great exercise.

Maybe the most important thing I learned from my thesis was how critical it is to be able to articulate not only what I want to do, but also why it’s important or valuable.

AndreA Brennen

What is the one thing you would have done differently or what do you wish you had known in advance?

While I was at MIT, I remember hearing a talk by a woman who had done her PhD in Architectural History and had written a dissertation on Rafael Moneo.

After finishing, she went on to work for Moneo as, basically, the historian of his practice.

When I was doing thesis prep, I remember being really envious of people who had (or seemed to have) that kind of focus. I wanted my thesis to be the beginning of some larger idea that I would continue to pursue after grad school and I spent a lot of time worrying about whether or not my premise was “interesting enough.”

I think if I did thesis again knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t worry as much. I’d pick something that I thought was meaningful and be more confident that I could make it interesting to other people by pursuing and communicating it in a compelling way.

I’d also try to take more advantage of being at MIT to talk about my ideas with as many people as possible from all across the institute. At MIT, we’re really lucky to be able to spend time in a place where so many smart people (with absurdly high expectations for themselves and each other) are trying to do so many crazy things. I think there is a brazenness about this kind of creativity that is inspiring and—if you expose yourself to it—contagious.

415

Building discourse

Office for Unsolicited Architecture (OUA) Volume Magazine 14: Unsolicited Architecture

Counter-Pragmatic : Architects Unsolicited As it is practiced today, architecture is all too often a responsive profession. Architects take direction from their clients, providing solutions to a set of problems and desires described in a project brief. While this sort of responsive architecture is, admittedly, the most pragmatic way of working (since financial remunerations are secured in advance), it affords little agency to the architect. Instead, clients alone determine architecture’s agenda.

The Office for Unsolicited Architecture proposes an alternative: a new form of practice that pro-actively seeks out new territories for intervention, addresses pressing social needs and takes advantage of emerging opportunities for architecture. All of this is motivated by a desire to fight interpassivity, self-doubt and perceived (or real) marginalization of architects while hunting for an architecture that is interesting, innovative, subversive, creative, transgressive, reflective, sustainable, attainable, idealistic, profitable and above all, forever unsolicited.

OFFICE FOR UNSOLICITED ARCHITECTURE

Andrea Brennen, optimist (and strategist) John Snavely, realist (and financial consultant) Ryan Murphy, pragmatist (and design advisor) Ole Bouman, visionary (and chairman of the board) Designers, Collaborators, Contributors : Michelle Peterson, Christian Ernsten, Gabriel Chan, Michael Rakowitz, Damian Chan, Shirley Shen, Andrey Dmitrov, Lena Vassilev, Edmund Kwong, Dan Smithwick, etc...

AN ATTITUDE OF TRANSGRESSION (from aia to oua)

an architecture of action, rather than re-action

HOW TO MAKE UNSOLICITED ARCHITECTURE

1.

1.

2.

Pro-Actively find an

urgency or opportunity within a New Territory for Architecture

Transgress architecture’s four cornerstones: client, site, budget, program,

3.

Design

a) the architectural object b) the marketing plan (reading of...) c) the financing plan (implememtation of...)

If you design the object without the financing, you’re an academic; If you design the marketing without the object, you’re a politician; If you design the financing without the object, then you’re a capitalist.

repeat step three or return to earlier step

If you can’t stand by it ethically, If you don’t have the resources to execute it, or If you think it’ll be boring to do,

3.

4.

4.

return to step one

as a necessary design approach.

2.

5.

If your project does not include a rethinking of the four cornerstones of architecture you are doing regular practice

5.

Reflection

upon reaching “turn-key” stage

Action

Solicit it and tell us about it!

return to earlier step

but tell us about it first, someone else might want to do it.

AndreA Brennen

417

Green Architecture Guide (GAG) Thresholds, 2009 With Zachary Lamb

Letter from the Editors, GAG, 2009 Sustainable Design. Everyone’s doing it…or says they’re doing it.

And there’s definitely an over-riding sense that everyone should be doing it, given the threat of global environmental catastrophe and the world-wide economic melt-down and all.

But what, exactly, are the proponents of “sustainability” doing? If the whole system is broken…what, really, are we trying to “sustain”?

Knowing that the construction and operation of buildings is a substantial consumer of energy and resources, how do we, as young designers, know where we fit into this sustainability debate? Where are the opportunities for intervention?

What are some tactics we can use? And what if we don’t want to engage in the debate at all…is this even an option? The solutions being offered are often vague and contradictory… and there’s surprisingly little critical evaluation of these various “solutions.”

For example…there’s still no consensus on the density of development with regards to sustainability. City dwellers argue that dense high-rise development is more sustainable because it decreases transportation needs (between people and their work). People who live in rural areas argue that widely dispersed “off the grid” development is more sustainable because it allows people to live closer to natural systems and decreases transportation needs (between people and their food).

This lack of consensus is good, except each of these “solutions” is supported by a moralistic rhetoric claiming to be the most “responsible,” “just,” and “ethical” answer. In other words, the terms of debate are making debate really difficult—how do

you critique something when the primary supporting evidence is someone’s assertion that it is the “most moral” alternative?

Plus, sometimes it seems like a lot of people are just interested in sustaining their own unsustainable lifestyles…design methodologies…business practices…etc.

In researching and writing GAG, we were not interested in finding the “right answer.” In fact, we had a hunch that there probably wasn’t a right answer, only better or worse tactics for confronting any particular situation. What we are interested in is trying to understand the playing field—who is arguing for what kind of sustainability? What aspects of a given strategy are based on innovative thinking, which are full-on greenwashing, and which are old arguments with a new green label?

We are skeptical of any cause that is framed in such a way that you can’t oppose it. Seriously, who isn’t for sustaining life on earth? But blindly accepting the premise doesn’t help us evaluate potential solutions.

That’s why we put together this guide: to begin to outline the underlying ethics and assumptions of the different camps within the Sustainable Design Movement, and to confront some familiar critiques of those camps.

We hope you enjoy the guide. If you like it…or if you don’t…please let us know at greenornot.com.

Building discourse

Netsite: Visual Analysis of Tactical Communications Networks MIT Lincoln Laboratory, 2014

AndreA Brennen

Datasets courtesy of the computational Sciences Division, U.S. army research laboratory and the DoD hPc Modernization Program's Mobile network Modeling Institute.

419

Building discourse

JAMES GRAHAM

421

James Graham UN2: Reconfiguring the World City M.Arch Thesis 2009 Advisor: Nader Tehrani Readers: Mark Jarzombek, J. Meejin Yoon

The establishment of the United Nations’ ‘permanent headquarters’ in New York City was hailed as an epochal triumph: the era of post-war internationality—in terms of global politics and architectural modernism—was to be continuous and encompassing. Sixty years later, however, the UN’s physical and governmental infrastructures find themselves desperately outof-date and increasingly irrelevant on the world scene; the decay of the original complex has necessitated a complete renovation (recently completed), which offered an opportunity not taken to rethink the architectural expression of international governance Opposite: UN in New York City under construction Above: UN complex as seen from across the East River.

while recognizing and reinforcing the existing iconic nature of the present structures. This thesis is a proposition to expand and reconfigure the UN (taking into account the increased prominence of Non-Governmental Organizations and decentralized agencies), ultimately reshaping its organizational apparatus as well as its urban identity. In reflecting on the UN as both site and subject, this project attempts a kind of radical preservation that considers the realities of contemporary bureaucracy while reinterpreting the tectonics and organicist rhetoric of the original complex’s designers.

Building discourse

OSL

LHR

AMS

YUL

CDG

NYC

CPH CGN BRN TRS TRN

GVA

MAD

IAD

VIE

FCO

MLA

BEY GZA

SDQ KIN ADD

NBO ARK

SCL

That a United Nations can exist at all is remarkable in and of itself. At its inception, it was heralded as a new, permanent world order. What is most intriguing about the idea of international governance—a preoccupation since the Enlightenment development of liberalism—is its extraterritorial existence outside of a state; a “United Nations” is by definition trafficking not in questions of sovereignty but of governmentality, to use Michel Foucault’s phrase. The idea that there could be an organizational apparatus (and associated physical manifestation) for the management of global politics places us squarely in an episteme of late-governmentality.

This thesis takes on Le Corbusier’s notion of the UN as a Battle-Post. Despite having a fixed physical infrastructure and being comparatively impotent during most geopolitical catastrophes of its six decades, it has nevertheless undergone a tactical evolution that has allowed it to find new forms of intervention within changing international situations. Especially notable are the decreased functionality of its councils (the Security Council is trapped by the mutually-cancelling vetoes of its “great powers,” the Trusteeship Council hasn’t met

since 1994, and most importantly, the ECOSOC has taken on a sort of middle-management role between a series of agencies and the UN), the rise of ad-hoc conferences, and the increased presence of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

Rather than pretending that all’s well with the embattled UN’s current international presence, this thesis seeks out moments of efficacy and persuasive jurisdiction (where the UN’s lack of sovereignty is outweighed by its other modes of governmentality) as a starting point for a reconfigured United Nations (organizationally and architecturally) that allows it to retain relevance in the twenty-first century. It is also a critical project in that it seeks to architecturally represent the United Nations as it exists today. Whether one sees NGOs as backdoor channels for making the world safe for global capitalism, or progressive forces working for the betterment of human rights, scientific knowledge, and public health and welfare, the NGO is central to the internationalist project—a condition this thesis aims at rendering visible.

JAMES GRAHAM

423

NYC

UNHQ UNICEF UNDP UNFPA

CEB IACSD IANWGE IAWG ICSC NGLS OCHA UNAudit

NRT

GVA

BKK

UNOG ILO ITU UNCTAD UNHCR WHO WIPO WMO WTO

ECE HLCM HLCP

UNCDF JUNIC UNIFEM UNDG UNFIP UNGIWG UNICT TF UNIS UNJSPF UNMAS UNOPS RCNet WW

IBE ICC ISDR ITC JIU JIAMCATT UNAIDS NGLS OCHA SCN UNCC OHCHR UNIDIR UNITAR UNRISD

VIE

UNOV IAEA UNDCP UNIDO

CTBTO OOSA UNCITRAL UNODC UNPA UNSCEAR NB0

AMS

UNON UNEP

IMF

UNESCO FAO IFAD WFP

UNICRI

Above: Acronyms of world cities and location of UN organizations

BEY ESCWA CPH IAPSO

OSL UNCSD

IIEP

LHR

BKK ESCAP

ICJ

IBRD ICSID IDA IFC MIGA UNAOO

FCO

ARK ICTR

KIN ISA

World Bank

CDG

ADD ECA

UNHABITAT ICTY OPCW IAD

CGN UNCCD UNFCCC UNV

IMO

SCL ECLAC SDQ INSTRAW NRT UNU TRN ITC/ILO UNSSC TRS UNIDO ICTP MLA INIA MAD

UNWTO

BRN

UPU

GZA

UNRWA

YUL

ICAO

Building discourse

The original design process: the invention of programmatic form brings with it a pseudo-science of transformations from

concept into actuality that produces an "un-authored" result. The nearly mystical column grid (28' x 26-6") provides the

framework for the entire complex; despite their radically different architectural forms, all buildings on the site (even the

FDR Drive) conform to its properties.

JAMES GRAHAM

425

PliNTh Though the on-site appearance of the plinth is that of a false datumâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a landscape populated by auxiliary servicesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;it presents itself as a logical point of entry into the redesign of the complex, allowing the alterations to re-

functionalize the site without competing with the compositional logics of the original. Weaving together infrastructure, program, and the existing buildings is at the heart of the reconfigured UN.

Building discourse

A series of operations are performed on the existing plinth to create a new landscape of bureaucracy below. What was formerly the lower plinth is raised to the +16’ level, creating a continuous street wall; this glazed perimeter is infilled with a topographic surface that encloses the new addition. A series of regular cuts (keeping within the existing dimensions of the column grid) striate the site, creating a series of bands that contain the new programs—an aggregation of a bureaucratic landscape.

The Secretariat and the General Assembly show the two essential typological conditions of governmental programs: large programs (like meeting halls) require enclosed volume, while bureaucratic spaces (offices) require glazed perimeters and access to daylight. This project enables those two necessities by creating large volumes out of agglomerated strips; the sectional slippages between the slabs of office program reconnect to the upper surface, enabling the creation of larger spaces beneath.

The result is a new NGO City that occupies and expands the UN’s plinth; large-scale program is distributed across the site in a constellatory way, allowing users to be oriented within the regularized landscape. The functions of the existing Conference

Above: Section through auditorium and NGO City Opposite: Exploded axonometric of systems

Building are also distributed through the site, organized along a major circulation axis, together with a major auditorium for periodic conferences, media production and broadcast facilities, dining and other support services, and mechanical operations that were displaced by the new plinth.

The NGO City of this reconfigured United Nations recasts bureaucracy not as a monolithically relentless mechanism, but an agile and effective dispersion of functions brought together by a common framework. In reorganizing the spatiality of the UN around the contemporary realities of its methods and systems, the building again becomes an active player in the ongoing work of international governance.

JAMES GRAHAM

427

Building discourse

JAMES GRAHAM

429

Building discourse

Public circulation is also incorporated into several of the critical large-scale programs that occupy the site. The new NGO auditorium is oriented adjacent to the 47th street promenade; the public

sidewalk cuts through the auditorium, stepping down in alignment with the public balcony of the auditorium, and provides direct access to one of the public plazas below.

JAMES GRAHAM

On a more fine-grained scale, the topographic surface of the NGO City provides opportunities for an interface between the public exterior and the private interior. The sectional slippages between the NGO slabs can be configured as light wells, security gaps, public pathways, private circulation, and exterior spaces adjacent to the NGO programs. Mullion

Slip Sections: a typological study of how the surface cuts engage the slabs, allowing different levels of access, visibility, and permeability.

431

spacing can be varied to adjust the visual opacity as well as the literal permeability of the skin; ventilation of mechanical systems and other facilities is enabled through a mullion screen like that of the Secretariat. The depth of the slippage can be calibrated to allow access underneath, from the surface, and particular viewpoints from outside to inside. The

NGO lobbies are housed in double height spaces that enable public view from the outside. Rather than creating a pure surface/volume dichotomy between the new plinth landscape and the NGO bureaucracies, the cuts and folds of the projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sectional slippages bring them into close contact with each other.

Building discourse

Above: Sectional rendering showing the different administrative and public areas.

Opposite top and center: Various views (aerial, interior) of the re-configured UN complex.

Opposite bottom: The First Avenue facade of the reconfigured UN subtly folds out of the plinth, re-constructing visitor access while preserving the iconic view.

JAMES GRAHAM

433

Building discourse

James Graham MIT / Master of Architecture, 2009 University of Virginia / B.S. Architecture, 2003

What have you been doing since thesis?

I graduated in January 2009, and that September I started the Ph.D. program in the history and theory of modern architecture at Columbia GSAPP, where I’m working on my dissertation.

Around that time, Meredith Miller and I also started our own practice, called MILLIGRAM-office. I love doing the heavy historical research that comes with academia, and I love the challenges and pleasures of practice. Balancing those two very different forms of architectural work can be a bit tough—it leaves you feeling like a dual-citizen, belonging to these two communities that speak the same language but use different methods and media and aim for different results. In a sense, MIT trained me for this, because I was unequivocally a design student but spent plenty of time lurking around HTC as well.

I think these two aspects of my work are fairly irreconcilable, and they should be—it’d be a shame if designers and historians didn’t have their own disciplines with particular stakes for their work. I’m not interested in blending them as much as I’m interested in finding those moments where passages open up between them.

Fortunately, though, I’ve had a number of chances in the past five years to think about this question and test some

things out. I recently took on the job of being Director of Print Publications at Columbia GSAPP, which lets me think a lot about the role of publication practices within architectural discourse— part of my job is to step back and see how other people situate themselves in the space between books and buildings. Moreover, Meredith and I have approached MILLIGRAM-office as an architecture and research practice, and we’ve found ourselves taking on curatorial projects and urban research as often as built work and installations.

What was the most important thing you learned from thesis?

I think the best lesson of thesis was how to work independently. All of a sudden, you’re on your own, trying to steer your way through a big and complicated project. It forces you to understand your own tendencies, to manage your own time, and most of all to develop your own claims. This was all much-needed practice for me.

What’s interesting and hard about the transition from studio to thesis is that you’re not rallying around the same ideas and problems anymore— you move from a research collective of twelve people to a party of one, even if you have a great office mate. I shared a funny little office space in building 9

with Damian Chan, since we both had Nader as our adviser, and one of the great parts was how invested we were in each other’s projects. The process brings about a different relationship with your colleagues, which produced a certain amount of anxiety but was also really positive. We were learning to work independently, but also to be good critics of each other’s work.

Thinking back on your thesis, how do you feel it has or has not influenced your career?

Thesis gives you the chance to pull together a lot of the threads that you’ve gathered while doing an M.Arch—it’s inevitably kind of retrospective even in the moment of making it, because chances are pretty good that you’re hammering out some ideas and methods that you picked up earlier in classes or studios. So in that sense, I don’t think that my thesis sent me in a radically different direction, career-wise, because the threads that went into it had been building up over the previous two years already—but it did give me the chance to draw them into conversation with each other, and make a document of what I’d been thinking about.

JAMES GRAHAM

What is the one thing you would have done differently or what do you wish you had known in advance?

One of the real challenges of a thesis project is accepting that the concept and the design aren’t going to synch up in a purely linear way. There’s no straight path from the idea to the finished project—irrationalities and personal sensibilities can and should sneak in.

Otherwise you’re stuck with the old modernist dogmas about form as an extension of requirements (which is of course exactly how the original UN was conceived…diagraming that initial translation from charter to organizational diagram to building was part of my historical research).

I was doing thesis in the early years of BIG, and there was this idea floating around that architecture actually worked like a Bjarke Ingels Powerpoint—the building waiting at the end of the design process was supposed to be a selfevident result of clear, diagrammatic ideas. But of course those Powerpoints are more theatrical than factual. There’s an entire design agenda that exists in parallel to the argument, and that’s not a moral failing by any means. If I could have done one thing differently, I’d have been less hung up on “justifying” the design through the argument. There should be clear linkages, for sure, but there’s also a place to just relish designing the thing.

What was the biggest advantage of doing your thesis at MiT?

MIT has a remarkable capacity for letting students work between the different disciplines within the school, and I really appreciated that MIT let me move back and forth between architectural design and HTC to the degree that I did. That made my thesis what it was, and it certainly led me down the path of doing a Ph.D. I learned an incredible amount from my studio professors and advisors like Nader, Meejin, Alexander, and Sheila. Everyone comes with really particular ways of working and it was fantastic to have the range and depth of that faculty to learn from. Alongside all of that design, though, I loved working with the professors in HTC like Arindam, Caroline, Stanford, and Mark (who was a great presence on my thesis com-

435

mittee). I really do feel like that couldn’t have happened at any other school.

What was particularly timely about your thesis? Was it technique or topical?

I didn’t really pick up on some of the timelier aspects of my thesis until later. I’d been doing some reading about governmentality and technopolitics at the time, and so I was drawn to an institutional site with an incredibly charged historical presence but also a changing role on the world stage. I was interested in changes to the UN’s original program that came along with an accelerating shift towards NGOs, its role in shaping heritage and preservation through institutions like UNESCO, and the building’s function as a producer of media images—and while I was coming at it from the usual thesis student position of having done just enough research to make an argument, I’ve realized in the last few years how much fascinating work is being done on these questions in a much deeper way.

Even with a remove of just five years, I think it’s possible to see my thesis as a vestige of an era—there was plenty of interest in landscape and especially landforming at the time. A lot of my student work went in that direction, now that I think about it… the project that Tad Jusczyk and I did for a Crowd Farm in Meejin’s studio was also a kind of folded landscape, so it seems like something I was working out of my system. I think that Stan Allen’s book Landform Building marks a certain kind of closure on that moment, and the architectural questions would probably be different ones today if I was doing it again. But I do think that the political and historical questions that got me started on my thesis still hold some urgency.

Building discourse

Crowd Farm Holcim Forum First Prize 2007 Advisor: J. Meejin Yoon In collaboration with Tad Jusczyk

The Crowd Farm began from a recognition that we interact with the city in a very physical way, and that our bodies have the potential to define and energize (literally and figuratively) new kinds of public space. Harnessing the energy of human footfalls (and channeling movement in ways that create moments of energy density), this project is a hybrid of technological and spatial thinking, in which the human body is seen as a kinetically-charged agent.

At this point, Tad's and my affection for this project has less to do with the proposal than the strange media afterlife it took on, where the MIT imprimatur caused people to see it as a viably marketable technology. Somebody even made a grossly inaccurate Wikipedia page. We'd sought to highlight the nature of bodily energy expenditure, but we ended up demonstrating the strangely promiscuous ecology of architectural imagery and ideas instead.

JAMES GRAHAM

437

Rights of Way Mobility and the City MILLIGRAM-Office & HĂśweler+Yoon Architecture Boston, MA 2013

Rights Of Way: Mobility in the City has gathered work from around the world that asks us to rethink how planning, policy, architecture, and individual initiative shape our public spaces of infrastructure and movement. Ranging from visionary proposals to everyday practices, from the city of 1960 to the city of 2030, these projects all stake distinct claims about how we might design or occupy the systems that surround us. Mobility

is made in many ways, and what unites the different components in this show is a shared focus on seeing our movement through the city with fresh eyes. Most of all, they help us to project new possibilities for the places that weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re most familiar with, pointing to our own agency, as architects or citizens, to imagine urban change.

Building discourse

Site Double La Biennale di Venezia, 2012 MILLIGRAM-Office Project Team: Meredith Miller, James Graham, Jordan Hicks, Harry Solie, Lizzie Krasner

The boarded-up windows of Detroit are but one of many examples of how architectural envelopes are sites of persistent social and material exchange, indexing anxiety as much as they ameliorate it. Even at their most opaque, walls are tools for tempering climate, mediating vision, and defining the ground rules of “occupancy” that can no longer be taken for granted in an urban landscape like Detroit’s, especially as untenable parceling structures are superseded by a de facto civic terrain in which backyards and alleys are places of negotiation and cooperative interest.

This speculative installation (commissioned for the 2012 Venice Biennale) is specific to two sites, highlighting the inherent strangeness of translating a previous project, R.O., built within a single-family house in Detroit, into a Venetian gallery. Site Double takes the Arsenale as its ground and the Biennale visitor as its occupant, creating an “exterior” space within the fictitious envelope of the house and redirecting views toward the installation's context. In scale and content, the project remains sited in Detroit, transporting the city's backyards to Venice through reflection.

JAMES GRAHAM

439

Mary hale

Mary hale

441

Mary Hale

Send My Love to Tijuana | Tijuana Sends Her Love The Transcendental Tijuanense Telecommunications Bridge to Everywhere M.Arch Thesis 2009 Advisor: Mark Goulthorpe Readers: Ute Meta Bauer, Yung Ho Chang

Send My Love to Tijuana | Tijuana Sends Her Love replaces an existing pedestrian bridge that connects two vibrant neighborhoods in Tijuana, Mexico. The bridge is strategically situated to integrate itself into the city’s urban fabric, while maintaining visibility from the United States Border and the San Ysidro Border crossing, the most heavily trafficked border crossing in the world. There, passage is tightly controlled, extending wait-times to unbearable lengths for even those permitted to cross legally. Nearby, my project provides an alternative portal that is universally accessible to those who wish to reconnect with their loved ones by way of another, virtual means: free video-conferencing within dedicated spaces.

These spaces range in scale, beginning with the precedent of the phone booth for private, intimate conversations and ending with large-scale public projection zones for families. In either case, families and loved ones are reconnected on opposite sides of the border in a communion whose significance is witnessed by the monumental scale and form of the architectural composition.

Not only is the building’s form significant, its details also contribute to its monumental character. While the façade facing the United States is a severe 900 foot-long, 40 foot-high, rectangular, corrugated steel reflection of the existing border “fence,” its symbolic severity is subtly subverted by an array of millions of end lit fiber optic cables. These cables are translucent hairs that blow in the breeze and channel it from the façade through the building’s folded steel structure, and out into rooms, beside walkways, and through ceilings. When light activates one end of the optical cable, it illuminates on the opposite end as well.

Therefore, the cable channeling system allows for daylight to penetrate the interior spaces,

whereas at night, the façade is illuminated by the internally lit building. The illumination on the façade is an eerie, abstract depiction of the activities inside, as shadows from pedestrians deactivate the cables they pass, and the family-conferencing projections activate cables that portray content on the façade. Finally, individual lights within the personal telecommunications rooms, when in use, can also be mapped to their own zones. Thus, form and fiber optics enhance the symbolic value of the bridge, which anyway represents the human desire to connect, and directly opposes the ever impassable border wall, an embodiment of military might and the distinctly human desire to separate.

This thesis project was inspired by my personal experiences with family members left behind in Central and South America by their dearest relatives—children, husbands, wives— who journeyed illegally to the U.S. in order to garner a financial foothold to support their loved ones back home.

Opposite: Sectional model showing fiber optic cables channeling from interior to facade. Cables were illuminated at the final thesis presentation as proof of concept

Mary hale

struction of a US—Mexico Border Fence. [1] The border itself is the most obvious manifestation of the U.S. This fence, or more pointedly, wall, demarcating the border government’s many post-9/11 measures to obtain “operational between the U.S. and Mexico serves a practical function for control.” Migrants must spend up to a year’s salary in their nathose who have instated it. Its purpose is to dam the flow of tive land to hire a guide, known as a coyote, who may or may humans across the border. However, unlike water, which obeys not guarantee his clients’ safe arrival in the United States. After its physical properties and whose behavior can be speculated all, the obstacles are vast and include thousands of additional upon with a certain degree of success, human innovation and Border Patrol Agents; “high intensity stadium type lighting; ingenuity are not as predictable. ten-foot-high steel fencing constructed by welding together Countless examples exist to describe the ineffectiveness of Vietnam War surplus corrugated steel landing mats; permamilitary border walls, which are perhaps the most literal and nently mounted and mobile infrared night scopes or thermal banal interpretation of political boundaries. There are ancient imaging devices, which detect migrants by their body heat and as well as contemporary precedents, from Hadrian’s Wall to the enable the border patrol to dispatch its agents and vehicles preBerlin Wall, whose marginal success at blockading foretells the cisely to those places where illegal entries have been made; large inevitable failures of the border wall between the United States numbers of motion-detecting sensors buried in the ground and Mexico. What’s more, advances in transportation technolnear the border; remote video surveillance systems linked to inogy, specifically airplanes, have displaced the border to cities ground sensors, so that as soon as a sensor is tripped a nearby that are distant from the geographical line that separates the video camera automatically pivots to survey the area; new road two countries. Thus, today, the border should be considered as a construction along the border, to give the border patrol greater more dispersed entity whose satellites include airports, seaports, access and mobility; and a computerized system of biometric MARY E. HALE - MIT - MASTERS OF ARCHITECTURE THESIS PRESENTATION - OCTOBER 31, 2008 scanning called “IDENT.’”* Finally, INS’s efforts include the con- and locations where migrants exist around the country.

CONFERENCE CALL

Mary hale

443

Of course, this dispersed border has not escaped the government’s attention, and its response can be seen in airports, train stations and seaports where international travelers enter the U.S. Programs such as “U.S. Visit” use digital fingerprinting, RFID technology, and digital photos to track international visitors’ stays in the country. While fingerprinting and photographing seems an ominous introduction for many foreign tourists, statistical evidence shows that nearly half of illegal immigrants primarily entered the country legally as tourists, and then

remained there illegally on account of nonexistent tracking technology.

Opposite: stills from a walk across the existing pedestrian bridge on the thesis site

human-scale buildings, all unique, interesting, and created by untrained designers. Maria’s son Manuel left for the U.S. seven years ago, fleeing Salvadorian street gang violence. He works construction in Houston and sends the remittances that paid for a window that one would most likely find on an American suburban tract home. I asked her when was the last time she had seen her son: “It was seven years ago,” she said.

Like many illegal immigrants who successfully land and find work in the U.S., Maria’s son cannot leave. His inability to return is largely due to the increasing security

Above: This is Maria Vargas and her daughter Consuela. I met them while participating on a trip organized by MIT’s Special Interest Group in Urban Settlements (SIGUS) in January 2008 in a World Bank-funded development called La Presita, in San Miguel, El Salvador. La Presita is minimally designed to contain pockets for all different income levels, from the most indigent to the most affluent. The latter live in architect-designed pre-fabricated homes on cul-de-sacs, but the former live in self-built houses lining narrow thoroughfares. These houses make up a neighborhood of

that defines the presentday border between the U.S. and Mexico. Beginning with the establishment of the border control in 1978 and bolstered by post 9/11 security, this border can be likened to a war zone, the implications of which reach far beyond the border into any ethnic enclave easily penetrated

by INS forces.

Mary hale

A border wall is a significant symbolic statement whose import is understood the world-round. Its universal symbolism betrays a distinctly human characteristic: the desire to separate. However, it is the distinctly human counterpoint, the desire to connect, that overwhelms the program and architectural composition of this thesis.

Enabled by today’s high speed telecommunications technology, which is ubiquitous in the U.S. but largely nonexistent for those without the financial means to obtain it in Mexico, the project is a real-time, undirected communication space for reconnecting loved ones severed from one another by economic realities and by today’s political situation. This reconnection happens within a single monumental infrastructure, what could be termed “a monument to living ghosts,” in Tijuana, within view of the U.S. Architecture provides, in a grand symbolic gesture, shelter for a therapeutic place of healing that would not be possible on the U.S. side of the border. This is because those living illegally in the U.S. need to maintain anonymity. Therefore, they interact with the monument by using their cell phones and internet cafes, which are easily accessible in the U.S. In spite of the border’s dispersed nature, the most tangible evidence of border enforcement exists along the line itself, whose physical articulation (opposite) began during the Clinton administration. Then, articulation was the imposition of a corrugated steel wall that enjoyed only marginal success as a barrier. Its primary purpose is symbolic, and the meaning of this symbolism is well stated by Robin Evans: “Walls are the martial declaration of the intent to repel all delinquent perception and all illicit communion. They are not simple barriers to energy transfer, but barricades that prevent entropy of meaning and

preserve the holistic and unitary concept of our dream world, be it personal or a universal dream, by eliminating that part of the other more disparate world which fails to conform to it. Walls are the armory that preserves our personal integrity against the inroads of humanity and nature.”

This symbolism has, in recent years, been deployed all over the world, well beyond the U.S.-Mexican border. Many have linked this trend to globalization because it, according to Stephen Castles, “leads to increases in all kinds of cross-border flows, including movements of people. In recent years international migration has grown in volume, and is now an important factor of social transformation in all regions of the world. States classify migrants into certain categories, and seek to encourage certain types of mobility while restricting others.”

The project is situated near the San Ysidro border crossing in Tijuana. This is the most heavily trafficked border crossing in the world. It links directly to the existing border fence, is situated beside informal housing settlements and is proximate to Tijuana’s major commercial centers.

More specifically, it is the site of an existing pedestrian bridge that is on the route to and from the border crossing to Tijuana. To me, the bridge is a powerful symbol of human ingenuity to create connections, and stands as a direct counterpoint to the wall before it.

Mary hale

445

As Georg Simmel points out in his essay “The Bridge and the Door,” “Only to humanity, in contrast to nature, has the right to connect and separate been granted, and in the distinctive manner that one of these activities is always the presupposition of the other.” Thus, a bridge and a wall begin to manifest themselves as polar opposites within the same family of physical manifestations of humanity’s desire to both connect and separate.

Opposite: Border wall between Tijuana and San Ysidio, CA Above: Global border walls Left: Existing conditions at site: Tijuana River

Mary hale

Top: 1/4â&#x20AC;? = 1â&#x20AC;&#x2122; model, North elevation (facing the U.S.). Birch plywood, plexi, and corrugated paper.

Bottom: Site model showing the border, the Tijuana river, and the thesis site (in white).

Mary hale

Above: Rendering from Southeast

447

Mary hale

Section 6 and Floorplan

Mary hale

Section 7

449

Mary hale

Below: Cross section showing occupiable roof, pedestrian passages & fiber-optic cable channelling Opposite: Rendering of public passage with end lit fiber-optic cables bringing light from outside

Mary hale

451

Mary hale

Top: 1/4” = 1’ model, aerial view. Birch plywood, plexi, and corrugated paper.

Bottom: Rendered elevation of the pedestrian bridge’s northern facade, a distorted billboard of the building’s interior activity

Mary hale

Above: Rendering of US facing façade. Fiber optic cables subvert the symbolic and tectonic severity of the existing border fence.

NOTES 1 Wayne A. Cornelius, “Death at the Border: Efficacy and Unintended Consequences of US Immigration Control Policy,” Population and Development Review 27 (2001): 663.

453

Mary hale

Mary Hale MIT / Master of Architecture, 2009 Brown University / A.B. Urban Studies 2002

What have you been doing since thesis?

Since thesis, my career has taken four independent but related trajectories: design advocacy, creating installations, professional practice, and teaching.

I finished my thesis when the recession was at its nadir and there were very few jobs at architecture firms. I first joined the National Design Initiatives division at Enterprise Community Partners, a national community development nonprofit that administers design advocacy programs such as the Rose Architectural Fellowship and the Affordable Housing Design Leadership Institute. The time I spent working on these programs was extremely important and influential in my professional development. As architects, we often lack agency in our design practice due to cost, client predilections and other forces outside of our control. My experience working at Enterprise taught me about the world of grants and fundraising, which enable unsolicited creative projects to come alive.

While at Enterprise, I started employing some of these lessons in my spare time, doing installation projects including “Itinerant Home,” a wearable, inflatable house commissioned by AIA New Orleans for their DesCours festival.

I also became deeply involved in the Boston Society of Architects’ Common Boston committee and created three very large designer networking events with site-specific installations. I co-chaired the committee for three years, inventing, producing and facilitating programs for the annual Common Boston Festival—New

England’s largest free festival of architecture, design and community.

My design advocacy work with Common Boston took place after hours, beginning while I was at Enterprise. A year and a half later, I was offered an architecture job at Goody Clancy. I struggled with the decision but ultimately knew that I missed buildings! I also wanted to pursue my license, which I viewed as an extension of my architectural education.

A couple of years later, desiring to gain exposure in another context, I took an offer to join Shepley Bulfinch.

All the while, I have participated as a critic on architectural studio reviews at the Boston Architectural College (BAC), RISD, Wentworth, Northeastern, and MIT. Some of my projects have been published. I’ve also taught three studios and advised a thesis at the BAC. What was the most important thing you learned from thesis?

The most important thing that I gained from doing a thesis was the confidence to pursue self-initiated design projects. This new self-confidence was a major step forward for me. The first year or two of architectural school were, to say the least, disorienting. I came to MIT with a liberal arts background and was not accustomed to the way that design work was evaluated through public critique. By the time I was in my thesis, however, things were beginning to gel.

My representational skills had vastly improved; my awareness of the subjectivity of design was giving me more confidence

in my own subjectivity; through trial and error I was narrowing in on my own set of design values and was able (with guidance from my thesis advisor, Mark Goulthorpe, and my thesis committee, Ute Meta Bauer and Yung Ho Chang) to form a coherent thesis problem and a resolution. The process was very empowering.

The thesis experience lit a fire in me to do civically engaged design projects, which I continue to do now through my volunteer activities and installations.

While I haven’t yet found an opportunity to continue working on my specific topic, it’s still a goal of mine.

What is the one thing you would have done differently or what do you wish you had known in advance?

To be honest, at this point I am not sure what I would have done differently.

The thesis is an exploration that takes place over a finite amount of time. You can dig in deeply, but you only have six months to a year to accomplish the whole thing. This isn’t a regret, per se, but I do wish that I were able to continue pursuing my thesis. I’m under the impression that I will at some point!

What was the biggest advantage for doing your thesis at MIT?

The thesis is a hugely important part of the curriculum at MIT. Everything prior to thesis builds towards it. It’s this looming, intimidating, but exciting even-

Mary hale

tuality; a culmination of your architectural education and a potential stepping stone to your career. For students who really want to do a thesis, MIT is a great place to do it because the program places so much importance on it. Of course, the resources and faculty at MIT are amazing. The reputation of the school makes it easier to connect with faculty outside of the school as well, which is useful for some projects. Finally, the smaller size of the program enables a rare sense of camaraderie amongst classmates. I have so many hilarious and otherwise fond memories from our hours upon hours upon hours in the thesis studio and have maintained close friendships with most of my cohort.

What was particularly timely about your thesis? Was it technique or topical?

It was topical, focused on the increased border security post-9/11 and how that has impacted families. My thesis was a very lightly programmed building… really a public space that used the scale and symbolism of architecture to give a commanding voice to the downtrodden.

Formally the project played with an old architectural trope: the bridge. It is a symbol of the human desire to connect, and it opposes the wall, a symbol of the contradictory human desire to separate (George Simmel). The project, which was a pedestrian bridge, connected two vibrant Tijuanense neighborhoods within view of the San Ysidro Border crossing, the most heavily trafficked border cross-

455

ing in the world. There, the design provided a highly visible, monumental space for the families of illegal immigrants to utilize Skype conferencing terminals and reconnect with their loved ones in the U.S. These virtual meetings were made visible in eerie abstract displays across the 40 ft-high, 700 ft-long wall-like façade, a billboard to the U.S., advertising the humanitarian consequences wrought by enhanced border security. The displays were made possible by way of millions of end-lit fiber optic cables that channeled through the structure from the facade to various rooms along the bridge’s length.

The bridge is an old idea, but today’s high-speed telecommunications technology allows us to transcend borders virtually. We take this technology for granted in the U.S., but it is not as easily available to the many impoverished people living in Mexico.

Mary hale

Mary hale

457

Bookscape Massachusetts College of Art Design for the 2011 dParty Commissioned Project

Bookscape was commissioned by the Massachusetts College of Art and Design for the 2011 dParty. The party kicked off the Common Boston Festival, whose theme ‘Live and Learn’ examined the relationship between neighborhoods and major institutions. Playing off that theme, the party’s decor became a vast landscape of decommissioned library books collected from public and institutional libraries around Boston. Amidst this landscape, architects, designers, and community members sipped wine and beer, danced, observed in a curated show of local artists’ work, and enjoyed an interactive dance performance choreographed by Boston and LA-based artist, Emily Beattie.

The bookscape was reinstalled later that summer in a gallery at Harvard University before being donated to charity.

Above: Dancer performing interactive choreography

by Emily Beattie

Building discourse

Simon Schleicher

459

Simon Schleicher

Adaptive Toldo Systems M.Arch Thesis 2009 Advisor: Sheila Kennedy Readers: William J. Mitchell, Nassar Rabbat

This thesis investigates the structural, spatial, and climatic performance of the Toldo—a traditional lightweight street shading device emblematic of Islamic cityscapes. Re-examining its historical roots along with its contextual, cultural and functional traits, the thesis aims at setting up a framework on the basis of which to speculate its reincarnation within contemporary practice. Such a framework provides the theoretical foundations and technological opportunities to reinvent the primitive Toldo as a commercial spin-off, which envisions its modernization in three steps. Firstly, a digital customization tool allows for intuitive, end-user generated designs. Secondly, energy-harvesting materials and microelectronics enhance the product’s application range and enrich it with a functional flexibility such that it can be used as an architectural skin beyond street level. Thirdly, an online marketing platform coordinates worldwide commu-

nication of interdisciplinary subcontractors, while integrating the product’s traditional economy and craftsmanship. Finally, different case studies in Cairo will demonstrate the widened scope of such architectural products, and prove the system’s reliability as it confronts real life demands and various propensities for investment.

Opposite: Detail of fabric awning prototype Above: Computer-aided generation of the cutting pattern.

Building discourse

Origin Toldo is the Spanish word for awning and describes various textiles and retractable sun shades that span between streets and courtyards. This small-scale architectural device can be traced back over a period of more than 2,000 years and is still extensively used today. Toldos can be found in many Islamic cities around the Mediterranean Sea and are most widely used in European towns with strong Islamic roots, like Seville in Andalusia. Outside of Europe and the Middle East, however, they can also be found in Central America, for example in Mexico, as well as in Japan and China.

Early designs were mostly likely influenced by Arab and Roman tent roofs and then further developed through manufacturing processes and kinetics used in shipbuilding.

Toldos are mainly designed to protect against excessive insolation and thereby prevent the space underneath from being overheated by the sun. Most often, they are used in cityscapes to moderate the micro-climate of streets, courtyards, and public spaces. Their cooling effect is based not only on shading, but controlling the radiation of the heat to the sky. During the course of a day, the Toldo has to adapt to changing environmental loads while always preserving a habitable space within human comfort zones. For this reason, the Toldo’s dense and heavy cotton sails are designed to allow for two conditions—an open and closed state.

In the summer, the Toldo is extended during the day and prevents the sun from hitting the thermal mass of the built architecture. As a welcome side effect, it also protects against

glare and airborne dust. During the night, the Toldo is folded together, allowing the warmth stored in the thermal mass to radiate freely to the sky. This environmental performance can reduce measured surface temperatures by 30°C and the offset temperatures of the air inside and outside the Toldo by up to 10-15°C. In the winter, this principle is reversed by absorbing warmth through a folded roof during the day, and preventing its escape by closing the roof at night.

Spatial Performance Besides their impressive environmental performance, Toldos are also highly valued for their spatial quality. Apart from manifold ornamental decorations and a large number of different cutting patterns, auxiliary structures can enhance the Toldo’s design language. By combining different types of canvas sails, the awning can be adapted to nearly any street proportion and can easily bridge gaps or equalize differences in height. This space-enclosing and space-creating effect can be created by one Toldo or amplified by a series of Toldos to frame entire shopping streets and boulevards. The geometric flexibility and its inherent expendability allows this application to easily range from a singular architectural intervention to a ubiquitous urban infrastructure.

Simon Schleicher

461

Structural Performance and Design Typologies Even though the use of Toldos is a very old tradition, the profession of architects and civil engineers largely ignored this architectural device. One notable exception is the research group around Frei Otto and his colleagues at the University of Stuttgart. In the 1970s and 80s, they started to investigate the Toldo’s cultural roots and structural performance. Their research focused particularly on the geometric transformation of the textile skin during the folding process and defined the resulting difficulties of punctual loading and suspending of textiles. Their goal was to understand more about the underlying physical principles, which are acting on retractable textile roofs, and transfer this knowledge into the design of new structures with even wider spans.

Toldos in Cairo Thanks to a travel grant supported by the Aga Khan Program of Islamic Architecture, I was able to investigate the use of Toldos in the city of Cairo. Especially in the historic district of Old Cairo, Toldos and Suradeqs characterize the cityscape even today. In particular, in the area around the 10th century gate of Bab Zuwayla in Old Cairo, the ancient craft of making Toldos and Suradeqs is still alive. Many workshops and tent lofts can be found in one of the oldest thoroughfares in Cairo—Shari Khayyamiya. Khayma means “tent” in Arabic, from which the name ‘Street of Tentmakers’ originated. Toldos and Suradeqs are everywhere—be they Street Toldos to cover boulevards and cafés without which the atmosphere in the souq Khan el-Khalili wouldn’t be the same, or Courtyard Toldos like in the Darb Shoughlan Community Center, or as one of the Suradeq pavilions, which seems to appear out of nowhere whenever a family gathering has to be hosted. Until quite recently, it was customary for all important events in a person’s life to be marked by the appearance of these tents—a wedding feast, the arrival of a newborn child, or a funeral. Whenever the occasion called for it, a whole street could suddenly blossom from end to end with archways decked out in bunting, leading to a Suradeq marquee for the reception of officials and guests. Suradeqs are especially in demand during the months of Ramadan to house groups of folkloric singers and dancers. On the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, a whole tent city rises not far from the University of al-Azhar. At dusk, religious groups from towns and villages surrounding Cairo come in procession— drums beating, hands

clapping—to take possession of the tent city for a few brief hours.

Toldos today remain largely ignored by the profession of architects and engineers. In addition, they demonstrate an architectural grassroots movement, designed directly by the enduser and completely disregarded by any local building authority.

The few exceptions in which Toldos were the focus of academic research fixated on their structural performance and ability to cover spaces with the least amount of material. However, Cairo and other cities also show that the Toldo has fascinating climatic, spatial, and cultural relevance, with potential for far ranging improvements. Moreover, it is worthwhile to further investigate one of the Toldo’s most interesting aspects, its inherent flexible nature of being a device in between defined categories. It ranges in performance and design manifestation from a small-scale architectural product to a ubiquitous urban infrastructure, from a protective skin to a cluster of moderated spaces for various forms of habitation, and from a mono-functional design solution to a multi-functional architectural system.

Opposite: Traditional street toldo. Source: Otto F. et al. (1972).

IL 5. Convertible Roofs.

University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart.

Above, left: Suradeq tent in Old Cairo. Source: Creative Commons Licence Flickr-User: Hicham Souilmi Above, right: Embroiderers in the Tentmaker Street. Source: Creative Commons Licence; FlickrUser: rsaslan https://www.flickr.com/ photos/egyptimagination/261754433/

Building discourse

Vision: Academic Initiative & Commercial Spin-off This thesis wants to be progressive by speculating that an unusual point of departure could tremendously inform the design process. In many academic fields, for example in business schools, interdisciplinary collaborations are quite common. For them, the exchange of expertise and the testing of new ideas are crucial tools to understand the economic potential of a new business concept. Under an academic umbrella, they allow for the emergence of possible commercial spin-offs.

In architecture departments, the inner-disciplinary discourse seems to be still high on the agenda. MIT, however, with its various world-class departments and long history of trans-disciplinary dialogue, could teach another approach and separate itself from traditional schools with its own unique identity of architectural education.

Part of this thesis is a hypothetical collaboration of multiple research groups and academic initiatives here at MIT. Their aim would be to understand the Toldo holistically and inform a commercial spin-off for the Toldo’s reincarnation as an architectural product. Therefore, the thesis pools together four main partners into a team. The first partner is the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture for its expertise in Islamic culture and its endeavors in city rehabilitation projects. The second partner is Media Lab’s Smart Cities Group for their innovative research

on new technologies to enable urban energy efficiency, sustainability, and cultural creativity. The third partner in the team is MIT’s Energy Initiative, which is an institute-wide initiative designed to help transform the global energy system to meet the needs of the future and to help build a bridge to that future by improving today’s energy systems. The last partner is the Institute of Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design at the University of Stuttgart; Frei Otto’s former institute is still the leading name when it comes to analysis and construction of textile structures.

The basis for a commercial spin-off, which is informed by an academic initiative, will be called Adaptive Toldo Systems.

It combines the development of a digital customization tool for intuitive, end-user generated Toldo designs with an online marketing platform to coordinate worldwide communication of interdisciplinary subcontractors, while integrating the Toldo’s traditional economy and craftsmanship. This framework can attract new customers and manufacturers. Furthermore, it can allow the Toldo to be reinvented through new materials, design, and fabrication processes.

Left: Mock-ups of an intuitive interface that enables the enduser to actively manipulate the pattern of the Toldo with all its construction elements.

Opposite: Street lighting plan for Old Cairo The frequently used Darb Shoughlan Street in Old Cairo is the perfect beacon project to demonstrate the Toldo’s new performance range and in particular its ability to provide self-sustaining street light during the night. Along the street are many workshops, retail stores and cafes, which can all profit from a climatic micro-modulation through the Toldo. Their electronic demands, for example, for lighting and communication devices vary from each other and show the entire bandwidth of design possibilities. As is the rule in many Islamic cities, all shop owners and inhabitants along the street have elected a local authority as representative, who would organize the ordering process and act as the main customer for this project.

Simon Schleicher

Case Study- Street Toldo for Darb al-Ahmar The idea of mounting Street Toldos in the Darb al-Ahmar neighborhood is closely related to the traditional use of Toldos in Old Cairo. For thousands of years, this architectural device was found in this part of the city. It is very likely that their numbers would increase with an expanded range of applications.

The new function of self-recharging street lighting in particular could be a usable feature for main streets and market places.

This example shows a Toldo set-up for the Darb Shoughlan Street. Its dimensions are 4x9 meters and it is equipped with 18 ultra-bright LED lamps. The six photovoltaic panels recharge the Toldo during the day and allow for an operation time of nearly 8 hours in the night. This Toldo provides illumination in the street for most of the night and would only be deactivated for three hours, when it is necessary to retract it and let the stored heat radiate to the sky.

Besides this rather pragmatic approach, this case study also explores aesthetic and spatial opportunities that could emerge from the utilization of additional digital design tools.

463

Building discourse

Top: Conceptual sketches show that the Toldoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cross section and its geometric modulation could be used to address specific side constraints and create various spatial configurations.

Bottom: The color coded helper surfaces already show the diversified spatial qualities of the Toldo.

Concave and convex ceiling geometries invite for centralized and peripheral habitations and activities under the Toldo.

Opposite, top: The digital model draws attention to the Toldoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s diverse surface geometry.

Opposite, center: Thermal driven micro-ventilation in between the textile layers. The already active cooling effect is enhanced to allow micro-ventilation between the textile layers. The surface geometry of the Toldo can thereby form little updraft chimneys to control airflow.

Opposite, bottom: Frames for the Toldo prototype mock-up

Simon Schleicher

465

Building discourse

CASE STUDy ROOFTOp TOLDO FOR THE AKTC The last case study seeks to emphasize new opportunities that result from transcending the Toldo from its traditional use to new areas of implementation. In this scenario, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) asks for a Rooftop Toldo to be assembled on top of the Darb Shoughlan Community Center. This sets new challenging problems, which can only be solved by introducing a new typology. One difficulty for example is that the roof dimensions are beyond the conventional structural spans of the Toldo, and requires new adjustments to extend these limits. Another problem is the exposed position of the roof with no shade whatsoever.

This demands an increased climatic performance of the Toldo. This

example will show that new systematic design and fabrication tools can achieve the adaptation to both constraints.

could offer the perfect panoramic view over the cityscape of Cairo and the newly developed park.

EVEnT SpACE DURIng THE nIgHT

If this case study meets all expectations, it could act as the first of a series of beacon projects.

Furthermore, it could raise once more the awareness for the use of Toldos, demonstrate an exquisite design, and make a looked-for space in the city inhabitable. All in all, this project would be a worthy kick-off for Adaptive Toldo Systems in Cairo. pAnORAMIC VIEw OF THE AL-AzHAR pARK Right next to the restored Ayyubid city wall and connected to the visitorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; circuit along the park, the proposed rooftop extensions of the Darb Shoughlan Community Center

with this newly accessible space, the Darb Shoughlan Community Center can easily host festivals or any other form of social gatherings. Furthermore, this space could be rented to local groups in the neighborhood and private customers for short or long-term use, and thereby create additional income for the owner of the Rooftop Toldo.

Simon Schleicher

467

Building discourse

Bunching of fabric: The prototype frame allows for the experimentation of textile manipulation

Simon Schleicher

469

Building discourse

Simon Schleicher MIT / Master of Architecture, 2009 University of Stuttgart / Pre-Diploma (Architecture and Urban Planning), 2004

After my graduation from MIT in 2009, I remained true to myself and continued my rather “unconventional” path as an academic. Instead of joining a larger architecture office, which would have been the obvious next step, I was driven to deepen my skills in designing kinetic and bio-inspired structures within the framework of a doctoral thesis.

Cherishing the biomimetic research community in Germany and the strong tie between architecture and engineering, which I witnessed during my bachelor studies at the University of Stuttgart, it was a clear decision for me to apply there for a PhD position.

I have been very lucky to be given the opportunity to join the Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (ITKE) as Research Associate and to have secured professor Jan Knippers as my PhD advisor. At the ITKE, I teach courses and design studios for students at all levels, ranging from classes on basic building structures, courses on advanced simulation and fabrication techniques, to individual project support for students in their thesis semester. Besides teaching, I’m a doctoral candidate, researching on the use of flexible kinetic structures and bio-inspired compliant mechanisms for architectural design. The aim of my PhD thesis is to challenge our present understanding of mechanical constructions in nature and technology by exploring how motion principles in flexible plant movements can be abstracted, transferred, and implemented to design and fabrication processes for the building sector.

In both teaching and research, my goal is to be at the forefront of a new professional direction—one that investigates not only the intersections between architecture and engineering, but also the less traditionally explored intersection of these fields with the sciences. Seeking in-

spiration as well as applying insights and theories from biology, material science, and mathematics to the design, computation, and fabrication of novel structures, is an area of particular personal focus. In fact, this inter- or even transdisciplinary approach exerts an almost magical fascination on me and so far has been a repeating theme during all stages of my professional career and personal development. I’m sure it will also guide my next step and perhaps lead to a postdoctoral fellow or assistant professor position in the U.S. again.

Learning from Thesis

The most important thing I learned from my thesis was becoming aware of the bigger picture. Compared to previous experiences in other schools, the teaching at MIT places great importance on the conceptual and theoretical embedding of the thesis into a larger context. Students need to be able to tell an entire story. This ranges from exploring the main drivers behind the first idea, outlining newly generated possibilities that might come out if it, to developing the techniques and processes needed to integrate the project into a larger cultural framework.

I would say that my thesis has definitely influenced my further career, in particular in two ways. On the one hand, it has reaffirmed my fascination for transdisciplinary work and on the other, it has showed me the practical use for research on flexible kinetic structures.

Firstly, having a transdisciplinary approach is of great importance to me.

Since our societies are permanently changing, we have to continuously adapt our role and contribution to the greater whole as well. Over the last centuries, we have unfortunately witnessed an increasing shift towards disciplinary separation

and professional specialization. In some aspects, a positive knowledge exchange even among the various experts of our own field has become very difficult. For this reason, I believe the present calls for researchers who can think laterally again and whose work spans over a significant number of diverse subject areas. With a transdisciplinary approach, however, one can draw from a diverse body of knowledge and start to play, risk, discover, and in the best case, solve difficult problems.

Secondly, bolstered by the positive experience during my thesis, I decided to continue my research on flexible kinetic structures as part of my PhD. This time, however, I’m stepping even further out of my comfort zone by collaborating with biologists. For me, biology is a seemingly inexhaustible source of inspiration. Here, one can find biological structures wellsuited as role models for the development of novel technical structures in various ways. In particular, regarding informed material differentiation and structural multi-objective optimization, biologists and architects can greatly learn from each other. In my view, this is a promising alliance for the future.

Thesis Reflections

Looking back on my thesis, there is not one aspect that I wish to have done differently. Overall, I’m still very happy with the final result. Based on my perspective today, however, my criticism would come from a different direction: It seems to me that in our current education system, a final thesis is mainly seen as an instrument where a single student has to prove on-time performance and quantifiable skills. A system that sets this much priority on the individual, however, is kind of misleading and impractical, given the fact that one never

Simon Schleicher

works alone in practice. This is especially true for the field of architecture, which is probably one of the professions that is most dependent on teamwork, coordination, and consultation. Therefore, we should probably reconsider the goals and practices of our architectural education.

In Stuttgart, I came across an interestingly different model. Upon my entry at the ITKE institute, Prof. Knippers established a collaboration with the newly found Institute of Computational Design (ICD) led by Prof. Achim Menges.

Together we created a novel educational platform called “ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion,” which pushed a project from the first sketch to an actually built 1:1 implementation. This platform effectively combined the profound research done by the institute’s PhD candidates with the creative and hands-on power generated in the design studios at the graduate level.

I was extremely fortunate to serve as the project manager for the first pavilion in 2010 and thereby contribute to a larger team. Here, I realized what far-reaching momentum and scientific rigor can be gathered by means of cross-integrative platforms that allow for project-oriented collaborations between students of all levels and faculty of all disciplines. I learned a lot from this experience and I would definitely vote in favor for this daring teaching model elsewhere too.

Thesis Experience at MIT

For me personally, it was the amazing research environment that created a lasting impression. MIT truly is the place where “creative thinking outside the box” has been cultivated as a powerful form of art. I was particularly fascinated by MIT’s world-class departments, which quite literally line up along the famous “Infinite Corridor” like pearls on a string. In these

471

research centers and laboratories was a positive curiosity and openness towards novelty that encouraged me to join in the collaborative work. Thanks to many accredited seminar points from my studies in Stuttgart, I was given the freedom to freshen up the normal architecture curriculum with elective courses from various other departments. Thereby, I was able to discover the lively surroundings outside my own department and to establish links beyond traditional departmental boundaries.

When I was asked to develop a topic for my final thesis, I wanted to know what would happen if the architecture school actively seeks contact with its neighboring departments. Moreover, I envisioned a transdisciplinary collaboration among multiple research groups at MIT. With Prof. Sheila Kennedy from the Department of Architecture, Prof.

William J. Mitchell from Media Lab’s Smart Cities Group, and Prof. Nasser Rabbat from the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, I was able to pool together a versatile team of advisors. This team supported me fully and offered not only profound critique and guidance for my thesis endeavor, but the willingness to mutually share with me the risk of exploring unknown grounds. For me, this is a key requirement for truly innovative work.

Technique or topical?

My thesis was both technique-based as well as topical. I investigated the structural, spatial, and climatic performance of the Toldo. For me, this foldable textile shading device was particularly interesting because it demonstrates a low-tech yet still very effective and sustainable solution for shading and cooling in an urban context. For most cities, the

overheating of its built environment is a burning issue and is usually addressed with complex mechanical systems that are very expensive, susceptible to failure, and often have high energy consumption.

The Toldo, however, is a cheap and highperforming alternative technology that has been known for centuries, but almost forgotten in today’s architectural planning. My thesis, therefore, envisioned the revitalization of Toldo craftsmanship within contemporary practice. Inspired by my travel in Cairo, it became my goal to modernize the Toldo’s manufacturing and marketing concept by developing digital customization tools for end-user generated designs, as well as by conceptualizing the use of functional add-ons like flexible electronics, energy harvesting photovoltaic cells, and light-emitting diodes. In the end, the thesis outlined not only an academic initiative that is typical for MIT, but also transcended this idea to a potential commercial spin-off.

Building discourse

photo credits: ICD/ITKE, University of Stuttgart

Concept & Realization: Andreas Eisenhardt, Manuel Vollrath, Kristine wächter, Thomas Irowetz, Oliver David Krieg, Ádmir Mahmutovic, peter Meschendörfer, Leopold Möhler, Michael pelzer, Konrad zerbe

Simon Schleicher

473

ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion 2010 University of Stuttgart Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning Instructors: Prof. A. Menges (ICD), Prof. J. Knippers (ITKE) Scientific Development: Simon Schleicher, Moritz Fleischmann, Christopher Robeller, Julian Lienhard, Diana D’Souza, Karola Dierichs

In 2010, the Institute for Computational Design (ICD) and the Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (ITKE), both at the University of Stuttgart, designed, fabricated and constructed a temporary research pavilion. Demonstrating the latest developments in material-oriented computational design, material simulation and robotic production processes in architecture, the result is a ‘bending-active’ structure made entirely of robotically-fabricated, elastically bent plywood strips.

During its operation time, the structure’s material changes were documented, its geometry measured by 3-D scanning and its structural performance validated by various loading test.

In today’s practice, computational tools are predominantly employed to create design schemes through a range of design criteria that leave inherent characteristics of the employed material systems largely unconsidered. Ways of materialisa-

tion, production and construction are strategized only after a form has been elaborated, leading to top-down engineered, material solutions that often juxtapose unfit logics. Based on an understanding of form, material and structure not as separate elements, but rather as complex interrelations embedded in and explored through internal processes of computational design, the research presented in this project demonstrates the feasibility of an alternative approach to computational design.

It unfolds morphological complexity and performative capacity from material characteristics and fabrication logics without differentiating between virtual form generation and physical materialization processes.

Building discourse

Flectofin® Bio-Inspired Compliant Mechanisms for Architectural Design Instructors: Prof. J. Knippers (ITKE), Prof. T. Speck (PBG), M. Milwich (ITV) Project Team: Simon Schleicher, Julian Lienhard, Simon Poppinga, Dr. Tom Masselter, Lena Müller

photo credits: ICD/ITKE, University of Stuttgart

Simon Schleicher

In architecture, kinetic structures enable buildings to react specifically to internal and external stimuli through spatial adjustments. These mechanical devices come in all shapes and sizes and are traditionally conceptualized as uniform and compatible modules. Typically, these systems gain their adjustability by connecting rigid elements with highly strained hinges.

Although this construction principle may be generally beneficial, it has some major drawbacks for architectural applications that increasingly demand custom-made solutions. Adaptation to irregular geometries, for example, can only be achieved with additional mechanical complexity, making these devices often very expensive, prone to failure, and maintenance-intensive.

Searching for a promising alternative to the still persisting

475

paradigm of rigid-body mechanics, the project team found inspiration in flexible and elastic plant movements. With their research on the Flectofin, they demonstrated how todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s computational modeling and simulation techniques can help to reveal motion principles in plants and how to integrate their underlying mechanisms in flexible kinetic structures. With the help of three case studies, the team discussed key aspects concerning the scaling, distortion, and optimization of these mechanisms and clarified important steps of the transfer process. Their finally acquired knowledge on bio-inspired mechanisms was then applied to the design of an exemplary application, in this case, an elastic shading devices for double-curved facades.

Building discourse

John Snavely

477

John Snavely

Pastiche As Technique: Inside an American Palace M.Arch Thesis 2008 Advisor: J. Meejin Yoon Readers: John Fernandez, Andrew Scott

This thesis investigates the potential of opportunistic borrowing and blatant referenceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a postmodern approach pioneered by architects like Michael Graves, Robert Venturi and Charles Jencks â&#x20AC;&#x201D;through a renovation that reinstates a movie palace into a 99 cent store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Instead of concentrating on the facade like postmodern architecture of the past, however, this thesis turns these techniques inward as a way of designing the interior of the building.

It uses an aesthetic which encourages nostalgia, that, through historical reference, can endear a design to a community, mitigate programmatic discord, and provide unusual formal qualities.

To find this nostalgic beauty, this thesis will revisit antique typologies like that of the movie palace and nickelodeon, outdated architectural techniques like pochĂŠ and pastiche, and

forgotten forms of ornament. Iconography and ornamentation, rather than being mere decoration, form a membrane which acts as a cultural interface to site the building in a strong, diverse, and ultimately stubborn community.

Building discourse

Why isn’t the notion of beauty a larger part of the architectural discourse? Even beauty’s cousin, style, has been noticeably absent from architectural discussion and production. Are we continuing the sensibility of the high-moderns who proclaimed architecture free from any notion of style? Other disciplines like product design, interior design, and a wide range of media arts seem thoroughly engrossed in style—and by extension issues of aesthetics, beauty and taste.

In the realm of critical theory, people like Sylvia Lavin [1], Wes Jones [2] and Sarah Whiting [3] have been calling for an acknowledgement of style for the past few years. While compelling, their call to action has lacked clear direction for architects on how to proceed. Architects themselves seem uncomfortable with questions of taste and judgment. How would they defend their aesthetic decisions?

Instead of holding onto their territory, architects have found solace in efficiency, economy and the elegance of the diagram.

In other words, stylistic and conceptual minimalism. This style does, of course, have a place in the built world, but are there other visions that we might investigate, styles that might speak to an aesthetic culture?

Thirty years ago, a series of American architects asked precisely these questions. They explored the relationship between

the vernacular and the avant-garde; [4] they interrogated the nature of history and context; [5] and they separated morality from aesthetic production. [6] Although promising, most of their work focused on the facade, not the interior. Their techniques and the potential of opportunistic borrowing, blatant reference and pastiche are currently under explored areas within the architectural discipline.

This thesis uses an aesthetic which encourages nostalgia, is unapologetically pleasurable and is unashamedly beautiful. It borrows ornamentation from the American tradition of movie palaces, whose stated purpose was “to make the common man feel like a king.” By revisiting antique typologies like that of the movie palace and nickelodeon, out-dated architectural techniques like poché and pastiche, and forgotten forms of ornament, the past may be mined for more than its history. [7] Iconography and ornamentation, rather than being mere decoration, form a membrane that acts as a cultural interface to site the building in a strong, diverse, and ultimately stubborn community.

John Snavely

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the chosen site for this thesis, has a rich and dynamic history. First settled by the Dutch in the 1800’s, it was once the most densely populated area in the United States (1920s-1930s). Although the population growth has slacked in previous decades, the last ten years have been ones of huge economic and population growth for both Brooklyn and Williamsburg in particular. Mostly, this is because North Williamsburg has gone through a process of urban “gentrification” resulting in a large population of hipsters: young students, artists, and musicians, settling into the region.

This large influx of a population willing to spend significant portions of their disposable income on housing has sparked numerous residential developments in North Williamsburg, namely high-rises along the waterfront.

This development has been so aggressive in terms of its scale and marketing strategy to people outside the existing Brooklyn community that the city and county government has taken a number steps to control and curtail development. South Williamsburg has not been a major part of these political or economic changes, but it’s poised to be.

There are two major characteristics to the site. The first is an urban landscape in which transportation infrastructure dominates. Within a few hundred yards are massive pieces of infrastructure: the Williamsburg Bridge, the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, the JMZ line of the New York City Subway system,

479

and Broadway Avenue, a four lane road and commercial hub.

Indeed, constructions and demolitions of these structures have had a direct effect on the area. For example, the construction of the BQE corresponded with a major recession.

The proximity of these different types of urban systems gives rise to the second characteristic condition of the site: a diverse set of inhabitants made up of distinct groups. Currently, the site consists of a stubborn population that can be broken into three types: hipsters, Hasidic Jews, and Hispanics. Each not only has different age distributions, households, spending patterns, and racial makeup, but also very separate neighborhoods and buildings. However, they all share the urban circulation spaces.

The site of the building itself is located at the nexus of all of these systems: directly on Broadway, at the Myrtle stop of the JMZ, one block from the Williamsburg Bridge, and two blocks from the BQE.

Building discourse

Design The question became how to construct a continuous, amorphous (blobby) circulation system/theater within an understandable structural system. As much as the movie palace represents a fantasy, the mid-rise represents the reality.

Keeping in mind the need to frame fairly tightly around these odd shapes, I examined ways of wrapping around an ornate curve with truss chords or webbing. I also thought about a framing unit from which these spaces could be subtracted.

Some of these experiments were impractical, such as a framing units based on octahedrons or pentagonal tiling.

Eventually, a 10-foot cubic grid provided adequate resolution for the circulation spaces, could accommodate livable floor to ceiling heights, and could be easily hollowed into apartment units. Below, diagrams illustrate the process of creating an adaptable truss system around various circulation or theater spaces.

From left to right: 1. The truss system without any intervention.

2. A single theater hollowed out from the interior of the truss frame.

3. Two theaters that sit along a public passageway from one end of the building to the other.

4. A more complex vertical circulation system that bulges in certain spots.

The final form (opposite, bottom) incorporates the vertical circulation into three separate theaters. The ten-foot truss grid has been adjusted to fit not only the theater/circulation, but also tightly packed apartments, retail and office spaces.

John Snavely

481

Building discourse

Plan 01, top: The ground floor of the building is programmed with retail. All of the currently existing businesses along Broadway are accommodated in the design. Farther into the building, a small cafe services the theater, while along the South 5th Street facade, an area of low traffic, a gym services both the neighborhood and building residents.

Plan 02, center: The second story contains office spaces. Public spaces like conference rooms are placed next to the ornate theater membrane and visitors who are watching the trains.

Plan 06, bottom: This residential floor has the third fifteen-person theater, used mostly by the building residents. An ornate staircase

takes the public to the roof. The deep interior contains a lounge area lit by skylights, with visual access to the very top of the dome of the largest theater.

John Snavely

Section 01, top: This drawing shows the main theater space. Like all the sections, it also traces sight lines from the seats. Two staircases (necessary to meet safety requirements) function as private circulation for building residents when the theaters are in use.

483

Section 02, center: The second theater links the urban circulation of the site to the public circulation of the building. When a movie is being shown, people on the subway platform can watch the film (in reverse). When movies arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t being shown, the theater becomes a place to watch trains and passengers on the platform and vice versa. All theaters are elevator-accessible.

Section 03, bottom: The last, smallest, and most private theater will be used mostly by the building residents.

Building discourse

Translating spaces into more ornate theaters is accomplished by using the classical orders.

The existing facade has traces of classicism, but doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t fit the typology exactly. (There looks as if there are bits of baroque ornament.) Like most movie palaces the ornament is for effect and not authenticity.

John Snavely

485

Building discourse

This Page : An ornate entrace for the 99 cent store.

Opposite : A view from the rear of the second theater.

64

John Snavely

487

NOTES: 1 “But to be contemporary—to be on time, to move with time and the times, subject to its losses, entropies, provisionalities, obsolescences, currencies, intensities, fads, and flourishes—is a possibility that architecture assiduously avoids.” Sylvia Lavin, Crib Sheets: Notes on the Contemporary Architectural Conversation (New York: Monacelli Press), 2005.

2 Wes Jones’ article “Post Cool,” first published in Log 3, calls for a post-post criticality, a hyper-criticality that is obsessively aware of history and historical styles.

3 See Sarah Whiting’s article “Going Public” in Hunch 6/7, 2003.

4 “Learning from the existing landscape is a way of being revolutionary for an architect.” Robert Venturi, Denise Scott-Brown and

Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977).

5 “...today all styles are equally open to adaptation and transformation, and it depends on the local context, the client, the function and several other concerns, including the architect’s desire, which style or styles are used.” Charles Jencks in an interview with Roermer Van Toorn.

6 “I see architecture not as Gropius did, as a moral venture, as truth, but as invention, in the same way that poetry or music or painting is invention.” Michael Graves.

7 “We are now, in other words, in ‘intertextuality’ as a deliberate, built-in feature of the aesthetic effect and as the operator of a new connotation of “pastness” and pseudo-histori

cal depth, in which the history of aesthetics styles displaces “real” history.” Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, Or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991).

8 See Craig Morrison’s “Theaters” in the Norton/Library of Congress Visual Sourcebook in Architecture 9 See OMA/Rem Koolhaas, The Dutch Embassy in Berlin (Rotterdam:NAi Publishers, 2004), which has a complete set of drawings, paginated, but also drawn as a continuity.

Building discourse

John Snavely MIT / M.Arch, 2008 Dartmouth College / B.A. Computer Science & Studio Art, 2001

Since finishing my thesis, I’ve been working as a designer in the technology sector focusing on future concepts, enjoying fatherhood, and getting old.

Specifically, I moved to Seattle to work for Microsoft where I worked on creating a vision for the future of productivity. I built concept videos, software and hardware prototypes and physical spaces to show the public and people within the company what the future of work and technology might look like. I did a brief stint in Silicon Valley working for Samsung on their Think Tank Team, a collection of people (many from the MIT Media Lab) with robotics, physics, engineering and design backgrounds working on future technology concepts and prototypes. Most of that work is under wraps.

However, we did design the concept for a series of wearables, including the Galaxy Gear (a smartwatch).

Currently, I work for Xbox on the Ecosystems team, a forward looking product team.

What was the most important thing you learned from thesis?

The most important thing I learned was that I was more interested in aesthetics than logistics. Just before thesis I was feeling pretty burnt out, and I took a trip to see the Moheegan Sun casino (by the Rockwell Group). Generally I’m not really into the casino scene; it’s a bit of downer, but this visit was for the architecture. It was a Boston winter, cold and grey. At Moheegan there were these beautiful columns, many stories high,

made of millions of little ceramic pieces.

It brought me back to a trip I took when I was younger to Parque Güell in Barcelona. Deep inside the casino, there was another treasure, a wigwam made of a crystallized lattice with huge slabs of rock as infilled panels. The rock was cut so thin that light could pass through. And it was still very much a wigwam!

After months of not sleeping, trying hard to connect my work to Deleuze, Derrida or whoever without any real cause, and struggling to rationalize every design decision, I finally felt like I found some architects who were having fun.

And I wanted to try and make my thesis fun too.

Thinking back on your thesis, how do you feel it has or has not influenced your career?

Thesis was my breakup letter to architecture. I probably should have just texted my goodbye.

That said, thesis got me deeply immersed in thinking about representation, which led to a path where I renewed my interest in graphic design and turned back to a career as an interaction designer. I’m still working with a passion for representation in technology, where (unlike architecture) you can be so much more literal.

Thesis really got me more interested in being more superficial and immediate, coming up with a process that reflected how I tackle design problems; not being afraid to steal the stuff you love directly without justification; taking the time to

understand style; and not feeling like ordinary people loving your work was beneath you. While I’m no longer interested in the topics I covered in thesis, it certainly set the tone for the work style that I have now. My process is very much the same.

Every now and then, I’ll dabble in architecture. A few years back I created and funded my own architecture competition (with GSD alum, Bryan Boyer) that solicited the best architecture drawings that used glitter. It was money well spent.

I’ve also spent some time lecturing, writing and designing workspaces. I live right next to really cool old dudes who run Rhino (the 3D modelling software).

When I first moved to Seattle, I was still having fun teaching Rhino Script courses (Rhino Script is going to date me, since everyone is using Grasshopper now).

I got a chance to meet people like Bob McNeel and David Rutten, who made the software that was my life in school.

Overall, my thesis and the architectural education I received at MIT are directly responsible for a great deal in my career direction. I feel as though I left the buildings behind but kept everything else.

What is the one thing you would have done differently or what do you wish you had known in advance?

I needed more time. I think I could have used another month or two for thesis. But school was so expensive I just powered through. I might be in the same place I am now, but I think I would be

John Snavely

prouder of the work I did.

What was the biggest advantage for doing your thesis at MIT?

It makes me happy just thinking about MIT. My colleagues and the extended student body are all (or almost all) a bunch of lovable, genius nerds.

There’s a real sense of wonder and innocence and therefore, genuine discovery that happens in that climate. When you’re asked to empty yourself into a project like thesis, having a community and culture to support you through the highs and lows is really invaluable.

What was particularly timely about your thesis? Was it technique or topical?

I was trying to turn “topicality” into a technique. I’m not sure my thesis was timely; I was trying to be a neoconservative, which is ultimately what I thought postmodern architecture was about.

I found that I was going to Rotch library, finding sections and plans that I liked and just copying their style. During my time at school, no one really talked about style. But more and more I was finding that the process of thinking about style, and layering or cutting and pasting little bits of ideas together was good for me. It was quite difficult to defend the decisions of my work, however. My thesis tried to start a dialogue about using “Pastiche as Technique” to design a building, as opposed to say, the “hyperrational”

489

approach (see Joshua Prince-Ramus talk about the Seattle Public Library).

I’m not sure I really nailed it with my work. Recently, I’ve seen some pretty rad theses on BldgBlog that put my realizations to shame. There’s still a desperate need for the Quentin Tarantino of architecture to make it to the big time. Calling all young architects!

Building discourse

Envisioning Lab Microsoft Professional Work: 2011

FOLIO PRESENTATION Project Northport: Metro Next Framework

Project Northport: Metro Next Framework

9 March 2013

I worked to create a lab where Microsoft could demonstrate future technology concepts. As part of this effort, I lead a team to create a set of principles, a graphic system that evolved the Metro design language, and a series of new interaction models

JOHN SNAVELY

that moved beyond the concept of windows and icons. These are some rough wireframes from our process.

WORK

OVERLAY Y

9 March 2013

PORTFOLIO PRESENTATION

CUTOUTCUTOUT

We’re s of bright fans of bright We create We our create own our own colors. e borrowed We borrowed a whitespace a whitespace through through mtyle print from to layer print to layer cutouts. cutouts.

SHAPES OVERLAY color he screen. onSIMPLE the screen.

JOHN SNAVELY

WORK

PORTFOLIO PRESENTATION

Project Northport: Metro Next Framework

9 March 2013

We love squares, but we like other shapes too. We use simple, playful shapes in our interfaces.

CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY

We’re fans of colors. We bo style from prin color on the s 1420

14

John Snavely

491

JOHN SNAVELY

WORK

PORTFOLIO PRESENTATION

Project Northport: Metro Next Framework

9 March 2013

3

Project Northport: Metro Next Framework

9 March 2013

18

CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY

JOHN SNAVELY

WORK

PORTFOLIO PRESENTATION

Project Northport: Metro Next Framework

9 March 2013

n gh

Y

CUTOUT

s of bright e borrowed a print to layer he screen.

We create our own whitespace through cutouts.

CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY

19

Building discourse

JOHN SNAVELY

JOHN SNAVELY

WORK

WORK

PORTFOLIO PRESENTATION

PORTFOLIO PRESENTATION

Project Northport: Metro Next Framework

Project Northport: Metro Next Framework

CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY

JOHN SNAVELY

9 March 2013

9 March 2013 32

WORK

PORTFOLIO PRESENTATION

Project Northport: Metro Next Framework

9 March 2013

CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY

CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY

41

34

John Snavely

493

JOHN SNAVELY

WORK

PORTFOLIO PRESENTATION

Project Northport: Metro Next Framework

9 March 2013

CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY

33

JOHN SNAVELY

WORK

PORTFOLIO PRESENTATION

Project Northport: Metro Next Framework

CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY JOHN SNAVELY

WORK

PORTFOLIO PRESENTATION

Project Northport: Metro Next Framework

CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY

9 March 2013

39 9 March 2013

38

Building discourse

Envisioning Lab Microsoft Professional Work: 2008 The Microsoft Envisioning Lab is a space designed to engage customers and partners in a conversation about our long-term

JOHN SNAVELY

WORK

CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY

CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY

PORTFOLIO PRESENTATION

Project Northport: Metro Next Framework

vision for productivity. I also led the redesign of the facility in 2011.

9 March 2013

105

106 106

John Snavely

495

JOHN SNAVELY

WORK

PORTFOLIO PRESENTATION

Project Northport: Metro Next Framework

9 March 2013

CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY

JOHN SNAVELY

CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY

WORK

103

PORTFOLIO PRESENTATION

Project Northport: Metro Next Framework

9 March 2013

107

Editor Irene Hwang Assistant Editors Elizabeth Yarina Philam Nguyen Evelyn Ting Contributors Dennis Cheung George X. Lin Carolyn Jenkins Alexander Marshall Kelly Shaw Sasa Zivkovic David Costanza Yushiro Okamoto Curtis Roth Nadya Volicer Natsuki Maeda Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi Lisa Pauli T. Buck Sleeper Pamela Ritchot Charles Curran Rafael Luna Duncan McIlvaine John Pugh Andrea Brennen Simon Schleicher James Graham Mary Hale John Snavely Editorial Collaborators Sarah Hirschman Kyle Barker Mariel Villeré Special Thanks Nader Tehrani Ana Miljački Sarah Hirschman Cynthia Stewart MIT Architecture students, faculty, and staff Publisher SA+P Press, Cambridge Design TwoPoints.Net — Barcelona, Berlin Design Assistance Kyle Barker Lauren Bordes Evan Cerilli Printer Oddi Printing, Iceland

© of the edition, 2014 SA+P Press © of the texts, their authors © of the works, their authors © of the photographs, their authors All Rights Reserved.

While every effort has been made to ensure that all material within this book not originally created by the authors or directly supplied to the SA+P Press has been cleared for copyright, please contact the SA+P Press for further information.

SA+P Press MIT, Room 7-337 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139-2307

30 mm spine

George X. Lin Design for Reuse: Post-Occupancy for Olympic Stadiums

Nadya Volicer Life in the Woods: Production and Consumption in the Urban Forest

Carolyn Jenkins East Boston Buffer: A Transferable Urban Framework for Adapting to Sea Rise

Natsuki Maeda Future of the Past: Augmented History, Preservation as a Catalyst for Transformation

Alexander Marshall Exodus Industrious: A New American Dream For The Next Industrial Revolution

Ekachai Pattamasattayasonthi Reinventing Flexibility: A Hybrid Paradigm for Thai markets in Bangkok, Thailand

Kelly Shaw HYPERsensarium: An Archive of Atmospheric Conditions

Lisa Pauli Containment Building: Architecture Between the City and Advanced Nuclear Reactors

Sasa Zivkovic Towards the Anthropocene: Colossal Naturality in Disordered Territories

Pamela Ritchot Tuktoyaktuk Responsive Strategies for a New Arctic Urbanism

David Costanza 100% Petroleum House

Buck Sleeper Last Resorts A Tour Guide to Territorial Protection for the Republic of the Maldives

Yushiro Okamoto Weathermart

Charles Curran Retrofit + Shrink Wrap Dubai: An Urban Recovery Plan

Rafael Luna A Flexible Infra-Architectural System for a Hybrid Shanghai Duncan McIlvaine The End of the Times: A Proposition for Transitional Journalistic Architecture ­John Pugh Megaform: A Frame of Opposition Andrea Brennen Arctic-tecture for the Global Commons James Graham UN2: Reconfiguring the World City Mary Hale Send My Love to Tijuana | Tijuana Sends her Love The Transcendental Tijuanense Telecommunications Bridge to Everywhere Simon Schleicher Adaptive Toldo Systems John Snavely Pastiche As Technique: Inside an American Palace

Building Discourse

Curtis Roth Acid Ecologies: Or the Secret Lives of Spanish Tomatoes

MIT Department of Architecture Irene Hwang, Editor

Dennis Cheung Covert Resistance: An Embodiment of the “One Country, Two Systems” Principle in Hong Kong

Building Discourse Proposition & Proof MIT Department of Architecture Master of Architecture Thesis 2008-2013 Irene Hwang, Editor