Rachel Ghindea Portfolio 2021

PORTFOLIO

RACHEL

GHINDEA

US EMBASSY

2017 UG4-AU STUDIO W/ KAREN LEWIS

THINGITECTURE

2018 UG4-SP STUDIO W/ SANDHYA KOCHAR

ACADEMIC

HETEROTROPICA

2017 INDEPENDENT STUDY W/ JUSTIN DILES, ANDREW CRUSE

PRESS START_

2017 RESEARCH SEMINAR W/ STEPHEN TURK

INDEPENDENT

NOODLE SOUP

2018 RAGDALE RING COMPETITION W/ OFFICE CA

ELECTROFIT

2020 SPECULATIVE PROJECT W/ AARON PAYNE

NOSPACE 2019 WIPSTUDIO

PROFESSIONAL

ABSURD ARCHITECTURE 2019 MKC ARCHITECTS

MENTAL HEALTH CLOISTER 2019 STUDIO AMES

US EMBASSY 2017 ACADEMIC UG4-AU STUDIO PROF. KAREN LEWIS

A US Embassy in Mexico City, this project is an investigation of the border between two countries acting as a catalyst for interaction rather than division. Extruded upward, the site’s border collects a series of pyramidal forms, causing them to overlap and create interweaving spaces, before cleaving off the excess and leaving behind transparent glass faces. The extruded border is intangible, existing only as a design operation - an action which posits the increasing obsolescence of borders and recalls the fact that most borders are not physical elements.

Much like the embassy’s disposition as a territory of one country existing within another, the walls and floors nestle within one another, mixing different programs to afford sight lines from offices and public spaces existing both on the same floor plane, and other levels. By mapping a typical office diagram to the pyramidal forms, this building maintains a vertical hierarchy of spaces while introducing opportunities for interaction among the cascading nested programs.

AWARDED 1ST PLACE IN THE 2017 UG4 CLASS-WIDE GUI COMPETITION, PUBLISHED IN ONE:TWELVE JOURNAL, ISSUE 014. KNOWLTON SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE PRESS

1. SMALL SCALE FORMAL STUDIES

TYPICAL OFFICE SECTION

INTRODUCE NEW FORMS

MAP SECTION TO FORMS

NEW OFFICE SECTION

2. TRANSFORMATIONAL SECTION DIAGRAMS

3. LONGITUDINAL SECTION

Early formal studies explored the interplay between public and private spaces, experimenting with ways to weave the interaction of frequent and infrequent visitors, or high and low level security clearances. A traditional office section is mapped to these forms, and cascading nested spaces emerge, creating new relationships while allowing vertical hierarchy and security levels to be maintained.

SECTION EVOLUTION 5

ACADEMIC

MEXICO CITY, MX

GROUND LEVEL PLAN 6

US EMBASSY

NORTH ELEVATION

EAST ELEVATION

SOUTH ELEVATION

2ND LEVEL PLAN

WEST ELEVATION

4TH LEVEL PLAN

6TH LEVEL PLAN

At ground level, the urban condition of the site is maintained by the building raising itself on occupiable piloti, which creates a porous relationship with the surrounding city network. Formal ground manipulation creates a secure perimeter that doubles as a safe space for protesters to occupy and hold the embassy grounds.

7

ACADEMIC

1.

formal ground manipulation creates protected public space for demonstrations and protests to take place

2.

4.

these same formal moves protect both the building and protesters occupying the embassy grounds from potential largescale security threats

3.

glass represents the “border� collecting the forms and recalls the invisible and increasingly obsolete nature of borders in a global society

4.

spatial qualities of the overlapping geometry create secure roof terraces

3.

2.

1.

8

US EMBASSY

LONGITUDINAL SECTION 9

ACADEMIC

10

US EMBASSY

EMBODIED MODEL PHOTOGRAPHS 11

ACADEMIC

12

US EMBASSY

PUBLICATION; MODEL PHOTOGRAPHS 13

THINGITECTURE 2018 ACADEMIC UG4-SP HONORS PLACEMENT RESEARCH STUDIO PROF. SANDHYA KOCHAR IN COLLABORATION WITH SARAH CRONIN AND ALEX OETZEL In an age ruled by speedism and collective demand for content, there is increasing interest in the creation of a single flattened image to represent a complex spatial architectural project. We posit that these static narrations contribute to boredom in the discipline, just another square in the Instagram grid. Architects, becoming consumers themselves, give up their agency as space makers in favor of becoming image producers.

Appropriating static images produced by contemporary architects, this project aims to turn these objects into things. Bill Brown asserts that “things� are that which shed socially encoded values and are presented to us in new ways through suspension of habit.

An object can become a thing through careful and thoughtful design.

The four flat, singularly representative images this project appropriates, investigates, and reimagines are Pool Party by Bureau Spectacular, Archaeograph by Sam Jacob, Detroit Reassembly Plant by T+E+A+M, and Flatbed Junk by NemeStudio. Evaluating the encoded values as they are presented in both the projects and a surface reading of the images creates a control against which we test difference - this reading is derived from habit, practice and assumptions. Originals are altered by hybridizing program, imagining new context and narratives, appropriating project techniques, questioning scale, and exaggerating or exploiting the original intentions or readings of the images as methods of making things from found objects.

RECEIVED STUDIO AWARD

15

ACADEMIC

STUDY ORIGINAL DRAWING

ESTABLISH EXPECTATIONS

SUSPEND EXPECTATIONS

This study questions lifespan and embraces impermanence by stating that every 21 days architecture can recycle itself into something new and different. We are speculating that contemporary architects have created rich, complex works that need to be unpacked beyond their static narratives, and that we don’t have to create an entirely new project to create a new experience.

TRAVELING TROUBADOURS SAMPLE: POOL PARTY BY BUREAU SPECTACULAR

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THINGITECTURE

SUBURBAN REASSEMBLY

DETROIT DIORAMA

SAMPLE: DETROIT REASSEMBLY PLANT BY T+E+A+M

SAMPLE: DETROIT REASSEMBLY PLANT BY T+E+A+M

CENTRAL PORK

ARCHAEOTHEATRE

SAMPLE: ARCHAEOGRAPH BY SAM JACOB

SAMPLE: ARCHAEOGRAPH BY SAM JACOB

BLOCKS OF JUNKJUNK

FUN HAUS

SAMPLE: FLATBED JUNK BY NEMESTUDIO

SAMPLE: FLATBED JUNK BY NEMESTUDIO

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ACADEMIC

DETROIT ARMCHAIR - SAMPLE: DETROIT REASSEMBLY PLANT BY T+E+A+M 18

THINGITECTURE

1909 PLANT - SAMPLE: DETROIT REASSEMBLY PLANT BY T+E+A+M 19

ACADEMIC

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THINGITECTURE

POOL HAUS - SAMPLE: POOL PARTY BY BUREAU SPECTACULAR 21

ACADEMIC

22

THINGITECTURE

MODEL PHOTOGRAPHS 23

ACADEMIC

24

THINGITECTURE

POOL CON - SAMPLE: POOL PARTY BY BUREAU SPECTACULAR 25

HETEROTROPICA 2017-18 ACADEMIC INDEPENDENT RESEARCH STUDY PROF. JUSTIN DILES AND ANDREW CRUSE SEE LINK BELOW FOR FULL TEAM CREDITS Heterotropica is a speculation on the capacity of architecture, technology and landscape to harness tropical climate in ways that produce new architectural and urban forms. It encourages a range of experiences that tie architecture to bodies and physical comfort zones, relying on factors like temperature and humidity levels. Heterotropica resists a clear classification as a building or park, but instead draws on the megadiverse Malaysian biome to present miniatures of iconic environments, like that of the Cloud Forest, a subtropical forest characterized by persistent low-level cloud cover.

This study looks to a forgotten goal of modernism: to connect interior and exterior experiences without distinguishing between corporeal health and sensuous comfort. The Cloud Forest is a rich sensorial experience that orchestrates climate, technology and physiology into formal, spatial and environmental systems. It fosters a wide spectrum of comfort zones under its iconic roof based on manufactured differences in temperature, humidity and enclosure. Between the facts and uncertainties that characterize the complex web of environmental relationships, this experimental project brings abstract scales and uncertain futures to the personal realm of experience.

SUBMITTED TO VENICE BIENNALE (2018) SUBMITTED TO BLANK SPACE FAIRY TALES (2018)

CLIMATE CONTROL SYSTEMS

1.

2.

3.

metal roofline is heated in the sun,

stack effect also creates low pressure

hot yoga enclosures within roof line

creating stack effect to draw hot air up

zone to pull cool air up from water pools

retain heat and humidity while allowing

and out of the activity level

on lower level

it to escape from surrounding space

1.

2.

3.

water is pumped up from pools on lower

the cool water is quickly heated to its

the roofline is enveloped in steam,

level to interact with the hot surface of

boiling point, creating steam that is

giving the cloud forest its signature

the metal roofline

released to surrounding canopy

appearance

CLOUD FORMATION PROCESS

CLIMATE SYSTEM DIAGRAMS; CLOUD FOREST AERIAL ANIMATION STILL 27

ACADEMIC

STEAM CHIMNEY

CLIMATE CONTROLLED ACTIVITY LEVEL

WATER WELL FOR COOLING

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HETEROTROPICA

CLOUD LEVEL

PARKING LEVEL

AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES

CLOUD FOREST SECTION

AERIAL ANIMATION STILLS 29

ACADEMIC

30

HETEROTROPICA

ANIMATION STILL 31

PRESS START_ 2017 ACADEMIC RESEARCH SEMINAR PROF. STEPHEN TURK

This project emerges from a seminar studying video game theory, including key elements such as World (actions as things), Platform (a thing for action), and Character (temperament and order). This case study features a classic platformer game, Super Mario Bros. 1985, one of the first side-scrolling video games which reflects a shift from classical, vertical bound subject to a modern, horizontally mobile subject. Completing a level advances the player across a world map horizontally, however, worlds are stacked vertically, recalling Rem Koolhaas’s 1909 theorem. Some worlds can even be skipped using the game’s hidden warp zones that behave similarly to the elevators in Downtown Athletic Club. Koolhaas and Hejduk projects were sampled to study Character, their distinctive features pulled apart and categorized to study the temperament that makes up each iconic project.

These studies culminated in the development of a video game created with Unity, in which the case study findings were brought together and hybridized, retaining distinctive characteristics while resisting classification as a result of the polarizing temperaments. Gameplay allows the user to play all levels or seek out a hidden quickplay route to complete a speedrun of the game.

PLATFORM STUDY: SUPER MARIO BROS. 1985

VOID VS. OBJECT

TYPICAL LEVEL DIAGRAM

1

2

1

2 3 4

DAIS: ASCENSION

LEVEL EXIT: ASCENSION TO NEXT WORLD

WORLD ASCENSION PATH USING LEVEL EXITS

WARP ZONES: ASCENSION TO ALTERNATE WORLDS

SPEEDRUN PLAYTHROUGH USING WARP ZONES

CHARACTER STUDY: KOOLHAAS AND HEJDUK

MELANCHOLIC

MELANCHOLIC

CHOLERIC

CHOLERIC

PHLEGMATIC

PHLEGMATIC

SANGUINE

SANGUINE

AGADIR CONVENTION CENTER

HOUSE OF THE LIBRARIAN

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ACADEMIC

34

PRESS START_

VIDEO GAME SECTIONS 35

NOODLE SOUP 2018 INDEPENDENT RAGDALE RING COMPETITION WINNER w/ OFFICE CA AND DESIGN AND FABRICATION TEAMS LAKE FOREST, IL Noodle Soup is an architectural scale interface. Conceived as an interactive playscape, it is flexible enough for a range of outdoor performances, and picturesque enough to seamlessly integrate into the wooded scenery of Lake Forest, IL. It features a set of fuzzy, fixed structures (walls) around which soft, linear, pliable pieces of furniture (noodles) are scattered. The soft elements can interact with the hard structures to serve functional purposes such as seating, but they can also act as oversized toys, freely configurable in a variety of ways. Conceptually, Noodle Soup seeks to empower individuals’ artistic agency as well as blend whimsy, playfulness, and interaction into a transformable constructed landscape with both predictable and unpredictable results.

The noodles are waterproof, lightweight bean bags arranged throughout the playscape.

The walls are made of traditional wood framing, anchored into the ground to withstand a variety of performances or play. They are conceived as being “peeled” up from the earth to create seating and act as fixed points between/with which the noodles create compositions. The color of the turf asserts both an artificial and natural relationship to the surrounding Lake Forest scenery. As one makes their way around the installation, the walls oscillate between receding into the greenery of the landscape, and emerging to the foreground and geometric objects in a picturesque forest.

NOODLE SOUP RECEIVED HONORABLE MENTION IN THE 2018 ARCHITECT’S NEWSPAPER BEST OF DESIGN AWARDS, YOUNG ARCHITECT’S CATEGORY.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ZANE SHAFFER 37

INDEPENDENT

CNC MILLED PLYWOOD FACE

PLYWOOD BENT INTO PLACE

2X6 WOOD FRAMING

MILLED FOAM INSERT

CNC MILLED OSB RIBS

6X6 IN. PRESSURE TREATED TIMBER

3 FT. AUGER STYLE ANCHOR RODS

PLYWOOD MILLED WITH KERFS, BENT TO 90 DEGREES

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NOODLE SOUP

39

INDEPENDENT

Synthetic turf and weatherproof paint complete the walls, and the steel rods anchoring 3 feet into the ground make them ready for any type of play. Noodles are fabricated with weatherproof canvas, inside which is a sealed plastic bag filled with recycled packing peanuts and beanbag fill. They are lightweight enough to be dragged by a child, but their cumbersome length encourages group play.

ARCHITECTS AT WORK; ARCHITECTS AT PLAY 40

NOODLE SOUP

A.

B.

E.

F.

C.

D.

G.

H.

A.

TO BARNHOUSE/OFFICE

B.

C.

TO GREEN BAY RD. D.

E.

F.

G.

TO RAGDALE HOUSE

H.

WALL TAXONOMY; SITE PLAN 41

INDEPENDENT

42

NOODLE SOUP

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ZANE SHAFFER 43

ELECTROFIT 2020 INDEPENDENT SPECULATIVE PROJECT W/ AARON PAYNE

Electrofit begins with the observation of the blending and blurring of public and private space brought on by COVID-19, social distancing, and self imposed quarantine. As a direct result of the current global pandemic, physical (private) space is fusing with digital (public) space, and the necessity for this to play out in our homes is changing the relationship between public and private, or social and domestic spaces.

Living in New York City, a little 1-2 bedroom apartment is now the only physical space you may get to experience daily, but this space must now function in new, unconventional, and unexpected ways. Instead of proposing a physical retrofit, Electrofit observes a new condition in which your home is digitally retrofitted through the interface of the screen to serve new functions. Your residence can now, at your will, include an office, your friend’s living room, a movie theater, a park, a museum, even a virtual architecture gallery. It is not a proposed “live-work” model, but rather a forced “live-EVERYTHING” model.

The project explores just a few of the seemingly endless and constantly changing functional possibilities through the use of an active plan; an ever changing drawing which we hope to develop further as quarantine continues and our homes are forced to take on increasingly more functional roles.

FEATURED IN “VANDALISMO” EXHIBITION, 2020 TO BE FEATURED IN YALE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE’S “HOME WORK” EXHIBITION, SPRING 2021

MONDAY 12:21 PM

TUESDAY 10:53 PM

WEDNESDAY 9:46 AM

THURSDAY 5:37 PM

FRIDAY 9:12 PM

SATURDAY 11:37 AM

MONDAY 4:54 PM

TUESDAY 1:23 PM

WEDNESDAY 8:49 PM

THURSDAY 10:21 PM

FRIDAY 6:34 PM

SATURDAY 7:54 PM

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INDEPENDENT

46

ELECTROFIT

Active Plan: the layout of the apartment is in a state of constant change wherein screens double as portals, augmenting the physical space, and serving to aggregate physical and digital space. The plan morphs continuously over time based on the occupants’ functional needs.

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NOSPACE 2019 INDEPENDENT BLANK SPACE “FAIRY TALES” COMPETITION ENTRY WIPSTUDIO

The following text is a series of excerpts from the accompanying narrative.

“Once inhabiting a world experienced through the occupation of three dimensions, humans of planet earth had been subject to living in a new plane of existence for many generations.’Nospace’ as it was called, was a very confusing world, a reality divorced from space and compressed into only two dimensions. Histories of Nospace and speculative stories of the third dimension were traditionally passed down through family elders. As time went on, however, history became mythology, and only one elder continued the ritual of storytelling, invigorating the citizens of Nospace with her words. Her name, Mémé.

Mémé spent her youth traveling across Nospace with great ambition, researching and looking for answers to the questions of her world. Her mission was not only to understand these mysteries, but find a way to set the citizens free from the constraints of Nospace.

At some point, age caught up to ambition and Mémé became too weak to explore. Stories became her only way to escape the flatness. Many listened to Mémé’s stories but wrote them off as fiction. Her great granddaughter Terra, however, heard her words as fact.

Mémé saw much of herself in Terra, in part because of their striking resemblance, but largely due to her intense curiosity.

‘Things were very different in my time, Terra,’ Mémé told her granddaughter, ‘But it was long before even my existence, that the world began to transition.’

‘Everyone was so consumed with screens, they failed to notice the world around them changing. Their faces flattened into these surfaces, until they finally looked up to find...nothing...the space around them had disappeared. It was as if the world had existed between two planes and they suddenly came crashing together, flattening everything. Tourists of the flatness became inhabitants, and the two dimensional quickly lost its charm.’

“It was as if the entire universe existed between two planes, and one day they suddenly came crashing together, flattening everything. What was once three dimensional space now existed within only two dimensions, we call it Nospace. It is our home now, as if we have any other option. I still remember what space was like, depth, being able to move beyond objects in the distance. Now everything is flat, and the translation from three dimensions into two has altered our world greatly. It would have been difficult to imagine what this might look, or feel, like before the flattening, but now it is all we know. What we don’t know is why. Why did this happen to the earth? What could have caused the complete collapse of space as we know it? And everpresent on the daily mind of a Nospacer, is it reversible? Can we re-inflate our world and bring back the space that used to define it? These thoughts feel trivial, how can we fix something if we don’t know how we broke it?

Sometimes I wonder if we are actually living in what was once our screens. Is Nospace just the surface of the screen and our faces were pressed so tightly against it that we just melded into it and became one with this other world? Are we occupying the platform from which we were clicking, liking and sharing?

Are there humans still existing in the three dimensional world and they just haven’t pressed themselves into the flat yet? If so I wonder if we could warn them somehow, or together discover if we flattened ourselves in, can we build our way out?

A NEW WORLD 49

INDEPENDENT

“Terra reached the map’s final destination, an old temple she had seen images of in the archives. She had reached the end of the journey as her grandmother intended it, but still had no answers.

Terra intuitively reached her hands up, placing them on the facade. With steady pressure, she pushed against the fabric of her world, not knowing what to expect. The surface before her gave way, extruding into three dimensions, forming a portal and breaking reality as she knew it.

Terra approached the aperture, and for the first time, she experienced what it meant to travel through.

Escaping the desensitization of Nospace, Terra danced around objects in the third dimension.

She looked back at the world she emerged from to see what the backside of Nospace, The Behind, looked like. To her surprise, she found the flat world laid out before her, resembling the map Mémé had made. The plane on which she had lived her entire life was an infinitely thin surface, 3D space had always existed around it, but those living on the plane were incapable of seeing it.

50

NOSPACE

MAP TO THE OTHERSIDE; OPENING THE GATE 51

INDEPENDENT

52

NOSPACE

MIGRATION FROM NOSPACE 53

ABSURD ARCHITECTURE 2019 PROFESSIONAL MKC ARCHITECTS; COLUMBUS,OH W/ MATTHEW TEISMANN PRESENTED AT EUROPEAN ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY NETWORK CONFERENCE IN BELGIUM Albert Camus’s writings are biographical descriptions of domestic and urban space that provide a stage on which characters become exiled from the society which surrounds them.

Emblematic of an absurd incongruence between life and the world, his writings portray an abstraction of architecture in vast African cityscapes. An analysis of displacement present in Camus’s writings, this paper interrogates episodic architectural instances as described through Camus himself. Inspired by Albert Memmi’s work on post-colonial theory, and Esra Akcan’s melancholy of colonialism, this investigation deepens relationships between the exiled and domestic space. Living in a displaced world, Camus abstracts himself, and subsequently the characters in his novels, from the reality of these environments.

Camus’s reluctance to accept his surroundings motivates him to fill his novels with nondescript architecture. As Memmi postulates, “[t]o live without anguish, one must live in detachment from oneself and the world - one must reconstruct the odors and sounds of one’s childhood” (Memmi, 1965, p. 26) A colonizer who tries to reject association with one side or another “either no longer recognizes the colonized, or he no longer recognizes himself.” Forced to remain in a state of absurdity, this person loses contact with reality and “begins to construct myths” (Memmi, 1965, p. 32). Perhaps this is why we see descriptions of architecture that are devoid of materiality or form; instead Camus chooses to describe the sounds, smells, and sights that make up an experience in a space. A result of his detachment from any semblance of “home”, architectural experiences are abstracted, reduced primarily to an emotional response a space elicits. Said (1994) suggests that Camus and characters in his novels “blocked off” ambitions of France to “possess the territory” of Algeria (p. 176, 178) Camus abstracted his surroundings - stripping them of signification - resulting in ethereal experiences as opposed to tangible reality - such as style, ornamentation, and detailing.

PRESENTED AT 6TH THEMATIC EAHN CONFERENCE HELD IN BRUSSELS, BE, MARCH 2019 PUBLISHED IN CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS FOLLOWING PEER REVIEW

MOTHER’S FUNERAL, THE STRANGER

PRISON CELL, THE STRANGER

HOME IN ALGIERS, THE FIRST MAN

COURTROOM DAYDREAM, THE STRANGER

THE SILENT CITY, THE PLAGUE

The above abstracted environments are illustrations of specific scenes in Camus’s work where the characters experience their surroundings through a series of phenomenological, sensorial descriptions.

55

MENTAL HEALTH CLOISTER 2019 PROFESSIONAL STUDIO AMES; BROOKLYN, NY W/ DAISY AMES, DR. MATTHEW STEINFELD, LEONARDO FUCHS, ALEK TOMICH

A mass timber structure which builds on the typology of a monastic cloister, our Mental Health Cloister proposes a new model for an urban-based psychiatric care facility. A ring of mental health professionals’ offices surrounds an open space, creating a partial refuge from the city in the central space and ultimately offering a place for meditation and reflection.

The offices open onto both the street and the courtyard, acknowledging that mental health care serves to negotiate between the expectations of society and the realities of one’s mental health.

Patients can exit directly into the city, or they can return to the courtyard for group activities and private moments of contemplation before their re-entry into the public realm. Serving as a transitional space that mediates between the privacy of the consulting room and the varied pressures of our shared social commons, the courtyard offers the possibility for community integration and engagement in a holding environment.

MENTAL HEALTH CLOISTER WAS THE WINNER OF THE 2020 ARCHITECT’S NEWSPAPER BEST OF DESIGN AWARDS, UNBUILT PUBLIC PROJECT CATEGORY

57

PROFESSIONAL

Like a monastic cloister, the central space serves as a place for group activity, connection and growth, if not simply a contemplative space for reflection.

58

MENTAL HEALTH CLOISTER

SITE PLAN; PHYSICAL MODEL; DETAILED SECTION 59

PROFESSIONAL

60

MENTAL HEALTH CLOISTER

61