Selected Work Russell Low 2018

2016 - 2018

Portfolio

Low

r-low.com

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Russell Low: Selected Work

01 Dirty Realism

02 Superstrata

03 Eaglebrook

04 Maximal

05 Four Figures

06 Kitbash

04-19 52-61

20-31 62-75

32-51 76-83

rl

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CV and Contents

Work Experience

About

Education

Sorenson Office & Partners Brooklyn, NY

I am designer based in New York

Pratt Institute, B.Arch 2018 2013 - 2018

Rapt Studio San Francisco, CA

City currently attending the Pratt Institute School of Architecture. I will be graduating with my Bachelor of Architecture in the Spring of 2018. I have worked on a variety of project types and scales and is an effective public speaker.

Intern office of 30

Skills

Teaching Experience

Digital Tools Rhino 3D Grasshopper Revit TSplines Sketchup Maya Unity AutoCAD Vray 2 + 3 Mental Ray for Maya Maxwell Render Adobe Suite

Pratt Institute School of Architecture Brooklyn, NY

2015 - 2016

Intern office of 5

2015 - 2016

Pratt School of Design Brooklyn, NY 2018

Installation Designer team of 6 Pratt Undergraduate Archives Brooklyn, NY 2015 - 2017

Lead Designer and Archival Coordinator office of 5 DE+ Studio San Francisco, CA 2014 - 2015

Intern office of 5 Jag Architects San Francisco, CA 2014

Intern office of 2

Oakland Technical High School 2009 - 2013

2016 - 2018

Teaching Assistant, Design 102, Spring 2016 - Spring 2018 Representation 01, Fall 2017 Generative Virtual Reality Architecture, Fall 2017

Fabrication Model making Laser cutting 3D Printing

References Scott Sorenson President, Sorenson Office & Partners ss@soap-ny.org

Publication Pratt Institute’s annual publication of student work

2013 - 2014, 2014 - 2015, 2015 - 2016

Michele Gorman Adjunct Associate Professor, Pratt School of Architecture mgorman6@pratt.edu

Photography Model photography

e w t

russell@r-low.com r-low.com 510 734 3140

contact

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Di

01

Su

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dirty realism 2017

Ea

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eaglebrook 2017

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2016

01 Dirty Realism

02 Superstrata

03 Eaglebrook

04 Maximal

05 Four Figures

06 Boathouse

52-61

62-75

maximal 2016

Bh

05 four figures

20-31

2017

Ma

Ff

04-19

superstrata

32-51 76-87

boathouse 2016

Russell Low Selected Work

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01 dirty realism 2017

Site San Francisco, CA

Level Advanced Design Semester 09

Classification Civic

Dirty Realism

Left: Bathhouse Hot Pool

Dirty Realism: Towards the New Civic The idea of a reality is a construct, not a given.

Our world is proliferated by fictions of every type, so much so that the idealized version of reality is so commonplace that the “fake image� has is no longer thought of as a fabrication. The notion of a Dirty Reality - one that celebrates the banality of urban life - starts to restructure the idea of how the mundane plays a much larger role in our daily lives. Aspirations of utopia are not the future of place and culture. The new civic will be small, emergent, hidden in plain sight - a fiction of its own.

How can a divergent urban system start to reassemble the way the one thinks about their city, and more importantly their spatial relationship to their fellow citizens? United across a larger field through color and tectonics, the new civic begins to play an urban game of hide and seek. Camouflaged behind banal containers, the unexpected intensity of the carved interiors barely unveil themselves from the street.

As overlapping contexts flatten and then refold onto each other as the system moves across space and time, architectural containers are no longer bound to autonomy. The city begins to reveal itself as a new series of layered containments. Rather than reading San Francisco as an arrangement of adjacencies [neighborhoods], the reconfiguration uncovers the larger field as a series of smaller moments from zones that are otherwise perceived as unlinked, building a new sense of collectivism and community.

Critic Jason Lee

Semester Summer 2017

Tools Rhino 3d, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, 3d Printing, Rendering

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Dirty Realism

Design 403

Summer 2017

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Fig. 01, 02

Fig. 03

Conceptual site plan analysis of Wong Kar Wai’s movies, Chungking Express (1994) and Fallen Angels (1995)

Elements of Architecture, corridor.Corridor iteration section.

Fig. 04

Fig. 05

Generative site plan showing corridor iterations deployed throughout overlapping fragments of San Francisco.

Sections of initial corridor element iterations using the carving tectonic.

Left: Cinematic Site Plans

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Right: Corridor Element Iterations

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Design 403

Dirty Realism

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Fig. 01 - 03

Fig. 02

Cropped site plan moments, showing multiple elements across the city flattened on each other.

Public Bathhouse Fig. 01 Public Pool

Summer 2017

Left: Site Plan

Right: Tracking System Deployment

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Fig. 03

Fig. 04

Public Homeless Persons Shower

Deployment of the wayfinding system that begins to carve out an alternative reading of the urban field. As one gets closer to bathhouse, swimming pool, and homeless persons’ shower, the visual system starts to become present.

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Dirty Realism

Design 403

Summer 2017

Left: Pool Model and Street Elevation

Right: Pool Section, Model, and Interior Perspective

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Dirty Realism

Design 403

Summer 2017

Left: Bathhouse Section Model and Street Elevation

Right: Bathhouse Section, Interior Perspective, and Plan

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Dirty Realism

Design 403

Summer 2017

Public Pool Perspective

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Dirty Realism

Design 403

Summer 2017

Site Scale Model Set

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Current Ongoing Thesis Degree Project

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Site Los Angeles, CA

Level Degree Project Research Semester 10

superstrata 2017 - 2018

Classification Research

Superstrata

Left: Generative Collage

Superstrata: Topomutations for a Vertical LA The street is the last remaining active public space in Los Angeles. But its capacity to provide the public a space for more than just the automobile has been abandoned. Vertical development has redefined the urban experience for the Angelino, leaving the ground for aspirations of elevated density without any connection to the exterior. The street remains dormant, devoid of any relief from the hard edges that encase your urban experience. But the exterior volume of the street presents an interesting opportunity for the public to reclaim space by extending the street vertically, a new datum off of which public space can grow.

The interrogation of the architectural envelope has been extensively studied at the ground level, but has not been properly examined in spaces that are not attached to the ground plane. The future of public space in LA demands the examination of the erosion of the binary relationship between inside and outside that is typically found when space is elevated off the ground.

The volume above the street becomes a site for introducing a new type of open space, one which grows in and through the built environment, at once integrating itself with, and offering escape from the oppressive envelopes and interiorities of a vertically intensive cityscape. This open space of the new street creates a volume which liberates itself from the traffic and congestion of the ground plane, reinventing a new topography for a pedestrian experience of the urban environment. Here the pedestrian is able to leave behind the overwhelming and exhausting aspects of urban life, accessing a space which allows them to briefly escape their day to day life. This new streetscape turns pedestrian into urban hiker, navigating an invented topography that invigorates them with a new form of urban play, one that transcends the spatial monotony of the typical experience by infusing the given context with entirely new hybrids of spatial environments - topomutations for a vertical LA. In collaboration with Sebastian Lopez Wilson.

Critic Dragana Zoric Evan Tribus

Semester Fall 2017

Tools Rhino 3d, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Rendering

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Superstrata

Design 501

Fall 2017

Left: Generative Collage

LA 2050 Future of Public Space: elevated distributed ground plane

LA 2017 Existing Public Space

Right: Datum Diagrams

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Superstrata

Design 501

Fall 2017

Generative Collages

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Superstrata

Design 501

Fall 2017

Research Booklet Excerpts

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Superstrata

Design 501

Fall 2017

Desert Collage

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Ea 03

Site Eaglebrook, MA

Level Advanced Design Semester 08

eaglebrook 2017

Classification Educational

Eaglebrook

Left: Worm’s Eye Axon

Eaglebrook This project for Eaglebrook School in Deerfield, Massachusetts is to demolish the two existing art and science buildings on campus, and redesign a new building that combines both art and science departments. Eaglebrook School is private boy’s boarding school, grades six through nine. Located just away from the perimeter of the town of Deerfield, the school is on a grassy shallow hillside surrounded by forest. The campus is essentially insulated by forest and rolling hills, so naturally the incorporation of landscape design and connection to the views of the wildlife is of high priority.

The design of the project addresses several critical relationships. Mainly, the form of the building is designed to absorb and speak to the corner of the pond. A simple linear volume is created to reflect the dominant axis of the edge of the pond, then the volume bends in plan in order to create a dialogue with the corner of the pond.

The corner of the pond then becomes a focal point for the amphitheatre, which emerges out of the landscape in the curved corner of the volume. Throughout the building, the spaces used for group gathering and socializing become moments where the facade opens up, allowing the beauty of the natural landscape to enter the building.

Furthermore, the various art department spaces (such as painting, ceramic, and stone carving studios) are intermixed with the various science department spaces (such as labs and classrooms). This allows neither art nor science to have a distinct area of the building; both fields are interrelated allowing the students to understand the inherent similarities between the two. This act of intermixing reduces any spatial hierarchy that would keep the two fields separate from each other. This idea is reinforced sectionally, as the entire building is essentially one continuous interior volume, with only a few light partitions and glass walls to create enclosed classrooms. Communication and serendipitous interactions between art and science students is opened up by this continuous, flowing space.

This building creates and promotes a different type of academic and social culture within the school. Typically, educational spaces are highly divided and autonomous; an educational building is usually a group of individual parts that do not spatially blend into each other. By having all of the group learning spaces connected, the design encourages the school culture to shift towards a more collaborative micro community.

Critic Lou Goodman

Semester Fall 2017

Tools Rhino 3d, Photoshop, Illustrator, Laser Cutting, Model Building, 3d Printing, Rendering

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Eaglebrook

Design 402

Spring 2017

Iterative Development Sequence

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Eaglebrook

Design 402

Spring 2017

Model Perspectives

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Eaglebrook

Fig. 01 Interior perspective in the ground floor computer lab

Design 402

Spring 2017

Interior Perspective

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Eaglebrook

Design 402

south elevation (top)

Spring 2017

Above: West Elevation

north elevation (bottom)

Below: Section B

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Eaglebrook

Design 402

Spring 2017

Left: Section D

Right: Wall Section

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Eaglebrook

Design 402

Spring 2017

Left: Pond Level Plan

Right: Section C

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Eaglebrook

Design 402

Spring 2017

Above: Perspective

perspective

Below: Section A

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Eaglebrook

Design 402

Spring 2017

Model Perspective

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Ma 04

Site n/a

Level Arch 581 Semester 07

Maximal 2016

Classification Educational

Eaglebrook

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Project Title

Design 403

Fall 2017

Left: Fish Eye Perspective

Maximal: an Analysis The following drawings are analytical explorations into the flatteneing of two and three dimensional space. Using Shin Takamatsu’s Kirin Plaza building in Osaka, Japan as a precedent, this set of drawings analyzes the “thick 2d” facade ornament as a system of layered components. The maximalism of the precedent’s architectural elements is further pushed through the drawing process, which seeks to extrapolate and reconfigure the idea of two dimensional depth.

Critic Jason Lee

Semester Fall 2016

Tools Rhino 3d, Photoshop, Illustrator, Rendering

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Maximal

Arch 581

Fall 2016

Left: Elevation

Right: Ornament

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Maximal

Arch 581

Fall 2016

Exploded Axon

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Maximal

Arch 581

Fall 2016

Interrupted Field

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Site Venice, Los Angeles, CA

Level Advanced Design Semester 07

four figures 2017 - 2018

Classification Residential

Four Figures

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Project Title

Design 403

Fall 2017

Left: Urban Scale Impact

Infra-House: Four Figures Residence Alternative models of domestic life have recently emerged through the shifting of traditional boundaries between public and private. This has come about with a direct relationship to shifting boundaries between work, leisure, and family life.

The model for how one occupies a residence has transformed because of the internet. The homes has become an opportunity for the expansion of how people conceive of the sharing of their privacy. The private interiority of the home has opened up to the exterior and virtual world. Commonly referred to as the Sharing Economy, this new paradigm of strangers living with strangers offers an intriguing opportunity to use create new types of home experiences.

The Infra-House operates as a homesharing residence as well as take away restaurant. The Four Figures are wall systems that begin to emphasize the importance of sharing infrastructural resources, such as water, power, and heat, via a transluscent medium. The center of the home performs as a food sharing gathering space for the neighborhood, while the rest of the home can be rented out via homesharing apps such as Airbnb.

Critic Lawrence Blough

Semester Fall 2016

Tools Rhino 3d, Photoshop, Illustrator, Laser Cutting, Model Building, 3d Printing, Rendering

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Infra-House

Design 401

Fall 2016

Airbnb - LA, 2016 Avg. price per night

No. of Airbnb listings in most popular areas

Desired rented spaces

% of monthly rent earned from hosting your home

Airbnb Diagrams

Types of desired amenities

in Bathroom

in Kitchen

in Bedroom

in Living and Dining rooms

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Infra-House

Design 401

Fall 2016

Above: Upper Plan

Below: Ground Plan

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Infra-House

Design 401

Fall 2016

Above: Section A

Below: Section B

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North Elevation

South Elevation

East Elevation

West Elevation

Infra-House

Design 401

Fall 2016

Left: Elevations

Right: Infra Axon

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Infra-House

Fig. 01 Sleep / Social Wall System

Design 401

Fall 2016

Below: Models of the wall systems

Fig. 02 Sleep / Social Wall System

Above: Corner Perspective

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Site Inwood, Manhattan

Level Comprehensive Design Semester 06

boathouse 2016

Classification Institutional

Boathouse

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Left: Perspective from park

Boathouse The Boathouse for the Columbia University at the northern tip of Manhattan operates as a public edge for the neighborhood community while simultaneously performing as a private rowing complex. The presence of the private institution’s elite sport in a working class neighborhood immediately became the most significant adjacency the design must address. With no community engagement programs currently in existence, this public edge begins to erode the unapproachable nature of the building’s program. Using glulam construction, the tectonic system creates a layering of blurred edges that allows for a dematerialization of the perimeter. With the ground floor serving as rowing boat storage, the top floor contains spaces for the team such as atheletic exercises and locker rooms, as well as classrooms for community children programs.

In collaboration with Ana Tan.

Critic Christian Lynch

Semester Spring 2016

Tools Rhino 3d, Photoshop, Illustrator, Rendering, Model Building

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Boathouse

Design 302

Spring 2016

Left: Upper Plan

Right: Section B, Model

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Boathouse

Design 302

Spring 2016

Wall Section and Details

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Boathouse

Design 302

Spring 2016

Section Model

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Boathouse

Design 302

Spring 2016

Public Edge Model

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Visit my website for more work.

e w t

russell@r-low.com r-low.com 510 734 3140