2023 Design Portfolio - SVH

Sarah

Van Horne Architectural Design Portfolio 1. Virtual Mural Galley 2. Uneven Geographies 3. Bridging the Gap 4. Nature Healing 5. Buoyant Micro Home 6. Echolocation Pavilion 7. Imprisoned 8. Space 9. Lost & Found

12.07.22 SVH

The design proposal for a virtual mural gallery utilizes the adjacent walls of the neighboring buildings as spaces for digital art work. Rather than defining a set studio space, the volume is flexible with no formal boundary between patron and artist. The tiered series on inhabitable slabs are situated in a way to provide visual connection between the two sides. The project is divided into three modules with grated transition spaces in between so that users can move from one program to the next. The module located in the back of the site, serves as the central circulation area where users can go between floors. These volumes break up the space in the vertical direction and provide variety within the layered slabs.

1. Virtual Mural Gallery

The natural properties of these transition spaces filter daylight and lend to the lightness of the project, as light perforates through on the grates connecting the ground plane to the roof plate. The use of slabs, thin columns, and beams also emphasize the lightness of the project with the art as the focal point rather than the structure.itself. The tectonic upper is juxtaposed with the stereotomic lower basement cut into the site. The basement contains private areas such as bathrooms, offices, and storage.

Zoning of Bogotá, Colombia Estrado 1 Estrado 2 Estrado 3 Estrado 4 Estrado 5 Estrado 6 Rural

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The zoning map of Bogotá, Colombia investigates the socio-spatial patterns of the zoning policies in place that reproduce and reinforce uneven development and social inequality. This uneven development manifests itself both socially and spatially at multiple scales and illustrates how the distribution of power between private and public entities establishes itself in the spread of new development and built space.

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Source: Sanchez Ayala, Luis. Planning to Segregate: The Case of Bogota, Colombia. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339153294_Planning_to_Segregate_Te_Case_of_Bogota_Colombia.

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The scale comparison maps analyze the density and spread of urban programs in cities around the world compared to a site in Bogotá, Colombia. Compared to the density of residential neighborhoods in Portland, Oakland, and Santa Cruz, it becomes clear that the residential neighborhoods in Bogotá are designed as city blocks as opposed to individual units. However, the density of Bogotá is more spread compared to the megablocks in Berlin and Madrid.

2. Uneven Geographies

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This proposal works to undermine the socio-spatial patterns and policies in place in Bogotá, Colombia that reinforce uneven development and social inequality by investing in a public development project between two middle class stratas. Bridging the gap between the two neighborhoods separated by a highway, the public pavilion provides community members with public amenities including showers, laundry, bike racks, market stalls, and community spaces. Formally, these programs cling onto the top-down, winding infrastructure that serves as the circulation path.

3. Bridging the Gap

WETLANDS Wetlands are ecosystems such as swamps, marshes, or bogs covered intermittently with shallow water or have soil saturated with moisture.

•Flood Prevention: “Wetlands trap and then slowly release rainwater, snowmelt, groundwater, and floodwater. Trees and the roots of other plants slow the speed of runoff and distribute it over the floodplain.

•Biodiversity: Wetlands are key habitats for fish and wildlife.

Freshwater Wetlands Act of 1975 intent to preserve, protect and conserve freshwater wetlands and their benefits, consistent with the general welfare and beneficial economic, social and agricultural development of the state.

(Source: NYSDEC)

BIODIVERSITY HUMAN IMPACT ON WETLANDS •Humans have significalntly contributed to the detorioration of wetlands through land development, agriculture, water pollution, air pollution, and the introduction of invasive species.

•Climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of naturally occuring events hurting many ecosystems including wetlands.

Biodiversity is the variety of life on earth at all it's levels, from genes to ecosystems.

•Ecosystem services: Humans rely on services ecosystems provide such as freshwater, pollination, soil fertility, food, and medicine.

•Reduces disease: there is a close link between disease outbreaks and the degradation of nature.

•Solution to Climate Change: Biodiversity reduces carbon emissions by storing carbon, and provides a buffer to extreme storms and flooding caused by climate change.

•Economic Incentive: Our economy relies on biodiversity as commodities.

Of the 160 threatened or endangered species identified by the NYSDEC, 50% are wetland species.

INVASIVE SPECIES •An invasive species is an organism that is not native to a particular area and causes environmental harm by altering the ecosystem.

• On the site, algae is an invasive species.

Water Chestnut

Eurasian Water-milfoil

Curly Pondweed

RARE ANIMALS Rare animals are listed by NYS as Endangered Threatened, Special Concern, or Rare.

Spruce Grouse

Peregrine Falcon

Piping Plover

Bog Turtle

Eastern Tiger Salamander

Pink Mucket

Short-eared Owl

RARE PLANTS Rare plants are listed by NYS as Endangered Threatened, Special Concern, or Rare.

Karner Blue Butterfly

Swamp White Oak

Brittle Fern

Green Ash Tree

Ebony Spleenwort

Lady Fern

Royal Fern

Swamp Horsetail

Shining Clubmoss

Site State Regulated Freshwater Wetland State Regulated Wetland Checkzone Freshwater Emergent Wetland Freshwater Forested/Shrub Wetland Freshwater Rare Plants or Animals Source NYSDEC 2021

On Architecture’s agency to undo human harms This project explores the agency architecture has to restore the natural landscape closer to its pre-existing form in order to undo the harms humans have done. Although this is impossible due to climate change and other irreversibilities, it is still beneficial to try to the extent that we can in order to preserve what we have left. The idea is to allow nature to heal itself through limiting human intervention and human interaction. This is done by having strict boundaries between the parts of the site humans can enter and what’s left to nature. This hand-off approach restores the site into the original wetland habitat which will naturally encourage biodiversity and help with the issue of endangered wetland species.

Restoring the wetland also addresses the site’s flooding issue as wetlands naturally serve as flood prevention.g

The goals of restoration, preservation, and healing are translated into the architecture. The system is a series of boardwalks raised above the ground to minimize the structure’s direct impact on the landscape. The boardwalk is a pathway through the site’s connective programmatic spaces meandering around the preexisting natural obstacles avoiding contact with natural boundaries. The series of metal arches over the pathway serve as a metaphorical cage trapping the human into space so they can’t interfere with the exterior. Additionally, the programmatic spaces are covered with a cage facade, again reinforcing the narrative of explicitly separating humans from nature. These cage forms also encourage foliage growth onto them, as plants can climb up the cage and engulf the structure. Overtime, these cages will be overgrown with foliage, and metaphorically is a way for nature to reclaim its territory.

4. Nature Healing

The floating micro home contains three modules supported by a series of plastic pontoons on a steel truss system. The birch lattice diffuses sunlight into the rooms covering both interior and exterior spaces. Using scalability, the module has the potential to multiple and link together to form communities of different sizes.

Glass Underlay Solar Panel Birch Plywood Rigid Insulation Metal Framing

Double Pane Window

Birch Lattice Birch Plywood Rigid Insulation

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Birch Plywood Rigid Insulation Steel Piping Steel Epoxy Coating

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5. Buoyant Micro Home

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The project is located in Syracuse, NY on the site of the controversial Columbus Statue.

The proposal deemphasises the site as a symbol of stolen power by removing the statue entirely and replacing it with a public pavilion that aligns with the social goals of the socio stratified neighborhood. The circular amphitheater space is built through the tiering of concrete circular structures. Levels are tilted on an axis for accessibility purposes and to allow the user to meander around the tiers before arriving into the central space. The arrangement of columns provides visual connection between the modules in the public market place while still defining space and limited access.

6. Echolocation Pavilion

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The landscape of the Yellow Pine Pit in central Idaho has been a wasteland ever since the gold pit mine was abandoned during the 1940s and has recently gained interest by the antimony extraction company Perpetua. This design proposal is a research center and living space that questions how community is built through the lens of a capitalist society.

Interior Perspective With no separation between work life and leisure life, workers are more efficient as their work consumes them and seeps into every aspect of their life.

The bottom floor is a singular communal space containing work areas, lounge areas, and kitchen areas. This performative social space promotes consistent interaction and transparent living as individuals learn how to live together and work together in one space. Movable furniture and temporary curtain systems give dwellers the illusion of control over their space and how they live their lives as they can design and redesign the interior based on their needs for the space. This creative freedom hides the reality that through the capitalist system, workers are treated like machines and disposable commodities.

Nested within the living units in the endangered plant sanctuary. The plant sanctuary is a way for the proposal to restore the site by growing and maintaining native endangered plants. The irony comes from the fact that the landscape has already been depleted and destroyed from unsustainable Section extractive mining and will only be more because of Perpetua’s mining proposal.

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7. Imprisoned

Objects superimposed on a fantasy space landscape questioning the boundary between reality and fantasy. Through the use of monochromatic tone, different subjects compete for spatial hierarchy.

8. Space

Lost & Found is a living museum in Berlin, Germany where lost items are on display for the public to view and interact with.

Lost items are not only valuable to the owner or past owner, they are valuable to the common person because they provide an intimate snapshot into history. Being on display in this exhibition space reflects this value.

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APARTMENT FLOOR PLAN 3

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Apartment 1900 sq ft Balcany 2100 sq ft

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9. Lost & Found

LOST AND FOUND MUSEUM 24.5’

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Lost and Found Museum 4600 sq ft

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LOST AND FOUND RETRIEVAL FLOOR PLAN 2

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Lost and Found Retrieval 2600 sq ft 45.5’ 44’

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The formal maze structure represents the endless nature of lost things, and provides the user/viewer the personal experience of “finding” the lost thing.

The formal structure of the maze is brought up through plan forming tiered apartment units. Maintaining the maze walls in plan creates an atmosphere where apartment users relearn how to live in this unconventional space. The hope is that this intimate experience reinforces the extent of which “home” is definable by the inhabitants.

12.07.22 SVH