J. Sawyer Davies Portfolio 2023 | mLA + mARCH

J. Sawyer Davies | 704.649.5603 | jd8wc@virginia.edu

Education

University of Virginia

School of Architecture

Charlottesville, VA | 2015-2018

Bachelors in Urban and Environmental Planning

Experience

University of Virginia

School of Architecture

Charlottesville, VA | 2020-2024

Masters in Landscape Architecture and Architecture

Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture | San Francisco, CA | Summer 2022

Intern

Designed and visualized landscape projects consisting of high-end residential, city parks, and hospitals. Designed custom pavers and wrote script in CAD for hospital rooftop landscape. Analyzed LEED requirements. Generated site sections for residence in Texas and rendered new site plans. Created custom bench models for high performance concrete furniture installations.

Wolf Josey Landscape Architects | Charlottesville, VA | Winter 2022

Extern

Worked on UVA’s Tree Master Plan for the Rotunda area of grounds, produced an axonmetric diagram of the site to categorize tree typology in relation to view. Responsible for generating topography models for this project and a local farm compound in Crozet, VA.

D.I.R.T Studio | Charlottesville, VA | Summer 2021

Field Work

Installed and constructed custom fence designs for residential projects. Prepared sites by clearing and pruning vegetation, removing debris, and grading. Maintained meadow installation on concurrent project.

EPR PC | Charlottesville, VA | Summer 2019 - Spring 2020

Planning Intern

Created maps and diagrams for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Local Foods, Local Places initiative, furthering understanding of cultural, geographic, and financial influences on food networks. Designed maps using VDOT data for Norfolk, VA and land use maps for James City County, VA.

Mudhouse Coffee Roasters | Charlottesville, VA | Summer 2019 - Winter 2021

Shift Leader

Charlotte Eagles FC | Charlotte, NC | Summer 2016 & Summer 2017

International Coach

Skills Proficiency

Adobe Illustrator | Adobe Photoshop | Adobe InDesign | ArcGIS Pro |

AutoCAD | Enscape | Microsoft Word | Microsoft PowerPoint | Lumion 12 |

Physical Model Making | Rhinoceros 3D | Sketching | French | Zoom

Working Knowledge

Adobe After Effects | Coding | Drone Photography | German | Grasshopper | Microsoft Excel | SketchUp | Video Editing

Research Awards

Cape Charles Storm water Management Planning | Prepared and implemented a plan for economic, social, and ecological success in Cape Charles, Virginia. Consulted with local officials and community members to create a positive, lasting impact.

Healthy Design Capstone | Studied the intersection of health and landscape/playscape design in hospitals, schools, and rehab facilities. Researched opportunities for improvement and case studies.

Landscape Architecture Departmental Merit Scholarship

2020 - Present

Architecture Departmental Merit Scholarship

2021 - Present

Teaching

History of Landscape Design I, II | UVA | Fall 2021 - Spring 2022

Teaching Assistant

Ecotech II | UVA | Spring 2022

Teaching Assistant

Theory of Urban Design | UVA | Current

Publications

Teaching Assistant LUNCH 17 | University of Virginia | 2021-2023

Editor

Table of Contents

Section I: Synthesis

Meander: A Spatial Sequence of Movement and Bathing .......................................................................................

Convivial Trajectories: Friendship Court Streetscape Re-Design ...........................................................................

Rotunda Apron Tree Catalogue Diagram ...................................................................................................................................

Finding and Grounding: Socio-Ecological Conditions of Charlottesville ........................................................

Section II: Urban Operations

Disaggregate: Repositioning the Interstitial ......................................................................................................................

Hybrid Piers: Manufacturing and Social Housing ..............................................................................

Section III: Mapping

&

Memory

Celebration Steps: Highlighting UVA’s Black Bus Stop ............................................................................................

Cheongycheon Case Study .....................................................................................................................................................

Section IV: Physical

Yamanashi Precedent Section Model ............................................................................................................................................

Section V: Parametric & Sonic

In many ways this portfolio is about hybridity, sensitivity, and care. Each project seeks to blur and entangle the distinctions between what are often confined professionally within the regular contours of Landscape or Architecture. My representational technique changes in response to the specific conditions of each project and certainly as my own positionality develops the patina of growth, experience, and nuance. Certain themes thread through each project and link the work contained within, but there is no formulaic approach or predictable outcomes.

When I’m not designing, you are likely to find me kicking a soccer ball with a few friends, feverishly competing over an inconsequential chess game, or trying to appease at least one of my cats.

Meander: A Sequence of Movement and Bathing

Meander envisions a new bathouse sequence to envelope and redefine two existing historic bathhouses in Warm Springs, VA. This sequence is guided by the larger geologic spatial patterns of the Appalachian mountains , both geologically and ecologically. In a way, the ridges and tree lines of the region act as veils for the valleys they enclose, fostering a cinematic visual play as one moves along the main routes. Meander responds to these conditions by offering a way to interpret the land, while also letting the land interpret the design. This design comes in contact with the ground at the fewest possible points, utilizing a tension system to maintain a light touch. The position of these points is dictated by three rules. The first is to never interrupt the existing stream, the second is maintaining the spatial integrity of the existing bathouses by not coming within 20ft of them. The third is to connect existing clusters of trees to form a singular canopy form. This project is called meander because of these spatial shifts on both the horizontal and vertical plane -- the 90 degree turns force one to pause at key points, while repositioning the body up off the ground facilitates and encourages new perspectives. The program is very simple, only what is necessary for the maintenance and use of the baths is incorporated. A series of new outdoor baths is situated at the end of the sequence at the lowest part of the site, mirroring the process of water flowing downhill until collecting and remaining still -- a theme again reflected and abstracted in the movement through the project. Meander establishes a new sequence of movement and bathing, complicating and clarifying the relationship of the old baths to the landscape through framing, veiling and the position of the body.

Reframing and Re-Entering

Convivial Trajectories: Friendship Court Streetscape Redesign

Detail Section: Rill Sidewalk Intersection with Metal Grating

Metal Grating 2”

L-Bracket

3” Steel Bolt

1/2” Laticrete Platinum Mortar Bed and Shims as Needed

Cast in Place in Concrete Base 3/8” Expansion Joint

Waterproof Concrete with Two Coats of Laticrete Hydroban Liquid Applied Waterproofing (TYP) 2’ 6”

#5’s at 12” O.C Both Directions

1”=1’

LimitofWorkandDesign

ProposedBuildingFootprint

Proposed Existing Site Section 1/4” = 1’ 22.00’ 2.0’ 5.4’ 10.50’ 10.50’ 20.50’ 7.75’ 30.00’ 3.25’ Sidewalk Rill Roadway PlayScape 13

Finding and Grounding: Socio-Ecological Conditions of Charlottesville

A place is not simply a network of pathways and structures to which they lead, but rather a complex landscape of topography, vegetation, history, race, and ultimately socio-ecological conditions. These conditions are embedded spatial figures and fields in the urban context. Here invisible and visible trajectories meet, weaving a complex narrative that is encoded in space.

This studio project explores the relationship of certain physical conditions and their relationship to race and wellbeing in the overall study of Charlottesville as a racialized topography. Urban canopy, southwest facing slopes, topography, and impermeable surfaces were all identified as fields that in isolation and in aggregate create unfavorable conditions for wellbeing. Charlottesville is situated in the piedmont region of Virginia, its most challenging season is the summer that brings intense, sweltering heat. All of the above conditions relate to the microclimatic conditions of spaces. A neighborhood that is situated on a ridge, with vast canopy coverage on a northeastern slope will experience this heat quite differently than a neighborhood on a south/southwest facing slope, with little canopy coverage and high levels of impermeable surfaces. Mapping these conditions and their intersections revealed vulnerable areas that correlated strongly with race, particularly the black population in Charlottesville.

The analysis of present day conditions was supplemented by a diachronic analysis delving further into the history of race and space of Charlottesville.

Disaggregate: Repositioning the Interstitial

By disaggregating program into narrow, separate and layered volumes interlaced with connecting bridges, stairs, and ramps – this project foregrounds the interstitial connective elements of the building, highlighting movement and allowing greater access to light, air, and visual connections. Disaggregate counteracts the typical relationship of structure to street in Fulton Market, instead offering a clear vocabulary of activity with open spaces for different degrees of gathering.

Layering the volumes and cladding them with facades of different opacities allows for variable levels of privacy and intricate visual relationships, especially in juxtaposition with the more open circulation corridors. A public plaza and rooftop garden act as dual attractors of movement in the central area of the design, while offices situated at each end of the project concentrate private work spaces. It is the this in-between condition that draws different users together and creates a dynamic workplace that refutes the physical and social bounds of the cubicle.

Hyrbid Piers: Manufacturing and Housing

This project seeks to interweave a hybrid manufacturing school and makerspace, social housing, and infrastructural park that redefines the relationship between the built environment and the east river socially, ecologically, and tectonically. Hybrid piers is grounded in a larger understanding of the city as topography and watershed. Early research was focused on the hydrology of the river, especially in relation to different storm events and climate change. In many ways the river and water itself is not confined to the thin boundary lines of edge, rather fluctuating and shifting, moving in and out of the city. On site, we were drawn to the industrial memory still persistent in Brooklyn. This project draws from typically industrial material such as corrugated panels, metal grating, and the typology of warehouses. The design proposes a structure that invites water into the site, and the public to the water, diffusing the boundaries between the two. By wrapping along the edge of the site and transitioning to the center, the building frames different spaces and offers a path to and from the water. Patterning of the city is embedded in the building as it shifts in scale to mediate relationships from the warehouse to housing tower along the edge of the water, responding as well to the spatial organization of buildings in the neighborhoods adjacent to the site. This morphological relationship is also embedded in the programmatic structure of the building, where the manufacturing space is concentrated at the base, the school weaves through the structure vertically, and exhibition, performance and gathering space is concentrated at the top.

Hydrologic Context and Landscape as Infrastructure

The landscape design protects the building from tidal changes and storm events, functioning infrastructurally. Also, it provides opportunities for a variety of aquatic habitats, wetland levels that take advantage of variable inundation levels, and microclimatic experiences. Because there is no door to the threshold for these spaces, they are a constant link to the community.

Massing Studies Framing

Stepping and Connecting Concept

Housing is modular and screened by corrugated metal panels which are perforated and operable. Our non housing program features glass panels and mullions that relate to the pattern of the panels but act to visually interrupt them, clearly legible from the exterior.

Each unit features a semi enclosed solarium/balcony space opposite of the circulation corridor. The same linear banding that guides the form of the building is also applied to the modular unit design where movement occurs especially at the edges.

Typical Units

Unfolded Section & Ecological Co-Production

Hybrid piers plays with the idea of piers that extend out into different territories, operating horizontally and vertically. The program of this project draws again from the history of production concentrated along the river’s edge, creating a high school focused on trade skills and manufacturing research. Additional makers spaces and manufacturing facilities are available after school hours and on a permanent basis for local companies that partner with the school. Exhibition and social spaces are a key component to the educational facilities and ultimate goal of providing opportunities for members of the larger public to participate. This project was coauthored by Blake Bissen.

Wetland Filtration Concept Plus Program Woven Vertically

Urban Renewal: A Vehicle for Racial Displacement

1957 | Predemolition

In the 1960s, the city of Charlottesville created a plan to demolish the Vinegar Hill Neighborhood, located along its most important and central axis. The thriving black community was displaced to a nearby neighborhood that was also demolished to make way for a federally funded housing project. The aerial photograph of Charlottesville’s Downtown core denotes the structures designated to be destroyed, and then observes its change through time. Following the neighborhood’s removal in 1965, the lot sat largely vacant for over 15 years. Today, in the place of churches, small businesses and ultimately a rooted community, stands vast expanses of parking lots, roadway, and large franchises. This diachronic analysis of Vinegar Hill was part of a larger exploration of impermeable surfaces and their relation to health and equity. This is one of the points where impermeability is at its most concentrated quite literally paving over the past.

Fragmented Spaces and Memory: Vinegar Hill

Celebration Steps: Highlighting UVA’s Black Bus Stop

Celebration Steps seeks to illuminate a historic space on the UVA grounds that has been appropriated by Black students, staff, and faculty as a place to gather, dance, rest, and find belonging in an otherwise unwelcoming social and physical landscape. The Black Bus Stop was no different from many of the other stops on grounds, rather it was chosen as a place to gather due to its central location -- an espcially improtant physical space before other forms of communciation rendered meeting elsewhere simpler. It is a place to see and be seen. A place claimed not given. This project explores the complex histories of the UVA Pavillion Gardens that sit next to the BBS as in-between spaces, drawing inspiration from the idea of in-betweenness both spatially and socially. Thge proposed design features a series of steps ascending what is currently a banal hill behind the BBS. Between these terraced steps are small planted gardens, whiel the steps themselves serve as places to perform and display not unlike a series of runways. The material language of the steps extends onto a paved plaza where changing paver frequencies and concrete bands reinforce the presence of the steps on what is a flat surface. Celebration steps draws from the notion of the bus stop as a place of identity, rest, and conviviality.

1950s:

INBETWEEN SPACES

1920s Early Aesthetic Rennovations

Anna Barringer, dauther of a professor, initially described the enclosure west of Hotel F as a highly functional area: "The back yard was constantly crowded by these delivery men and a kitchen house with quarters above for the cook and family, a coal bin, a wood pile, a chicken coop, and a hydrant. These then were the essential components of a back yard..." Later, the arrival of indoor heat, plumbing, baths, and kitchens meant the disappearance of earlier landscape features like wood piles, chicken coops, and coal bins. Backyards were planted into edible and ornamental gardens and porches were added for outdoor leisure.

Early 19th Century: Gardens are utilitarian, often workyards or waste dump sites as much as they are used for domesitc kitchens.

Coed Room: A sanctuary for women starting in 1928 (1920 decision allows female graduate students). Bettie Slaughter aka. Bettie Co-Ed runs it for 33 years. She provides emotional and physical support, “an institution herself.” Mentor, friend, surrogate mother, and much more, Bettie supported white women in a university system that denied her access and visibilty as a black woman. Current location of west range cafe.

“1935: Alice Jackson, from Richmond Virginia, and a graduate from Virginia Union University, applies for matriculation into the University of Virginia. She wanted to attain a master's in French. The Board of Visitors deny her application the NAACP tries to wage a battle with her case. They are unsuccessful at desegregating the University then, but have set a precedent to be followed fteen years later.”

The Garden Club of Virginia projects an alternate version of pleasure gardens in pursuit of beauty.

Isabella Gibbons: 1850-1863, held in slavery, cook in pavillion VI. 1867, Awarded diploma from New England Freedmen’s Aid Society Charlottesville Normal School, she became a teacher. Earliest example of a woman teaching and learning at UVA.

Chonggyecheon Case Study

The ChonGae Source Point is a unique social, cultural, historical and urban lanscape by MYK Design. Various material and spatial strategies draw from the History of Korea, seeking to unite people with this previously paved-over stream with a vision for reunification and healing. The complex geometries of the source point are sculptural in nature, udnulating and twisting to meet the water. In these excerpts from a case study, certain moments are highlighted as design tactics in an acitvity lexcion, and diagrams as well as an ideogram speak to the design logic behind the project as well as the embedded memories and histories it draws from. These are speculative in nature, but are based in rigorous research and analysis.

Hang Ten

Urban Shoreline

No Shoes, No Problem

Case Study - ChonGae | Cheonggye Canal Source Point

LAR 6020 | Meyer, Mitchell | Spring 2021 Sawyer Davies

Design tactics

Image sources from left: ASLA Awards MYKD Landzine FLICKR

Material Meaning and Context Ideogram

A prerequisite of reunification is separation, fragmentation. Addressing this condition in a way that does not simply attempt to reassemble, but rather find a new way to connect ensures a recognition of past and future. Water acts as a connecting, and shaping symbol. Symbolically it is dynamic. It connotes wisdom and the flow of time. It is both calm and vivacious. It is complicated and changing, ultimately connecting and shaping the stone sourced from the 9 regions of the Korean Peninsula. Water and earth are placed in dialogue.

Fragmentation Concept - Glass shattering from source points

Introduction of Materiality - Stone

Channel Water through thalweg, allow it to smooth and carve

Placement of water jets at 9 source points and final human touches

Yamanashi Broadcasting Center Case Study

This Section Model at 1/3” = 1’ scale seeks to characterize the relationship between the rigid vertical cores of Kenzo Tange’s Yamanashi Broadcasting Center and each modular floor. Here each floor cantilevers from a single cylinder structure, exposing the tectonic nature of the concrete construction. Below is an image courtesy of Architzer and a section traced over and modified from a base image courtesy of ArtStor.

Residential Panel Fence Construction

Completed Summer 2021

D.I.R.T Studio

Axial Mold and Garnet Casting

Using a 3d printed axial mold specifically calibrated to fit onto a rolling implement, a unique concrete panel was created. The roller mold plays with the idea of texture, and is inspired by the topographical condition of dunes. A concrete mixture was infused with garnet (a waste product of concrete disposal), mixed, and then finished with a top layer of garnet. This medium is what the 3d printed mold was rolled over to create a unique cyclical pattern. The addition of garnet into the casting process resulted in a dynamic and rich coloration that fades in certain areas and remains vibrant in others -- changing over time.

Drawing Water: Sediment Simulation and Representational Experimentation

This project was part of an elective course focused on representational techniques and technical understanding with focus on water. Pictured adjacent, a geomorphology table was used to simualte sediment movement in alluvial and coastal conditions. Plastics are color coded according to their weight and size, with a water outflow situated at one end of the basin.The table acts as a drawing itself, allwoing water to determine the outcome. Various iterations were explored. Some focused on observing extrenmely gradual changes with a consistent river-like flow, while others focused on many iterations of wave conditions. Ultiamtely, various mesh configurations and devices were used to approximate the effect of submereged vegetation on sedimentation. During this process, I focused on observing specific sediment formations and documentating relationships. From this a particuallrty intersting form arose that became the basis for the final project. Experimenting with drawing techniques in a simialr manner to Catherine Dee, the image was projected onto a wall and traced onto a 24” x 36” piece of paper with 7 different pencil lineweights. The finished drawing is an abstractional representation that questions scalar relationships and synthesizes several techniques in the hopes of generating new udnerstandings.

Sonic Recalibration | A Spatial Meditation

This project is audio-centric in nature, prioritizing the sonic experience and soundscape as the guiding element of design. Situated adjacent to a reservoir, and at an intersection between several edge conditions, the design responds to the innate sonic conditions and prevailing wind patterns in order to create the conditions for a meditative composition. Ground material, habitat, plant architecture, wind, water, and any number of combinations there-in serve as the instruments of the soundscape around which an experience is tailored. Cut into the ground, a path derived from the notion of the meditative maze provides a clear oscillating movement from out to in through a series of raised mounds. These mounds are arranged parametrically, with the largest mounds at the north east and south western area of the design (corresponding to the greatest wind velocity during the winter and summer seasons), receding as the user moves closer to the center until the path culminates in a deep depression cut into the earth, not unlike the journey experienced in the Japanese tea ceremony. Through the experience, visual inputs will be limited and frequently changed as different sonic experiences are highlighted in a journey that culminates in a reset, allowing a recalibration to greater awareness of the soundscape that is so often a background influence.

Ground Material x Slope Sonic Index

Ground Material x Slope Sonic Index

Paved

Sound is never pure, rather it is simultaneously an action and reaction. As users we impact the sound created in a landscape as we move through it. Our movement is an unavoidable interaction that necessitates contact with the ground, this interaction generates sound that changes with the ground material, but also with the amount of pressure with which our body meets the ground. This pressure changes with slope and so too does the noise produced. This can be expanded to look at rasised or sunken paths, stairs, other materials and footwear choice (as well as vegetaional and laerger landform considerations).

Loose Rocks

Low Grass (Dry)

By creating four unique parts to the composition and encircling them, one can experience several parts all at once depending on how the other parts of the maze are activated based by users movement and wind conditions. This allows for greater control and variety than a linear path where there is less opportunity for overlaping sounds unique to each user, climatic condition, and time. Additionally, just as when one is focused on reading their part in a song they are unable to visualize the other parts, a condition enforced by the maze in contrast to a linear path with total visual clarity.

mound bu ers wind in cut, limited noise

water ampli es noise of path and grass

mound bu ers wind in cut, but grass noise prevails above

Envelope

Eye

Level Grass

- Focal Point Insect Habitat