S LAKE STREET

Retail Renovation Ti

FIRM: WOLCOTT ARCHITECTURE

Revit / Enscape / Adobe Softwares

Project Area: 8,000 ft 2

In the City of Pasadena's efforts to revitalize S Lake Street, we were entrusted with renovating one of its original buildings. Amidst this wave of renewal, we were approached by a client with a vision—to renovate one of the original buildings on this iconic street. A 45-degree corridor posed a challenge, hindering perspectives and confusing visitors. Our proposal was to straighten the corridor for a seamless view inside and out. We infused clean look by introducing up-to-date materials, creating a harmonious blend of past and present. The overhaul also included a new MEP system for efficient power usage, reducing the building's environmental impact. The transformation was remarkable. The corridor became an inviting pathway, drawing visitors deeper into the building. With its updated materials and efficient systems, the space felt both contemporary and rooted in history.

Our interior project on S Lake Street exemplifies Pasadena's commitment to revitalization and sustainable design. It invites all to witness the power of thoughtful renovations in transforming spaces, while preserving the street's authentic character. Step inside and experience the magic—a harmonious convergence of tradition, innovation, and environmental consciousness.

Thesis

Ensemble Adorné : Finite Boundary and Infinite Patterns

Instructor: Matias Del Campo / Sandra Manninger

Collaborators: Yongjoon Kim & Nathan Wesseldyk

Cinema 4D / Maya / Rhinoceros 5 / Adobe Softwares

Modern architecture has been looking for an optimal singularity in an attempt to construct a well-tailored object. However, nature is not a “homogeneous soup.” The language of modern architecture has been concealing the complex dynamics of things and ideas in a box of rationality. However, we see architecture as a means of revealing the complexity and the uncertainty of nature by employing patterns of a painterly quality, which allows for infinite possibilities of aesthetics beyond the realm of reason and rationality. Pattern is a medium for understanding a multiplicity of overlaying complex systems and capturing the moments of interaction. The pattern generates a hierarchical framework that allows for the potentiality of new organizational logics. These logics will also be affected by the patterns transitioning between magnitudes of scale from the urban and regional to the architectural detail. This ensemble of logics is the key to creating a framework of this project, which will direct the partto-whole relationship of the design.

This thesis explores the “Ensemble” of architecture that clusters different spatial entities of CERN’s new campus within a rigorous and finite organization by allowing the pattern to address the possibility of flexible transitions between different scalar compositions and the potential for future internal and external growth. Under the control of the system, the fundamental elements of a pattern can transform, evolve, and merge together. A variety of formal families composes a more complex group of patterns. A pattern can also transform, overlap, and grow in order to create a field of interactions. The infinite potential of a pattern that grows both inwards and outwards, both two-dimensionally and three-dimensionally, allows for responding to the increasing spatial needs of CERN. The infinity of the pattern continues on the surface of the visitor center by projecting itself on the topological manifolds. The adornment of the ensemble is the interface between the finite and the infinite.

Introduction

Our proposal explores how the idea of Ensemble can create maximum architectural potentiality by harnessing highly intricate pattern system within the geometric boundary.

Understanding CERN's Background

CERN’s ambition is not about application of science that responds to a specific problem, but about understanding natural systems at their largest and the smallest scales, and the relationships of everything in between. The ambition is reflected to its future expansion plan with FCC. (approx. circumference 100km)

Site

The massiveness of the future facilities, including the FCC, requires a solid organizational strategy, which is highly disciplined to meet the scientists’ needs, yet flexible enough to generate infinite spatial potentiality. Adjacency and relationship between the new campus and the existing campus

“Ensemble” is an idea about how to cluster different entities within a finite organization while allowing the possibility of flexible transition between different scales. The configurations can be morphologically varied and it operates as various spatial uses. To be specific, the rigorous organization of ensemble can create a higher intricacy that allows for a variety of formal typology in respect to its programmatic diversity.

Reflecting Pool Perspective

The pattern generates a multiplicity of axis and hierarchy globally and locally as well as connections and adjacencies. The pattern is an organizational strategy, The mechanism and interface between scalar orders of magnitude from the campus within the landscape to the ornamentation of the architecture. The pattern allows the potential of growth internally and externally. The agglomeration of the pattern permits a dynamic multiplicity of potential relationships, instead of static singularity. It is neither the platonic notion of ideal form nor is it formal optimization that responds to a specific contextual problem set. The idea of pattern and ensemble is reflected to the physical planning and programming of the new CERN campus.

Interior Perspective

The superimposition of pattern on the site acts as a formal basis of the recursive process for the building form. The pattern ties the building and the surrounding context together. Based on the base pattern overlaid on the site, multiple massing iterations have been produced.

The pattern not only acts as a form-generator, but also acts as an interface of conversion between 2D pattern and 3D materiality. It is projected to the building mass and dictate te material division and scaling architectural details.