ISSUE:007 spring | summer

ISSUE:

Volume 007 / UTSoA Student Work 2010

1 University Station A6220 SOC #426 Austin, TX 78712 issue@austin.utexas.edu http://soa.utexas.edu/publications/issue/ Š2011 ISSUE: All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-0-9786228-6-2 Printed in Austin, Texas

2010 Foreword

Spring Interviews Exhibitions Studio Abstracts Studio Work Course Work

4

6 8 12 16 24 84

Summer 98 Studio Abstracts Studio Work Course Work

100 102 110

Fall 118 Interviews Exhibitions Studio Abstracts Studio Work Course Work

120 124 130 140 196

Acknowledgements

214

Foreword ISSUE: is an annual student-run publication featuring graduate and undergraduate work at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. Its intent is to foster interaction and the interchange of ideas among students as well as to record the intellectual activities of the UTSoA.

Practicing architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and interior design is rich, challenging and rewarding work. Within the pages of this book we record a special year of work at The University of Texas School of Architecture and at this reflective juncture we savor the 2010 centennial celebration of the school’s past accomplishments, and turn to focus on the future.

As a second-generation alumna of the School and a faculty member here for almost twenty years, I have a deep appreciation for the evolution of architectural education at The University of Texas. From the renowned “Texas Rangers” who developed a progressive curriculum and set a course for the School in the 1950s, to the newest faculty members who represent a multitude of approaches and experience, the school’s legacy of teaching innovation continues.

As architecture professors, our task is to prepare students for a rapidly changing world, one that we can imagine, but not predict. Although we do not know precisely what coming decades will bring, we know that fast-changing innovations and the ability to address difficult issues will continue to command our attention. We also know that in an increasingly complex society and environment, we cannot rely on any single approach to problem-solving.

And, we know that to advance, our practice of architecture must embrace

other disciplines. Therefore, education of future architects must engage with our changing world, and teach the skills that will be needed to adapt to it.

Now more than ever, the School fully embraces this teaching philosophy.

A wide range of programs celebrates the vitality of a multi-disciplinary and interdependent practice of architecture— one that encompasses everything from new technologies to humanitarian concerns. Architects must always weigh the artistic with the practical, and good design is at the core of this balancing act.

Harmonizing these challenges is a skill, indeed a methodology, which must be honed with a multi-pronged education which prepares students to manage the inherent conflicts that architects face.

ISSUE:007 presents a glimpse of our students’ often provocative explorations, innovative works and critical studies from the past year. The projects and proposals in this book contemplate myriad—often conflicting—agendas: from the interests of users and the challenges to those interests, to the specific demands of a project and accommodation of societal concerns. The work reflects the creative energy and ideas that spill over from our classrooms, and into our studios. As evidenced by the projects featured in this book, our students have already begun to imagine the future, bringing a diverse range of insights and influence to bear on their work.

Elizabeth Danze University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture Associate Professor

Foreword / 2010 / 4-5

Studio Abstracts 16 16 16 17 17 17 18 18 18 19 19 19 20 20 20 21 21 21 22 22 22 23 23

Context and Architectural Production / Smilja Milovanovic-Bertram, Coordinator Judy Birdsong, Jennifer Marsh, Clay Shortall, Lois Weinthal DENSITY | San Antonio and the [Mega]city / Charlton Lewis, Coordinator Elizabeth Alford, Sinclair Black, Kevin Moore Meshworks / Igor Siddiqui Zilker Clubhouse / Ulrich Dangel, Coordinator John Blood, Ernesto Cragnolino Medical Suite University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston / Carl Matthews Engaging the Street: A Multi-use Building on Guadalupe and 24th / Michael Benedikt Building as Cure: Architecture for Mental Health & Illness / Elizabeth Danze Green Austin / Larry Doll Food + Architecture / Michael Garrison Negotiating the Ground Line / Joyce Rosner The Dallas Urban Laboratory Studio: Riparian City / Dean Almy Sustainability Innovations Studio: Green Monsters / Michael Beaman A Gaze at New Orleans: Strategies and Operations for Meaningful Buildings / Angelo Bucci Measuring the World Through the Things We Make / Coleman Coker Whole Foods: Past, Present and Future / Tamie Glass Inks Dam: Environmental Industry / Cisco Gomes & Russell Krepart Alley Flat Initiative / Louise Harpman Model Sustainable Development for the Braker Lane MCC Tract, Austin / Barbara Hoidn Reinventing Low-Carbon Design for NREL in Golden, Colorado / Werner Lang Studio Mexico / Juan Miro Solar Decathlon 2011 Proposal / Vince Snyder Introduction to Design and Visual Studies / Hope Hasbrouck Above Ground_Dallas, Texas / Jason Sowell

Symposia Lati2des: Architecture in the Americas Tatiana Bilbao / Mexico City, Mexico Javier Corvalan Espinola / Laboratorio de Arquitectura, Asuncion, Paraguay Sebastian Irarrazaval / Sebastian Irarrazaval Arquitecto, Santiago, Chile Vince James / Vincent James Associates Architects, Minneapolis, Minnesota Jose Maria Saez Vaquero / Quito, Ecuador Giancarlo Mazzanti Sierra / Giancarlo Mazzanti Arquitectos, Bogota, Colombia Maryann Thompson / Maryann Thompson Architects, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Exhibitions Cisco Gomes & Mark Macek / 2x2: Ordinarily / The Gift Idea Arthur Andersson & Christian Wise / 3 Buildings Coleman Coker / Projects

12 14

Spring Studio Work 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 46 48 50 52 56 58 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 82

Lake Pontchartrain Performing Arts Center / Edna Ledesma Whole Foods Market: Campus Presence Prototype / Sarah Jean Ellis High-Rise for Suburbanites / Roy McGarrah Viewing Platform / Brian Doherty Single Family Stack / Ross Galloway Transforming the Continental Bridge / Shannon Bronson & Britta Johanson Artist Studios and Slow-Food Restaurant / Joseph Boyle Design Within Reach Showroom / Jennifer McGowan San Antonio Residential Densification / Christopher Ferguson Inks Lake State Park Overnight Retreat / Matthew Leach & Amit Oza The Cabinet of Curiosity Updated / Todd Ferry MCC Tract Development / Ryan Deffebach, Manuel Roman, & Manmeet Sabharwal Zilker Park Clubhouse / Enoch Shih Hybrid Geometry / Alfonso Calero-Lopez & Chelsea Larsson Birding Center for Hornsby Bend / Thomas Guerra Deformation / Whitney Cooper Austin Asylum / CJ MacQuarrie Zilker Clubhouse / Daniel Morrison Sprouts Grocery Store / Laura Wagner Health and Science Center / Sarah Miracle A Gradient of Light and Shadow / Marcy Shaw Bayou St. John Learning Center / Kayla Lyssy Living Scaffold: Re-Imagining Continental Bridge / Christina Sohn & James Yan Showroom of the Future Art + Commerce / Virginia Lowder Austin Asylum / Cameron Kraus Curv House / Whole Class Lady Bird Lake Swim Center / Travis Avery

Lectures

8 10

Cisco Gomes / 2x2: Ordinarily Mark Macek / 2x2: The Gift Idea James Holston / Brasilia @ 50 Jorge Otero-Pailos / The Ethics of Dust Emily Pilloton / Project H Fred Holanda / Brasilia @ 50 Susan Yelavich / Petrified Curtains Tom Kundig / SHELTER Fred Holanda / Brasilia @ 50 Arthur Andersson & Christian Wise / 3 Buildings Marcel Meili / Architecture Elena Manferdini / Design is One Curtis White / Naked Force Clothed in ...

Marlon Blackwell / An Architecture of Unholy Unions Ana Tost천es / Portugal/Brasilia @ 50 Martin Rein-Ano / Personal Public Space Coleman Coker / Projects

Course Work Community-Based Solid Waste Assessment / Whole Class Tower of the Winds / Vince Ho & Molly Hubbs KDNC: Translating Music to Form / Kevin Johnson, CJ MacQuarrie, Diana Su & Nirav Savjani The Athena Lighthouse / Gerald Griggs & Weimeng Lu Thesis: High Performance Facades / Stefan Bader

84 88 90 92 94

UTSoA Lecture Series Interview by Daniel Shumaker & Kristina Olivent Tom Kundig, FAIA of the award-winning Seattle firm, Olsen Kundig Architects, is one of the most recognized architects in North America. Tom lectured to a full house in Jessen Auditorium in Spring of 2010. ISSUE: staff interviewed him to record a few of the insights he shared during his lecture and question-and-answer session.

Interview: Tom Kundig ISSUE: What got you into architecture, and today, what continues to fuel your inspiration?

Kundig: I grew up in a family where my dad was an architect. That actually led me to stray from architecture. I was not interested in architecture at all as a kid in high school. Leaving for college, my focus was going to be on physics.

Abstract physics was certainly interesting at some level, but the real physics of plate tectonics – the way the earth, the cosmos, all of that sort of stuff moved – was at least intuitively more interesting to me. So I had an interest in hard science and less of an interest in architecture, even though I had grown up working for a sculptor and been around artists most of my youth. That changed when I was at the University of Washington, largely because I discovered that there was something missing for me in the pursuit of physics, and that was the poetic nature we all know exists in the world of architecture. Glenn Murcutt and a number of other architects always describe successful architecture as the successful intersection between function and poetics. There seems to be a natural place that I love to explore things in and that is that intersection between the poetics of something and the reality of something. In fact, that is what keeps me going in the profession. There’s never really a boring moment in the pursuit of that exploration because it continually morphs in our world. Certainly, culturally we morph all the time. Successful architecture reflects what’s happening in our culture, that we’re changing, and of course the functional side of architecture is also ever changing. If you really take the profession of architecture seriously, you cannot be bored at any time in your career. If you keep your eyes and

ears open to what’s happening out there, it is ever changing. And certainly we are in a revolution right now and the face of architecture will change probably in the next five or ten years. Certainly the practice will change in the next five or ten years.

ISSUE: How do you see that practice changing?

Kundig: I think the promise of technology is finally becoming real. I am not deep in the technology of how we generate work in the office. I’m not on AutoCAD, Photoshop, or computer programs. I’m of that generation where the computer was basically my brain and my hands. I drew and I thought and learned how to used that tool. But when the computer tool became a part of our landscape, I was relatively skeptical of it. The first editions of AutoCAD were clumsy, difficult to work with, not intuitive. Because so much of our work is in fact intuitively based, the use of a pencil, the push of a pencil is in fact an intuitive action, a poetic action, and it transfers to the drawing the idea making. The computer seemed to put a line between that impulse of creativity and how you translate that creativity on to a line. I consistently saw deterioration in the subtle nuance of proportion and finish – parts of architecture that make it work at an experiential level.

Like overtones and undertones in a piece of music, the architecture that seemed to be generated under the influences of a computer seem to lose a part of that. What’s happening in programs like Revit, which are becoming more and more part of our landscape, are becoming more intuitive and more facile. At some point, the computer will merge with the pencil again and it will be an extremely powerful marriage between the act of using your hand, using your pencil, and translating that into the computer and actually transferring that nuance between the hand, computer and ultimately the reality.

ISSUE: You mentioned that when you were studying physics, something was missing in your pursuit. How did you know architecture would fill that gap?

Kundig: I was born lucky. I was raised in an architecture family, certainly most family and

Left: Delta Shelter, right: Outpost / photographed by Tim Bies

friends were architects or were associated with the profession of architecture. There were the artists, the performance artists, the painters, the musicians that were part of that universe. You can’t help as a child be affected and learn about those particular professions. I came into the business actually having been exposed to it. Had I not been born into it, I don’t know if I would have understood or realized that architecture would be that satisfying to me. It’s the way I’m hard-wired, so it feels very natural for me to work in architecture. It seems the ideal profession.

It might be clearer to say that I was lucky in that I was exposed to architecture’s potential.

ISSUE: What would you recommend should be the first move an architecture student should make after graduating from school?

Kundig: I intentionally took a year off after I graduated from undergrad because I needed a bit more clarity on where I was going and what I was doing – and how what I was doing made sense to where I was going. I worked at an architecture firm.

A good one. That’s the first thing I’d recommend to a student: look for an architecture firm that is a good one, because the learning curve in a good firm is exponential and that is what you’re looking for.

It’s much different than academics. It’s the practice of architecture which I am more interested in than the academics of architecture. If you’re looking to practice architecture, then practice with a good firm and begin to understand. You’re not going to get it on all levels, but begin to understand how the practice of architecture differs from the academics of architecture. Also within that year, I indulged in my passion for mountain climbing and mountain skiing and travel. I went to Europe for two months. I skied and climbed in the Canadian mountains. My first year of working as an intern architect, I took three-and-ahalf months off [laughs] to sort of enjoy those pursuits up in Alaska, Canada and Europe. I took every possible weekend to also get into that landscape.

And I got into what I learned as a climber and as a mountain skier and how that translates into my architecture. Indulge in something that is somehow important to you; it does not have to be architecture,

it can be anything you want to do. Follow it, learn from it and fold it back into your personal vision or values of architecture.

So that year for me was a critical moment of my life, to give me a little bit of breathing space – a little bit of thinking space – between the academics of architecture, the practice of architecture, and back in to the academics of architecture.

I went back to grad school with at least a survey of what the practice of architecture looks like, a survey of what was important to me as a person that would be designing places for people. Grad school was a place for me to put parts and pieces of that together as best as I could.

ISSUE: What career path would you advise someone to take, after that first step?

Kundig: I always say to students just out of grad school: remember that you’re not an architect. Your learning curve is almost a geometric curve when you graduate from grad school. You really don’t understand architecture at its core − at its root. You’re certainly on your way to understanding it, but you’ve got to be patient. My guess is that it takes an average of about ten years of practice to actually begin to understand architecture. I learned from an older architect what that meant. He said, ‘You’re an architect when you draw a plan line in the horizontal dimension and you understand the implication of that line in the third dimension – structure, volume, and proportionality.’ When I first heard that, I thought that it was sort of BS in a way, because I didn’t even understand that that was possible. Somewhat magically, after ten years, it actually was true. After ten years trying to practice – apprentice architecture – there’s a breakthrough that happens all of a sudden. All these crazy and complex parts of architecture began to assemble themselves in my mind and through my arm and into my pencil and down to the line onto the paper to make some sense of architecture – not just doing a building or not just doing a bunch of marks on a piece of paper. Your drawings kinda have imbued in them the spirit of the architecture that you were trying to generate.

And it just takes practice. I’m a skier. Other people do sports, or do music, and anybody that’s really good at something that they’ve spent a lot of time working at, at some point in that learning curve, it become second nature. It’s almost like breathing. You can do it efficiently, poetically and meaningfully – but it takes time. Be patient and keep working at learning.

Interview / Spring 2010 / 8-9

UTSoA Lecture Series Interview by Caroline Emerson Arthur W. Andersson, AIA and F. Christian Wise, AIA founded Andersson·Wise in 2001, following their 15-year collaboration with the esteemed architect Charles W. Moore. From its outset, the firm won several prestigious national competitions. Arthur and Christian lectured at UTSoA while their most prominent Austin project was under construction: the 37-story Block 21/W Hotel.

Interview: Arthur Andersson & Christian Wise ISSUE: What got you into architecture and what continues to inspire you today?

Wise: I grew up next to a church.

My father was a minister, so I always associate my contact with architecture with churches. I had access to churches when it wasn’t Sunday morning, and I used to like to go in them because the space would just be amazing − the sound and the light in it with no one else there.

Andersson: I was about six when I knew I was going to be an architect.

My mom took me to the San Juan Capistrano mission. Those Spanish missions are remarkable buildings; the power of materiality is still inspiring to us in our practice today. As a child, I was fascinated with the diorama models in the visitor’s center. I started making dioramas. And when I was a kid, there was a dog food that you could buy that was in the shape of little cubes; they looked just like adobe bricks. I would make these missions and stuff out of dog food. You’d have to take them outside after a couple of days, though, and it would attract the neighborhood dogs, so I started whitewashing them. That got me interested in architecture of rural Greece − all of those beautiful white buildings. I made the Acropolis out of dog food.

Wise: I want to do a project at UT because I’m interested in the challenges of the design guidelines, and in working with the Board of Visitors.

ISSUE: What would you recommend would be the first move an architecture student should make after graduation from school?

Wise: There’s so many things that you can’t learn in architecture school that are part of the profession. In one way, it would be good if everyone tried to work before they graduated. So they could really see if they like this life, this way of working. The attrition rate for architecture graduates is high.

Andersson: I think 50% of people who have worked for us over the last twenty years are now doing something else − they got out of the profession. So knowing is important.

ISSUE: What sort of projects would you like to be doing in the future and why?

Wise: It’s important too, to understand the environment. There are lots of different environments: corporate, people like us, there’s people who care, people who just run businesses. To get out there and get a feel for where you want to land, before you graduate, is so valuable. You’re better off. Being fresh out of school with a professional degree, putting out the resume like scattershot, it can get really frustrating. To me, traveling and going to see architects speak is important and you should do that while you’re in school. That’s what school is about − broadening your horizons − but when you get out of school, you need to lock down and say “I gotta do this,” because you have another three years to work hard before you can even get your license. You just have to go for it.

Andersson: I think I’d want to do affordable housing. We did a private affordable housing off of Riverside. It was a rewarding project because we built it for $65/foot − made of limestone mostly.

Our concept for the condominiums was a pinwheel, so that everyone has their own garden. It was rewarding and challenging, and I’d like to do more of it.

Andersson: That’s true. But I also think that the smartest thing anyone can do is to find the best architect that they can to work with. That’s not for everybody; but it was for both Chris and myself. I worked, when I first got out of school, for a big firm in Kansas City. They did good work in Kansas City, and the design partner had gone to UT with someone who worked with Cesar Pelli. So we worked on a project with Cesar Pelli, and they brought Charles

Cabin on Flathead Lake, Polson, Montana.

Moore onto the project, and at that time I worked hard to become a part of that project. I wanted to go and work with these guys and learn from them.

Meeting the big leaguers is important if you’re interested in this aspect of it; not everyone is. If you’re interested in designing hospitals, go find the best hospital architect out there.

ISSUE: Looking through your work, and knowing the story of your firm, I wondered if you could talk a little about Charles Moore. For example, how his practice shaped your own.

Andersson: Charles Moore came to Texas from Los Angeles. He was brought to the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture by Hal Box, dean at that time. It was part of an endowed chair- the first of these that they set up in the 80s; the O’Neill Ford Endowed Professorship. Charles brought me to Texas to set up our office in what is now the Charles Moore Foundation. That had our studio and Charles’ house and a house that I built − a mini-Taliesin is what we called it. One of the first people we got out of UT because he was the best student there was this guy named Chris Wise, sitting right here with us.

ISSUE: Can you elaborate a little more on Charles Moore’s humanist approach to architecture?

Andersson: The basic thing is that his work is rooted in the physical attributes of a place − meaning climate, terrain, materials that are available. What most interested Charles was architecture that was not built by architects, like Bernard Rudofsky’s book, Architecture without Architects. It was made by hand from the things that were of the place. After WWII, Charles understood that a tension was created between the way we manufacture materials and their use in buildings. The materials we use are not rudimentary any more, they’re machined. And what separated Charles from other architects was that he used local materials so that aesthetically, visually, it appeared natural. Not tectonic, not based on a ideology of the science of building, but more the sociological and environmental characteristics of a place. And ultimately, Charles’ essays talk about how

listening and collaboration were the important part.

Wise: What you’re saying reminds me of a famous book Charles Moore did with Kent Bloomer called Body, Memory and Architecture. It’s hooked into the phenomenological approach that is a popular educational position now. Charles really started off all of these theory concepts that we use. He was the first to talk about it and relate it to architecture. It is about how people experience, and how architecture should be about experience rather than just an object or an aesthetic or purely conceptual pursuit.

ISSUE: Charles Moore is a forefather of UT curriculum, and I think it is fair to say his thinking and writings are still useful in helping us understand environmental realities and spatial experiences. So let’s take a minute to talk about this sort of reality as it occurs in your architecture.

Andersson: Charles was focused on the reality of the experience and the reality of the connection between the social place and the decisions about the building. I think that drives our work in every single project − it starts with understanding how the sun moves across the site, understanding how we can take advantage of things like prevailing breezes, or a canopy of trees and shade, or open space to let sun in. In the case of Stone Creek Camp in Montana, you really want open spaces so that in the winter the sun can get in. Next always is laying out the room orientation within the building. Each room, for example in the Montana project and in the Tower House in Austin, is laid out with a particular intent: to have a postcard view of something, very specifically from a very specific place.

Our buildings are all about making pretty specific choices in terms of what we’re wanting to do. It’s like Hemingway rewriting the same paragraph twenty-three times before it’s right. We work these buildings to edit and codify the message of what we want. We find our best work is the simplest work because we’ve honed it down to its simplest elements. We have a rule that we try to abide by: we never use more than three materials per project. Which is hard to do, because there’s a lot that goes into buildings. But keeping a small palette − it works. It helps to give a specific set of rooms a very specific feel. I think you can read that. A purposeful simplicity of materials is good.

Interview / Spring 2010 / 10-11

2x2 Faculty Exhibition Series Mebane Gallery, January 25 - February 25, 2010

2x2: Ordinarily / The Gift Idea Cisco Gomes: “Ordinarily” Ordinarily, buildings benefit from their place. Ordinarily, buildings are weighty and bear substantially on the land.

Ordinarily, buildings are consequences of their materiality. Architecture has often sought alternatives to the ways buildings have usually existed in our landscape and culture. This reactionary impulse is necessary for critical practice, but is not a prerequisite of meaningful architecture.

Mark Macek: “The Gift Idea” Most memorable experiences of architecture are interactions with the materiality of the edifice. Space and light are held up by substance. We often perceive the excessive care in a building’s construction. While it stands, a building shares with us its materiality, durability, and its makers’ intentions for life. Architecture is, in this way, a gift to the people living there.

Exhibition / Spring 2010 / 12-13

Faculty Exhibition Mebane Gallery, April 12 - 30, 2010

Coleman Coker: Current Work Coleman Coker, the Ruth Carter Stevenson Visiting Professor, is an American architect and artist best known for the Bridges Center (2005), the Patterson Clinic (2004), Texas Twister at Rey Rosa Ranch (2003), the Shiloh Falls Residence (1997), the Barton Residence (1992), and the Cook House (1991).

Coker founded buildingstudio in 1999 after a thirteen-year partnership with Samuel Mockbee as Mockbee/Coker Architects. In 1995, their work was collected in Mockbee/Coker, ‘Thought and Process.’ With the formation of buildingstudio, Coker sought to blur the boundaries between art, architecture, craft, and thinking. His work puts a strong emphasis on the phenomenological quality of presence and being in the world through the things we make as one small part of the interconnected whole.

Coker has earned numerous honors, including a P/A Design Award for lowcost housing, “Breaking the Cycle of Poverty.” In 1991, he was recognized by the Architectural League of New York in their Emerging Voices Series.

He has received two Record Houses Awards from Architectural Record, a National AIA Honor Award, and was selected for Architectural Record’s “The Millennium - Futures to Come: Visionary Projects for the 21st Century.” His work has been highlighted in various exhibits including MoMA, SF MoMA, Wexner Center for the Arts, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Triennial, and the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., where he has work in their permanent collection.

Exhibition / Spring 2010 / 14-15

Design II / Design IV / Interior Design IV / Design VI / Interior Design VI / Vertical / Advanced / Landscape

Context and Architectural Production / Design II

DENSITY | San Antonio and the [Mega]city / Design IV

Smilja Milovanovic-Bertram, Coordinator / Lois Weinthal, Clay Shortall, Judy Birdsong, & Jennifer Marsh

Charlton Lewis, Coordinator / Sinclair Black, Kevin Moore, & Elizabeth Alford

Meshworks / Interior Design IV Igor Siddiqui

The studio’s central topic is the understanding of design within the context of the built environment.

Consideration is given to the implications of context at varying scales, including the personal scale of the body to architectural details, and the larger scales of interior, building, landscape, and urban environments.

Understanding the various components of the built environment and the relationships among them leads to a knowledge of architectonics. This is achieved through analysis, drawing, and modeling systems. Observation and intuition are intrinsic elements in this process of discovery. By dissecting the project physically and conceptually at differing scales and through various media, the embedded orders are revealed and provide strategies for design and construction.

Using two related projects, a Bird Blind and Birding Center, the studio studies and maps Object (bird) and Field (site). The first project, the Bird Blind, enables personal observation of birds in the landscape. The second project, the Birding Center, provides a gathering and information center for birders at Austin’s Hornsby Bend.

IMAGE: CAMERON BENSON

In 1900, 10% of the world’s population lived in cities. In 2006, the United Nations announced that the majority of the world’s population – almost 3.3 billion – lived in urban rather than rural areas. Today, we exist in ‘city regions,’ ‘megacity regions,’ and ‘megapolitan city regions’ (more still). As of 2007, the Bos-Wash region was 54.8 million, Bajalta California was 42 million, and our very own, Daustin was 9.1 million.

With rapid urbanization, the traditional models for planning and urban design are inadequate when faced with the speed and scope of today’s city. How do we understand an urban experience that oscillates between local and global concerns?

As designers, how do we engage today’s cities? How do we intervene?

This studio built upon previous semesters’ exploration of architecture as intellectual pursuit and built form by enlarging the frame to the urban context.

Investigating evolving definitions and characteristics of urban space and community; how public space is defined and, ultimately, designed today; our primary question examined density and tested it in the context of San Antonio.

IMAGE: STUDIO SITE MODEL

The studio considered the mesh as an intersection of material tectonics, design techniques, and organizational principles, and as such sought to actively reinforce and articulate this intersection through focused investigations addressing the design, fabrication, and experience of interior space.

Students explored meshed materials and assemblies as crucial ingredients in the physical construction of interior space, but also treated them as valuable resources in the discovery of novel design concepts.

In terms of design technique, the studio explored various relationships between digital meshes and their physical translations as waffled, contoured, and woven models.

Organizationally, meshing as a process was considered vis-à-vis issues of site and program. Following a series of short assignments, the final project was to design a furniture of the near future that included a live-in residency program, thus subverting the work-from-home paradigm of the live/work typology.

IMAGE: HALEY TOWNSEND

Studio Abstracts

Zilker Clubhouse / Design VI Ulrich Dangel, Coordinator / John Blood & Ernesto Cragnolino The Sound Building studio is designed as a comprehensive studio to allow students to complete the conceptual development of a building with consideration of structural, mechanical, electrical, and site integration needs while simultaneously designing an exemplary work of architecture.

An understanding of how systems work independently, as well as a whole, is critical to the creation of a working building.

This year’s studio focused on the design and development of a new multi-purpose event facility to replace the existing Zilker Clubhouse, which entailed building on one of Austin’s most desirable and unique building sites. Important aspects to explore in the design of the new clubhouse included acoustics, daylighting, space planning, indoor/ outdoor relationships, assembly, and materiality among many others. Based on energy-efficient construction and to remain in keeping with the city’s reputation as a progressive community, the design was not limited to envelope and structure, but extended to an energy concept that made maximum use of renewable resources. The goal was to develop a building with aesthetic and tectonic qualities that were reflected in its structural efficiency, functionality, and energy performance.

Medical Suite, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston / Interior

Engaging the Street: A Multi-use Building on Guadalupe and 24th /

Design VI

Vertical

Carl Matthews

Michael Benedikt

According to Interior Design magazine, the medical sector of interior design practice is expected to grow at a rate faster than all other market sectors in the next few years.

The design of a multi-story multi-use building on the “old” Tower Records/ Intellectual Property bookstore site, incorporating restaurants, a youth hostel, bookstore, nightclub, and movie theater was preceded by two short studies: one on the path of the sun (“a sundial”), and one on the effect—on urban open space and sidewalk use—of the complexity of the sun-shade boundary created by buildings, shelters, arcades, and trees (“an urban square”).

The semester’s assignment was to design for a real and an imagined client spanning the range of design from general medical practice/offices to a specific practice. Throughout the medical design industry we can see a movement away from sterile traditional institutions towards more of a hospitality approach to design.

The challenge was to meet the needs of medical practice in a way that is warm and inviting to visitors, patients, and workers.

IMAGE: SETH BRUNNER

The real client was the University of Texas Health Center at Houston as they seek to reconfigure a portion of the 19th floor at the University Center Tower to accommodate speculative offices for Medical Start-Up companies. The imagined client is a Breast Imaging Clinic.

Practitioners from RTKL, Dallas worked with students throughout the semester. One student’s project (Carolina Bobadilla) was selected

by The University of Texas Health Science Center for implementation.

IMAGE: CAROLINA BOBADILLA

IMAGE: PAUL LI

Studio Abstracts / Spring 2010 / 16-17

Design II / Design IV / Interior Design IV / Design VI / Interior Design VI / Vertical / Advanced / Landscape

Building as Cure: Architecture for Mental Health & Illness / Vertical Elizabeth Danze This graduate design studio examined two worlds: that of architecture—the outer, material world of tangible places— and that of psychology—the inner world of the mind.

Case studies of architectural environments designed for treating the mentally ill reveal what architecture is and can be, and our understanding of mental illness and health is, or could be. Architecture is container of and medium for health, participating in the healing process.

Introspection and reflection are both subject of and method for design.

Preliminary projects examined therapy spaces and the potential of water as the medium for therapeutic healing.

The final project investigated the contemporary ‘asylum’ where the mentally ill are treated in a wellness center. Students addressed concepts of access and confinement—the explicit or implicit ability to cross a boundary—and separation—a physical or conceptual boundary between elements that emphasizes their difference.

IMAGE: SASHA GREIF MAXWELL

Green Austin / Vertical

Food + Architecture / Vertical

Larry Doll

Michael Garrison

There are many arguments supporting high urban density as the most efficient route to a sustainable future. Among them are limited use of personal and commercial vehicles, economies of scale in terms of energy and material consumption, and limited range for all infrastructure. This last factor translates as “every home built downtown reduces the extending perimeter of the suburbs by a significant amount.”

This studio introduced students to a process that describes the confluence between design and technology. This studio concentrated on the ways in which the nature of building systems affects and informs architectural design. This semester we focused on Food + Architecture, integrating food and green building technology with two mid-size building projects that emphasize design and the integration of regenerative green building systems.

One important trick underlying this idea is that there are very many people who do not wish to, or cannot live in a dense urban core.

Our job this semester is to develop possibilities for a dense, urban Austin that fit the needs of suburbanites and, perhaps more importantly, create a vision that they can share.

In this regard, the studio is part architecture and part propaganda.

The first (four-week) project was the adaptive reuse of a suburban Big Box super-sized grocery store. The problem we investigated is a reversal of a function for a big box grocery store, from retailer of food – food detached from processes from which it came to be – to producer of food.

The parking lot became a park-farm.

The inside of the big box became a greenhouse and restaurant.

IMAGE: ROSS GALLOWAY

The second (eight-week) project was the design of a new 23,000 square foot East Austin Sprouts Farmers Market store. The econatural food supermarket, features vertical farming, water harvesting, on-site wastewater recycling, and on-site power collection, in an mixed-use urban setting on Manor Road in Central East Austin.

IMAGE: BRYON PIGG

Negotiating the Ground Line / Vertical

The Dallas Urban Lab: Watershed Urbanism /

Sustainability Innovations Studio: Green Monsters /

Advanced

Advanced

Dean Almy

Michael Beaman

The reconstruction of the Trinity River into one of America’s largest urban parks continues to place significant development pressure on the adjacent neighborhoods and districts. In particular, the Design District in Dallas is projected to undergo a significant transformation.

Green Monsters describes the potential of large urban event spaces, their connection to and development of viable and robust urban conditions, infrastructure and social identity, and the ability of these highly unique and specific spaces to contribute to a shift in priorities, organizations, technologies and attitudes toward sustainability. Our studio will examine the construction of a new Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox baseball team, and venue for public and commercial events throughout the year.

Joyce Rosner This studio focused specifically on the ground line: how it mediates between earth and sky and how it can be captured spatially and poetically through the architectural process. We looked at two contrasting strategies in the relationship between the architectural intervention and the ground plane: making an obvious distinction between the building and the ground with a clear separation and making an ambiguous transition, blurring the line between the two.

All the projects dealt with different relationships to water, beginning with capturing and holding, moving to viewing, and then to occupying.

Pedagogical objectives of the studio were three fold: to understand 3d spatial relationships specifically relating to the idea of a ground line, to engage the issues of place and place-making, and to examine/ question the relationship of architecture to nature and vice versa.

In all of these objectives, process modeling and drawing play an important role.

IMAGE: PARKER DOELLING

DLAB®, working together with the urban development office of the City of Dallas, has proposed a green infrastructural system to be laid into the existing rail-spur right-of-ways. This new system is designed to mitigate the effects of storm water events and pollutants in the district, thereby allowing restoration of the Trinity Meanders into a new urban park, changing from its current role as a flood retention pond. Additionally, the new infrastructure is to be an agent for incremental change, by proving a catalyst for the adaptive reuse of existing underutilized building stock.

New systems of mobility are further overlaid into the district, a diverse set of programs and lifestyles are anticipated to take root.

IMAGE: WHOLE CLASS

The studio will examine the nature of this predominately exterior venue and its ability to organize and define adjacent programs / urban spaces and community identity. A ballpark has two sets of facades – interior and exterior – beyond accommodating the regulating lines of the ball field the studio will posit that a ball park’s greatest formal challenge is its articulation through section and that its predominate surface of interaction is vertical. To explore how this surface has implications of program and sustainability we will utilize parametric software to develop these surfaces and their volumetric implications through section.

IMAGE: JOSHUA HOGAN

Studio Abstracts / Spring 2010 / 18-19

Design II / Design IV / Interior Design IV / Design VI / Interior Design VI / Vertical / Advanced / Landscape

A Gaze at New Orleans: Strategies and Operations for Meaningful Buildings /

Measuring the World Through the Things We Make / Advanced

Advanced Coleman Coker Angelo Bucci We started by studying cities and city features that parallel the New Orleans context. Collecting all the information we could about New Orleans, we discussed our preliminary approaches with local architect Coleman Coker. As a result, we defined a path which crossed New Orleans from the Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain, like a cross-section through the city. This line was our way to explore New Orleans: Algiers, crossing the Mississippi River (0.5 mile), following through Canal Street up to Jefferson Davis (2.3 miles), then north (0.3 mile) and finally the whole St John Bayou reaching Pontchartrain Lake (3.7 miles).

This path was a strategy to understand how subtle and crucial is the topography of New Orleans.

The relationship between the river, the levees, the city itself and the lake was investigated through four operations: to view, to transfer, to infiltrate and to invade. Each student was requested to find their site (where) along that line, to propose a program (what), to justify their choice (why) and to design it (how).

This was our gaze at New Orleans.

IMAGE: BUD FRANCK

Through the narrow lens of quantifying, categorizing and ordering that often leaves curiosity and wonder behind, this studio explored how we characteristically measure our world in typically reductive and abstract ways. To investigate this, the studio examined “depth� and how it shapes the buildings we make. In geometry depth recedes into the distance, in perceptual experience however, depth makes the world real.

Beginning first-hand investigations explored the physical and temporal qualities of depth to provide deeper insight into further design development. Using concrete as a building material, hands-on exercises expanded to building a full-scale architectural component (door, window, etc). In turn, this finished piece was incorporated into the final building design. Preliminary projects in Austin and New Orleans engaged the physical and temporal conditions of measurement through a mediumscale, public building constructed of concrete. This final design expanded on the full-scale concrete component built to test these qualities of depth.

IMAGE: JOSEPH BOYLE

Whole Foods: Past, Present and Future / Advanced Tamie Glass Whole Foods, which literally means foods that are unprocessed and unrefined, has become a household name in the US when it comes to grocery shopping. Whole Foods Market began in 1980 with a small, local store in Austin, Texas.

Today, the brand is still anchored in Austin with its flagship store and corporate headquarters located downtown at 5th and North Lamar, but it now boasts more than 270 stores internationally.

This studio focused on comprehension and analysis of the Whole Foods brand and how this knowledge applies to the stores currently in operation, as well as its role in shaping their presence in the future. Students worked independently and in collaboration with Whole Foods management to design a new Wine and Cheese Bar for the Austin flagship store and to develop a prototype design for a Whole Foods presence on university campuses.

IMAGE: KIM COLE

Inks Dam: Environmental Industry / Advanced Technical Communication Cisco Gomes & Russell Krepart The Inks Dam has created a productive environment at an industrial scale. The dam is a significant piece of infrastructure which provides several conditions of production: electrical energy, recreational activity, and large numbers of fish. Despite their immediate adjacency, each of these elements currently exists in relative autonomy. It is a place that has both substantial natural presence yet is also considerably built. The natural beauty that attracts recreation is, in part, a result of massive infrastructural intervention. This project sought to establish relationships between these natural and man-made conditions of productivity.

A program which supports group visitation and allows observation and understanding of the operation of the productive environments of Inks Dam was proposed. Like the Italian Colonia of the 1930s, this project proposes accommodation of groups of children or teens for periods from 5 days to 3 weeks.

In addition to active communal spaces such as an assembly hall and a dining hall, sleeping and bathing spaces, support space, and exterior accommodations were needed. A pedestrian connection across the river was also required.

IMAGE: ELIZABETH BEECHERL & BRAD SINGER

Alley Flat Initiative /

Model Sustainable Development for the Braker Lane MCC Tract, Austin /

Advanced Louise Harpman

Advanced

The Alley Flat Initiative works to advance three goals: design innovation, environmental sustainability, and affordability.

In the format of a design/build studio, students work closely with each other, the studio professor, and Alley Flat Coordinator Sarah Gamble. Students also works directly with a real-time “network” of community partners, city regulators, professional architects and contractors, and the media.

The studio has a number of mutually overlapping goals: -To create innovative designs for infill housing in Austin -To meet or exceed the expectations of our community partners -To create full sets of construction documents -To test and evaluate design proposals through 1:1 wall section models -To evaluate designs through EcoTect or similar thermal modeling -To work in a BIM format The Alley Flat Initiative secured seats in the BIM/Revit workshop, which is an integral part of the studio. The studio presents its proposals within the School of Architecture and also to the community at large through public workshops and exhibits.

For more information about the previous Alley Flat Initiative studios, please go to thealleyflatinitiative.org/

Barbara Hoidn This studio cooperated with the Campus Real Estate Office (CRO), focussing on the Pickle Research Center West tract. The purpose of the cooperative exercise was to provide students with a “real world” design problem, to introduce the students to the complexity of real estate development and for CRO to learn more about the tract for future development.

The University of Texas at Austin owns significant portions of land close to downtown Austin. The UT Austin Campus Real Estate Office has been tasked with management of the development of 109 acres at Mopac and Braker known as the Pickle Research Center West Tract or the MCC Tract. Their initial inclination is that the tract should be developed as a multi use, mixed use project incorporating Office, Residential, Retail, Hospitality and community features such as parkland.

The development of the site meets the standards of LEED ND (New Development) approach. The studio developed alternative masterplans based on the premises of existing surveys and preliminary Land Use studies and examined typologies for residential and mixed-use programs.

IMAGE: CASSIE JO GARNER & JASON MANN

IMAGE: SARAH HAFLEY

Studio Abstracts / Spring 2010 / 20-21

Design II / Design IV / Interior Design IV / Design VI / Interior Design VI / Vertical / Advanced / Landscape

Reinventing Low-Carbon Design for NREL in Golden, Colorado / Advanced Werner Lang The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado is the nation’s primary laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. With an increase in annual funding of 250% during the past few years, NREL is in constant need of new buildings, the latest one being the new ‘Renewable Energy Innovation Laboratory’ (REIL). With this challenge in mind, the students of UTSoA were asked to design a unique, top notch and high quality laboratory building, dedicated to the development of innovative technologies in the field of Renewable Energies.

The main task of this design studio included the examination of the implications of a sustainable, future-oriented design approach while exploring the options for the creation of a functional, livable, exciting and beautiful building and work environment. The relationship of functional and energy-related issues with regard to its implications for innovative architectural design had to be defined. The studio was conducted in close collaboration with leading planners at NREL, including a site visit at NREL in early April 2010.

IMAGE: ALIX BULLEIT

Studio Mexico / Advanced

Solar Decathlon 2011 Proposal / Advanced

Juan Miro Studio Mexico is a comprehensive traveling studio that provides architecture and landscape architecture students the opportunity to experience Mexican culture, landscape and architecture by complementing the design studio with traveling, drawing and architectural research.

The program is structured to allow students a rigorous exploration of the rich legacy of Mexican architecture and place-making, as well as an enriching interaction with Mexican students.

This year the studio project was located in the Xochimilco area, in the southern part of Mexico City. It involved a master planning phase for the culturally and ecologically significant area, which included the canals and chinampas of the original lake system that occupied the Valley of Mexico in the Aztec times.

The project incorporated, as well, an existing structure of Felix Candela, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of his birth in 2010. We studied the area at the beginning of our trip and there was a preliminary review with Mexican students towards the end of the trip.

IMAGE: JUAN MIRO

Vincent Snyder This studio furthered initial studies that originated in a 30-page Solar Decathalon proposal from the University of Texas at Austin that included the School of Architecture, College of Engineering and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. The class developed the project up to design development and providee a package of deliverables as outlined by the U.S. Dept. of Energy and National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Since the industrial revolution, the building industry (and by extension, architecture) has been reconsidered in terms of its design processes and methods of delivery.

Currently, with the assistance of digital technologies, many of the engineering difficulties related to the design, analysis, performance and production within these fields have been overcome. There has been a renewed interest in research that is more building specific and can be applied to all scales of a building.

This project examined this contemporary condition which has largely come about in the building industry as a response to public demand for a construction industry and architectural profession to be more technically responsive and socially responsible.

IMAGE: WHOLE CLASS

Introduction to Design and Visual Studies / Landscape II

Above Ground_Dallas, Texas / Comprehensive Landscape

Hope Hasbrouck

Jason Sowell

Introduction to Design and Visual Studies in Landscape Architecture II is the second in the sequence of four core design studios in Landscape Architecture. This design studio continues the examination of the issues methods, and theories that underlie the practice of landscape architecture that were introduced in the first core studio with an elevated level of complexity. The studio introduces survey methods, design, decision making, and representation through a series of projects of varied scale and context. The design studio has the following three objectives:

As a termination for the Continental Bridge, this project addressed a number of potential transitions established by the City of Dallas’ Trinity River Corridor Project.

Infrastructurally driven, the project had to contend with overlaps in vehicular, tram, bicycle, and pedestrian traffic; as well as how to interface with buildings and other engineering works.

-To develop a fluency in the vocabulary, strategies, and operations of the landscape architectural discourse. The vehicle for this is the design of space whose territorial boundaries may be revealed, exploited, distanced, obscured or eliminated.

-To develop a facility with the materials, measures and geometries of site planning.

With each of these circulation systems crossing the area at multiple points vertically, relationships between section and surface provided opportunities to engage movement, structure, and the urban fabric. Built as an above ground landscape, questions of context, material, and agency supplanted a prescribed program as critical factors for contemporary landscape practice.

IMAGE: CHELSEA LARSSON & ALFONSO CALERO-LOPEZ

-To apply various representational methods of drawing, computation, and modeling as a research tool, as a systematic record of thought, and as a means of inspiration.

IMAGE: NICOLE VANCE

Studio not listed this semester: Vertical Studio taught by Kim Furlong

Studio Abstracts / Spring 2010 / 22-23

Edna Ledesma / M.S.U.D. A Gaze at New Orleans: Strategies and Operations for Meaningful Buildings / Angelo Bucci

Lake Pontchartrain Performing Arts Center The city of New Orleans has struggled to recover from the damages and losses due to the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Facing these and many more challenges, the vision that this studio had was to allow for public amenities to begin changing the face of the city through small scale urban interventions. The goal of these small interventions was to slowly have an impact on the integration of micro hubs into the larger scope of the city’s urban fabric. This project, situated at the northern end of the city straddles the edge of Lake Pontchartrain in an area that once served as the primary gateway into the city through the St. John’s canal.

Nestled along the spine of a large urban park and outside the city’s natural levee walls, the performing arts center serves as an architectural gem hidden in the path of the edge of the city. Similar to its placement in the landscape, this idea of discovery is articulated in the separation of the served and servant uses for the building consisting of two flanking wings used for circulation and services. The service wings provide infrastructure for the gem of the program, the auditorium space, to be suspended between them.

In response to the city’s flood lines, the building is elevated twenty five feet off the ground liberating the ground for a continuation of the existing park and integration of the trail system.

The organic form of the auditorium space not only allows for maximizing of acoustical requirements of a performance space but also is in line with the idea that this civic service become a focal point of the community. The monocoque structural system of the auditorium, as is used in the structures of airplanes, allows for the even transferring of loads through the skin of the building onto 4 large columns that support the entire building.

This allowed for a limited disturbance of the ground and the parks system.

Tucked away at the end of the city the performing arts center exemplifies the ideas of discovery and visual reward for visitors to the site.

Advanced Studio / Spring 2010 / 24-25

Sarah Jean Ellis / B.S.I.D. Whole Foods - Past, Present, and Future / Tamie Glass

Whole Foods Market: Campus Presence Prototype The requirement for this project was to create and develop a prototype for a Whole Foods presence on campus, such that it would be feasible to duplicate the presence on other campuses across America. There were few to no limits put in place, and we were each given the freedom to develop whichever aspects of the project we felt were most critical to conveying the idea to the client.

My prototype is called WFM Bicycle Bites, and its concept is centered upon widespread food distribution across a college campus. Based on my research of UT’s topography, pedestrian routes, and food hubs, I developed bike routes that would pick up from a central location where a WFM catering van would distribute goods to each employee.

The bicyclists would assemble their custom-made, folding, refrigerated bike carts, load the food into them, and then go along their routes selling the items to students in their campus zone. For much of their routes they would be flagged down by customers as they rode by, but during the busiest lunch hours they would set up shop in a marked area to sell the goods.

A well-developed aspect of this project, aside from the design of the cart itself, was the marketing impact that Whole Foods would have on students with this concept. The unique personalities of the bicyclists are emphasized as much as the brand itself, in an effort to create a comfortability with the brand among its future customers. The cart is equipped with an iPod dock, so that the bicyclist’s favorite music can blast from it while they ride around in their zones, similar to an ice cream truck. This not only familiarizes students with the sounds of approaching food, but it allows students to easily relate to the food peddlers, and, by proxy, the brand they’re peddling.

Advanced Studio / Spring 2010 / 26-27

Roy McGarrah / M.Arch.

Green Austin / Larry Doll

High-Rise for Suburbanites With demand for housing continuing to push development farther outside city lines, this project attempts to create a vision for dense urban housing that can compete with the amenities of the suburbs. Starting with the idea that dense urban areas inherently reduce consumption and promote sustainability, the Highrise for Suburbanites makes a case for city living by providing aspects of low density housing in an urban context.

This high-rise provides abundant private as well as communal public outdoor spaces. Units are 1000, 2000, and 3000 square feet, each containing an outdoor patio with gardening space and a fruit tree. These spaces are subtracted from the volume of the building rather than projected as balconies, providing shelter from wind and sun. Units on the southern face have deeper outdoor space than those to the north, which mitigates solar heat gain. The building is situated next to Shoal Creek, providing walking and biking access to the river trails as well as commuting north into the city. The location of Whole Foods next door allows easy access to food and shopping. The plinth of the building is fronted by retail space with two stories of parking above. The top of the plinth is used as a community park and is accessible from the creek side, which serves as a waypoint along the trail with restaurants, bike rentals, etc.

The overall concept of the project is one of connection and circulation; Movement of people vertically through the building, enabling community and neighborhood creation as well as the movement of air through the building, assisting passive ventilation. The experience for residents includes the outdoor space and neighborhood feel of the suburbs, combined with the accessibility and sustainability of the city center.

PARKING LEVEL

RETAIL STREET LEVEL

30’

90’

Vertical Studio / Fall 2010 / 28-29

Brian Doherty / M.Arch.

Negotiating the Ground Line / Joyce Rosner

Viewing Platform The pool on town lake acts as a knuckle between Austin’s downtown and the Town Lake waterfront, helping to reconnect two landscapes that are currently dependent upon each other, yet remain separated and isolated. The axis of Trinity Street is carried out into the green space of the waterfront, dividing the site in half while creating a visual and spatial connection to the lake’s urban counterpoint. Private program elements are contained in a long slender bar of space held by a series of rigid steel frames while active public spaces – multiple pools, a running trail, etc. – merge beneath.

Vertical Studio / Spring 2010 / 30-31

Ross Galloway / M.Arch.

Green Austin / Larry Doll

Single Family Stack In an attempt to understand America’s culture of suburbanization and sprawl, we were prompted to study and model both an existing single family home as well as an established neighborhood, and determine what could happen if it were re-imagined as dense multifamily housing.

This project is an exploration of the creation of circumstantial spaces through the random stacking and combination of this known commodity--the single family home--to create a high rise tower that exhibits some of the characteristics and diversity of a neighborhood.

While studying the neighborhood just north of 7th Street in Austin and east of I-35, Morphosis’ Crawford Residence was modeled and stacked randomly to create as many idiosyncratic conditions as possible.

These conditions were then mined for information that could be used to inform future dense multifamily projects.

Vertical Studio / Spring 2010 / 32-33

Shannon Bronson & Britta Johanson / M.L.A. Above Ground_Dallas, Texas / Jason Sowell

Transforming the Continental Bridge The Continental Bridge provides a critical connection between downtown Dallas, Texas and the emerging Trinity River Corridor revitalization project. We determined that “grafting” platforms onto the Continental was appropriate for two reasons. The first is that the purpose of creating a graft is to strengthen both elements that fuse within the graft. In this case, we sought to strengthen the relationship between the city and the river. Second, conceptually a graft is a culturally derived management technique of natural processes. Thus, creating a graft expresses the urban/river dichotomy of the site. The shape of our platform is derived from manipulations of a literal graft form in order to accommodate vehicle, pedestrian, train, and bicycle traffic, as well as points of prospect over the Calatrava Bridge to the south and the Trinity Lakes Park.

We examined the transition from urban fabric to river corridor and identified six distinct bands of either program or activity that define this shift.

Superpositioning these bands onto the grafted platforms informed our placement of elements across the site. This superposition is expressed most notably through the creasing of the ground plane.

The physical crease seeks to reveal or frame the contextual landscape below the platform through transparency and illumination, making visitors aware of the thresholds they cross as they move over the platforms. It also provides the main seating elements throughout the site, and ramp infrastructure that guides pedestrians along the edges.

The project’s conceptual development evolved from three primary operations: graft, band, and crease. Each operation strengthens the bridge’s interface with the city’s eastern edge and helps articulate the shifts in program, infrastructure, and movement. In this manner, formal and material decisions demarcate various transitions that take place at the city scale, as well as the human one. By these means we have created a place that functions effectively as a transitional zone. It allows for moments of pause and leisure that make it a culturally sustaining landscape for commuters and local residents to return to again and again.

Vegetation Structure

Vegetation poles reveal the structure below, and cables strung across the site provide a sense of movement across the bands of activity.

Lighting Fiber Optic light illuminates the crease, while LEDs accentuate the zonal transitions. A fountain draws visitors Paving

into the creased seating area.

The paving visually enforces the transition of zones across the site by changing shape and

Drainage

pattern over each band.

Drainage is performed by low-profile slot drains at low points, and in the fountain area.

Grading Grading ties into the existing storm water infrastructure of Continental Avenue. The platform drops 9’ from Layout

west to east.

The Crease becomes the main seating element and ramp infrastructure

Structure

throughout the site.

The platform structure is grafted onto the column layout of the Continental Bridge.

Comprehensive Landscape Studio / Spring 2010 / 34-35

Joseph Boyle / M.Arch.

Measuring the World Through the Things We Make / Coleman Coker

Artist Studios and Slow-Food Restaurant The conceptual design for this studio focuses on perceptual depth as it relates to experiential qualities of inhabitation.

Students are asked to design an aperture and redefine ‘window’ as it relates to the context of New Orleans and the programmatic requirements of a live/ work artist residence. This design is then constructed in cast-in-place concrete—a 1:1 physical realization of the design— and to allow the lived experience and perception of this piece to begin to inform the design of the building.

Concrete has a highly monolithic presence in the built environment, while recording a surface cast of the form-work in which it is cured. This duality of solidity and surface inspired a series of tests with CNC-routed form work. The result exaggerates this latent paradox in materiality by establishing a digital imprint (CNC) on an analogue process (cast-in-place concrete). The studies manifest in a system of linear striations that excavate a ruled surface beneath a layer of ¾” plywood.

The pattern is tessellated throughout the concrete façade. This repetition is interrupted with a series of stacked polygal fins that project from the partiwall plane. The light fins maintain privacy between neighboring dwelling units while establishing a unique identity within the eclectic urban fabric of the Marigny district in New Orleans.

Advanced Studio / Spring 2010 / 36-37

Jennifer McGowan / B.S.I.D Meshworks / Igor Siddiqui

Design Within Reach Showroom I began the design process by studying the use of materials in fine art, more specifically a variety of mesh materials, and how they inform the decision making process for artists. I then analyzed a material called intelli-gel, which is a product used in hospital mattresses and back-pack straps. It is a polymer gel that is extruded into a three dimensional grid. Its structure allows for specific points in the plane to buckle in order to relieve pressure points on the body for comfort and durability. This study informed my final project.

The final project was to create a livework environment within a retail space, Design Within Reach (DWR) in Austin, Texas. DWR seeks to bring beautifully crafted modern home furnishings and accessories to the world. Their business model started as a catalogue selling well known designers’ furniture and has expanded to include works by upand- coming designers. The company now utilizes showrooms in every major city to better reach their customers.

Austin’s own DWR Studio needs a versatile program that meshes with a fresh, modern aesthetic. With the upset of an economy based on building and housing, furniture stores are threatened and DWR is no exception. My design solution addresses the need for the retailer to re-envision the showroom as a place for multiple uses. The space I have designed houses an artist in residence. This artist would have full access to a wood shop that includes a CNC router and would be able to design furniture that can be sold on location.

Public lectures, art openings, and private parties are also held in the store. The space has a mezzanine level reserved for private activities and allows natural light to pass through onto the lower level while visually connecting the artist to the showroom. The design center is used as both a point of sale and a central office for the designers and employees.

The form is derived from a single plane where spaces are created through the pull of forces up and down. The frame work is made of a composite wood using a CNC router. The floor and walls are made of a modern poly product that is heated and molded to form. The form visually disintegrates, creating openings to allow for views, doorways, and shelving.

Interior Design IV Studio / Spring 2010 / 38-39

Christopher Ferguson / B.Arch.

DENSITY | San Antonio and the [Mega]city / Elizabeth Alford

San Antonio Residential Densification The studio was focused on both macro and micro issues of city planning and residential development in San Antonio, Texas. Each project in the studio had to fit into a cohesive master plan developed collectively by the studio.

My project is designed as a high-end real estate project one block from the Riverwalk and a local park. It has a ground floor program designated as a membership gym.

Formally, the faรงade is intended to feel cloud like, with a series of sliding louvers that residents could operate depending on shade preference. There are five double-height units per floor, connected by a winding hall. Pockets of communal space are found where the back door of one unit faces the front door of another.

The units are unique and offer a design aesthetic with an open plan conducive to entertaining. Each unit features a hot tub connected to a large balcony. The many protruding balconies contribute to the cloudlike appearance of the faรงade and also speak of a subtle sarcasm of conflicting ideas: the units are themselves seemingly unique, but the building itself is modular by nature; is there any individuality at all?

East Facade - Solar Tracking Louver System

Sunrise

Mid-Morning

Noon

User-Specific

Design IV Studio / Spring 2010 / 40-41

ing

omes epart

Matthew Leach & Amit Oza / M.Arch.

Inks Dam: Environmental Industry / Cisco Gomes & Russell Krepart

Inks Lake State Park Overnight Retreat The Inks Lake Retreat sits in the richly diverse Texas landscape of the Inks Lake State Park in Burnet, Texas. Situated between the upper and lower lake due to it’s adjacency to Inks Dam, the Retreat building sits at the base of a rising rocky hill. It is on the high side of a saddle that is the boundary between the state park and the fish hatchery below as well as between the hills and the beginning of the low-land tree-scape. From here, one has views up and down the lake, across the dam, and across the low-lands.

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Site

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Large Ballast

Untreated Ipe Wood

Metal

Laying claim on the identity of this place, as well as the culture of the fish-hatchery and the state park, our building seeks to reinterpret and take advantage of the intimacy that this landscape demands, as well as it’s monumental character. In orienting the building around a partial courtyard, where one moves into it, your understanding of this place is conditional on your frame, and your point of view.

It becomes both of the hill, and of the lake. The hill form closes the courtyard, but due to the ground floor being open, and the outward room orientation, one’s understanding of their context is entirely conditioned by occupancy and use.

Concrete

Quartzite Stone Flooring

Views 1. Dam 2. Inks Lake 3. Colorado River 4. Fish Hatchery

On the ground floor, public and semipublic functions are oriented to be related, but distinct in order, to formalize the courtyard. Above and below your eye, the surfaces are treated in response to the dynamic nature of the natural ground and canopy conditions that surround the building. Materials were selected to take advantage of the incredibly dynamic lighting and thermal swings throughout the day and seasons, as well as to belie its contemporary construction.

02

Material Palette

Roof

Not to Scale

Roof Framing Plan

Screen Structure

Second Floor Primary Structure

Second Floor Framing Plan

Ground Floor Bearing Walls

04 Site Photo 01 Axonometric Through Room Type “A”

02 Structural Diagram

Not To Scale

Not To Scale

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+14.2’ +19.9’

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+17.6’

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03 Drainage Diagram 1/16”=1’-0”

06 Site Photo

Inks Lake State Park Overnight Retreat

Burnet, TX

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1/16”=1’-0”

Project Team

Matthew Z Leach Amit S Oza

Consulting

Notes

Francisco Gomes Russell Krepart

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w r k s h p

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1. Not For Construction 2.

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+12.7’

04 Ground Floor Lighting Diagram

Diagrams

Scale: Varies May 12, 2010

a0.1

+15.7’

+17

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a2.2

Exterior Lounge +19.9’

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a2.2

a2.2

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a4.3

Rock Garden

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Exterior Lounge +19.9’

3

Fire Pit

3

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a2.2 Exterior Lounge

Room Type “A”

+19.9’

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Inks Lake State Park Overnight Retreat

Burnet, TX

rs w r k s h p

Project Team

Matthew Z Leach Amit S Oza

Consulting

Francisco Gomes Russell Krepart

Notes

1. Not For Construction 2.

3.

4.

Advanced Technical Communication Studio / Spring 2010 / 42-43

Second Floor Plan

Scale 1/8”=1’-0” May 12, 2010

a1

01 Enlarged Elevation 1/2”=1’-0”

01 Enlarged Elevation 1/2”=1’-0”

02 Wall Section 1/2”=1’-0”

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nks Lake State Park Overnight Retreat

Burnet, TX

rs w r k s h p

6

a3.1

Advanced Consulting Technical Project Team Matthew Z Leach Amit S Oza

Francisco Gomes Russell Krepart

Communication Studio / Spring 2010 /Notes 44-45

1. Not For Construction 2.

3.

4.

a3.2

Todd Ferry / M.Arch.

Architecture and Collecting / Kim Furlong

The Cabinet of Curiosity Updated This project involved researching traditional cabinets of curiosities and their role as the precursor to the modern museum as a way of understanding the act of collecting and how designing around a collection can inform architecture.

The drive to collect and display extraordinary objects might be rooted in the desire to understand life through its extremities and to connect more directly with the larger world through a tangible interaction with its wonders.

This design was very much meant to be an updated cabinet of curiosity featuring elements that I identified as contemporary sources of wonder and marvel.

The project intends to create a juxtaposition between the natural elements commonly used in eastern medicine (as well as common objects in traditional curiosity cabinets) and the contemporary western medicine equivalent contained within these objects in order to emphasize the relative newness of modern medicine compared to these age-old objects, the distinct difference in perception of these items, and our lack of understanding of things that we trust blindly.

Vertical Studio / Spring 2010 / 46-47

Ryan Deffebach, Manuel Roman, & Saheb Sabharwal / B.Arch.

Model Sustainable Development for the Braker Lane MCC Tract, Austin / Barbara Hoidn

MCC Tract Development The University of Texas is currently considering options to develop the Gateway Tract, a large piece of university-owned land near the Pickle Research Center in North Austin. In keeping with the Austin comprehensive plan’s recommendations for density levels in the area, our proposal envisions the property as a secondary urban core for the city. The primary aim of the proposal is to create an urban environment that incorporates aspects of a business district, residential neighborhood, and recreational zone within a single compact neighborhood.

Connectivity to surrounding neighborhoods is a major concern given the placement of the site at Mopac Expressway and US 183. As a result, the third edge, Braker Lane, becomes a major access point. The road network consists of two grid systems, one oriented to Braker, the other to the Mopac service road. Where they would collide at oblique angles, a void occurs. This becomes the heart of the neighborhood, a public zone free of road infrastructure where freestanding development occurs periodically in the field. A small creek winds its way through the zone and continues under Mopac.

Dense office development is proposed for the site’s eastern edge, creating a buffer between freeway and neighborhood and taking advantage of the high visibility along Mopac. On the ground, restaurants are envisioned along the creek, serving neighborhood residents and office workers. In areas removed from major arterials, urban residential development would occur. A coding system would subdivide larger lots to discourage over-scaled development.

Advanced Studio / Fall 2010 / 48-49

Enoch Shih / B.Arch.

Zilker Clubhouse / Ulrich Dangel

Zilker Park Clubhouse Located west of Zilker Park in the rolling hills overlooking downtown Austin, the Zilker Clubhouse is a new multipurpose event center that caters to the demands of the growing local population. The facility replaces the existing outdated structure, which is situated upon one of Austin’s most desirable and unique building sites.

The facility’s stunning panoramic view provides a dramatic backdrop for conferences, retreats, weddings, and other social functions. In addition, the upper level contains a coffee bar with an outdoor patio that provides a full panorama over the hill country and city.

The Clubhouse, a thin translucent plank lifted by four concrete cylinders, offers a sublime experience as one enters the hovering structure and is elevated above the neighboring landscape. The heavy crimson cores, which houses vertical circulation and building services, support a system of floor-to-ceiling Vierendeel Trusses that wrap throughout the building. A series of thin vertical louvers run around the perimeter of the building, providing appropriate solar shading.

From afar, the Zilker Clubhouse is visible, perched over its surrounding environment. It stands as an icon, a glowing beacon in the night, signifying the progressive nature of the city of Austin.

Design VI Sound Building Studio / Spring 2010 / 50-51

Alfonso Calero-Lopez & Chelsea Larsson / M.L.A. Above Ground_Dallas, Texas / Jason Sowell

Hybrid Geometry Hybrid Geometry creates an innovative tactic for connecting urban environments with urban parks by proposing connection through a consistent design language and places of inhabitation. This scheme looks to the inherent geometries within the park and urban environment and fuses them together, creating a cohesive design language. Moreover, a series of intermediate plazas encourage human inhabitation. The human presence in the plazas will psychologically tie the urban and park environments together, thus smoothing the transition between the two.

The urban significance of Hybrid Geometry is how this scheme utilizes a comprehensive approach to designing a place of connection. From the detail you can see the larger setting therefore the site belongs on every scale, an approach that certainly could inform similar future interventions within the Trinity River corridor. The strategy of creating a set of plazas with differential amenities and character is a strategy that also gives identity to the whole neighborhood. We believe that this grandiose Landscape Architectural infrastructure strategy would certainly contribute towards the redevelopment of the neighborhood.

By concentrating amenities, for example, bringing together park and urban environments, and plugging in people with the light rail, we reduce the long-distances traveling, so frequent in the Dallas area. This is how Hybrid Geometry supports sustainability, as a comprehensive concept acting locally and positively impacting larger urban scales.

+ Park Geometry

= Urban Geometry

Hybrid Geometry

Urban Plaza

Mid Plaza

Rail Stop

Grass Plaza

Floating Plaza

Comprehensive Landscape Studio / Spring 2010 / 52-53

URBAN PLAZA

MID PLAZA

RAIL STOP

GRASS PLAZA

FLOATING PLAZA

Comprehensive Landscape Studio / Spring 2010 / 54-55

Thomas Guerra / B.Arch.

Context and Architectural Production / Smilja Milovanovic-Bertram

Birding Center for Hornsby Bend Interaction within the site as well as issues of public verses private shape the design of the birding center. A central spine is carried down the structure.

Positioned on one side are private programmatic requirements such as offices, bathrooms, storage, and utilities.

On the other, the birding center is opened up to allow for transitional spaces of meeting in the form of an informal meeting spot, a lobby, and a gallery space. A series of stairs are employed to develop separation between these spaces, as well as negotiate the elevation changes in the topography.

To create an interaction with the site, the building responds to a path that links two bodies of water. The path runs through the northern part of the building, creating an informal space for the convenience of moving through. For those simply going along the path that do not wish to formally enter the building, the shaded area can be utilized as an informal meeting spot, a place to rest, and an area to easily access bathrooms.

The birding center slightly diverges away from the path, only to be reunited again at the termination of the building’s southern point. As one travels down the path, the building’s facade creates a sense of movement and casts dynamic shadows on the interior.

Design II Studio / Spring 2010 / 56-57

Whitney Cooper / M.Arch.

Measuring the World Through the Things We Make / Coleman Coker

Deformation This project in New Orleans was about shifting scales and creating the micro before creating the macro. A concrete window was the first component to be designed, which was then applied to the overall building formation. The scalar deformation that happens in New Orleans was translated and applied to the window application. The character that occurs from this deformation reveals place and penetrates the city with memory. The design tried to incorporate these aspects to maintain the historical decay that the city possesses, as well as fill the voided parking lot with a telluric design to create a fluid deformation.

McGuire’s of New Orleans

B Gallery BECA

Contemporary Arts Center

NATIONAL WORLD WAR II MUSEUM

Advanced Studio / Fall 2010 / 58-59

CJ MacQuarrie / M.Arch.

Building as Cure: Architecture for Mental Health & Illness / Elizabeth Danze

Austin Asylum An asylum environment holds a commitment to creating a safe haven for its patients. Historically asylums were built as a self-sustaining community that replicated the lifestyle of the real world, while remaining apart from it (miles from towns). However, given modern misconceptions and governmental budget cuts, asylums have been pushed into close proximity to cities and tight detrimental environments.

To revive the notion of healing within asylums, issues of natural light, access to nature, and opportunities for community must be available. This formal proposal addresses these issues. The layering of the bar-shaped forms allows for the different wards to be contained within each bar hierarchically. Depending on the severity of the patient’s illness, a further distance from the primary entry is necessary. Additional security measures allow for central nurse stations at each of the intersections of the wards to deter from patient flight. The bar forms also create courtyards and cross-views create a sense of security and community. Material selection of glazing and concrete create a sectional contrast of solid and transparent, further facilitating view access to activity within each of the wards. Additionally, the transparency allows for the private units and offices to be secure while having direct access to the naturally lit corridors, communal spaces, and courtyards.

The outcome is a formally responsive and healthy environment that ultimately benefits the patients’ well being and expedites healing.

Perpendicular

Composite

Faceted/Triangulated

skin_Patterns Curvalinear

skin_Studies

Warp/Weft

Dissolve

Twist/Interlace

Undulation

Site Statistics:

skin_Profiles Screen/Layering

Perpendicular

skin_Materials Faceted/Triangulated Cantilever

Composite

skin_Patterns Curvalinear

Warp/Weft

Dissolve

site_Boundaries

Twist/Interlace

Undulation

Void

Screen/Layering

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site_Boundaries Tom Miller Hydroelectric Dam

Support

skin_Materials Composite Cantilever

Red Bud Trail

Translucent/Screened Concrete

1-3 Knots 4-6 Knots

Tom Miller Hydroelectric Dam

Agriboard

7-10 Knots

skin_Patterns

11-16 Knots

site_Features

17-21 Knots

Red Bud Isle

Bendheim Channel Glass

Warp/Weft

Dissolve

Twist/Interlace

Undulation Red Bud Trail

1-3 Knots

danze studio_03.002

4-6 Knots Void

7-10 Knots 11-16 Knots 17-21 Knots

site_Features

Red Bud Isle

Lake Austin Blvd.

skin_Materials Support

Tree Threshold 01

Cantilever Translucent/Screened Concrete Lake Austin Blvd.

Agriboard Tree Threshold 02

Tree Threshold 01

Sun Angle Spring 40 Sun Angle Summer Solstice 85 Sun Angle Winter 38

Bendheim Channel Glass

Tree Threshold 03

site_Thresholds

Lady Bird Johnson Lake

danze studio_03.002

Void Tree Threshold 02

Sun Angle Spring 40 Tree Threshold 03

Sun Angle Summer Solstice 85 Sun Angle Winter 38

site_Thresholds

Lady Bird Johnson Lake

Support

Translucent/Screened Concrete

Agriboard

Bendheim Channel Glass

danze studio_03.002

Vertical Studio / Spring 2010 / 60-61

Daniel Morrison / B.Arch.

Zilker Clubhouse / John Blood

Zilker Clubhouse Perched atop a hill overlooking downtown Austin, the Zilker Clubhouse is a popular venue that hosts a variety of events. The program of the clubhouse is centrally organized around a large subterranean courtyard which branches medium and large event spaces to provide this degree of flexibility. This courtyard is entered through a highly choreographed approach sequence in which the softscape of the surrounding site blends into the hardscape of the roof plane.

The building’s relationship to the site increases the public presence of the landscape, so as to provide equally for public and private programs. This intention drives the form of the building by means of an expansive, occupiable roof which arises out of the landscape to harbor the majority of programed space.

The idea to forcefully set the building into the landscape came from a study of karsting processes in indigenous limestones and the residual spacial possibilities therein. In this sense, the building is comprised of forceful stereotonic elements as well as more delicate tectonic elements.

WEST ELEVATION

EAST ELEVATION

zilker

clubhouse

WEST ELEVATION

LONGITUDINAL SECTION [LOOKING NORTH] Design VI Sound Building Studio / Spring 2010 / 62-63

EAST ELEVATION

Laura Wagner / M.Arch.

Food + Architecture / Michael Garrison

Sprouts Grocery Store kitchen

restaurant patio

The project is a Sprouts grocery store for East Austin which has the capability of producing all its own food. The grocery store functions atypically as it is designed with separate storefronts for basic amenities: milk and dairy products, bakery, produce, meat and fish. The resulting functionality is a quick-stop, street front shopping suitable for a tightknit community with sustainable goals.

The complex also includes a restaurant, wine bar, bike shop and coffee bar to facilitate urban community living.

storage mens

womens

restaurant

Randolph street elevation 1/16” = 1’-0”

wine bar

facade generation

program translation exterior lawn patio

milk & dairy bakery

A dramatically sloping site induces a downward-stepping slab foundation for the street-facing grocery store and a large park on the contiguous green roof that connects the building to the ground. Use of grid and color provide a distinguishable difference between storefronts while also tapping into a common visual vocabulary with which Sprouts can identify. The greenhouse above seeps into the ground-level grocery store at various points to articulate the homegrown nature of the products.

topography change

produce meat & fish restrooms

bike shop coffee bar

Sprouts grocery floor plan

1/16” = 1’-0”

entry circulation

lateral section 1/16” = 1’-0”

3 section conditions

reflected daylight

12 pm solstices

greenhouse to grocery

9 am, 3 pm solstices

multi use program

grocery embedded

store circulation

natural ventilation

vertical

y change topography change

greenhouse interaction greenhouse withinteraction grocery with grocery

structural grid structural definitionsgrid definitions

canted facadecanted facade

unifiying

unifiying

individualizing individualizing

rotating shading rotating panelsshading panels

Manor street elevation 1/16” = 1’-0”

Manor street elevation 1/16” = 1’-0”

longitudinal section 1/16” = 1’-0”

Vertical Studio / Spring 2010 / 64-65

Sarah Miracle / B.S.I.D. Medical Suite University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston / Carl Matthews

Health and Science Center The renovation of the nineteenth floor of the University of Texas Health Center called for a dual program including a Breast Imaging Center and the Biotechnology Commercialization Center.

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The top concerns when designing the Breast Imaging Center (BIC) were to avoid the often confusing corridors in medical suites and to open the space to natural light. Patients visit the breast imaging center for the state-of-the-art technology provided, but also require a sense of comfort and security during the strenuous process. By creating intimate pockets within a minimal space, patients’ emotional needs are met without over commercializing or compromising the medical facility. Tactile materials such as raw wool carpets, leather panelled walls and sycamore veneer give natural warmth along with sunlight that floods through large windows. Juxtaposed with the sleek white corridors, guests easily recognize where to go within the facility without requiring additional signage.

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The Biotechnology Commercialization Center (BCC) provides lab and office suites to start-up medical companies.

Merging state-of-the-art science with western influences from UT’s branding, led to a streamlined reception with the duality of the Biotechnology Commercialization Center (BCC) represented through materiality.

Limestone flooring, off-white cowhide, leather, and cacti add character to sleek modern furniture and a panelled reception desk. In order to allow personalization in the tenant suites without permanently affecting the space, a modular system gives tenants the ability to customize the workspace to their company’s work culture. A grid system of one inch square tubes is attached to the sub floor, creating voids for flooring panels and lab casework to sit in. Electrical wiring runs through the grid, providing the freedom to arranged casework without limitation of proximity to outlets and neatly contains cords. Further flexibility is provided by the three part casework that consists of a stationary frame, a rolling storage unit with a stainless steel work top, and optional overhead storage.

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Interior Design VI Sound Building Studio / Spring 2010 / 66-67

Marcy Shaw / M.Arch.

Measuring the World Through the Things We Make / Coleman Coker

A Gradient of Light and Shadow This studio takes a critical approach to perceptual depth as it becomes the conceptual driver of the experiential qualities of the design. The vehicle is materiality, specific to cast-in-place concrete. The design begins with a window that informs the development of the whole.

The artist lofts and slow food restaurant are set within the rich contextual fabric of New Orleans’ vernacular architecture of organic iron detailing pulled away from flat, colorful walls, tall and narrow windows veiled by shutters or screens, and courtyards that blur the boundaries between indoor and outdoor. Rather than creating actual depth where layers of space are separated by planes, the investigation focuses on how the experience changes when those layers of depth are condensed into a single plane, placing priority of experience on perceptual depth. Taking cues from the strong presence of place, the artist lofts and restaurant aim to create a layering of light where gradients of light wash the angled concave apertures. The abstraction of organic visual drama project patterns of light and shadow.

The plant vegetation develops over time and scales the structure of the open-air corridors where the façade is punctured by the funneled openings that begin to act as a vertical trellis. Over time, the cyclical patterns register against a monolithic structure.

Advanced Studio / Spring 2010 / 68-69

Kayla Lyssy / B.Arch.

A Gaze at New Orleans: Strategies and Operations for Meaningful Buildings / Angelo Bucci

Bayou St. John Learning Center Mid-City, the neighborhood where modern-day Bayou St. John terminates, has struggled to rebuild in the wake of Katrina.Opportunities to engage natural water features (so important to New Orleans’ history) are limited across the city. Bayou St. John is one such feature that is underwhelming in its physical presence and design.

An anticipated hike and bike greenway planned to link Louis Armstrong Park near the French Quarter to City Park adjacent to Bayou St. John creates an opportunity to make the end of the Bayou a node celebrated by the neighborhood and city at large. By extending the Bayou to create a recreational body of water at its termination point, social park space is provided where the anticipated greenway intersects the Bayou and its connection to Mid-City. A building, the Bayou St. John Learning Center, celebrates this intersection.

Elevated to respect the volatile surface conditions in New Orleans, the building helps facilitate new social activities on the ground plane by forming shaded areas for stretching and resting, event staging, and educational exhibits illustrating the importance of natural water habitats to the city.

The first (elevated) level of the building acts as a community porch, providing space for events, activities, technological access, dining, and social observation of happenings on the ground level. The second level of the building houses a library on one side (a permanent collection to take the place of the neighborhood’s current temporary facility) linked by bridge overlooking the porch level to a community learning center with classroom and studio spaces. The building intends to enrich the neighborhood and city socially while enhancing recreational activities that celebrate the geography and landscape of New Orleans.

Advanced Studio / Spring 2010 / 70-71

Christina Sohn & James Yan / M.L.A. Above Ground_Dallas, Texas / Jason Sowell

QWM OOF

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SRM OOF

UM WOF

QRM OOF

CONTEXT PLAN | 01

450 300 150 75 0

BRIDG NT HIL L ARET H U MARG

CONTINENTAL AVENUE

TRINITY RIVER

The design sets up the layered framework, but the user defines the path, experience, and tempo. Each level contextualizes a corresponding vista: city, bridge, and park. At each level, path transitions to platform the following programs: upper level – game boards and overlook, bridge level – fishing, lower level – bird watching, and park access. The upper level features recessed courts for shuffleboard, bocce, and horseshoes. Benches surrounding the lanes provide seating for spectators or those viewing events in the park below. As the user moves between levels the transition parallels a gradient in program from more active and urban to activities that engage the river ecology.

E

This project organizes the movement of pedestrians, bicyclists, cars, trains, runoff and sunlight, and considers the ways in which these components interact. The path system stretches from the proposed urban development at an above-bridge level, ramps down to the bridge, and connects with the park’s greenway.

This change in path elevation, and the corresponding platforms, registers a gradient of city to park activity.

proposed skywalk, our project sets up a promenade between city and river where pedestrians and bicyclists can access the park path system.

TRINITY RIVER CORRIDOR

PROPOSED TRINITY PARK

CONTINENTAL BRIDGE

TOP OF LEVEE

The Continental Avenue Bridge represents one of the few opportunities for visitors to access the planned new park space of the Trinity River Corridor Project. This design benefits from the proposed commercial and residential development that the new infrastructure and park system establish. Tying into this edge, and the proposed Dallas Skywalk, the project sets up a promenade between city and river, where pedestrians and bicyclists can access the park path system.

Our design benefits from the proposed commercial and residential development that the new infrastructure and park system establish. Tying into this edge and the

DEVELOPMENT

DALLAS URBAN LAB MASTERPLAN

This project transforms the Continental Bridge into a dynamic connection between the downtown Dallas urban edge and the new Trinity River Park.

We re-imagine the bridge as a layered experience that accentuates contextual datums intrinsic to the site. The project creates a living scaffold which synthesizes the energy and vivacity of the city with the rhythms, cycles, and seasons of the Trinity River.

PROPOSED

NEW MARGARET HUNT HILL BRIDGE

Editors’ Note: Living Scaffold received the National Honor Award in General Design in the ASLA 2010 Student Awards.

PROPOSED DALLAS SKY WALK

Living Scaffold: Re-Imagining Continental Bridge

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Bird-Watching Platform

The lower level platform looks to the design's new landforms that create an opportunity for bird watching.

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Comprehensive Landscape Studio / Spring 2010 / 72-73

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Virginia Lowder / B.S.I.D. Meshworks / Igor Siddiqui

Showroom of the Future Art + Commerce The space for the visiting artist consists of areas that are flexible in their ability to be private as well as more public work areas. The centerpiece of the work area is a CNC router, which each artist will use to construct their body of work during the residency. The challenge was to design a cohesive interior system that can, through both continuity and variation, address multiple programmatic, spatial and atmospheric requirements. To this end, at least 50% of the proposed interior design is constructible using the CNC router as a primary means of fabrication.

Issues of privacy and publicity, consumption and production, spectatorship, exhibitionism, display, surveillance, interaction, spectacle, community, temporary events, flexibility, image, branding, failure, craft, multiple scenarios, market values, fabrication technologies, are among many considerations that the project begins to engage.

Interior Design IV Studio / Spring 2010 / 74-75

Cameron Kraus / M.Arch.

Building as Cure: Architecture for Mental Health & Illness / Elizabeth Danze

Austin Asylum The question of mental well being as it relates to architectural form is perhaps most poignant in structures that house the care of the mentally unstable.

This asylum proposes a return to earlier models of mental treatment, through exposure to nature, respite, and a gradual re-introduction to society through work programs. Architecturally, it responds to the 19th century Kirkbride model of hierarchy in patient severity and is meant to be a facility that treats a broad spectrum of mental health patients, from outpatient to critical care.

Security and surveillance are managed in the organization and siting of the building and through material properties such as glazed interior circulation space. Comfort and community are engendered in the landscaped courtyards and cafe facilities.

Along Austin’s Town Lake, set back and shrouded in trees, the asylum offers refuge and security for those needing care from or re-acclamation to society.

Vertical Studio / Spring 2010 / 76-77

Bobby Astrich, Ben Bowman, Arturo Gonzalez, Ben Howell, Alex Morris, Christina Ng, Hyo Park, Kyle Petro, & Eleen Wu / B.Arch., Diz Jeppe & Darby Noonan / M.Arch.

Solar Decathalon UTSoA Submission 2012 / Vince Snyder

Curv House The UTSoA project submission for the 2012 Solar Decathlon was a team effort focused around siting considerations for the competition. The building touches the ground lightly and expresses its mobility, taking inspiration from the fabrication techniques of antique airplane construction in pursuit of a technically dynamic form.

The CURV Appeal home provides homeowners an affordable means to directly participate in the energy economy, moving from energy consumption to production. Through the use of sustainable design approaches, materials, and energy efficient systems, the CURV Appeal home becomes more than just an “off the grid” house; it represents an effort to economize building “green.”

Our design is a single, modular shell with layers and components that interact with the environment to provide and energy-efficient and comfortable home.

The house has a thin section in one direction to allow for cross ventilation and daylighting throughout the interior. The shell orients itself along the east-west axis, to take advantage for the southern exposure during the winter and to reduce the intense sunlight in the mornings and evenings of hot summer months.

A continuous corrugated metal façade forms the identifying curves of the CURV Appeal home. This material is economical and structural, emphasizing the idea of multi-functionality. The metal reflects heat away from the home, resulting in a decrease in energy usage. The home includes photovoltaic panels integrated with the building envelope, fiber-optic and LED lighting prototypes, evacuated tube solar hot water heating, innovative HVAC and engineering systems design, and an aquaponic garden that provides food for two people. All systems are energy-efficient and inexpensive, reducing the long-term cost of the home and making “green” building more available to the average homeowner.

The CURV Appeal home represents a movement in architecture towards affordability and efficiency. Our design is made feasible and responsible and follows the principles of collaboration – between the homeowner and the home, between a building and its environment, between ecology and economics.

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Advanced Studio / Spring 2010 / 78-79

Advanced Studio / Spring 2010 / 80-81

Travis Avery / M.Arch.

Negotiating the Ground Line / Joyce Rosner

Lady Bird Lake Swim Center This civic swim center is an attempt to establish a central ‘hub’ or pedestrian port of access to Lady Bird Lake for this portion of the river, which basically has no dominant access point.

With the re-development of Waller Creek and the future implementation of a pedestrian bridge at IH-35, this public space could become a very active and vibrant access point for East Austin’s family population as well as the downtown and student communities.

I ultimately wanted to create a public space that has a strong local community identity, but that can also act as a place that is accessible to ‘Park & Ride’ transportation options for those traveling from communities not adjacent to the ‘hub.’ The site location, directly adjacent to the Mexican American Cultural Center, is ideal for lending opportunities for shared parking and interactive event planning.

The articulated geometries in the design are responses to the inherent use of the site, as it exists now. Many beaten paths intersect and overlap throughout the site and the swim center directly responds to this spontaneity and interaction with pedestrians and passers-by, as well as allows for access to the facility from nearly any direction. These existing paths became catalysts for formal generation and programmatic delineations.

The swim center’s interface with the ‘Hike & Bike Trail’ is open with dissolving layers back to the pool to imply a welcoming and a coming forth to the pool/courtyard area from the trail.

A public bathroom and drinking fountain will be placed very close to the trail’s edge for convenience. Incorporating kayak and bicycle rentals into the public pool program helps to reiterate that this location is both a start and stop destination for access to the lake, as well as provides necessary amenities to nearby families.

Vertical Studio / Spring 2010 / 82-83

Editors’ Note: This essay is a summary of a larger report which can be found at http://soa.utexas.edu/files/crpla/ HaciaUnCaminoLimpio_Web.pdf

Project Overview During the spring of 2010, nine students in Dr. Bjorn Sletto’s Latin American Planning Studio conducted a multifaceted analysis of solid waste problems faced by a poor, informal settlement on the outskirts of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. This project was the second in a series of planning studios focused on the community of Los Platanitos.

Working collaboratively with community, local government, and NGO partners, we focused on the social, environmental and infrastructural causes and consequences of the solid waste problem, with the ultimate goal of developing empowering solutions that can serve as a regional model for solid waste management in informal settlements.

Introduction to Los Platanitos Los Platanitos is an informal settlement located in a low-income sector in the municipality of Santo Domingo Norte in the Dominican Republic. The community was constructed by residents in the late 1980s and early 1990s in a steep canyon, or cañada, which was once the site of a municipal landfill. The slightest rain easily clogs the canyon with large volumes of trash, flooding the nearby houses and creating serious health risks to residents.

Now home to between 2,200 and 3,000 people, most of the residents have moved to the area to seek employment opportunities and a better livelihood, or to be close to family members.

Los Platanitos is one of many “cañada” settlements in Santo Domingo Norte.

In fact, the word “cañada” has come to signify informal settlements characterized by unplanned “self-help” housing. In cañadas, like in many informal settlements across Latin America, residents generally do not hold titles to the land they live on and they lack basic municipal services such as electricity, running water, and solid waste services. After many years and increasing attention by local governments, many cañadas have become incorporated into the city with service provision and land titleization following in some cases. However despite these trends, services provided to cañadas such as Los Platanitos typically remain unreliable and irregular compared to “formal” neighborhoods in the municipality.

Previous Research In 2008, a team of students from the University of Texas at Austin (UT) was invited to work with the community of Los Platanitos and the Municipality of Santo Domingo Norte to conduct a participatory risk and vulnerability assessment. This assessment documented the major social, economic, political, and infrastructural challenges facing the community, in particular the causes and consequences of the frequent flooding along the channel that runs through the settlement. The study identified several critical problems in Los Platanitos, including lack of access to education and healthcare, high crime rates, and pervasive unemployment, which forces the majority of residents to rely on irregular income from informal and extremely low-paying jobs. However, the study found that the lack of regular, municipal services poses the greatest challenge to the health, well-being, and development of the community. In particular, the lack of solid waste and drainage infrastructure was identified as the primary cause of the frequent flooding and contamination of the channel and was determined to be the most immediate challenge facing the community, especially for residents living directly alongside the channel.

Project Goals Building upon the risk and vulnerability assessment, a second phase of the ongoing collaborative project was initiated to focus on the key problem of solid waste. The most immediate goal of the project was to work with community members and partners to design an innovative and sustainable community-based solid waste management program in Los Platanitos.

However it was critical to assess the key issues in a systemic context. The following report presents the findings from our work in Los Platanitos, while outlining a model for integrated solid waste research and management soundly based in local knowledge, local needs, and local social and environmental realities.

Methodology The second phase of the project included a variety of methods to better understand the complex social and environmental context in Los Platanitos. Using a participatory research approach, we gathered both qualitative and quantitative data and considered social, political, economic, and environmental factors associated

Gina Casey, Omar Diaz, Lindsey Engelman, Vanessa Martinez, George McQueen, Laura Muraida, & Christeen Pusch / M.S.C.R.P., Lindsey Carte / Geography & Eva Hershaw / Journalism Latin American Planning Studio / Bjørn Sletto

Community-Based Solid Waste Assessment: Empowering a Community by Understanding Trash Perceptions and Production with solid waste management at different scales. We divided into three teams that used specific methods to obtain different types of data and produced varied community perspectives: community engagement and project design, social survey and assessment, and physical survey and design. All groups had to work within a complex cultural context characterized by unequal relations of power and defined by gender, age, and race dynamics, which led us to reflect critically about the adequacy, appropriateness, and limitations of our different methods. The methods developed by each team shared the common goal of encouraging community participation.

The community engagement and project design team used a variety of styles of focus groups, using creative tools of engagement such as capacity building workshops and drawing exercises, to better understand the social relations that inform decision-making processes on the household and community level. The social survey and assessment team conducted surveys and interviews with a random sampling of community members living along the channel. The team collected largely qualitative data that revealed personal decision making processes and behaviors imperative to developing an appropriate waste management program grounded in local realities. The physical survey and design team used a number of mapping and observation methods to assess, in quantitative terms, challenges associated with access, mobility, trash generation and water quality. Their methods included measuring household generation of solid waste, documenting patterns of flow and accumulation of solid waste both within the channel and throughout the community, and measuring water quality at various points along the channel.

Focus Groups Focus groups allow for group dialogue and processing, and include the input of an array of community members and leaders, therefore providing unique information to complement survey and interview data.

We held a first round of focus groups in January in order to understand how community members felt trash affected their family and neighborhood, their current practices around trash maintenance, and the potential solutions to alleviate the trash problem. A second round of focus groups were held in March to assess the level of participation and reactions to recent community clean-up efforts and a newly formed community trash foundation. In general, focus groups were conducted with 8-12 participants and three facilitators, and were audio recorded. Separate focus groups were held based on gender and age. Upon realizing difficulties of some community members to attend focus groups in the house in which we were based, March focus

groups were held in various parts of the community to ensure the maximum and most representative attendance.

Drawing Exercises In addition to focus groups, youth and children participated in group-based drawing exercises where we asked them to draw how they observed and perceived of garbage in their community. The goal was to identify what symbols and imagery they felt represented awareness of trash and the environment. These exercise allowed us to better understand the complex meanings and forms of consciousness about the creation and management of solid waste in Los Platanitos, and to obtain visual representations of knowledge and perceptions of solid waste problems that may not otherwise emerge. The total number of participants fluctuated between 10 and 15 children and teenagers, with participants coming and going at different times. We concluded the project by asking the groups to present their work to the other participants.

This allowed the artists to emphasize and elaborate on their message and to facilitate a collaborative conversation.

Capacity Building Workshops When we returned to Los Platanitos in March 2010, the community had already formed a community organization to oversee solid waste management, a direct result of our January 2010 collaboration. We wanted to facilitate the future relationship between community members and municipal authorities.

We also received an opportunity to present at a city-wide Urban Forum in which mayoral candidates and representatives of 200 organizations would be present, and wanted to use this presentation as a starting point for that process. Accordingly, we held a series of workshops during which community members and the research team worked together to elaborate community goals and to discuss a strategy for meeting these goals, paying particular attention to the upcoming Urban Forum.

We employed a variety of techniques in the workshops. We began by facilitating brainstorming about the goals of the newly formed organization, what the next steps or most immediate goals of the

Course Work / Spring 2010 / 84-85

organization should be, and the long-term goals and needs for a community based management system. The workshop then moved in the direction of capacity building as the conversation shifted to the preparation for upcoming meetings with government officials and civil society organizations. We employed role-play techniques to provide the opportunity to practice and reflect on how the community would present at the Urban Forum. Finally, we used techniques of mediation when conflicts arose between different community members at various points in the workshops.

Surveys and Interviews Our surveys and interviews focused on risk, vulnerability, and solid waste problems, limiting our study area to the most vulnerable households living along the channel. The primary goals of the surveys and interviews were 1) to assess indicators of risk and vulnerability of households along the channel, and 2) to better understand waste management along the channel.

organic contamination in the channel, we took water samples and tested for biological oxygen demand and ammonia. Biological oxygen is used as an indicator of levels of organic waste, while ammonia is a form of nitrogen toxic to aquatic life and therefore acts as a measure of toxicity. Children and elderly members of the community accompanied us, observing the testing process, assisting us in finding accessible points for sampling, and helping record and keep track of data. The biological oxygen tests were performed at five sites and the ammonia tests were performed at these same five sites plus an additional 6 sites. The tests were repeated four times on different days to verify consistency.

Trash Mapping To assess the health and safety implications of the solid waste and to evaluate the best strategies for removing the trash from the community, we decided it was necessary to document the type and amount of trash found in the community by mapping. To consistently map, categorize and measure the trash, we chose to divide trash into two basic typologies: “accumulated” or “scattered.”

In order to map the accumulated and scattered trash, we started by drawing areas of trash on our preprinted, large scale maps. We then measured the width, length and depth of the piles of accumulated trash only. Finally, we categorized the trash found in these accumulations by type, and estimated the percentage of each type of trash that was present. All this allowed us to digitize these areas in GIS, and then later calculate their approximate area and volume of “accumulated” surface trash.

The trash categories were organic, plastic, metal, Styrofoam, glass, or “other.” These categories were the types of trash that we found to be most prevalent based on an initial cursory survey of the area and a discussion with community members. Systematically mapping the trash throughout the community gave us a better understanding of the extent of the problem, both in terms of total type and quantity. The process helped us identify the most problematic areas for trash collection and identify locations where trash tended to accumulate.

In addition to basic demographic questions, we designed the survey and interview questions to capture more detailed information on the production, behavior and perceptions of solid waste and problems regarding solid waste.

Survey and interview questions were integrated and conducted simultaneously to allow to provide the opportunity for follow-up questions and to better understand why respondents answered questions in a particular way. The survey consisted of 63 questions and was conducted orally in 36 households.

Household Trash Survey An important step was to determine how much trash each household and family produced. This data would help residents design an appropriate structure for a community-based solid waste management program, including number of employees, number of pickups per week, and so on. We chose to survey household trash production in every fifth house located along the channel, using the numbering system of houses developed in the physical survey in 2008 and arrived at a sample size of 44 houses, approximately 20% of all houses. Based on data from this sample of houses, we could approximate the total, the household, and the individual production of solid waste in all households along the channel.

Water Quality Measurements In an effort to document the level of

To do so, we went door-to-door and handed out two, 140-liter trash bags to each household in our sample.

One bag was labeled organic trash and the other inorganic. We explained the difference between the two and asked the residents to put all their food remains, excluding meat, in the bag for organic trash, and all remaining trash, including meat, in the bag for inorganic trash. On each bag we recorded the house number, name of the family, number of families within the house or structure, number of people within the family we were surveying, and the total number of people living within the structure.

After informally electing a board of directors, members of the fledgling organization successfully organized four major cleanups, or operativos.

Assisted by numerous volunteers from the community, the organizers removed trash from most of the channel, working mostly by hand or with limited equipment.

We left the bags with each family or household for a total of three days. After picking up the bags, we measured the weight of each bag using a hand scale, and the volume using a large plastic bin, in which we had measured and marked volume levels beforehand. Therefore to measure volume, we placed the trash bags in the container to get an approximate measurement without opening the bags.

Alley and Staircase Mapping and Evaluation Being situated in the bottom of a narrow canyon, primary access to nearby streets is only possible through steep, crumbling and uneven staircases from Los Platanitos. The main alleyway, known as Cacique, follows the channel the entire length of Los Platanitos and is relatively easy to walk, but during periods of rain and flooding, Cacique becomes impassible and residents are forced to use the steep stairs to move in an out of the canyon. This restricts access and mobility, and creates serious obstacles for solid waste removal from Los Platanitos. To better understand how trash is currently moved from peoples’ homes to waste disposal sites outside Los Platanitos we decided to systematically evaluate the quality of the alleyways in the community by mapping, photographing, and hand-drawing diagrams.

We took a similar approach when we surveyed the staircases, which are key access points to Los Platanitos, but which are in varying states of deterioration. In order to assess the feasibility of utilizing these stairways for trash removal, we systematically walked each stairway with a group of women and men, identifying them on a large-scale map, and digitizing them for future analysis in GIS. Community Response Returning to Los Platanitos in March 2010, we were delighted to learn that community members had begun the process of forming a community-based organization to manage the solid waste problem. The initiative was spearheaded by a group of residents who had worked with us in January. After our first visit in January, this group of residents organized a series of community meetings to explore the possibility of forming an organization similar to the community-based fundaciones in the Distrito Nacional, who had joined us in Los Platanitos in January to presented their work and experience.

The group of organizers had also begun an informal process of environmental education and conscientization. By walking door-to-door, asking residents to stop throwing trash in the channel and instead collect it in trash bags and bring it to disposal sites on the main roads.

However, we realized this group was still in its infancy and members were still uncertain about the goals and structure of the organization, and the nature of its relationship with external partners and other grassroots organizations already working in Los Platanitos. Given the great enthusiasm and hope evidenced by these residents, we decided to provide whatever assistance we could to facilitate the development of this group. Together with residents, we also invited representatives of the local government to tour Los Platanitos and observe the results of the cleanup.

We were pleased to receive the municipality’s commitment to establish four paid positions for residents to conduct trash pickup, to donate necessary tools and equipment for trash pickup, including a monthly supply of plastic trash bags, and to provide the service of a tractor and truck to remove the remaining trash scattered throughout the community.

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Vertical Shading

Ventilation

Views

Vince Ho & Molly Hubbs / M.Arch.

Intelligent Building Skins / Ulrich Dangel

Tower of the Winds The façade design for the Piraeus Tower seeks to showcase the dramatic force of wind through its performative as well as aesthetic qualities.

Piraeus has long benefited from the presence of wind. The temperate climate, the fresh air, and the success of the historical shipping trade all depend on its presence. And so the tower itself, with its prominent location on the shore of one of the busiest world harbors, would do well to feature wind for its façade.

The façade has two main components: a dynamic vertical louvered system and a beacon along the western corner integrating an escape stair, a vertical solar chimney, and viewing platforms of the main harbor. For the first, operable louvers much like venetian blinds allow occupants to control views, shading, and ventilation into the core of the building.

Using relatively flexible fasteners, the panels shimmer as wind hits the façade.

Louvers in the closed position allow occupants to operate the façade as a double skin, whereas in the open position more direct views of places like Athens or the harbor are possible. The inner skin is a fixed glazing system with operable features at certain locations to allow individual occupant control. While air intakes happen at a floor-by-floor level, the primary exhaust is made on the western corner via a solar chimney. The chimney is flanked by stairwells. Viewing platforms are placed in the interstitial space of the stairwells. Lastly, Piraens can enjoy the plinth by watching movies on the surface of the corner tower with Athens shining in the background.

The material palate for the Piraeus Tower includes reflective panels of Dupont Corian Solid Surfaces and fritted SentryGlas. Thus, as wind hits each panel the entire façade will shimmer. Variations in opacity will create visual interest across the façade. The horizontal division elements will be clad in aluminum. All of these material choices are durable enough for exterior use.

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weezer. say it ain’t so

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weezer, ‘say it ain’t so’

weezer. say it ain’t so

mozart, ‘symphony no. 25 kv183, 1st mvmt.’ mozart. symphony no. 25 kv183, 1st movement

mozart. symphony no. 25 kv183, 1st movement

longitudinal structure

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Kevin Johnson, CJ MacQuarrie, Diana Su / M.Arch. & Nirav Savjani / Comp.Sci. Recursive Assemblies / Michael Beaman

KDNC: Translating Music to Form Music is a form of beauty and inherently subjective in its experiential interpretation by the user. Genres attempt to quell a few of the discrepancies in interpretation by creating areas of consensus that typify the music’s arrangement and execution, but these are typically limited to audible perception. This collaborative, experiential installation is initiated by an analysis of music compositions that develops a translation of audible perception into a formal, haptic, and kinetic experience.

Through data collection, advanced programming techniques, and parametric tools, the components of the music (i.e. frequency, stability, and volume) are translated into generators of formal elements. The analysis and integration of each instrument into the composition builds a linear timeline while directly corresponding to the sheet music.

In order to achieve a contrast the comparison study pulls from two polar genres: Alternative - Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So” and Classical - Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 kv183, 1st Movement. As the songs play they become the unique generators of their comprehensive form.

Evaluating the formal outputs against their preconceived genre-based characteristics yields a contradiction. Typically, classical music is defined as containing numerous layers of instruments, overlaid with indelible intricacy, purporting elegance and refinement. On the other hand, Alternative Rock carries the reputation as being explicitly edgy, straightforward, and predominantly heavier in execution.

However, from the forms generated we get quite the contrary notion.

Characteristics of the form generated from the classical composition draws out monolithic and disjointed forms with an heir of banality cohesion. While on the other hand, the alternative song undulates cohesively with peaks and contrasts of thin and thick elements.

The end result is a provocative and interactive form that engages the user, but ultimately redirects preconceived notions of music classification. A new conversation emerges exploring how characteristic typologies can be evaluated against alternate modes of perception.

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Window section a-a

Shaft section b-b

Elevation

Gerald Griggs & Weimeng Lu / M.Arch.

Intelligent Building Skins / Ulrich Dangel

The Athena Lighthouse Editors’ Note: The Athena Lighthouse was the third-place winning entry in the Piraeus Design Competition.

By virtue of its height and proximity to the water, the Piraeus Tower has already become iconic – as the lighthouse of the ferry harbor and the gateway to Athens. This design proposes to make the building more elegant and less overpowering to better assume these roles.

Original structure system

Marble Window Screen Pane

Add vertical ventilation shaft

Covering Translucent Skin

This design shows a respect for the vernacular architecture of Greece expressed in the buildings nestled in the hills rising above the harbor and seen in the villages – the white cubes which inspired the early 20th century Modernists. This proposal also pays homage to ancient Athens and the values that Athena represented: strength, wisdom and civilization. Also, this design maintains the regular orthogonal geometry seen in the architecture of the Parthenon. It also injects a certain amount of randomness into the arrangement of the planar and cubic elements to convey that wonderful aesthetic quality of the Greek villages.

In summary, this project proposes a light shimmering tower of strength and elegance with a design which embraces the simple vernacular architecture of the Greek hill towns and the Classical geometry of ancient Greece.

From an environmental viewpoint, the building skin promotes energy efficiency by helping to keep the interior cooler.

The design prevents direct solar heat gain by the use of a slightly reflective translucent low thermal mass skin, deeply recessed windows, and sliding translucent exterior window shades. The double skin design enables the cooler harbor air to enter the cavity and vent the warm office air. An intake vent above each window allows on-shore harbor air to enter the interior, while a vent at the ceiling level in each room allows the warmer office air to flow out and up the shaft. In summary, the double skin uses the cooler summer on-shore breezes to cool and ventilate the building.

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IV. Optimized shading structure

Fig. 204 Changing depth of optimized shading

Fig. 205 Optimized shading in Austin (TX) for south

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Stefan Bader / M.S.S.D. Master Thesis / Werner Lang

Thesis: High Performance Facades Due to the fact that construction, maintenance and operation of buildings consume almost 50% of the energy today, architects play a major role in the reduction of energy consumption. The building’s envelope (façades and roof) can have a significant and measurable impact. With regard to overheating and the potential lost of internal heat, transparent parts of the building envelope have a large effect on the building’s energy consumption. Modern, transparent façade systems can fulfill contemporary demands, such as energy conservation, energy production or the degree of visual contact, of sustainable buildings in order to reduce internal heating, cooling, and electrical loads.

An analysis of existing shading devices and façade design leads to a comparative analysis of conventional shading devices like horizontal and vertical blinds as well as egg-crate and honeycomb shading structures in a hothumid climate like Austin, Texas. This study helped evaluating strengths and weaknesses of each device resulting in an optimization process of conventional shading devices. Ultimately, an optimized shading structure has been developed.

a. Solar insolation for conventional shading devices oriented towards S, SW and W

This project aimed to develop an advanced transparent façade system for a south-oriented commercial façade in Austin, Texas, which fulfills high standards with regard to low energy use, by limiting cooling loads and demands for artificial lighting while avoiding glare and heat losses during the cold season.

The optimization has been achieved in providing full shading for a specified period of time throughout the year while providing maximized solar exposure.

The shading structure consists out of an array of fixed shading components varying in size and proportion to fulfill criteria like specific views, transparency and aesthetics. The shading structure has been compared to conventional shading devices and analyzed with regard to the reduction of annual solar radiation. The improvement in design and energy consumption contributes to the variety of shading structures for building skins. It is anticipated that the solutions will help to widen the options for aesthetically pleasing, high-performance façades for commercial buildings.

Fig. 09 Southwest: honeycomb vertical 4’

University of Texas - School of Architecture - Center for Sustainable Development - Prof. Dr. Werner Lang

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south-west provide full shading from mar 21 - sep 21 at 3 p.m. width: 1' azimuth window: 45 ° W azimuth sun: 63° W (red: 18° W) altitude angle sun: 37° Shading device: diagonal shading / fins

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East

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W Fig. 202 Diagram showing how to design optimized shading blinds for a southwest oriented building

IV. Optimized shading structure

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zed shading blinds c. Optimized for a southwest shadingoriented blinds for building a southwest oriented building Fig. 212 Final layout of components in order to reduce material waste

rays - sun at 3 p.m. de of the sun = 37°

Solar rays - sun at 3 p.m. altitude of the sun = 37°

attached element that rests on these metal bolts. The structure can easily be hung onto the façade, facilitating the mounting. In order to protect the shading structure from getting blown off by a strong wind, the shading structure could be held in place by replacing this ‘hanger’ with a simple hole. The shading structure would be held in place and fastened with the bolts. Like that, the shading structure would sit tight on the façade. Along the edge of the opening, a tolerance of 1 1/2” was given to allow the structure to expand. Since the whole structure was build with zero tolerance between each component, the structure should not be moving towards the edges since the structure should keep itself in place. The width of the aluminum ‘U’-profiles is 2 1/2”. Therefore, the shading structure would be able to move along these 2 1/2” as well. Having designed the whole structure with zero tolerance made it quite challenging to put it together.

Every connection isextrusion under a lot of tension. For Fig. 213 Optimized shading component w/ and w/o the future, a tolerance of at least 1/16” should be taken into account. The components were assembled row by row in order to facilitate the assembly process. It turned out that it is easiest to start hanging the first row (upper 86

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Fig. 218 Attachment piece to connect to window frame

Professional Report - Stefan Bader - sb32944 - MSSD - Spring 20

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Fig. 219 Installation row by row to fasten and facilitate the process

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University of Texas - School of Architecture - Center for Sustainable Development - Prof. Dr. Werner Lang

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Course Work / Spiring 2010 / 96-97

Studio Abstracts 100 100 100 101 101

Design in the Realm of the Senses / Larry Doll A Community Swimming Pool / Michael Benedikt Ordering Systems / Smilja Milovanovic-Bertram & Michael Beaman Sacred Beauty within the Profane / Coleman Coker Summer Atelier in Landscape Architecture / Hope Hasbrouck

Summer Studio Work 102 104 108

Wetland Mausoleum / Courtney Kizer Re-Appropriating Mechanisms / Garrett Jones & CJ MacQuarrie Memorial Hill Park: Urban Necropolis / Kristina Olivent

Course Work Observatory, Restaurant Tower, Thekla / Johanna Reed Western Impressions of Eastern Japan / Molly Hubbs Japanese Menu, Mile-High, Sequential Space / Mike Start

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Design I / Design II / Interior Design / Vertical / Advanced / Landscape

Design in the Realm of the Senses / Design I

A Community Swimming Pool / Design II

Larry Doll

Michael Benedikt / Igor Siddiqui, Visual Communication Instructor

During this summer session we considered architectural form as a dependent variable. That means that the forms we developed were contingent on forces other than our individual “will to form.” For most of the semester we focused on the human body and psyche as sources for our independent variables.

We explored microprogramming — the close reading of spatial requirements attached to a large number of everyday activities. We explored the movement of people through space — rather we studied the space required for humans to move through matter. These first exercises employed stereotomic production of space. We finished by exploring the perception of light as it is reflected, filtered and received by matter. These exercises employed tectonic production of space.

IMAGE: SCOTT PARKS

This five-week intensive studio, with its visual communications accompaniment (taught by Igor Siddiqui), met all day every day. In design, seven exercises were undertaken: one 2D field composition; in 2½ D field composition; one study in landform geometry; one in (pool) behavior research; one in the design of a 1200 s.f. shade structure in wood.

These culminated in the design of a neighborhood swimming pool complex, with change/ rest rooms, a pump room, a shade structure, parking, and a variety of open-air amenities.

IMAGE: CINDY TO

Ordering Systems / Vertical Smilja Milovanovic-Bertram & Michael Beaman “Architecture: instrument for the invention of knowledge through action” -Lebbeus Wood

The two sessions of this vertical studio focus on the relationship of ordering systems, the language of construction and how those systems are inhabited in context. The first session (Milovanovic-Bertram) makes use of analog tools and the second session (Beaman) implements digital tools for architectural production.

There are many ways in which abstract thoughts are translated into an artifact— a building. Instead of projecting form first and pondering how to make it, we consider systems as the point of departure.

The first session studio project, a video gallery, addresses a project between action and stasis in an urban context. Action is the projection of videos while stasis is represented by layers of materials forming enclosure. The studio undertakes a series of investigations across different scales, both in drawing and model-building.

IMAGE: KRISTIN WALSH

Studio Abstracts

Sacred Beauty within the Profane / Advanced

Summer Atelier in Landscape Architecture / Landscape

Coleman Coker The studio addressed impermanence and imperfection as a means of design. Within the boundary of wabi sabi nothing lasts, nothing is finished and consequently imperfect; wabi sabi differs from our conditioned western attitude where architecture is the pinnacle of permanence and perfection. (wabi—beauty found in the transience of life by accepting the constant flux of all things / sabi—a respect for imperfection that equates to a kind of solemn beauty.) To explore this, the studio undertook an urban necropolis along the riverfront of New Orleans.

The designs addressed how a cemetery is more a place for the living who visit cemeteries to remember their lost loved ones. The studio investigated the unique site for a cemetery in the CBD on the river’s edge through considering degrees of public/private; sacred/profane; flux/permanence; stasis/movement; perfection/ imperfection and how these differences could be enrich a dynamic civic intervention. From these, the final projects focused on privacy, solemnity and remembrance while exploring the idea of what a cemetery is and how that might expand to challenge the conventional role of the burial place in an urban environment.

IMAGE: JESSE MAINWARING

Hope Hasbrouck Landscape Architecture is the thoughtful creation and manipulation of space in response to a specific idea or set of ideas about habitation, art, man, and nature.

The course has three distinct yet equally important educational objectives. The first is to introduce those aspects of design that are considered fundamental to an understanding and interpretation of landscape architecture and the visual arts in total. The principal vehicle for such an understanding involves an exploration of compositional rules. Second, the course seeks to introduce the conventions for design representation including drawing and presentation skills so that course participants develop the precision and facility necessary for visual communication. The development of visual literacy necessitates the simultaneous development of one’s graphic and representational skills. In this context, the work of this course holds some analogies to the process of learning a new language in which vocabulary and syntax are the ingredients through which semantic content can be established. The third objective is to initiate the development of a critical framework from which course participants may evaluate their individual production.

IMAGE: KEVIN SULLIVAN

Studio Abstracts / Summer 2010 / 100-101

Courtney Kizer / M.Arch.

Sacred Beauty Within the Profane / Coleman Coker

Wetland Mausoleum New Orleans is a city brimming with history, with a renowned reputation for the arts and being dangerously close to a volatile river. Of the countless traditions found in NOLa culture, above-ground cemeteries are some of the most interesting architectural marvels. This studio explores a difficult site for our own cemetery design. Flanked on three sides by a massive parking garage, a raised shopping center, the New Orleans Convention Center, a working freight train thoroughfare, and the great Mississippi River, the site is a parking lot currently servicing the surrounding programs.

Site Plan

Wetlands are a naturally occurring phenomenon in southern Louisiana, particularly around the mouth of the Mississippi, which are home to thousands of animal and plant species. Over the last hundred years, humans in the area have gradually destroyed countless acres of these delicate ecosystems.

This project joins the need to educate the public about wetlands through the creation of new ones with the increasing demand for cemetery space in the growing city. Essentially, the cast-in-place concrete structure serves as a new sea wall, bringing the Mississippi River under the Riverwalk Shopping Center and into the realm of the city. The cemetery itself is conceived of as a series of mausoleums within which private meditation can occur.

Each grave is capped with a steel plate: the amount of deterioration is related to the time passed since the first body was ‘buried’ there. Paramount to this promotion of spirituality is a connection to the ever-changing expressive New Orleans sky. A module of units is stacked such that each space has a direct visual connection to the clouds above. The third floor, however, is not only a mausoleum to house urns, but promotes shoppers to ambulate the wetlands below via a connected walkway.

The entire system dovetails with the city’s plan to continue a riverside pedestrian zone that has been constructed upand down-river of the site. This project proposes moving the walkway on top of the Riverwalk shopping center, thus promoting the success of the shops within and bringing pedestrians into the realm of the wetlands.

3rd Floor Plan

1st Floor Plan

Advanced Studio / Summer 2010 / 102-103

Garrett Jones & CJ MacQuarrie / M.Arch.

Independent Studio / Joyce Rosner & Michael Beaman

Re-Appropriating Mechanisms It was our intention, through an in-depth study of engineered machines, to reappropriate mechanisms of technology to engage the human spirit. We wanted to explore the possibilities of re-animating architecture through the conduit of machine, technology and tool. Ultimately, it was our goal to create or suggest space for the mind to inhabit.

We wanted to foster an atmosphere of discovery and exploration, but most importantly growth. By allowing the process itself to reveal the resulting built fabric, an outcome emerged that we could not have foreseen. We initially began this studio with an experiment concerning the beauty of mechanized parts working together. In our first project the output of the machine was less important. The machine serves no function other than to engage the imagination of the observer. Light, reflection, materials, and method of kinetic motion became leading factors that informed the machine’s design.

We then started to investigate the possibility of a machine with an output that enhances the overall operating experience. We created a series of lowtech drawing machines using variable rotating gears controlled by a simple hand crank operation. The end product, or output, is a dynamic and spatial geometric drawing that from afar reads as machine or computer generated, but upon closer inspection reveals defects and ‘squiggles’ reminiscent of a free-hand drawing. This duality is an important quality of the work we have been pursuing. Machines traditionally achieve acute precision. We wanted to create a machine that made little messes and produced little defects. We believe the beauty of these drawings lies in their imperfections, a very human quality.

While working with gears and other mechanical systems for the drawing machines we became interested in exploring and generating threedimensional spatial gears that begin to imply possibilities for occupation. These kinetic spatial gears are articulated with intersecting planes, overlapping linear members, and pivoting points. These components interact creating mobile dynamic compositions that transform static spaces into animated, interactive and playful moments.

Independent Advanced Studio / Summer 2010 / 104-105

Independent Advanced Studio / Summer 2010 / 106-107

Kristina Olivent / M.Arch.

Sacred Beauty Within the Profane / Coleman Coker

Memorial Hill Park: Urban Necropolis

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The vast underground rooms are populated by conical structures which simultaneously support the ceiling and serve as small remembrance chapels with wall niches to store the ashes of the dead. These conical structures push through the surface of the earth and dot the landscape with limestone markers engraved with the names of those entombed below. Daylight enters the chamber through an oculus in and around each of these structures, establishing the thinnest of connections between the above- and below-ground realms.

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One’s experience of the place unfolds gradually. A plaza forms off the street, merges upward onto grass slope, reveals a park terrain, and culminates in a river overlook and amphitheater. Four mounds define the park terrain, three of which are dotted with limestone markers. The fourth and largest mound is topped by a large live oak tree which serves as a psychological destination for mourners and park visitors alike.

The realm of the underground is dedicated to three large columbariums (facilities for ashes and urns). The above-ground approaches to each of the three columbium entrances are carefully choreographed to offer mourners the option of entering the chamber or steering away towards a landscape feature which suggests respite and solitude.

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Memorial Hill Park echoes the crosscultural tradition of burying the dead under earthen mounds, a practice quite uncommon to this region. This is accomplished by giving New Orleans – a city known for its below sea level topography – a new highest elevation point atop a man-made wedge of earth.

The 62-foot high earthen mass extends out over the Mississippi River and is held in place by limestone clad concrete retaining walls and underpinnings.

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The task was to design an urban burial place in the downtown business district of New Orleans. The difficult site is adjacent to the city’s Convention Center, fronts the Mississippi River and a busy street, and is bisected by a series of commercial rail lines. In addition to navigating these constraints, the studio was asked to challenge the conventional role of the burial place by including a secondary civic-oriented program.

Advanced Studio / Summer 2010 / 108-109

Johanna Reed / M.Arch.

Advanced Visual Communication / John Blood

Observatory, Restaurant Tower, Thekla The drawings produced in this course focused on perspective and composition as well as finding ways of randomizing our work via speed and uncontrollable media.

One project was an Observatory for a rogue scientist’s film set. Initial compositional studies were executed quickly with the goal of randomizing composition through loose media and hand strokes. The media for this work is charcoal, ink, graphite, and marker.

Another project was a Restaurant Tower designed as urban infill in Osaka, Japan. An identical plan is repeated vertically, hosting a different restaurant on each level. This work was handdrafted with computer editing.

Yet another project was Thekla.

This perspective is inspired by Italo Calvino’s short story ‘Thekla’ in Invisible Studies. The city is always under construction – following the night sky as its blueprint – so that destruction may never begin. This work was hand-drafted with computer editing.

Course Work / Summer 2010 / 110-111

Molly Hubbs / M.Arch.

Non-West Aesthetic Experience in Japan / David Heymann

Western Impressions of Eastern Japan For westerners, Japan evokes a sense of perpetual detachment. Visits to temples and towers yield wonder but rarely comprehension. This sentiment has its origins in a distinctly Japanese complexity; that is, a complexity which arises from ambiguous, strange spaces which embrace disorientation. Like Ryoan-ji, no one perspective offers a full view, a full understanding.

As I marked the days on my month-long journey through Japan, this sense of alienation only intensified. Through serial photography, I sought clearer insight into my surroundings; yet with each picture, my sense of place became less apparent.

To this day, the Eastern beauty of Japan remains intangible. I only hope these photographs capture its spirit.

Course Work / Summer 2010 / 112-113

Course Work / Summer 2010 / 114-115

Mike Start / M.Arch.

Advanced Visual Communication / John Blood

Japanese Menu, Mile-High, Sequential Space This drawing studio was designed to explore design through drawing, primarily perspective drawing, using a single idea and a series of drawn studies as the generative process for producing architecture. Many drawings became hybrids of hand drawing and other analog media and digital enhancement.

The Japanese Menu Building is based on a building our professor, John Blood, encountered traveling in Japan. The building entrance is an elevator, inside are posted menus for 7 restaurants, each restaurant occupies a whole story, each story has the same essential floor plan. A large portion of the restaurant is open to the outside on each floor. The idea of this building is to create an inner courtyard space using the same form as the peeled street front facade. The media used is graphite, gouache, and Photoshop.

The Mile-High Building assignment was to draw our vision of what the tallest building in the world would look like and do so on a small piece of paper. We were asked to make our drawing highly detailed and when done make an enlarged photocopy with high contrast. In this design, the idea is to use a mile long section of Austin’s south Congress Avenue across the bridge and into downtown, rotate the section 90 degrees and use it to generate the tower’s form. The media used for this work are graphite, coffee wash, and graphite powder.

A project entitled Sequential Space required that we read Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky’s piece on transparency.

We were asked to rewrite the piece, as a whole or one portion that we were interested in, as we thought Italo Calvino would write it in no more than one paragraph. When writing our paragraph, we were to pick a moment in space-time from Calvino’s perspective that crosses the threshold between poetry/prose and visual art/architecture and include our paragraph somewhere in the final drawing. Here the idea was to create a sequential space in which no building can ever be viewed fully without being obscured by another. The media used for this work was graphite, graphite powder, and Photoshop.

Course Work / Summer 2010 / 116-117