Will Lathrop Portfolio 2023

PORTFOLIO

WILL L ATHROP LATHROP

Personal Statement:

What interests me in architecture is its ability to be a tool for personal and community improvement. I find the personal connections that people form with their environment inspiring and I am interested in learning how we can positively influence those connections through materiality, conceptualization, and accessibility.

Outside of architecture my interests include object/ furniture design, sports, music, and art. In my spare time I enjoy riding my bike around the city, playing pickup games of basketball, playing videogames, or reading a book and at any opportunity possible listening to music.

“ To create, one must f irst “To create, one must first question ever y thing.” everything.”

-Eileen Gray

-Eileen Gray

INDEX

1-ON AI PERSONALIT

Y AI PERSONALITY

2-THE MOUND

2-THE

3-REAC TION ROOMS 3-REACTION

ON AI PERSONALIT Y AI PERSONALITY

FALL 2022

UIC SOA STUDIO 465

Instructor: Sean Lally

Collaborator: Alex Mai

This studio looks into new modes of representing architecture and how we can use software foreign to architecture to predict and simulate future conditions. This project uses Unreal Engine 5 to render an immersive environment in real time which one can walk through and experience interactive elements of the design.

We predict that in the future artificial intelligence will develop to the point of being able to understand and feel emotion. From this point AI will begin to develop personality as something that goes hand in hand with emotional capability.

By giving an AI a body in the form of a building it can now express its personality in the physical dimension and learn from the behavior of its inhabitants. This AI, given the tools to develop and communicate personality and emotion becomes a reaction to the sum of its inhabitants and builds personal relationships with members of its community.

The building’s exterior is a monolithic cube form made of dark concrete and sits on a mound of earth. This gives the building character and presence, understanding character as an aspect of personality.

The entrance opens into a foyer which acts as a buffer to provide a smooth transition from the park space to the main interior of the building.

The AI communicates with inhabitants through a mural which updates as the conversation develops. The images are personal but contribute to the larger narrative of the community.

AI Takes personality information from user interaction

AI combines personality information with present information and mixes with information from other inhabitants

THE MOUND THE

SPRING 2023

UIC SOA STUDIO 466

Collaborators: Alex Mai, Donovan Skowrinski, Alissa Barr Instructor: Antonio Torres

This studio seeks to infuse artifical nature into UIC’s campus through a softball field, combining ideas like the pagentry of sports with a scenic and fuctional landscape in a way that proposes new ideas of sports spectatorship and participation.

In this scheme, the field is surrounded by a series of mounds with burroughed walkways that act as the stadium’s primary circulation route while doubling as a linear nature park. Inhabitants are surrounded by interiorized landscape, and the experience of spectating softball is influenced by a setting of controlled nature with scenic views.

In this project my contributions included making the drawings with complete linework and photoshop underlays, creating a frame for the rendered triptic, and putting final touches on the physical model

SITE CUT PL AN PLAN

CLOSE UP CUT PL AN UP PLAN

Burroughs become linear parks and offer paths to spectator seating

RENDERED TRYP TIC RENDERED TRYPTIC

Mounds ripple and spread beyond the softball field to create landscape parks which integrate nature into the stadium’s fabric

Interiorized landscape conditions are created by stacked limestone slabs which act as a substrate for species of clinging flora.

LONGITUDIONAL STADIUM SEC TION SECTION

TRANSVERSE STADIUM SEC TION SECTION

CLOSE UP SEC TION UP SECTION

REAC TION ROOMS REACTION

SPRING 2022

UIC SOA STUDIO 366

This project explores the relationship between rooms and space, looking at the ways in which they might interact or respond to each other. In this building there is a hierarchy of spaces based on a space’s solidity or sacredness and divided into three tiers.

The highest tier is a single large concrete room whose form is sacred. On the opposite end, at the bottom of the hierarchy is an orange space covered in felt that acts like a liquid, filling in gaps between rooms and creating curved geometries. This space questions the traditional definition of a room by expanding and contracting in a playful way to create ambiguous spaces. In the middle tier of this hierarchy are rooms like offices and art studios which take the form of a traditional room, but which react to the orange space at localized points by picking up curves.

Felt creates a softness that reinforces curved geometries and questions how we percieve qualities of materiality in space

Uniformity of material and dissolution of threshold between walls, floor, and ceiling in orange room challenges conceptions of ‘roomness’ and what constitutes the elements of a room

The offices adorn a patterned wallpaper which mimics the orange room’s curved geometries in shades of blue that become a theme throughout the rooms of this hierarchy.

In other places, the pattern explodes, getting scaled up and simplified into line decals that wind through rooms and become furniture or windows.

SEC TION ELEVATION SECTION

SEC TION ELEVATION SECTION

CORE SAMPLE MODEL

Privacy increases as one progresses through each office. Last office in series becomes a destination with its large window

Staggered enfalade provides a sense of progression while maintaining privacy.