Urban Proposal in New York, NY
Advisor: Anna Neimark
2016
To Fit or Not to Fit argues the end of the architectural object and instead proposes working on backgrounds. Overcrowded cities require fitting very large things inside of tight spaces, blurring the distinction of foreground and background. The act of packing produces conditions of a tight squeeze, stabilizing and preserving buildings in the urban environment.
A series of seven towers wrapping around Daniel Burnham’s Flatiron Building are proposed in New York City. Plazas and pedestrian areas create multiple transitions from inside to outside along the urban block. The final model is an unrolled elevation, showing the multiple layers of background and context within the project, and the layers of the city that remain visible or are now interrupted with the new towers. With open space obsolete in Manhattan, To Fit or Not to Fit proposes a new way to build in the city, working somewhere between object and context, foreground and background.
Urban Proposal in Seoul, South Korea
Advisor: Andrew Zago
2015
A wide spread conceptual field is not a viable solution to redevelopment within the urban fabric. The project instead argues for an assemblage of differences. Reversing the simple diagram of an object in a field, the field can instead be read as an object while objects begin to gather into potential fields. The illegibility of fields and objects allows for heterogeneity within the urban fabric, avoiding an over-arching organizational strategy.
Using a limited number of forms and scaling of effects, the project develops a catalogue of object and field conditions. Layering of field as field, field as object, object as object, and object as field challenges the categorization of each component as strictly an object or a field. Surface treatment and graphic representation serve to reinforce differences within the project, while edge treatments and formal outlines aggravate the tension between object and field, with the interstitial space becoming an additional investigation throughout the site.
Multi-Use Tower in Mexico City, Mexico
Advisor: Alexis Rochas
2015
The project disrupts the dense system of the typical tower typology by introducing a more porous and varied system. When the envelope is unrolled, the ratios and repetition of the facade creates multi-story modules, which are used to dictate where one unit ends and another begins. A system of modular arcs is developed to create irregular slabs within the mass. The arcs contribute both to the unique slab condition, and allow for the multi-story volumes to exist throughout the project. The result is a system of positive and negative spaces that are constantly shifting within the tower. This shift creates the illusion of porosity, while thearticulation of fins, materiality, and levels of transparency in the project create an overall density and maintain the presence of displaced voids. The project was done in collaboration with Kyla Schaefer.
Google Headquarters in Barcelona, Spain
Advisor: Devyn Weiser
2014
This project reverses the assumption that a the mat typology is an open, free plan. In this case, the mat is a thick, dense mass of objects that begin with bumpy edges, which is later aggressively sheared to expose new flat figures. The faces of the building are expressive more like a flat cartoon bubble with eroded corners rather than the expected regularity from the mat.
These cartoon figures are unfolded to emphasis their two-dimensionality. Exploring the relationship of the new two-dimensional figures and the existing bumpy objects, the mass is developed by refolding the figures into smaller blocks which contain both the original aggregated forms and the new two-dimensional figures. Those blocks are then tumbled and re-aggregated into a looser more heterogeneous mat. Each block exists equally but independently as they are nested up against each other, creating multiple envelopes for program distribution within one mass. The project was done in collaboration with Kyla Schaefer.
This project questions the competence of the digital world, exploring techniques of representation that shift perception of the geometric and stereometric. Vector-based drawings capture two-dimensional effects in a three-dimensional environment. In contrast, a raster-based rendering is produced the three-color process in photography, combined with robotically controlled camera paths in the SCI-Arc Robot House. Three models are built from geometry found in the vector-based drawings, and photographed using combinations of the three-color set-ups.
This results in discrepancies in resolution and registration, oscillating between vector and raster effects. Though both sets of outputs appear separate from each other, formally they have been produced by the same geometry, showing the capabilities of representation to present similar objects in very different ways. This project was done in collaboration with Eyad Kalaji, Kazuhiro Okamoto, and Sasha Tillmann.
Single Family Residence in Silver Lake Los Angeles, CA
Advisor: Jonah Rowen
2014
The project is exploiting the reality that all surfaces have normals and imply space. This is both a technical and a geometric problem. In the computer, surfaces have normal directions that are constitutive of the surfaces themselves, and can successfully represent the surfaces. Geometrically, surfaces define both insides and outsides. With the initial proposal asking to address architectural form through the use of curved surfaces, the residence proposes that surfaces already contain form, or at least the space in which the form will exist. The single family residence argues that rather than being simply literal superficial surfaces, surfaces are always containers. The relationship between an intersection of these containers will result in different geometric centers, which was utilized as a primary organizational component within the project.
Architectural Disegno and Colore
Advisor: Andrew Zago
2015
The project aims to address the longstanding dichotomy between line and color in architecture by incorporating the Florentine and Venetian painting techniques of disegno and colore into the architectural discourse. While disegno easily translates into drawing through lines, colore has been generally absent from architectural discussions as it involves the flexibility of layering and blending colors and effects, without the hard boundary of a line.
Through translating these techniques into an architectural problem, the project aims to move representation away from the thin black line drawings that have traditionally been used to represent architectural geometry. The paintings of Mark Rothko were used to translate colore into both a two dimensional and three dimensional architectural proposal using layering, perforation, color studies, and polyhedral geometry. This project was done in collaboration with Kyla Schaefer.
Geometric Construction of Lettering and Experimentation in Rendering
Advisor: Anna Neimark
2014
Beginning with reconstructing a letter within the Romain du Roi font, a grid is used as a controlled transformation tool. The transformed letter is then projected against another, using the intersection of the letters to create a figure. The figure is rendered to emphasize the character of the figure and develop a specific language through the drawing set.
Primitive Transformation
Advisor: John Bohn
2013
Primitive forms were modeled using three concepts: sheets, sticks, and cubes. One complex primitive was fabricated to begin consideration of tectonic systems. The primitive was constructed using layers of wood secured with pins and joints, without adhesives. This project was done in collaboration with Justin Smith.
