CRITIC / CHRIS KRONER
COMPLETED / FALL 2012
Taking advantage of the high surface tension of water, water skimmers use the tiny hairs on their long, hydrophobic legs to spread their weight over the water surface on four points.
This exploration of a singular unit exhibits those characteristics of distributing the load at four points. The unit, then, multiplies and transforms into an oscillating aggregation through the use of various parametric design tools, essentially producing a transparent screen similar to that of Erwin Hauer. This oscillation can be seen at www.vimeo/karlalockhart/videos titled ‘Spatial Membrane Variation Animation’.
PROJECT TYPE / COMMERCIAL OFFICE BUILDING CORE & SHELL
LOCATION / SAN FRANCISCO, CA / 2015
PHASE / CONSTRUCTION DOCUMENTATION / ADMINISTRATION
SIZE / 423,000 SF
SHoP, with Quezada Architecture, have design Uber’s new headquarters in the Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco. The project’s goal is to bring this developing stretch of Mission Bay into step with the successful, human-scaled urban environments for which San Francisco is so famous. Key to that goal is the “inside-out” design of the two buildings. The 423,000 square foot project includes an eleven-story tower at 1455 Third Street and a six-story structure at 1515 Third Street with an almost fully transparent facade. These adjoined buildings will be catalysts for transforming this stretch of urban blank-canvas into a dynamic, pedestrian-friendly neighborhood. Along Third Street, a deep setback creates a generous, partially-shaded public plaza designed to support and accommodate what is expected to be increased activity at the adjacent light-rail station. The project also includes streetscape improvements and public amenities on Pierpoint Lane, an intersecting pedestrian way. A feature known as the Commons—a striking network of circulation and gathering spaces—will bring the life of the building into contact with the life of the streets, and allow views of the living city to serve as a continual inspiration for the creative work taking place inside.
CRITIC / FERDA KOLATAN
COMPLETED / SPRING 2015
Currently, the identification of a new common ground, market or environment, has become the departure point of design culture. The ordinary, the accessible, and the rational have become the new normal. Any language that aims for universal recognition necessarily faces problems of uniformity and in some cases may fall towards the totalitarian. With the growing realization of this condition the last few years have given rise to a number of theories, concepts, and ideas, which actively seek to establish counter-positions without falling into older paradigms of the vernacular or the subject/individual. Among these we can identify one, labeled as the ‘concept of the weird’.
This line of thought has been introduced into architectural thinking by philosopher Graham Harman in conjunction with his object-oriented philosophy. The “weird” here takes on two distinct meanings. First, it is understood as an indispensable ingredient of all objects, a withdrawn quality which cannot possibly be accessed, explained, or rationalized by any human strategy. But through this very quality objects maintain the ability to change, surprise, and become other things. The other meaning of the "weird" in this context reflects back on us and our approach to objects and in extension to the world itself. The weird can become a tool in the way in which we describe the world and how we reflect on reality. Along these lines a strategy of the weird can be viewed as a counterpoint to the traditional mechanisms that establish the concept of a well-understood reality.
PROJECT TYPE / COMMERCIAL HEALTHCARE BUILDING CORE & SHELL
LOCATION / SAN FRANCISCO, CA / 2011
PHASE / CURRENTLY IN CONSTRUCTION
SIZE / 1.2 MILLION SF
Applying Lean Management & Virtual Design Construction techniques pioneered by the automotive industry, Sutter Health and CPMC in San Francisco used a progressive project delivery approach called Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) -- collocating client representatives, designers, contractors and key trade partners in a single location to ensure collaboration in all aspects of design and delivery. This collaboration is enhanced by the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM), an advanced virtual modeling process that allows real time design changes and reduction of potential errors; CPMC is one of the largest and most complex projects to be designed with this new method. The project was designed to meet a LEED Silver rating, making it one of the largest hospital projects ever to seek LEED certification.
This 1.2 million sf, 16 stories urban replacement hospital isn’t just state-of-the-art; it’s breaking new ground in multiple areas of design and operations. Designed to accommodate 555 beds for adults and women/children, the new hospital is organized around comprehensive centers of care rather than traditional departments, enhancing the delivery of patient care while improving space efficiencies, workflow and productivity.
CRITIC / CHRIS KRONER
COMPLETED / SPRING 2013
A cross-sectional analysis was performed to understand the construction and tectonics of connective infrastructure of a bridge.
The La DeVasa Footbridge (Ripoli, Spain) designed by Santiago Calatrava was explored and manipulated to perform tectonic kinetic time-based design showing precision, craft, environment and technical clarity.
This 2-minute animation titled ‘Tectonic Kinematics’ can be found at: www.vimeo.com/karlalockhart/videos
Deployment, mechanics, temporal operation and construction are the initial means of this animated investigation.
CRITIC / HENRY SMITH-MILLER
COMPLETED / SPRING 2015
Live, work, play is a programmatic dilemma that fascinates contemporary architects because of the potential to draw relationships between unique spatial obligations, however, the fallacy that an architect will reinvent the way in which people live, work and play is irrational.
Take for instance, monuments. Monuments are monuments for a reason - to inspire. They inspire for opportunity, for power, for meaning, and for remembrance in order to fill a void …in time.
Monuments can be seen all around NYC including the FDR Memorial on Roosevelt Island (a national monument), the United Nations (an international monument) in Manhattan, the towers of our famous bridges and the Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island (an international monument).
So how can an architect reinvent the way in which people live, work and play but in an iconic way through emotions.
CRITIC / JAMES GARRISON
COMPLETED / SPRING 2013
Research has shown that children between the ages of 5 and 10 years respond positively to multiple iterations and a variety of input of information.
An investigation was performed to understand the heightened tactile and visual stimuli for the development of architecture, which will not simply engage the children and teachers, but also the emerging community that is developing in the Seaport area of Manhattan, New York.
My design takes into account the uniqueness of the elementary school experience. The size and scale of the bulding must engage students on their own level. The library should support story telling and hands on activities, in addition to research addressing these issues, along with the appropriate integration of technology and community use spaces, can create a truly exceptional elementary school design.
CRITIC / STEPHANIE BAYARD
COMPLETED / FALL 2012
This program is a contemporary take on the public bath house, which could be understood alternatively, a sort of urban “watering hole”, as a speculative infrastructural/social program that is a structure or structures that will house bathing facilities, bathrooms, a public drinking water supply, and other water features. Public bath houses have a rich and varied history throughout urban life in many cultures, including Roman, Turkish, Japanese, Scandinavian and Jewish. In New York, The Asser Levy Public Baths is a notable example of the important hygenic and social role that baths played in the city in the first hall of the 20th century.
As part of the infrastructural role that this program can play, sustainable aspects of water including grey water treatment and runoff collection may be considered as part of the program. The program can also be understood as the design of gradient conditions of open to enclosed, wet to dry, warm to cool and public to private.
CRITIC / ERICH SCHOENENBERGER
COMPLETED / SPRING 2014
TEAM / ASLI BAYSAN & MILAD SHOWKATBAKHSH
The program introduces an exterior facade system that reaches and gathers the solar radiation & water infrastructure (waste water/river/ocean) that delievers these essential ingredients to the algae system network integrated within the building. This operates through an exposed veining system that not only feeds the algae food production plant, but becomes apart of the building systems processes (mechanical, electrical and plumbing).
The goal of the building design & exterior system is to become the most sustainable and the most efficient by allowing natural ventilation, natural water pressure and natural habitat to occur, benefiting the ecosystem of the Mississippi River, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic Ocean. A natural ebb & flow simultaneously occurs throughout the building, its systems and the surrounding environment.
There is an importance of incorporating and meeting sustainable guidelines including a LEED Silver certification as well as other energy efficient and sustainable measures such as ASHRAE 90.1.
This project shows moderate complexity, investigating the urban environment of New Orleans including the culture, the history, the nightlife, and the food. It also includes all aspects of schematic design, design development and construction documentation.
CRITIC / JASON VIGNERI-BEANE
COMPLETED / SUMMER 2013
Rome is as much a contemporary city as it is a historical one. It is in the midst of a whole range of challenges that the process of globalization brings to such an urban environment that is both dense with historical material and burdened with its status as the one of the most romanticized of western cities. Perhaps the constraints through which Rome operates due to the historical material that suffuses it will ultimately provide pressures for urban innovations and, if not creative destruction, creative bypasses toward future vitalities of contemporary urbanism.
At the same time, contemporary lessons can also be drawn from Rome’s historically evolved complexity. Across the city and at various scales one can mine the city for lessons of emergence, evolutionary design, collective intelligence, complexity, systematic change, distributed behaviors, networked zonalism, accretive negotiation, partial infrastructural adaptation, non-linear growth, linguistic drift, material development and so on.
The Rome program engages some of these complexities within a graphic format that folds together diagrams of spatial formation and change, highly edited fragments of figuration and notational approaches to historical and contemporary information.
CRITIC / MARIA SIEIRA
COMPLETED / FALL 2013
The goal in NYC is to “create homes for almost a million more New Yorkers while making housing and neighborhoods more affordable and sustainable. By 2030, New York City will be home to over nine million people - nearly one million more people than in 2005. As we prepare for the challenges and opportunities that will come with population growth, we must set our goals beyond just increasing the number of housing units-which will continue to be a major focus for the City. We must also create and maintain sustainable, affordable neighborhoods. We recognize that strong neighborhoods are among our greatest assets. Each neighborhood has its own distinctive character, history, and culture; maintaining this diversity plays a vital role in the continuing health of the City.
Our program responded to existing/transitional neighborhood site conditions, a strong ecological mandate, and the tremendous need for housing.
We investigated how the development can be scaled down, used the architecture to take on ecological issues such as flooding conditions and storm water management, and thought of our intervention as a catalyst in a neighborhood that is about to change.
CRITIC / ROBERT CERVELLIONE
COMPLETED / SPRING 2013
Using tectonic & parametric modeling techniques with architectural, parametric design and representational software (Rhino, Grasshopper, Photoshop, Illustrator), there is an emphasis on technical proficiency, precision and complex yet legible delivery.
A concentration on the design media’s capacity to inform behaviors and relationships among objects wherein strong internal and systemic logic of form and organization become agile enough to be responsive and adaptive to external inputs.
CRITIC / JEFFERY TARAS
COMPLETED / SPRING 2014
This is an exploration of the architect’s capacity to reciprocally and iteratively design and produce with computer aided fabrication tools. Developable surfaces, sectioning, flattening and the creation of parametric models were created using multiple scales in 2D and 3D on the laser cutter machine as well as the 3-axis CNC router.
CRITIC / SULAN KOLATAN
COMPLETED / SUMMER 2013
Since the 1980s, the Golden Horn has been the focus of a long-term remediation effort, that by all accounts, has been tremendously successful in achieving what it is set out to do. The successive removal of industrial facilities, halting of industrial and toxic waste, and construction of public parks and buildings dedicated to cultural activities has significantly improved the estuary and its urban edge.
And yet, when we evaluate the improvements within the framework of the emerging ecological discourse, it becomes quickly apparent that the solutions and tools applied to the problem are part of the standard repertory of the 20th century (smooth and hard land water edges, shallow-grass dominated parks, object buildings) and as such fail to take on the challenges and opportunities of the super wicked problem that is the Golden Horn Watershed.
Ecology is teaching us to reconsider our ways of breaking down the world into ‘meaningful’ entities. As far as water systems are concerned, any meaningful way of looking at a river or estuary implicates the entire watershed. Issues occuring anywhere along hierarchy does not produce the kind of shift necessary, namely, long-term change in urbanization strategies.
CRITIC / STEPHANIE BAYARD
COMPLETED / FALL 2012
A series of material studies investigated the properties and tested the performative limities or boundaries of building matter. Material investigations of scalar relationships, aggregate systems and structure and envelope seeks an understanding of how material properties and techniques of manipulatoin can be employed to generate intricate, multivalent spatial conditions.
Material properties including flexibility, memory, strength, and transparency, are manipulated through a range of analog and digital tools and techniques to generate serial unitized proto-architectonic models that explore a range of spatial relationships including gradient progressions from surface to volume, structure to skin, and enclosure to aperture. These formal investigations of aggregation and assembly are understood as studies of the potentials of emerging design and fabrication technologies and their role in the production of architecture.
