institution: harvard graduate school of design course: innovative construction in japan instructor: mark mulligan team members:johanna faust, justin jiang, felipe oropeza, and myself time:spring 2015 project:model, analysis, and representation of toyo ito’s serpentine pavilion location: london, england
Toyo Ito’s and Cecil Balmond’s design for the 2002 Serpentine Pavilion in London was a structurally driven concept. As a temporary structure, the pavilion required a fast construction schedule as well as a strategy for disassembly. Within a group of four students, we analyzed the detail drawings and collaboratively developed a hypothesis for the design and construction decisions. Our presentation represented the generative geometric concept, construction phasing, structural load distribution, joinery, materiality, and overall successes and failures of the project.
institution: harvard graduate school of design course: making sacred space professor: christine smith time: spring 2016 project: a roman catholic cathedral location: tromsø, norway
Tromsø, Norway resides over 190 miles north of the Arctic circle. The sun does not rise in the winter and the sun does not set in the summer; therefore, the locals have a very unique relationship with light. This period in winter where the sun never rises is colloquially referred to as the “blåtimen” or the “blue period,” due to the blue shade of sun light. Because of this, the cathedral design should be considered for both times of lightness and darkness.
A survey of other Norwegian cathedrals shows a collection of sharply angled silhouettes, often as steeples on top of a cubic form. The new cathedral embraces this vernacular but with a less medieval reverence.
Positioned in the same site as the former Cathedral of the Arctic Sea, the new cathedral would be propped up on a the hill and on axis with the Tromsøbrua bridge, acting as a beacon for the faith and visible from across the Tromsøysundet strait and from miles away.
site plan
The vertical planes that make up the four sides of an implied box serve as an opportunity to provide multiple apertures for stained glass. These surfaces are made of white stone, reminiscent of the stone of medieval gothic structures. but the white color allows more reflected light and brighter interiors. The curvilinear and undulating surface of the roof provides a modern contrast with the verticality of the stone by seemingly defying gravity. Wooden supports can provide enough flexibility to create this complex surface.
elevations
plan
View from across Tromsøysundet strait (edited from original photo by Shigeru Ohki)
institution: harvard graduate school of design instructor: beth whittaker time: 2nd semester core / spring 2014 project: rare book library / community gathering / bridge location: boston, massachusetts
Following the analytique / redux exercise, the new assignment was to design our own rare book library in the same site in which we situated our redux. The site was along the Fenway in Boston, a marsh-like park adjacent to the Museum of Fine Arts. The concept of my redux was to creating a much needed pedestrian bridge to connect two sides of the park previously divorced from one another. The resulting form took shape as both a bridge and a wall.
institution: harvard graduate school of design instructor: beth whittaker time: 2nd semester core / spring 2014 project: drawing exercise / precedent study location: astana, kazakhstan / boston, massachusetts
The Astana National Library of Astana, Kazakhstan, is an unrealized design by Bjarke Ingels Group. The design was conceived as a mobius geometry, in which the public program revolves about the library collections in a circular form. Thus, the section of the building changes from the public program flanking the library horizontally, then revolves and rotates to flank it vertically which the analytique, at left, graphically represents.
The redux of the library design was an exercise in applying the concepts of the mobius geometry to a site along the Fenway in Boston, a marsh-like park behind the Museum of Fine Arts. The geometry is unwound, preserving it’s sectional revolution of public program around the library, but as a linear form. This new form acts as a bridge across the Muddy River and reforms lost connections between the park and surrounding areas.
institution: harvard graduate school of design / design miami advisor: megan panzano team members: carly dickson, anita helfrich, emily margulies, lilian taylor, and myself time: spring 2015 project: temporary outdoor pavilion design / competition entry
Our concept considered the spatial qualities and behaviors of inhabiting an above water coral reef. Concrete tubes extruded from the ground rise to create amorphous clusters that serve as tables, seating, shading, gathering nooks, and climbing mounds. The ephemerality of Design Miami/ week caused us to consider the lifespan of our installation, which we decided would be relocated to the Atlantic Ocean to serve as an artificial reef. Our material and process was chosen to maximize interactions both above and below water.
institution: harvard graduate school of design instructor: megan panzano time: 1st semester core / fall 2013 project: four volumes that hide a fifth
Proportion, circulation, elevation, and axiality were used to establish a familial relationship between the four main volumes. The fourth volume juts out off axis from the other and is initially understood to be the end of the main circulation path. These differences were used to set this volume apart from the others to create a false sense of completion, thus serving as a “red herring,” to conceal the presence of a truly hidden space. Additionally, the presence of “red herring” is two fold, in both space and circulation. There is only one path to ascend through the volumes, with another unreachable circulation path in plain site. The expectation is that they are a part of the same system, though they are not. Upon the moment of returning to the circulation path to descend, a slip in the wall is revealed that provides access to another circulation path that was previously unobtainable. The impression is given that this ramp will return to the exit, as the expectation is that the journey through the building was complete, but in fact this ramp leads to the hidden room. A banal space that when contrasted with the other volumes provides a sense of anti-climax.
institution: harvard graduate school of design instructors: danielle etzler / mark mulligan team members: sofia balters, ruth chang, carly dickson, justin gallagher, emily margulies, patrick mckinley, joe qiu, haibei peng, lilian taylor, and myself time: 1st semester / fall 2013 project: structure with experientially different interior / exterior
Our studio was charged with creating an inhabitable structure, in which the experience of the interior is different from that of the exterior. The concept was to create an occupiable tensegrity structure. Using a system of adjustable knots, wood boards, and aluminium L brackets, the structural frame was assembled with a hanging seat at the center. The frame was covered in fabric to create an interior and exterior condition.
institution: harvard graduate school of design instructor: farshid moussavi time: 5th semester option studio / fall 2015 project: a charter high school location: east palo alto, california awards: nominated for and featured in platform 9
Farshid Moussavi’s option studio, “The Function of Education: The 21st Century School” began with in depth research of classroom spaces and their “affects.” Taken from the writings of Gilles Deleuze, affects refer to the bodily experiences of space, including transparency, openness, or thinness. The studio sought to identify, catalogue, and utilize affects within precedent studies of educational spaces. With this lexicon of affects, we created cutting edge learning spaces and represented our visions of the school of the future.
My proposal was to design a high school that blurred the distinction between interior and exterior. Hermetically sealed spaces with little natural light stifle the student’s focus and ability to learn. With the mild yearly climate of northern California and a spacious site, it is an opportune moment to create outdoor learning spaces. Additionally, visually connecting indoor spaces with the lively activities of the exterior invigorate the interior classrooms.
In order to maximize the students connection to exterior stimuli, the outdoor programming needed to be defined, scaled, and arranged most efficiently within the site. Four zones were identified: the entry/exit, the athletic zone, the open lawn, and the courtyard garden. Their distribution within the site was based on accessibility, views, noise, and scale.
program distribution
The building massing is derived from the negative space that the exterior zones do not occupy. For security purposes, the building extends to the limits of the fenced property, and acts as a boundary that delineates each of the exterior zones. The linear massing is as thin as the interior programs allow, and pushed much of the classroom space and circulation to the exterior.
Depending on which exterior zone a facade faced, it responded for optimal interior and exterior experiences. Factors such as noise, physical activity, views, and spectatorship were considered for an architectural embrace or shield from these factors. Facades facing the athletic zone create seating to both watch the sporting events, but also to rest while walking through the corridor. Windows are smaller clerestory windows to minimize noise on the interiors. The facades facing the garden courtyard have counters for individual study facing the gardens, space for exterior classrooms, operable windows, and fully glazed walls.
institution: harvard graduate school of design time: fall 2015 project: graphic design collage of administrators at the harvard gsd
Taken from the title of Farshid Moussavi’s most recent publication, “The Function of Style: Halloween Edition” is a lighthearted group of caricatures of GSD administrators dressed up in Halloween costumes. The name below each caricature is a hybrid of the administrator’s name and the character whose persona they have assumed. The Harvard GSD Halloween poster competition is an annual tradition that lets the students express their creative talents in a medium other than landscape, planning, or architecture. The poster was voted on by the GSD student body and won to become the official poster of the GSD 2015 Halloween party.
institution: harvard graduate school of design instructor: eric höweler team members: james murray, kimberly orrego, and myself time: spring 2015 project: urban housing at the hudson river waterfront location: New York City awards: nominated for and featured in Platform 8
Working in a group of three for the entirety of a semester, our team was tasked to establish a concept for housing complexes across six blocks of the Hudson Yards neighborhood of New York City. Drawn to the challenges of addressing the waterfront with the infrastructure of the city, we chose to site ourselves along the edge of the Hudson River. First, we created five categories of coding to lay bare our priorities and goals:
We tried to both draw the city toward the water’s edge with public programming, infrastructure, and destinations, while simultaneously pulling the water’s edge into the city. This blurring of the threshold between city and water was stitched together with the existing thoroughfares, subways, and other infrastructure.
Operating within this framework, each team member took a portion of the site and developed a proposal emphasizing different aspects of the code. My proposal, positioned at the northernmost edge of the site, stacked modular housing units into an aggregate tower placed around a canal leading into the Hudson river. The towers were arranged to maximize views to the river and the city, staggering the plans to ensure this.
