Project Name: MaSA
Project Location: Austin, TX
Description:
MAker Space Austin is the redesign of the Dougherty Arts Center, a community based arts center, in Austin, TX. Thinking of a church as the historic center of a city, this project was meant to act as the new center of Austin, a center based on culture. Finding inspiration from the existing trees on site, this proposal is for a forest to cover the site where the buildings, parking, and circulation is nested within. A site where the interaction between “ground” and “canopy” are in dialogue with one another.
The main strategy of the project was developing different site conditions where the buildings negotiate between them, acting as thresholds. These conditions compromise between civic spaces, open plazas, the trail around Lady Bird Lake, and the suburban neighborhoods of south Austin. This threshold condition is further manifested through varying ground surface patterns which begin to activate areas that are defined, containing formal clarity or casual, bathed in dappled light.
Atomizing the buildings into separate structures allowed for the proliferation of shaped space throughout the site, situated program where it would be most beneficial, and interacted with the edge conditions of the site in different ways. The schools were designed in a way that “exude casualness” and reduce exclusivity to feel open to all. They were designed to act as more background buildings (more ground than figure) and to provide a frame. A frame for the canopy of the trees from the exterior and a frame to the canopy of trees from the interior. Separating the schools into adult and children structures was for safety, privacy, and to contain space in different ways. The tower is a building which is perceived as an object in the landscape, one that is more figure than ground by interacting with the “field of Austin”. By mixing different agencies (gallery, office, restaurant, administrative space), this building provides a place for everyone. The theatre was designed as a building for the public, one that invites and encourages people to pause and enjoy the confluence of urban and landscape.
As this site is quite open and undensified, it is providing a framework for when MaSA would expand in the future. An open space between the grid of Red Bud trees in the parking lot can be developed as the age of the car comes to an end and the programmatic needs of the arts center change.
Project Name: Anmien Siedlung
Project Location: Garching, Germany
Team: Charles Beckendorf III + Jordan Sheets
Description:
As housing becomes more of a global issue, we, as designers, should strive to create the most habitable, open, and flexible residential developments as possible. Anmien Siedlung is a project just North of Munich that integrates the idea of home within a large scale housing development. The concept of home – essential to dwelling – is reimagined and reinterpreted to develop a new organizational method of living. The buildings are composed of vertical and horizontal houses that are paired and arranged to capture large public parks while incorporating the German idea of Hofe within the structures to create communal areas for the residents. The site, located at the confluence of agriculture, research, industry, and city, is designed to accommodate the lives of the tenants and the general populace throughout different stages of their life cycle.
Researching and diagramming the programmatic relationships of Garching, we noted some amenities the city was lacking, mainly, cultural centers when compared to Munich which is just a few train stops away. We also began to analyze the sequence that a person would take to our site, form the International Airport or from downtown Munich and how the architecture and urban fabric transitions from historic to modern to rural. We are proposing a project that reframes the idea of Garching. To make it a destination. One not directly related to Garching or the nearby Technical University – Munich. One where travellers, residents, students, and citizens can feel comfortable, can play, and can become more culturally aware.
The site developed initially by reacting to two existing walking paths and through a series of study models and drawings which began to reveal how the buildings, not just the landscape can begin to shape space through uncontained courtyards and activity hubs. The buildings are massed from a three-part model: a vertical tower, a horizontal bar, and an additional piece of program acting as an armature. This developed as a way to increase densification while not feeling overly scaled. As previously stated, we are proposing buildings of cultural significance to further shape and act as cultural activators. Here, we included an art gallery and a kindergarten with future installations including a science center, a library, and a theatre.
Knowing that we had to design for densification, the notion of “home” was very important to us. A place where one could dwell and call their own. A place that is unique and singular. To construct these houses we used the four ingredients of walls fenestrations, roofs, and gardens in each unit to materialize our conceptual idea. Each “house” has a garden and the “neighborhood” is connected through hofes - or shared public spaces. A further iteration of this concept developed through the angulation of the facades, which indicate an individual house.
Project Name: Gulf Coast Design Lab
Project Location: Galveston, TX
Team: Peiwei Chang + Pia Garcia + Maggie Gaudio + Danlin Huang + Sudarshan Iyengar + Reuben Joseph + Miguel Rodriguez + Jordan Sheets + Derek Smith + Andrew Stone + Brandon Tharp + Claire Townley + Angela Vanella
Description:
How do we understand the world? How do we understand nature? By gathering, separating, and ordering. To understand a complex system we must first understand its parts.
An elemental understanding of the universe began with the Ancient Greeks. Their world was built of essential, indivisible pieces, or elements. Earth, Air, Wind, Fire. Aristotle proposed a fifth element: aether, which can be compared to Heidegger's concept of the divinities.
Why do we do this? Why do we seek to order complex systems, and to divide them into their smallest parts? We seek to understand nature by our relationship to it.
Ecological education temporarily gathers, separates, and orders nature as a means of understanding relationships. When we understand the parts, the elements of a system, we have a greater appreciation for the harmony of the whole.
Our design for an outdoor classroom provides an architectural framework for an elemental understanding of architecture. Through targeted interventions, it will gather space and people, highlighting underlying order, and elevate the understanding of an ecosystem as a complex orchestration of essential parts in harmony.
Our project is conceived as an organizational gradient. The heart of it is a highly ordered, rationalizing space created through the use of columns, almost as a hypostyle hall would be designed. Space is organized between the columns which transition from a frame, to a screened space, and finally to a matrix of trees before a viewer is exposed to the beautiful views of a barrier island prairie.
Project Name: The UPcycle
Project Location: London, UK
Team: Kendall Claus + Danny Montalvo + Jordan Sheets
Description:
Adaptive reuse, or up-cycling, is among one of the most effective approaches to achieving architectural sustainability due to its ability to reduce waste and material use, while also prolonging the character and identity of place. “The UPcycle” investigates how we, as creative invigorators, can reuse the existing fabric along the Thames to create high performance communities. The UPcycle intervention introduces new development to the old as a way to reduce hierarchy and maximize equality by following a collection of goals and strategies to create a high performance community including cultural diversity, healthy environments, walkability, and resource availability.
The existing site includes the historic London Fire Brigade building, fire brigade warehouse, railway arches, galleries, and residential buildings and suffers from underutilization. This proposal revitalizes the area through three methods: the Waterfront which acts as a gateway to the site, the Cultural Hub which provides the complex with financial stability through an arts center, museum, hotel, and an accelerator for startup ventures, and the Neighborhood which includes a library, sculpture walk, practice and performance spaces for the London Philharmonic, and additional resources for local residents.
Tying these three pieces together are a series of towers, inspired by the existing historic fire tower on site and still used for training today. They serve as beacons and an overarching wayfinding tool. Emerging from this cosmology of towers, a system of periscopes was created along the bank of the Thames. Periscopes were a natural evolution to this design as their height serves multiple purposes. They can used to navigate the Thames as they are easily recognizable from a great distance. Through their lenses, people are able to gain a new perspective of the area from a new, inaccessible datum and can observe unique views of London. Their placement and size begin to demarcate space where people can meet, converse, and just have a good time.
Project Name: The Foundry
Project Location: Toronto, ON
Team: Andre Boudreaux + Kaia Kuan-Ying Chiu + Patrick McAneny + Quinhui Mao + Jordan Sheets
Description:
The Toronto Foundry is about capturing the intellectual energy of both professionals and students throughout the greater Toronto area in order to disseminate ideas, empower an active community, and create a more resilient Toronto. Building upon the creative energy the city’s workforce and student population, our site will provide affordable think-tank space for professionals and students from all over to gather and construct the next big idea, only possible through the incubation of a myriad of ideas and knowledge. Capitalizing on the existing cultural activators of Toronto, we would propose incubator spaces for film studios, industrial kitchens, and environmental ecology experimentation, along with more traditional technology startup areas. As the center of gravity for Toronto shifts to the southeast of the current urban core because of major development proposals, we are introducing a project that fosters an indispensable link between Toronto’s urban center and its surrounding neighborhoods. This is not a project of maximum density, but instead is one based on scale, proportion, nodes of activity, connectivity, social engagement, and a sense of place.
The massing, circulation, programming, and layout of our project is reminiscent to what one might feel in a traditional city. Hyper mixed-use streets and buildings are interwoven between a close knit street network. The focus is on the pedestrian with streets given to walkers and cyclists, while still allowing for a minor amount of automobile traffic. A multi-modal transit hub is prposed to increase the connection capabilities of our site and would service regional trains, a new water ferry stop, access to the street car, an underground subway station, and a bike highway. Anchoring both ends of this avenue are two courtyards that are designed to allow for flexibility, social interactions, pop-up markets, and intimate gatherings. Similar to the church tower of villages of the past, a viewing tower rises above the rooftops to provide a landmark, a datum of sorts, noticeable throughout the area and able to offer a different view of the lake and downtown Toronto. Throughout the phasing development of our project, we are proposing for the removal of a portion of the Don Valley Parkway to reconnect neighborhoods East of the Don River with their natural riverfront heritage, while reducing vehicular pollution, and increasing public greenspace. By converting this six lane highway to a two land boulevard over a number of years, the people who live, work, think, and recreate at the Toronto Foundry will be able to enjoy public greenspace in their backyard along with a bike system running along the river.
Along with places for incubation, we are including housing, retail, hospitality, market spaces, and hotels to aggregate throughout the site and throughout the buildings. A mix of affordable housing and high end rental apartments will create a vibrant and diverse community of long term tenants while the hotels will allow for the passing traveller to experience Toronto in a new way. Currently on site there is a defunct bridge that would be retrofitted to once again connect the east and west side of the Don River and allow for permanent and temporary pop-up markets and exhibitions to be accessed by visitors. On a few rooftops, we are proposing roof top gardens that can be accessed by tenants and by food clubs who want to have freshly cultivated food that can be grown year round and doesn’t need to be exported to the site.
A resilient city is one that pinpoints what it is good at, and strengthens that quality. The Toronto Foundry is a smart village, based on people, interactions, and ideas that could change the landscape in which cities are urbanized. As a porous amalgamation of buildings, our project is the threshold for how people want to experience cities. There needs to be intrigue, activities, casualness, connectivity, and most importantly a diverse group of individuals who, when offered the chance, can interact and produce wonderful results.
