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Stackable, Flipable, Packable, Lovable, Huggable, Vertablock

Genome of Time

Marking the Genome of a Moment of Time through the crossing of the cycles of the year, month, day, hour, second, millisecond.

Proposal to Address Change in NYC Subway System

In evaluating the current state of the MTA transit system the growing divide between the infrastructural system and the end user interactivity raises serious concern about the efficiency of the functionality of the Subways.  (i) station is proposed as an informational interface and economic engine which at the point of confluence seeks to synthesize the system with its users through branding and information transmission.  The form derived as a mediation between program, an entrance to a  subterranean system, environmental mediator, water/ dispersion and solar alignment of surface and acknowledgment of urban vertical occupation as relating to visual axis.  Cladding this form is an information and advertisement LED display system which continually updates the user with current transit system data.  This display system is held in a series of colored custom milled aluminum panels whose color reflects the dominant subway line for which the entry serves evoke the iconic form of the subway car window as they transition across the faceted surface.  Supporting these panels a structural systems meets at cylindrical nodes, which serve as lighting for the entries interior, crossing aesthetics, structure and function into one architectural moment.  The lights, which are easily accessible from the outer surface are capped with brushed aluminum radial caps which contain and high intensity LED icon of the subway line contained within, further developing the branding/ visual accessibility of the system.  Each station entryway, displays all currently available information, which is normally dispersed throughout a  station in various often temporary wasteful formats,  into a stable and predictable readout system, which is available before one even enters the system.  The advertising space, which flows across the surfaces display panels is oriented in all primary axis, service not only sidewalk traffic but urban vertical office traffic as well, in a density 9 times that of the average current station.  (i) station proposes a genesis for a true rethinking of the NYC subway system, in response to a greening culture which is information dependent and brand conscious.

Programmatic Integration Installation for the Japanese Shinkansen System

Aurora: A brilliant display of bands or folds of variously colored light in the sky

Aura: A distinctive but intangible quality that seems to surround a person or thing; atmosphere

Aura is a response to the highly saturated culture of Japan and the speed of the Japanese Shinkansen system.  Embracing the beauty of a complete immersion in color at a simultaneous velocities Aura, produces a wall scape that can respond the the experience of the occupant and the passer by.  Designed as an installation into existing bullet train station, Aura addresses two simple typologies, the bench and the vending machine.  The form flows from a continuous bench surface to a series of steel ruled surface slits.  These steel fin’s axis allow visual permeation from seating surfaces across platform and outwards from within the station run perpendicular to the axis of an incoming train, creating a wall of color.  The linear aggregation of the Aura bench when chromatically sequenced undulate ,allowing a blending of color.  The result on a train bypassing the station is a flash of color, a moment of excited expression, before opening back to the local context.  For the slowing train, the consistent meter of the fins, produces a moray through the space between parallel installations, creating a depth to the color field.  Each Aura unit contains a single color across the finned surface.  At the end of each, the surface curls back to produce a implicit volume which can house a vending machine.  A common component of the Japanese high speed culture, which often floats without context.  Aura acknowledges this component and gives it a place, much as for the occupant of the bench, it is a moment of rest, a chance to become a beautifully framed part of the passing texture.

A pre Fabricated Park

|pfp|, a pre fabricated rapid deployment urban mini park proposes a rethinking of the scale of the park to a single moment.  Designed with the intent to serve either as an integrated enhancer to an existing city park, or a standalone instigator for development, |pfp| attempts to create an isolated moment of escape in the urban environment.  Each unit contains a bench capable of supporting 3 people supported on a perforated aluminum frame which contains an internal colored light source, improving the environment/ safety of an area.  The perforated block uses the concept of a pixel screen to provide a space for information, art, or iconography to brand a particular area.  Adjacent to this block an area of green space, which sits above a field cast structural counterweight, is partitioned out to allow for whatever local application is appropriate.  The scale of the park is based upon the philanthropic paradigm of the donated park bench, and proposes a private subsidization that can respond rapidly to a particular neighborhoods desire.  Congruently application in larger parks reveals secondary intents to functionality, a field of units could produce a light scape at night, or a color scape in the day.  Park’s could brand themselves through color and pattern within the open system.  The relatively modest materiality of the |pfp| system anticipates derivation of alternate formal manifestations within the same family, tied together through material composition.

An Analogous Building System for an age of Digital Design

Para_Mech is a reflexive assembly mechanism, developed as a structural scaffold and skinning system for a multifaceted look at the transition of the architectural body.  By working through Rhino Script and Grasshopper, reality/ fabrication based constraints are pre-programmed into a tool set which allows for free form design based on a uniformly faceted linear rib system. Freeing the designer to work with form and design development as a primary concern, the Para_Mech system can be applied to an end form as an automated digital evaluation tool.  The designer, once satisfied with the digital representation, simply runs the final portion of the system, which within user specified constrains of member length, density and tolerance, produces a digital document set analogous to a materially uniform fabrication process.  .  This set produces an index of angles for rib construction, a drill pattern for the secondary skin and a total material area readout, generating all required information for immediate production. With rapid full scale fabrication as a primary desire, a series of easily machinable components, requiring no specialized CNC tools to produce are produced, forming the primary structural system,  Tooled onto these members are a  set of digital analogs, angular markers, drilled holes, etc.  which become primary guides for the direct translation of the digital model.  To produce an accurate shell, the user simply aligns the bend angles to the provided output indexes.  Once the members are assembled into the large rib bodies, a corresponding series of holes are drilled into a pre-measured set of ply strips, as designated within the systems output.  When fastened to the structural ribs, the result is a direct fabrication of the digital model.  Within the uniformity and geometric constraints of the assembly system the possibility, the development of secondary plug ins, enhancers and appliques become possible to enhance the functionality/ programmatic specificity of the desired end application.  By development of a direct relationship between a methodology of design and an economy of fabrication a rich diversity of end applications becomes possible, presenting a new material system into the architectural world.

Synthetic Nature

Produced for Coggan Crawford Schaut

The concept as established by CCS was to develop a topiary of light and shadow for the contributors to the Celebrate Brooklyn performance series. The installation was to freeze the sky scape of the park through the night maintaining a contextual sensibility in the absence of natural light. In response the pattern developed as the isolation of 3 local leaf types and a five stage abstract morphing process held in a branching lattice as a textural component to create a diverse lattice. Fabrication, using tyvek and a laser cutter, produced an enormous cost to lifetime ratio and a simplicity of reproduction for future applications.  Beginning from an interest in maintaining the Zen principles of appearance natural randomness through systematic control and the concept from No theater of all elements even the audience being a component of the performance, a rich series of criteria and opportunities emerged.  By creating a system which deals in scale, rotation, density, morphological diversity as parameters of deployment, a seemingly natural light scape could be produced that responded to specified occupant locations, opening above service area’s to expose more light and closing above seating area’s to produce a more intimate environment.  Through a custom developed methodology of production this program could be sketched into the drawing as a diagram which, when acted upon by the system produced a fraying and softening of the pattern, masking the intent in an ambient transition from one need to the next.  At the level of detail the “leaf” formations often maintain connection to the main field through only the “stem” portion of the figure, allowing each piece hang loosely from the larger pattern creating a fray which moves in the wind, bringing life to the ceiling.  The resulting light scape  gently hovers above the occupants, creating textural richness at the level of detail, visual intrigue upon approach and a soft tone from a distance, so as not to draw attention from the performance space.  

An Architectural Response to an Impending Environmental Crisis Through Agricultural Sustainment and Economic Diversification

China is the world’s largest growing agriculture producer per population, with over 60 percent of its population classified as rural. Yet, recent rapid urban migration has increased demand on these regions while reducing supply producers, the effects of which have been a further exhaustion of an already depleted landscape, resulting in desertification at a rate of as much as 900 square miles annually. Protoculture addresses this high demand market presenting a prototype architectural body capable of sustaining an intra-dependent culture while stabilizing a depleted landscape. Since its initial typological definition, agriculture as a practice has shifted away from its cyclical origins towards complete dependence on synthetic stabilization. Through hybridization of agriculture with fuel production practices, reconstitution through alteration of existing landscape footprints, and exploitation the adaptive nature of the architectural material practice, Protoculture seeks to re-embed these cyclical processes as self supplying programmatic layers. The process is opened in recognition of the distinct entities within Agra Culture and the duality of scale embedded in this history. First the people and small communities which develop around the typology of the farm and their unique growth provide a rich regional heritage from which Agra Industry, consisting of product production and markets which network these communities to their consumer markets, has emerged in the now global economy. Protoculture always address the smallest scale with the intent of stabilizing the unique properties of the individual, while at the same time seeding a common market base which in time begins to network into larger entities. It is developed around recognition of the need for permanent sustainment of site, yet acknowledges the architectural construct must be responsive to transitional nature of the market. Protoculture proliferates within a regional culture of mass transition, feeding upon the synthesis of programs into macro clustering’s of hyper dense tertiary synthetic ecosystems for the sustainment of contextual environments and economies.

A Reflexive Redefinition of the Formal Elements of Architecture Through Materiality

Between the ever changing plain of earth on which the house finds itself and the predictable and filterable light of the sky there exists a Reciprocity of Horizon. The house, a moment between two systems, a covariant derivative between light and ground. Within natural systems there is a play, an essential exchange between energy, it is consumed in order that it may further consume, it is stored only to be later expelled, and it is emitted back into a ubiquitous system that it may be retained at a later time. Its use is multifaceted, yet its essence is the same. The Horizon house provides a rhythm, structure, to which the systems are measured against. They dance across each other in units whose reactions are minuscule accumulate pressure and through its expulsion enable space. Their intricate differentiations of the single unit cross generate identifying relationships which establish their function. These relationships form a language and by growth and incursion into the space between, generate a program in the horizon.. This emergent space in turn demands new dialog between the passing systems, this Reciprocity breeds reactions back into the system which form identity unique to the house, the collective, no longer storing and mediating, but applying the energy. Material from matter.

An Urban Synthesis of Transit, Commerce, and Global Competition

The Interference Plexus, an Olympic aquatic center and community space, is an architecture composed of disruption and mediation of a highly varied range of speeds of transit, located across from the PS1 in queens. It is a place of arrival, interchange, and ultimately synthesis. Sited at a junction for the, BQE, LIRR, the MTA subway, and MTA bus system, it serves at one level as a mediator between these networks and a disparate personal transportation based community. However it is not a transition zone, instead it is a moment of collision where these systems are forced to engage a the unique program of the aquatic center. This program provides a sensory contradiction to the transit aspect exchanging intensity in speed with that of atmosphere. In addition an open park and international exchange ground making contact with street level presents a field for expulsion of pressure, while at the same time acting conversely as an ambiguous accelerator into the transit system.  Therefor the form, the architectural enabler of the programs, takes on a unique quality for each individual aspect, transit, shopping, athletics, etc.. It is the release of the pressures embodied in these components which express and explore Interference as a means of creating place within a plexus of interchange.

The form of the Plexus is differentiated by the programmatic qualities. Through the process of tessellation as a means to establish meter in plan and a strict hierarchy in terms formal intensity in section, the three strata, a dissimilar collection of elements is allowed a means of communication. The strata’s which interchange at one point in plan and section each house unique qualities. The top strata presents itself as an ambiguous park scape making contact with the street level at three points. This park scape is populated regionally by shell eruptions which are appropriated as kiosks. Puncturing this plane, two towers emerge which serve as administrative facilities as well as the primary interchange for circulation and the highest pressure zone in the Plexus. The towers are deformed and yet capture two vortex’s which mediate the two transit intakes of the train and bus. Reflexively across the surface, the seating defines the material quality of the vortices’s, and begins the materialization process of the Plexus. At the interchange of the vortices’s contained within the towers there is a plunge through the base plane, which becomes the single access point to the aquatic centers activities layer. The combination of these systems forms the bases upon which the relationships of interference and synthesis begin to play against each other. The final form is held as the complete reciprocity of all systems. This applied against structural, spatial, and programmatic limitations results in the current moment of architecture.

A Hybrid Biological Park/ Ecological Lab Facility

Populous is an urban park, educational complex, and aquatic nature reservoir for indigenous life forms on the Hudson river along the west side of Manhattan.  Grappling on the resident typology of the pier as a collection of pylons, Populous creates an aggregated of programatically diverse units within a single morphological typology.  Using structural/ skinning expression to actualize programmatic function and volumetric parameters as typological controls a single system takes of a diverse array of functions in a single population.  Small low profile area’s become a diverse urban park growing from planter to park bench to boat launch before rapidly expanding to highly functional enclosures.  Conic formations act a rain water collectors feeding through filtration centers into bubble shape biological research labs.  Pylons plunge into the water creating points of collection and isolation for local plant and wildlife reserves.  The system evaluates itself post mapping by measuring the diameter to specify program potential, according to each diameter relative to functional range/ density to determine typological stage.  With typology established  an independent mapping is read against the each position to establish diversity and intensity of program relative to planned intent.  Populous is a system of rules who’s complex self actualization when combined creates a diverse and rich texture of function.

Typologies > 1a:plates, 1b:pores, 2a:pools, 2b:benches, 3a:eddies, 3b:launches, 4a:columns, 4b:canopies, 4c: huts, 5a: amalgamations

Program> 1  :  urban park, 2: biology lab, 3: aquatic nature preserve, 4: educational complex, 5: ferry port, 6: boat launch

Materials> 1  :  prefabricated faceted aluminum, 2: prefab/ site cast concrete, 3: on site thermal formed glass, 4: earth/ grass/ water, 5: wooden lathe, 6: composite wooden beams

An Open Archive of Knowledge

A library for the memory of knowledge, sited at the edge of an ocean adja cent to a graveyard evokes an ever growing critical question about the life and death and rebirth of objects and information. The architecture of this place will capture the essence of detach ment and isolation, the ephemeral quality of information in a time digital transition, and celebrate the life of a community provid ing a gathering space in the current time. The approach to the project was one of embodied sketch, studying the rapidity at which concept can pass to matter. Concrete channels define passages of isolation and contemplation, which release into a vast common space open to the infinite ocean. The space covered by a canvas upon which light casts the silhouette of the occupants, creating an fleeting imprint in time between the resting place of objects of knowledge and an ephemeral sea of information. If one passes below to the resting place the space will reveal the stacks containing books which can be read but not removed. If one moves above a ring houses glass shells which project fluid streams of information, from which moments can be captured and taken, but whose origins are in flux and object less. This balance between the book and the network only needs a shell to frame its presence. And a can vas upon which to project its existence. In this space there is a joint between our life, death, and means of immortality. It is a reminder of speed of memory, and is a Library to Mortality.

Passively Sustainable Low Income Housing

The program breaks away from its context revealing a facade as a shell, split by light opening spaces for a Community within. The ground between now exposed the contextual private and public now fl ow through this chasm. Draped over this concrete scaffold a skin of ivy binds the space together, its life and death cycle a tempo for the existence of the occupants and a mediator of the environment. Facing the hollowed void the program of housing nests itself introverted into its own place. The building should not only be responsive to environment in form, but in materi ality both in essence and in behavior. Passive systems and living organisms form skins mediating the sun to maximize living conditions without mechanical appa ratus.  Water is fi ltered through gardens encased upon the roof which thrive on the heat of the bodies and the spaces they occupy below. Occupants dwell between the skins, encased and implied, in terraces and greenhouses private to each unit.  Through the creation of interdependent systems and environments the program of low income housing can maintain architectural clarity through its effi ciency over time. It is in the death and rebirth of the skins that the architecture of a Beautiful Decay can be found.

An Exploration of an Editorial Relationship Between Design and Fabrication

Fiber placement technology opens the opportunity to address structure and skin as a synthetic and synonymous system who’s aesthetics can be directly tied into a structural methodology.  The architectural factors of light and translucency, stress and structure, material and effect, and function must by simultaneously addressed and reflexively informing in a cyclical relationship seeking a moment of optimum stability.  Vector Space proposes a body as a shell which is a ghost of the forces which invisibly act within it and visibly are affected by it.  What is explored is a relationship between fabrication and function in search of a new paradigm of of building which disintegrates and blends what historically were individually factored components of assembly.  Through the use of scripting via the processing, java based formats, inputs of structural vectors, moray patterning, and aperture gradation can be individually controlled and intensified resulting in automatic adjustments of other parameters to maintain their programmatic functions.  The result of which is a complete fabrication ready set of machining parameters which maintain the integrity of all specified criteria.