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Hello everyone. As you know, i am an architecture student, and have entered into the final year of my education. I want to put together a semi-consistent blog showing both my previous work throughout my last four years and show the progress of my thesis project for those who are looking to study architecture, or just find it interesting, and want to understand the process of my projects and see what to expect as a student of architecture.
To understand a little of how architectural education is structured, at least for an American professional architecture degree, you must go through five years of coursework. How they structure that course work varies, but at the core is usually the design studio, a design lab where students work on projects and explore design. At my university, this is taught through four years of various design studios, lectures, and other related course work, and the final year, while still in this studio culture, is a self-assigned, self-fabricated research and design project that one produces throughout the year.
For the general structure of this blog, i will have two sections. I will pull a project from my portfolio, and give an in-depth description of the design and guide you through the process of one of these projects. The second part will be a documentation of my thesis. The Architectonic Series as a whole will be structured as an art blog, so you will see this as a continuing series that will be updated periodically and a full compilation of both past projects and my thesis.
Part 1
Part 2
Project: Echo Tower
Echo Tower is one of my favorite projects in my portfolio. It is the only project thus far that has been translated into a minecraft project, so some of you may be somewhat familiar with this project already. To understand it in the context of this blog, though, and to see it from the educational perspective of architecture, second year projects begin to enter more depth. Unlike the projects of first year, like paraSITE and others that i plan to post later, these projects go farther into depth into the systems of the projects. While first year focused on design, the projects that succeeded them began to create a more concrete exercise into how to design a building with a set program. Due to the depth that we are beginning to go into with these projects, we are given the full quarter, ten weeks, to explore the design. Echo Tower was the second quarter-long project i had done.
Program
The program of the site was given to us in a prescribed manner. The site was a parking lot in Portland Oregon, on 12th Avenue and Washington Street. The site was 133' x 100' (40.5 m x 30.5m) plot of land that was adjacent to a residential mid-rise building. The program of the building we had to design was to be somewhat mixed use, with at least a single floor of retail at the street level, and a minimum of 60 living units, with half being single bedroom, and half being two bedroom units. The tower also had to incorporate habitats for bats.
The Process
The process for this project actually began with a week long design exercise that involved simply creating a nest. We then had to incorporate it into a setting of some sort. I began with these small, three sided pyramidal structures out of museum board, a type of thick paper material, with the top open. From here, i combined six of them to create a hexagonal structure, and to make it stand, i made two of them, connecting at their tips. To make the overall structure taller, i made two more of these clustered shapes and created a sort of tower like piece. I thought about the setting, and because they resembled very large towers, i thought that they could be placed in urban environments almost as these vertical cities, so i placed them in three cities: one in Dubai, one in Shanghai, and one in Hong Kong.
Why do i include this in the Echo Tower project? The primary reason is that this got us to think about a dwelling, a nest is a protective enclosed structure essentially for one to live in. This mirrors what we think of as a place to live, it is safe, it is secure. While significantly abstracted, it is still something to look at. The other reason is that this set me off on a minor obsession with creating a skyscraper for my project that quarter. Like paraSITE was, this was also just a design exercise that loosely tied to architecture, and to what our project was going to be. While on its own, this isn't a substantial project, the importance in it is where it led me in this quarter long project
Knowing that i wanted to increase the program, and increase the height (which we deduced to adhere to the program, it would be a minimum of 6 stories, about 72' or about 24m). I wanted to design something significantly taller. I began first by doing a series of sketches, thinking about how to reimagine a dwelling, what could an apartment tower be?
I then proceeded by doing three fairly quick study models looking solely at form. I referenced the initial sketches, but began doing forms that exemplified what i thought was successful in each sketch, particularly the cavity created in the sketch on the far right. I thought this could create an interesting and somewhat protected environment for the bats.
From both the chipboard model and the modelling clay model, i came up with a sketch that made my form for my tower concrete.
At the same time, i am trying to cement why i was designing the tower this way, why it had to be so tall, and i had to rationalize the shape, i had to make sure that i could explain that this would on the site. I began by doing a study of the weather in Portland. It showed that it is mostly cloudy, and thus solar gain was going to be critical in this location. Secondly was a gentle, but prevailing wind that would come northeast to the southwest. I began tinkering with the design some, changing the structure, and having the cavity face somewhat parallel to this wind alleviating the building of some of the wind load but also coinciding with the bat's daily movement through the city. Consulting with a local bat caretaker, she confirmed that my intent to raise the bats from the street level and place them within this cavity was actually ideal for them, as it was quieter, involved less direct interaction with people, and the habitats themselves would allow them to be protected from the wind.
I then began my focus on the program. How was i to organize the retail and the apartment units in this shape that i've given myself. In the apartments, i decided on giving each unit two floors, and stacking them in an organization derived from Le Corbusier, where the eight units would take up three floors, and a corridor would be every third floor rather than every floor. This alleviates the vertical circulation, and it gives each unit the space they need, as the organization was on the bottom floor were part of four units, the middle floor was the other part of four units, and part of another four, and than the top was the remaining parts of the other four units. This was the organization in both towers, and allowed for a single loaded corridor, with the corridor opened to the cavity, and thus to the bats. The retail portion would be in a three story plinth that the rest of the tower would sit upon.
The next challenge was in the facade. My initial sketch never addressed the facade treatment, but had this angled language at the "folds." I came up with two facade ideas, the first was having these screened off sections with these circular apertures of glass all along the building, and the second was from a couple of case studies looking at a glass facade and a diagrid structure. I chose the second one to pursue because i found a way to utilize the structural element into a passive ventilation system, allowing the building to be more energy efficient. This passive ventilation system dictated my facade, as the structure would reside in a 4' (1.3m) cavity that would allow air to flow from the bottom of the tower up to the top simply by the current of the air being affected by the heat differences between the bottom and the top of the tower, removing a need to rely on mechanical system.
section through a unit, showing the air paths and the facade
This is the base drawing for a series of facade studies. The images below are the two best, the top one is the one chosen for the final iteration
The last element was to look at the habitats for the bats. As the split tower concept became concrete, there needed to be a way to connect them. i began by building bridges between them that held the same facade language the rest of the tower did. Underneath the bridges was a small enclosure for the bats that was just large enough for them to get in and would sufficiently protect them from the environment as well as any predators.
As what became standard for these projects, we had to create a scale model of the building and a poster. The poster had to contain some floor plans, sections, an explanation of the project, and some renders of the project. This essentially represents the compilation of all of the work you had done on this project throughout the quarter, and then you present the project before some faculty, and they give critiques on the project, and they are incredibly beneficial as it gives you something to learn from in future projects. This was my poster, and some images of the final model.
What is significant about this project? Well, this is the last project i did in my second year. It was the second quarter long project i did, and it was really the most successful project i had up to that point. It was a project that my professor allowed me to extend on the program and really make it something that i wanted to do rather than strictly adhering to the prescribed program. It was also the first project i did that was a high rise. As you know, i have a minor obsession with high-rises and skyscrapers. If you look at my profile, about 37 of the posts are skyscrapers (this is excluding my cities). It was also the first time i made a model entirely from digital fabrication, as i laser cut the entire model. This is still one of my favorite projects, and is the only studio project i have been able to translate into minecraft.
Thesis: Abstract
What is abstract? Through a series of discussions, my studio determined that something that is abstract is a representation of the most pure form of a given idea through the use of an object, image, and/or text. It is with this understanding as to how to interpret abstraction did we proceed with our thesis. The abstract portion of thesis is about really trying to get a grasp on the idea that you want to explore with your thesis. It is a 3 week intense exploration into representation of ideas culminating in the Abstract Show where all thesis studios come together to present the work in a gallery setting.
I reflected back on my thesis proposal. I determined that the two most critical ideas in their simplified form was to connect the greater Los Angeles area and create a housing community in downtown Los Angeles. But how could i represent that? The project itself, even given the simplified idea, is almost absurdly complex. This involves several layers of intricate planning that will all interact and influence each other, and their success in working in such a city lies with so many variables. It is a daunting project, and one that's ideas are difficult to simplify. I quickly came to the conclusion that i needed two objects of focus to reflect the two facets of my project: transport and the city.
The transport section could easily be represented by maps, yet to abstract them to me meant to devoid them of context. For the city, a physical representation would easily suffice and i would need to play with how a person would look at this to ensure that downtown was the focus. My first iteration utilized a very literal representation of these two elements. In the foreground, there are transparencies that had the highway system, the rail system, the major streets, and the population densities in Los Angeles. To hold these transparencies was a box where the transparencies would slide in, and overlap each other. Behind the box was the focus: a simplified representation of a city showing that these systems need to focus and look at where the expansion will be focused.
There were flaws in this first iteration. It was difficult to determine what the true focus was. The images of the maps were too obvious that they were of Los Angeles, though it was still obscure as to what the maps actually represented. I revised the design, and created a small box, about 6" x 6" x 6" (15cm x 15 cm x 15 cm). Inside the box were two of the three maps i had from the previous model placed inside, one of the rail system and the one of the highway system. Underneath was written "Connect the sprawl" and "Focus the sprawl" respectively. In the far back was a population density diagram and fiber optic lights coming from a small box in the center representing the city. This was received well, and i really liked the direction it was going.
I then proceeded to making it to full scale. I bought some MDF (medium density fiberboard, essentially a compressed paper material), and cut it to 15" x 15" x 15" panels. I mitered the edges at 45˚ angle so that the edges would be as clean as possible. I also built a little viewer on one of the panels to direct the person who is viewing it and make it a little more obvious. Inside the box, i printed the same images using black ink and spray painted the interior black, and glued the piece together. I then painted it with a pure white paint. I then drilled out holes in the panels for the fiber to go out of. For the center, i found a piece of 6" x 6" (15 cm x 15 cm) wood block to act as the base to the city. I routed out the bottom to place an LED and battery pack in the bottom to light the fiber that would come out of it. On top of the wooden block was to be a representation of the city. I chose to use staples and created a composition that loosely resembled Los Angeles. From there, i began threading the fiber, around 70 different strands, into their respective places. Once it was finished, i brought it carefully downs from my studio to the gallery. As with a lot of projects like this, when we finish, we like to have a little show. We placed everything in our main gallery, and all 100+ thesis students showed off their abstract project.
Interior image of the abstract
For the next two and a half weeks following the Abstract Show, i did not work on my thesis, and was working on the project below:
Thesis: Vellum
This is technically not part of my thesis, and is just my entry in a furniture competition. The Vellum furniture competition is a competition that is hosted every year for students of the architecture college to design and build a unique piece of furniture. The grand prize is an all expense paid trip to Milan, Italy in the spring for the Milan Salone de Mobile, a massive furniture fair. There are also many other smaller awards, such as 100% award given to those who make all parts of their project themselves, the Solar Decathlon award to make furniture that can fit into the small Solar Decathlon house, a solar powered house for a national design competition, and the cradle to cradle award, which is given to sustainably made furniture. The only reason i include this project here is it is technically part of my thesis studio, and is designed within my studio. My idea was to create something that i could use to stow my bike as it doesn't have a kick stand and i'm often leaning it against walls and tables in my apartment. Due to me living in an apartment, i had to make something that would be free standing, so as not to damage the walls.
My first iteration was to have the base be a piece of found wood, a piece of eucalyptus that i got for free from a local lumberyard. This idea involved having a piece of plywood curved and cut to place the front tire in, rout out the eucalyptus and make grooves for it so the bike doesn't tip over, and in the curved piece of plywood, i would have shelves to place tools while i was working on the bike. This idea didn't get off the ground. I found it rather unnecessarily difficult to deal with the piece of wood, it was cumbersome, and would have taken up a lot of space.
Initial sketch
Initial study model
I revised the design with a plywood slat system bound with dowels that would collapse down and be folded away when not in use, which was inspired by a bench i saw in a furniture gallery that inspired the design language of the stand. It would be a vertical bike stand to have the bike take up the least amount of floor space. This first model merely tests the hinges in regards to the slats to make sure that the system actually works. When i presented it, there were some problems that were brought to my attention that i had not yet fully considered as i was planning this out, most notably how to make the piece sit stably and to brace the vertical member to avoid it from tipping over.
Initial Sketches
I revised the design, and planned out every brace and kept it in line with the slat organization language that is throughout the piece. This second model is a 1:6 scale model of the final piece, and you can see how i solved the two problems that i had. To counter it from tipping, i made wide feet on the ends of the base, cambering them so just the ends touch to keep it as stable as possible, even on uneven ground. The second problem was addressed by having a series of diagonal members on rod hinge joints that would lock into a key like hole in the main slats, and thus would create a truss that works in compression. To keep it collapsible, i had to ensure that these joints could be removed, hence this design.
I bought my material: 2 sheets of 3/4" (18mm) thick baltic birch plywood for the structural elements and 3/8" (9.5 mm) diameter aluminum rods for the joints. For four days, i cut out the 85 various pieces from the plywood, and managed to use all of one sheet of plywood, and only 1/8 of the other sheet making it weigh about 80 lbs (about 36 kg), and only having at most 5% of the material being wasted (this does not include the other piece of plywood, and that will be built into a chair at a later date). While yes, it is over engineered for its purpose, it is also meant to have a visual aesthetic relationship with the scale of the bicycle. I then proceeded to drilling the 73 holes that allowed for the aluminum rods to act as the joinery. The final stages involved marking out and cutting notches for where the diagonal supports would rest in the main structure. Then i was able to put it together. To keep all of the pieces together, the aluminum rods were tapped (threading the inside of a hole) and capped with some bolts. Due to the unpredictability of wood, this involved some difficulties, which involved the use of a high-speed rotary tool and a hammer to get everything in place. The finishing touches were in sanding down the exposed edges, ensuring that there weren't any splinters or rough edges, and hanging my bike on it.
Wood cutting documents/guides
As was required for the contest, i made a poster that would be placed on my piece explaining how it worked, and the process behind it. This is the poster below
This was placed in a gallery among over 140 other pieces of furniture made by the various students within my college.
Again, you may ask, what does this have to do with architecture? And if you were to ask this question over 100 years ago, you would be right in saying that it really doesn't. Since the advent of Modernism and the idea of total design took hold, architects have explored furniture design with the same zeal as they would a building. It is only a matter of scale, but we still are engaging the human scale with furniture as we would with buildings. They require form, they require function, they require a program (though carried out differently), and they are constructed. Furniture, like with the first studio project i posted, is an opportunity to engage the human scale in a reasonable and manageable manner, rather than just dealing with models. But a competition like this allows us to not just create something we find aesthetically interesting, but create something functional. I built this bike stand knowing that i was fulfilling a need, granted it was a personal need, but a need nonetheless. And it was something i put great care into making, just as i would with any other project.
In reflection, it was a great experiment to actually build something at full scale with an intended purpose. So often we fabricate projects and they never get beyond the conceptual stage. Yes, we make beautiful and sometimes photo realistic renders, yes, we make physical models, and yes, some of them are pretty accurate to what we would expect in a real structure, but that's as far as we get while in school. And often in most architecture educations, that's as far as you will ever get. Schools often focus on the theoretical, both exploring theory, and putting them into practice through projects not unlike what i have and will be posting here, but there is something about actually using real building materials and making something to full scale that adds a certain satisfaction and fullness to my educational experience.
Along with my reflection on the project, i also wanted to reflect on the judging and outcome of the competition. I did not win any of the awards with my entry. The two pieces that won the top awards were a modernist-esque chair made from steel tubing and fabric, and the other was a pair of stools made from two x-shaped pieces of wood and bent pieces of steel, with one powder coated and the other left bare. I feel mine didn't quite have the design flourishes that seem to catch the judges' eyes. While mine had great craft, a strong design language, visually, it is simple, and the reason for its simplicity was to ensure that it would properly collapse, which one of the judges wondered, but didn't test, if the project actually could fold down. One of my professors told me this, to which i responded that i wouldn't have made it this way if it wasn't going to work. It still received tremendous praise from the people who walked through the gallery and the various faculty from my university alike. And i'm pleased i finally have a place to put my bicycle.
If you enjoyed this, please let me know in a comment below and/or a diamond above, i always greatly appreciate the support and encouragement. I will continue updating this blog as a series over the next several months as my project progresses. While the content of the latter portion will be dictated by the direction of my thesis, which at the moment, i am not sure how it will develop, the first portion will be periodically updated (coinciding with progress being made on my thesis) to show the various work i have done throughout my education. I apologize for it's length, but due to the nature of these projects, I have to go into this with as much detail as i feel is necessary. Please let me know of any suggestions of formatting, content, or anything else to improve this. I also want to open this up as a place to offer my knowledge to any who are curious about architecture or its related fields, and i will gladly answer any questions you have about this series, some of the terms that i use, the projects i have posted, or just general inquiries. Feel free to leave them in the comments below or you can send me a PM, and i will answer as promptly as possible. Thank you for reading, and i hope you will enjoy this journey with me.
To understand a little of how architectural education is structured, at least for an American professional architecture degree, you must go through five years of coursework. How they structure that course work varies, but at the core is usually the design studio, a design lab where students work on projects and explore design. At my university, this is taught through four years of various design studios, lectures, and other related course work, and the final year, while still in this studio culture, is a self-assigned, self-fabricated research and design project that one produces throughout the year.
For the general structure of this blog, i will have two sections. I will pull a project from my portfolio, and give an in-depth description of the design and guide you through the process of one of these projects. The second part will be a documentation of my thesis. The Architectonic Series as a whole will be structured as an art blog, so you will see this as a continuing series that will be updated periodically and a full compilation of both past projects and my thesis.
Part 1
Projects Part 1
Project: Year 1: paraSITE
This project is called paraSITE because it involves creating an intervention on an existing building, our architecture building. This can be open to all forms of interpretation. What actually does it mean to create an intervention? Well, it began with our site, and we did a series of studies of the site through drawings, photographs, and study models (messy physical models used to try to understand a principle or idea). It is this north facing alcove that has little foot traffic, no sunlight, and a single, massive air intake. This air intake became our focus.
Through the final study, the layered image at the bottom of the images you see above, really led to the final design of our project. This is a visual representation of the pathways the air takes as it enters the intake. We hung string from the air vent to various places on the building that the alcove looked off from. And from that, we wanted a visual representation of one of these paths.
The actual fabrication of this installation was to be made entirely out of 16 guage steel (1/16" thick or about 1.5mm) that was cut into a series of strips, spot welded every 3 inches (about 7.5 cm) on 3-4 ft long (1m to 1.3m) strips layered on each other, and bolted together to create this wavy shape coming down to a light box in the alcove.
All of this was fabricated by me and two other students, and once all of the pieces were made, it was installed in a little under 3 hours. The plywood slats (not my decision, unfortunately, which is occasionally the nature of group projects) were added on towards the end of the project.
The question you may be asking yourself is what does this have to do with architecture? Why make this abstract thing rather than an actual building design? You have to understand what the first year of architecture is all about. It is about design, not about buildings. In some of my other projects, i'll explain how, but the professors intentionally break down our perception of architecture to this core idea of what design and composition are about. Then from there they give us the tools to make them. This project is at the end of our winter quarter (2/3 of the way through the year), so this is the beginning of them giving us those tools. This is the first time that we are making something truly to human scale. This is the first time we are actually building with real building materials. This is also the first time most of us would have worked with steel. It is an invaluable experience to be able to fully understand how to make something. That is why this project is very significant in my education, and is always one that is in my portfolio.
This project is called paraSITE because it involves creating an intervention on an existing building, our architecture building. This can be open to all forms of interpretation. What actually does it mean to create an intervention? Well, it began with our site, and we did a series of studies of the site through drawings, photographs, and study models (messy physical models used to try to understand a principle or idea). It is this north facing alcove that has little foot traffic, no sunlight, and a single, massive air intake. This air intake became our focus.
Through the final study, the layered image at the bottom of the images you see above, really led to the final design of our project. This is a visual representation of the pathways the air takes as it enters the intake. We hung string from the air vent to various places on the building that the alcove looked off from. And from that, we wanted a visual representation of one of these paths.
The actual fabrication of this installation was to be made entirely out of 16 guage steel (1/16" thick or about 1.5mm) that was cut into a series of strips, spot welded every 3 inches (about 7.5 cm) on 3-4 ft long (1m to 1.3m) strips layered on each other, and bolted together to create this wavy shape coming down to a light box in the alcove.
All of this was fabricated by me and two other students, and once all of the pieces were made, it was installed in a little under 3 hours. The plywood slats (not my decision, unfortunately, which is occasionally the nature of group projects) were added on towards the end of the project.
The question you may be asking yourself is what does this have to do with architecture? Why make this abstract thing rather than an actual building design? You have to understand what the first year of architecture is all about. It is about design, not about buildings. In some of my other projects, i'll explain how, but the professors intentionally break down our perception of architecture to this core idea of what design and composition are about. Then from there they give us the tools to make them. This project is at the end of our winter quarter (2/3 of the way through the year), so this is the beginning of them giving us those tools. This is the first time that we are making something truly to human scale. This is the first time we are actually building with real building materials. This is also the first time most of us would have worked with steel. It is an invaluable experience to be able to fully understand how to make something. That is why this project is very significant in my education, and is always one that is in my portfolio.
Thesis Part 1
Thesis: Proposal
This is an edited essay explaining my proposal for my thesis. This is what has originally guided my thesis thus far.
I grew up outside of Los Angeles. As a child, i remember admiring the city, fascinated by its vast scale. It was something whimsical, and it captured my imagination. For years, i have stared out at its skyline rising out of the surrounding foothills and fog like an image from Oz, at night the endless carpet of lights sprawling across the basin, immersed in it. Since i was five years old, i was involved in Los Angeles' most notable and cliched profession: acting. I've seen the stages, the neighborhoods, and the studios that made this city the entertainment juggernaut that it is. And in traversing this city on endless auditions, often going from Pomona to Santa Monica, I've often been baffled at the intricacy of the layering within this city, from numerous small cities that compose it to the interwoven highway system that snakes throughout it.
But how has this city responded to the changing mandates that seem to have been assumed by the architectural community? Architecture has been at the forefront of environmental responsibility by taking on the burden of dealing with the energy crisis in the world. Buildings use nearly 50% of the total electricity produced, contribute more to the environmental hazards around the world than any other area of production, compounding the effect of the energy industry. Many efforts have been undertaken to counter this, most notably LEED, the Living Building Challenge, and Architecture 2030. Beyond the concerns of the building emissions, there also are huge concerns regarding transportation, which in dysfunctional Los Angeles is fully dependent on cars and its highway system, primarily a result of the sprawling nature of the city. The effort to create a more reliable transit system seemed to lack the significant impact they really need to change the city. And this is what has captivated and driven me through my education, and will be the foundation to my thesis.
One of the primary problems with the city is its urbanization plan. In my research, i want to understand why Los Angeles has consistently failed in recentralizing the city, while also failing to truly connect it with a transit system that is both reliable and profitable. I want to explore this through two facets: an overall urbanization plan that counters urban sprawl and encourages a recentralized downtown, and a reorganization of Los Angeles' public transit system in an effort to see how Los Angeles might change by 2035.
I want to explore this concept from three different scales: from the scope of the entire Los Angeles basin, by an examination of the greater downtown area, and lastly from exploring a single housing community within downtown through an in-depth design. This should give a unique look but a global study of the city, and let me understand the best way to approach the tranportation and living paradigm that has defined the city.
How has the Los Angeles basin defined itself in unique terms of its urbanization plan, and what has made it unique as a city? Los Angeles is a story of change. Vast Spanish land grants were broken up into massive ranches and farms. Farms and ranches in turn were bought by developers, and planted into communities. Communities became cities, with urban services in central downtowns, or strung along the trails and highways. As the population grew, the edges of the cities merged, forcing political divisions and incorporations. And as Los Angeles grew at the center, gobbling up land and resources like water, harbors, and transportation routes, it had begun to annex those smaller communities, absorbing their civic functions and identities as it grew. Each of thos communities today still retain their own cultural context and their own unique identity. But their boarders are often not clearly defined, as each city seems to blend into the next distiguished only by the standardized Lost Angeles Signage and councilmatic districts
The highway systen, which is composed of dozens of Interstate highways and state routes throughout the city, help to define areas and connect them to each other. The local nomenclature tells the story: the Santa Monica Freeway, the Pasadena Freeway, the Hollywood Freeway. The nature of these sub-cities began as the city needed housing to accommodate a rising population. Outside of the city itself were numerous agricultural fields, most notably the orange groves. As housing demand rose, residential communities began springing up, and today, this has spread beyond the city center, pushing agriculture beyond Riverside and Orange County. This is one of the primary problems an environmentally responsible and profitable public transit system has to overcome in Los Angeles. The population destinations are growing at a faster rate thatn the transporation system can connect to.
I have had the opportunity to travel a lot in my life. my parents loved the road and criss-crossed the country with me, touching nearly every state. That, coupled with my own travels, really sparked my interest in this aspect of the project. I have been to most of the major US cities, most notably Chicago and New York. I want to explore some of their approaches to urbanization and compare that to Los Angeles, to compare with what is working in those cities to how they work in Los Angeles, and try to understand the factors of what succeeds in the context of American cities.
Througout Los Angeles, there is already a system of busses, light-rail trains, a larger regional train system, and a subway system, but none of these are used widely enough for them to be profitable or even effective. There are several reasons why the public transit system in Los Angeles has seemingly failed, but the primary reason is the car culture that the city has nurtured. Los Angeles has one of the most complex highway systems in the world. WIth dozens of different freeways and highways, it is far easier and more convenient to drive around the city than it is to utilize a broken and incomplete public transit system that often can't deliver the passenger to their desired destination.
But this isn't the only problem facing a public transit system in Los Angeles. While public transit is heralded as being less environmentally harmful, the critical issue is that public transit, whether with busses or trains, is that they are too expensive to build and maintain to ever make a return on the investment. This is something completely neglected throughout the state, as evidenced by the growing failure of a high-speed rail line planned for California. With a $91.4 billion price tag, even with its rather optimistic daily ridership of 260000 people, it will never offset its cost, and with alternatives forms of travel, it will never be competitive. It simply becomes a tax burden at a time when an increasingly conservative electorate is often opposed to any perceived tax.
This, too, faces local transit. The Gold Line Metro, a light-rail running from Los Angeles to Pasadena is a project i have been following since its conception, and it is currently undergoing an extension through the San Gabriel Valley (being extended about 15 miles). At a cost of over $700 million just for the extension alone, this is very expensive given the limited daily ridership of only 40000 people. Also given the huge initial investment, the constant upkeep of the current line, and the replacement of the light-rail trains (at a cost of over $2 million per car), it is a costly and cumbersome mode of transportation constantly in conflict with the expansive network of streets that this line cuts through
One of the critical things that should be noted is that none of these public transit systems seem to really respect the unique culture of Los Angeles. A city that has a successful and widely used transportation system is one that respects the city's context. London's Underground is a reflection of the city's history and layout without being invasive. The buses represent a tradition, while being respectful of the size of the streets, and they are frequent enough to be usable. In New York, while its streets are widely used and congested by vehicle traffic, the transit system is used widely due to a focus and dedication to the system. In Manhattan, public transportation seems so accessible, with a bus on every street, and a subway entrance on every corner. Manhattan is capable of doing that due to its relatively small and condensed scale and with it being centralized compared to the surrounding buroughs. But with such a large and spread out layout that Los Angeles has, as well as the varied demographics of each region and their specific needs, it is illogical to try to approach it in a similar way. By comparison, access to the nearest bus is often blocks away, and access to the nearest subway or light-rail is often measured in miles, creating the absurd requirement that most rail stations require huge parking lots, and thus never alleviating the dependency or impact of the cars.
What is housing in the context of Los Angeles? Countless suburbs and smaller cities surround the city proper. A majority of the housing is small apartments, duplexes, and single-family houses. Despite a growing loft culture, only in certain areas of downtown are there high-rise apartments, but these often cater to those with wealth than those who would be benefiting from a recentralized Los Angeles. Downtown high-rise housing is often priced in the millions.
The suburban communities are often small in population. My hometown is a perfect example of a Los Angeles suburb. It has 22,000 residents, with a majority of them living in single-family or duplex style homes. There are a few small apartments around the city. The town has no real urban core or civic center of its own, born of a linear spread along the old Route 66. The residences are centered around schools in the area, which there are five elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school. What then can be done to move this kind of demographic into the city?
The first concern of a resident would be size. A house offers a freedom of space that an apartment cannot necessarily offer. The house has a symbolic meaning, not just to residents in the suburbs of Los Angeles, but also to Americans in general. It is the American dream to have your own plot of land, the modern farm or ranch, your own "spread" to make a success of one's self. A house represents the pinnacle of success, something you own, tend to, make your own, and take pride in.
I have always lived in a house, a single-family dwelling. I enjoy the comfort of it, i enjoy walking out into the front or back yards and enjoying the weather underneath the large trees that shades the west side of the house. I enjoy playing with my dogs. But in the limited space and condensed design of an apartment building, these things are not really possible. Often the space of an apartment is dedicated exclusively to the structure and the units, and often there is little space for other amenities. I want to explore how to create an apartment complex that can comfortably translate the ideas and comfort of living in a house and within a neighborhood.This is to allow a more comfortable transition to the city without losing what is critical. The context of these "neighborhoods" will need to incorporate everything that a traditional suburban neighborhood would have: comfortable housing, education, access to basic needs, and space of leisure and recreation.
This is an edited essay explaining my proposal for my thesis. This is what has originally guided my thesis thus far.
I grew up outside of Los Angeles. As a child, i remember admiring the city, fascinated by its vast scale. It was something whimsical, and it captured my imagination. For years, i have stared out at its skyline rising out of the surrounding foothills and fog like an image from Oz, at night the endless carpet of lights sprawling across the basin, immersed in it. Since i was five years old, i was involved in Los Angeles' most notable and cliched profession: acting. I've seen the stages, the neighborhoods, and the studios that made this city the entertainment juggernaut that it is. And in traversing this city on endless auditions, often going from Pomona to Santa Monica, I've often been baffled at the intricacy of the layering within this city, from numerous small cities that compose it to the interwoven highway system that snakes throughout it.
But how has this city responded to the changing mandates that seem to have been assumed by the architectural community? Architecture has been at the forefront of environmental responsibility by taking on the burden of dealing with the energy crisis in the world. Buildings use nearly 50% of the total electricity produced, contribute more to the environmental hazards around the world than any other area of production, compounding the effect of the energy industry. Many efforts have been undertaken to counter this, most notably LEED, the Living Building Challenge, and Architecture 2030. Beyond the concerns of the building emissions, there also are huge concerns regarding transportation, which in dysfunctional Los Angeles is fully dependent on cars and its highway system, primarily a result of the sprawling nature of the city. The effort to create a more reliable transit system seemed to lack the significant impact they really need to change the city. And this is what has captivated and driven me through my education, and will be the foundation to my thesis.
One of the primary problems with the city is its urbanization plan. In my research, i want to understand why Los Angeles has consistently failed in recentralizing the city, while also failing to truly connect it with a transit system that is both reliable and profitable. I want to explore this through two facets: an overall urbanization plan that counters urban sprawl and encourages a recentralized downtown, and a reorganization of Los Angeles' public transit system in an effort to see how Los Angeles might change by 2035.
I want to explore this concept from three different scales: from the scope of the entire Los Angeles basin, by an examination of the greater downtown area, and lastly from exploring a single housing community within downtown through an in-depth design. This should give a unique look but a global study of the city, and let me understand the best way to approach the tranportation and living paradigm that has defined the city.
How has the Los Angeles basin defined itself in unique terms of its urbanization plan, and what has made it unique as a city? Los Angeles is a story of change. Vast Spanish land grants were broken up into massive ranches and farms. Farms and ranches in turn were bought by developers, and planted into communities. Communities became cities, with urban services in central downtowns, or strung along the trails and highways. As the population grew, the edges of the cities merged, forcing political divisions and incorporations. And as Los Angeles grew at the center, gobbling up land and resources like water, harbors, and transportation routes, it had begun to annex those smaller communities, absorbing their civic functions and identities as it grew. Each of thos communities today still retain their own cultural context and their own unique identity. But their boarders are often not clearly defined, as each city seems to blend into the next distiguished only by the standardized Lost Angeles Signage and councilmatic districts
The highway systen, which is composed of dozens of Interstate highways and state routes throughout the city, help to define areas and connect them to each other. The local nomenclature tells the story: the Santa Monica Freeway, the Pasadena Freeway, the Hollywood Freeway. The nature of these sub-cities began as the city needed housing to accommodate a rising population. Outside of the city itself were numerous agricultural fields, most notably the orange groves. As housing demand rose, residential communities began springing up, and today, this has spread beyond the city center, pushing agriculture beyond Riverside and Orange County. This is one of the primary problems an environmentally responsible and profitable public transit system has to overcome in Los Angeles. The population destinations are growing at a faster rate thatn the transporation system can connect to.
I have had the opportunity to travel a lot in my life. my parents loved the road and criss-crossed the country with me, touching nearly every state. That, coupled with my own travels, really sparked my interest in this aspect of the project. I have been to most of the major US cities, most notably Chicago and New York. I want to explore some of their approaches to urbanization and compare that to Los Angeles, to compare with what is working in those cities to how they work in Los Angeles, and try to understand the factors of what succeeds in the context of American cities.
Througout Los Angeles, there is already a system of busses, light-rail trains, a larger regional train system, and a subway system, but none of these are used widely enough for them to be profitable or even effective. There are several reasons why the public transit system in Los Angeles has seemingly failed, but the primary reason is the car culture that the city has nurtured. Los Angeles has one of the most complex highway systems in the world. WIth dozens of different freeways and highways, it is far easier and more convenient to drive around the city than it is to utilize a broken and incomplete public transit system that often can't deliver the passenger to their desired destination.
But this isn't the only problem facing a public transit system in Los Angeles. While public transit is heralded as being less environmentally harmful, the critical issue is that public transit, whether with busses or trains, is that they are too expensive to build and maintain to ever make a return on the investment. This is something completely neglected throughout the state, as evidenced by the growing failure of a high-speed rail line planned for California. With a $91.4 billion price tag, even with its rather optimistic daily ridership of 260000 people, it will never offset its cost, and with alternatives forms of travel, it will never be competitive. It simply becomes a tax burden at a time when an increasingly conservative electorate is often opposed to any perceived tax.
This, too, faces local transit. The Gold Line Metro, a light-rail running from Los Angeles to Pasadena is a project i have been following since its conception, and it is currently undergoing an extension through the San Gabriel Valley (being extended about 15 miles). At a cost of over $700 million just for the extension alone, this is very expensive given the limited daily ridership of only 40000 people. Also given the huge initial investment, the constant upkeep of the current line, and the replacement of the light-rail trains (at a cost of over $2 million per car), it is a costly and cumbersome mode of transportation constantly in conflict with the expansive network of streets that this line cuts through
One of the critical things that should be noted is that none of these public transit systems seem to really respect the unique culture of Los Angeles. A city that has a successful and widely used transportation system is one that respects the city's context. London's Underground is a reflection of the city's history and layout without being invasive. The buses represent a tradition, while being respectful of the size of the streets, and they are frequent enough to be usable. In New York, while its streets are widely used and congested by vehicle traffic, the transit system is used widely due to a focus and dedication to the system. In Manhattan, public transportation seems so accessible, with a bus on every street, and a subway entrance on every corner. Manhattan is capable of doing that due to its relatively small and condensed scale and with it being centralized compared to the surrounding buroughs. But with such a large and spread out layout that Los Angeles has, as well as the varied demographics of each region and their specific needs, it is illogical to try to approach it in a similar way. By comparison, access to the nearest bus is often blocks away, and access to the nearest subway or light-rail is often measured in miles, creating the absurd requirement that most rail stations require huge parking lots, and thus never alleviating the dependency or impact of the cars.
What is housing in the context of Los Angeles? Countless suburbs and smaller cities surround the city proper. A majority of the housing is small apartments, duplexes, and single-family houses. Despite a growing loft culture, only in certain areas of downtown are there high-rise apartments, but these often cater to those with wealth than those who would be benefiting from a recentralized Los Angeles. Downtown high-rise housing is often priced in the millions.
The suburban communities are often small in population. My hometown is a perfect example of a Los Angeles suburb. It has 22,000 residents, with a majority of them living in single-family or duplex style homes. There are a few small apartments around the city. The town has no real urban core or civic center of its own, born of a linear spread along the old Route 66. The residences are centered around schools in the area, which there are five elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school. What then can be done to move this kind of demographic into the city?
The first concern of a resident would be size. A house offers a freedom of space that an apartment cannot necessarily offer. The house has a symbolic meaning, not just to residents in the suburbs of Los Angeles, but also to Americans in general. It is the American dream to have your own plot of land, the modern farm or ranch, your own "spread" to make a success of one's self. A house represents the pinnacle of success, something you own, tend to, make your own, and take pride in.
I have always lived in a house, a single-family dwelling. I enjoy the comfort of it, i enjoy walking out into the front or back yards and enjoying the weather underneath the large trees that shades the west side of the house. I enjoy playing with my dogs. But in the limited space and condensed design of an apartment building, these things are not really possible. Often the space of an apartment is dedicated exclusively to the structure and the units, and often there is little space for other amenities. I want to explore how to create an apartment complex that can comfortably translate the ideas and comfort of living in a house and within a neighborhood.This is to allow a more comfortable transition to the city without losing what is critical. The context of these "neighborhoods" will need to incorporate everything that a traditional suburban neighborhood would have: comfortable housing, education, access to basic needs, and space of leisure and recreation.
Part 2
Projects Part 2
Project: Echo Tower
Echo Tower is one of my favorite projects in my portfolio. It is the only project thus far that has been translated into a minecraft project, so some of you may be somewhat familiar with this project already. To understand it in the context of this blog, though, and to see it from the educational perspective of architecture, second year projects begin to enter more depth. Unlike the projects of first year, like paraSITE and others that i plan to post later, these projects go farther into depth into the systems of the projects. While first year focused on design, the projects that succeeded them began to create a more concrete exercise into how to design a building with a set program. Due to the depth that we are beginning to go into with these projects, we are given the full quarter, ten weeks, to explore the design. Echo Tower was the second quarter-long project i had done.
Program
The program of the site was given to us in a prescribed manner. The site was a parking lot in Portland Oregon, on 12th Avenue and Washington Street. The site was 133' x 100' (40.5 m x 30.5m) plot of land that was adjacent to a residential mid-rise building. The program of the building we had to design was to be somewhat mixed use, with at least a single floor of retail at the street level, and a minimum of 60 living units, with half being single bedroom, and half being two bedroom units. The tower also had to incorporate habitats for bats.
The Process
The process for this project actually began with a week long design exercise that involved simply creating a nest. We then had to incorporate it into a setting of some sort. I began with these small, three sided pyramidal structures out of museum board, a type of thick paper material, with the top open. From here, i combined six of them to create a hexagonal structure, and to make it stand, i made two of them, connecting at their tips. To make the overall structure taller, i made two more of these clustered shapes and created a sort of tower like piece. I thought about the setting, and because they resembled very large towers, i thought that they could be placed in urban environments almost as these vertical cities, so i placed them in three cities: one in Dubai, one in Shanghai, and one in Hong Kong.
Why do i include this in the Echo Tower project? The primary reason is that this got us to think about a dwelling, a nest is a protective enclosed structure essentially for one to live in. This mirrors what we think of as a place to live, it is safe, it is secure. While significantly abstracted, it is still something to look at. The other reason is that this set me off on a minor obsession with creating a skyscraper for my project that quarter. Like paraSITE was, this was also just a design exercise that loosely tied to architecture, and to what our project was going to be. While on its own, this isn't a substantial project, the importance in it is where it led me in this quarter long project
Knowing that i wanted to increase the program, and increase the height (which we deduced to adhere to the program, it would be a minimum of 6 stories, about 72' or about 24m). I wanted to design something significantly taller. I began first by doing a series of sketches, thinking about how to reimagine a dwelling, what could an apartment tower be?
I then proceeded by doing three fairly quick study models looking solely at form. I referenced the initial sketches, but began doing forms that exemplified what i thought was successful in each sketch, particularly the cavity created in the sketch on the far right. I thought this could create an interesting and somewhat protected environment for the bats.
From both the chipboard model and the modelling clay model, i came up with a sketch that made my form for my tower concrete.
At the same time, i am trying to cement why i was designing the tower this way, why it had to be so tall, and i had to rationalize the shape, i had to make sure that i could explain that this would on the site. I began by doing a study of the weather in Portland. It showed that it is mostly cloudy, and thus solar gain was going to be critical in this location. Secondly was a gentle, but prevailing wind that would come northeast to the southwest. I began tinkering with the design some, changing the structure, and having the cavity face somewhat parallel to this wind alleviating the building of some of the wind load but also coinciding with the bat's daily movement through the city. Consulting with a local bat caretaker, she confirmed that my intent to raise the bats from the street level and place them within this cavity was actually ideal for them, as it was quieter, involved less direct interaction with people, and the habitats themselves would allow them to be protected from the wind.
I then began my focus on the program. How was i to organize the retail and the apartment units in this shape that i've given myself. In the apartments, i decided on giving each unit two floors, and stacking them in an organization derived from Le Corbusier, where the eight units would take up three floors, and a corridor would be every third floor rather than every floor. This alleviates the vertical circulation, and it gives each unit the space they need, as the organization was on the bottom floor were part of four units, the middle floor was the other part of four units, and part of another four, and than the top was the remaining parts of the other four units. This was the organization in both towers, and allowed for a single loaded corridor, with the corridor opened to the cavity, and thus to the bats. The retail portion would be in a three story plinth that the rest of the tower would sit upon.
The next challenge was in the facade. My initial sketch never addressed the facade treatment, but had this angled language at the "folds." I came up with two facade ideas, the first was having these screened off sections with these circular apertures of glass all along the building, and the second was from a couple of case studies looking at a glass facade and a diagrid structure. I chose the second one to pursue because i found a way to utilize the structural element into a passive ventilation system, allowing the building to be more energy efficient. This passive ventilation system dictated my facade, as the structure would reside in a 4' (1.3m) cavity that would allow air to flow from the bottom of the tower up to the top simply by the current of the air being affected by the heat differences between the bottom and the top of the tower, removing a need to rely on mechanical system.
section through a unit, showing the air paths and the facade
This is the base drawing for a series of facade studies. The images below are the two best, the top one is the one chosen for the final iteration
The last element was to look at the habitats for the bats. As the split tower concept became concrete, there needed to be a way to connect them. i began by building bridges between them that held the same facade language the rest of the tower did. Underneath the bridges was a small enclosure for the bats that was just large enough for them to get in and would sufficiently protect them from the environment as well as any predators.
As what became standard for these projects, we had to create a scale model of the building and a poster. The poster had to contain some floor plans, sections, an explanation of the project, and some renders of the project. This essentially represents the compilation of all of the work you had done on this project throughout the quarter, and then you present the project before some faculty, and they give critiques on the project, and they are incredibly beneficial as it gives you something to learn from in future projects. This was my poster, and some images of the final model.
What is significant about this project? Well, this is the last project i did in my second year. It was the second quarter long project i did, and it was really the most successful project i had up to that point. It was a project that my professor allowed me to extend on the program and really make it something that i wanted to do rather than strictly adhering to the prescribed program. It was also the first project i did that was a high rise. As you know, i have a minor obsession with high-rises and skyscrapers. If you look at my profile, about 37 of the posts are skyscrapers (this is excluding my cities). It was also the first time i made a model entirely from digital fabrication, as i laser cut the entire model. This is still one of my favorite projects, and is the only studio project i have been able to translate into minecraft.
Thesis Part 2
Thesis: Abstract
What is abstract? Through a series of discussions, my studio determined that something that is abstract is a representation of the most pure form of a given idea through the use of an object, image, and/or text. It is with this understanding as to how to interpret abstraction did we proceed with our thesis. The abstract portion of thesis is about really trying to get a grasp on the idea that you want to explore with your thesis. It is a 3 week intense exploration into representation of ideas culminating in the Abstract Show where all thesis studios come together to present the work in a gallery setting.
I reflected back on my thesis proposal. I determined that the two most critical ideas in their simplified form was to connect the greater Los Angeles area and create a housing community in downtown Los Angeles. But how could i represent that? The project itself, even given the simplified idea, is almost absurdly complex. This involves several layers of intricate planning that will all interact and influence each other, and their success in working in such a city lies with so many variables. It is a daunting project, and one that's ideas are difficult to simplify. I quickly came to the conclusion that i needed two objects of focus to reflect the two facets of my project: transport and the city.
The transport section could easily be represented by maps, yet to abstract them to me meant to devoid them of context. For the city, a physical representation would easily suffice and i would need to play with how a person would look at this to ensure that downtown was the focus. My first iteration utilized a very literal representation of these two elements. In the foreground, there are transparencies that had the highway system, the rail system, the major streets, and the population densities in Los Angeles. To hold these transparencies was a box where the transparencies would slide in, and overlap each other. Behind the box was the focus: a simplified representation of a city showing that these systems need to focus and look at where the expansion will be focused.
There were flaws in this first iteration. It was difficult to determine what the true focus was. The images of the maps were too obvious that they were of Los Angeles, though it was still obscure as to what the maps actually represented. I revised the design, and created a small box, about 6" x 6" x 6" (15cm x 15 cm x 15 cm). Inside the box were two of the three maps i had from the previous model placed inside, one of the rail system and the one of the highway system. Underneath was written "Connect the sprawl" and "Focus the sprawl" respectively. In the far back was a population density diagram and fiber optic lights coming from a small box in the center representing the city. This was received well, and i really liked the direction it was going.
I then proceeded to making it to full scale. I bought some MDF (medium density fiberboard, essentially a compressed paper material), and cut it to 15" x 15" x 15" panels. I mitered the edges at 45˚ angle so that the edges would be as clean as possible. I also built a little viewer on one of the panels to direct the person who is viewing it and make it a little more obvious. Inside the box, i printed the same images using black ink and spray painted the interior black, and glued the piece together. I then painted it with a pure white paint. I then drilled out holes in the panels for the fiber to go out of. For the center, i found a piece of 6" x 6" (15 cm x 15 cm) wood block to act as the base to the city. I routed out the bottom to place an LED and battery pack in the bottom to light the fiber that would come out of it. On top of the wooden block was to be a representation of the city. I chose to use staples and created a composition that loosely resembled Los Angeles. From there, i began threading the fiber, around 70 different strands, into their respective places. Once it was finished, i brought it carefully downs from my studio to the gallery. As with a lot of projects like this, when we finish, we like to have a little show. We placed everything in our main gallery, and all 100+ thesis students showed off their abstract project.
Interior image of the abstract
For the next two and a half weeks following the Abstract Show, i did not work on my thesis, and was working on the project below:
Thesis: Vellum
This is technically not part of my thesis, and is just my entry in a furniture competition. The Vellum furniture competition is a competition that is hosted every year for students of the architecture college to design and build a unique piece of furniture. The grand prize is an all expense paid trip to Milan, Italy in the spring for the Milan Salone de Mobile, a massive furniture fair. There are also many other smaller awards, such as 100% award given to those who make all parts of their project themselves, the Solar Decathlon award to make furniture that can fit into the small Solar Decathlon house, a solar powered house for a national design competition, and the cradle to cradle award, which is given to sustainably made furniture. The only reason i include this project here is it is technically part of my thesis studio, and is designed within my studio. My idea was to create something that i could use to stow my bike as it doesn't have a kick stand and i'm often leaning it against walls and tables in my apartment. Due to me living in an apartment, i had to make something that would be free standing, so as not to damage the walls.
My first iteration was to have the base be a piece of found wood, a piece of eucalyptus that i got for free from a local lumberyard. This idea involved having a piece of plywood curved and cut to place the front tire in, rout out the eucalyptus and make grooves for it so the bike doesn't tip over, and in the curved piece of plywood, i would have shelves to place tools while i was working on the bike. This idea didn't get off the ground. I found it rather unnecessarily difficult to deal with the piece of wood, it was cumbersome, and would have taken up a lot of space.
Initial sketch
Initial study model
I revised the design with a plywood slat system bound with dowels that would collapse down and be folded away when not in use, which was inspired by a bench i saw in a furniture gallery that inspired the design language of the stand. It would be a vertical bike stand to have the bike take up the least amount of floor space. This first model merely tests the hinges in regards to the slats to make sure that the system actually works. When i presented it, there were some problems that were brought to my attention that i had not yet fully considered as i was planning this out, most notably how to make the piece sit stably and to brace the vertical member to avoid it from tipping over.
Initial Sketches
I revised the design, and planned out every brace and kept it in line with the slat organization language that is throughout the piece. This second model is a 1:6 scale model of the final piece, and you can see how i solved the two problems that i had. To counter it from tipping, i made wide feet on the ends of the base, cambering them so just the ends touch to keep it as stable as possible, even on uneven ground. The second problem was addressed by having a series of diagonal members on rod hinge joints that would lock into a key like hole in the main slats, and thus would create a truss that works in compression. To keep it collapsible, i had to ensure that these joints could be removed, hence this design.
I bought my material: 2 sheets of 3/4" (18mm) thick baltic birch plywood for the structural elements and 3/8" (9.5 mm) diameter aluminum rods for the joints. For four days, i cut out the 85 various pieces from the plywood, and managed to use all of one sheet of plywood, and only 1/8 of the other sheet making it weigh about 80 lbs (about 36 kg), and only having at most 5% of the material being wasted (this does not include the other piece of plywood, and that will be built into a chair at a later date). While yes, it is over engineered for its purpose, it is also meant to have a visual aesthetic relationship with the scale of the bicycle. I then proceeded to drilling the 73 holes that allowed for the aluminum rods to act as the joinery. The final stages involved marking out and cutting notches for where the diagonal supports would rest in the main structure. Then i was able to put it together. To keep all of the pieces together, the aluminum rods were tapped (threading the inside of a hole) and capped with some bolts. Due to the unpredictability of wood, this involved some difficulties, which involved the use of a high-speed rotary tool and a hammer to get everything in place. The finishing touches were in sanding down the exposed edges, ensuring that there weren't any splinters or rough edges, and hanging my bike on it.
Wood cutting documents/guides
As was required for the contest, i made a poster that would be placed on my piece explaining how it worked, and the process behind it. This is the poster below
This was placed in a gallery among over 140 other pieces of furniture made by the various students within my college.
Again, you may ask, what does this have to do with architecture? And if you were to ask this question over 100 years ago, you would be right in saying that it really doesn't. Since the advent of Modernism and the idea of total design took hold, architects have explored furniture design with the same zeal as they would a building. It is only a matter of scale, but we still are engaging the human scale with furniture as we would with buildings. They require form, they require function, they require a program (though carried out differently), and they are constructed. Furniture, like with the first studio project i posted, is an opportunity to engage the human scale in a reasonable and manageable manner, rather than just dealing with models. But a competition like this allows us to not just create something we find aesthetically interesting, but create something functional. I built this bike stand knowing that i was fulfilling a need, granted it was a personal need, but a need nonetheless. And it was something i put great care into making, just as i would with any other project.
In reflection, it was a great experiment to actually build something at full scale with an intended purpose. So often we fabricate projects and they never get beyond the conceptual stage. Yes, we make beautiful and sometimes photo realistic renders, yes, we make physical models, and yes, some of them are pretty accurate to what we would expect in a real structure, but that's as far as we get while in school. And often in most architecture educations, that's as far as you will ever get. Schools often focus on the theoretical, both exploring theory, and putting them into practice through projects not unlike what i have and will be posting here, but there is something about actually using real building materials and making something to full scale that adds a certain satisfaction and fullness to my educational experience.
Along with my reflection on the project, i also wanted to reflect on the judging and outcome of the competition. I did not win any of the awards with my entry. The two pieces that won the top awards were a modernist-esque chair made from steel tubing and fabric, and the other was a pair of stools made from two x-shaped pieces of wood and bent pieces of steel, with one powder coated and the other left bare. I feel mine didn't quite have the design flourishes that seem to catch the judges' eyes. While mine had great craft, a strong design language, visually, it is simple, and the reason for its simplicity was to ensure that it would properly collapse, which one of the judges wondered, but didn't test, if the project actually could fold down. One of my professors told me this, to which i responded that i wouldn't have made it this way if it wasn't going to work. It still received tremendous praise from the people who walked through the gallery and the various faculty from my university alike. And i'm pleased i finally have a place to put my bicycle.
If you enjoyed this, please let me know in a comment below and/or a diamond above, i always greatly appreciate the support and encouragement. I will continue updating this blog as a series over the next several months as my project progresses. While the content of the latter portion will be dictated by the direction of my thesis, which at the moment, i am not sure how it will develop, the first portion will be periodically updated (coinciding with progress being made on my thesis) to show the various work i have done throughout my education. I apologize for it's length, but due to the nature of these projects, I have to go into this with as much detail as i feel is necessary. Please let me know of any suggestions of formatting, content, or anything else to improve this. I also want to open this up as a place to offer my knowledge to any who are curious about architecture or its related fields, and i will gladly answer any questions you have about this series, some of the terms that i use, the projects i have posted, or just general inquiries. Feel free to leave them in the comments below or you can send me a PM, and i will answer as promptly as possible. Thank you for reading, and i hope you will enjoy this journey with me.
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Update #1 : by jduartemiller 12/18/2014 10:38:56 pmDec 18th, 2014
Part 2 is posted
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Quite a long way before the Echo tower reached it's final form.
The bycycle stand is one I haven't seen before in that setup. Self have I seen various stands including double layered ones. I guess it were four long days looking from the outside darkness. Somewhere a bit of shame you didn't win anything but at least you can make yourself good use to it.
Oh and keep aware of personal information of sharing by accident, like your name and email.
And indeed, the Echo Tower went through a long process to get to its final form, and in my mind, i'm still messing with it a bit.
And i am very proud of that bicycle stand. I have been considering ways of changing the design to accommodate more than one bike, and it should be fairly feasible, as the actual piece is capable of supporting at least 135 lbs (70 kg). I'm going to be making a work stool or two, depending on how much wood i use for it, that will accompany the piece, and uses a similar design language. I'll post it as a follow-up when i actually build them. The judging is purely a subjective thing, all based on personal preference of the judges. Functionality isn't something they consider, as some of the pieces in the show broke or had signs on them saying "do not sit." But i got a solid project, so i'm very pleased
And shees if those pieces can''t handle weight or something it makes me wonder if their real-life projects will be strong enough.
Anyway I look forward towards updates of this series.
ps. how is the judging going?
And judging is nearly done, i know one judge is incredibly busy right now, and hasn't been online in a while. So bear with us