Program_ Mixed Use Tower
Location_ Pudong, Shanghai, China
Critic_ Hina Jamelle
Year_ 2014
Team_ + Ulrika Lindell

The tower explores a programmatic strategy responding to a network of relationships between its different users over time. Our intent was to create an architecture where the urban landscape exists in different manifestations - both as public plazas at different elevations and as the driver for the configuration of the facade - creating a continuous ecology of landscaping, skin and spatial organization. Situated along the Huangpu River, the tower simultaneously relates to the context of the financial district of Pudong and the historic center Puxi on the opposite side of the river. By gradually morphing attributes of form, materiality and opacity, we are proposing a tower that adapts to variety whilst remaining an organic whole. The tower features a new kind of urban landscape manifested through dispersed green spaces throughout the building. This new urban landscape operates in an array of modes and at different intensities - from programmatic dividers and public circulation to a public plaza at 400 ft. The plaza connects to various observation decks and showrooms for technological innovation. The tower proposes a new sustainable building typology through a layered landscape approach.

Program_ Vineyard
Location_ Napa Valley, CA
Critic_ Kutan Ayata
Year_ 2014
Partners_ Danica Selem + Zach Gryzbowski

The site for this project, a 60 acre field in Napa Valley, can be approached and animated as a field of vectors that lead to the folding of landscapes into builtscapes. The counter position to that is an autonomous object planted onto the site which claims its identity by being different and opposing the landscape. The challenge of this studio was to find a way to create an architecture which was not autonomous, but at the same time was not embedded into the landscape. Our design consisted of two parts, one being the wine production line that connected to the earth and acted as a semi landscape with a walk able roof. The "V" shape of the production line squeezed together the public space which consisted of two larger cantilevers that overlooked the vineyard and the mountains. The two parts are being pulled in opposite directions and are connected in the middle which is seen as the 'eye of the tornado.' This space is one which can be seen from all levels of the building and is topped off with a skylight bringing light into the space. 

Critic_ Vito Acconci
Year_ 2015
Team_ + Danica Selem

Touch sensitive audio-visual installation dealing with the relationship of visual and tactile perception of materiality in architecture.

Press play on the first image for video.

Program_ Mixed-Use Housing
Location_ Queens, New York
Critic_ Carlos Arnaiz
Year_ 2013

The design for this project is a mixed-use housing complex in Astoria, Queens. The primary focus for this project is finding an organizational system to deal with the depth of the site and the waterfront. The idea of a grid made up of projections explores the idea of projections on the site and perspectival views. The design proposal calls for a large mixed-use housing project to be located in Halletts Point, Astoria, Queens. Halletts Point is an industrial site along the waterfront in Astoria. The site is adjacent to 85th street in Manhattan, with views all the way down to mid-town. The site also looks out to Randell’s Island, and is very close to the Robert Kennedy Bridge. 

These cones act as slices through the entire building mass. The slices provide various views throughout the building and the surrounding area. The points in which two cones overlap act as significant public spaces. The water view projection begins at the main entrance and stays at the same elevation. This provides a direct view of the water when entering the site, but still encompasses a feeling of enclosure. The bridge view begins at three levels up and looks north across the waterway to the Robert Kennedy Bridge. This view can be seen from the public roof-scape, where these two projection cones intersect. The city view looks out towards Manhattan and also provides a large public roof-scape for the residents and public. The city view projection begins at 72 feet, where the hostel cafe is located. 

Key elements emerge by re-inventing the grid. Unlike the standardization of a basic grid where every square is the same, a customized grid allows for differentiation between the units. No two units on the same floor are the same.  Each housing unit is a duplex which allows for residents to have a work + live space. The top portion of the duplex consists of the residents studio. The surrounding area around all the studio spaces is public, to allow for others to walk around and observe the artists’ spaces. The idea of the duplex is to bring together those who work at home to this new community; to interact and exchange ideas with one another. A hostel is also integrated into the housing complex to allow those not from NYC to live there. The building facade is composed of basalt stone panels. Each unit holds a shutter window, and when the shutter is closed, it keeps flush with the external stone coating, visually disappears in the modulation of the ventilated facade. The interior material is wood, which is expressed throughout the second level duplex roofscapes and on the inside of the shutters. When the shutters are opened, they evolve from their anonymous presence towards singularity.

Relief Printing
84” x 36”
ldf board/fabric

Year_2015

Critic_ Michael Szivos with Ryan Whitby

Completed_ Spring 2015

Design Team : Elisa Yi Feng, Zachary Grzybowski, Jeremy Hill, Eunmee Hong, Sasimanas Hoonsuwan, Wooseong Kweon, Maria Nikolovski, Danica Selem, Milad Showkatbakhsh. T. Craig Sinclair, Emily Walek

Press play on the first image to watch the making of the installation.

Pratt Institute’s Graduate Architecture & Urban Design exhibition is an exhibition of student work in the Hazel and Robert H. Siegel Gallery. Each year the course produces an installation that explores digital fabrication methods while showcasing the previous year’s student work. The opening of the exhibition coincides with InProcess, the annual publication of student work. The curatorial component of the exhibition is meant to contrast the more traditional way of indexing the work through InProcess.

This year’s GAUD exhibition grouped the visual work of the previous year in a large hanging installation. The collection of work takes the form of a field of hanging panels that have been precisely rotated to form a spatial catalog of the work. The panels are rotated in a way to both visually reveal and obscure slices of the work as visitors move around the floating volume forming a three dimensional ventricular effect.

The hanging installation was made of over 800 panels. These were each custom laser cut, assembled, and clad with custom cut images. All of the various details used to create the large volume were made out of flat parts which were laser cut or produced on a CNC mill. These parts were all generated from an overall computer model of the installation. The rotation of each panel is held in place through a CNC cut disk, two strings, and a weight that keeps the panel aligned. The overall form of the piece is vaulted creating cavities for visitors to explore the work as well as view the models below. By faulting the volume it not only references the gravity driven nature of the piece but also allows visitors to be immersed in the paneled volume without disturbing them.

From underneath the gradual rotation of the panels towards the apex of each vault can be seen. This pattern helps produce a visually dynamic filter of the work that comes alive as you move around it, but also frames the work in two ways: 1. The healthy turbulence that exists in the school and the work. It is the experimental nature of the school that is the common influence and thread that connects everything in the curriculum.  This turbulence can be seen as the force that exposes new conditions within the work 2. The anchors of the curriculum, studio and methodology, act as magnetic fields orienting the work in different ways. This orientation provides an extreme variety of direction, but it is the graduated precision and strong inflection points that keep even the farthest exploration.

GEOMETRIC MANIPULATION

Program_ Pavillion
Location_ Various
Critic_ Peter Macapia
Year_ 2012

This project derives from an original module that was extracted from an algorithm. Once the result is selected, it submits to another move. It becomes flattened, to give it dimension in two-dimensional space. The shape is laser cut onto a material to bring it back into three-dimensional space. Then, the module takes on a series of folds followed by connecting the modules, at first slowly, and then in combinations of combinations. What drives this project is the taxonomy of fold, space, and form. At the very moment when the surfaces fold, they create a volume. The behaviors and intelligence of the single module cross the categories of structure becoming skin, inside becoming outside, and two-dimensional becoming three-dimensional. As the system gets further developed by these operations, the layers of complexity pile up to create an intricate architectural condition. 

Program_ Elementary School
Location_ Manhattan, New York
Critic_ James Garrison
Year_ 2013

The design for this project is an elementary school located at 1 Peck Slip in Lower Manhattan. This site was strongly damaged by Hurricane Sandy receiving up to 5 feet of flood water. To solve this problem, the building is raised five feet, and the first floor consists of a gym and lobby/gathering area, both of which would not be damaged if the water were to raise above five feet. The primary idea of this design is to focus on interactivity and sunlight. The idea is promoted through a centralized staircase as the main feature. The staircase not only directs traffic, but also leads to a series of destination points. The staircase void plays an important role in this project. The void is seen as a volume that is subtracted from the building volume. Starting from the gym, the void draws you up in to the library and vis-versa. It provides a multi-layered view of all the activity within the void and distributes sunlight into the space. The void, which is primarily used as vertical circulation , is also an interactive space. There are spaces within the four levels of void which act as programmatic areas in which the students and faculty can engage in a wide variety of activities. The perforated facade skin is developed using a parametric pattern which accentuates the void. A higher concentration of larger dots towards the center implies a space of complete transparency. The entire pattern is projected onto a skin to visually communicate the void.  The system is created to allow for light to come into the space, yet also act as a shading device. 

MINIMUM / MAXIMUM
MICRO DWELLING

Scott Murray
Ecole National Superieum d’Architecture de Versailles
Spring 2009

In this workshop, we teamed up with the students from Ecole National Superieum d’Architecture a Versailles. The goal was to design a minimal transportable housing unit which could accommodate the daily living needs for one person, with an occasional guest. This was an experiment to study minimum and maximum uses in different ways. Minimum space, material use, energy use and consumption, use of landscape, and effort in construction costs were the primary goals, while maximum spatial experience, comfort & flexibility were necessary goals.

Professor: Jason Vigneri-Beane
Summer 2013
Modeled + Animated in 3DS Max

CROWD SIMULATION
Further exploration in 3dsMax is analyzed, concentrating primarly on crowd systems. Crowd systems are produced by making many delegates which react to objects in different ways. Objects were set within the field and hold different behaviors ,such as seek or avoid. The delegates are turned into geometry which is manipulated and assigned various modifies to create a field.

Professor: Jason Vigneri-Beane
Spring 2013

Press play on the first image to watch the animation.

ANIMATED BRIDGE
To further understand how animation techniques can be used in architecture, the assignment is to design and animate an individual bay. Each bay releases a floor plate from within which becomes a walkable surfaces when the bays are multiplied. The final form of representation was a two minute long animation with audio in High Definition format

INDIVIDUAL BAY
Each bay carries a landing component inside the top segment which is relased and layed flat onto the arms of the bay.   This becomes a walkable surfaces when the bays are muliplied next to one another.

Chair Design
Year_ 2013

The design of this chair is composed of two ‘h’ shaped wood pieces that are notched to allow for them to slide together. There two pieces create the backbone and structure of the chair. The seat is composed of white plastic that is placed into the wooden structure and reinforced with steel L clips that hold the seat upright.  

Robotic Drawing
18” x 24”

Year_2015
 

Completed_ September 2015

Design Team : + Danica Selem, Matt Boker, Agathe Ceccaldi, Emma Weiss, Bryant Mojlca, Tim Lee, Olivia Tarro, Jenny Arizala, Eleni Krol, Pablo Escudero, Roma Shah, Raquel Sanchis

Putnam Triangle Canopy was designed and built by PrattSIDE – an organization of graduate and undergraduate architecture students from the neighboring Pratt Institute. In response to the community meeting requests to make the plaza more pleasant to inhabit the rope canopy and added benches and planters at this corner of the plaza aim to activate the space and create a visual landmark for the Putnam Triangle. Putnam Triangle Canopy is a collaborative project of PrattSIDE, Fulton Area Business Alliance and Pratt Center for Community Development supported by NYC Department of Transportation. It was financed by the Taconic Fellowship grant, Neighborhood Plaza Partnership in collaboration with IOBY through generous donations by our supporters and FAB Alliance. This temporary structure is designed to be easily adapted and reused or replicated on other locations in the city.

Images coming soon...

In collaboration with Urban Matter Inc.

Project Team: - Shagun Singh, Rick Lin, Ulrika Lindell, Aaron Campbell, Sara Bayer, Danielle Christophe

Role - Design Consultant

Golden Afternoon is the first large scale permanent interactive installation in the City of Austin's Public Art Collection The installation mimics a hanging garden that has overgrown from the flower beds on the ground level, down the open stairwell, and is making its way into the parking lot. This hanging garden evokes a sense of fantasy because of its gigantic reflective flowers and illuminated fields. It responds to people walking up and down the stairs by sending light through this natural surreal ecosystem. The stairs mimic the rabbit hole of the fantasy novel Alice in Wonderland, and the piece aspires to create a sense of wonder and delight akin to being in fantasy or wonderland. The forms used in the artwork are primarily based on the floral geometries of the Prairie Nymph and the Indian Blanket, which are wildflowers popular in Texas.

http://urbanmatterinc.com/golden-afternoon/