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Emerald Plaza | |
| UAE, 2008 | ||
This project deals with the problem of urban space in a very hot environment, and in particular, the problem of the ‘Plaza’ in artificial, context-less developments in the Middle East and elsewhere. The project is based on creating continuity between the three elements called for in the brief: a garden, a central sculptural volume, and a network of canopies. The project looks to the souks of Northern Africa as a model for creating interiority and passive cooling as an alternative to open, western public spaces. In this case, the canopies merge into a landscaped Roof which provides shad (more) |
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Batwing | |
| Matters of Sensation Exhibition Artist Space, 2008 | ||
Batwing is part of a larger body of work concerned with creating coherent relationships between building systems through geometric and atmospheric means. The aim is to move toward a higher-order emergent wholeness in architecture while still maintaining a performative discreetness of systems. The project can be understood as an articulated manifold which incorporates structural, mechanical, envelope, and lighting system behaviors. This is not to say that any one of these systems is ‘optimized’ in terms of any functional category-- the formal and ambient spatial effects of fluidity, t (more) |
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Cheongna City Tower | |
| Incheon, 2008 | ||
THE TOWER
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Mersey Observation Deck | |
| Liverpool, 2008 | ||
| This project, originally intended by the competition organizer to be an Observation Tower, is re-imagined as an Observation Deck cantilevering out over Mersey River and the Seaforth Nature Reserve. This Deck is intended to integrate with the adjacent wetlands in a more sensitive way than a monolithic tower structure. It also allows the same unobstructed views as a higher structure would due to the horizontal nature of the surrounding environment. Nevertheless, the design includes several vertical Light Masts which give the project an iconic presence in the area and satisfy the competition crit (more) |
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European Solidarity Center | |
| Gdansk, 2007 | ||
| The birth of the Solidarity movement marks the transition from totalitarianism to an evolved state of freedom and democracy in Eastern Europe. This transition now seems inevitable but at the time it was a struggle against not only a powerful regime but of a world view which was in its waning years of influence and which, therefore, existed in a heightened state of insecurity. This proposal for the European Solidarity Center in no way tries to represent the events of the 1970s and 1980s; architecture that attempts to do this often remains conceptual and inert. The project instead is a platform (more) |
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Novosibirsk Summer Pavilion | |
| Novosibirsk, 2007 | ||
| This Pavilion design is the result of research into grid-stiffened shells. Grid-stiffened shells (a.k.a. gridshells), prevalent in 1950s-60s engineering masterworks by Nervi, Otto, Fuller and Candela, were part of a lineage of experimentation into material intelligence and analogue shape computation leading all the way back to the Gothic era. The elegance of these structures is a function of their controlled curvature which is generated using form-finding techniques as well as their patterned relief which reduces weight and while increasing stiffness. These solutions, while efficient and elega (more) |
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Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art | |
| Shenzhen, 2007 | ||
| Urban Concept This proposal for MoCA/PE creates a world-class institution which is characterized by both its response to its local environment but also by its formal and structural elegance. The project embraces the concept of the northern part of the Futian Center District as a traditional Chinese courtyard space. In order to bound and intensify the monumental scale of this courtyard, the building massing is designed as a mirror reflection of the L-shaped YAH building. This move creates a defining corner for the urban space. A Garden Plaza is located in the void created (more) |
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Dragonfly | |
| SCI_Arc Gallery, 2007 | ||
| In nature, the dragonfly wing is unmatched in its structural performance and exquisite formal variation. Its morphology can not be traced to any single biomathematical minima or optimum, but is rather the complex result of multiple patterning systems interweaving in response to force flows and material properties. Dragonfly wings consist of both honeycomb patterns which are flexible and exhibit membrane behavior and ladder-type patterns which are stiff and exhibit beam-like behavior. These patterns are characterized by their rule-based interaction in terms of cell density, cell shape, and ce (more) |
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National Library of the Czech Republic | |
| Prague, 2007 | ||
| This proposal for the National Library of the Czech Republic is based on radical contextualism, where the new building relates simultaneously to its local environment and to the larger urban context of Prague. The project sets into motion a dynamic relation between the Prague old city, the urban topography, and the Prague Castle, opening up a dialog with the cultural and political history of the city. The project is intended to become an important landmark for the Czech Republic in the league of similar undertakings in Paris and other world capitals. The building is composed of 4 components- (more) |
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Stockholm City Library | |
| Stockholm, 2007 | ||
| Urban Concept The Library of the Future will be defined by its ability to collect and organize information, but also by its ability to network disciplines and people in an urban setting. In this way, the new building design is a linking mechanism at the urban scale. It visually links to the existing building in terms of height and width, and materially via an underground passageway. The new building also connects to the steep hillside of Observatory Hill via a bridge-like construction. This connection allows library visitors to access the historical Stockholm Observatory directly. Between (more) |
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Paris Courthouse (TGI) | |
| Paris, 2006 | ||
| This project is part of an urban plan in the Paris Rive Gauche district, intended to contain both the Paris Courthouse and adjacent mixed use development. The site contains a landmark warehouse building by Freyssinet which was to be reused, and is directly opposite the Paris National Library to the north. Due to the extremely tight available site footprint (80% was already inhabited by the Hall), we proposed to float a new building volume above the Hall which would interface with the existing Hall, creating a composite of new and old. The new slab reflects the Hall in dimension, but (more) |
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Cell House | |
| Los Angeles, 2006 | ||
| This house is primarily organized by cellular tectonics and structural performance rather than program or function in the modern sense. Walls become obsolete in their function of both dividing space and resolving loads in favor of a vivid, multidirectional system of forces and behaviors. Floor plates, structural frame, and building envelope are not understood as independent systems, but rather as emergent behaviors resulting from variation and adaptation in a three dimensional cellular pattern. This pattern grows, spreads out, evolving toward local performance based on local conditi (more) |
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SCI_Arc Boardroom Table | |
| Los Angeles, 2006 | ||
| This Design is composed as two seperate parts- a highly articulated Table and a simple sliding glass wall defining the new space in the Kappe Library. The Table, while functionally rectangular, is characterized by a radial patterning which is intended to spatially interconnect people sitting around it. This pattern exhibits both an open-ended cellularity and an emerging linear heirarchy, which delaminates downwards to become the ‘legs’ of the Table, and upwards to become relief for organizing books, water bottles, and flowers. The internal cavity defined by the table structure will b (more) |
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Tsunami Memorial Landscape | |
| Khao Lak, 2005 | ||
| The sheer scale of loss in the 2004 tsunami is beyond comprehension, and certainly, beyond any type of direct architectural representation. Our proposal for the memorial therefore does not attempt to index the event literally, but rather through abstraction. It is a landform rather than an object, an experience rather than a focal point. It is a space which relates to the mystery and power and dynamics of nature as much as to the human impact of the event.
The landscape creates a clearing on the west cliff, allowing views of the ocean. It is separated from the Memorial Center by (more) |
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Lattice House | |
| Los Angeles, 2005 | ||
| This proposal for Vitra is based on the concept of a monocoque structure, where hierarchical orders of skins, beams, columns, ducts, and passageways collapse into a three-dimensional latticework defined by its coherent morphology. As opposed to the Radiant Hydronic House, which is based on the flexible, adaptive surfaces as the operative medium, the Lattice House is a multidirectional array in space with an exceptional range of motion and adaptibility. Inverse Kinematics (‘bones’) were used to generate this array in order to maintain a dynamic coherence in the system. The lattice perf (more) |
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Seoul Performing Arts Center | |
| Seoul, 2005 | ||
| This design aims to reanimate Nodeul Island as a cultural space with a huge range of functions and potentials, propelling Seoul into the global cultural scene. The proposal transforms the divided island landscape into a cohesive zone dynamic cultural and public exchange zone. The design links various modes of transport with the desire for an elevated, sublime space away from traffic. Nodeul Island, formerly an urban wasteland, becomes a new urban center, an anchor point for Seoul as well as a gateway between halves of the city. The key of the design is a building complex on the west side o (more) |
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Radiant Hydronic House | |
| Los Angeles, 2004 | ||
| The Radiant Hydronic House is based on feeding back various building systems into one another in order to produce emergent effects, both quantitative and qualitative. The house is structured by a set of flexible bands which take on various gradients of behavior-- structural, mechanical, circulatory-- depending on various local requirements but also based on the behavior of adjacent bands. A central spine, cascading down from the roof, connects the various infrastructures into a monocaulk structure. Ductwork in this spine opportunistically twists up to become structural supports in key (more) |
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MoMA/ P.S.1 Urban Beach | |
| New York, 2003 | ||
| The PS1 Urban Beach, realized in 2003 in the PS1 Contemporary Art Center courtyard, was based on 2 distinct but interrelated systems: the Cellular Roof and the Leisure Landscape. The landscape integrates various programmatic elements such as long lap pools, furniture for sitting and lounging, and promenade catwalks at different heights. Also, at key points, the landscape begins to adapt into structural supports for the roof. All of these behaviors are integrated into a coherent gradient of use, spilling out rhizomatically into the courtyard, parsing the space into microclimates and passagew (more) |
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Micromultiple House | |
| Los Angeles, 2001 | ||
| This house is based on a mass-produceable system implemented as an interconnected network of small, flexible bands. The bands are flat steel trusses, scaled to fit and stack into standard delivery trucks and shipping containers-- hence processes of construction and distribution are engineered into the system at the front end. The bands operate according to simple rules, incorporating various behaviors and patterns of movement into their forms. Through topological bending and twisting, they conduct or arrest flows of bodies, vehicles, and light. Stairs, windows, and doors evolve performa (more) |
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Palos Verdes Art Center | |
| Los Angeles, 2000 | ||
| This project began with the investigation of 2 key parts of the competition program-- the sculpture garden and the lobby. Rather than relegating the sculpture garden to the back of the building, and placing the lobby in the front in a kind of categorical arrangement, we decided to overlap their distinct behaviors in one space, creating an enclosed plaza with traits of natural and urban. This open, naturally ventillated space became the tissue which connected all of the other cultural functions of the building. In order to negotiate the open landscape and the discreet functions i (more) |
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