2009 portfolio

Ben Regnier

Portfolio

2002-2009

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Ben Regnier 3654 Beethoven Los Angeles CA 90066 310 902 0714 [email protected]{

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Objective.......

Experience....

A Project Architect position at a progressive architecture firm that will provide a creative outlet and opportunities for advancement in the future.

May 2006 - Present Marmol Radziner Prefab Los Angeles, CAActed as Project Architect on several residential and retail projects. Aided in design process, built BIM models and worked on details in every division. Generated digi-tal and hand renderings. Designed mechanical and plumbing systems. Prepared sets from ground up for client meetings, permit, and construction. Revit adminis-trator and tutor for office. In charge of agency research. Prepared and presented office education seminars on prefab construction, building and zoning codes. Obtained LEED AP credentials.Projects: Palms Residence, Wada Residence, Chevlen Residence, Vince retail locations in New York and Los Angeles

Preceptor: 2004-2005 Rogers Marvel Architects New York NYWorked directly with associates and principals on SD, DD, and CD set completion and coordination. Studied and presented programming options. Prepared presen-tations and documentation for environmental impact reports, RFQs and RFPs, as well as awards applications. Produced renderings and diagrams for presentations and team meetings. Built finish and study models in foamcore, wood, plastic, metal and many other media.Projects: Westchester Reform Temple, Kate Spade stores, State Street townhouses, 350 West Broadway tower, American Can Lofts

Intern: Summer 2003 DiMella Shaffer Boston MAWorked on DD and CD set completion and coordination. Built working and display models in foamcore. Organized and managed drawing sets and documentation for several projects.

Intern: Summer 2002 MBT Architecture* San Francisco CAWorked on CD red lines (floor plans / sections / elevations / finish plans). Made presentation drawings, and study and presentation models in foamcore. 3D CAD rendering work. Attended and recorded client and subcontractor meetings. Re-searched architectural products and acted as liaison with subcontractors.*MBT Architecture was recently acquired by Perkins + Will

Intern: Summer 2001 Gould Evans Affiliates Kansas City MOWorked on construction drawings (floor plans / sections / details). Made drawings and layouts for client presentation and for publication.


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Skills..............

Education......

Interests.........

Physical: ink and pencil drafting, perspective drawings, woodworking, model build-ing in paper, wood, metal, plastic, and other media.

Digital: Revit Architecture and MEP, AutoCAD, Form-Z, Rhino, 3DMAX, Adobe Suite, Microsoft Office

Other: photography, videography, intaglio, welding, writing (editorial and fiction).

Rice University2004-2006: B.Arch degree1 year of preceptorship and 2 more graduate level studios. Entered in architecturalcompetition while working. One semester spent abroad in Paris. Involved in Rice Building Workshop, a design-build studio affiliated with Project Row Houses in Houston. Recipient of Fossi Traveling Fellowship for best graduate level project.Related coursework: architectural history and theory, documentary filmmaking, sustainability, professional practice.

2000-2004: BA in Architecture4 years (8 semesters) of architecture studios, as well as required and elective courses in history and theory, materials, structures, and cultural criticism. Cumula-tive GPA of 3.75, studio GPA 3.85. AIA Certificate awarded at graduation as well as local travelling fellowship. Related coursework: photography, videography, typography, intaglio and freehand drawing

Dedicated husband and parent of twins.Maintains an active interest in writing (fiction and nonfiction). Essays and short sto-ries have been digitally published. Writing portfolio available upon request. Contin-ued interest in photography and videography, especially as it relates to architecture and architectural theory. Main area of interest in all media is the intersection of physical reality and collective and individual memory.


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Contacts........Clover Lee: principal at davidclovers architects and Rice studio professorp: +39 331 403 5934email: [email protected]

Rob Rogers: principal, Rogers Marvel Architectsp: 212 941 6718f: 212 941 7573email: [email protected]

2 AnatomyLaboratory-Galveston,TX-2002

8 TheBlackArtofAnalog-ResearchPamphlet-2002

10 TransGenerationalHousing-Houston,TX-2004

20 Weathering-Photography/Intaglio-2004

22 WestchesterReformTemple-Westchester,NY-2004

30 TurntableSecurity/WestBroadwayTower-NewYork,NY-2005

34 MarcusandDriving-FictionalEssay-2005

40 ParachuteJumpPavilion-NewYork,NY-2005

42 Libraryinthe13thArr.-Paris,France-2005

52 MC2Live/WorkComplex-Shenzhen,China-2006

62 UrbanEcologyofHouston-Houston,TX-2007

70 MarmolRadzinerPrefab-LosAngeles,CA-20071

AnatomyLaboratoryGalveston,TX,2002SophomoreStudio,RiceUniversityProfessors:WilliamWilliamsandDougOliver

North Elevation

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This anatomy laboratory, classroom, and library is situated on a com-pact site, closely bordering two other buildings, a small park, and a garage across the street. Utilizing a folded ribbon for formal organiza-tion allowed for the building to respond to each boundary in a unique way, also addressing its de facto status as a “gateway” to the campus.

Site Plan

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North Elevation

Section

South Elevation

West Elevation

Section

East Elevation

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South Oblique

The folded plate responds physically and materially to the program it encloses, shading the rare book room at the top while providing ample light and adequate drainage to the offices on the open third floor. This open mezzanine space, with limited access from the lab below and the library above, maintains a necessary distinction between the highly disparate programs on each floor, even while these spaces are linked by the continuous enclosing ribbon.

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Detail Model

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North Oblique

The studio required building two large models, one of which was large scale sectional model illustrating the systems of structure and enclo-sure. This model indicates that the ribbon, instead of being a mono-lithic graphic object, is instead a complex assemblage that changes its composition to respond to programmatic imperatives. In retrospect, more variation in form and materiality would have probably strength-ened the project further, differentiating each space further and obviat-ing the need for additional supporting columns that compete with the dominant grain of the elevations.

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TheBlackArtofAnalogResearchProject,2002Professor:SanfordKwinterThis small book was part of a seminar that explored the interrelationship of technology and history. It documents the development of analog comput-ing in the last century, and its effects upon popular culture through the parallel development of analog sound synthesis.

TransGenerationalHousingHouston,TX,2004SeniorStudio,RiceUniversityProfessor:DawnFinley

Case Study: Gifu

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This project involved the development of a housing scheme (in this case, senior housing) through case study analysis followed by iterative development of the concepts discovered in the case study. The project I studied was the Gifu Prefecture housing by Sejima and Associates. “Seam and Peg” tactics were derived from this project and then extrap-olated into a three-dimensional architectonic diagram that explored the spacial possibilities of the analysis.

Ben Regnier / A302-402 / Housing: Trans-Generative Models / Rice School of Architecture / Spring 2004 / Instructor: Dawn Finley

Analysis Model

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Analysis Model: Details

Analysis Model: Details

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The diagram involved showing different possible interactions between c-shaped extrusions (the “seams”) with planar “pegs” unfolding and recombining the extrusions at intersections and end points. The inter-actions were designed with thought towards possible interpretation as public/private “mixing” spaces in a final housing scheme.

Analysis Model

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Plans

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The given site was in the middle of an artificial superblock, wedged between 1960’s era brick duplexes and a parking garage, with a park to the southeast gently sloping down to a section of sunken freeway. The project was created as two north-south bars, with c-shaped units each featuring a large directed window in the living room/kitchen. Flipping these units in either the latitudinal or longitudinal direction allowed for apartments to have widely varying levels of privacy and relation-ship with their neighbors. Between each two units, as both an ame-nity and a sound barrier, is a shared private-public outdoor “room”.

Site Plan

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Model Views

Longitudinal Section

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Further amenities, such as a screening room, convenience store, and library, open to both the residents and the surrounding community, both enliven the scheme and foster interaction between the occupants and the neighborhood. A quasi-public street through the center of the project maintains the neighborhood’s access to the park, while ty-ing the park’s program (playground, pool) to specific programs in the housing block (convenience store, “front porch,” day care).

Latitudinal Section

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Rendering: Interior Court


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The end aim is to promote both an active lifestyle and community in-volvement while maintaining both a sense of security and the impres-sion of privacy and group ownership. This not only makes the everyday experience in an assisted-living environment more enjoyable, but has documented real positive impact upon physical and mental health.


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WeatheringPhotographicandIntaglioPrinting,2004

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This series began as a photographic exploration of texture and surface. Two of the photographs were chosen for an intaglio process that furthered this investigation, compounding the photographed weathered building surfaces by etching them into copper plates using a technique invented for circuit boards. These plates were then printed using a ink that oxidizes upon contact with the plate, blackening in thinner areas and remaining bright red in the grooves. The end result is a palimpsest that oscillates between the graphic and the photo-graphic, the image and the physical object.

WestchesterReformTempleWestchester,NYRicePreceptorshipProgramPreceptor:RogersMarvelArchitects

Diagram: Garden and Bimah Locations

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Part of the Rice B.Arch degree is a one year preceptorship at a coop-erating firm. In addition to many concept models and renderings, I worked on a single project, the Westchester Reform Temple, from early schematic design through the beginning of contract documents. This synagogue, extended several times over a half century, was looking to build an entirely new sanctuary space and renovate the remaining building to expand their religious school. As there was only one pos-sible location for a large building on the site, the early design process was directed towards in-depth program analysis. Directionality and important sanctuary elements were considered, as well as acoustics, seating, traffic flow, and the necessity of a conjoined “social hall” to the sanctuary space to expand seating for special events and high holy days.

Diagram: Sanctuary Layout

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Concept Model in Site

Concept Models

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Schematic design then continued through the production of ten differ-ent organizational schemes rendered as tiny “built diagrams” to show-case to the client. No single solution was chosen, but rather elements of several ideas were brought together in a collective solution.

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Light Study Model

Light Study Model

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The chosen design, involving “ribbons” of material changing profile slowly over the length of the space, was then modeled at a larger scale to study lighting and profile. Even at this large scale the model re-mained a conceptual study.

Light Study Model

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Model: Library and Classrooms

Rendering: Library

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Further models and renderings completed the initial design study. One area in which had a larger contribution was in the rehabilitation of the existing sanctuary to include 10 new classrooms and a library for the religious school, a difficult task given the triangular form of the exist-ing building.

Plan: Mezzanine Classrooms

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TurntableBollardSystemNewYork,NYRicePreceptorshipProgramPreceptor:RogersMarvelArchitects

Assembled Model

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One of the most complex models completed while at Rogers Marvel was a working model of a device designed the “security architecture” wing of the firm, rock12. This “turntable” bollard system allows movable bollards to be installed in streets with less than 18” of excavation. The model was largely laser cut and sat on a miniature thrust bearing that allowed it to rotate freely.

Model with Clear Top

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WestBroadwayTowerNewYork,NYRicePreceptorshipProgramPreceptor:RogersMarvelArchitects

Unfolded Poster

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This tower project in SoHo involved a three-day brainstorming session involving a “kit of parts” modelling system on the large scale and a se-ries of investigations into above-grade retail at a smaller scale. At the end of the process a booklet was presented to the client that unfolded into a single poster-like sheet.

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Marcus starts the drive by a right and then a left, a quick lateral jog that maintains a straight southern course. The streets here are compass-true, each crossroads making two lines that perfectly quarter the earth. Longitude is not the same as latitude, to understand the horizontal bands you have to tilt your head until it is parallel with the equator—twenty two degrees, understanding this infinite plane that slices the earth like an orange, revealing that this entire town was created at some bizarre angle to Cartesian reality.

Close to home are the large houses on small lots, crowded together, maximum isolation, maximum comfort, maximum efficiency, cost completing this equation, the envelope of each house swelling and contracting until an optimum figure is reached, freezing it in its wood frame and thin stone. Traveling south the houses get smaller and the land gets bigger, as if each building bleeds itself to create more space. There are more hills out here—or maybe he just see them more readily, as the swelling bare earth swallows verticality and yellow fields surpass green trees and grass under the blue-white spotted sky. The air is cool and the wind is light, and if he puts the heater on the windows and sunroof can stay open to the air.

In a satellite photograph a car is a tiny dot, maybe you can tell the color but not any real detail, not how old the occupant is or if they have friends in the back seat. Driving has the same perspective to Marcus, everything flattened and reduced to coordinates and flash-frozen at each present moment. Driving is a series of thin slices, like that fat criminal in his highschool biology book that men had cut like deli meat and splayed out on glass. On the highway at night he would pass by a hotel, and if you looked at the right moment, knew the sightlines, you would see lobby coke machines on every floor out the windows for an instant, the building bisected by a dashed red line. Driving is about tangents; the orbit of a satellite is made of an infinite series of straight lines, with the Earth always pulling at a right angle. The way an object changes shape as you go by it, everything lining up for an instant and then spinning away, its perspectival moment spent and gone.

He looks to the side as a bean field passes by, the field opening up as the planting’s row lines point into his eyes, and growing more opaque to the sides until it is a thick yellow blur. It is a moiré that is the result of roundness, light falling at from every angle, but all of the light his eyes receive was pointed straight at his pupils, a sphere of particles bombarding his face at every possible now. The roof of the car is reflecting the sun, creating a vertical column of light at a constant angle from the two o’clock sun, perhaps briefly illuminating an

MarcusandDrivingFictionalEssay,2005Thiswasashortwritingmadeasaninitialentrytoaweblogstartedinlate2004.Furtherwritingsaboutarchitecture,photography,cities,andculturecanbefoundatautoautism.blogspot.com

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aircraft, a cloud, or the moon.

The streets change surface from smooth asphalt to a rougher, potholed variety, one without markings and curbs, and this gives way to gravel. You move to avoid the dust that you create, constantly running from a white cloud in your rear window. There is a crunching sound from the tires, and Marcus likes to gun the gas and jerk the wheel to send the rear of the car swinging back and forth, until things turn uncomfortable. He stops for a train and watches it go past, slower than his car but massive beyond belief, and long string of inertia, its contents heavy and elemental. His sight cuts through the train every few moments, as the linkage passes in front of the car. If he took a picture at night, holding the shutter open, the whole train would become a blur, semitransparent in the middle, revealing a road that points infinitely South.

Marcus lives in a house that goes like this: street-yard-wall-house-yard-fence-trees-ditch-path-stream-path-trees-field-highway-street-hill-horizon. Sitting in front of his rear window he feels like his house is a stage set, an animated diorama with tiny cars and trees beyond, framed and finite. As a child he could see the cars on the highway, especially at night, when he had to go to bed with people still rocketing by, audible even under the covers out of view inside his bed. The highway pushing sound over the gully, through his walls, around corners and deep into his ears, keeping him wide awake late, staring at his glowing red clock, waiting for it to have been long enough to get up and look. Occasionally his parents would take that road and he would desperately search through the passenger window for a glimpse of his house through the trees, the house staring back, diminished and monochromatic.

On a dirt shoulder, it is time to stop. He turns the key and the car rattles to a close, shuddering gently as the aluminum cylinders transmit their force to the frame. Marcus drives a decaying Volkswagon of middle age, red and sagging. Every mechanism in the car seems provisional, voluntary—the clutch or the radio or the seat belt all have an equal chance of working at any one time. The car has been scarred and weathered by water, heat, cold, and time, expanding and shrinking until it lost any produced monolithic quality, but is merely a loose matrix of glass, vinyl, and metal. The car is alive, has lost any quality of a product, has been absorbed by the chaos and decay of the world around it. Gravel is stuck in the tires with tiny flecks of white primer showing where the hood has been struck. Marcus must periodically fill the car with clear golden oil which it then quickly turns black and proceeds to slowly distribute over the road in a series of small spots, marking where the car has been in a continuous dashed line. Transmission fluid is a greasy red and radiator fluid, antifreeze, is a smooth neon green. There is water in antifreeze—water in his car.

His insomniac childhood nights, spent staring coldly at the blue/white wallpaper or creating patterns in the textured ceiling three feet from his face, lofted in the dark, his brother gone from the bed below to another room. Sometimes his father would come home late, the headlights briefly creating a sweeping illumination on the ceiling and walls as the car mounted the curb. The light always moved across his room in exactly the same way.

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His father would come upstairs and Marcus would pretend stiffly to sleep, modulating his breathing as he received a sandpaper kiss goodnight. The room always the same dark blue and grey, with the same warm light from behind the door, sneaking out of the cracks.

He stops for a second, enjoys the absence of sound, the void a negative shape, cast, the mold created by constant engine and gravel noise broken suddenly and gone. There are trees along the south edge of this westerly road, and to the other falls away into a smooth deep field. His white cloud has overtaken him. This is not lost enough, and because he is alone and young, Marcus says it out loud: “this is not lost enough.” He isn’t trying to get lost, but it sounds good, like a movie. His voice sounds thin and small stuck between the dust, sun, and car. He gets back in, shakes the car awake and turns around, east, to find the highway.

“Sneaking out” was a phrase his mother used to describe suspicious activity in the dark. Despite its origin, this phrase now defined the loose and shifting realm of stolen night time to Marcus. Sneaking was a fair description of the adrenaline and silence of car-pushing, door-closing, and stair-climbing. And the rest of the night was definitely Out. Sneaking out had been done so often that it had been his primary life, with school and day being a hazily remembered back side spent in anticipation, writing letters, obeying rules and napping.

It’s getting dark now, slight orange and red to the west spreading over to the east and becoming deep blue-violet. The highway is a line bisecting this, I-35 going north northeast, bowing slightly, pulled by the city’s gravity. The highway is an extruded no-man’s land, lofted above everyday life, deadly. He went to New York one time on a band trip and found the whole city occupied. Not even an alleyway to escape the dense crush of eyes and ears and feet covering every square inch with gum and trash and spit and view. More alive were the cracks between boarded up windows, the sliver of dark just visible beyond the curve of the subway tunnel, the areas no-one can see, spaces that inhabit themselves, the rest of the city a floodlit exterior, occupied and known.

Marcus likes the shoulder of the highway, gravel and weeds untouched like the moon, likes to stop, wants to stop, but the minute he loses his velocity his power is gone and the other cars can see him, strobelit, naked. Velocity is the frontier of the highway, the texture of the road elongated by speed into a barrier that nothing can cross, a million cars a million isolated pockets of air drifting in space.

They used to go out at three or four on K-10, and pick an offramp, seldom used and isolated, turn left and drive down a country road, perpendicular and away from this extruded civilized frontier, into nothing farmland. They would turn out the lights and drift slowly through clouds of insects with the windows open, no longer a vehicle but part of the landscape now, a moving component counterweighting the delicate trees and fences, ditches and grass that stretched out for miles, rolling beneath the wheels. Everything was the same color, a graphite that reflected like pewter and fell away to infinity. A firefly would strike the windshield and leave a green fluorescent smear that would slowly fade to shining grey.

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At some point you would have to stop, because the only way back is the way you came, retracing your exact path, being pulled back home as if by a string, by gravity. But the stops were the best part of the trip, the infinite point of rest at the apex of the pendulum’s swing, spent in the backseat.

In the dark, all space is negative, the void filled at points by headlights and billboards and rhythmic yellow and white lines, the occasional green roadsign fluorescing into existence in the corner. One is supposed to pay attention to billboards, but more interesting is the space below and around, scaffolding and eaves, with shadows of every imaginable shape. Marcus has a friend that visits these places; she finds clearings and vistas and overhangs and long winding stairways, with inches of dust and soot and spraypaint everywhere. Spraypaint is dust thrown out of a can with glue to stick it to a wall. Some warehouse somewhere is filled with barrels filled with color.

She once brought him to visit a stepped plateau dead center of three monolithic silver office towers, a fountain and steps and a few sickly plants, up a few feet, like an altar for necktied sacrifices. It’s busy enough during the day but in the middle of the night it’s alive by itself- the water is still on and light music still plays from hidden grilles, music just for crickets and empty cigarette packaging. Marcus likes spaces like this, like the highway, better at night, with yellow and blue sodium lighting that vibrates only barely, adding waver and strobe to everything, and a hum that is always just inside of your ear, to the back and right.

The car is moving in a river of positive space created by the road and light, a puddled space that spreads to enclose all available road, sidewalks and parking lots and garages, the asphalt and the blueyellow overhead light symbiotic. From above, out the scratched rounded plastic of an airline window, you don’t see the light directly, only the rounded grids of illumination, the darkest areas complete voids. One never sees people or even cars moving in the lit asphalt lots, everything is arrested by light, frozen and static, watched. As a child Marcus used to think of vision being like beams of seeing coming out from his eyes, grabbing objects and making him aware to them. But it’s the opposite—his eyes are passive receivers of the controlling beams thrown by hooded towers.

Locations were always paired by a journey, ends of a string. Home to diner, diner to her place, out of the car hidden across the street and through the door to her bed, making the smallest of noises as moving parts unstuck and stuck again. But it was the string that kept memory, the journey the shape of the car’s interior stretched across fifty miles, tiny orange buttons red dials and the white headlights turning into glowing threads that follow every curve and bump in the road. And everything else charcoal. Her car was an aging BMW near to death, with round headlights that were identifiable from two blocks away, as he waited on the corner in a chilled sweatshirt.

The highway splits away to exit and he follows the righthand curve, pulled by the dive into a deep crevice unnaturally vertical, dynamited. The road curves and gives way to another notch

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and this time he goes left, perhaps north, now cut loose of the infinite grid of Cartesian reality. It is dark here, streetlightless, and he turns the stereo off to better hear the car as it displaces the air, creating eddies and winds. Suddenly, it becomes a street with houses and shops and delicate paintstriped curbs. Detail is revealed in the lightest of grey shading, the neighborhood the lightest of pencil tracings on black paper.

He stops here, pulls into a diagonal greypainted space, a notch for his car. This is the point of rest before swinging back. He stops because you have to stop—it is part of the motion’s whole. He gets out, feeling the chill of the wind without the filter of grille or glass. The transfer is from a cocoon of warmth and quiet white noise to one of cold and almost silence, with a faint whistle.

The street goes like this: window-sidewalk-curb-parking-asphalt-parking-curb-sidewalk-door. The street is a room open at the top, extending for miles in each direction. He starts to walk in the direction he has been traveling, as if pushed by his car’s former velocity. The chill is felt on his cheeks and eyes and ears. The road is so deserted he begins peopling it with memories, friends and people from school, remembering previous drives and laying them on top of one another until the collected traces overwhelm the map they were laid on, pushing it away and reaching outward, hungry and ancient. Memory is a piece of steel that keeps his spine stiff, gently humming at the back of his skull, pushing his head rigidly forward. Memory is numb.

At the first corner, everything goes dark. A streetlight has shut off, the quick shuttering of fluttering green illumination bringing a deep redblack veil that covers everything, fading the houses and the curbs and the poles and sky to the same tone and color, erasing. Marcus cannot see the street for a second, and feels invisible, gone. He is part of the pavement, the wall, motionless and dumb. There is no sight, no sound, no movement. He turns and nearly runs back to the car.

Holy shit it is cold, his coat feels like saran wrap, and thought is impossible. He gets back in the car but does not turn it on. He and the car are the same color as everything else. His coat and the car are thin carapaces that mimic the street and sky, layers in an infinite cocoon, of which he is a homogenous core. He pushes gently and turns and the car shakes alive, producing color and sound. Heat and light and motion, all related in an intangible way.

Marcus grasps the lever and reverses the car to face back home. Now, with a destination, expedience takes hold and the whole route makes itself known at once, a clear shape in his mind. The journey is a glowing string in front of him, a channel of vistas revealed in gentle curve.

When he’s out, alone and free, these trips will make sense; they’ll have a purpose and a place and everything will work together, he’ll be like an arrow in flight, fired at a high trajectory but uncertain in its target.

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Back onto the highway, like a rail this time, why do people even need to be here, you just need to keep the wheel steady and the pedal down. The lights sweep the inside of his car rhythmically, his car motionless with waves of light cascading.

There will be a home, a center that is his, dents that are his, scratches created by his hand. The door will make a noise that is his and he will know this. A city that is big but not intimidating, cold in the winter and hot in the summer, dry when he wants it and with huge broadleaf trees reaching towards windows.

When he was a kid the places he was driven to were isolated pockets of concrete-plastic newness in a sea of farmland. Then one day he climbed a hill and saw felled trees for a mile in every direction, curved streets and cul-de-sacs already etched in the ground. The huge grids of farmland fragmented and preserved in pockets, recreated as a backdrop for picture windows, only visible from a single angle, like a diorama.

There is some adult place out there with the same raw excitement as the spaces beyond his childhood back fence, and he will find it, show it to his children, a mediated frontier that is not alone but alive, created somehow by occupation. And all around them the grids of asphalt containing these pockets, waiting.

He crests a hill and passes a low rock wall and then he is home, through the big door for the car and then a smaller one, into the ticking woodframed home quiet. Marcus doesn’t want to stop, everything has ended so quickly and he still has some potential energy to spend, his mind racing to compensate for his still body.

There is a schism between the life he likes and the life available, a schism of quality. There is nothing of that childhood space, that stolen time, in any job or home he knows, but it has to be out there, there is something real waiting just beyond his view, and it’s only a matter of time before he finds it. He can see his life from a satellite, the regular grids with a twisting path among them, and it’s amazing how much is flattened, how most of what matters is an invisible texture from this scale.

In the house, beyond the sound of the house cooling and shrinking, there is white noise, air pushed off of cars a half a mile away, transmitted across the valley and through the cracks in the window to his ears. He knows what is out of view, over the fence, it is schematically clear to him because he has been there, and will go there tomorrow, after he sleeps.

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ParachuteJumpPavilionNewYork,NY,2005IndependentContestEntryTeammate:JohnPeek

Axonometric

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During my preceptorship I co-authored an entry for the Van Alen Institute’s Parachute Jump Pavilion contest. We started by examining the history of Coney Island as an interaction between movement and perception, a history that includes theatrical devices, early photogra-phy (especially that of Edweard Muybridge), the inventions of Thomas Edison and Leon Theremin, and (of course) the modern amusement park and its paraphernalia of lighting, noise, and violent movement. Our strategy thus became a series of devices, such as operable screens, telescopes and remote listening devices, and mutable lighting that responds to inhabitation. These technologies are used as tools to ex-plore the complicated history of Coney Island, reviving the almost to-tally dissolved physicality of timber, steel and glass that once defined the place as divorced from everyday reality.

Rendering: Main Courtyard

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Libraryinthe13thArr.Paris,France,2005FifthYearStudio,RiceUniversityProfessor:KentFitzsimons

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The site as it exists is an archeological remnant-- the last reminder of the original topography of the site. A shallow gully slopes from rue Cantagrel to rue Chevaralet, the canyon walls formed by the "bridge" of rue des Grands Moulins one one side and the refuge on the other.

Completed during a study-abroad studio in Paris, this project involved a new library and school building on reclaimed industrial land in the 13th arrondissement. The city has in recent years covered over the rail yards for the Gare d’Austerliz and is repopulating the space with commercial and residential blocks. I began the project by investigat-ing the material reality of this enormous public works project and the new spatial conditions it has generated, that obliterate the formerly industrial character of the neighborhood. I also generated a quick se-ries of case studies, both in Paris and elsewhere, that involved similar programs or spatial conditions, to attempt to gain a hold on the scale of the site. The existence of a party-wall condition with Le Corbusier’s Salvation Army building complicated matters further.

Existing Conditions: Concept Statement

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The Rive Gauche development is a project of monstrous artifice -- an

enormous slab levitated over programmatic and geographical

realities, creating a tabula rasa for a new community. This is not

done in the spirit of progressivism, however; this enormous plinth is

carpeted with a traditional perimeter block system, the buildable

envelope a synergy between profitability and non-controversiality.

The buildings on the edges of the slab negotiate delicately between

old and new, attempting to "naturalize" and hide any artificiality.

But what if a building deliberately exposed this engineered denial of

topography and exploited the gap between new slab and old

ground? The readers in this library exist precariously, inserted

between the ancient "earth" of written knowledge and the floating

slab and clerestories above.

In addition, while turning its back on the mid-century "tower in the

park" planning of the surrounding neighborhood, this new

development has not accounted for public space to alleviate the

filling-in of relatively open industrial lowlands with repetitive

perimeter blocks. The only nod to greenspace is a shrunken garden

and monotonous allees of saplings along every new roadway. This

"new land" is too expensive to leave bare. As a remnant left at the

edge of the ZAC, this area is an ideal location for a neighborhood

park. A new typology of public space, created on top of a "peeled

and planted" section of the slab, this new park would end with an

overlook facing the rest of Rive Gauche, hopefully prompting a

critical reappropriation of what this new neighborhood is and

means.

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means.

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0 5 10 25 50 100

REFUGE SERVICE COURT REFUGE RESIDENCE

INALCO REFUGE RESIDENCEINALCO COURTYARDR. GRANDS MOULINSSTUDENT HOUSING

R. GRANDS MOULINSSTUDENT HOUSING

CROSS SECTIONS 1 : 300

0 5 10 25 50 100

0 5 10 25 50 100

INALCO COURTYARD INALCO R. CANTAGREL APARTMENTS

INALCO R. CANTAGREL PRIVATE GREENSPACE

APARTMENTSR. CANTAGREL APARTMENTS R. RÉSAR. GRANDS MOULINSOFFICES



0 5 10 25 50 100

Latitudinal Sections

46

My solution involved drawing attention to the artificiality of this new ground plane by “pulling” it up into a switchbacked neighborhood park-- a sorely needed resource for the area. The library was then inserted beneath this new ground plane, with storage areas at the bot-tom and terraced reading rooms sitting above, with views out into the new park space. The park also punctures through the building to allow a pedestrian shortcut.

0 5 10 25 50 100

SITE PLAN 1 : 500

ASPHALT

CONCRETE

GRAVEL

GRASS

PLANTING


























means.

Site/Park Plan

47

Exploded Perspective

48

The park was supported by a series of cross brace/columns, that organize the circulation through the library space as well as provid-ing support for the weight of earth and paving above. The offices and administrative areas above the library were sheathed in a perforated metal paneling that screen it from public view while dematerializing the mass and letting through light.

Circulation Diagram

49

Live/WorkPrototypingandProductionFacilityShenzhen,China,2006FifthYearStudio,RiceUniversityProfessor:CloverLeeTeammate:JonLaRocca

Concept Sketch

52

This final school assignment challenged us to imagine a new industrial future for Chinese Special Economic Zones (SEZ’s). The given program was a large industrial/residential complex outside of Shenzhen, north of Hong Kong. The first step in the studio process was to produce a quick individual “RFP” that gave an indication of the direction we would take the rest of the semester. I had two main objectives at the beginning of the project. First, the large amount of program combined with a desire to avoid verticality led to the idea of linearizing and “sandwiching” programs together. In addition, long-term trends in employment in urban China indicate that there may be a new market opening up for more skilled labor. I posited that a new type of factory could be built, one that combined prototyping, testing, and produc-tion to make limited-run, high-craft versions of common objects. The product I chose to highlight was seamed nylon, used to make tents, bags, and protective gear. The RFP produced was admittedly somewhat dystopian, as I was trying to enhance the impact of my presentation and avoid timidity.

Mangagement / Display

Manufacture

500 Units @ 300 sf

3 Communal Spaces

Site Scale 1" = 250'

program scales

Program Diagram

53

RFPstatementofintent:“corpusuniversitas”

The SEZ is rapidly approaching a point where land prices and cost of living are making it inviable as a manufacturing base. One can assume that as the market progresses much of the Pearl River Delta will fall to the same fate. However, the infrastructure and proximity to major trading and shipping areas mean that industry is not likely to move that much farther inland for items that require oversight and quick communication. This, combined with a growing experience workforce suggest a particular future for PRD factories.

This project attempts to critically re-imagine a live/work factory as a site for large-scale rapid prototyping-- limited runs of experimental assemblies or industrial-botique prod-ucts. The factory floor is kept open and flexible, with only a grid of streets. Above, a “thick roof” holds utilities, waste lines, heavy traffic, offices and housing. This elevated socle warps in response to needs for entry, drainage, and light, while containing disparate programs.

Carpeting this socle is an idealized natural scene that replaces the wasted industrial landscape below. Rain and wastewater is pumped to the surface and biologically filtered as it drains into the river, leaving cleaner than it entered.

The workers, embedded in the muscles of a market economy, are constantly aware of the global network surrounding them.

55

Site400 000 sf

Lincoln Center710 000 sf

The Acropolis810 000 sf

Rockefeller Center1 260 000 sf

World Trade Center1 300 000 sf

Taj Mahal1 430 000 sf

The Pentagon1 520 000 sf

The Galleria2 370 000 sf

The Mall of America3 170 000 sf

Parc Villette4 940 000 sf

Rice University12 470 000 sf

Washington D.C. Mall28 400 000 sf

Central Park41 660 000 sf

Versailles47 010 000 sf

Case Studies at Scale

56

As the project developed it became rapidly apparent that, although the project was a very large building (almost a million square feet), it was quite small for a landscape. To pick apart this in-between scale, existing campus and superblock projects were collected and examined to get a hold of sizes and attempted strategies. It was determined that instead of making very large buildings, a process of dilution and expansion, our team should begin by designing very small landscapes, in an inverse process of concentration and intensification.

Site Plan

57

Top to Bottom: First Floor Plan, Second Floor Plan, Site Plan

58

The complex is organized as a series of parallel intertwined strands of program. To one side is a two-story factory structure with ramps, freight elevators and a series of loading docks that allow the floor to be reconfigured as multiple smaller loops or one large facility. Admin-istrative areas are embedded within this space. On the other long edge of the site are the residential buildings, configured as a field of indi-vidual units organized around various amenities. These amenities are paired with various testing stations used to check the performance of the manufactured goods to extreme temperatures, winds, and rain. The project play with the idea of “social cogeneration”, using industrial waste heat and energy to improve the quality of life, not the efficiency of the complex. Thus waste heat and water is used for a greenhouse, and the wind and cold air is ejected into neighboring courtyards, cre-ating local artificial microclimates that are an outdoor twin to the tiny test landscape within the factory.

Model Oblique 59

Longitudinal Sections

60

Rendering from River

Rendering: Housing at Wind Research Area

61

The Urban Ecology of HoustonHouston, TX, 2006-2007Independent ResearchSponsored by the Rice Design Alliance

62

“The Urban Ecology of Houston” is research project completed with the help of the Rice Design Alliance, in a grant received my final year at Rice. In a team with Jean Daly and my wife Katherine, we collected, analyzed, and projected new ways of integrating infrastructure with public space in contemporary cities. We chose a segment of elevated highway south of downtown, the Pierce Elevated, to show how these ideas might be implemented.

The hope is not only to provide valuable public venues for adjacent communities but to ameliorate, eliminate or even reverse the divisive, detractive force infrastructures can generate. To put it simply, what if the Pierce Elevated became not a dividing line but a organizing and uniting seam between scales and neighborhoods? What if the periph-ery can become a kind of center?

Underneath the Pierce to the left: US-59 at I-45

63

The Comey Plan

64

The project began with research into Houston’s urban history, as seen through the filter of new infrastructure. One of the first things we came upon was an early, 1912 study by Arthur Comey where he pro-poses extending and widening the existing river and bayou system in downtown Houston, using it as a park system and urban generator.

Comey Plan Street Sections

65

Case Studies at Scale

66

The next step was generating a list of case studies that showed suc-cessful integration of infrastructure and public (or semi-public) space. Half of these studies were in Houston. Each location received an analysis and distillation down to particular conditions and strategies, such as strong cross traffic, or an added program.

Images: Allen Parkway

67

Organizational and Programming Strategies

68

The last, ongoing, step of this process was to use these new conditions and strategies to generate solutions for the Pierce Elevated. These solutions involved both ameliorating perceived negative conditions beneath the free-way, and inventing new programs and services to draw new users. We have just completed a small book documenting our working process, and have begun a companion website.

Strategy: Evaporative Cooling

69

MarmolRadzinerPrefabLosAngeles,CA,2006-2007

Setting a Module

70

For the last two years I have been a team member at Marmol Radziner Prefab in Los Angeles. In addition to regular duties as a project ar-chitect, I have assisted in agency research, new materials research, production administration and Revit administration.

House in Summerland, CA (scheduled to begin production in April)

71

Revit Model - Overall, Structure, Wireframe

72

Wall Sections

73

A design-build office is a perfect venue to take advantage of the ef-ficiencies presented by parametric building information modeling. Part of my work at MRP has been streamlining our production process using BIM, producing automatic counts and material takeoffs, steel shops and cut lists, and refining our modeling process to better reflect real methods of construction. I am also involved in developing new draw-ing set standards for factory production-- modular production demands a different approach, one that in many ways is more related to product or transportation design than architecture. The latest BIM adventure has been implementing the Revit MEP software, which will eventually allow us to design and integrate our mechanical systems without the need for consultant coordination.

A Module in Production

Modules Waiting for Delivery Wrapping

74

Setting a Module

75

Another component of my work is overseeing the factory production. This has been an enormous opportunity not only to experience con-struction first-hand, but due to the collaborative atmosphere at MRA, I have been able to have input and feedback on the process of con-struction itself. For many aspects of the design we partially bypass the shop drawing process, enabling a reduced schedule and greater quality control. Delivery and setting is also done under office oversight, as is the final finishing.

76

$20.84$31.88 $2.96 $.72

GERMANY

UNITED STATES

MEXICO

CHINA

AVERAGE HOURLY MANUFACTURING SALARY BY COUNTRY

53’

53’x 8’x 9’6” STANDARD RAIL HC. LEGAL FOR TRUCKING IN N. AMERICA

48’x 8’x 9’6” LARGEST INTERMODAL (SEA-TRAVELLING) HC

45’x 8’x 9’6” COMMON INTERMODAL HC

40’x 8’x 9’6” MOST COMMON INTERMODAL HC 48’

45’

40’

BY 2010 HALF OF ALL SEA-GOING CONTAINERS WILL BE HIGH CUBE (HC) CONTAINERS. HERE ARE SOME COMMON SIZES FOR HC CONTAINERS

DESERT HOT SPRINGSLOS ANGELES

LOS ANGELES

LOS ANGELES

LOS ANGELES

NEW YORK

NEW YORK

EUROPE

LOS ANGELES LONDON

LOS ANGELES DENVER

LOS ANGELES CHICAGO

LOS ANGELES MIAMI

LOS ANGELES DUBAI

CHINA LOS ANGELES

CHINA NEW YORK

CHINA EUROPE

MEXICO

MEXICO

OTMORF DISTANCE COST OF SHIPPING 1300SF HOUSE COST SHIPPING 40’ CONTAINER TIME

LESS THAN $500

$2000

$2000

$2000

$2000

$2000

$2000

$2000

LADOMRETNI SYAD 40002$ATNALTASELEGNA SOL

$2000

$2000

$1000

$3000

MARMOL RADZINER PREFAB

53’ HIGH CUBE DOMESTIC SHIPPING CONTAINER

[RAIL + TRUCKING IN NORTH AMERICA ONLY]

10’ HC

1DDD

20’ HC

1CCC

40’ HC ISO SHIPPING CONTAINER

1AAA

40’ HC ISO SHIPPING FLAT RACK

WITH POST EXTENSIONS*

45’ HC ISO MAXIMUM INTERMODAL

1EEE

FLAT RACK MAXIMUM

SHIPPING VOLUME (APPROX.)

*POST EXTENSIONS CAN BE USED TO ACCOMMODATE HIGHERCARGO (AT A HIGHER SHIPPING COST)

INTERIOR 52’-8” X 8’-4” X 9’-1”

MAX WEIGHT 60,000 LB

INTERIOR 44’-5” X 7’-8” X 8’-10”


INTERIOR 39’-5” X 7’-8” X 8’-10”


INTERIOR 19’-4” X 7’-8” X 8’-10”


INTERIOR 9’-3” X 7’-8” X 8’-10”




77

Most recently we have begun research on ways of “extending our reach,” making our buildings available to foreign markets (and pos-sibly even off-shoring part of our production process). Future goals include more flexible and immediate methods of weatherproofing and connecting utilities on site, and ways of marrying prefabricated hous-ing with international shipping standards. Standardized prefabricated housing has long been one of the unreachable dreams of modern architecture. Many attempts have fizzled or failed, from the Unite’ d’ Habitation to Lustron Houses to the long line of unbuilt prefabs avail-able online today. I am confident that MRA’s program of building first, dreaming second will prove a viable model for a continuing design/build practice.

*POST EXTENSIONS CAN BE USED TO ACCOMMODATE HIGHERCARGO (AT A HIGHER SHIPPING COST)


STANDARD CONTAINER

LOADED HORIZONTALLY USINGROLLER OR TRACK SYSTEMEMBEDDED IN CONTAINER FLOOR

UNLOADED AT SITE ONTO TEMPORARYSTAGING PLATFORM SAME HEIGHT ASCONTAINER FLOOR (TYP. 52”)

FLAT-RACK

VERTICALLY: TOP-PICKED BY CRANEHORIZONTALLY: FORKLIFT

*

SHIPPING IN A CONTAINER PROTECTS THE MODULE DURING TRANSITAND ALLOWS THE SHIPPING COMPANY TO USE NORMAL CRANINGAND STACKING METHODS, SUBSTANTIALLY REDUCINGSHIPPING COSTS BY SEA OR RAIL.

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2009 portfolio

Documents

presentation drawings

presentation models

mbt architecture

retail projects

revit architecture

client presentation

client meetings

study models