THE STUDIOThe material presented in this booklet has been clustered into chapters that correspond to a speci c setting in which I have lived, worked and occasionally left some kind of mark. The work that follows rst is situ-ated in or within walking distance of the UBC’s MacMillan Building.

This booklet traces my life in Canada, on and around the way to a Bachelor of Environmental Design degree at the University of British Columbia. All work is authored by Josh Jordan, collaborators noted.

4. Sophie Macneill

6. Josh Jordan

18. Phil Riley

1. craning

floors twist toward contextual attractors, geometry is adjusted minimally

2. envelope

tectonically transparent volumes are fenestrated maximally

3. trussing

oversized glazings are given moment resistance with trusses that loft the transforming wall inclinations

This project, a new Student Union Building at UBC, was unrestricted by square footage, scale, or scope. We decided to work from two concepts: a robust, truly student-owned place, and a tectonic gure that responds smartly to its situ-ation as landscape and/or building. Sophie and I intended the product to be both impactful as a building and present-able to the institution as the Big Idea.

1. s.u.b., for ENDS 401 (Martin Lewis), with Sophie Macneill, Autumn 2009

DOWNTOWN EASTSIDEVancouver’s Downtown Eastside has the notorious distinction of being the poorest postal code in Canada. But it’s also the most interesting and redeeming neighborhood in the city. It’s where I met my future boss, who was helping to launch a chapter of Architecture for Humanity. It’s both subject to and immune from every clumsy attempt the city makes at whitewashing its identity. And it’s the point in Vancouver’s design topography to which any idea will ultimately run.

ABANDONED

OFFICES

ABANDONEDCAFE

FRANCISCAN SISTERS MISSION

LIFE SKILLS CENTER

MARKET

CHAPEL ARTS

CHAPEL ARTS

VARIOUS COMMERCIAL

BENEVOLENT SOCIETY

BUDDHIST TEMPLEVARIOUS COMMERCIALS

FORMER TEMPLE / CITY STORAGE

FIREHALL THEATRE

POLICE MUSEUM

POLICE STATION

COFFEE AND CONVENIENCE STORE

CONVENIENCE STORE

ABORIGINAL SUPPORT CENTREVARIOUS COMMERCIAL

FILM SOCIETYSTUDIO

CONVENIENCE

NON RESIDENTIAL

NON RESIDENTIAL

SAKURA SOCIAL HOUSE

SOCIAL HOUSING

MIXED USE W/ RESIDENTIAL

SOCIAL HOUSING

SOCIAL HOUSING

PATRICIA HOTEL

SOCIAL HOUSING

DETACHED RESIDENTIAL

VARIOUS SROs

VARIOUS SROs

SPECIAL NEEDS HOUSINGSOCIAL HOUSING

VARIOUS SROs

VARIOUS SROs

BRUCE ERICKSON SOCIAL HOUSE

FORD BUILDING SOCAIL HOUSE

WASHINGTON HOTEL

MIXED HOUSING

BALMORAL HOTEL

RESIDENTIAL

RESIDENTIAL

BUILDINGS

POWELL STREET

OPPENHEIMER PARK

JACKSON AVENUE

DUNLEVY AVENUE

HASTINGS STREET

GORE AVENUE

MAIN STREET

COLUMBIA STREET

ALEXANDER STREET

NON BUILDINGS

1. opposite: glazing and mirror design, reclaimed material pendant construction, Lus’s Pharmacy for Women, for ASIR Studio

2. above: Potter’s Mission mirror mosiac, for ASIR Studio

3. GO! Gallery courtyard electronics and installation, for Organelle Design and ASIR Studio, Vancouver 2010 Olympics

Mari Fujita mentored us through a rigorous, generative series of model-ing exercises, which ultimately guided our design of this 25-unit building for a mix of students and seniors. Our goal was to draw a relationship between form and program that was meaningful to the housing crisis in the Downtown Eastside. Interestingly, the very synthetic approach we took to designing led to perhaps the most overtly political statment that we would make about living with other people.

1. evolution of unit volume

2. “designed in section”

3. Public Rhythm, for ENDS 302 (Mari Fujita), with Phil Riley

VANCOUVERThe nal six weeks of my undergraduate studio were spent worrying that the city of Vancouver was beyond saving through design. Our consultant-critics from the City of Vancouver planning department were generous and imaginitive, but they made sure that we knew that the bottom line is value for design on a large scale, speculative or realized. Accordingly, I believe that if he wishes to save a city, a designer must be very deliberate in how he quanti es value.

This project aims to increase density in a Vancouver neighborhood by crafting a new type of city block from large chunks of aging, lapsed institutional property. I tried to diagram each commodity that I believe the new pattern created, while allowing for improvisation within a clear hierarchy of planned scales.

1. territory diagram

2. street

3. laneway

4. alley

5. master plan, Urban Fabric Softener, for ENDS 402 (Erick Villagomez), Spring 2010

Design for the living, design for the dead. This 500-grave cemetery is designed to be a monument in the slowly shifting sand. Outwardly vast, inwardly permanent. I revisited memories of my young days in Quaker Meetings as design muses, which turned out to be surprisingly at home 3000 miles away on the West Coast.

1. Silent Reach, for ENDS 301 (Doug Paterson) Autumn, 2008.

2. glass memorial wall

3. columbarium

4. seawall, Straight of Georgia

OUT THEREA lesson to take away from the physics prerequisite: just as scienti c results can change by measuring them, memories can change by the simple act of documenting them. This chapter is a snapshot of the time immediately before and after my enrolment at UBC and a rough summary of the work into which these times have led me.

1. step 2, installation for Some Powers of Ten artist exhibition, curated by Laura Kozak, 221a Gallery, Vancouer, 2010

“How do you think it looks?”

“Like the drawings.”

1. partitions, bleacher, and of ce

2. Vancouver Circus School, New Westminster BC, completed 2010 with Marianne Amodio

1. opposite: fence concept, form gives structure

2. schedule 40 steel tube, 2-3/8” O.D. ; powder coat, RAL 6018 yellow green

3. late night structural quality testing

4. above: magnetized wall, with removable 7.5” tea tins, 50 of 600 shown

5. prototyping with Mica

6. Great Wall Tea Company, New Westminster BC, completed 2010 with Marianne Amodio

1. EEGress graphic short story, with Alan Rahi and UBC Psychophysics Lab, 2007

December 2010