studio design | build

So, this semester is pretty special. I mean, it has kicked. my. butt.  but its also been really fun.  I think I have learned more this semester than in a long time. But I'll have to save what I'm learning for a different post.  For now, I wanted to update you on the design-build / research based design studio I am in.  In the world of architecture school, design-builds are a fairly unique opportunity. Because they require money and time (two things students are seriously lacking) the chance to design and build a project doesn't come around every semester.   SO the fact that this past year I have participated in 3 design-builds is pretty crazy to think about. and I am seriously addicted.   I don't know how I am going to go back to not operating a chop saw every day, and only see my designs in the abstract. And I have day dreams about taking a semester to do an independent study and building some random structure on my family's farm.  but I digress.

THE PLAYERS
Coleman Coker of Building Studio = our fearless (mostly) leader
11 graduate and undergraduate students
South Texas Botanical Gardens and Nature Center in Corpus Christi

THE PROBLEM
Only 70 acres of the 180 acre Nature Center are developed, and visitors infrequently make it past the developed portion. Yet, Corpus is considered one of the Birdiest cities in the States, and tons of bird watchers come to the area and the center to see migratory birds. Because the Nature Center has different environmental conditions (wetlands, Oso Creek, and meadows) tons of different types of birds come to this one spot. Anyway, the director wants us to build some kind of structure to pull people off the established trails, and into the back portion of the center, towards the creek.

THE PROCESS
After our first site visit, the studio could not really come to a consensus on where exactly our intervention would be situated. After weeks of talking, debating, designing and coffee, we decided on a specific location that only three of us had actually seen in real life. And just a few days before leaving for our second site visit, we pared down 3 radically different designs into 3 less radically different designs into one cohesive idea.

some early ideas

When we got to the site for the second time, we all knew we had chosen the perfect location for our project (save our professor, who was having serious doubts), but our design was too massive for the immediate context. Those two days we spent on the site were really great. Actually being back and experiencing the sites and sounds helped us all be on the same page. It had been several weeks since we were on site, and trying to design when all you have are google satellite images and limited personal photos is really difficult. We found that we had forgotten what it felt like to be there, and were just operating off of our memories, which are inevitably skewed. After the first few hours of thinking we got it completely wrong, we met with the director and explained our design intent.

THE SOLUTION
We want to draw people off the mulch path with a wall that sticks out of the tree line.. visitors will follow this wall, squeeze through it at one point, and step onto a board walk. As they move down the board walk / platform / deck toward a sandy area, the wall breaks to reveal some existing posts in the ground disappearing into the distance. on the other side of the sandy area, the grasses and trees return and create a kind of out door room, on the edge of the creek. There will be another, identical wall, that will call visitors to cross the sandy area, and explore this outdoor room and see the creek.
The director loved it.

It took another week of drawing over each other on tables covered in white butcher paper to hammer out the details, and we are still working on details as we finish the actual construction.

A lot of the design details depended upon what materials were available to us. We scoured craigslist and freecycle and talked to several lumber and milling companies to acquire materials for the wall. The only way we could build it was if we got the lumber cheap or free. We were fortunate enough to get some awesome cedar pieces for $1 a board and two pallets of free redwood, douglas fir and cedar. Included in that were 7 huge cedar beams, one of which was 28 feet long!

two wall panels

testing out the bench

the building deck 

We have 8 days of construction left, and we are all pretty excited to see it installed. Because the site is in Corpus Christi (3.5 hours away), we are constructing everything here in Austin, on a deck on the backside of the architecture building. Everything is broken down into panels and after Thanksgiving, we will load it all up on a flat bed and ship it down. The following two weekends, we will stay down in Corpus installing it on site. Please pray for clear skies!

Shifted House.

Hi. 

So I finally have a minute to update this page.. I'm in the middle of summer session - doing a Public Interest Design program at UT.. but more on that later. 

Last semester, for my studio I worked on a competition for Habitat for Humanity. The deadline was 2 weeks after classes ended.. So I spent the semester hand drafting the same (more or less) floor plan and such over and over again, and then after final review drafted it all over again for the competition submission.  Here are a few drawings, and 2 of my submission boards. 

The house is called Shifted (aka wall house)  My professor made sure to tell me "every architect does a wall house at some point. this is yours."   great thanks.

The design of this house is mainly centered around a shift. The design process involved taking a regular form - the rectangular prism - carving a sloped roof to match contextual building typology, and then shifting the volume along the ridge axis. The two volumes created are then adhered together using a 3-foot thick wall element. Originally, the wall was intended to separate program - the two smaller bedrooms, with their shared, guest bath separated from the main living space and the master suite. As the project developed, however, the wall became more embedded into the spaces.

Each of the main spaces cling onto the wall by carving their own nook into it. The kitchen is completely contained within the wall, which anchors the dining and living spaces to it. In two of the bedrooms, the nook acts as a cavity for the bed to sit. This cavity could change purpose, however, and host a writing desk, vanity, shelves or be enclosed to contain a closet. In the master bathroom, the bathtub also sits within the wall to frame this element. 

ACME

On Tuesday, my construction class took a field trip to the ACME brick factory in Elgin, TX.

IT WAS AWESOME.

We learned all about how bricks are made.. ok its sounds incredibly dull. But, it was really cool to see all of the science that goes behind it.. in the 'new factory,' which is like 11 years old, everything is almost completely automated. there are huge machines everywhere that extrude the clay, apply coloring, shape it, cut it up into bricks, stack it to dry, then stack it again in a different way and roll it through a huge long kiln.

It gets up to +2,000 Deg F in there.. and we got to look inside -- all you could see was orange.

Jonesy Jones took us around on a tour and told us not to touch anything because if you touched the side of the kiln, you would leave all of your skin behind.. and the employees complain about the smell.

Anyway, this location is cool because they make this rose colored brick that can only be made from the clay they mine on site.. so they ship it all over the US because people love this rose brick..

and Jonesy Jones hand stamped a bunch of longhorn bricks especially for us UT kids. so sweet.

Warped Interior Boulevard?

sooo.. here is my project. it is a "very interesting project"

This semester, I'm working on a team of three, and while we were assigned the site, we get to choose the program. Above is a model I built for our first review.. it just gets the massing idea across.. platforms (that are now called Decks) that accommodate parking and car program -- drive-in theater, auto shows, and a high class Porsche dealer -- with retail volumes hanging off the side..
Here is an excerpt from the few pages of bs we submitted with our initial proposal.

Summary: The current Whole Foods Parking annex is strategically located on the edge of several conditions – the edge of work, play, and home. This space is meant to be a transition – transition from work to home, home to play, work to play, etc. as well as a transportation transition. Bordered by 6^th St., 5^th St. and Shoal Creek, our site is an under-utilized transportation hub. The proposed program for the site involves integrating the 3 main modes of transport in Austin – the vehicle, the bicycle, and the pedestrian. By intertwining select retail, open space, and public and private parking into one site, we seek to create a new urban environment. Condensing and folding the urban street and storefront in on itself, the project succeeds in producing a new definition of urban density – the Urban Car Park.

The Urban car park creates a node of transition between the automobile, bicycle, and pedestrian. Stacking program vertically, the project promotes interaction between the users of the designed parking space, retail, event space, bicycle facilities and green space. The project is essentially a warped interior boulevard of ramps and parking space, creating an urban sponge of accessibility and program.

The project will integrate seamlessly with the surrounding context – it provides small-scale retail to counter the larger stores on Lamar, parking for shoppers, an open public space for the nearby residents, and a bicycle storage and shower facility for those commuting to work.

One of the latest models.. we spent 2 weeks developing the ground site and courtyards.. so they are staying put while we develop what the heck happens above ground.

We had our first formal critique (with outside professors) a week and a half ago, and we were torn apart. Project was called a vertical suburban strip mall and a glorified garage. but we took a few days off, rallied, and are changing the way we talk about and describe the project.. "Parking Platforms" and "Garage" have been eliminated from our vocabulary, and we are pressing on! Next review is on Wednesday... hopefully it will go a lot better. We'll be better prepared to present the project, i think.

sooo... this project is nothing like what I want to do with my life.. and just when I was getting discouraged, I got an email about a lunch session with Katie Swenson -- who is pretty much who I want to be as far as architecture goes.. here is her bio from the email:

"Katie Swenson, a national leader in sustainable design for low-income communities, recently named an emerging leader by the Design Futures Council, and to Steelcase’s prestigious Green Giant list. She is the Vice President of National Design Initiatives at \Enterprise Community Partners, Inc. She is also the Director of the Rose Architectural Fellowship and Affordable Housing Design Leadership Institute."

The Rose Fellowship is AWESOME, and something I have had in my "opportunities for the future" list for years... you have to have a professional degree, so I definitely plan to apply once I'm done at UT. Anyway, I'll be meeting her on Thursday, so I've got to come up with some great questions and become her best friend. advice? AHHHH so excited!

chi town

Last week, I got to go to Chicago!! woo hooooo I had three missions while in the windy city: visit friends who I hadn't seen in a while, go to the Architecture for Change summit on affordable housing, and see some architecture icons!

First stop, the 103rd floor of the Sears Tower (now called Willis tower, boo.)

buildings just get eaten up by the clouds!

The city also looks fabulous at night from the 60th floor of steve's apt.

Kathryn and I went to Millennium park to visit the bean!

and held some eyeballs:

and I got to see some Calder sculptures, with my favorite architect (Mies van der Rohe) in the background.

and then, visit Marina City (the round building) which, ironically, is designed by Mies' understudy.

Oh Chicago, I'll be back to visit your too many museums and stare at your monet paintings another time.

ps. hopefully I will be able to compose my thoughts enough to create a post about the architecture summit, but we shall see about that one. I'm not really known for my eloquence. HA

houston

On monday greg and i went downtown for a much needed photo walk. i've been cooped up in the house calling potential employers, so it was great to get out and visit downtown.

i got to see the place my grandma lived when she moved to houston. it is being demolished soon, so it was cool to see it again. it is the place my grandparents met.

also walked by the building she worked in:

downtown is pretty fun, i guess. hah

BING ma yong. the warriors.

this has been on my list of things to see before i die since i was like.. 10. seriously. as soon as i get home and find my diary with the christmas kitty on it, i will prove it to you.

in three 'pits' stand over 6000 terracotta soldiers. built for the first emperor (who is buried nearby) over 2200 years ago, they were only discovered in 1974, by some farmers digging a well!

each one is different and they represent the 50 - some odd people-groups of this country. The emperor was known for unifying the country, so building an army where all of the minorities are represented is a testament to his power. (ps. it was really interesting to see this at this time because the violence in the west started right after i saw these 'unified' warriors)

so the bodies, which all meet the requirements to be in the army, were made first. Next, came the arms and head. Beards and ears (which apparently are the predominant characteristics) came last.

also, each soldier's attire and hair-style tell what his rank is. in the front of the formation are all of the low-ranking soldiers. they wear pants, short jackets, and don't have any armor. my guide book says, "armor was unnecessary since ferocity and bravery were considered sufficient protection for infantrymen." the highest ranking officers have long coats, armor, and their hair is in a high bun. none of the soldiers wear helmets.

can you imagine, you're just digging a well one day, and you come across an ear and some other clay pieces. then, you dig a little more, and you find a body and a horse.. and then you find an entire army of soldiers... crazyyy.

doesn't this guy look intense:

anyway, they have some soldiers that are part of a traveling tour. apparently they are in Houston right now at the museum of natural science.. they will be there until the end of september.. anyone want to go with me and my momma in september??

some extras.

you can buy sunflower seeds STILL in the sunflower!

starbucks actually has pretty cool architecture...

a big nest.

also while we were up north, we were able to visit this place that might look familiar....

designed and built by Herzog and de Meuron the same guys that built the deYoung museum in SF! even though i think the deYoung functions horribly as a museum, i think this nest makes a very good... nest.

i spent a lot of time in arch 160 (construction) studying this building so it was really awesome to see it in person..

and it also looks good at night:

and the cube.. this was a team project by a bunch of guys i don't remember.. Oh and the PTW architects.

all the bubbles on the outside (and inside) are made of this plastic that comes in sheets and can be stretched.. it is double layered, stretched on a steel frame.. so, when air is blown in between the sheets, it makes a bubble! this plastic stuff is awesome.. it is lighter and more energy efficient than glass, and its recyclable! it was also used in the Eden Project.