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M. ARCH I Thesis
Awarded the Richmond Harold Shreve Thesis Prize
Advisors Val Warke, Sasa Zivkovic
There are currently over 1500 Confederate monuments scattered across the United States. The majority of these monuments were dedicated during the post-reconstruction Jim Crow Era—a period defined by Southern white-supremacist rule and terrorism against African Americans. They worked to perpetuate the “Lost Cause” myth of the Confederacy in Southern culture and “history” books.
This thesis attempts to A) catalog methods of architectural intervention, designed to deconstruct the intended power of the mass-produced monuments and, B) apply these methods—in combination with urban planning and landscaping strategies—to Richmond’s Monument Avenue, revealing the structures of racism and white supremacy embedded in the wealth of Monument Ave and Richmond as a whole.
Reuse Italy Competition
Piscina Mirabilis, Naples
With Petrea Sweeny
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” -Charles Caleb Colton Little S/Cister(n) revitalizes the architectural origins of Piscina Mirabilis—bringing water to the depths of the 1st century “wondrous pool” through a system of vaulted piping, that imitates the program and the arcades of its idol, the older s/cister(n). The lightweight framework of pipes and grated platforms piggy-backs on the existing structure, spanning across the vaults to exhibit art works that hover above the cistern’s landscape of concrete, water, shadow and light.
The thin structural framework of the Little S/Cister(n) hangs bridges of circulation for people to view the space at new heights, and stages performance, projection and installations against the backdrop of the concrete arcades—allowing the work to become a part of the sensory experience of the museum. With this design, we challenge featured artists to test the limits of contemporary art—asking them to work in direct dialogue with the architecture to create a new canon of sculpture, performance and visual practices that are enhanced and tested by their exposure to natural light, moisture and seasonal shifts.
The roof has been preserved at the north-east and south-west corner, referencing the large program areas that sit below, while the rest of the original roofing has been removed and replaced with a grated metal floor that reveals the vaulted structure below. Large oculi that again reference the proportions of the arcades, run span the central East-West axis of the roof---in the same location as the previously eroded openings. The structural piping that supports all of the exhibition and circulation platforms within Piscina Mirabilis is counter-balanced by arches that reach upward to the roof, defining a new sectional landscape above ground. This piping circulates water from the roof to the lower level of the cistern, where new channels have been carved into the concrete floor.
Cornell Journal of Architecture 11: Fear
Racializing Public Space: Monuments to Racism as Obstructions to Freedom
There are currently over 1500 physical Confederate monuments scattered across the United States. The majority of these monuments were dedicated during the post-Reconstruction Jim Crow era—a period defined by Southern white-supremacist rule and terrorism against African Americans. The monuments fed the fire of the “Lost Cause” myth that was conjured by ex-Confederates and perpetuated, to no end, in Southern culture and “history” books.
This essay, published in Issue 11 of the Cornell Journal of Architecture, includes drawings from the design thesis Eroding the Confederacy: Revealing and dismantling white supremacy on Richmond’s Monument Ave.
This book was the culmination of research related to the mass-produced Confederate “soldier monument” which marks public parks and squares of countless towns all over the American South. The monument could be customized and ordered from a catalog of the Monumental Bronze Company. Thus this book serves as a “counter-catalog” of architectural interventions to be discussed and used by communities dealing with the controversial (and often futile) question of whether to keep or remove these monuments.
This book was the culmination of research related to the mass-produced Confederate “soldier monument” which marks public parks and squares of countless towns all over the American South. The monument could be customized and ordered from a catalog of the Monumental Bronze Company. Thus this book serves as a “counter-catalog” of architectural interventions to be discussed and used by communities dealing with the controversial (and often futile) question of whether to keep or remove these monuments.
A run of 100 tri-color hand-printed posters for the Spring 2019 Preston Thomas Memorial Symposium Trash Talks: Design for the end of material as we know it. Printed on reused plots from architecture students at Cornell AAP.
Small event programs laser printed over reused A3 paper from Cornell AAP.
Event info:
Trash Talks: Design for the end of material as we know it comprised the Spring 2019 Preston H. Thomas Memorial Symposium and centered on the urgent need among architects to rethink not only what materials we use, but how they are designed, assembled, and eventually disassembled, in order to be reused in a circular fashion.
With a keynote address by Peter Van Assche and presentations by Maria Aiolova, David Benjamin, Meredith Miller, Sabine Rau-Oberhuber, Billie Faircloth, Michaël Ghyoot, and Juliette Spertus, this year's Preston H. Thomas Memorial Symposium gathered the world's leading creative experts on waste and design to focus on the question of how we as designers can, and must, play a larger and more creative role in design for a circular future.
The symposium was organized in tandem with the book Design for a Circular Economy: The Architecture of Waste by Edgar A. Tafel Senior Professor of Architecture Caroline O'Donnell and Dillon Pranger (M.Arch. '15).
Reuse Italy Competition
Piscina Mirabilis, Naples
With Petrea Sweeny
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” -Charles Caleb Colton Little S/Cister(n) revitalizes the architectural origins of Piscina Mirabilis—bringing water to the depths of the 1st century “wondrous pool” through a system of vaulted piping, that imitates the program and the arcades of its idol, the older s/cister(n). The lightweight framework of pipes and grated platforms piggy-backs on the existing structure, spanning across the vaults to exhibit art works that hover above the cistern’s landscape of concrete, water, shadow and light.
The thin structural framework of the Little S/Cister(n) hangs bridges of circulation for people to view the space at new heights, and stages performance, projection and installations against the backdrop of the concrete arcades—allowing the work to become a part of the sensory experience of the museum. With this design, we challenge featured artists to test the limits of contemporary art—asking them to work in direct dialogue with the architecture to create a new canon of sculpture, performance and visual practices that are enhanced and tested by their exposure to natural light, moisture and seasonal shifts.
The roof has been preserved at the north-east and south-west corner, referencing the large program areas that sit below, while the rest of the original roofing has been removed and replaced with a grated metal floor that reveals the vaulted structure below. Large oculi that again reference the proportions of the arcades, run span the central East-West axis of the roof---in the same location as the previously eroded openings. The structural piping that supports all of the exhibition and circulation platforms within Piscina Mirabilis is counter-balanced by arches that reach upward to the roof, defining a new sectional landscape above ground. This piping circulates water from the roof to the lower level of the cistern, where new channels have been carved into the concrete floor.
This proposal for a new public junior high school in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, takes the form of the oil retaining tank (this heavily polluted area of Greenpoint was once an endless field of these structures) and reclaims it as a sustainably designed tower for learning. The school’s form combines four main cylinders—one each for art, literature, theater, and music—and arrays them around a larger, common atrium. In between each of the main cylinders are two smaller service columns for facilities, egress and elevators.
The separate towers create a sense of distinct, vertical communities within the school, that bleed together via the open common space on each floor. In plan, the filleted towers become cloud-like forms that represent the larger, combined community of each horizontal level.
At the top of each tower there are apartments to house young teachers who can’t afford to pay NYC rent on a starting salary. These apartments might also house artists or musicians in residence that would teach at the school in return for free or reduced-cost housing.
The cast-in-place concrete floor plates and curving brick rainscreen facade are supported by a radial structure of concrete columns and beams.
Cornell Journal of Architecture 11: Fear
Racializing Public Space: Monuments to Racism as Obstructions to Freedom
Cornell Journal of Architecture 11: Fear
Racializing Public Space: Monuments to Racism as Obstructions to Freedom
There are currently over 1500 physical Confederate monuments scattered across the United States. The majority of these monuments were dedicated during the post-Reconstruction Jim Crow era—a period defined by Southern white-supremacist rule and terrorism against African Americans. The monuments fed the fire of the “Lost Cause” myth that was conjured by ex-Confederates and perpetuated, to no end, in Southern culture and “history” books.
This essay, published in Issue 11 of the Cornell Journal of Architecture, includes drawings from the design thesis Eroding the Confederacy: Revealing and dismantling white supremacy on Richmond’s Monument Ave.
There is already a growing demand for public libraries in New York City. In a city transitioning into a post-work society where every individual receives a universal basic income, this demand will grow as people have more time to discover new interests and self-educate.
Additionally, UBI and affordable housing go hand in hand—a UBI won’t help us move forward in a post-work society if people can’t afford to live on it. Currently affordable housing in NYC is synonymous with NYCHA. Most of the NYCHA housing projects were designed based on the “tower-in-the-park” model, which isolates the housing instead of integrating it within the surrounding community. Often green areas are fenced off so that neither the public nor the residents have access to it. It serves only to separate the site from the surrounding neighborhood.
I propose to respond to the increasing demand for public libraries and affordable housing by combining the two programs as live-in libraries that infill existing under-used space in NYCHA sites—redensifying the “superblocks” and reconnecting the sites to the surrounding neighborhood. As a possible cooperative effort of the New York City Housing Authority and the New York Public Library, these libraries will also serve as a historical archive for each neighborhood, where students, scholars and other people who live in the library will record the oral history, stories, music, and cultural traditions of the resident elders (seniors). This archive will essentially be a record of life before UBI (or in capitalism) and a documentation of each neighborhood’s transition to the post-work world for future generations to learn from. These recordings will be accessible to patrons from each site, as well as other sites.
Already there is some talk of selling unused parcels of NYCHA land and converting parking spaces to apartments. I propose going a step further— as an antidote to the modernist ideas behind pubic housing, the sites will become more dense, more public, more activated. I propose to weave the NYCHA sites back into the surrounding neighborhood —to bring the neighborhood into the site, rather than isolate nycha residents. The live-in libraryies will combine affordable housing with free self-education, the recording of each site’s histor,y and care taking for young and old residents.
There is already a growing demand for public libraries in New York City. In a city transitioning into a post-work society where every individual receives a universal basic income, this demand will grow as people have more time to discover new interests and self-educate.
Additionally, UBI and affordable housing go hand in hand—a UBI won’t help us move forward in a post-work society if people can’t afford to live on it. Currently affordable housing in NYC is synonymous with NYCHA. Most of the NYCHA housing projects were designed based on the “tower-in-the-park” model, which isolates the housing instead of integrating it within the surrounding community. Often green areas are fenced off so that neither the public nor the residents have access to it. It serves only to separate the site from the surrounding neighborhood.
I propose to respond to the increasing demand for public libraries and affordable housing by combining the two programs as live-in libraries that infill existing under-used space in NYCHA sites—redensifying the “superblocks” and reconnecting the sites to the surrounding neighborhood. As a possible cooperative effort of the New York City Housing Authority and the New York Public Library, these libraries will also serve as a historical archive for each neighborhood, where students, scholars and other people who live in the library will record the oral history, stories, music, and cultural traditions of the resident elders (seniors). This archive will essentially be a record of life before UBI (or in capitalism) and a documentation of each neighborhood’s transition to the post-work world for future generations to learn from. These recordings will be accessible to patrons from each site, as well as other sites.
Already there is some talk of selling unused parcels of NYCHA land and converting parking spaces to apartments. I propose going a step further— as an antidote to the modernist ideas behind pubic housing, the sites will become more dense, more public, more activated. I propose to weave the NYCHA sites back into the surrounding neighborhood —to bring the neighborhood into the site, rather than isolate nycha residents. The live-in libraryies will combine affordable housing with free self-education, the recording of each site’s histor,y and care taking for young and old residents.
A run of 100 tri-color hand-printed posters for the Spring 2019 Preston Thomas Memorial Symposium Trash Talks: Design for the end of material as we know it. Printed on reused plots from architecture students at Cornell AAP.
Small event programs laser printed over reused A3 paper from Cornell AAP.
Event info:
Trash Talks: Design for the end of material as we know it comprised the Spring 2019 Preston H. Thomas Memorial Symposium and centered on the urgent need among architects to rethink not only what materials we use, but how they are designed, assembled, and eventually disassembled, in order to be reused in a circular fashion.
With a keynote address by Peter Van Assche and presentations by Maria Aiolova, David Benjamin, Meredith Miller, Sabine Rau-Oberhuber, Billie Faircloth, Michaël Ghyoot, and Juliette Spertus, this year's Preston H. Thomas Memorial Symposium gathered the world's leading creative experts on waste and design to focus on the question of how we as designers can, and must, play a larger and more creative role in design for a circular future.
The symposium was organized in tandem with the book Design for a Circular Economy: The Architecture of Waste by Edgar A. Tafel Senior Professor of Architecture Caroline O'Donnell and Dillon Pranger (M.Arch. '15).
This proposal for a new public junior high school in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, takes the form of the oil retaining tank (this heavily polluted area of Greenpoint was once an endless field of these structures) and reclaims it as a sustainably designed tower for learning. The school’s form combines four main cylinders—one each for art, literature, theater, and music—and arrays them around a larger, common atrium. In between each of the main cylinders are two smaller service columns for facilities, egress and elevators.
The separate towers create a sense of distinct, vertical communities within the school, that bleed together via the open common space on each floor. In plan, the filleted towers become cloud-like forms that represent the larger, combined community of each horizontal level.
At the top of each tower there are apartments to house young teachers who can’t afford to pay NYC rent on a starting salary. These apartments might also house artists or musicians in residence that would teach at the school in return for free or reduced-cost housing.
The cast-in-place concrete floor plates and curving brick rainscreen facade are supported by a radial structure of concrete columns and beams.
This book was the culmination of research related to the mass-produced Confederate “soldier monument” which marks public parks and squares of countless towns all over the American South. The monument could be customized and ordered from a catalog of the Monumental Bronze Company. Thus this book serves as a “counter-catalog” of architectural interventions to be discussed and used by communities dealing with the controversial (and often futile) question of whether to keep or remove these monuments.
M. ARCH I Thesis
Awarded the Richmond Harold Shreve Thesis Prize
Advisors Val Warke, Sasa Zivkovic
There are currently over 1500 Confederate monuments scattered across the United States. The majority of these monuments were dedicated during the post-reconstruction Jim Crow Era—a period defined by Southern white-supremacist rule and terrorism against African Americans. They worked to perpetuate the “Lost Cause” myth of the Confederacy in Southern culture and “history” books.
This thesis attempts to A) catalog methods of architectural intervention, designed to deconstruct the intended power of the mass-produced monuments and, B) apply these methods—in combination with urban planning and landscaping strategies—to Richmond’s Monument Avenue, revealing the structures of racism and white supremacy embedded in the wealth of Monument Ave and Richmond as a whole.
Course: Drawing Housing Manifestos
Symmetry. Order. Balance. Organization.
On earth, plans to create cities enclosed in circular walls (a circle is the most efficient way to enclose the largest area) most often resulted in imperfect forms due to the constraints of site context. The symmetrical plan of these cities was efficient, ideal, but not necessary.
The inhabitability and carrying out of daily life in the space city requires the simulation of gravity. In order for the feeling of gravity to be balanced and constant throughout the city, the construction requires, necessitates perfect symmetry around the center about which the whole city spins. This also requires a carefully planned distribution of program to ensure symmetry of weight or mass. Even the slightest asymmetries in mass distribution would be problematic.
The most perfect symmetry would be achievable by monitoring and regulating the movement of individuals within the station—that is, individuals will come and go on the space elevators in a methodical way—to and from work—at the same time, in order to maintain the balance of the ship, the city, the society. In this balance, or equal distribution, is the epitome of socialism.
The physical design of the city, or station, depends on a number of euquations, including the following:
The equation for the rate of rotation is:
Ω = 9.55√(g/r)
where
Ω is the rate of rotation in revolutions per minute (rpm)
g is the acceleration due to gravity (9.8 m/s2 or 32 ft/s2)
and r is the radius of the spaceship donut in meters or feet
Centrifugal force equation:
When you swing an object around you that is tied to a string, the outward force is equal to:
F = mv2/r
Centrifugal force and artificial gravity:
Since the centrifugal force is F = mω2r and the force due to gravity is F = mg, you can combine the two equations to get the relationship between the radius, rate of rotation, and g:
mg = mω2r
g = ω2r
Solving for ω:
ω = √(g/r)
Also, solving for r:
r = g/ω2
