Phillip Denny: Work 2009-2014

PHILLIP DENNY

[email protected]

+1 240 529 8089

WORK

Campus: Situating the Global University

Curriculum Vit (abbreviated)

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Campus: Situating the Global UniversityB.Arch Thesis Project (ongoing)

Carnegie Mellon University

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Is This Not a Pipe?Volume Magazine/C-Lab

Columbia Laboratory for Architectural Broadcasting

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TenerifeEMBT Arquideas Grant 2013

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Rome Center for Peace & Religious StudiesCornell University in Rome

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Scenes and Speculations: Future CitiesCommissioned Research on Gulf Urbanism

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Theater for a New AudienceCarnegie Mellon Drama + Architecture Collaborative Studio

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Al Wakrah Village HousingCarnegie Mellon Qatar + Qatar Museums Authority

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Frick Environmental CenterLandscape + Architecture Studio

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Saco Lake Bath House + School for DanceMaterial Tectonics Studio Projects

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White Cube, Green Maze: New Art LandscapesHeinz Architectural Center, Carnegie Museum of Art

-Biography

PHILLIP DENNYSelected Projects

PHILLIP DENNY

[email protected]

+1 240 529 8089

EDUCATION

Carnegie Mellon UniversityB.Arch | Minor in Architectural HistoryCumulative GPA 3.89, Design GPA 3.93Deans List Fall 2009 - Fall 2013

Cornell UniversityVisiting Student of Architecture | Rome

Semester GPA 4.00 | Spring 2013

Carnegie Mellon University in QatarVirginia Commonwealth University in Qatar

Visiting Student | Doha, QatarSemester GPA 4.00

HONORS

BECA Arquideas Grant 2013First Place Winner, International competition juried by EMBT Architects.

Louis F. Valentour Travel FellowshipSchool award for design excellence. Architecture study tour in UK + France.

Phi Kappa Phi Honor SocietyNominated and inducted Spring 2012. GPA within top 7.5% of University class.

Crossing Boundaries Juhani Pallasmaa CharetteInvited participant in a week-long design charette with Professor Pallasmaa.

Head of School CommendationsAll semesters, Fall 2009-Fall 2014

College of Fine Arts, Deans ListAll semesters, Fall 2009-Fall 2014

LEADERSHIP

interpunctEditor-in-Chief, Student Journal for Architecture Theory, 2013-ongoing

Student Advisory CouncilElected Class Representative

OdysseyResearch Honor Society, Faculty-elected, Spring 2010

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Volume Magazine/C-LabColumbia Laboratory for Architectural Broadcasting

Researcher, Editorial Intern, Volume 37 Is This Not a Pipe?, Columbia University, New York, NYMay - August 2013

over,underDesign & Research Collaborator Scenes and Speculations Boston, MA

May - August 2012

Carnegie Museum of ArtHeinz Architectural Center

Intern Curator White Cube, Green Maze & Maya Lin ExhibitionsMay-July 2011

ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE

Research CollaboratorPittsburgh Projects & 4D Doha Apps for Architecture

Teaching AssistantshipsArchitecture Design Studios: Foundation II (Gutschow, Year 1), Environment (Mondor, Year 3)

Architecture for Non-Majors (Hutzell, Mixed), Pre-Collegiate (Wolff, High School)History Courses: Survey of Arch. History II: Modern (Gutschow, Year 2)

School of Architecture Lecture SeriesGraphic Designer, Assistant Coordinator

EXHIBITIONS & PUBLICATIONS

AAP in Rome ExhibitionExhibition Committee, Architecture

Fourth Year Design AwardsLouis F. Valentour Travel Fellowship Recipient

Sheraton Doha Design CompetitionDesign charette hosted by Qatar Museums Authority

Meeting of the Minds-UROAl-Wakrah Village Housing Project exhibited in Doha, Qatar

NAAB Accreditation ReviewPresidents Advisory Council Review

Thesis, and various undergraduate design projectsselected for exhibition

SOFTWARE & SKILLS

AUTOCAD, RHINOCEROS, GRASSHOPPER, V-RAYRHINOCAM, SKETCH-UP, ARC-GIS

ADOBE CREATIVE SUITE

Strengths in research, design, writing, and editing.

References available upon request.

01 CAMPUS: SITUATING THE GLOBAL UNIVERSITYPARADISE

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01 CAMPUS: Situating the Global University

B.Arch ThesisCarnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

Advisors Mary-Lou Arscott, Jon Kline, Charles Rosenblum, Rami el SamahyJuly 2013 - ongoing

PrefaceArchitecture: a medium for the production of Utopias, and the complex process by which they attempt to become material. Much Architecture devotes itself to the reproduction of the material conditions of the status quo. Architecture creates facilities (from Latin, facile, lit. trans: easily, that which makes easier), for

the processes of the dominant social framework.1

The impossible dreams of Utopia, however, do not negate its conceptual value. The object of the project Utopia is not so much a Sisyphean chase after a perfected image-world, but rather the production of a critical mirror.2 All Utopias, while literal No-places, are reflectionsinverted, mirrored reproductionsof

immediately apparent every-wheres.3

The global stock of Universities constitute a vast catalog of unique No-places situated within the context of the late modern every-where. A landscape of failed Utopias, the history of Universities is colored by a perennial struggle: the essential protection of sacred Ideals from the forces that simultaneously support, and compromise the project of Universitas.4 This irreconcilable Gordian knot is arguably the root of the diversity of processes that the contemporary University now engages. These processes no longer constitute a singular search for Truth, but rather a complex ecology of often competing, even conflictual aims and exchanges at

all scales.

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01 CAMPUS: SITUATING THE GLOBAL UNIVERSITY

The scenes outlined in Campus interrogate the place of this ubiquitous institution within the complex milieu of late capitalism, and ask: what might happen when Architecture is no longer the tool for mediating conflict by separation,5 a fortification holding the forces of Capital at bay, but rather is poised as an instrument for the radical accommodation of conflictual Ideologiesa frame for

the hyperbolic juxtaposition of simultaneous, competing realities?5

Campus recognizes the absurd realities of the contemporary University as a very real dream, a compromised utopia. It is not merely a critical appraisal of the University; the scenes propose a series of situations that exploit the institutions late modern reality for the production of new institutional and architectural possibilities.

1 Frampton calls attention to this, one of Architecture's essential dichotomies, in relation to Hannah Arendt's analysis of the vita activa and Heidegger's thought on dwelling. See Kenneth Frampton, "The Status of Man and the Status of His Objects: A Reading of The Human Condition" in K. Michael Hays, ed., Architectural Theory Since 1968 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998) pp. 358-376.2 See Chapter 2 "The Utopian Enclave" in Fredric Jameson Archaeologies of the Future (London: Verso Books, 2005), and Reinhold Martin, "Utopian Realism" Online.3 The attempt to realize Utopia might be considered a form of Totalitarianism, specifically, the application of a totalizing framework toward a singular future. See Sheldon Rothblatt, "University as Utopia" in European Research University: An Historical Parenthesis.4 Universitas is here in reference to the concept of the 'ideal' University, a confederation of scholars devoted to the search for "Truth." See, also, the proceedings of the 1972 MoMA conference, "The Universitas Project," convened by Emilio Ambasz, which brought together Jean Baudrillard, Octavio Paz, Umberto Eco, Henri Lefebvre, and Hannah Arendt, among others, to debate the foundations of an ideal University. The Universitas Project (New York: MoMA, 2003).5 When the political agency of form is taken to lie in its essential finitudethe definition of a 'limit,' the production of distinction. See Pier Vittorio Aureli Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011).

Universitas and the postmodern Metropole

Metropole, n.: The parent state of a colony.

Origin: late 15th c.: from Old French metropole, based on

Greek meter, metro- mother + polis city

The University is a productive entity at the heart of center-less Empire.1 More than ten thousand universities now dot the globe, a flexible meshwork of faculties more or less devoted to

the project of Knowledge formation. Today, the University can be found anywhere, all over the world. Whether situated in the metropolis or standing in an idyll, all campuses are enclaves of one sort or another. But before the university took refuge in the Ivory tower it was universitas, a body of faculty and studentsan essentially placeless federation.2 Before then, Universitas was a utopian projecta No-place. An entity distinctly removed from the political ordering of its context, universitas constituted a space of difference within a city defined solely by the foreign origin

of its students and scholars. Not until the sovereign authority of medieval Bologna gifted a chapel to the scholars guild did

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The Plate (Edu-factory)

Edu-factory condenses the Social to flash-point: nodes of contact, lines of

discussion, planes of argumentationEdu-factory collapses Life and Labor.

Disciplinarity is abolished; new minds for new problems. The epicenter of

production, Edu-factory is a re-producer of the Social. Knowers invest

themselves with Knowledge; in the process they soak up value like a sponge.

Research MillPlan

Scale: 1:250

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Campus (Genesis)

The Building had stood in the center of town for as long as anyone could

remember, and before then, too. It was no more than 200 meters on each side.

It stood above a patch of ground, campus. Over the years the bounds of campus

had slowly eroded. The city dwellers confused one ground for another, and

soon nobody could remember which was which.

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Alma Mater

Scholars huddled on muddy ground (Athens all over again. Democratic space

realized at last?) The Refugees eagerly dream of new Urbanities. Impromptu

symposia commence as the Knowers debate the formation of a masterpiecea

University: autonomous, pristine, ideal.

06


universitas become university, suddenly finding itself on a campus.3 Within the context of late capitalism, the state of the university has reached triple-point. At the beginning of the new millennium the traditional notions of universitasuniversity as Utopia for the pursuit of Knowledgehave been marginalized by market imperatives: research funds, prestige value, endowment growth dominate the modern University agenda. Universities worldwide continuously produce knowledge, write patents, innovate new technologies.4 University destroyed Universitas, and is itself at the edge of crisis.

If the groundless universitas was literally utopian, then the modern campus is the ideal Universitys heterotopic counter-site. Defined by Foucault as a space that accommodates and reproduces

a societys inversion, the heterotopia is at once removed from its context while at once being intimately bound up within its very culture. The global proliferation of universities at once reproduces the hegemonic subjectivities of Globalizations will-to-education, while simultaneously negating the sociopolitical context of the heteropic campus.5

Considering the modern university as an effectual mechanism of globalization, it ought to be examined through the lens with which we critique globalized capital.6 The replication of the university model across the globe via satellite campuses represents the incursion of foreign logics upon local territories.7 As distinct from colonialism per se, the university is not just a microcosmic core sample of a society and its accompanying politics to be transplanted elsewhere, a project of authoritarian translation, but rather a finite instance of the metropoles inversion: the university is a metropolitan antithesis. Campus as anti-city, or enclavewhat Castells has termed the transnational enclave.8 In the same way that the intimate frictions of vastly differing ideologies incited violent altercations between town and gown in the earliest colleges of Oxbridge, the postmodern campus is imbued with the latent potential to destabilize the status quo.9 Campus has always been a fascinating stage for the playing-out of binary oppositions. The University: standard-bearer for the pursuit of pure Truth, and the same, an engine for extracting practical utility from new Knowledge; institutional reproducer of subjectivity, while at once a context primed for the disruption and subversion of subjectivities.

Yet, still, the university, by way of its pernicious intimacy with the complexes of capitalist production, is essentially a normalizing institution. While the history of the late twentieth century is punctuated by moments in which universitys complicity with the mechanisms of late capitalism incite popular unrest, the story always ends in the same way: a brief period of popular consciousness is followed by an inevitable return to order by means

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Consumer Paradise

The University had become a mall. A luxe terrazzo unfolds underfoot in every direction. Everything gleams beneath the relentless Glo of fluorescent tubes. Exact air-conditioned, it is Eden. Even the

atmosphere is indulgent.

Consumer ParadisePlan

Scale: 1:250

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Debates

Within the Tower notions of disciplinarity are to be abolished. Knowers

will be socially and cerebrally mobile, able to (and required) jump nimbly

between domains of Knowledge according to whim or reason. Curriculum reverts

to its Imperial definition: racetrack. The debates drag on for weeks at a

time. Stultifying horizontality the madness of their meetings sublime.

Point Counter Point in a cyclical discourse of absurd proportions. Consensus

is never reached. Discussion plods on, sideways, with no hint of relief.

Before long, the Knowers realize their Dreamed-of University has suddenly

come into being.

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of police action.10 The violation of the campus political bounds explicates the crisis of autonomy in the postmodern university. The superposition of disparate political orders is irreconcilable within the totalizing framework of the late capitalist city. Traditions of autonomy, whether upheld de facto or juridically codified, hold the precinct of campus as an extra-political space.11 This irreconcilable conflict is at the heart of globalizations

absorption of the University in the twenty-first century.

The global dispersion of the University forms a constellation of extra-political territories whose supranational coordination echoes that of postmodern Empire. Just as late capitalisms transnational enclaves are linked by the flows of international

finance, world Universities are bound by the pervasive exchange of

Information. An archipelago, the global network of universities is both a smooth extension of the post-Fordist economy and a discontinuous inversion of the global polis.12 Enmeshed within the complex mechanisms of the global economy, the postmodern university is positioned at the helm of vast flows of capital. Ubiquitous,

diffuse, the university is bound loosely together by commonly held rules. Since the universitys medieval formation a series of dicta have codified the role of the university in society: ius ubique docendi, Constitutio Habita, Magna Charta Universitatum.13

Academic capitalism forms the modus operandi of the postmodern university, despite its idealized independence from politics and the market. The University in the market economy endlessly chases revenue production. Growth is the dictate of success in the market. More is more. From the creation of non-academic consumable goods found in campus bookstores, to the displacement of student dining halls in lieu of national restaurant brands, campus has become a Consumer Paradise.14 Facing massive governmental de-investment, public universities, too, must engage in market activities as a matter of course. Students have become commoditized, a stream of revenue to be exploited by the burgeoning academic-capitalist complex. Faculties vie for funding linked to enrollment figures,

offering courses taught by legions of underpaid graduate students. The university is yet another industry whose profit margin relies

upon the exploitation of a precariously situated labor force.15

The dot com boom of the nineties marked a radical transformation of production in the age of Empire: no longer was the economy tied to the reproduction of material wealth (vis--vis the industrial production of goods), but rather, vast wealth would be borne of speculation, the endless manipulation of exchange value. The virtual has unequivocally displaced the material. The disappearance of the factory from urban centers is perhaps the clearest evidence that the city has become the factory.16 The factory is everywhere, and nowherea pervasive, ethereal network.17

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The rush on the University in the early aughts evidenced the position of higher education as an inroads to the post-Fordist labor market. In 2001, amid the excesses of new Globalizations bull market, university tuition and enrollment surged, soaring past historical rates of growth. Enrollment, formats, tuition have since multiplied, transformed, and bloated. The market calls for the processing of more students, more tuition hours, more. The University campus seems to wobble on the edge of anachronism as web-based educational models are the order of the day. The States endorsement of online education, and investment in MOOC initiatives foreshadows an immediate future: Knowledge will be free, and it will be online.

The project of online higher education aims to equitize access to Knowledge. While the World Wide Web University is opening new avenues to Knowledge, the MOOC isnt itself an equivalent alternative to the brick and mortar institution. The modern University is first

and foremost a public spacerarefied air for the Free exchange of ideas. In an era in which technology provides the ability for remote surveillance of the private communications of Billions, the web has quickly become less public than even the most insular private college campus. The threatened disappearance of publics is but one part of the crisis of the modern University.18

Crisis is a moment of opportunity. In which the normalizing parameters of the institution are shaken and dematerialized. Crisis is a duration in which the space of possibilities suddenly becomes vast.19 Witnessing the apocalyptic tail-end of universitys long-arc from religious scholasticism to academic capitalism, the university can be redirected to an alternatively productive model within and against late capitalism. A building has to hold the forces that might want to transgress its order and should accommodate them through the management of the spaces so that at the same time, the same forces are restrained.20 Campus does not disavow the forces of capital and Globalization, but rather seeks to inscribe a space that is simultaneously within and without.

While the concepts of institution and utopia are seemingly antithetical (the institution is literally the establishment, the utopia No-place.), elements of the one are always, necessarily, bound up in the workings of the other. The University is an institution that holds a utopian ideal at its core, a fact of its heterotopia-function.21 Campus exploits the Universitys heterotopian logic by creating an alternative utopia in the contemporary Universitys place. The Utopian animus of the University has always been the pursuit of Truth. However, the entry of capital has transformed this simple logic into one of exchange. The modern University is a site for the exchange of knowledge for value, the entry of commoditized knowledge. In order for the University to nourish its

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Hangar

The University finally learned to stop worrying and love Research (dollars).

There is no need for Byzantine ethical posturing or skunk-works secrecy in

Edu-factory. Veritas is flexible, anyway.

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Research MillPlan

Scale: 1:250

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City

Within the walls of the Tower, the City folds upon itself. A massive cabinet

of metropolitan density, it is a frame of collective space, and a museum of

the City that once was. Within, an energetic Public lay claim to Streets and

Squares. City-Building is Civic-Stage; within the Tower a different quality

of life lives on.

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Frame

Climate-controlled and relentlessly empty, the Living Room is 40,000m2 of

Almost Nothing. On its surface camps coagulate, then languish, before finally

disappearingabsorbed. Conscripts to Knowledge wait to ascend the Tower.

Slowly, cohorts percolate through, exploring. No one has ever Known the Tower

in all no single map is a record of all its rooms.

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ideal it must regain autonomy. The University must divorce the pursuit of Truth from the pursuit of capital.22 While the separation of education from the reproduction of value constitutes a difficult decoupling of the Universitys contemporary

functions of economy, it can reposition the university as a necessary, productive public at the core of society.23 Campus proposes a space for the exchange, pursuit, and generation of Knowledge that empowers the Knower (the precariously situated Knowledge Worker) by establishing a discernible place for him within urban society.24 The Knower is a unique member of the Knowledge Society. Precariously employed, highly educated, and young; the Knowledge workers needs are worlds apart from those of previous generations. Frenetic nodes in a highly charged network, Knowers thrive on proximity, flexibility, and security.

Campus imagines a social contract between universitas and context that governs an order of exchange that is inclusive rather than exclusive, connective rather than disjunctive. By way of a simple agreement, Knowers can become an integrated component in the social ecology of cities. In exchange for the monetary support of the urbs, the Knower agrees to apply his accumulated knowledge to its dissemination: the Knower becomes Teacher. The city guarantees its own future vitality through this multigenerational exchange. Public investment in the young Knower is repaid by his commitment to become a Teacher, to educate future Knowers, and citizens alike. Campus thus short-circuits the late capitalist paradigm of educational attainment: cash for Knowledge, and resituates the university in relationship to a public.

Campus can no longer be a colonized territory of late capitalism, the University an outpost of the disembodied market. For the Institution to regain the precious ground of autonomy, it ought to remember that campus, while referring to ground, structure, and locus of the Institution, originally referred to a battlefield. Now,

it would seem that the field has been lost to the market. While

the University must strive towards autonomy, it cannot become a hermetic enclave. Throughout its history the University has been, for better or for worse, bound to its realityand all of the frictions and compromise that entails. Campus thus imagines a radical accommodation of the forces that seek to transgress the limits of the institution and its ideals. A project of utopian realism, Campus recognizes the reality of the University in late capitalism as itself a complex fiction constructed by global forces,

and asks: what might happen to our battlefieldcampuswhen we

recognize the forces of global capital as manipulatable flows rather

than adversarial conditions?

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Corporate Eden

A crown of Hotel Suites sits precipitously above the void. Heroic elevator

bundles pierce the emptiness with Piranesian audacity. The immediate needs

of a transient population are automatically provided for in the rooms.

Food, liquids, climate, entertainmentall optimized to ensure spontaneous

and uninterrupted satisfaction. It is a Taylorist dream. A vast golf course

spills out across the roofan ersatz Arcadia, open Daily.

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Endnotes:1 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000).2 Neave, Blckert, Nybom, eds., The European Research University: An Historical Parenthesis (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).3 Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, A History of the University in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) pp. 92-96.4 Jeffrey Williams, "The Pedagogy of Debt" in Edufactory: Towards a Global Autonomous University (New York: Autonomedia, 2009) pp. 89-96.5 Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias" October (March 1967)6 Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2000)7 Andrew Ross, "The Rise of the Global University" in Edufactory, pp. 18-31.8 Castells, Chapter 2: "The Network and the Self" in The Rise of the Network Society.9 The student uprisings of 1968, and 1971 in New York, Paris, and Athens, e.g. Radical student-activist demonstrations had lasting effects on the composition, and policy of both Universities and cities. In Paris, after the end of student revolts, the state education system atomized the Universit de Paris, creating smaller campuses scattered about the periphery. See Ridder-Symoens.10 Like the uprisings at the Sorbonne, and three years later in Athens, the Columbia University protest was ended by the intervention of the civic police force. Foucault was greatly affected by a similar experience in Tunisia, March 1968, in which massive student strikes were dissolved by police brutality. See Didier Eribon Michel Foucault (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989) p. 194.11 The right to political autonomy, specifically the exclusion of the campus precinct from civic control, was established in the medieval period at many European universities. The University of Prague was famously spared in the Russian supression of the Prague Spring uprisings, 1968.12 Pier Vittorio Aureli has defined the polis as the socially-produced space of the city; the space of, and produced by politics. The University, understood as an exclusive enclave (per Manuel Castells, "A New Globe in the Making") might thus be considered a disjunctive space within the global network.13 Sheldon Rothblatt, "University as Utopia" in European Research University, Neave, Blckert, eds.14 Campus succumbed to Junkspace sometime in the early-2000s. See Rem Koolhaas, "Junkspace" October 100 (Spring 2002): 175-190.15 Ilkka Kauppinnen has argued that the University is no longer a promoter of national economic competitiveness, but that Universities have impelled the "transnationalization" of academic capitalism. See "Towards transnational academic capitalism" in Higher Education vol. 64, no. 4 (October 2012): 543-556.16 The University is considered a component of the city-as-productive-mechanism in "All Power to Self-Education," introduction to Edufactory: Towards a Global Autonomous University.17 The un-rooting of centers of production is a key facet of 'network culture,' and a factor contributing to the productive agent's precarity in the late market economy. See Kazys Varnelis, "The Rise of Network Culture" in Networked Publics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012) pp. 145-164.18 The relative attraction of online education might be considered one symptom of the recent swing towards austerity politics post-2008. See Pier Vittorio Aureli, "Less is Enough" (Moscow: Strelka Institute, 2013)19 Crisis has been appropriated as a productive force in the postmodern creative economy, see Agenda: can we sustain our ability to crisis? De Smedt, Clouette, Neiheiser, eds., (Barcelona: Actar, 2009)20 Pier Vittorio Aureli and Martino Tattara "A Simple Heart: Architecture on the Ruins of the Post-Fordist City" Architectural Design vol. 81, no. 1, January 2011.21 Rothblatt, "University as Utopia."22 Autonomy is a precondition for the pursuit of Knowledge, as argued by Stanley Aronowitz in The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher Learning (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000).23 Antonio Negri, "From Koolhaas's 'Generic City' to 'Junkspace' in Berlage Survey of the Culture, Education, and Practice of Architecture and Urbanism, Salomon Frausto ed., (Rotterdam: nai010 Publishers, 2011).24 Loosely analagous to what Richard Florida imagined as the constitutive members of the 'creative class.' Richard Florida The Rise of the Creative Class (2002).25 Reinhold Martin, "Utopian Realism" Online.

Advisors: Mary-Lou Arscott, Jon Kline, Charles Rosenblum, Rami el Samahy.Support: Kai Gutschow, Kelly Hutzell, Michael Kubo, Francesca Torello, Talia Perry, Zachary Weimer.

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Stoa

A library, a University, an office, a museumEdu-factory merges genres of

Knowledge Space without compromise. The Public Realm is a Productive Realm.

Edu-factory condenses the Social to flash-point: nodes of contact, lines of

discussion, planes of argumentation Edu-factory collapses Life and Labor.

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02: IS THIS NOT A PIPE?

VOLUME 37 IS THIS NOT A PIPE? COVER DESIGN, IRMA BOOM

19

02 IS THIS NOT A PIPE?

Volume Magazine/C-LabColumbia Laboratory for Architectural Broadcasting

Editorial Intern, Columbia University, New York, NYwith Benedict Clouette, Jeffrey Inaba, C-LabMay-August 2013, Published November 2013

Original research, text, graphics, and layout design for Mechanization of

the Office and Increasing efficiency, increasing usage? Interview with

Mahadev Raman, Arup, "Its the physics" in Volume 37.

Before electric illumination the workday was bound to daylight hours. The optimization of the architectural plan to admit maximum natural light caused U, H, L and other such letterform typologies to proliferate (the earliest generation of mechanized buildings retained these pre-Industrial forms). The electrification of

the workplace at the turn of the century introduced a range of technologies whose effects would diminish the contingencies of environment that impeded the efficient performance of work. Electric

light flooded the pre-War office, allowing work to proceed around the

clock. Otis electric-powered elevators lifted droves of workers as tall office buildings sprang up across metropolitan centers. The plan

of the office building, now artificially lit and conditioned, swelled

to brutal depths. The development of technology would continuously transform how and where work took place in the twentieth century.

20

Drawings, text and layout by Phillip Denny with contributions by Maria Broytman.

31

Drawings, and text by Phillip Denny.Document design Irma Boom.

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03: TENERIFESITE PERSPECTIVE

35

03 TENERIFE

BECA Arquideas Grant 2013First Place Winner, International Competition

Juried by EMBT Architects, Barcelona, ESDecember 2013

The thalassotherapy center is an immersive landscape: it is a place within which the user submits the body to spa treatments and transformation. In order to treat the body and mind, the user must first be removed from the usual. Arriving at the center, the user

enters the pavilion at the high end of the site. Here the patron is oriented and directed down through the atrium to the changing rooms. From the changing rooms the bathers move along a corridor, passing through a series of water gardens which frame and orient the user to the sea beyond. As the bather moves along the path the space begins to open. Suddenly the bather finds himself on the

slope among the many basins. Set within the basin are planters for flowering shrubs and trees, whose branches provide shade and

whose rustling leaves create a soothing soundscape. After bathing the user may choose to have a massage in the hammam, or relax in the steam sauna, beneath a skylight that refracts the seawater above. In the evening, the user returns to the pavilion by the way he arrived. Moving back up through the atrium, he reenters the

everyday, replenished and rejuvenated.

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03: TENERIFE

Sections

The sites slope is manipulated to create a series of terraces that simultaneously hide unsightly development downhill, and open

a dialogue with the sea.

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cc

cc

Entry TunnelSauna Water GardenSaltwaterBasin

Changing

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03:

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RIFE

Site Plan / Diagrams

The projects particular geometries are an artifact of an incomplete resort development project. The poured-in-place concrete foundations are repurposed to become thalassotherapy basins and spa facilities.

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Extant Structures(Basins)

Saltwater Basin

Freshwater Basin

Entry TunnelSauna Restaurant & Arrival/Check-inMechanical

Architectonic Elements(Frame)

Program(Fill)

Desalination

+200

+220 +24

0

+260

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03: TENERIFE

Vignettes: Atrium + Arrival

The main building functions as a point of departure and arrival, where patrons transition from their everyday world to one of

relaxation and introspection.

3939

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cc

cc

Transverse Section / Plan +268

The basins are scattered over the landscape, opening up vistas onto the sea beyond.

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Mechanical

Parking

Entry

Arrival

Restaurant

Meditation

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04: ROME CENTER FOR PEACE AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES

GROUND PLAN

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04 ROME CENTER FOR PEACE AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Cornell University in RomePax Romana Studio

Cornell University, Rome, ITProfessors George Hascup, Davide Marchetti

Spring 2013

The Rome Center for Peace and Religious Studies project reconciles the need for the construction of a massive institution on an actively utilized public landscape. The project explores the potentials of the mat-form building to activate context and expand the urban field.

The architecture connects a series of interrelated programs to a wide range of urban situations. The projects intricately scaled network of outdoor spaces extends the public realm over, under, and through the built environment. The ground plane is considered as an intensive architectural landscape, a plinth of public programs that create a public campo above. At the heart of the building, a central void connects all of the projects functions, a non-programmed green space sheltered by the building-as-canopy above. The buildings raison detre, the religious study centers, occupy the highest points of the building. Raised above the public plinth, the centers pair enclosed study spaces with exterior courtyards. The study centers and libraries form a continuous, porous canopy

that unites the buildings form, and defines the public realm.

42


Section / Courtyard

The site's ground is intensively manipulated, an architectural landscape that aims to instigate moments of public enticement and

interaction.

4343

04:

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STUD

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Site Plan

The architecture soaks up its context like a sponge. It carries the surrounding urban texture over the site and throughout the

building.

4444


Concept Drawing

The project generates spatial complexity by layering formal traces of historical site features, contextual axes, and programmatic factors. The interplay of layers becomes a dialogue played out

within and outside of the Center.45

04:

ROME

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STUD

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Canopy Development: Diagram / Section

The Center preserves the site's current open space by framing a public courtyard. The library and learning centers spill out onto

the main courtyard, ensuring access to light and air.

Excavations Figures Extrusions

46


Ground Plan

The ground plan elaborates a complex dialogue between contextual site features, historical absences, and local use-functions.

4747

04:

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Formal Relationship / Public Interface

The building cedes space to public use at key points on the site. At the corner closest to the Colosseum, the Center anchors a piazza.

48

Site Envelope

Block PorosityContextual Situation

Contextual Relationships

Green Spaces

48

Plans

The building is a complex assembly of distinct volumes and excavations pulled together by the institution. Green spaces

permeate the structure, dissolving thick poche.


ProgramLibrary

Learning CenterCirculation Desk

AuditoriumMeeting

CourtyardArchiveGallery

CafeDormitory

12345678910

4

1

Level 0Level +2

Level -1Level +1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

13

5

6

7

89

10

1010

49

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Formal Development / Learning Center

The Peace Center's porous form carefully balances dark spaces for the preservation of rare artifacts, and light-filled spaces for

their study.

PorousLithic

ConsolidatedDispersed

PROGRAM

FORM

12345678910

50

05: SCENES AND SPECULATIONS: FUTURE CITIESPETRO-FIT, RIG TOWER

51

05 SCENES AND SPECULATIONS: FUTURE CITIES

Three Scenes and Speculations from a Future Cityover,under / Carnegie Mellon University

Researcher, Design Intern, Boston, MAwith Rami el Samahy and Adam Himes

May-August 2012

If all design can be seen as ways to predictand shapethe future, no field ought to look further forward than urban design and planning.

However, as a profession, planners tend to be fairly cautious, relying on historical precedents rather than future trends in shaping cities. There are perfectly rational reasons for this tendency; the past is a more knowable territory than the future. And yet, do we limit our vision if we fail to occasionally untether ourselves from the past, and seek where design opportunities may

lie in the future?

Our research teamarchitects and urban designers, curious about alternative approaches todesigning the urban future, especially as it relates to the Middle Eastbegan by creating a digital compendium of all the predictions we could find (past and present)

related to the future of urban environments. We tagged and sorted these in various ways to see what we might uncover. Among the most interesting (and obvious) discoveries: projections into the future

are more telling of the present in which they are created.

52

05: SCENES AND SPECULATIONS: FUTURE CITIES

Rising Sea Levels

Conservative projections of sea-level rise expect a +1m change in the next hundred years. Doha, Qatar would see profound consequences

after even a marginal rise in sea-level.

53

2012 2025

2040 2050

SITE

53

05:

SCEN

E 1:

SAB

KHA

CITY

Solar Desalination Infrastructure

How can one of the most energy-intensive and ecologically destructive infrastructural processes (and a necessary evil for life in the

Gulf) become productive and positive?

54

high tide

low tide

high tide

low tide

Desalination gateThe gate permits a small amount of seawater to enter desalination.

Solar desalinationA thin sheet of seawater travels through a series of solar stills, causing freshwater to collect on glass planes.

DockA f loating pier rises and falls with the tides.

Brine lift

Brine reservoirA public saltwater pool serves as reservoir before brine is distributed to the spray grid.

Brine distributionBrine is carried through existing village plumbing and fed through scaffolding to spray heads.

Existing

Solar Desalination

high tide

low tide

high tide

low tide




Brine lift



Existing

Solar Desalination

high tide

low tide

high tide

low tide




Brine lift



Existing

Solar Desalination

high tide

low tide

high tide

low tide




Brine lift



Existing

Solar Desalination

high tide

low tide

high tide

low tide




Brine lift



Existing

Solar Desalination

high tide

low tide

high tide

low tide




Brine lift



Existing

Solar Desalination

Brine Distribution

New Infrastructure

Village+1.5m rise

01

01

Brine is carried through existing village plumbing, and distributed

through scaffolds to the spray heads.

A public saltwater pool serves as a holding tank for

brine, which will be distributed into the spray grid later.

A thin sheet of water is evaporated by solar exposure. Freshwater collects in the stills. The

resultant high-saline brine is collected.

A tidal-powered gate permits a

limited amount of seawater to enter the system daily.

As the tides rise and fall, a cable-pulley system opens valves and locks throughout the

village, initiating desalination.

Brine Reservoir02

02

Solar Desalination03

03

Gate04

04

Kinetic Dock05

05

54


Elements / Below Sabkha City

Desalination's waste, high-salinity brine, is repurposed for the creation of an artificial salt-landscape above the Gulf's inundated

coastal towns. A simple system of tidal-, and solar-powered mechanisms allows desalination to occur without external power.

Scaffold Plumbing

Solar Desalination Arm

Brine Sprayer & Matrix

Scale = 1:250Scale = 1:500500 2000

1000250Scale = 1:250Scale = 1:500

500 2000

1000250

Preservation Bubble

Current-Pump

55

05:

SCEN

E 1:

SAB

KHA

CITY

Urban Core Sample

A new kind of urbanism grows above the Gulf's inundated coastal towns. A freshwater reservoir anchors each urban courtyard, a new type of street furniture that serves as a meeting point for

village life.56


Urban Courtyard

An urban courtyard is accommodated above the remains of each one of Al Wakrah's historical villas. Urban life is centered around spaces

for the production and storage of freshwater.

5757

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Urban Mechanisms

Sabkha City is animated by the many tidal-, and solar-powered mechanisms that adapt Al Wakrah to life with rising seas.

58

low t

ide

high

tide

Sabkha City Courtyard: Desalination ArmsSun/Mode Diagram

Tidally-activated Pedestrian Bridge

Tidally-activated Dock

58


Module System

Much of Sabkha City's infrastructure is composed of repurposed construction scaffolding, which provides a fine-grain, flexible

construction module.

59

Scaffolding Module3.4 x 3.6 x 3.6

Aggregation

MODULES

Unit Aggregation Unit Aggregation

Units (Module Aggregations)

59

05:

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E 1:

SAB

KHA

CITY

60

Year 2014 Villa courtyards are f illed with a site-cast concrete liner in anticipation of their inundation and destruction.

Interior spaces are cast in concrete to provide foundations for the salt landscape.

The negative form courtyard casts are pulled by the tide into the Gulf. The villages inundated ruins become a marine habitat.

Scaffolding is deployed throughout al Wakra as a framework for the growth of a new landscape.Construction mesh is stretched between the scaffolding to form spans between each tower.

Year 2075 As sea levels continue to rise, al Wakras historical buildings are washed away by the tides and the freed courtyard casts f loat out to sea.


The village expands into the Gulf.

Year 2077

The salt landscape continues to grow.

Year 2075

Year 21??Year 2125








Year 2077


Year 2075

Year 21??Year 2125








Year 2077


Year 2075

Year 21??Year 2125








Year 2077


Year 2075

Year 21??Year 2125








Year 2077


Year 2075

Year 21??Year 2125








Year 2077


Year 2075

Year 21??Year 2125

Year 0Courtyards are filled with a concrete

liner.

Landscape growth infrastructure is inserted.

Year 2

Courtyards become buoyant as tides rise.

Year 5

Salt landscape continues to develop.

Year 10

Courtyards sink, seed new landscape growth.

Year 15

Sabkha City grows above the inundated old Town.

Year 25

60


Linear Oasis

Desertification threatens over

one-third of the Earths population and affects over 40% of its land area. Over twelve million hectares of arable land is lost every year to desert

encroachment.

The Linear Oasis is a hybrid botanical-mechanical infrastructure that provides integrated solutions to the problems of desertification,

resource scarcity, and urban sprawl at a regional scale. It serves as a barrier to sandstorms, a self-sustaining source of water and food, and a limit to urban growth. After the construction of its most basic infrastructure, the Linear Oasis can passively collect water from the atmosphere, subsequently supporting local agriculture, live-work settlement, and transit

infrastructure.

Doha

Lusail

Al Dhakira

Dukhan

Proposed Doha Met

A

Doha

Lusail

Al Dhakira

Dukhan

Proposed Doha Met

B

Doha

Lusail

Al Dhakira

Dukhan

Proposed Doha Met

C

Transit Hub01

Transit hubs are located at the intersections of Linear Oasis and existing transit infrastructure, and the proposed GCC railway.

Linear Oasis is paired with an open air market in locations where the wall is an urban growth

barrier. Fresh produce from the Oasis is transported

here for sale.

Where Linear Oasis crosses water and other difficult terrain, it

serves as a springboard onto which new transit or power infrastructure

can be attached.

Market02

Bridge03

Doha

Al Wakra

Umm Said

Lusail

Al Dhakira

Al Ruwais

Dukhan

Projected Area of Urban Growth

Proposed GCC Railway

Proposed Doha Metro

01

02

03

61

05:

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LIN

EAR

OASI

S

Linear Oasis Phasing

Construction of the wall seeds the development of a new, liveable territory Northwest of Doha, Qatar. Irrigation and transit infrastructure ensure liveability while the wall itself defines an

urban growth boundary.62

Transit & Infrastructure+15 years Settlement

+25 years

Agriculture+5 years

Construction+1 year

+0 YearsConstruction

+5 YearsAgriculture

+10 YearsTransit

+15 YearsSettlement

62


Systems

Linear Oasis employs a system of water-collecting surfaces to harvest ambient moisture in the air, and directs the collected

water towards irrigation for agriculture and flora.

63

750mm

500mm

250mm

875mm

9-01x1:1

= e

lac

S

Water-collectingHydrophobic Panel

Panel-FrameConnection

Panel AggregationFloral Irrigation

63

Details

The panels aggregate to form a water collection surface that feeds an agricultural irrigation system.

Water-collectingHydrophobic Panel

Panel AggregationCorner Detail

Corner DetailSurface Panel Aggregation

05:

SCEN

E 2:

LIN

EAR

OASI

S

Tubular-steel Frame

Drought-resistant Planting

Water-collecting Panelized Surface

64


65

Rig-Tower: Doha, Qatar

The Rig-Tower becomes a new addition to the Doha skyline, constructed at blazing speedeven by Gulf standardsand at a lower cost than

any structure of its size.

65

05:

SCEN

E 3:

PET

RO-F

IT

66

Program

Rig Storage Refinery Pipeline

Agriculture

Amusement

Commute Reversal

Construction

Education

Mall

Skyscraper

Infrastructure

Petro-fit Matrix

Infrastructural possibilities are paired with programmatic opportunities as a first step toward imagining architectural futures

for a Post-Oil Gulf.

66


Rig Tower: Module + Assemblage

Platforms in the Gulf are designed to drill in relatively shallow waters, and to be self-propelled. Each of the rigs three pylons is retractable, allowing for the platform to move itself to a new

drilling location as needed.

0 m

500 m

1000 m

1500 m

Empire StateBuilding

Sears Tower Burj Khalifa Rig Tower

There are 120 offshore rigs in the Gulf.Together they measure 307,006 m2 (3,304,582 ft2) in area.

67

05:

SCEN

E 3:

PET

RO-F

IT

Rig Tower Detail

The High-Rise of Homes becomes reality in the Gulf as oil derricks are repurposed for a novel residential development project.

68

06: THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE

SECTION (THEATRE-MACHINE)

69

06 THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE

Architecture + Drama Collaborative Studioin cooperation with Theatre for a New Audience, New York

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA. TFANA, New York, NYProfessors Hal Hayes, Dick Block, and Peter Cooke, OAM

Fall 2012

I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage.

A man walks across an empty space whilst someone else

is watching him, and this is all that is needed for

an act of theatre to be engaged.

Peter Brook

The organizational diagram of the archetypal theatre building reserves the performance chamber as the sole intersection of public & private, theatre & patron, reality & illusion. The Theatre for a New Audience proposes an alternative diagram that instigates moments of synchronistic programmatic cross-pollination by rearranging the theatres constituent programmatic components according to hyper-

rationalized adjacencies and functional efficiencies.

70


Lobby & Roof Performance Garden

Interspatial relationships are established through curated visual and surface continuities. Spaces unfold one into the next.

7171

06:

THEA

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DIEN

CE

Orchestra Level Plan

The raised lobby volume consolidates the theatres social functions onto a single horizontal plane.

72

1 Cafe2 Lobby3 Patrons Lounge4 Production5 Technical6 Terrace / Garden7 Forecourt & Performance Space8 Auditorium (Thrust)

1

2

3

4

4

5

6

7

8

72


Performance Chamber

The performance chamber gathers an audience of 299 into an intimately scaled space. No seat is more than 30 from the center of the stage.

73

Performance Garden

Tension Grid / Production Space

Performance Chamber

N/S Corridor

Back of House

Transverse Section

The performance chamber is flanked on one

side by a corridor that enables free circulation while carefully preserving

public-private relationships. Space required above the chamber for technical needs sympathetically accommodates the

depth of the planted roof terrace.

73

06:

THEA

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Program Scheme

Programmatic juxtapositions drive the architectures formal-spatial manifestation. Functions often religiously separated are brought

into contact, creating charged and dynamic zones of activity.

74

Composite

Public

Production

Performers

Performance Garden

Tension Grid / Production Space

Performance Chamber

N/S Corridor

Back of House

74


In Context

The Theatre for a New Audience will be flanked by new, massive

residential towers in coming years, meanwhile it is a dynamic presence on Flatbush Avenue.

75

06:

THEA

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A NE

W AU

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Plan +015

Plan +034

Plan +056

Plan +096(Roof)

Performance Garden

Atrium

Upper Balcony Seating

Conference Room

Offices

Outdoor PerformanceTechnical Gallery

Outdoor Performance

Cafe

Production

Tickets

Lobby

Lobby

Technical

Terrace / Garden

76

07: AL WAKRAH VILLAGE HOUSINGSITE PLAN

77

07 AL WAKRAH VILLAGE HOUSING

Gulf Urbanism + Architecture Design Studioin collaboration with Qatar Museum Authority

Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, Doha, QRProfessors Rami el Samahy, Kelly Hutzell.

Spring 2012

A proposal for the integration of new housing above the Emirs reconstructed historical village in Al Wakrah, Qatar.

The existing architectural condition on site speaks to the villages historical social dynamics. The urban fabric is defined by the organic

aggregation of inwardly focused courtyard units. As a result, the village is an archipelago of introverted courtyard houses within an intricate network of circulation and social spaces, the sikka.

The proposal seeks to subvert this urban paradigm by introducing a second layer urbanism to the site. The integration of new housing above the villages historic fabric allows for gradations of public and private space to occur vertically, liberating the ground plane

as a continuous network of public spaces.

78

07: AL WAKRAH VILLAGE HOUSING

Site

The existing architectural condition is considered a material landscape that the project may augment and exploit. The new intervention generates a mat-urbanism that opens the possibility for new modes of interaction between users and their environment.

AL WAKRAH VILLAGE HOUSING SECTION

0m 2m 4m 6m 8m 10mScale 1:100

Roof Terrace

Main Level

Ground Level

AL WAKRAH VILLAGE HOUSING CIRCULATION

Interstitial Space

Public

Private

Housing Units and Corridors

Communal Spaces

Ground Plan

AL WAKRAH VILLAGE HOUSING COURTYARDS

Existing Buildings

CirculationCommunity Courtyard

Public Space

Parti

Housing

Circulation

Communal Space

Existing Structures

Ground Plan

Community Courtyard GardenPublicCorridor

Apartment Semi-PrivateTerrace

79

AL WAKRAH VILLAGE HOUSING BIRDS EYE

07:

AL W

AKRA

H VI

LLAG

E HO

USIN

G

Housing

Al Wakrah's existing condition is the result of a decades-long accretion of units following ad hoc logics. The new housing proposal contributes to this complex system by adding yet another layer.

1-Bedroom 2-Bedroom

Efficiency Studio

80


Staff Housing Hotel Family HousingStudent Housing

Communities

The housing project is itself comprised of four smaller communities, each set in relation to a public space, and each stitched together

by the historical village below.

81

Terraces: Diagram + Model / Perspective

Public spaces of nested scales and varying degrees of privacy are integrated throughout. At the terrace level, above the housing units, a continuous roof-scape allows for neighborly interaction.

07:

AL W

AKRA

H VI

LLAG

E HO

USIN

G

Roof Terrace

Main Level

Ground Level

AL WAKRAH VILLAGE HOUSING CIRCULATION

Interstitial Space

Public

Private

Housing Units

Private Gardens

Roof Terraces

Roof Terraces

Public Ground

82


Tectonic Scheme

A system of pre-cast structural elements pairs with a modular shading system to ensure rapid expansion and a multitude of shading

possibilities.

83

07:

AL W

AKRA

H VI

LLAG

E HO

USIN

G

Project Assembly

The schemes structural module allows for a delicate integration of new architectural features with the historical context, while

maximizing architectural variety.

Shading

Ground Plan

AL WAKRAH VILLAGE HOUSING STRUCTURE

Housing units

Structure

Existing buildings

Shading Components

Prefabricated Units

Prefabricated Frame

Extant Structures

Extant Plan

84

08: FRICK ENVIRONMENTAL CENTER

ENTRY

85

08 FRICK ENVIRONMENTAL CENTER

Landscape + Architecture StudioCarnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

Professors Christine Mondor, Jennifer GallagherFall 2011

At present, the south end of Frick Park is a tract of wetland under-utilized by the city of Pittsburgh and its inhabitants. Disconnected from the rest of the park by an expressway overpass,

the area has become a polluted landscape.

The project creates a series of programmed surfaces that provide a linkage between the more well-trafficked areas of Frick Park and

the forgotten portion to the south. The architecture augments the users access to, and understanding of, place by synthesizing spatial relationships between the architecture and its environs.

The environmental center is organized as a landscape transect. The architecture both responds to, and acts upon, the landscape along its length. The user is thus immersed in a dialogue that instills an appreciation of the ecological diversity inherent to the area. Educational spaces are dispersed along the buildings length, each focused on a specific ecological condition, and landscape space.

86


Plans

Building as transect: the environmental center extends itself across the site, instigating moments of dialogue with a range of

landscape ecologies.

87

08:

FRIC

K EN

VIRO

NMEN

TAL

CENT

ER

Perspective, Section

Architectures relationship to nature is interrogated in a number of spaces. Classrooms function as lenses onto specific landscape

ecologies, while courtyards envelop extant site features.

88


Skin Diagram / Perspective Section

The site is brought under, over, and through the center. The building's perforated copper screen functions as a trellis to

encourage flora growth.

Meadow Classroom

Forest Classroom

Wetlands Classroom

Nine Mile Run Classroom

89

Tectonic Scheme

The Environmental Center's lithic tectonics are a blank surface to be colored and manipulated by the environmental context. The enclosure system mediates the 'hard' structure's relationship to

environment.

Green RoofNative groundcover + perennials

Green RoofBoard-form concrete hardscapeIpe wood deck

Concrete slab

Glazing

Structural Frame

Performative skinPerforated copper

Forest Classroom

Wetlands Classroom

08:

FRIC

K EN

VIRO

NMEN

TAL

CENT

ER

90


Planting / Greenhouse

A demonstration greenhouse is situated at the south end of the site. Workshops and public programs are conducted here.

pennisetumfountain grass

fraxinus nigrablack ash

gymnocladus dioicuskentucky coffeetree

platanus acerifolialondon plane

populus grandidentatabigtooth aspen

acer saccharumsugar maple

pennisetumfountain grass

fraxinus nigrablack ash

gymnocladus dioicuskentucky coffeetree

platanus acerifolialondon plane

populus grandidentatabigtooth aspen

acer saccharumsugar maple

91

Acer saccharumSugar maple

Populus grandidentataBigtooth aspen

Gymnocladus dioicusKentucky coffeetree

Platanus acerifoliaLondon plane

Fraxinus nigraBlack ash

PennisetumFountain grass

91

08:

FRIC

K EN

VIRO

NMEN

TAL

CENT

ER

Site Diagrams

The site is read as a series of forces and contingencies that define

a diagram for the architectural

92

Site ConditionsForward Ave

Nine Mile Run

I376 Overpass

Forest

Wetlands

Meadow

Pedestrian

Vehicular

Ecology

Park Boundaries

Use

Movement

Parti

92


Section / Model

The building unfolds along a series of linear paths that cut through, over, and beneath the building.

Meadow Classroom Greenhouse Library Cafe

Forward Avenue

Nine Mile Run Stream

93

08:

FRIC

K EN

VIRO

NMEN

TAL

CENT

ER

Classroom

Each of the four classrooms functions as a lens focused onto a specific landscape zone and its attendant issues.

Lobby Meeting Room Art ParkNine Mile Run Creek

94

09: SACO LAKE BATHS + SCHOOL FOR DANCECALDARIUM

95

09 SACO LAKE BATHS + SCHOOL FOR DANCE

Material Tectonics Studio ProjectsCarnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

Professors Jeremy Ficca and Tom PriceSpring 2011

PROJECT 1: SACO LAKE BATHSThe Bath project investigates the role of the building envelope as mediator between environment and spatial experience. The user encounters a series of spaces in which the relationships between

self, architecture, and exterior condition are transformed.

The hikers first impression of the spa is of an excavated monolith,

an outcropping of rock in the forested hillside. A long bridge provides a singular pathway between natural and constructed environment, reinforcing the architectures role as experiential mediator. Upon entering, the user moves downward through the building, confronting a series of spatial episodes within a concrete structure loosely-bound by a gabion envelope. The user finds the

lowest level inundated with water, a grotto space in which one is alternately isolated from, and exposed to the environment. A pair of light wells illuminate the baths while simultaneously inviting

the climate into the lowest depths of the building.

96

09: SACO LAKE BATHS

Plans

A visit to the Baths involves a sequence of mediated experiences of the environment. Moving down the building towards the baths, the user's experience of their environment becomes increasingly

unmediated, visceral.

+074 +035

+055

97

09:

SACO

LAK

E BA

THS

Section / Corridor

Throughout, the gabion wall functions as a mediator between interior and exterior. A stone wall suddenly luminous, the gabions filter

sunlight into the complex.

+035

+055

Entry Changing/LockersFrigidarium Caldarium

98

99

09: SACO LAKE BATHS

Entry / Tepidarium

Upon entry an enormous aperture frames the user's view of the landscape beyond. In the tepid-bath, filtered sunlight reflects onto

cast-concrete walls hanging just above the surface of the water.

99

100

09:

SACO

LAK

E BA

THS

Axonometric / Model

The building's tectonic scheme carefully separates two systems: the superstructure, and enclosure. All of the surfaces kinaesthetically engaged by the user are in cast concrete, while the gabion wall,

generator of visual affect, is always just out of reach

Gabion wall, steel-framed

Structural steel bridge

Site-cast concrete

100

09: SCHOOL FOR DANCEURBAN SITUATION

101

09:

SCHO

OL F

OR D

ANCE

PROJECT 2: SCHOOL FOR DANCEThe project assembles a set of programs (too large for the site) in a vertical composition. A stable form contains a range of disparate programs, united by a zig-zagging circulation path that maximizes interaction between each. The architecture is rendered legible to the urban condition as the facade hides or reveals public and

private spaces.

The circulation element unites the schools three main functions (performance, education, and administration) by eliciting a different attitude toward each. The path circles around the performance space, allowing a range of perspectives. The circulation cuts diagonally through the school, creating a series of smaller spaces centered around a generous stair. At the highest level, the pathway brushes against the administrative area before letting onto a public roof terrace. Throughout the building, the integrity of the horizontal floor plate is interrogated as cuts and folds are introduced to

generate inter-spatial continuity and an architecture that prompts the engagement of the body.

102

09: SCHOOL FOR DANCE

Models / Tectonic Strategy

The buildings composition is conceptualized as an interplay of four autonomous systems whose collision and cooperation yields the

architectures final form.

103

Screen

Glazing

Structure

Concrete

103

09:

SCHO

OL F

OR D

ANCE

Plans

A serpentine circulation trajectory twists and unfolds through the building. Programs and vistas form a cinematic series of images

presented to the user.

104

Screen

Glazing

Structure

Concrete

+05

FLY GALLERY

+17

administration

+76

104

09: SCHOOL FOR DANCE

Perspective Section

The generic slab is cut and torqued at each level, opening unexpected vistas between distinct levels and programs.

105

Lobby Auditorium Flyloft

Gallery

Studios

Administration

Mixing Chamber

105

09:

SCHO

OL F

OR D

ANCE

Diagrams / Mixing Chamber

The collision of structure, circulation, and program create dynamic spaces between areas of activity.

106

circulation

Circulation ProgramStructure

administration

school

performanceTheater

School

Administration

structure

106

10: WHITE CUBE, GREEN MAZEINSTALLATION VIEWS

107

10 WHITE CUBE, GREEN MAZE: NEW ART LANDSCAPES

Heinz Architectural CenterCarnegie Museum of Art

Curatorial Intern, Pittsburgh, PAMay-July 2011

White Cube, Green Maze: New Art Landscapes presents, in six case studies, the emergence of a new museum typology characterized by the synthesis of architecture, landscape design, and art in situ.

The show presented the Olympic Sculpture Park by Weiss+Manfredi, USA; Raketenstation by Raimund Abraham at Stiftung Insel-Hombroich, Germany; Jardin Botanico de Culiacan, by Taller de Operaciones Ambientales and Tatiana Bilbao, Brazil; the Grand Traiano Art Complex by Topotek 1, HHF Architects, and Johnston Marklee, Italy; and the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, with work by Tadao Ando and SANAA, Japan. In addition to models and original drawings, the exhibition showcased original photographs created by architectural

photographer Iwan Baan.

Curatorial Internship, with Raymund Ryan, Curator of Architecture, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Provided design consultation and digital modeling expertise. The show travelled to

Yale School of Architecture after opening at Carnegie Museum.108

BIOGRAPHY

Phillip Denny (b. 1991) is a designer working in architecture, graphics, research, writing, editing, and curating. He expects to graduate in May 2014 with a B.Arch degree from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. Since 2013 he has been the Chief Editor of interpunct, a student-led journal for architecture theory and discourse. Phillip has worked at over,under in Boston, MA, where he developed the Future Cities project on urbanism in the Gulf. He has also worked at Carnegie Museum of Art, where he assisted in curating the White Cube, Green Maze: New Art Landscapes, and Maya Lin exhibitions. Most recently, Phillip was a researcher at the Columbia Laboratory for Architectural Broadcasting where he researched, wrote, and designed Mechanization of the Office, for

Volume a quarterly magazine on architecture founded by Ole Bouman, Rem Koolhaas, and Mark Wigley.

Phillip is currently developing an architecture thesis, Campus, which interrogates the contemporary universitys architectural,

urban, and institutional form.

Phillip lives in Pittsburgh and New York City.

Documents

Phillip Denny: Work 2009-2014