Woodshop section added to site with current and past projects on display. Contact for more information
A Taxonomy of MAKING /
Assorted documentation of MAKING in the shop from 09-Present
ACADEMIC WIP (‘15-20)
MISC (‘10-Present)
New Entry Added! /
New entry added to GSD category! My Graduate School thesis titled, “Inside-Out: An Investigation of the Assembly as an Equitable Mediator in the Wake of Climate Change Disruption.” The full entry can be accessed here, while the abstract is included below:
This thesis seeks to explore the Assembly as a viable implementor, educator and generator of adaptive climate-change strategies. Through inverting the perimeter wall model of western diplomatic architecture, introducing time as a medium of design, and questioning the antagonistic relationship of water to the built environment, this thesis proposes an approach where siloization gives way to international cooperation. These mechanisms can inform a less obscured form of diplomatic action that can be recontextualized within a global framework of mitigative action.
In a country with limited support and dwindling resources, can a building seek to leverage a country’s soft power as cultural, political and foreign capital to a complex issue? Can a platform for engagement be established with the government to institutionalize sweeping change? Will establishing an educational framework help to craft a more resilient model in the wake of an uncertain future?
In low-lying countries like Bangladesh drought, flooding, frequent cyclonic activity, and the escalating influx of people (often considered climate refugees’ ) toward larger cities like Dhaka, are becoming certain realities. Within the capital of Bangladesh, new models of public assembly can serve as exemplars in rethinking the dialectic between colonial imperial approaches, or local reactionary maladaptive practices.
Situated near the seat of Democracy in developing Bangladesh, on Louis Kahn’s National Parliament campus in Dhaka, the proposal will draw upon reciprocal motivations to establish a new model. Inside-out serves as the proving ground to consider how an architecture that is more open to the public and the environment might arm developing countries with models to address the long-term effects of climate change.
Restaurants in '20 /
“People are time bound entities transiting from cradle to grave. Any “solved problem” that involves human beings solves a problem whose parameters must change through time.”
Living in Cambridge, Massachusetts during the COVID Pandemic, I would say my spouse and I have largely been lucky (in terms of health and caseloads in the area). In other words, our lives have largely gone unimpeded. However, one thing we have noticed on our routine walks have been the seemingly high number of restaurant closures. From our own observations, the shutdown has seemingly reclassified restaurants into three different Darwinian categories: the adaptors (hastily constructed makeshift outdoor covered or uncovered seating, sometimes in the right-of-way), the ignorers (indoor seating only, most likely due to a restriction of outdoor space, with little to no natural ventilation) and the extinct (shuttered since the beginning of lockdown, doomed never to reopen for one reason or another). Of the latter category, this constitutes about 1/5 of all restaurants and bars in Massachusetts, or about 3,600 spaces (per CBS Boston).
This loss will inevitably have far reaching consequences on the economic and social fabric of neighborhoods, not just in MA, but all across the country. More importantly this reveals how inflexible some of these spaces were devised from their conception, justifiably never assuming something like this would happen yet revealing a serious shortcoming.
If made me think of an old project I had done in 2005 in Undergraduate school for a high-end restaurant in Chicago’s loop, situated on the ground floor of the John B. and Alice R. Sharp Building, an early 20th century Holabird and Roche designed building at the corner of N Wabash and E Monroe St. The space is now (was?) a student center for my alma mater, but the proposal I worked on had envisioned a series of stationary translucent partitions that delineated seating arrangements for a modern commercial restaurant. There wasn’t anything particularly awe inspiring about the scheme, but I did reflect on, if this had been constructed years ago, how it would have fallen into the extinct category of restaurants now pervading the restaurant industry in metropolitan cities. Could something have been done to keep the business operating during these trying times?
The original parti was fairly conducive to a flexible spatial arrangement and the façade had previously been built out with a simpatico curtain wall system so there was no need to take a historical renovation approach. I began to imagine these original partitions with multiple functions, able to slide and rotate to accommodate different configurations all while adhering to CDC guidelines (maintaining 6 ft of distance between parties, among others). Incorporate pivoting curtain walls on the exterior to allow a continuous stream of fresh air into the space, and perhaps an argument could be made for more informed designs for commercial restaurant spaces in the near future. The following are some of these explorations
As a personal note, it is simultaneously horrifying and satisfying to revisit old work, re-interpreting it under a more informed understanding. It reflects the old aphorism that design is never done, but it also holds opportunity for contextually specific conundrums.
O2 in '20 /
Continuing the thread of redoing some existing work in the past to resolve some elements, this was a project in 2015 for a competition titled The Oxygen Home, a mentally rehabilitative health facility for people afflicted with lung cancer in Krakow, Poland. In the spirit of Maggie Centres, prominent alternative healthcare facilities in the UK, the Oxygen home, “is a place of community for lung cancer patients and their families to feel whole again.”
Some edits include resolutions to structural logic, incorporation of entourage and materiality, and adjustments to ADA accessibility. The full proposal can be found here.
Timber in '20 /
This month I revisited an old competition entry for Timber in the City in 2013 titled Against the Grain. I redid the plans to reflect a more “fleshed-out” representation because I always thought the older ones lacked definition. New program was added and a little life was injected into the proposal.
I enjoyed this exercise and hope to revisit other projects to do the same.
Color versions were uploaded to +Other Projects TIM section
Storm King Labor Day /
This Labor Day we visited the Storm King Art Center during a beautiful sunny afternoon. Our group moved pretty quickly through the site so I tried doing 3-4 second sketches of each work we came across to varying degrees of success. Hopefully, over time, I can get better at representing 1 second attempts of a place - exceptionally hard by any standard but worth working toward a goal.
Here’s a list of the work represented, in order:
Mark di Suvero b. 1933 Mon Pere, Mon Pere 1973-75, Pyramidian, 1987-98, and E=MC^2 1996-97
Magdalena Abakanowicz b. 1930-2017 Sarcophagi in Glass Houses 1989
Ronald Bladen b. 1918-1988 Untitled (Three Elements), 1965 (Fabricated 1966-67). The Burnished and painted aluminum had an almost ethereal quality to it.
Maya Lin b. 1959 Storm King Wavefield 2007-08
Richard Serra b. 1939 Schunnemunk Fork 1990-91. My favorite piece there due to its ability to be immaterial, three dimensional, and textured all at different moments
Andy Goldsworthy b. 1956 Storm King Wall 1997-98 “The work was built, in some parts, stone-by-stone upon the remnants of an old farm wall that Goldsworthy found in the woods overlooking Moodna Creek, at Storm King’s eastern boundary…The British team of wallers built the wall by placing one stone on top of another while chipping and shaping each one to fit snugly; no concrete was used in stacking the wall’s 1,579 tons of fieldstone.”
Kenneth Snelson b 1927 Free Ride Home 1974. Or as our friend called it, “a nightmare camping tent”
Menashe Kadishman b. 1932 Suspended 1977
Robert Grosveror b. 1937 Untitled 1970 “we thought it was a bridge :( “
This was uploaded to Sketches & Artwork under +Other Projects section
Methuselah in ‘17 /
Possibly Methuselah?
Looking back at some older artwork this past week and came across a watercolor drawing of our time visiting the Inyo National Forest circa August 2017. It was here that we visited the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in search of the presumed oldest tree in the world, Methuselah. Said to be around 4,852 years old, the exact location is a secret protected by the United States Forest Service (vandals help to ensure that no one learns the true location). After prodding the Ranger incessantly, she estimated the approximate location to us and I sketched what we assumed was it.
This was uploaded, in addition to some other drawings in the area, to the Sketches & Artwork page under + Other Projects.
"Nature's Cathedral" /
Almost about a year ago to date, we went to a wedding for our dear friends in Seattle. The ceremony was on Bainbridge Island, a remote island West of Seattle in a beautiful and remote state park. On the big day, one of our friends took a fantastic photo looking upwards to a grove of Douglas Fir at the base of the altar. It was such a great photo because it was so reminiscent of the incredible time we all shared.
As a wedding present to the new couple, I painted a large scale acrylic painting (25x46) of the very scene, in a floating oak frame made in my school’s woodshop. I appreciate the time it took to get the detail right because it was a great meditation on that incredible time that feels so long ago now
WIP
Old and New Furniture /
Getting nostalgic for furniture design…
Read More