basecampZERO

Competition Proposal in collaboration with atr+d, NY, New York.    

New York City is undergoing a Cultural Transformation, investing heavily in initiatives that actively promote an environmentally smart and health conscious city; eliminating car lanes in-lieu of bike and pedestrian paths, populating the city with 1,000,000 trees, all but eliminating smoking in public places and addressing housing for one million people.

Our proposal interrogates the humanist, cultural, environmental and social conditions of human occupation by appropriating the space of the automobile.  UpLIft  thus liberates conditions of site and context in an effort to re-envision space of human occupation.

Our response re-appropriates existing car park structures with 'plug-n-play' units completely prefabricated, injection molded panels made from recycled materials. These panels are typically deployed taking advantage of solar, wind (passive cooling) and water collection opportunities.  For example, a south facing wall may be configured with solar panels as energy gained would be stored and equally distributed among the collective and roof panels provide opportunities for rain water collection for a grey water system.

Interior space is at a premium and as such maximization is paramount. Spaces are required to be multi-use;  bathrooms blend showers and sinks, bedrooms blend living and dining rooms. Internal services are run within wall/floor system and connected to the overall system.  The prefabricated pods are delivered  to the site, dropped off by truck, rolled onto a tray and jacked into place.... Finally plugged in and ready to be occupied.

Garrison, NY.  In collaboration with hMa.

Working as a design consultant to hMa, the client commissioned a 7,000 square foot house on a wooded site. The house is a second home for this client whose primary residence is a loft in lower Manhattan. The program includes a master bedroom suite pavilion; an entrance pavilion with two guest bedrooms and media room; and a third pavilion with living room, dining, and kitchen. Two stone walls are the main elements of the house, defining and separating the master bedroom suite from the entry area and marking the edge to the public spaces.

The house is experienced as a sequence of indoor and outdoor spaces organized around the stone walls. The open pavilions are designed as floating roofs over wood decks, connecting interior spaces to outdoor landscaped areas. Two experiential sequences intersect in the formal entry area of the house, in the guest wing.  The house includes a number of green features. The cladding is sustainably harvested cedar. The stone is from a local quarry, and some harvested from blasting on the site. All finishes including paint and floor finishes are low VOC. The landscaping is native species, with no artificial fertilizers or pesticides. The lighting is high efficiency fluorescent fixtures. The heat is from a high efficiency boiler system. Cooling is mostly natural ventilation. If needed, Air Conditioning is provided through small, high efficiency, local units.

Santa Monica, CA

Description to follow.

Milwaukee, WI

Located in Milwaukee's Historic Third Ward district, the Moct Bar and Restaurant inhabits a 1930's warehouse building.  The design strategy was to treat the new architectural elements as a “temporary exhibit,” occupying and in contrast to the original exposed brick, steel trusses, skylights, overhead cranes and garage doors retained as a marker of history.  The new insertions were seen as rotating displays of art, similar to those that now inhabit the multitude of galleries permeating the area. 

The new programmatic elements consist of a bar, furniture and a “floating” service program containing bathrooms, a stair and kitchen.   The bar, designed to reference a local iconic bridge and acting as a marker of time, houses a backdrop of theatrical scrim.  This scrim allows for projections or illumination, thus revealing and concealing the activity occurring on either side.  The bar is inserted to break the space into three layers of intimacy: public, semi-public and private.  Patrons can choose to see (private) or be seen (public) or somewhere in-between (semi-public) depending on where they choose to sit.   The furniture, consisting of benches and tables made from stock 4”x4” pine planks, was custom designed and evokes the nearby railroad tracks which once played a huge part in the transportation of local goods in and out of the Third Ward.  The “bridge” backdrop is in reference to the Hoan Bridge, once an iconic symbol of downtown Milwaukee.  This icon, clearly seen when the garage doors are open, has since been replaced by Santiago Calatrava’s addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Mays Landing, New Jersey

Magic Sports & Health Complex is a state-of-the-art, indoor/outdoor facility offering a host of sports-related activities and events focusing on 5 primary areas; baseball, women’s sports, special populations, medical services, and sports career training.

We were asked to do a master plan for the site as well as preliminary design for all the buildings that comprise the complex.  Of particular note is a 315,000 sq. ft. sports building which houses TV/Radio sports broadcasting, food and medical services, sports fields and corporate offices.

Another requirement was extended stay and play. We devised a “village” comprised of various programs and housing “clusters,” buildings that contain sleeping quarters for up to 20 teams.  During the summer baseball season, each week new teams inhabit the clusters which are designed to promote interaction in centralized interior open rooms and interior courtyards. These clusters are sited amongst an outdoor swimming facility, basketball courts, a food court, game rooms and various other programs.

The overall site contains baseball, softball, soccer and Lacrosse fields, a 200 meter indoor track and field facility, a 5,000 seat baseball stadium, a 2,000 seat soccer stadium and various special population fields and parking.  It is our goal that all buildings and site use green building technology throughout, including solar and geothermal energy.  

New York, New York

Information to follow.

Brooklyn, NY.  In collaboration with PKSB.

The Community Center’s design for the New York City Housing Authoritycombines the need for physical security with visual permeability. The concept for the building was derived from the chain-link fencing that surrounds the site and defines the different activities taking place within the park. In the new facility, this idea was translated into a series of protected indoor and outdoor spaces that can accommodate a greater range of recreational activities and community services.

To reduce the building’s bulk, its mass was splintered into a series of small pavilions that extend from a large, central multi-purpose space. Organized by function, the pavilions spill out into the park and define outdoor courtyards. Large semi-transparent walls provide visual connections between interior and exterior. Inside, operable screens divide the center into smaller areas so that simultaneous functions taking place can be glimpsed through the screens. Transparent and open, the center acts as a beacon that illuminates the park at night, making it easier to patrol.

The facility includes a gym, a dance studio, a stage for theatre and dance, a music recording studio, art studios, classrooms, computer facilities, a movie projection screen, a commercial kitchen, and a variety of multi-purpose spaces that can be used by neighborhood children, youth, and adults. Its construction was intended to dovetail with the renovation of the Williamsburg Houses, a 24-building residential complex that dates from the 1930s that the center sits within.

Studio Critic:  Pratt Institute - Undergraduate Dormitory, Brooklyn, NY

The work presented is a sample of that produced by students in a 3rd Year housing studio I teach at Pratt Institute.    As described below, students are immediately confronted with the question of public space, public/private adjacencies, organizational strategies, procession and the integration of structural and geothermal exchange systems. Natural daylighting and solar orientation are also critical driving forces behind the pedagogy.

Students are asked to interrogate the edge/boundary between the city and the private dwelling.   Facades become a highly explored and examined component of the studio.   Each student must develop a strategy and respond with drawings/diagrams of materiality and constructability.  In addition, new technology such as the software program "ladybug" is currently being introduced to force each student to understand solar gain/loss as a means to enhance/alter their designs to be responsive and responsible to the environment. 

Studio Outline:

At the heart of this studio is the social-psychological construct of "liminality” meaning a threshold as presented by Cultural anthropologist Victor Turner.  It is a term that describes an in-between time when what was, is no longer, and what will be, is not yet.  It is a time rich with ambiguity, uncertainty, indeterminacy and the possibility of creative fomentation.  It is a place where one can investigate the ever dissolving line between public and private, a place where cross programming presents endless opportunities for dwelling in the collective realm.  It is in this “realm of pure possibility” where the familiar may be stripped of its certitude and conventional economics and politics transcended.  It is a place that increasingly calls us to experience the “both/and” rather than “either/or” and from that place of ambiguity and uncertainty to find a sense of home in the in-between.  It is a period of transition.

The studio will look at public space as the mediator of this change, thoroughly examining a multitude of densities and programs.  We will strip the familiar; in program, space and materiality.  We will explore spaces that impact the quality of living and the societal interaction of the inhabitants in fundamental ways, those that house great potential of multiple becoming, of in-betweeness.  We will look at the material and the immaterial, pushing the boundaries by envisioning them in new contexts, studying the possibilities of re-conversion and technological transference.  We will explore sustainability, not only from an environmental standpoint but also from the context of economic means and social perceptions.

The limen became the leitmotif (lit-mo-tef) in Turner's theoretical discourse, denoting a complexity of interwoven processes versatile in application. Responsible for consolidating 'liminality' in social and cultural theory, he defined it as this: 'a futile chaos, a storehouse of possibilities, not a random assemblage but a striving for new forms and structures, a gestation process.  It is in these areas, the in-between, the liminal, where we will find the greatest opportunities of forming new notions of dwelling in the collective realm.

New York, NY.   In collaboration with hMa Architects.

Working as a consultant to hMa, the Infinity Chapel for the Tenth Church of Christ, Scientist is a 4,000 square foot cubic sanctuary where squares, golden section rectangles, and spheres surround worshippers with sacred geometries. The Chapel’s south, north and west walls curve inward, shaping the Chapel, and suggesting the presence of a sphere. The curved west wall is punctured by a large square opening to bring light to the sanctuary. The Chapel brings together nature, geometry and light to make a sacred space.

Visitors enter through a glass façade into the Christian Science Reading Room. The path east to west is calibrated by five light monitors that mark the space, from the Reading Room to the Chapel stage. Three monitors in the Reading Room appear as white objects floating in the space, and project light to the ceiling and the Sunday School below. A fourth monitor marks the rear edge of the Chapel seating; a fifth sits on the Chapel stage. Monitors appear as skylights in the Sunday School below and connect the lower level to the Chapel and Reading Room above.

Nature and light are presented within minimalist white glass and concrete spaces through large pieces of old-growth Ash: the Reading Room storefront window areas; the Librarian’s Desk; two Benches for members who take the weekly collections; and the Chapel podium. Chapel benches are oak, and parts of the Reading Room casework are also oak. Wood objects, mixed with light monitors that frame light, distribute nature and light through the space.

Brooklyn, NY.  In collaboration with PKSB.

Forming the eastern edge to the Institute’s five-block-long urban campus in a transitional area outside the gated tree-filled yard, the dormitory separates a row of landmark faculty town houses from a parking lot.  The long, low bar-like west facade faces the street with a two-story brick band, penetrated with small square windows and capped with an aluminum canopy to emphasize its domestic scale. It then steps back where it is sheathed with an aluminum and glass curtain wall like those on nearby industrial buildings and rises three more stories.  On the east side, the bar divides into three five-story pavilions with rooms oriented to the courtyards created between them.

Winning an invited competition for a new dormitory specifically for architecture and design students, this building provides living, social, and work space for 256 freshmen.  Students enter the building through a porte-cochere into a corridor lined by transparent, semi-private lounges.  Views into these glass-enclosed areas, half of which are equipped as studios for art and architecture, disclose the activity within and promote discussion and participation on works in progress. Because these double-height spaces are each shared between two floors, they offer opportunities for students to meet and collaborate.

An unusual addition to the dormitory’s program is the large gallery above the main entrance in the prow of the building, where students can curate and mount exhibits or host artists in residence, tying themselves back into the campus and the larger art world.

Studio Critic:  Pratt Institute - Undergraduate Dormitory, Brooklyn, NY

The work presented is a sample of that produced by students in a 3rd Year housing studio I teach at Pratt Institute.    As described below, students are immediately confronted with the question of public space, public/private adjacencies, organizational strategies, procession and the integration of structural and geothermal exchange systems. Natural daylighting and solar orientation are also critical driving forces behind the pedagogy.

Students are asked to interrogate the edge/boundary between the city and the private dwelling.   Facades become a highly explored and examined component of the studio.   Each student must develop a strategy and respond with drawings/diagrams of materiality and constructability.  In addition, new technology such as the software program "ladybug" is currently being introduced to force each student to understand solar gain/loss as a means to enhance/alter their designs to be responsive and responsible to the environment. 

New York, NY.

The client charge to combine two apartments into one totaling 3,000sf  lead to a diagram outlining a sequence of rooms or “cellular spaces” organized along a central spine connecting public entry to public living. This space is created as a series of overlapping rooms, operating as singular and multiple spaces simultaneously.  This overlapping area includes the kitchen, dining, living and game rooms.  For privacy, the game room can be isolated from the kitchen and living room by sliding doors and is convertible to a bedroom for guests.

The cellular spaces are the private bedrooms which incorporate built-in closets and furniture to enhance the clean appearance and unobstructed connections to the outside. The entire floor of the apartment is a wide plank French Oak, stained dark to offset the storage cabinets, typically in white. The master bedroom consists of two walls, one of white glass concealing closets and the master bathroom, the other of blackened steel, concealing closets and TV.  Each bedroom includes its own bathroom and is finished to reflect the personality of each child and parents. 

Competition Proposal, Queens, NY.  In collaboration with hMa.

Working as a design consultant to hMa, the proposal was a first phase competition finalist for the renovation of the Queens Museum of Art.  The strategy proposed three new design elements: bridges which mark a series of proscenia; a new perimeter intelligent programmable skin; and a new roof with a louvered system for admitting reflected north light into the main galleries.  These three elements create a new Museum with themes from popular culture.

Bridges:  The building entry is a bridge with a ground floor bookstore and café, and an upstairs “Cineplex” of movie theatres.  The next two bridges to the north are interior galleries with light monitors that make a loop for viewing art. One gallery widens and becomes an outdoor band shell for music and theater.

Programmable Skin:  A perimeter screen of perforated metal channels wraps the building and is an intelligent programmable skin that projects events that are happening at the Museum. 

Roof:  A new translucent roof with north facing louvered skylights brings natural light into the existing large-scale interior galleries and fills these spaces with ambient natural light.

Studio Critic:  Pratt Institute - Undergraduate Dormitory

Brooklyn, NY and Cooper Square, NYC

The work presented is a sample of that produced by students in a 3rd Year housing studio I teach at Pratt Institute.    As described below, students are immediately confronted with the question of public space, public/private adjacencies, organizational strategies, procession and the integration of structural and geothermal exchange systems. Natural daylighting and solar orientation are also critical driving forces behind the pedagogy.

Students are asked to interrogate the edge/boundary between the city and the private dwelling.   Facades become a highly explored and examined component of the studio.   Each student must develop a strategy and respond with drawings/diagrams of materiality and constructability.  In addition, new technology such as the software program "ladybug" is currently being introduced to force each student to understand solar gain/loss as a means to enhance/alter their designs to be responsive and responsible to the environment. 

Competition Proposal, Shiga, Japan.

We envisioned the museum as an extension of the landscape, a “back and forth” discourse between nature and art, one constantly informing the other.  This interaction, a device that allows us to better understand the “other” is a theme central to Tomihiro Hoshino’s watercolors and poems.  The museum thus takes on two characteristics, one dedicated to the artist, the other using nature as a unifying element.  We propose that the continuous landscape and a new museum become one entity, an “artscape.”

Our response was based on understanding the process of Tomihiro’s paintings and poems are as important as the finished work of art itself.  We categorized the program into three types of spaces; introverted, extroverted and hybrid.   Introverted spaces do not require natural light, are set into the earth and whose activity is contemplative.  Extroverted spaces are light filled and located at the cliff edge, consisting of reading rooms, research rooms and study areas. Hybrid spaces are courtyards inserted throughout the museum and grounds, allowing patrons to simultaneously view nature and art, the inspiration of Tomihiro’s work. 

Another organizational strategy, circulation, is based on three distinct yet inter-related movements.  The first unbound and free, is in response to an assemblage of fragmented activities.  The second, relating to the introverted spaces, is linear yet still free.  The third, relating to the visually transparent extroverted programs, is circuitous and flowing. The introverted, extroverted and hybrid spaces are located on the same level to facilitate ease of movement for the physically disabled.

Milwaukee, WI.

We were approached by the client initially to renovate the existing church.  Upon reviewing the facilities, we were able to convince the committee and congregation to renovate the adjacent gymnasium as well to develop a new office wing and Chapel.  This new Chapel was to serve as a gathering space for pre/post church functions, daily prayer and baptisms. The final solution was an “L” shaped scheme, the mirror of the existing church and gymnasium.  This approach allowed a garden courtyard to be placed where a concrete parking lot once stood.

The two new pavilions relocate the main entrance of the church to the gap between the renovated gym and new Chapel wing.  In addition, the removal of a solid gym wall and replacing it with a transparent partition suggested the possibility of a “time warp.”  As the elderly ascend or descend the new handicapped accessible passageway, it suggests a moment of reflection.  For the elderly, a reflection into the past, a time long ago.   For the kids, a time far away into the future.  Another type of reflection occurs in the garden, a cleansing, as one moves through the series of spaces that allows one to clear ones thoughts prior to entering into a space of silence.  The garden also acts as a “space of remembrance” where parishioners are able to dedicate trees, benches and markers in honor and remembrance of loved ones. 

Completing the courtyard is an office wing and priests private contemplative space.  The office wing, made of grey stone, is in stark contrast to the white concrete chapel.

New York, NY, in Collaboration with PKSB.    

We were asked to investigate two options: the first a recladding of an existing building, the second, a new building for the Art and Engineering school.  For the recladding project, we used a new energy efficient double skin.  This new “veil” was a Stainless Steel  mesh rainscreen, the density of apertures responding to the program within; large scale public spaces and circulation zones more porous, labs and classrooms less porous.  During the day, the façade is meant to capture and reflect the active street life of cooper square; at night, the actions of the buildings inhabitants would be revealed, thus illuminate the area.

For the new Art and Engineering building, we examined the curriculum of each school as a point of departure.   The engineering school centered around three basic values: “technological and scientific competence, balance between theory and practice, and consideration of the societal and holistic aspects of engineering.”  The School of Arts curriculum was based on “each student being educated not only in specific disciplines, but also in the complex interrelationships of all the visual vocabularies.”

Our response located all circulation and public spaces facing Cooper Park, an act of “interchange,” not only within the two schools but also the surrounding context.  We envisioned the building’s lobby and the life of the street becoming one, a seamless exchange of people; a “glass box theater.” This public zone is sandwiched between an exterior skin, representing the Engineering School, resembling a metallurgic reaction, flowing and densifying as one moves up the building.   The interior skin, a random pattern of color, a “quilt”, represents the School of Art. 

Charlottesville, VA.  In collaboration with PKSB.

The proposal addresses a major renovation of Rouss Hall and the adjoining Robertson Hall.  The University’s mission   was to create a new 156,000-square-foot academic complex adjacent to Thomas Jefferson's historic Lawn.

Our strategy was to create a central courtyard lined by a circulation core and linking the two existing buildings on the periphery with computer labs, study, class and conference rooms. Within the resultant courtyard we inserted a “snail” to house a food pavilion and a new entrance to the lower levels.  This amorphic shape was in sharp contrast to the new wings and the very ordered and classical composition of the existing buildings. 

Rather than completely enclose the roof or cover the courtyard, we proposed a “fixed canopy” whose solid membranes consisted of photovoltaic panels providing energy to the new school of commerce.  This “canopy” created a comfortable, shaded outdoor space to study beneath.  To mediate between the historic lawn, Rouse Hall and lower Robertson Hall, a terraced “illuminated stepscape” was proposed to provide scrolling information in the individual artificial risers between treads.  Seen holistically, they create larger images and would be also used for telecasting school wide lectures.

New York, NY

basecampZERO has been working with a New York City commercial real estate developer to create layouts for potential clients.   As a point of departure, we discuss with the client their programmatic requirements regarding number of executive offices, open office space, kitchen, game, lounge, and other spatial requirements.  From this, we prepare a minimum of three options for the potential client  to help them visualize possibilities.  All projects start with just core and shell.   Presented here are several projects, all with varying square foot allocations, different clients and various locations.

Wise, VA.  In collaboration with PKSB.

The Education and Development Center, 42,000 sq. ft. multipurpose classroom and laboratory building for Clinch Valley College in western Appalachian Virginia, connects two existing buildings and provides handicapped access to all three.  The Education center plays a key role in the transformation of a divided upper and lower campus into a single, cohesive composition.

The design process began with the development of an overall site strategy and campus plan.  The plan makes the new building the first step in unifying the upper campus - a 50' plateau where the existing main academic buildings are situated. 

The building's placement creates an outdoor circulation zone that runs down a gentle, terraced slope from the north parking lot (the de facto main campus entry), along the new building's inner length on the ridge of a steep hill and down towards the "ceremonial" main campus entry.  Inner facades and entries are scaled and detailed to respond to the courtyard that the building forms with its neighbors.  The outer facade operates at a larger scale, relating to the more distant lower campus and the mountain landscape.

The building is organized to support interaction among the many departments that share it.  Each Department is stacked vertically, arranged around a vertical circulation node.  Spatial overlap and transparency at these points allow views from one department to another.  A glass enclosure moves through the building and culminates in a double-height student lounge with views out over the entire campus and the mountains beyond.

Description To Follow