USC Architecture Xpo
THE INDUSTRIAL SHED IS TRANSFORMED INTO TO A DOMESTIC PLAYGROUND FOR CHILDREN. THIS PROJECT EXPLORES PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE THROUGH INTERSECTING
THE SUBURBAN CIRCUMSTANCE WITH THE PREEXISTING SHED. FURTHERMORE, IT USES THE STREET GRID AS A PROGRAMMATIC TOOL AND CREATES A CITYSCAPE WITHIN. THE PROJECT AIMS TO TIE IN THE LEARNING SPACES WITH IT’S SITU.
This project studies the idea of Playful tension in the application of program relationship to materiality. The use of material layering is implemented to create new unique dynamic spaces where kids can circulate within the school and have a different experience in each overall Sawtooth. This application of Playful Tension continues to develop by the use of scaling to further breakdown the norm of a rigid classroom program space to a more open playful teaching environment with a connection to the outside world.
An investigation on how spatial sequences and journeys can interact and collide into one another, therefore forming a series of spatial arguments through the confrontation of different forms. My proposal for a kindergarten further dissects how seriality and argumentation may trigger eloquent or jarring interactions, in a school no longer of binary functionality.
This project explores the nature of a shipping container through play. The containers are stacked, transformed, and utilized in unique ways that create the kindergarten program. Overlaying grid systems define the placement of organic and industrial elements to create high contrast of materials within the kindergarten.
This project emphasizes a lack of distinction between programmatic spaces and aims to break down traditional means of boundary. This interconnected space is produced through the play between unrestricted circular forms in rising ground planes with the rectilinear structural system. The organisation of the spaces provides an environment where different activities can go on concurrently, delineating sociality and dynamism in what was once a restrictive shed space. The program is reimagined as additions to a whole rather than distinct separated boxes.
The project seeks to blur the boundaries between inside and outside. The existing bow truss shed offers a structural and material palette exploring biomimicry and reinvention. Open to the air and surrounding context, the building extends, invites and embraces the living environment producing a new architecture for children.
Inspired by the set of language developed while studying a multi-leveled single classroom for P2, P3 developed this same idea while building a kindergarten for 60 students, using the entire shed building. The final design aimed towards the creative education and entertainment of the children.
Site address: 12210 Nebraska avenue, Los Angeles, 90025
This project sought to transform conventional educational spaces into an innovative, unconstrained field that seeks to stimulate the intellect of young students. It encourages and suggest circulation and program through methods of materiality with the interest of its occupants in mind. By adding playful curvilinear objects to a strictly modular shed, a typical education space is altered to create a more lively experience.
The Bow Truss warehouse is transformed into a cross-programatic building featuring a nursery and a library. In the mornings, the building is a stack of light filled boxes containing children, while in afternoon it is a silent library filled with readers, students, and the general community. Winding paths of works spaces lead students towards their tree house classrooms. These tower over the library program and shower light from above through the rhythmic arrangement of beams. Cold pre-existing concrete is combined with warm tones of wood to add a variety of color and textures to the surfaces while contrasting lightness and heaviness.
The project seeks to facilitate and encourage physical activity and creativity in the classroom environment. Studies have determined that a successful
co-mingling of these two factors fosters development in early childhood. By intertwining the geometries of the existing shed’s structural trusses with a rippling circular nature-inspired pattern, the primary programmatic elements of a kindergarten are established. The simultaneity of these systems encourage constant movement through learning spaces while enabling specificity and zones for various classroom activities.
Through a fluid movement of spaces, this reconsidered Sawtooth Shed incorporates a multilevel kindergarten that transitions from an opaque, heavy structure for formal learning to a translucent structure for gatherings and playful activities.
The movement from the structural encapsulation at the top to the highly exposed open space at the bottom generates a continuous circulation throughout the kindergarten all connected through an angular central atrium.
The project explores this thesis by examining the qualities of materials, access to light, exposure and concealment; which in turn results in a communication between programs, levels and materiality.