Category: ARCH 202B: Architectural Design II

The word ‘atlas’ has two meanings in this project’s context: an atlas is a book of maps which relates to the educational purpose of the school, and Atlas is a character from Greek mythology who holds up the weight of the sky. This project took an early interest in developing a weighty tectonic system: the megalithic concrete base supports a light steel and glass second floor, which in turn supports a massive, thick roof system. The concrete first floor engages the school’s idea of safety and security – it is a shelter where students should not feel exposed to danger. The second floor treats a school as a place to observe the outside world – everything is visible from there. Finally, the roof joins the two together; it is a heavy, imposing presence, designed to shelter those within from the outside world, but it has a high degree of transparency, so students can observe without feeling exposed.

Through this adaptive re-use project, I wanted to create an environment that encourages movement through the interlocking of walls and openings, separating spaces while still allowing for fluid movement. I introduced this concept of movement into the form itself, manipulating the existing roof angles, creating different wall-to-roof conditions throughout the building and individual programs. Located in a closed parking-lot like site, the original building was just surrounded by asphalt and concrete. Thus I decided to introduce large, open courtyards, exposed to the exterior, introducing some greenery, creating a warmer space overall for the kindergarten.

In this project, two material systems clash and combine to create a kindergarten with unique spatial experiences in each classroom.The first material system is a steel grid extrapolated from the roof structure of the existing shed. This system is the primary basis for classroom organization and frames the second-floor space intended for playful activity. The second material system is comprised of of large-scale wood volumes that disrupt the rigid steel grid at non-orthogonal angles. These occupiable volumes serve as the bathrooms, offices, and a circulation corridor. While program is clearly denoted by the contrast in material, there are moments of intersection between the two systems, such as the skylights and window frames, that suggest interdependence between spaces as well as the exterior site.

The main idea for this project is to apply wall rotation and intersection onto the plan with a grid-aligned-truss system placed on top of the rotated walls. This emphasizes the idea of rotation and intersection with two different systems (truss and wall) working in contrasting direction, but still function together to ensure that the structures are all well supported. At ground level, the floor becomes a gradual slope that transitions into the landscape, blending the classroom space with the courtyard to represent the removal of the threshold between exterior and interior. The articulation in the floor is minimal in order to contrast with the visual complexity in the roof structure. Thus, this simple spatial continuity with the shared interior courtyard provides children an opportunity to be inside the classroom while experiencing nature simultaneously, enriching their wandering experience inside the room.

A kindergarten design revolving around the original Triple Pitch Shed. Based on my ideas of Project 2 and the precedent of the Open Air School, my design is on the concept of two different buildings within one building. The left side is similar to the open air school where the classrooms are made mostly of glass and allow students to learn in the sunlight. The right side is more dense and similar to my Project 2, with the offices, staff rooms and restrooms. The new design keeps aspects of the old Triple Pitch while including new aspects of my project 2 ideas and the Open Air School.

I created my LA schoolhouse by analyzing the underlying grids of the precedents and using the components as modules. With public gathering space on the ground floor and the learning spaces elevated above with exposed steel structures, the eccentric gridding of the project frames a variety of experiential niches.

In my investigations of the Petal House, I examined Eric Owen Moss’s dysfunctional and erratic functionalism, particularly in instances of competing vertical circulation. In particular, I was drawn to the Petal House’s semi-functional “fire-escape” ladder as a center-piece of investigation. In my classroom, I decided to incorporate styles of erratic functionality through the bow truss and ladder forms to create overlapping forms of vertical circulation.

After these two projects, I concluded that learning spaces for young children could be invigorated by assigning alternative functionality to vertical circulation in order to create disparity between journey and destination.

To bring this idea into a fully realized schoolhouse, I optimized use of secondary “shortcut” routes of circulation (such as ladders) in tangent to primary pathways and corridors to occasionally introduce moments of hijacking. By doing this, emphasis is placed on journey instead of destination, making the school energetic and exciting in its navigation for students.

This semester’s work investigates the relationship between raw and cooked materiality. Raw refers to a material in its most natural state, or seemingly unprepared for use, and cooked materials are those that are prepared for a specific function and purpose. I utilize varying composites of wooden framing, a material I define as raw, as a means to indicate the function of programs in the Kindergarten, a space clad with cooked materials such as CMU and red brick. Framing becomes a means of separation, volumes, and transforms into an indication of space. Framing in itself becomes a new way of articulating space, as it is not just something that is utilized for cladding: it transforms into something that can be interpreted in a multitude of ways, having varying scales, proportions, and combinations. This facilitates the communication between program and material and becomes a new way of interpreting the use of wood as a means to separate spatial function.

This project challenges the nature of the relationship between explicit and implicit. More specifically, this project highlights the conversation that can be seen between the two and the exterior and interior of a space. As the hidden implicit structure and geometries are excavated, they are unfolded and exposed to become explicit. The seemingly more regular implicit condition is the metric for a cracking, shifting and revealing a new, more open condition.

This project is exploring the reconsideration of existing sheds by either degrading the ordinary to useless or elevating it to extraordinary through different material techniques. The removable and additive quality, the replacing and exposing of materials, and the translation of modules help understand how the material systems work together to create something of a completely different category.