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SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE

FRAMING THE COLLECTIVE:

A RESILIENT NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM

AIA SF | 2050 HOUSING COMPETITION PROPOSAL

Home is the building block of community. Our modular approach is designed to be adaptable across the physical and human landscape of San Francisco. It aims to maximize cost-efficiency while also respecting existing communities and honoring individual needs.

Air, light, accessibility, warmth, security, familiarity — housing is the most personal of architecture. Yet a public initiative to build housing at scale may be challenged to keep the individual in sight. Our proposal uses modular components as a flexible design language, comprehensible to neighbors and newcomers alike, to suggest it is possible to plan large — for tomorrow — and think small — for the everyday — at the same time

San Francisco needs a smart and responsive system that can adapt to different neighborhoods, occupancy demands, and planned densities. This proposal offers a development system that leverages public infrastructure for collective housing. The city builds the orange-coded core while residents determine the demands of the flexible frame based on co-housing requirements of the community. Once complete the residents manage the core and common spaces, sharing core utilities, on demand, as a collective. This design satisfies accessible requirements for universal housing and standardizes parcel distribution.

The Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) frame with floor diaphragm and sheer wall infill panels creates a seismically open framework for equitable co-living. Streamlining the development, planning, and construction process into a simple kit of parts allows the city to be clear with budgets while being sensitive to neighbors. The system optimizes factory ready deployment; construction would take months, not years. The 4 bay, 6’ x 6’ x 10’ modulated structure is responsive and adaptive, ranging from a typical 3 story, 4 unit infill condo to a 5 story 15 unit collective corner building. This flexibility can maximize the diversity of residents through private, semi-private, and public spaces.

This modular construction system allows for a variety of equitable unit types. The typical unit is comprised of 9 basic 6’ x 6’ program modules; FOOD, BATH, and MANIFOLD are served directly by the public infrastructural spine while WORK, SLEEP. RELAX (green), and OPEN SPACE (blue) aggregate to balance indoor and outdoor living across the frame. Unit layouts range from 210 SF with 36 SF patio for efficiency studios to 582 SF with 36 SF of patio for 3 bedroom 4 and 5 resident layouts. 3 full floor layouts can account for units up to 1,296 SF for extended families.

The collective planning process allows the system to be socially adaptable for cross- generational needs. Each building may be slightly different to accommodate the needs of the inhabitants while building collective ownership for long term community development. This collective housing approach might even be suitable as a transitional housing model, giving those most in need a platform to call home.

2014

URBAN RISK LAB

in collaboration with Enrique Justicia

Infrastructure is the fabric of our urban environment. Water, air and fire have been captured and distributed through conduits and veins below the surface and above the trees. These utilities meet the human body at the scale of the street and designate a particular behavior. This set of drawings looks at the scale to which infrastructure exposes itself and the relationship to the human dimension as an investigation toward a new prototype for the next generation of utilities.

2014

Urban Risk Lab

SF Director

Pre-Hub is the deployable emergency response unit equipped with a kitchen, ham radio, water distribution, and power generation all interlocked into a truck size cube. Partially prototyped for the San Francisco Prototype festival.

 2013 MIT MASTERS THESIS

Inhabiting the Cycles of Maritime Obsolescence 

Redirecting the National Defense Reserve Fleet

Defense is in a state of obsolescence. The metrics of risk have changed from threat of military invasion to that of weather. Infrastructure is in a state of transition. The Maritime Administration’s National Defense Reserve Fleet (NDRF) has dwindled from 2,700 in 1946 to only 140 in 2013.  Now, along with closure of over 350 military installations and their subsequent infrastructures in the continental US, the 140 remaining sealift merchant vessels are deemed obsolete, no longer needed for global defense operations. This cycle of infrastructural obsolescence offers an opportunity to realign coastal sites of maritime service and production to serve within regional seaport operations to mitigate the inevitable threat of a catastrophic seismic and/or flood event. Waterfront development must now be coupled with appropriate metrics of defense and redundancy to project long term phasing for the future occupation of the post industrial estuary.

This thesis proposes a strategic redevelopment of obsolete maritime infrastructures that programs a regional sealift defense program for the urban edge of San Francisco Bay. It realigns one of 3 remaining sites of the NDRF to serve in a region where there is a 63% chance that an earthquake with magnitude of 6.7 or greater with occur in the next 30 years resulting in the loss of water, power, and shelter for  more than 27,000 buildings and 60,000 people. The project proposes reprogramming the remaining NRDF merchant vessels as floating water, power, and food utilities and the staging of strategic coastal infrastructures to produce an entirely ship powered waterfront, beyond the grid.  These proposed hybrid landscapes_leisure and emergency_ work together as a strategic urban model for phasing resilient seaports in highly vulnerable coastal regions, inverting the “hard”, land borne conduit infrastructures of power and water in favor of multiplied and thus redundant “soft” distributed waterborne infrastructures to deliver power, water, and food in order to deploy an emergency urbanism. 

2012 MIT

Bayview Hunters Point is the southeastern point of San Francisco. Its hidden geography and historical isolation poses a challenge to both invigorate the site while integrating the surrounding communities into a symbiotic relationship. Urban Hydration refers the urbanization of the estuary through a process of coupling programmatic potential with a resilient infrastructure that acts as a new hub for hydrological processing, supply, and transportation.

Urban hydration re-imagines and reprograms the hard infrastructure of San Francisco’s water systems. From greywater and blackwater treatment and stormwater runoff to the pressurized auxiliary water supply for fighting fire, this dual system both serves and protects. Integrating civic and social uses into the design and access of the infrastructure creates a clear relationship between the use of water and hazard.

Within a multi-hazard site that combines flooding, seismic, and ground contamination, the project proposes a development that is entirely above grade allowing the ground to be properly remediated for future use. The hovering infrastructure connects the existing neighborhoods to the site and strategically engages existing structures with a appropriate use. The branching network combines a water treatment facility, a cruise and ferry terminal, a waste incineration plant, a manufacturing hanger, and artist studio, to create a self sufficient zoning that stems from a spine, and not conventional centers. This continuous mega structure integrates the desired mixed use ration of transportation, residential, and creative and spaces in an effort to propose a new urban development that is both horizontal and vertical and simultaneously wet and dry. 

2011 MIT

This project was an adventure. It was my first studio working at an urban scale and its complexity was multiplied by the cultural and infrastructural chaos that is Caracas Venezuela. The project opened doors to new questions; the role of an architect; the economics of space; the politics of public; the meaning of a park, the mechanisms of modernism and the failures of master planning. Caracas is like a swelling relic where informal settlement consumes a post-capitalist city plan. The phases intermingle like concrete scars to be mended, bridged, or broken. 

This project takes the opportunity of time to couple projected realities. It begins by mapping the development in tandem with socio-political agendas of dictators, planners, and technology. It ends up using the identified modes of connectivity to develop a void through the phasing of land stewardship, mobility, and ecological rehabilitation. It proposes a network with existing parks, transportation corridors, institutions, and waterways, pulling on the origins of the land. The project attempts to sequence the void from the original flood plane to the contemporary vacant tarmack toward a varied and diverse territory of rich tropical urbanism. 

In the end, the project focuses on the primary phase of accessing the site; bridging and tunneling a river and a 10 lane highway with a proposed subway line. The systemic development surrounding the new subway station stems from the program of a convention center. The station becomes integrated as a park, recreation, exhibition, education, and commercial nodes as a generator for public diversity spanning from infrastructure to open space. 

The project is presented in collage, plans sections and diagrams. It left me with many questions that I continued to work on at a similar scale in the Fall semester and offered new grounds to focus why architecture happens, and grounding it to a social and political urban condition as infrastructure and culture. I am indebted to Franco Micucci for the long and deep dive of cultural sharing, patience, and enthusiasm and look forward to watching the realities of the project develope.

2011 MIT

This project re-imagines the new life of a collection of abandoned and obsolete spheroid steel water towers that have been harvested from across the United States. While harnessing the inherent structural performance of each form, the project operates at the conical base to produce a tilting array of grafted combinations and re-combinations at three specific scales for three specific functions: the cloud performance above ground, the cistern performance below ground, and the central public promenade floating in between.  The reflected condition of bulb clusters pushes the duality of highly defined seated theaters high above the street and highly transient fluid theaters that blur the boundaries between performer and audience underground.  These two mirrored horizontal zones provide a gradient of actor and observer in an episodic tour of space and time. This architecture of once pastoral infrastructural objects proposes a new typology in between building and network, an institution that can grow, adapt and change to imagine an alternative PERFORMAPLEX.

Partner:

Kelly Shaw

Instructor:

Ada Tolle and Guiseeppe Linguano | LOT-EK

MIT | OBJECTS and OPERATIONS SPRING 2012

MIT 2012

3_Ply was a personal investigation in analog, non-digital manufacturing and prototyping for a furniture course. Using a series of anatomical studies, a surface curve was established that could work for the legs, seat and back support for bent plywood construction. Tests proved a 3 inch bend radius with 3 layers of 1/8" birch plywood. Wetting, dry_bend and then glue_up resulted in an extremely strong, repeatable, and low waste design that is rooted in the ergonomics of sitting.

RIP Calvin Street Fire 7/25/2013

Designed for MIT 150th Anniversary and the Festibval for Arts Science and Technology (FAST) this 20' inflatable dodecahedron is constructed from aluminized nylon and filled with helium. I was sited within the Lobby 7, the main entry to MIT's campus from Massachusetts Avenue. The piece was installed for 6 days, changing shape with passing crowds and reflecting the expression of the festival. 

TEAM:

Moe Amaya

Juan Jofre

Kyle Barker

Nick Polansky

2011 MIT

Maintaining Contemporaneous Systems for the Future of LIncoln's New West Lab

Lincoln Lab faces the challenge of the unknown. Technological research initiatives are open ended react to global trends in communication, intelligence, energy, and security. This project proposes a systemic organization that structures multiple functions using a hierarchical kit of parts that act together to maximize the efficiency of project adaptation and the growth of the lab over time. 5 bands of infrastructure provide 4 bays of operation that can support all required conditioned environments. It uses the base logic of metabolist warehouse while enlisting a rule set for expansion for maintaining an interior environment conducive to cross discipline research and both formal and informal collaboration. The lab is highly specified, negotiating collaboration through spatial management allowing the operators to continuously engineer the facility for contemporaneous operations during an expanding lifecycle.

2011 MIT MEDIAL LAB

Lamintad interlocking ribs are draped with different woven textiles creating a compression and tension to sling your body across and around. The curved rails allow the chair to rock in all directions.

Lead Fabrication and Project Management for the exhibition of Liam O'Brien Jr's portfolio for the New York League's Young Architects prize 2011. The project challenge the ornate geometry and construction of the frame, negating mitered construction for solid form. It resulted in 71 unique frames and 140 unique corner conditions. The exhibition entitled "Its Different" gathered the work of 5 young designers and ran at the Parsons New School of Design main gallery from June-August 2011. The project was re-appropriated as a component LIam's solo exhibit at MIT's Keller gallery November 2012.

Team:

LIam O'Brien Jr.

Juan Jofre

Alan Lu

Iman S Fayyad

Majeda I AlMarzouqi

David Costanza

Aaron Willette

A specimen analysis, digitization, and physical translation of a sycamore seed or Neri Oxman's mediated matter design research workshop "Crafted By Nature" 2011 at MIT's media lab.

partner:

anthony divencenzi

published:

[AD} Architectural Design

Special Issue: Material Computation: Higher Integration in Morphogenetic Design

Volume 82, Issue 2, pages 88–95, March/April 2012

2010 MIT

This project is an attempt to re-conceptualize the purpose of a Design Institute in collaboration with Kenmore station and its impact as a cultural, technical, and scientific agent in the immediate urban context of Boston. It is intended to work like an organism. By working through the act of design, from conception, through review, technical experiment, execution, and finally publication, and archive. This loop of production drives the organization of the building through a hierarchy of mechanisms designed to move people, material, and data and multiple scales.

At the smallest scale, and idea is exchanged between two people. At the largest scale, an idea is exchanged between the institute and the city. By directly engaging the pulse of the city, this school for architecture can directly curate its curriculum to begin to identify and solve real problems.

The product of the school is centered around the production of the collective archive. Each partition is dedicated to cluster of personal work spaces and managed by a specialist. The specialist guides the group through SEARCH practices, mapping demographic, natural, ecological, economical, and political aspects of a particular issue until a clear problem is defined. At various phases of this process, peer, and public review is invited or imposed for proper feedback through the process for design intervention.

The facility of the school floats as a long bar above the market layer of the street and connects vertically through a series of large lift plates to the underground program of the library, archive and auditorium, the train platform, and the mechanical and material storage below. These large vertical lifts attempt to intervene with the horizontal program depending on where they are engaged. In the instance of the largest lift, a gallery can exist in the library, school, or roof park depending on the particular purpose of the event leaving in its absence a huge atrium for cross visual connections. At a smaller scale, a classroom can exist as a meeting space on the facility floor, as an isolated room for direct lecture, a public seminar space at the mezzanine level, or a kiosk at the roof park. At the smallest scale, an individual’s personal archive space raises and lowers from the floor allowing for a variety of work clusters to form, or in the extreme, to create a completely open hall.

Each mechanism carries a dual function. When they are all working in network, the building is intended to absorb and filter relevant information, engaging both internal and external review, then package and distribute the idea, product, or service to a broad reaching network through public transit routes. By participating with the cycles of already established by existing infrastructure, the school for architecture no longer exists in isolation but instead acts as an urban think tank for the public environment, taking pulse, if you will.

This presentation presents the project as a series of scenarios understanding that no one image can convey the entire process. Some are specific to the time it takes for a pedestrian to exit the train, a day in the life of a student, a year in the life of a project, a seasonal change in the market, or even a the projected life span of the building itself. This is not a heroic form, but instead a tightly packed machine that serves the city as a Design Institute that elicits participation. Through this creative and critical participation in the public, “architecture” education can once again align itself as an incubator of culture or a even a facility for environmental relief.

Harking back to Walter Gropius in a “Design and Industry” c. 1950 “If mechanization were an end in itself, it would be an unmitigated calamity, robbing life of half its fullness and a variety by stunting man and women into sub-human, robot-like automatons. But in the last resort mechanization can have only one object: to abolish the individual’s physical toil of providing himself with the necessities of existence in order that hand and brain may be set free for some higher order of activity.”

SPRING 2011 | MIT

INSTRUCTOR: 

Cristina Perreno

2010 MIT

Playback Theater is a building performance. Choreographing the visitor and the operator, the plan of the building weaves the stage and audience throughout. The sidewalk extends into the facade, playing back the movements of the visitor as a physical theater to the street. Inside, volumetric theaters are flanked by front of stage and back of stage as the staff and visitors circulate like a double helix up above the surrounding buildings. Glass is triangulated to swell and contract to the undulating pathways and seating areas forming an urban juke box.

2010 MIT

Featherfield is a design exercise that negotiates a pedestrian park and parking structure in a trapezoidal site in Fort Point of Boston. Deriving a geometric condition from plumage, this project develops a hierarchy of intersecting and overlapping grids. The integration of the grids allow for multiplied and scalar operations in a field condition. Small benches are formed as well as large structural folds that bridge high and low points for continuous circulation. The resulting pattern is thus system and a landscape that can adapt to multiple condition. 

2010 MIT

This project was conducted as a 3 week material and assembly investigation as a part of the first year curriculum at MIT's Master of Architecture program. We were challenged to find variable volumetric strength conditions derived from a  flat sheet material that could adapt to multiple environments. We ultimately extracted a repeatable module from an origami folding pattern developed by the artist Ron Resch. Here we installed it for the Open House exhibition showcasing a flat, arched, column, and floor condition all inherent in the logic of the system. The final installation took 12 hours of lazer cutting and 12 hours assembly. It was on display for 12 hours.

TEAM:

Juney Lee

Keven Lee

INSTRUCTORS:

Skylar Tibbits

Liam O'Brien Jr.

Ashley Shafer

QUEST CRITICS:

Mark Gaulthorpe

Neri Oxman

Joel Lamere

Sheila Kennedy

A mold a casting project that re-appropriates the archive of cellular phones for contemporary functions.

2006 CED

The urban landscape is evolving. New masses sprout up and grow in density. Zoning regulations preserve view corridors and access to daylight. This project maps the 3 dimension aspect of San Francisco real-estate based on the distance of the view. Inversely, the apertures turn inward to created reverse prosceniums for the public to view in, while the public views out. Theaters are suspended in cross access view corridors and are stitched together with a woven promenade into the elevated areas of the performance center.

UC Berkeley

2005 Arch 100A

Fully integrated hydronic structural monocoque with natural water filtering and cycling. Programs unfold around a continuous circulation that wrapps up the canyon and stretches out over the view to the bay. Sunshade louver skin shades and creates privacy to various public and private pools an baths.

Case Study House:

2005 Arch 100A

Maison Bordeaux

Rem Koolhas / OMA

France

1998

Orthographic drawing set and Analytical exploded axonometric of part to whole relationships.

AutoCAD 2D

2005 DIS Copenhagen

Cycle is a concept for an integrated plaza, parking stucture, transit hup, and bicycle kiosk. Inscribed within the landscape, the interior works as a landform that actively separates, pedestrian, bicycle, automobile, and bus traffic as an interchange where transportation types can change. A motorist to a cyclist. A commuter to a park goer. On one of Copenhagens 5 fingers, this would be a prototype hub for people entering and exiting the center of the city. In effect, it is an inhabitable intersection.

2005 DIS Copenhagen

Slip Medium is a concept for a building that can freeze and thaw through the seasons. The project was conceived in Denmark during the winter of 2005 and was used an entry into a student competition in Germany. The book that was produced tells the story as a narrative of creative process and cross-reference debate, animating a facade made of chain-male that collects ice and swells into an urban waterfall during winter, melting in spring, and shading summer sun with vine coverage in the summer. The lattice structure can be adapted to existing buildings or new construction.

2005 DIS Copenhagen

A woman sits down in the middle of the sculpture gallery in the Glyptotek. She sets her bag down on the neighboring chair, crosses a leg and retrieves her mobile phone. Silently, a message is transmitted, head down and disconnected. Is this an outlet of distraction or has the modern gallery  transformed into a multi-level experience? How can design interpret and include the tempting digital filter?

Art has been represented within the gallery as a static medium until the moving image was employed in 1923 on 16 mm film. Audio visual stimulation and mobile network capabilities have now turned a once closed forum into a multi-media platform for emerging artists. This project intends to confront the progressive art medium through an architectural exploration of an urban infill gallery.

How long is a temporary exhibition and how is the residue absorbed?

2005 

Denmark’s International Studies Program spring John

Instructor:

 Anderson and Regitza Hess