allen pierce's architecture portfolio

Three Years Ago I was finishing up my undergraduate thesis in philosophy, asking questions about the nature of systems and languages. My love of thought, study and understanding had grown deep but I was frustrated by my discipline’s lack of physicality and craved work that would engage both my senses and my intellect.My liberal arts education taught me to think critically and to come at problems in unconventional ways, but I enjoy making, working with my hands, drawing, designing, too. I wanted to devote time to those less-objective acts that rely as much on instinct and process-discovery as on sytematics. I had never been exposed to architecture as a discipline but I understood vaguely the power that it had to unite these two desires. I made a leap.

The following pages document a cross-section of my yet-young foray into architecture and design. Throughout, I have attempted to approach my work as a process, not as a series of ends. I have sought to develop an ever-deepening, ever-sharpening understanding of my own work and that of others through first-hand experiences with materials, techniques, spaces, and mindsets and through reflections on and systematizations of those moments of contact. I have attempted to mediate the concepts of the library and the actions of the workshop through the linework of the design studio – to be rigorous, exacting and systematic, but with feeling.

What follows traces the many paths of my explorations. It is a process document; assembling it has given me another layer of understanding, as I hope it will, you. Most of the distinct projects that follow have already become historical documents, no longer at the front of my thinking. They have been instruments in the development of concepts and skills; testing grounds for the ideas that keep me up at night and drive me to new places. Still, the marks left upon these tools by the tasks to which they were set provide a rich record of thought and action, a register of my short history with design and the vectors on which I find myself today.

In three years, opinions have changed; structures, broken; some design problems have yet-far failed to find resolutions. But each new exploration, each turn in the path has taught me something new about design and making. This is what I hope to bring forward to you.

PORTFOLIO | PROCESS

Allen [email protected]

02

SPACE | PLACE | WORLD

The Conception and Documentation of Spaces, Places and Worlds that never find full resolution is the backbone of architectural education. These distinct “projects”, never meant for full construction, manifest in drawings, models, installations and perspectival renderings. Each stems from a single directive, a program or a set of pedagogical goals, but together they exhibit a set of interests, common questions and ways of approaching design.

Because, in many ways, the school studio limits design to the schematic, it becomes the testing ground for ideas above actions. Still, the reqirement remains that these fictional worlds respond to real-world needs, desires and limitations. This tension can be a productive one - forcing the wildest of ideas to find viable form and allowing one to concieve of rich new perspectives on tired programs, typlopgies and materials. A large part of my journey has been learning to walk this line; to be simultaneously earnest and fanciful.

02

(May 2013)

A Magnet School for Creative Young People in a major city is faced with the dual respon-sibilities of connecting its small student body to their community and of providing a safe and healthy environment in which students can learn, grow and create. The introspective cloisters at the heart of the school provide a kind of retreat so often necessary for self-re-flection and aloof play, while the sizable public arts and library buildings that bracket them meet the city at its edges and invite the popu-lous in to participate in student work. Mean-while, every space - the cloister, the cafeteria, the library, the roof - is liberated for creative activity. All of this is accomplished while con-tributing to the character and quality of the surrounding streets of urbanism-challenged Midtown Atlanta.

Atlanta High School for the Arts

04 05

The Structure Fills the Site, completing the formerly-broken street walls along North and Peachtree. All three facades rise three stories, in keeping with most of the surrounding buildings. Rather than provide open space at the periphery, as is common in Atlanta, the building adopts a “mat” typology providing open spaces at dispersed points within its plan.

Unlike some mat buildings, each of these open spaces has a different volume and phenomenal quality than the others while functioning within the same logic, establishing difference without heirarchy and providing variation in the daily experiences of students and teachers.

06

The First Floor engages Juniper Street to the east side of the site with the public arts portion of the program. Here, visitors enter into a water garden via a street front gateway and into the common lobby for the art gallery and the recital hall.

At the site’s center, a two-lane driveway cuts through the mass of the building from North to South providing a sheltered bus drop off near central vertical circulation and access to parking for faculty and staff.

At the west end of the site, a loading dock, mechanical spaces, locker rooms and the triple-heght gymnasium are sunken well below the level of Peachtree Street to minimize their programatic profile and their distortion of the squat massing.

07

The Main Level is built around four class-room cloisters at center where students learn and create in an indoor-outdoor en-vironment. The southern cloisters lend outdoor lawn and garden spaces to the ac-ademic classrooms while the northern ones form paved courts into which the perform-ing and visual arts studios might flow.

These are bracketed in from the east by the cafeteria and student center and from the west by the administrative center and gym which form a “front door” onto Peachtree Street. Administrators’ offices ring a shady outdoor space that serves as both a vesti-bule off of the street and an open and vari-ably programmable outdoor classroom.

08

The Roof Level is largely occupied by lawns and gardens in which students might sketch, practice an instrument or take in the sun in contrast to the shady cloisters below. At this level the south and west sides of the building create a thin wall, of program, shielding the interior. The library rings the upward expan-sion of the outdoor classroom space, below, while a balcony overlooking the gym provides a space for student recreation during free periods and after school.

Unlike the green roofs of the side-lit central program, the roofs above the art gallery, caf-eteria and gym are made up of precast con-crete light scoops which fill them with soft north light.

09

1021’

995’

1036’

1039’

Most of the Structure is built of In Situ Concrete, using flat slabs in most classroom-sized spans, and significantly deep beams where extended columnless soffits are desired, particularly around cloisters.

Sliding gates, doors and handrails which are not integral to the concrete structure are handled with weathering steel on the street edges and hardwood within the building.

Thermal Insulation and moisture protection is achieved in vertical planes via a system of cast-in-place rigid insulation panels which can achieve the neccesary R-values while maintaining clean interior and exterior brut faces - all in a single pour. Horizontal indoor surfaces recieve an insulating underlay along with a concrete topping.

Systems are caried around most of the central complexin the space between the charred cedar drop ceilings of classrooms and offices and the structural slab. Forced air supply and return transgresses this space at the edges of the drop ceilings.

At the roof level, a unitized green roof system supports an ecosystem based around local tall and knee-high grasses which support native bird and insect species and tollerate periodic foot traffic. In the rainy season, excess water from the roof-lawn is channeled to cisterns in the basement for use in greywater applications.

12

1021’

1036’

1051’

13

MODEL PHOTOS!

14 15

(December 2012)

The Architecture of Public Bathing simultaneously celebrates the diversity of bodies and the unity of a community. Through Japanese, Finnish, and Turk-ish bathing traditions, and with modest, locally con-scious design, the Georgia State Bathhouse rejoices in and ritualizes both the corpus and the corpora of the University while attending to the practical needs of each.

The Fairlie Poplar Historic District comprises the Southwest quadrant of Atlanta’s downtown. The small block size, rotated street grid + preservation status have kept buildings low and dense.

The Site occupies a significant corner in the district at Luckie and Forsyth streets. One block from Marcel Breuer’s Central Library and across the street from the Equitable building, the design draws on the mass and tectonic clarity of each landmark project.

Georgia State University Bath House

18 19

The Scheme is organized by four heavy bear-ing walls that layer back from Luckie, mea-suring space and passage. At the street, the first wall lifts to welcome the city. Here, a large concrete column acts as both signpost and landmark gathering point.

Moving to the interior, visitors transgress each succeeding wall, first arriving in a dou-ble-height public foyer - an indoor extension of the urban - and then ascending a staircase which slips along the party wall.

22

The Central Program begins on the second floor where guests are greeted in a smaller lobby overlooking the central space before being directed to increasingly private func-tions beyond.

Returning to the front façade, a large pub-lic living room looks back down into the city. It serves as an event space for the Georgia State community - a place for gathering which is one step further removed from the public, below and beyond.

23

The Baths begin on the third floor with the entries to the men’s and women’s Hammams and Saunas. Each type of bath includes its own changing + washing facilities as called for by their respective traditions.

The Central Circulation Space again looks down on the public living room. From the corner balcony, speeches could be delivered to those below, while glassed-in window box-es along one edge form ideal resting spots for bath-goers.

24

The Upper Level brings daylight and open sky down into the heavy building. In the Hammams, light leaks into the high tepidarii through bentwood screens and pours down into the open-roofed water gardens where patrons might relax and play chess after their bath cycle.

As part of the Sento sequence, bathers can enjoy the mineral baths amongst greenery in the Japanese Gardens. All the while, privacy from the street and surrounding buildings is maintained.

25

The Spanning Structure is formed of a series of pre-fabricated concrete beams which rest on corbels at each bearing wall. Some units are inverted, allowing for a smooth soffit on the porch, a sprung floor in the dance studios, underfloor steam-paths in the Hammams and a water channel in their gardens. The beam’s arch form is echoed in the Hammam ceiling-screen, the lobby’s great bearing arch and it’s clock face.

26

Served and Service Spaces occupy alternately thick or thin bands of program between the bearing walls. The major program spaces - the lobby and living room, the main baths - operate within the larger bands where they often take on expansive proportions, opening to the floor above. Smaller spaces within the thin band can accommodate drop-ceilings to carry services and control scale. In many cases, large and small spaces connect sectionally, promoting acoustic and visual togetherness without direct planimetric access.

27

(December 2013)

When The Center for Chemical Evolution decided to build it’s own campus after years of using university facilities, it’s directors saw the opportunity to further the center’s efforts to unite the arts and sciences by giving art initiatives a place in their new home. This im-pulse led to the a dispersed field of structures accom-modating labs and studios under a common roof. The scheme incorporates programing for housing, work spaces, public galleries and performance venues, and community outreach.

The 40 Acre Campus, which slopes dramatically from east to west, is the former estate of the Asa Candler Jr. family. The original house sits on a high point near Briarcliff Road, the site’s western edge and only entry point. The lowest, western edge of the site is a state protected wetland - a tributary of Peachtree Creek.

At Present, the site is occupied by the ruins of the for-mer Georgia State Mental Hospital - a series of heavy concrete pavilions projected down upon the hilly site in a perfect golden spiral. The hospital’s design both con-ceptually and literally held its residents in check through a variety of panoptic mechanisms like radial connect-ing tunnels and long, straight corridors, empowering the one looking out at the expense of the many at the periphery. The CCE master plan I developed attempts to reverse this center-out plan by creating a new set of empty centers, encouraging the new tenants to look in to a common heart and look around at one another as equals.

The Center For Chemical Evolution

30 31

32

A More Detailed Scheme for the central “work” cluster illustrates the way in which a field of pavilions dispersed around the detention pond re-sponds to each of the center’s needs, providing labs, studios, galleries, a lecture theater and a cafe, each structure enclosing a specific program. Circulation between program nodes brings the various members of the arts-and-sciences collective into constant contact with one another and with the wide variety of projects that take place under the shared roof.

Pavilions sink into the slope of the hill at points of minimal impact, keeping the “cutting” of the site to a minimum in contrast with the existing hospital. Each pavilion is surrounded by a two-layered screen illustrated in greater detail here. This screen’s layers part to create variable po-rosities - allowing views into program areas by curious co-workers while keeping private spaces shielded. The effect is furthered at a distance: opacity dissipates over great distances even as the view itself is abstracted, lending a feeling of connection between workers in distant pavilions without compromising privacy.

33

34

All of the Pavilions are United under a common canopy which allows for comfortable, semi-conditioned passage between them. The columns of the canopy mimic the scale and patterning of the surrounding forest which will eventually come to its edges. Meanwhile, the canopy surface itself continues the human-scaled, datum of the sheltering forest canopy through and over the program areas.

The canopy perimeter was defined by the shading and weather-coverage needs of the pavilions in concert with iterative studies of actual forest edge geometries. Column centers were produced by a Grasshopper script within this boundary and outside of the pavilion’s volumes. The size of the columns themselves were established by a further Grasshopper script which calculated their caliber based on their area-load within tree-like upper and lower limits.

At the Scale of the Individual Pavilions there is a persistent tripartite interdependence between lab, studio and office/conference nodes. To-gether, each cluster creates a sub-community of artists and scientists, sheltering one exploration by each in the hope that both would come to reflect understandings of one another.

Labs align with the topography to create low boxes with wide view sheds, tucking student desks and prep spaces back against the hill. Studios extend further into the ground and reach much higher for big, light-filled spaces. Screens wrap off of the skin to define zones internal to the program.

35

(April 2012)

When A Deeply Other-oriented Quaker Community builds a new worship and fellowship center, a major portion of the program space is devoted to improving the lives of their new neighbors. In Atlanta’s Reynoldstown, once described as a food desert, the pressing need for fresh food meant that the Quaker meeting house would include a garden, a food-storage warehouse and a community kitchen in which classes on heathy eating and healthy living could be shared by the affluent congregation and their poorer neighbors. This sense of welcome translates into a green passage through the large residential block, bringing neighbors and congregants into regular contact among the grains and the fruit trees of the common space.

The structures for worship and sunday school are , like the Quakers, simple and hard-working. Comprised of a series of linked shed-roof structures, the design allows the community, itself to participate in the construction and maintenance of the building. The roofs typologically mediate the transition through the block from brick warehouses to single story bungalows and shotguns in the south.

The siteplan does not immediately admit of a heirarchy, but rather blends with the scale of the surrounding houses. The structures are, however, united by a wooden rain screen which mimmics the clapboard siding that dominates the neighborhood while allowing a great deal of light into interior spaces.

Quaker Meeting House + Community Kitchen

38

Formally Minimal Typologically Mediating Constructionally Simple

39

(October 2012)

This Formal Puzzle asked participants to create a siteless, programless building with a square footprint from 12 volumes of variable square footage - four large, four medium and four small. The volumes had to provide vertical circulation entirely with their surfaces, shaping one another at their zero-point meetings.

My Scheme makes use of switch-back ramps to generate great height gains over short distances. Beginning and ending the path with the largest volumes, the mediums and smalls are allowed to act on and shape their bigger counterparts from the middle of the building.

Movement on the ramp always occurrs in the short term at 90º to the actual direction of travel; even as a volume means to carry visitors from north to south, they traverse the entire width of the building from east to west. As movement twists and volumes shift in the small and medium spaces, the largest spaces are shaped into cave- or cathedral-like spaces. Thresholds assume a human proportion and always occur against a wall which continues from volume to volume precisely where overhead clearance allows for them.

Packing Puzzle

46 47

(April 2013)

In The Waiting Room, visitors are confronted with a scene from the everyday - a sitting room, a piece of a house perhaps not unlike the one they grew up in. Pressing their hand into a book they discover that the clocks on the wall measure time in more than seconds; their heartbeats count out the passage of life.

Set construction drew upon normative American building techniques (framing, siding, drywalling, wallpapering)to create something both disarmingly ubiquitous and slightly queer. The “L” shaped wall captured a distinct rectangle of space and kept itself upright with a minimum of material. Clock and sensor interactions were regulated by an Arduino microcomputer concealed within the wall and programmed through a removable section of siding. All power supply and signal exchange needs were rerouted through the six pins of two standard electrical sockets, cleanly connecting the electronics within the wall to the lamp and book and allowing for easy disconnection and transport while maintaining the space’s altogether everyday, non-technical appearance.

“Waiting Room”

50 51

52

OBJECT

52

The Design and Production of Small-Scale Objects + Assemblies provides me with platform for material and process research that the normal graduate studio, which focuses on schematic design, does not. In the shop, details are worked out not only on paper but in reality; tollerances must be considered, allowances made. The unforgivability of some common architectural materials becomes readily apparent, as do the limitations of tools and processes.

Furthermore, the manifestation-in-the-world of a designed piece, a rare experience for students, allows for reflection on the phenomena of true experience. I immediately notice the ways in which real light acts on a model in significantly different ways than the best ray-trace software, or the way that the textures and colors of materials produce something entirely divorced from the matte Rhinceros or Solid Works model I begin with.

As experience returns to the drawing board and begins to shape the way I design, I am beginning to find ways to manipulate materials and tool processes to produce geometries and effects I would not, before have arrived at. My experience making allows me to anticipate many of the problems that come up in translating scheme to reality and to quickly provide creative solutions to them.

(October 2013)

This Door at first appears to be a part of the normative wall-screen system in which it sits but gives way organically with human contact. A counterweight system regulates the emer-gence of the parabolic from the linear-vertical and returns the door to plane when it is re-leased. Brass details note the location of the handle and line the top and bottom of each fin.

This system was developed in conjunction with the CCE Art + Science Center Project wherein it was used to catch and alter daylight from dif-ferent compass points.

Physical prototyping is ongoing in collaboration with Georgia Tech’s Digital Fabrication Lab.

Parabolic Door

54

Hinge 1.5” = 1’

1/8” Sheet Steel Disc: 4” ID, 6” OD

A

Welded to Pipe

4” Steel Pipe: 1/4” Wall

1/8” Teflon Low-Friction Disc

1/4” Teflon Low-Friction Disc, Toothed

1”x6”x4’ Treated Plank, Pine

14 ga. Brass Sheet, Inset to Flush

Handle 1.5” = 1’

1” Teflon Low-Friction Sleeve

Radiused for Grip

B

A B C

Plan 1.5” = 1’

55

4.0"

3.5"

4.0"

3.5"

(December 2013)

The Panel System Exercise challenged stu-dents to develop a three-unit system of vary-ing materials and its mounting system while demonstrating proficiency with virtually all of the tools in the Digital Fabrication Lab includ-ing traditional power tools like the planer, join-er and table saw and a variety of digital tools including the 5-axis router, water jet, cnc hot-wire foam cutter, and thermoformed. Materi-als included hard- and softwood, ABS plastic, plate steel and concrete. The software pack-ages employed include SolidWorks, OMAX and AlphaCAM.

Panel System

56

4.0"

3.5"

4.0"

3.5"

4.0"

3.5"

4.0"

3.5"

57

58

1.25"

1.6

87"

4.437" R 0.1"

1.5"

1.0

"

3.0"

6.13"

1.44" 1.69"

1.0

" 0

.5"

0.3

75"

1.0"

0.3

125"

0.3

43"

59

R0.1

625

4.337"

R0.1"

3

(February 2014)

The Monastery Tables make up a parametric family of frames that facilitate the conversion of recovered pieces of redwood monastery doors into coffee and side tables. The structure is entirely of cold-bent sections of rebar joined in four places with threaded rebar clamps, drawing upon the technologies of reinforced concrete construction. It both reflects the simple beauty of the heavy, smooth slabs of hardwood and contrasts in material + visual weight and warmth allowing the wood to stand forth while retaining a sense of belonging and togetherness.

Monastery Tables

60 61

2nd Place, Region(March 2013)

As a team we were challenged to develop a new CMU geometry which could be produced with the same technology and at similar speeds to standard blocks. The units had to be function within normal masonry construction paradigms and successfully engage (proportionally and aesthetically)with one another when combined to form a built whole.

The result is a new cinderblock family in which the geometries of the unit accommodate assembly at angles other than 90º. Cuts and notches deal with the resultant ledges which might catch water and deteriorate. The functionally derived geometry generates a variety of formal patterns as blocks find different alignments with one another.

The blocks retain the structural advantages of standard CMUs by encorporating space for vertical reinforcing bar and grout. 1/4 scale plaster casts were made from molds similar to those used for conventional blocks to demonstrate the manufacturing viability of the design.

Designed and executed in collaboration with Eli Damircheli and Logan Tuura.

NCMA Concrete Block Design Competition

62

7 5/8”

7 5/8” 7 5/8”

1’ -3 5/8”2 1/4” 2 1/4”3 3/16” 3 3/16”4 13/16”

7 5/8”1”3 3/16”

1’ -3 5/8”

3 3/16”

4 1/16”

63

Flitch Plate Truss(November 2012)

A Softwood Truss joined at nodes by plasma cut steel flitch plates, the design evokes the profile of the predicted moment graph for a center load. In final testing the structure failed in tension along a set of bolt holes; it was bearing just under a ton.

Designed and executed in collaboration with Bunny Tucker and Tom Cramblitt.

64 65

(March 2012)

A Simple Pratt Truss designed to carry a spread load. Constructed from extruded aluminum angles with steel pop-rivets. The bridge ultimately failed when shear at a central connection tore the head off of a rivet.

Designed and executed in collaboration with James Van Horn and Jim Boyer.

Aluminum Rail Truss

66

(February 2013)

Representing a moment-frame tower, this wooden structure uses through mortise and tenon joints to mock up a rigid lateral load resistance system. All parts were modified from stock elements found in Home Depot’s millwork bins.

Designed and executed in collaboration with Bunny Tucker and Jennifer Ingram.

Moment Frame Tower

67

68

TEXT

68

I Spent the First Four Years of my higher education in the text-heavy disciplines of philosophy and English literature. Initially, writing and spoken word allowed me a more familiar route into design: I could appreciate Loos and Kahn and Rossi by reading their books, first, then looking at their buildings. As time went on and I adopted sketch and diagram as a sort of “second language”, writing provided me with an opportunity to step outside of design and reflect more purely on my own work and that of others without being further bogged down in the design of graphic analyses as many of my classmates have been.

Plain-language writing allows me to hone my designs to a finer point; to clarify systems, validate arguments, express unvisualized desires in ways that graphic thinking can often gloss over (enough strokes in a sketch and a line begins to look straight, whether it is or isn’t). Words have also allowed me access to nuance and detail that cannot really manifest in a “dumb” diagram early in a design. It is in these circumstances that I am most thankful for writing; here, so early in my career, my writing fronts concerns and desires that have not yet found form. Writing allows these thoughts to find physicality in another way and to deepen, even if only as the questions I am left with at last.

Blurred LinesReinvestigating the Design Possibilites of Architecturalized Furniture and Furniturized Architecture in Contemporary Housing.

(April 2014)

Blurred Lines, my Master’s thesis, seeks to reopen dis-cussion of the scale and interrelation of architecture and furniture, traditionally conceived. It traces the recent his-tory of furniture and architectural making from the high-point of the “built-in” through the manufacturing age, questioning the corresponding stratification of our imme-diate built environment into building, infill and objects. En-gaging modernist and contemporary criticism, it explores a return to unified building in which the architecture might well become the furniture and vice-versa, erasing built hi-erarchy and asynchronicity.

The paper describes lessons learned from modern mas-ters of the discipline from Adolf Loos to Nader Tehrani and attempts to identify key formal, spatial and constructional considerations in the successful reintegration and “blur-ring” of this line between built scales. All of this comes to bear in the establishment of design experiments to be carried out in studio, testing the possibilities and viability of the paper’s theoretical models.

70

Mass Light SilenceA Case Study in Phenomenal Typology

(August 2013)

Mass Light Silence is the end result of explorations into the relationship between phenomena and construction in a specific “feeling” space particular to northern Europe. It examines the relationships between experience and the physical stuff of architecture across five projects in an at-tempt to re-understand the art of building a feeling and its relationship to place and culture. Projects examined include: Islev Kirke by J + I Exner, Bagsvaerd Kirke by Jørn Utzon, the Danmarks Nationalbank by Arne Jacob-sen, Grundvig’s Kirke by PV Jensen-Klint, and the Berlin Jewish Museum by Daniel Libeskind. First-hand research was conducted over the Summer of 2013

71

Urban EssaysParis, Amsterdam, Berlin

(July 2013)

As Part of my Travels in Western Europe in the Summer of 2013 I was asked to contribute essays on three signif-icant cities to a forthcoming collection edited by Geor-gia Tech’s Professor Richard Dagenhart. For each city a keyword was shared by all participants. They were, in no particular order - Paris:Theater, Amsterdam:Water, and Berlin:Memory.

Paris : Theater : Skene - An interrogation of the rela-tionship between Hausmann’s plan for the IXe and IIe arrondissements and its contemporary centerpiece, the Garnier Opera.

Amsterdam : Water : Brick - A look at the relationships between water, mud and masonry in Noord Holland.

Berlin : Memory : Strata - An examination of physical manifestations of layered memory in the German capital including discussion of David Chipperfield’s Neues Muse-um restoration, the Neue Wache and the Soviet Memorial at Treptower Park

72

Being + Becoming:Material, Process + Making in Contemporary Swiss Architecture

(November 2013)

Being + Becoming attempts to shed light on the meta-physics of late 20th and early 21st c. Swiss architecture through the lens of Martin Heiddeger’s hermeneutic of the “thing” and its coming into being. At the heart of the discussion lies the obvious preocupation of many Swiss architects with construction, making, and the architectural detail; the seeming obsession with discovering the truth of and ensuring the honest manifestation of both work and material in everyday buildings.

In the essay, I spell out three understandings of the nature of an architectural “thing” - its being (substance), its becoming (process), and its drawing-forth (genesis, impetus) as alternate, coexistant modes of conceptualizing the work of such practices as Herzog + DeMeuron, Meili + Peter, Gigon Guyer, Miller Maranta and Peter Markli. Through these perspectives, I hope to demonstrate the intimate relationships between maker and made, and the clear prioritization of process over end by the craftsman-architects of the mountain nation.

This work actively engages with and stands upon the writings of a number of critics, most significantly those of Martin Steinmann of the ETH Zurich who once wrote of understanding what we make, “The significance of the built fact has many layers, which we should be able to read.”

73

74

IMAGE

74

The Latin Noun Imago can mean either a simulacrum of something in the world or a conception - a thought not yet manifest except in the mind. In design, one must often “image” something before it is ever really present; images allow us to imagine things and worlds that are not yet extant. This power allows us to communicate ideas to clients and co-workers, and to become better aware of what we, ourselves are conceptualizing. In this way, image becomes more than an end to me - the production of images through photography, painting, drawing or photo-collage is a central part of my process towards understanding and realizing a final built work.

On the other side of the definition, images can preserve a particular moment of reality for future meditation. Photography and on-site sketching have allowed me to capture textures, colors, forms and contrasts that I later reflect on and incorporate into my thinking. These “realized” images supplement and inflect my memory of spaces, allowing certain aspects to appear richer in my mental picture. They allow me to inhabt worlds in ways I could not otherwise - to stand inside a model; to take in a whole landscape in the round. In other ways, the act of focusing a camera or selecting details to sketch indicates to me after the fact what was important about a moment, even when I did not realize it then. Images of what is or has been form the grounds for discovery, and for future work.

Works on Paper

76 77

Photography

78 79