ANDREW FRIEDENBERG2016 Portfolio

When tasked with the impossible, representing oneself in a concise archive we call a portfolio, it becomes a challenge not of characters and images, but of actual character. How can I display my personality, my evolution, as a designer and as a person, in something consisting of architectural projects and commonly viewed at only a glancing?

This architectural portfolio is a summary of my education in a series of chapters. Sorted from present to past, each chapter has been chosen to represent a significant stage in my development as both a designer and a person. Starting with my most recent studio project, DESCENT, and ending with my thesis proposal TERRAFORM which will be completed June 2016. !!

CV @ BACK

chapters year

DESCENTSTUDIO 8 // Fall 2015 // Charles Dorn & Nicolas Smith (Hacker Architects)Project: Oregon College of Arts & Craft (O.C.A.C.) CampusCreated with Kimberly ThorsellStatus: COMMEND

We were tasked to create a new campus master-plan and communal building to house the expansion of the art college. The program required a library, a student union/cafe, and a gallery/lecture hall space, a substantial upgrade for the already densely packed and heavily forested hillside campus.

Exploring this historical campus located in the West Hills of Portland, we were taken by the stark contrast between the rustic nature of the old cabin VERNACulAR architecture nestled across the steep site and the CONTEMPORARy construction in recent years which had ignored the context to accommodate the necessary expansion of the school.

ContemporaryVernacular

This being, how can we create a new space that breaks the paradigm of complete separation between exterior and interior? The division of people and nature?

We asked ourselves, how can we provide a contemporary image for the college while remaining in-line with their existing ideals?

Ourselves stumped, we began to examine our classmates slowly tear themselves apart over how to manipulate the steep topography ... and BOOM

The solution lies within the problem ... THE TERRAIN!!!!!

charles dorn gallery

In PlAN, existing contours are carried through the 3 spaces establishing a uniting element, yet allowing the spaces to create their own identity. These identities are seen.... IN SECTION.

1. GALLERY / LECTURE HALL (opposite)

2. STUDENT UNION / CAFE(next spread)

3. LIBRARY(next spread)

In a building so encapsulated by terrain, it is the SECTION which truly reflects each spacial experience. Initial sketching...

But how will this fusion of nature and occupiable space realize in an architectural design?

We proposed an alternative typology of architecture which removes the building as a singular element and instead embeds the program within the steep existing topography, using the nature as structure, allowing the campus to maintain its forested character while still accommodating the massive increase in program.

charles dorn gallery

The GAllERy / lECTuRE HAll allows existing topography to sculpt a new public space which serves as a cross campus axis and provides the local community with a variety of art gallery conditions and a 150-person lecture hall.

...and in its final form. It is a building shaped by nature.

At this point in my architectural career, I have come to visualize spaces as a series of experiences. These spaces are constructed to better the inhabitants AND the Earth, and as architects, we are the conductors of this process. What DESCENT really represents is my developing understanding of this concept.

The STuDENT uNION / CAFE acts as the heart of the campus. Its connection to the exterior plaza creates a very different aesthetic where the topography frames the ceiling / roof-scape rather than the occupiable floor space. This allows for the interior to serve as a seamless continuation of the adjacent plaza.

DESCENT also represents the value of teamwork. After working at an architecture firm (following spread), I have come to appreciate the collaborative design process and its ability to provide a multi-dimensional way of approaching a solution.

The lIBRARy creates an intimate wooden space framed by a continuation of topography collapsed through the building. It serves as an educational landmark and blurs the definitive line between sculpture and architecture.

I was headed to las Vegas, a place less regarded as an architectural Mecca, but more of an extensive architectural study. It was the perfect place to begin my career!

It is a beautiful hell. The ultimate architectural paradox, a playground of constructed imagination fueled by a lust for riches. This provided me with an eye opening experience into the realities and opportunities within the industry and pushed me to take the next step towards my future career.

[all rendering/media shown is of my creation, however each design was a collaboration with the talented people of Gensler of Nevada. Many projects/work were not included due to confidentiality]

Gensler (2015 summer internship)

I worked on a large variety of projects such as the largest Jewish Community Center in the uSA...

...a design competition for a casino in Holland (we won)......a high-end rooftop restaurant and lounge...

...and more, including a restaurant, an office renovation, a corporate center, and an intern-led study of the abundance of vacancies within Downtown las Vegas. On these projects, I primarily focused on schematic design and design development through sketching, physical and BIM model making, rendering, CAD, and research. I learned how to work with a team, work with a client, and generally come to understand the office environment and culture.

...a parking lot (slightly less glamorous)...

monument

STUDIO 7 // Spring 2015 // Kevin NuteProject: Cliff House, San Francisco, USA

Perched on the western-most edge of Western Civilization, the Cliff House represents the evolution of settlement of the Bay Area and the Golden State as a whole. As of today, the Cliff House has two restaurants, a small museum, a lookout point, a gift shop, and a camera obscura. Our studio “burned it down” and we were to propose the next step in this sites long history.

Assigned to examine the future of the famous Cliff House (currently a conglomerate of restaurants and gift shops), I delved back into the sites’ checkered past of illicit gambling halls, gentlemen clubs, and sleazy restaurants...

...and found nothing inspirational to lead to a progressive new design! (examine its built history to the right)

What about the sites’ history prior to its colonization?

My research showed that the Ohlone people had settled in these harsh coastal conditions long before Europeans had constructed these isolated series of period architectural icons on this rugged point. They were the original inhabitants.

1858

1863

1896

1907

1909

1937

2003

I borrowed from their A-frame structural shelter design and created two separated gallery and restaurant spaces connected by an meandering CulTuRAl PATHWAy that follows the existing coastal procession.

MONuMENT creates a seamless cultural procession of prospect and retreat between historic Sutro Baths... ...and beautiful Ocean Beach...

...while minimizing its ecological impact by sitting within the cavernous remains of the prior structure. Simultaneously these new structures frame a series of unique views out to the ocean, almost like a giant camera obscura.

Creating a series of cultural experiences prompted a question: how can the Idea of hIStorIcal preServatIon be taken beyond the SemI-tangIble realm of elementS generally ShowcaSed In muSeumS?

I needed to physically represent the convoluted evolution of this particularly historically rich site...

...so playing off the delicate relationship between finely crafted man-made structure and the brutal exterior elements, I preserved the skeletal timber structure of the prior Cliff House. Swooping from the exterior street level into the interior space, it creates a gradient of exposed wood to sheltered wood that over time will become a gradient of decay-to-preserved, representing the constant battle between man and nature in these harsh climatic elements that have claimed so many of mans previous attempts of settlement here. It is a monument.

LIVE FROM PYRAMIDen

We had 120 hours to design a method to facilitate the preservation of architecture in an abandoned Soviet Arctic mining town named Pyramiden on Svalbard, an island near Greenland ... what? This is a place where there is no sun for 155 days a year, the average July temperature is 5o C (42o F), and the only inhabitants besides the Global Seed Vault (to ensure plant life after the apocalypse) are 3000 hungry polar bears. Great!

projekt (120 hrs design comp.)

120 Design Competition 2015Team: Andrew Metzler & Amin Yazdi

Text Submission:“In the most fragile reaches of the Earth, the intensity and severity of climate change is most apparent. Extreme environments bear the brunt of society’s choices; they experience accelerated transformation. Considering the wild, remote nature of Svalbard, we pose the question—how can we preserve and celebrate post-human occupation while simultaneously minimizing the inevitable negative human footprint? PROJEKT is an awareness program that preserves Pyramiden’s legacy by broadcasting the town digitally to all corners of the planet via an array of cameras peering in from the surrounding mountains. During the daylight seasons this feed acts as a virtual museum where people can view nature’s reclamation of a man-made landscape in real-time, accessible from televisions, computers, tablets, etc. Through virtual exhibitions we bring the essence of a faraway place to humanity’s doorstep. Viewers are placed on the land of Pyramiden, without setting foot within the ecologically fragile system. During the seasons of darkness in Pyramiden, projectors placed along the mountain ridge, project the illusion of human life onto the town below. Each viewer is represented as a single projector so as viewership of the broadcast increases, so does the life in the abandoned town below, as additional projectors come to life. This tangible representation of the human impact even on the farthest corners of the Earth will stimulate and serve as an educational tool for all.”

In our team deliberations, we concluded that the lEAST sustainable way to preserve Pyramiden would be to transport people there.

So how could we showcase Pyramiden as an architectural tombstone of human impact on the Earth to people without people present?

But how can we tangibly reflect each individual viewer’s environmental impact on the town?

Paired with the cameras live streaming on the surrounding mountains are a series of projectors.

DIGITAlly!!!

We created a live feed to stream across the globe allowing anyone to view the derelict people-less town.

Each projector represents a single viewer of the stream and activates as new viewers tune in, so the abandoned town comes to life as viewership increases showing the global impact of humanity even on far flung places like Pyramiden.

swerveTeamed with consultants from the Eugene Building Development Committee, local architects and planners, and the community, we were tasked to provide a 20 yr development plan for HWy 99.

We began with an intense analysis of the 1.7 mile site, mapping building height/program/condition/value, pervious/impervious surfaces, landscaping, parking, and a variety of demographics including income, race, and age. Can we use this plethora of info to guide our design?

STUDIO 6 // Fall 2014 // Mark GillemProject: HWY 99 Re-design in Eugene, OregonTeam: Kimberly Thorsell + Nick TurrellStatus: COMMEND

Highway 99 is the main arterial connecting downtown Eugene to the airport and adjacent towns. The neighborhood that HWY 99 bisects has suffered what Pixar showed best in the movie Cars; a prioritization of commuter convenience over the integrity of the local community. Can we provide a solution?

The most profound analysis was the quality of building conditions [BElOW with good condition (lifespan of >20 more years), mediocre condition (<20 years), and bad (0 years)]. The majority of these were storage units, vehicle services, and abandoned buildings.

After our analysis, we determined the cause of this dis-functioning community was 1. the uNWAlKABIlITy OF THE BOulEVARD, 2. the lACK OF PuBlIC TRANSIT, 3. the lACK OF GREEN SPACE, and 4. the lACK OF DENSITy. How can we address these issues in a new city plan?

So we developed a multi-layered approach distinguishing three new COMMERCIAl NODES focused around new GREEN SPACES and a series of BuS RAPID TRANSIT (BRT) stops on an extended line from Eugene. Along this new route is a designated off-street CyClE TRACK (a glorified bike path).

But this does nothing to repair the highway which fractures the entire community.

So we developed a new concept; SWERVE. If we cannot scale down the 5-lane throughway, why not split it into a much more human scale two 2-lane + BRT lANE boulevards. This slows down traffic, allows for pedestrian crossings and frames the commercial nodes.

PHASE 1 is the initial demolition of abandoned buildings and construction of boulevard, BRT lane, vital through-streets, and green spaces.

PHASE 2 shows the BRT and boulevard as a catalyst for high value development around the BRT stations and green space in the nodes.

... and AFTER our 20 year development.A FIGuRE / GROuND showing HWy 99 BEFORE...

PHASE 3 shows the further development of commercial and residential spaces within the nodes.

In order to guide the development, we created a REGulATING PlAN. This plan establishes zones to control the evolution of the highway once it gets into the hands of developers, some of which do not always have the best interests of the community as a whole.

Much of the decisions regarding the zoning came from the desire to create mixed-use work/living space within the nodes, and then a gradient of housing into the surrounding residential areas. Many zones were left flexible to accommodate the future needs, whether commercial or residential.

PHASE 4 shows continued construction and occupation of space surrounding the nodes, gradiating into the mostly residential context.

What I learned through this project is that urban design is not a single move like a typical building, it is a whole predetermined evolution of an entire landscape. In this case our urban intervention, SWERVE, turned a typical American commuter highway into a lEED ND certified neighborhood.

FLEX COMMERCIAL MULTI-FAMILY MIXED USE GREEN SPACE CIVIC INDUSTRIAL

rift

STUDIO 4 // Spring 2014 // Peter KeyesProject: New Elementary School for Eugene, OregonStatus: COMMEND

Eugene’s current public schools do not reflect the culture of symbiosis with the environment that the majority of Oregonians believe. We were prompted to create a new educational platform to develop and invigorate the idea of sustainability within the youth. How will this manifest itself in a built structure?

Entering my 4th studio, I decided to experiment with an architecture that pushed the boundaries of basic design principles beyond the norm to test the barriers of architectural reality. Isn’t this what architecture school is for?!

Similar to my latest project, DESCENT (chapter 1), this educational facility was located on a steep +20ft (6.5m) embankment which provided both opportunity and unique problems. In a comparable manner, I embedded the structure within the topography, however, for a number of different reasons.

LIBRARY

GYM

CAFETERIA

ADMINISTRATION

OUTDOOR / INDOOR CLASSROOMS

OUTDOOR / INDOOR CLASSROOMS

FIELDS

FIELDSN

These wings are bisected by the core program; a library juts through the bluff in the NW addressing the community while the gymnasium and cafeteria act as the nucleus of the campus encompassed by the classroom wings.

There are two wings of classrooms; one acts as a retaining wall from the slope to the NW and the other acts as a barrier from the highly trafficked street to the West.

using the slope to enclose the campus provides a sense of security which is important for elementary school aged children. Also the frontage by all the classrooms and the highly transparent cafeteria adds to this sense of comfort. Why use fences when you can use structure?

...one being a rain water catchment system. Bioswales integrated into the structure filter the substantial amount of water cascading down the slope and channel the run-off into communal gardens before reuse in the building...

But such a large design move should provide a variety of services...

...another being daylighting. Peeling back the earth allows for a series of overlaps that creates continuous clerestory lighting in even the most recessed classrooms...

This new elementary school provides the means to teach sustainability to the youth and reinforces this principles in the architecture surrounding them.

...and finally occupiable space. The necessary safety barriers for a living roof would ruin the natural aesthetic so I looked towards the idea of HA-HA’s, a French method of creating barriers while maintaining the ideal seamless landscape. Inspiration stemming from COW containment might be applicable for CHIlDREN in this scenario.

Impending Bloom

STUDIO 3 // Fall 2013 // Leo YuiProject: LIVE/WORK space in London, U.K.

Dalston is an ethnically diverse neighborhood in North London. We were assigned to imagine a new live/work development at the end of a long parade of row-houses that fronted a street on one side and a public square on the other.

Although IMPENDING BlOOM was created early in my education, I feel it was the first project that I saw through the process of design that actually culminated in a successful building.

Although especially simple, imitating the surrounding rowhouses’ rhythm created an highly contextual structure and determined the base shape for this structure.

Our site.

But how could this farmers market / apartments actually ENHANCE the surrounding public space?

By facilitating movement from the street-scape to the enclosed park through the porous market level!!!

And as a stark contrast to the gray london sky, I “capped” the rowhouses with a green wall signaling the park to the street and creating a new identifiable landmark for this autonomous neighborhood.

While the design of this project was simple, the thought process outlined on the previous spread was the start of my architectural storytelling that has developed throughout the sequence of designs proceeding this one.

It was also the first time I was able to delve into the digital aspects of design and this opened a whole new realm of possibilities that previously I had only been able to represent using hand media.

utilizing this multimedia approach I was able to represent the GRIT of this neighborhood (maybe I overdid it a little) and earned me my first project archival by the school!

The series of plans shows the public market on the ground floor and the 2 living units above.

These elevations illustrate the concepts I had developed, a green cap, and a permeable ground level.

After graduating high school I felt unprepared to take the dive into college and my future. I needed some soul searching... and where better to do that than SOuTH AFRICA which was currently dominating the news with the 2010 FIFA World Cup (mostly about Vuvuzelas).

I ended up in Cape Town for 4 months VOluNTEERING and living in a township stricken with extreme poverty and a dis-functioning social

This reality was not the illusion all major sports networks were broadcasting across the globe. This is exactly what I needed !!!

A good portion of my time was spent physically constructing a simple wood/steel framed library that used the abundance of local sand to utilize sandbags as cheap mass walls. This shelter provided structure ... and security from stray bullets, an all too common occurrence.

South Africa 2010

The majority of my time however, was just spent engaging the community, playing with the children and talking with the elders. I learned their culture, and they learned mine.

I TAuGHT THEM MATH, THEy TAuGHT ME WHO I AM.

...and after that jaunt back in time, we find ourselves in the present looking toward the future. I thank you for exploring a select few chapters of my design evolution. This collection of experiences, challenges, encounters, and knowledge, has culminated in who I am today as a student of architecture.

This last chapter of this portfolio is dedicated to TERRAFORM, my thesis project which will be ultimately completed by June 2016. Due to the ongoing nature of the project, I will leave you with a glimpse of my proposal and what I intend to accomplish by my graduation in Spring.

What has arisen from this dynamic is a strain on the displaced populations, the urban infrastructure, and especially the ecological systems where green spaces are often condemned for more economic uses. How can this dynamic be “regenerated” at an architectural and urban level?

Tasked with choosing a global problem for my thesis (halfway done), I set out researching the history of human settlement. From explorers and pioneers, to political and environmental refugees, humans have always been on the move with fluctuations of urbanization and de-urbanization happening across different places at different times. Presently, however, we are in the greatest period of global urbanization ever... the Tokyo metropolitan area now accounts for 37 million people, Seoul 26 million, Shanghai 24 million, and the list goes on. In an age where 30% of a country’s population can live in one metropolis, this creates a consolidation of services and economy, causing further centralization as rural populations are forced to these already packed cities in search of a better future.

terraform (literally earth-shaping) seeks to blur the boundaries of urban and natural ecosystems within america’s densest county, manhattan.

GREEN GRAy

Historically we have lived in a green environment, however during the Industrial Revolution when we entered the Anthropocene (the epoch of humans) humanity exerted the greatest impact on the Earth’s ecosystems. Since then we have paved a path converting this green natural environment into a gray man-made hardscape. A gradient of GREEN to GRAy.

THESIS // Fall 2015 - Spring 2016 // Hans Joachim (Hajo) NeisProject: REPAIRING THE EARTH - REPAIRING THE CITYStatus: ONGOING (June 2016 completion)

This thesis studio seeks to understand and analyze large-scale world-wide issues and connect them to particular problems within the urban fabric; neighborhoods, parks, and buildings. The main purpose of the studio is to help preserve life and beauty on Earth in a way that our children and children’s children will be able to continue to enjoy life in a more sustainable future.

terraform (thesis proposal)

phaSe 0 [existing ecology] The city is dominated by man-made infrastructure leaving nature as shattered pockets of green ecosystems. How can we reconnect these disconnected eco-oases into a homogeneous system?

phaSe 1: rootS [horizontal networking] Roots, the primary origin of any organic matter, will unite the existing urban ecologies and serve as a catalyst for the entire project. To map these roots, I created a experiment used the organic growth efficiencies of a yellow slime mold, physarum polycephalum, and viewed each Manhattan park as a food source. The mold radiated from Central Park and established a network connecting the various isolated ecologies (food sources) in the most efficient manner in terms of size and proximity.

phaSe 2: ShootS [vertical networking]Also known as stems, shoots provide the structure and facilitate the processing of resources whether filtering gray water collected in the canopy down to the roots or processing resources through the roots and up to the inhabitants. These shoots occur at collisions of the roots allowing for a dispersed array of stems to collect/distribute resources captured from above (water) or harvested in the roots (food sources).

phaSe 3: canopy [developed tripartite ecosystem]Canopy, the upper layer of an ecological community is formed by the collection of root and shoot systems. Evolving from the shoots it can envelope the preexisting desolate roofscape and turn this asphalt landscape into a producer. This canopy captures rainwater, filters it, and distributes it across the root network to urban farming at the street level. Grey-water is also stored in cisterns arrayed across the roofs and algae is harvested to produce biomass and ultimately energy to power the entire system.

my proposal turns this historical gradient of green-space-to-grey-space, into a symbiotic ecosystem of both green and gray. looking at a city from above, why does a gray block have to designate a built landscape and a green space designate a park? what if buildings themselves could also act as vertical parks? what if boulevards could also act as streams for run-off management? what if roofscapes could also act as a forest canopy? I have taken the idea of biomimicry and applied it to an urban scale where man lives amongst nature and nature lives amongst man.

This intertwining of ecosystems will be phased into the existing urban fabric spotted with isolated “zoo” like exhibits of nature. These phases follow a study of biology called DEVElOPMENTAl BIOlOGy, essentially the process by which plants grow. This breaks down into 3 phaSeS (rootS + ShootS + canopy):

TERRAFORM will transform Manhattan from a heterogeneous consumer ecosystem into an homogeneous producer system.

EDuCATION university of Oregon School of Architecture & Allied Arts Bachelor of Architecture [I accelerated to complete the 5 year program in 4 years with a June 2016 graduation] 3.3 GPA in Arch / 4 studio commendations Minor in Business Administration

EXPERIENCE

Gensler las Vegas [summer intern] 06/2015 - 09/2015 I worked at the las Vegas branch of the internationally renown design firm, Gensler, as one of two architectural interns.

HOPES Conference [creative director] 09/2014 - 05/2015 I was the creative director for the student run HOPES conference which focused on sustainability in architectural systems.

Volunteer (South Africa & Argentina) 09/2010 - 04/2011 I volunteered through the organization Projects Abroad and spent 7 months living and working in Cape Town (South Africa) & Cordoba (Argentina}. In South Africa I helped design & build a simply constructed library in a township for people with limited access to education, literature, and shelter. In Argentina, I assisted at a community center & taught English to children facing similar issues as the South Africans. Volunteer (Portland, Oregon) 06/2010 - 09/2010 I spent four months volunteering with the organization, Habitat for Humanity, constructing small affordable housing units.

SKIllS

ORGANIZATIONS AIAS / HOPES Conference / Peer Mentor / Oregon BIlDS

TECHNICAl Rhinoceros [5/5] Vray [5/5] Adobe CS [5/5] MS Programs [5/5] Physical Modeling [5/5] Hand Media [5/5] Autocad [4/5] Grasshopper [3/5] Sketchup [3/5] Revit [3/5]

NOTEWORTHy ClASSES Building Enclosures Environmental Control Systems (2) Building Structures (2) urban Design Principles Minimal Dwelling Spacial Composition Human Context

Specialty / Interests Biomimetics Sustainable design Computational design Integrating new technology + ultimately creating beautiful space

Specialty / Interests Biomimetics Sustainable design Computational design Integrating new technology + ultimately creating beautiful space

andrewlfriedenberg@gmail.com+1 (503) 407 8861