DANIEL CASSIDYportfolio

ARTISAN HIGHCambridge, MA45

MADRID SPINE Madrid, Spain23

POROUS CITY Elizabeth, NJ05

VANISHING POINT Tribeca, NYC 73

CENOSPA Bowery, NYC 87

DUNESTOPDraa Valley, Morocco61

POROUS CITY

“The right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar in an age when everyone pos-sesses such a vehicle is the right to destroy the city.” - Lewis Mumford

Elizabeth, NJ is seemingly well positioned for success. Linked by quick transit to the largest and wealthiest city in the country, home to the busiest port on the East Coast, and adjacent to an international airport. Yet much of downtown Elizabeth is vacant, consisting primarily of paved parking lots clustered around the Elizabeth river, now channelized to mitigate flooding from excessive run-off.

Despite its small size, Elizabeth’s streets are choked with traffic, enabled by excessive parking and a zoning that encouraged to the “Bayonne box,” detatched multifamily homes with four car garages on the ground level. Yet its downtown commerce is depressed, with consumers favoring the megamall on the outskirts. Elizabeth is an edge city.

The Porous_city masterplan and housing proposal calls for light rail/BRT transit options and restoration of the riv-er basin, simultaneously reducing runoff and curbing auto dependency. Focused on walkable, car-restricted com-munities, both high and mid-rise homes cluster around a shared yards that both manage rainwater and nurture community. Sprawl is thwarted and the city center revital-ized with the river once again its central asset.

POROUS CITYElizabeth, NJMasterplan and Housing DevelopmentAcademic (Spring Studio 2013)Professor Julio Salcedo

Zoning proposal

Conceptual Section through development proposal

Neighborhood development and watershed restoration objectives

Development plan

Housing unit typologies

Stacked housing schematic

Neighborhood schematic

Porous — stacked housing elevation

Typical plan

South elevation

North elevation

Street view in Porous City

MADRID SPINE

“The landscape itself is a medium through which all ecological transactions must pass, it is the infrasturc-ture of the future and therefore of structural rather than (or as well as) scenic significance.”

- Richard Weller

The Madrid Spine is a response to a crisis, both econom-ic and ecological. In the early aughts the Spanish gov-ernment ploughed money into reckless housing develop-ment schemes, building vast highway networks encircling new districts centered on mega malls. The government embraced generic and dated planning models complete-ly out of sync with Spanish culture and lifestyle. Clustered on the southern side of the city, these zones now sit emp-ty, grids of wide avenues surrounding empty lots.

Meanwhile the southern branch of the Manzanares River, upon whose waters Madrid was established, languishes, cut off from public use, trapped between highways and rail lines, and fouled by a series of inadequate waste-water treatment plants. Development plans neglected this critical riparian zone entirely.

The Madrid Spine attempts ameliorate these conditions with an infrastructural megaproject. Combining transit, wastewater management, soil enrichment, food produc-tion, conservation, and recreation, the Spine seeks to transform service systems into a spectacular network, a habitat to grow community and seed development or-ganically.

Madrid, SpainInfrastructure InterventionAcademic (Etsam Proyecto) 8Professor: Manuel Ocaña

MADRID SPINE

Beneath the Spine

ARTISAN HIGH

In an era where high school curriculum is increas-ingly standardized and formulaic, Artisan High of-fers an alternative education based on creative pro-duction. Built upon the artisan tradition, from the legacy of the Arts and Crafts Movement to the Bau-haus, the school instills students with design sensibili-ties and empowers them with critical fabrication skills.

The core organizing principal for the school’s program is to foster the community that forms around creative pro-duction. To encourage this, the design studios are orga-nized as small independent units framing a courtyard.

As an alternative school, it aims to provide a lifestyle for students, nurturing their talents beyond final bell. Studio practice is not only incorporated into the curric-ulum, but the focus of the afterschool program, where students are given the freedom to create in open studios. Set on a plinth and anchored by a gallery, the court-yard functions as a small campus, providing adolescent students a critical sense of agency and independence.

Cambridge, MAMagnet High School | 50,000 Sq. Ft.Academic (Spring 2014 Architecture Studio)Professor Brian Healy

ARTISAN HIGH

Site Analysis

Artisan High materials

WORKSHOPS GALLERY / SHOP LIBRARY / REC CLASSROOMS DINING AUDITORIUM

WORKSHOPS GALLERY / SHOP LIBRARY / REC CLASSROOMS DINING AUDITORIUM

Workshops

Core

Gallery

Dining

Library

Auditorium

Program illustration

Workshop finishing loft

Elevations

Workshops plan

Main entrance view

Aerial courtyard view

Bauhaus curriculum — based in material exploration

Model East view

Model South view

Courtyard view

DUNE STOP

DUNE STOPDraa Valley, MoroccoHolistic Environmental RegnerationETSAM Basic HabitationProfessor: Felipe Colavidas

Ksar Bounou is a subsistence farming community located in the southern oases of Morrocco. The community lives in a traditional fortified village built of rammed earth, which is currently under threat from sand incursion. In an effort to stem wind erosion and provide greater eco-nomic opportunity for the community, this project offers a holistic approach that incorportates physical interventions with social practice. Thus traditional agricultural and con-struction methods are deployed in a two-pronged ap-proach to tackle the deteriorating ksar and empower the community.

The agricultural component aims to reclaim former pro-ductive fields, enclosing them with a green wall, thus an-choring the soil agianst wind erosion. The development component is a community-run hotel and cultural visit built with tradional construction methods, reclaiming currently damaged areas of the ksar. To support both strategies, and improve the health, dignity, and quality of life for Ksar Bounou residents, composting toilets are built be-tween the two components. These move human waste streams outside of the habitation, and process waste to both prevent groundwater contamination and exploit its nutrient-rich properties.

VANISHING POINT

Tribeca, NYCCooperative work space Academic (Fall Studio 2013)Professor: Ali Hocek

VANISHING POINT

The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.

- John Ruskin

Digital technology has fragmented the traditional work-place, giving workers greater agency over their produc-tion while freeing them from the tedium of the hierarchi-cal office. However, the tradeoff for this new flexibility is isolation and thus limited access to critical resources. Cathedral co-working spaces offer necessary amenities as well as a “physical social network.”

As John Ruskin critiques the industrial division of labor in “The Stones of Venice,” the Cathedral recalls Gothic idealism which resonates at both the community and entrepreneurial levels. The building serves a force of creators who benefit by collaboration and expand their potential through networking. By creating a dynamic space that encourages interaction and chance encoun-ters among thinker-workers, the Cathedral re-imagines the experience and ultimate purpose of working.

Site plan

East Elevation

Floor Plans

West Elevation

Balcony details

Model balcony view

Elevator details

Model elevator view

Sixth Ave view

CENOSPA

CENOSPABowery, NYCPublic BathouseAcademic (Spring Studio 2012)Professor: Brad Horn

Cenospa is a bathhouse, public pool, and spa design inspired by the Cenotes of Veracruz, and whose pro-gram of leisure and relaxation sits in stark juxtaposition with the grit of the Bowery. The bathing program is thrust against the façade, pressing bodies floating in space against the determined linear trajectories of a tur-bulent artery. A dynamic staircase curls along the edge of the central chasm, cirulating people upwards around falling water. The solarium towers over the fracas, a warm oasis permeated with sunlight filtering through tree branches and the sound of cool cascading water.

The bathhouse is a zoo, where twisting pathways, sur-prising perspectives, and miniature worlds collide with delightful results. Beyond pleasure and spectacle, the structure functions as an independent ecosystem. De-signed to capture all rooftop rainwater runoff from the block in a vast subterannean cistern, the building incor-porates various bio-filter systems, cleaning and aerat-ing the water it as it spills through the building.

POOLSWATERFALLSSTAIRSElements of spectacle

Cross section

Floor plans

Floor plans

Street elevation

Longitudinal section

Model street view

Model detail view

Bowery night view

The City College Studio I program focused on designing a bicycle pit stop with attendant facilities (cafe, office, and learning center) totaling approximately1600 sq. ft. for West Harlem Piers Park on 125th St in Harlem. This park is one isolated node on a virtually uninterrupted green ribbon sandwiched between the West Side Highway and the Hudson River. A bicycle path runs through the park, ultimately encircling the island, and is a popular leisure destina-tion for residents and tourists alike.

This particular stretch of the park straddles a unique geologic feature known as the 125th St. fault line, a tectonic rift cutting through Manhattan. Situated in the rift valley between two steep hills, West Harlem Piers is isolated from the otherwise continuous river parks, which ter-minate atop the adjacent hills. The rift is not only physical but socioeconomic. On the northern hill is Hamilton Heights, a predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhood. On the southern hill is Morningside Heights, a predominantly white neighborhood. Furthermore, this small par-cel of riverfront land is rendered inaccessible by high traffic volume, poor street design, and unwelcoming overhead environments.

My design addressed these factors, expanding the scope of the project.

Street traffic already overwhelms the area so limiting its impact was of paramount importance. The cars rip by overhead at highway speeds, and the on/off ramps unload directly along the park. The first move is to push this highway traffic into an underground tunnel, linking the access ramps to 125th Street directly by means of sloping sheds that function as architectural features.

The site is also impacted by three overhead spans carrying a highway, rail tracks and a road-way. The speed of traffic overhead generates overwhelming noise, disrupting the otherwise placid setting. Using the design language of the shed, the second move is to wrap the high-way and railway in a noise-dampening sheath. This sheathing would also serve to funnel wind pressure generated by passing vehicles across laterally mounted turbines, powering lighting features mounted in pedestrian corridors underneath. The elevated roadway is currently a forbidding expanse with excessive lanes and minimal walkways. The strategy is to convert ex-cessive lanes to a tree-lined pedestrian promenade with sweeping views of the park and river.

With traffic rerouted, some currently existing roadways become non-essential, and can thus be de-mapped and incorporated into the park. An otherwise compressed and secluded space now becomes open and approachable. Having rectified the these impediments, the third move is to strategically place development to enhance commercial vitality in the remain-ing and otherwise desolate streets.

The block adjacent to the park and partially beneath the overpasses is dominated by park-ing lot. If the lease on this city owned property to lapse, it can be utilized for park expansion. By strategically locating key structures underneath the forbidding overpasses, this unusable space becomes activated. Fingerlike structures of a new community facility project from the underpass, opening onto a newly created plaza. The facility fills the void while transluscent channel glass walls illuminate the pedestrian pathways at night. Corten steel roofing with in-tensive rooftop beds merge visually with the rusted and cracked industrial overpass, and the building seems to grow from it.

Two wedge shaped buildings, seemingly lifted up from the earth, slope down to the plaza, referencing the hills that frame the park. The roof of these wedges flows into the ground plane, and provide amphitheater style seating whose overlapping concrete slabs recall fractured mountainsides. The vertical wall of the wedges face 12th avenue, under-neath the immense arches of Riverside drive, providing retail and restaurant space for the area.

On the Hudson River side of the new park the highway sheathing extends to the ground, forming the operable curtain wall for an airy bicycle facility along the bicycle path. The demapped roadway is transformed to vital practice space for children learning to ride.

The design language of the new park pairs the jagged and broken geometry of geologic action with heavy industrial materials to generate a new park distinctly urban in character. Broken pedestrian links are repaired through responsi-ble traffic management and commerce is encouraged through new welcoming streets and facilities, thus transforming a formerly inhospitable area while simultaneously uniting a community.

DANIEL@APISARC.COM