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Selected WorksCaitlin Scott2011

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Selected WorksCaitlin Scott2011

This collection of my work produced while attending Rice University’s Architectural program is intended to show my interests in the social, sensorial, aesthetic, and physical qualities of architecture and my desire to invoke these qualities.

As of the end of 2010 I would describe myself as proficient in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, AutoCad, Google SketchUp and Rhino. I also enjoy using a woodshop to produce models and am very comfortable with a bandsaw. I’m quick to learn computer programs and I enjoy my work.

I hope the following projects interest you, the viewer of this portfolio, and that they inspire you to invite me to work with you.

To contact me feel free to use my:email- cat.scott@gmail.com

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Table of Contents

Vertical Growth in the Horizontal City 3

Motorcycle Museum 9

Stella 11

Toy 13

InLightened City 15

Branching into the Bayou 23

Criminal Crenellation 33

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Vertical Growth in the Horizontal City Fall 2008

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In designing a botanical garden for downtown Houston the issue arose of designing a vertical space for a typically horizontal program. In choosing plants that can thrive in the Houston area, a variety of succulents, I was allowed to create a space that was simultaneously interior and exterior.

The modified-can design of the building accomodated sunlight and produced various vantage points from which each of the planting displays could be experienced from both the street and the interior of the building.

Top: 50th scale model in site Middle: 16th scale model Bottom: Interior of 16th scale model

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Top: circular circulation diagramMiddle: diagram showing the relation to Market Square Park Bottom: diagram of stacked green space

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Motorcycle MuseumSpring 2008

The motorcycle museum was an early experiment in relating the exterior of a building to the interior. The skylights, windows and doors all relate to a separation within the building of height and of program. The parts of the build that extend to the street level house the public museum and the motor-cycles, while the private space changes the direction of spanning to North and South and houses the private, administrative space.

Top: North FacadeBottom: South Facade

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Top: Interior with roofBottom Left: Interior without roofBottom Right: Interior without Roof

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Stella’s Chair SpaceFall 2007

The outdoor space that was for “Stella’s” enjoyment of a chair, designed earlier in the semester, was a space that was about privacy and also about physical experience. The columns are sized specifically so that from the lower plane one could wrap their arms around them (this desire coming from my own experience of being in Rome during a heat wave and cooling myself against a large, marble column) and from the higher plane they could be crawled on top of and around in. The columns give variation to the space as well as sensual experience.

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ToyFall 2007

The toy project was another project where the sensual experience was important. Color, texture, and creating a tool of creative play were all primary in the concerns of this work considering the focus was the playful experience of the user.

With this project I was interested in using a grid to produce non-orthogonal forms, as well as in bringing to the user an opportunity to interact with ideas of order and chaos in a bright, soft, colorful fashion.

Right Page:Instruction manual for toy.

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InLightened City:Sunscrapers and Reflective Collectives in Future-Past Los AngelesSpring 2010

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The InLightened City is part of a collection of future pasts that are showcased in a World Expo at the beginning of the 22nd century. This project, built in the early 21st century, problematized the 20th century idea of energy outsourcing as part of the productive division of territories and cities by bringing back to the city its sources of energy production. The first prototype based on Sun Light Capture took place in L.A. as a three-way initiative between energy companies, social collectives and light researchers. The project took the typology of the tower and transformed it into a light tower, a sunscraper. From the point of most light exposure a set of mirrors were laid out down and around the tower, guiding light into a series of different spaces where they were filtered into various colors of the visible light spectrum. Each of these colors related to a

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set of physiological effects that were meant to provoke and offer different sensations to the users of this new urban-energy tower prototype pavilion. Left Page: Top:mirror on L.A.’s exsisting buildings feed the tower with light and energyMiddle: ground plan Right Page: Top: Diagram showing the how the mirrors on the existing building play within the community and when focused on the building their use in the production of energy (through a molten salt ther-mal energy production tower) and their use in the production of physiological affects on the visitors of the towerBoth Pages: unrolled section

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The pavilion was an experiment in the reinvention of an element older than life itself and the expressions it took in built form as well as within the human being.

Top Row:Left: Structural Forces DiagramMiddle: Diagram showing how light carves the structural coreRight: Diagram showing how the typical heliostat radius from a molten-salt energy production and storage sys-tem defines the radius of the city around the Sunscraper where the mirrors are superimposed.

Bottom Row:Left:Diagram of mirror exposure in relation to height and sun Middle: description of the users of the Sunscraper; Light Loungers, Light Monks, and Patients of Light TherapyRight: Map of Light pollution in L.A.

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The various light rooms which produce the physiological affects in the Sunscraper’s visitors.

Next Left Page: Diagrams describing case-studies, energy systems, and various information about artificial light and solar exposure

Next Right Page: Original concept drawing of the sunscraper

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Branching Into the BayouFall 2009

[Right: Skin pattern of bridge ]

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The Brays Bayou and it’s Bridges was a project that was concerned with formal practices in a situation that has very specific functional needs.

When considering the problems of

crossing and remediation the formal process that my partner and I found most inspiring was branching.

In the case of the tera-reformation of the edge condition between city and bayou we considered the natu-ral progression of lake>river>stream and how these steps could be ap-plied to retain, carry, and cleanse run off from the city while also pro-viding relief in times of flooding.

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The branching process eventu-ally lead to the blurring between the conditions of wetland and bayou, spreading like fingers into the water for plants to flourish in and for fish and other living crea-tures to live and breed, renewing the environmental value of what is often thought of as a polluted creek in the middle of concrete waste land.

Left Page:Top: temporal water diagram in four stagesBottom: sections through various stages of the landscapeRight Page:Top:circulation of people and water

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By touching this bayou, these fingers would not only refresh the ecology of Brays but also revitalize the surrounding community by pro-viding a safer and more pleasurable water-scape for Houstonians.

Branching was also inspirational when considering the structural benefits it lent to a span of Brays Bayou. The Brays Bayou bridges presented a unique challenge and opportunity to stitch together the urban fabric above with the planted bayou below.

The branching of the bridges’ inte-rior girders mimics that of the reme-diation ponds’ fingers. Extending this formal process, the bridges’ pedestrian paths branch off into the site, extending the fabric of the city down into the heart the bayou.

Through this connection and inter-action between our site and bridge, we disrupt the general dichotomy between today’s city and bayou and instead present a new solution that encourages the interaction between

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these two systems and in fact creates one, more cohesive and successful system.

Left Page: Top: Main Street Bridge Middle: MSB Exploded Structure Bottom: MSB Exploded Skin

Right Page: Top: N. Braeswood Blvd. Bridge Middle: NBBB Exploded StructureBottom: NBBB Exploded Skin

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Left Page: Bridge Section showing branching rib structure and dual-pedestrian traffic inside bridge Bridge Section showing variation in road height to allow for larger interior space in the N. Braeswood Bridge which houses a cafe.Main Street Bridge ElevationRight Page:Main Street Bridge PlanBoth Pages:Braeswood Bridge PlanElevation including both bridges

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Criminal CrenellationFall 2010

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The prison project had to do with considering the social and architectural issues of the current American prison system. The specific issue that I gained my architectural inspiration from was the prisonisation of both convicts as well as their families.

The current system works so that when someone is convicted of a crime they are isolated from society not only physically but also by the entering a space where social norms change. By only surrounding the convict with others who have criminal disposi-tions the system encourages the criminal disposition within the prisoner and the prison community.

The convicts themselves are not the only ones affected by prisonisation. The family members of those who are convicted are also faced with the affects of incarceration. Stigma and isolation in the outside community and the restrictions, both physical and

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behavioural, within the prison when they visit their convicted loved ones both act to produce a prisonised individual who has committed no crime.

My proposed solution to this issue was combine the pro-grams of hotel and prison so that a society of non-criminals would be injected into the prison. The current prison is already

Left Page:Top: Visitor Prisonisation DiagramBottom: Prisoner Relationship to the Commu-nity Diagram

Right Page: Top: Early crenellation study models (wood and resin)Bottom: Prison/Hotel Crenellation Diagram

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an alternative family system in some respects, with a considerably more consistent influence of those who will be the support system for prisoners post prison sentence, the hope is to build more a educated and durable family unit and to discourage recidivism.

The system is crenellated to produce shared, “private” space for the convicts and their families while maintaining separate and secure circulation systems.

In spaces that are shared by all members of this community the crenellation is visibly apparent so as to produce and awareness of the system that otherwise would be difficult to discern from the interior.

Left Page: 16th scale model (orange representiong prison specific program

Right Page:Exploded Axo

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41Caitlin Scott/2011/cat.scott@gmail.com