Winner of the Passageways 2.0 public space competition
Chattanooga, TN - Given the immediate context of downtown Chattanooga - a growing community of innovators - City Thread is a social connector where the different actors of the city can come together for both unique public programming and informal hangout. Situated in a city that privileges how infrastructure can enhance urban life, the project is intended to operate as a piece of urban infrastructure rather than simply a piece of art, making a vibrant public space accessible to all.
Consisting of a continuous linear volume constructed from a series of large, simple steel tubes, the project physically connects visitors with a single gesture while also producing a multitude of dynamic conditions. By virtue of its geometry and formal manifestation, the project possesses many potential conditions including informal lounging/sitting, mini-stages, and movie screenings, among others. Further, the zig-zagging linear structure implies a variety of smaller spaces within the alley, breaking down the overall space into a series of more intimate spaces, or “urban rooms”, which are reinforced by a system of painted graphic shapes onto the alley surfaces.
The design is intended to allow both users and those in charge of programming activities to interpret the project and discover different ways to utilize the alley. In so doing, this art-as-urban-infrastructure can be used widely by a diverse range of users over the years in Chattanooga, maintaining the alley as a vibrantly activated space as needs change.
Design: SPORTS
Engineering: NOUS Engineering
Metal Fabrication: Metal Arts Foundry
Photos by Garey Gomez, Justin Harris, Benjamin Chase, and SPORTS
Photo copyright Garey Gomez
Photo by Justin Harris
Photo by SPORTS
Photo by Justin Harris
Photo copyright Garey Gomez
Photo copyright Garey Gomez
Photo by Justin Harris
Photo by Justin Harris
Photo by Justin Harris
(L to R): Photo by SPORTS, Photo by Benjamin Chase
Photo by Benjamin Chase
Photo by Justin Harris
Photo by Benjamin Chase
Photo by Benjamin Chase
Photo by Benjamin Chase
Exhibited at Succulent: Recipes for Architectural Consumption exhibition. Curators: Joachim Perez (Dawntown Miami) and Germane Barnes
The soup of architecture is arguably spatial, formal, and contains legible architectural elements but lacks the larger pronouncements of being a building, having a prescribed function, containing site relationships, or integrating systems. Architectural coherency is passible by nature of being “enough” and is consumed as something that is familiar because of its ambitions to introduce architectural ideas but not a comprehensive statement. Columns are silly but column-like, spaces are vague but spatial, and form is unique but primitive. Similarly, the representation through drawing is fluid, flickering between narrative, a work in progress, and a set of tectonic details. It is some kind of kinda.
Winner of the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCASB) takepart | makeart pavilion competition
Santa Barbara, CA - Runaway is the winner of the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara Take Part / Make Art Pavilion Competition. In order to emphasize the MCA Santa Barbara Pavilion’s goal of acting as a “vibrant beacon” to the diverse communities of Santa Barbara, our project emphasizes a vibrantly saturated visual environment that aims to architecturalize the aesthetic quality of air in Santa Barbara. The aesthetic qualities of the air in Santa Barbara is often very powerful and visible - a beautiful blur caused by heat (heat shimmer or mirage) and beach fog (June gloom). Runaway privileges this visual and atmospheric effect and in so doing, acts as a beautiful spectacle and object of urban decor for the communities of Santa Barbara.
The three objects of Runaway are simple self-similar geometries and have a number of different possible orientations. In some orientations the matrix object acts as a dappled-shade structure, while in other orientations, the matrix can act as a wall, a loungescape, a bench, or a performance stage. The project will be moved to 6 different sites in at least 3 different neighborhoods during it’s 2-year life-span in Santa Barbara. The composition and display of the collection is intended to be different at each site, allowing for a variety of programs to be supported by the pavilion, while also establishing a renewed existence at each new site. As a whole, the project is envisioned as a collection of urban décor objects that decorate the landscape of Santa Barbara while at the same time dissolving into its air. As the objects move from site to site, their display will be different, their program will be different, the visual experience of the blurry material overlap will be different – bringing a unique identity to the different neighborhoods.
While the fully “interior” space of the pavilion is limited – prioritizing instead an open spatial composition - the tall matrix structures cast shadows at most times of the day that provide a patterned (dappled) partial-shade in the spaces between the structures. In this way, the project provides a variety of shading conditions that allow for greater engagement and expanded use. Once finished with a series of brightly-colored paints (cyan, magenta, yellow), the thousands of linear elements within each of the objects emphasizes a thick and saturated haze.
Design: SPORTS
Engineering: NOUS Engineering
Metal Fabrication: Metal Arts Foundry
Powder Coating: Williamson Ocean
Photos and video by Elliot Lowndes.
Visual Blur of Objects in Elevation
Catalog of Potential Orientations and Arrangements
Sequence of Pavilion Sites in Santa Barbara
Buttonwillow, CA - Hearts of Gold: Buttonwillow Rest Area is one of a series of six rest area buildings proposed along California's brutally dry and monotonous Interstate 5 that explore the possibility for agency in the artificial. The building is an exotic roadside respite that contains simple public amenities (bathrooms, information boards, vending machines, and picnic areas) and sits indifferently within a constructed landscape of imitation. The unapologetically artificial grounds, artificial vegetation, and artifical air are integral parts of the building and serve as proxies for the “real” or “natural” elements in order to appropriate the latent spatial, experiential, and visual effects of a richer and more natural landscape elsewhere.
Exhibited at Adjacencies, Yale School of Architecture, Curator: Nate Hume
Elevations
Plan
Rod Squiggle Types
Select Project Details of Rod Connection
Section
Winner of 2016 Ragdale Ring Competition, Adrian Smith Prize and 2016 Architect's Newspaper "Best of Design" Award
Lake Forest, Illinois - Architect Howard Van Doren Shaw designed the original Ragdale Ring in 1912 as an open-air theater for the work of his playwright wife, Frances Shaw. Rounds honors Shaw’s 1912 Ring by further architecturalizing the ring, reinvisioning it as a whimsical and inhabitable performance surface. The new ring considers the way in which one engages the space of performance and intends to allow the ring itself to become integral to that experience, while also producing an atmosphere of discovery and fun for visitors.
Rounds encourages a multiplicity of performance types, performer to audience relationships, stage arrangements, and seating options, generating a versatile outdoor venue and a fully encompassing experience. Acting as a piece of architecturally-scaled garden furniture, our project compliments the (beautiful) existing landscape and natural prairie setting and can be enjoyed by both visitors on special occasions as well regularly by artists in the residency program as they reflect and nurture their creative efforts.
Design Team: SPORTS
Build Team: Greg Corso, Molly Hunker, Jordan Nelson, Nick Zukauskas, Kevin Lenhart, Preston Welker, Sean Morgan, Dabota Wilcox, Jon Anthony, Monika England, Kokeith Perry, Sarah Beadoin
Engineering Consultants: Arup
Landscape Architect: Rosborough Partners
Fabrication Consultants: Knowhow Shop
This project was made possible with the generous support by Adrian Smith, Ragdale Foundation, Syracuse University School of Architecture, Stuc-O-Flex, W.E. O'Neil, OWL Hardwood, and Terry Dowd Inc.
Photos by Nick Zukauskas.
Commissioned Installation - Woodbury University Hollywood Gallery
Hollywood, California - Stay Down, Champion, Stay Down is a commissioned temporary installation for the Woodbury University Hollywood (WUHO) gallery, located along the busy and iconic Hollywood Blvd Walk of Fame. Considering this location and context, the installation focuses on the presence and activity of the ground plane. The project explores the relationship of the analog artifact and the digitally developed composition. It is a study of the role of both the handmade and “cursor-made” in curating a contemporary environment of space and visual effect - comfort, hominess, and familiarity on one side, exotic on the other.
Comprised of a system of handmade terracotta tiles - a ubiquitous material in Southern California homes - the floor of the gallery breaks away from the planar to compose a flowing and colorful interior landscape that guests can navigate through on foot. The bulging areas of this landscape are created by gradually elevating the tiles on transparent acrylic supports. Heightened by vibrantly colorful lighting, the contrast of the analog tiles and digital surface creates a compelling experience that rivals the lure of the historic sidewalk beyond the gallery.
Photos by Justin Harris.
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Brooklyn New York - Ceiling Unlimited is an installation for The Architectural League NY’s 2019 Beaux Arts Ball in a Brooklyn Navy Yard building that was previously a submarine assembly facility from the 1930s. In considering the unique industrial technology of the building and the event theme of "Wave", the installation produced an environment that was conceptually fluid and literally dynamic. The design is comprised of two primary bulging canopy surfaces, each made of soft felt strips and attached on one end to one of two existing operable gantry cranes. By moving the gantry cranes throughout the night, the installation canopies compressed and expanded over the course of the event in order to help define event activities and create playful spatial manipulations.
Designers: SPORTS
Lighting Designers: Wild Dogs International
Engineer Consultant: NOUS Engineering
Installation Assistance by: Metal Arts Foundry
Client: The Architectural League of NY
photo by Hanneke van Deursen
photo by sports
photo by Hanneke van Deursen
photo courtesy of Hunter Douglas
photo by Leandro Viana
Commissioned Installation - REVOLVE Clothing
West Hollywood, California - Life Will Kill You is a temporary installation for the Revolve Clothing showroom in West Hollywood. To stand in contrast to the high-fashion clothing of the boutique, cheap everyday industrial materials - zip ties and electrical lamp cord - were aggregated to create a floating volume that nestles below an existing soffit. Though the soffit was designed to hide the store’s inner workings, Life Will Kill You calls attention to the ducts and wiring of the store by employing an excessive amount of the electrical materials. The design explores the contrast between industry and elegance through material sensibility, form, and visual effect.
The cloud-like volume is created by a double-sided surface composed of over 100,000 zip ties. The exterior surface of the volume is an aggregation of longer, wider white zip ties while the interior is comprised of shorter and finer colored zip ties. The resulting bulging form offers ever-changing glimpses of blurred yet vivid color combinations as the zip ties layer on top of one another in the predominantly black and white store interior.
Photos by Justin Harris.
How does design work realistically exist in the world for many young practitioners? - as a breadth of curated and consumable representations.
The age of consumption has asked a lot of the production of architecture, but now the image of the architectural project has less and less purchase as the saturation of visuals becomes significantly greater with every new technology and media stream. However, if we look beyond the proliferation of the image (blogs, books, social media), consumer artifacts are conduits for the dissemination and presentation of architectural work, perhaps more extensively than the actual objects or buildings themselves. What may have existed as an earlier financial model for young architecture offices where original drawings were sold to support practice (e.g. Max Protetch Gallery), the contemporary landscape asks for more accessible artifacts and expedient modes of procurement. From starchitect museums turned t-shirts, to building landmarks turned kids puzzle, the architectural project already exists strongly in the consumer space. Can this latent thread of production be successfully appropriated by the architectural studio?
This project explores alternative modes of production, representation, and dissemination for young architecture practices through the lens of a recent exhibition of the authors’ entitled “SPORTS, the store”. The exhibition was a functioning gift shop consisting of a selection of custom consumer goods (t-shirts, totes, toys, etc) that were representations (merchandise) of SPORTS built and unbuilt work. The exhibition was a speculation on how practices can leverage the contemporary cultural phenomenon of mass consumption to augment the trajectory of their practice and generate real traction through a consumeristic Trojan horse. The project intends to show how the insular nature of current architectural representation can be challenged with alternative modes of communication and production to reach a larger, more general audience - and more importantly, a greater appreciation.
UIC School of Architecture, 2013-2014 Douglas A. Garofalo Fellowship Installation
Chicago, Illinois - Myth grows out of research on the religious genre of the home shrine, re-imagining the richly decorative and often kitsch assembly through the lens of the architectural installation. The extraordinary variety of home shrines, as well as the variety of objects and materials that make them up, narrates a story of relationships and beliefs unique to each creator. The artistic production of the shrine tends to be read as kitsch, but it is based on a sincere decoration strategy in which display and adornment have no limit, for it is a sign of the devotion of the family.
In addition to questions of quantity (the belief that the more objects employed, the stronger the power of devotion) and visual intensity (achieving a huge visual payoff from an inexpensive kitsch sensibility), home shrines describe an active relationship between ornamentation, object-hood and the architectural interior. The interior architectural space of the shrine becomes defined not by the envelope containing it, but rather, by the collection and accumulation of decorated objects therein. Not unlike the excessively adorned interiors of Baroque, Rococo, and Art Nouveau religious spaces, home shrines utilize accretive ornamentation for more than just mere decoration – it is employed for emotional and spiritual power and devotion.
Myth uses the decorative prayer candle as the primary object-tradition through which to explore how home shrines may provoke new understandings of visual and atmospheric opulence in the architectural interior. Made with traditional candle-making techniques, hundreds of handmade wax candles are suspended on embedded cotton wicks, accumulating to create a semi-enclosed chromaphilic space. While the overhead candles are geometrically simple and clean, the candles closer to the ground are increasingly articulated with a grotesque rustication captured during the transformation of the material from its liquid state to its solid state. This rustication technique partners with a gradient of increasing color saturation to engage with the traditional shrine organization that establishes a narrative describing the change between heaven and earth.
Contemporary expressions of religious architecture tend to reinforce a clean, open-minded spatial construct that leaves the spiritual narrative to be defined by each visitor’s imagination and beliefs (however rich or bland those may be). Instead, Myth aims to establish a space of greater emotional and spiritual resonance by employing familiar materials, crafts and even smells present in more common devotional spaces. While kitsch might encourage the manipulation of emotions to such an extent that the space makes someone feel a certain way, the intention here is to stimulate a connection between memory / association and the senses such that the project actively invites a visitor to loosen their resolve and examine what direction they want to go with their emotions or beliefs.
Project Team: Molly Hunker, Danny Travis, Preston Welker, Samra Pecanin, Max Jarosz, Nichole Tortorici, Jacob Comerci
Photos by Wallo Villacorta.
2014 Louisville Children's Museum Competition Proposal
Louisville, Kentucky - As a museum dedicated to the interests of children, the focus of The Sweetness is to create a novel architectural expression of fun, delight and amusement by exploring something children find irresistible - CANDY! Unlike other children’s museums that simply use literal interpretations of objects children find interesting (dinosaurs, airplanes, etc) into the architecture, the project leverages the qualities and characteristics latent in candy as a precedent for architectural expressions of atmosphere, program and form. By considering such qualities as gumminess, softness, color, translucency, and texture the project begins to curate a stimulating experience for children, parents and even the larger urban community.
Formally and programmatically the building considers the idea of gumminess as a way to create spaces and blur the distinction between types. Just as kids love to wander and explore, The Sweetness creates a landscape where spaces, programs (or “flavors”) bleed into each other. Contrary to “grown-up” museums where walls are needed to display art, children’s’ museums engage the ground planes with interactive exhibits. This allows us to reconsider the role of the wall and use ETFE panels to provide a compelling museum experience.
Visualization by our good friends at nephew.