Skylar spent the Summer of 2015 working for Pollen Architecture & Design in Austin, TX. A small firm with a very progressive ethos, Pollen gave him the chance work on a range of different projects at different levels of development. He produced the final presentation and marketing drawings for a pair of speculative houses being built for a small local developer and was trusted with a leading role in the initial schematic design of a pool-house and back yard storage project. Skylar also completed a ground-up redesign of the firm’s website.

Given his particular training, Skylar was able to advise Pollen on its first in-house development project: a 25,000 SF “creative-office” complex still in the early phases of conceptualization. In that capacity he conducted market analysis, built a detailed pro-forma that leveraged the principals’ sweat-equity and walked the firm through using these tools to help evaluate schematic massing strategies. Doing development work in a design firm setting provided a chance to practice a philosophy in which budgetary concerns that would normally lead to cost cutting and site “maximization” are instead placed in dialogue with a constellation of other formal drivers.

Starting in 2014 as the inaugural recipient of the Glascock and van Buren Graduate Fellowship and continuing in the fall of 2015, Skylar's role at the Center for Urban Real Estate (CURE) has been a hybrid of research and design. Working directly under the center's research director, Jesse Keenan, Skylar conducted a literature review of office space design metrics to aid in CURE's case study of the climate change adaptation strategies that Goldman Sachs employed in the design of their new corporate headquarters in Lower Manhattan. Skylar also prepared background research on the last 50 years of Mexican housing policy to brief Director Keenan ahead of a talk he gave at a conference organized by Infonavit, Mexico's national home mortgage lending agency.

Skylar was also in charge of managing and implementing CURE’s graphic identity, designing posters for events the center hosted and laying out working papers for its senior researchers. Additionally, Skylar advised Director Keenan on graphic representation strategies for his work on climate change adaptation in the real estate industry, producing charts and diagrams for Keenan’s publications.

Started in 2010 by Janette Kim and Erik Carver at Columbia's Urban Landscape Lab, the Underdome project is:

"…an architect's guide to contending with energy agendas. A cross between an architectural handbook and a voter's guide, the project maps approaches to energy management and performance to examine their implications for public life. Underdome catalogs a spectrum of positions argued for by a diverse cast including economists, environmentalists, community advocates, political scientists, and designers. In turn, it highlights in architecture questions of professional agency, the contemporary city, and collective priorities in the face of uncertain energy futures."

Skylar joined the project in its final months, as the team was readying the manuscript of its capstone book, The Underdome Guide to Energy Reform, helping to finalize the 3D modeling of its case study projects and refine the book's graphic language. Throughout the summer of 2014 Skylar developed and executed the workflow that realized the final illustrations from the 3D models that the team had produced.

In June 2011, Estudio Teddy Cruz held the third in its series of conferences on borderland architecture. The Political Equator 3 was focused on border neighborhoods as sites of social and cultural production and was framed around conversations at three sites straddling both sides of the US/Mexico border. Skylar worked with a team of other interns to produce a model that anchored the conversation at the second site: the Tijuana Estuary right at the mouth of Smuggler’s Gulch, a point of entry for those who do not have the privilege to cross the border with papers. The model depicted the gulch on the US side and the “zero setback” condition of Tijuana’s urban fabric clashing against the border fence. After the discussion the attendees crossed the border in to Tijuana through a storm drain.

Skylar also helped to diagram Professor Cruz’s arguments about the micro-politics of neighborhoods and his work with the local community development agency Casa Familiar, as well as to conduct research on the historical and theoretical precedents of Cruz's theories.

JOINT M.ARCH + MSRED STUDIO, PART 2:
GSAPP Advanced Studio VI // SPRING 2015
PROFESSORS LAURIE HAWKINSON + VISHAAN CHAKRABARTI
A collaboration with Steve Chappell, Daniel Rojo + Martin Smith

Given the provocation to engage a new mode of “collective urbanism” in the context of the future of housing and urban development in two older, western cities, our projects sought to explore two central questions: can architecture respond to the exigencies of the contemporary urban condition while simultaneously engaging the legacy of a city’s history? Both sites, the Preso Model in the Eixample district in Barcelona and Pier 7, the northern most point in the Brooklyn Marine Terminal in New York have a historical and territorial significance that we attempted to balance with the pressing demand for contemporary needs like housing and employment present in both cities.

In the spirit of the joint MSRED / M.Arch studio, we pursued those goals dually in terms of architecture and deal structure, using creative financing mechanisms and cross subsidies in conversation with hybridized programmatic design and formal explorations. History, politics, culture, transit infrastructure, project finance, construction costs, employment statistics, typological convention and regional planning were among the drivers that shaped our investigations.

A CHECKERED PAST: El Preso Model in the Eixample district is a little known site with a highly contentious history. The site is first noted on Barcelona’s periphery in the Cerda Plan for Barcelona in 1859, though the prison itself is not constructed until 1904. Throughout the 20th century Barcelona’s distinctive “manzanas” (square blocks with chamfered corners) filled in around it. The real legacy of the Preso, however, stems from the fascist occupation of Barcelona during the Franco Dictatorship. It was at this site that the political prisoners, many of them Roma and Catalonian Nationalists, were imprisoned, tortured and executed. This is not a legacy that Barcelonans take lightly, nor one they wish to erase; a sentiment reflected by the recent designation of the site as a historic landmark, even though it remains an active prison. The local government plans to decommission the prison in 2017, and its future remains somewhat of an open question. Our proposal employs an aggressive mode of adaptive reuse to honor the legacy of el Preso’s political prisoners while re-appropriate the structure for the needs of contemporary Barcelona. Market research pointed to astonishingly high unemployment, but strong growth in the tourism sector. As such, we set out to adapt the site for workforce training for the hospitality industry.

ADAPTING A STRUCTURE: The entry point to the design process was navigating the complex geometries of the existing building. A series of strategic operations were carried out to clear away parts of the site to make it suitable to public occupation. The most heavily preserved portions of the site make up the “legacy programs,” spaces and institutions which allow the public to engage with the site’s complicated past. The remaining heart of the prison’s panopticonal form is reclaimed as the center of the hospitality school. Its arms are expanded to accommodate classrooms while allowing the original circulation to be appropriated for new purpose. Sites for new construction around the reclaimed buildings redefine the preso’s relationship to the surrounding context.

BUILDING A SELF SUPPORTING INSTITUTION: The buildings around the hospitality school have ground floor retail spaces, half of which are dedicated to “incubator kitchens,” micro-restaurants that will be run by the top students in the culinary program at the hospitality school. Above these spaces is student housing, and higher still are “incubator hotels,” the hospitality equivalent of the culinary spaces on below. The income generated from the hotel and the retail spaces completely subsidizes the tuition for the students as well as the student housing. The highest levels in the newly constructed buildings are sold as market rate condominiums to cover the cost of construction for the project.

URBAN ENGAGEMENT: The ground conditions between the preserved buildings and the new construction seeks to engage the surrounding urban fabric through a variety of urban conditions. The most intimate is the “contemplative plaza” that frames the entrance to the memorial. This space is semi-enclosed by the only remaining piece of the prison’s walls and is built around a reflecting pool that traces the outlines of the cells of the removed prison arm. To the north of that is a retail arcade that occupies the negative space around the shadow of the former arm, evocative of the “pasatge” conditions found elsewhere in Barcelona. The southern half of the site, which is mostly devoted to scholastic programs, is foregrounded by demonstration fields, which allow the culinary students to cultivate their own produce while simultaneously providing a visual interface with the broader urban public.

JOINT M.ARCH + MSRED STUDIO, PART 1:
GSAPP Advanced Studio VI // SPRING 2015
PROFESSORS LAURIE HAWKINSON + VISHAAN CHAKRABARTI
A collaboration with Steve Chappell, Daniel Rojo + Martin Smith

An active port facility leased to a beer distributor by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Pier 7 in the Brooklyn Marine Terminal is on the frontier between the docklands and the southernmost portion of Brooklyn Bridge Park. Our investigation began with a look at the history of New York’s waterfront, which has always been integral to the city’s identity: from a colonial port, to a manufacturing and distribution hub, to the era of waterfront redevelopment, to the flooding during Hurricane Sandy. In recent years, the city's waterways have been the site of major municipal policy initiatives. Whereas the Bloomberg administration sought to bolster public access to the water through a series of new parks supported by private development, the de Blasio administrations is attempting to harness it as an infrastructure, expanding the existing ferry system exponentially to serve as the backbone of new transit-oriented development sites for affordable housing in the outer boroughs. One of the new proposed ferry terminals is at Pier 6, immediately next to our site. Our analysis looked at the areas within a half mile radius of each of the new terminals and examined existing retail square footage (a metric for identifying job centers), existing housing units and unbuilt as-of-right residential FAR.

TRANSIT ORIENTED WORKFORCE HOUSING: The analysis made clear that while the ferry system as a whole had great potential for connecting areas with lots of untapped development rights to areas with high concentrations of retail employment, (the expressed goal of de Blasio’s initiative,) our site lacked much in the way of unused FAR, despite having little existing housing stock. However, due to its close proximity to the Manhattan job centers, we proposed that the site be designated a special development project along the lines of the Mayor’s plan for Sunny Side Yards, directly integrated with his ferry proposal. A 99 year lease would be obtained from the Port Authority, in exchange for a nominal payment and the provision of a state-of-the-art, (albeit small) distribution center on site. Additionally, the workforce center would house facilities for the International Brotherhood of Longshoremen and the Teamsters to provide services to their members, potentially helping the Port Authority in their labor negotiations as they plan for the future of the Brooklyn Marine terminal. The main mass of housing would be mixed income project of 900 units, split 50-30-20 per HDC guidelines. The unit types and sizes were specified by the development program, but algorithmically shuffled and packed to break up the building’s mass. The massing was tapered on both ends: inland to relate to the scale of Brownstone Brooklyn and to the water to provide views. The whole project was lifted on stilts out of flooding concerns and to provide views from Brooklyn Bridge park clear through to the active port on the other side, connecting the public with the cities maritime legacy. In addition to the ferry, a new gondola system was proposed running from the Barclay’s Center along the Atlantic Avenue retail corridor to Governors Island, to further tie the site in to existing urban networks.

BLURRING THE BORDER BETWEEN PORT AND PARK: The site around the main housing mass was left predominantly open, allowing for fluid circulation between the two transit modes, unobstructed views of the the active port to the south, as well as easy access to the cultural program, retail spaces and workforce center. , which are housed under a folded roof that slips beneath the housing on the east end of the site and defines the project’s urban edge along Columbia Street. The western portions of the site slope down to meet the waters edge, creating an artificial beach that allows for viewing of “culture barges,” floating attractions that are prepared by a facility along the back edge of the new pier. The financial model of the project was geared around both the provision of affordable housing and the cross-subsidizing of the cultural and civic programs in the podium as part of the justification for the major variances that the project would require from the city. A density analysis explored project sizing relative to providing revenue streams to various public amenities.

REVOLTING APARTMENTS: ADVANCED STUDIO V
FALL 2014 // PROFESSOR ANDRÉS JAQUE
A collaboration with Yongchan Kwon + James Quick

Out of the ashes of the recession, a new typology emerged along 57th Street, the Super Tall, Ultra Luxury Condo Tower. While Extell’s “One57” was technically the first building of this class “432 Park Avenue” by Harry Macklowe with support from the CIM Group, is arguably the ideal type. After topping out in October 2014, it officially became the highest roof in the city, its relentless grid of 10’ x 10’ monolithic windows evoking a late-capitalist rendition of Super Studio’s Continuous Monument. Everything about this building is extreme, including its construction methodology, the subsequent construction cost, the sales point, and the potential profits. However, Professor Andrés Jaque had us examine the a scenario in which that large portions of the building remain vacant. Real estate financial analysis of such a scenario showed that the replacement value of the condos as luxury rental properties does not come close to being a viable option for an investor looking to acquire portions of 432 park as a “distressed asset.” So what would happen to the tower? This scenario (and it is not completely improbable, if not for 432 Park, then for one of the half dozen other towers currently under construction) provides a fertile testing ground for alternative modes of urban domesticity, which might re-purpose the tower to its own ends. Towards this goal our team conducted field research on the specific domesticity present in the sharing economy communities, AirBNB and Couchsurfing.com, providing case studies of hosts to inform our project.

Repositioning Units: Our proposal repositions 27 units in 432 Park as a new rental mode: CrashPad is simultaneously an architectural tool kit for transforming the tower’s opulent apartments into spaces that are more easily subdivided, and a management strategy that interfaces between a micro-subletting service front end and a conventional tenant structure back end. CrashPad provides a means for the general public to live in 432 Park, by creating units with three sub-tenancies explicitly designed to be micro-sublet through CrashPad’s front end hospitality service, thereby making up the difference between standard New York rent and the revenue need to support our repositioning proposal. In this way, CrashPad harnesses the conflict and pressures present in New York’s general rental market and puts them in the service of our “distressed asset.” Cynical? Perhaps, but this reflects the current state of play in housing in this city. The front end character of CrashPad is built around the notion of “a curated domestic experience” packaging the different domestic modes we found in our field research as part of the “narrative of authenticity” that fuels the sharing economy. Through our field work, we identified four distinct unit types across a dual-axis spectrum from radical to normative and from hands on to hands off.

GETTING PHYSICAL: Throughout the semester a 1:100 scale model of 432 Park, standing some 15’ tall, served as a site of experimentation for our investigations. Beginning the semester as a pristine representation of the tower, the model slowly was overcome by the different group’s interventions.

KNOWN UNKNOWNS: ADVANCED STUDIO IV
SPRING 2014 // PROFESSOR JANETTE KIM

In response to the Post-Disaster Interim Housing plan put forward by New York City’s Office of Emergency Management, this project proposes a framework for the production of interim, heterogeneous urban spaces to address the loss of the physical infrastructure that facilitates complex networks of urban use beyond the simple designation of “housing.”

one to one equivalence? Illustrations produced by the planning department for the OEM’s interim housing plan, show a vision for the recovery of a fictional New York neighborhood. Investigation for this project began with questioning whether this post-disaster state represented a 1:1 recovery of the urban complexity that existed before the disaster event. Could a process be conceived that better accounts for the differences inherent in the lives of the people who are displaced resulting in a scenario with less long-term or permanent displacement?

a scalar strategy: The project calls for the preparation of numerous sites throughout the city which would be built out with interim spaces only in the event of a disaster, and only in proportion to the levels of displacement the city experiences. Site preparation involves the city using eminent domain to obtain easements on property allowing for the laying of foundations and utility connections in anticipation of future interim programs without the need for the municipal government to take possession of vast land holdings. These foundations would be disguised as landscape features or occupiable spaces with over-engineered structural capacity, designed to be able to receive the interim use spaces should the need arise. However these preparatory interventions are intended to serve as infrastructural and programmatic investments in themselves, and would ideally continue to benefit their surroundings irrespective of any need for the site to be built out. In the advent of a disaster, the new interim spaces would parasitize the vertical circulation of multiple existing structures, both creating infrastructural redundancy in older buildings with only one elevator as well as unifying the existing residents and the displaced residents as a single constituency.

Architectural Technology V // SPRING 2014
Critics: Jay Hibbs + Patrick Hopple
A collaboration with Jessie Baxa, Steve Chappell + Stephanie Jones

Given only a set of envelope dimensions, a generic site and mandated floor to floor heights, our design began with a material: concrete. We wanted to understand both its structural and material properties.

This investigation led us to a reinforced concrete waffle slab system. Because of the permitter cantilevers our design called for, we tapered the long edges of the slab, which had the added effect of lightening the projects appearance in elevation and introducing more light into the space. The grid of the waffle slab became the driving factor for all systems, from HVAC lines to facade datums. In our efforts to coordinate our systems around the grid of our waffle slab, great attention was directed towards the spacing of the waffle and ribs to incorporate the sizing of our systems.

The building is clad with alternating bays of a double skin translucent concrete system and transparent vision glass. The double skin portions of the facade are built around a self supporting, modular steel frame which ties back to the waffle slabs at every floor to transfer lateral loads. The steel modules are shop built from hollow square tube stock to match one of eight different module types within a family of details. The modules attach to one another by way of mated joints, whereby smaller diameter steel sections shop welded to one module are received by the larger hollow steel sections of the connecting module. The jointed is fastened on site with bolts which lie flush. This system greatly limits the amount of site welding which will be needed during construction. Once erected, the steel frame is glazed on exterior side with point supported glass of the same specification as elsewhere in the project. The other side is clad in translucent concrete spanning from floor to ceiling which enables the transmission of diffuse light. The translucent concrete is perforated with vents along the ceiling of each floor, allowing the double skin facade to exhaust conditioned air from each floor back to the AHUs on the roof for heat recapture. The presence of conditioned exhaust air in the double skin facade improves the thermal performance of the building by spreading out the temperature differential between the interior and the environment across the 4' cavity.

HOUSING STUDIO: GSAPP CORE STUDIO III
FALL 2013 // PROFESSOR RAFI SEGAL
A collaboration with Steve Chappell.

Early on in our exploration of this East Harlem site, Steve Chappell and I determined that the location was ill-suited to residential development. The challenges presented by our site result from negative externalities caused by a confluence of regional transportation infrastructure. Rather than fight this condition, our proposal seeks to invert the relationship, repositioning the site as a new node in these networks. Drawing from both contemporary and historic plans, we propose a large automated garage, with integrated automotive services and car-sharing, which interfaces with Harlem River Drive and intermodal connections to the East River Ferry, the 4-5-6 subway line and the CitiBike system via the Manhattan Green-way. The project offsets the burden of automotive infrastructure in the surrounding area, allowing surface lots to be developed for new housing opportunities and street parking to be re-designated as parks or dedicated bus lanes. However, this project is more than just a new piece of infrastructure; it seeks to avoid the mistakes of the previous century’s rigid, purpose-built schemes. This is inhabitable infrastructure, hybridized with programs that can leverage an embeddedness within transportation networks. Integrated into its role as transport hub is housing for commuters, retail, recreational space and work space. This is a piece of infrastructure which holistically addresses the city-dweller’s relationship to these larger regional systems; this is infrastructure as place.

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY INFRASTRUCTURES: Bounded by some of New York’s most heavily used transportation arteries: the Metro North Rail Line to the west and the Harlem River and Harlem River Drive to the east, our site is defined by regional infrastructures which would little benefit a traditional housing model. The neighborhood is home to a range of “secondary infrastructures:” car dealerships, park + ride lots, mechanics and other programs at the service of car owners. The circumscription by primary regional transportation arteries and pervasiveness of secondary automotive infrastructures have a profound effect on the urban character of the area around are site. Structured as it is around the scale of the automobile, it lacks the vibrancy of the neighborhoods to the immediate south and west.

SECONDARY INFRASTRUCTURE, A REGIONAL PERSPECTIVE: Looking at secondary automotive infrastructure as a regional institution, it seems to have a somewhat even distribution across the city. However, when you begin to break down this information by the intensity of usage, showing which plots are entirely devoted to automotive services rather than just providing underground parking, a different picture emerges. Strikingly, these concentrations of intensive programs do not necessarily correlate with car ownership rates, meaning that these districts are primarily not servicing their own residents. Returning to the immediate area of our site, it is clear that it is part of an “infrastructural edge” condition, one which services the car owners of the Upper East and Upper West Sides, as well as parts of Harlem, while doing little for the residents of the neighborhood.

CONSOLIDATION + REDEVELOPMENT: To engage this condition head-on, our project proposes to consolidate all of these secondary automotive programs in within a new infrastructural typology, freeing up the land formerly occupied by the old, single-use infrastructures for the development of affordable housing and other programs which would make the neighborhood more suitable to residential use. The land that the secondary automotive infrastructures holds the potential to provide a wealth of new housing opportunities. With minimal rezoning to match adjacent parcels (those lots outlined red at left) the numbers far surpass those that could be achieved developing our site alone.

DESIGNING INFRASTRUCTURE AS PLACE: The resulting infrastructure is a large-scale automated parking garage with many different components servicing different secondary automotive infrastructures. Surrounding this mechanized core is an intermodal transit hub and various complimentary, occupiable programs that position our site as a node in broader regional networks while simultaneously providing amenities to the surrounding neighborhood. This section illustrates the inner workings of the project, exposing the entrance and exit ramps, the short-term parking mass, the dealership and custom shop as well as the relationship between the resident’s parking and the commuter housing masses. The commuter housing forms a veneer along the waters edge, both granting views to the apartments as well as masking the utilitarian appearance of structure from the green-way. Inversely, the infrastructural elements of the program shield the apartments from the noise of the Metro North Railway and the sanitation truck parking below it. The Harlem River Drive freeway is covered by an extension of the green-way, further insulating the residences. Many of the site’s users would enter the site via car, a population which include park and ride commuters, residents, patrons of the mechanics, longterm parking lessees, grocery store shoppers and cinema-goers attending the drive-in theater on the roof. The entrance ramp leads to a bank of car elevators that are the start point for the automated sorting system above. A roof-top park and accompanying “drive-in” theater provide public access to views of Midtown Manhattan down the Park Avenue / Metro-North corridor. Land-hungry secondary automotive infrastructural programs like car dealerships are consolidated into more compact footprints by the mechanics of automatic car sorting. This arrangement can also play an aesthetic role in the retail component of these programs.

Bank Studio: GSAPP Core Stuido II
SPRING 2013 // PROFESSOR MABEL WILSON

Located on Fulton Mall in Downtown Brooklyn, the Alternative Development Bank (AltDevo Bank) seeks to act as a mediator between the traditional belligerents in the gentrification battle in commercial districts through two adversarial sub-agencies: one which represents the interests of the retail tenants and the other which represents the interests of the landlords. The AltDevo Commercial Debt Restructuring Agency that would work with retailers to manage their debts and transition their businesses to adapt to changing local economic conditions. The AltDevo Development Agency would work with landlords to build out underutilized upper-floor offer space, increasing rent revenues in exchange for more gradual increases in ground-floor retail rents, buying the retailers time to transition their businesses. In this way, AltDevo Bank proposes to intervene in the redevelopment process, creating inclusive institutional frameworks that allow existing residents to actively participate in neighborhood transition, thereby producing outcomes that better reflect neighborhood character. The architectural intervention parasitize the existing structure in a series of phases, gradually exploiting untapped property value for the landlord, forgoing the kind of reckless, zero-sum speculation that prices out existing tenants.

THE CO-CREATION OF VALUE: A literature review of studies of retail gentrification pointed to Sneaker Culture as a non-typical case study. Based on logics of authenticity, or “street cred,” Corporate America has effectively partnered with small urban retailers in an arrangement termed by Nike as “the co-creation of value.” Whether this is a truly symbiotic relationship, or simply capitalist appropriation of minority culture is a matter for debate, however it provides an interesting model for an alternative mode of retail gentrification. Leveraging the value of authenticity, Alt-Devo Bank might be able to engage in a similar Co-Creation venture with corporate partners and landlords in order to “buy time” for its debt restructuring retail clients to adjust their business models to changing consumer conditions, thereby preserving small local retailers.

A PHASED MODEL: The architectural model for Alt-Devo banked involves the phased, parasitic adaptation of the existing building on the site, expanding gradually as the number of clients grows. This model could serve as a case study for land lords interested in gradually increasing upper floor rent revenues without speculatively selling their properties to larger developers.

GSAPP Architectural Drawing + Representation 1
Fall 2012 // Professor Josh Uhl

A precedent study of Rudolph M. Schindler's canonical Lovell Beach House in Newport Beach.

Aquatic Studio Part 2: GSAPP Core Studio I
Fall 2012 // Professor Galia Solomonoff

The Parking Spot Micro-Economy is a roof condition proposal for a Columbia University run natatorium located at the Grant Houses NYCHA development in Harlem. The project attempts to negotiate the checkered history of Columbia Athletics’s interventions in public space in Harlem, addressing issues of ownership and sovereignty; simultaneously leveraging the University’s resources to improve the facilities available to residents while fulfilling programmatic requirements for student users. The existing condition of the site, a parking lot, is replicated on the roof of the natatorium, preserving the informal economy of parking sublets that the residents use as an economic resource. This economy is expanded through the addition of per-permitted micro-economic interventions that residents can request to plug into their “parking” space, allowing for storage, office space, take-out kitchens, gardens and other flexible programming. The parking surface is bifurcated, allowing for easy entrance from the parking deck in to the natatorium space, which houses a hiring office that allows residents to collaborate with student attending the pools. The pool and jacuzzis act as meeting spaces where the terms of the partnerships between the residents and students can be negotiated.

A STRATEGY FOR SOVEREIGNTY: The section illustrates the relationship between the aquatic programs and the micro-economic roof-scape. The connection between the two via the bifurcation in the roof not only lets in light , but creates a programmatic agency intended to foster connection between the different use groups. The hot-tub meeting rooms are strategically placed along a raised band, closest to this opening.

Aquatic Studio Part 1: GSAPP Core Studio I
Fall 2012 // Professor Galia Solomonoff

This bathroom for West Harlem Piers Park seeks to address several of the chronic problems facing the provision of public restrooms through an architectural engagement with the economic and social factors that govern the maintenance of restroom facilities. The site’s proximity to the West Side Highway, enables the use of a billboard to cover maintenance costs through corporate sponsorship. An efficiency apartment is provided for maintenance staff, allowing for a rent-for-services agreement to cut down costs and near 24 hour on site supervision for security reasons. The use of mandated local hiring for maintenance workers employ the existing social structure to create accountability for the users. Integrated thermal hot water and photo-voltaic systems provide additional cost cutting potential.

Arch 101: UC Berkeley Advanced Studio
Fall 2011 // Professor Renee Chow

This project houses two previously unrelated institutions at UC Berkeley, the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, which is responsible for overseeing classes in Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Buddhist Studies, and the Center for East Asian Studies, a collection of research institutions focused on East Asian issues. The proposal is comprised of two distinct masses, which give discrete identities to the two institutions. This partitioning is mediated by a spanning element, which seeks to facilitate inter-organizational collaboration; placing instructional spaces and faculty offices in close proximity to offices for visiting scholars and guest lectures at the institute. The large-scale concrete frames which support the spanning element, serve to create a secondary ground condition above large open spaces that are used for public events. The two masses and an adjacent building enclose a courtyard space which opens up to the campus. This space has a degree of intimacy in its proximity to the gallery space, but is also decidedly public in that it maintains a right of way through the site. This duality seeks to increase the interaction between the two client institutions and the larger campus community by bringing passersby in close proximity to event spaces.

Arch 100B: UC Berkeley Fundamentals Studio
Spring 2011 // Professor Keith Plymale

A hypothetical addition to UC Berkeley’s campus, the Center for Collaborative Research is an interdisciplinary research institution, comprised of three large, flexible laboratory spaces that could accommodate a shifting roster of different areas of research. Site analyses provided potential routes for cross-site pedestrian traffic which served as the formative organizing logic for the project, the thought being that the provision of pathways with clear views in to labratory spaces would encourage the university community to take an interest in the CCR’s research agenda. Paths for different user groups were considered and a pedestrian bridge was provided, short cutting the rout between the dormatories and some of the largest classrooms on campus, increasing the likelyhood that students would observe labratory activity.

In December 2008, the Cal Memorial Victory Garden Club was formed by a group of students, primarily agroecology majors, with the intent of building a demonstration garden on Memorial Glade, a central location on the UC Berkeley Campus. In January, initial meetings began with the administration and Jim Horner, chief landscape architect of Campus Physical and Plant Services. By the end of February, the plans were approved and construction began. The design utilized salvaged wood from houses in Oakland and a layered construction system which did not require the digging of post holes, which would have been quite difficult in the compacted clay soil of the site. The garden functioned as a site for agricultural demonstrations, a meeting place for other clubs on campus and hosted the lab for ESPM 117, Urban Agricultural Ecosystems. In late December 2009, the garden was demolished by a unilateral action from the administration.

The garden was a staple of campus tours during the Spring and Fall of 2009 and was featured in the university’s newsletter, garnering praise from renowned journalist and UC Berkeley professor Michael Pollan:

”Students will learn that they can feed themselves, and just how much food a small plot can produce…They may also learn new habits of thought and, paradoxically, values of self-reliance and community. The university will learn that students care about food, and that there are more productive (and beautiful) uses of its land than grass.”