Porch House + 300 Panels, 400 Cuts, 400 Bandages

Anna Goga (MArch II ’20)

The pedagogical experiment of the studio questioned the aesthetic and structural possibilities of Cross Laminated Timber panels or “CLT Blanks”, through the lens of two typologies – a house and a mid-rise tower.

The Porch House engages an old-notion of “folding in architecture”, where the CLT Blank measuring 9’ X 50’ is folded to create a miter-joint connection, allowing for the material to appear less sheet-like and more like plastic. Large CLT folds are distributed at the scale of—a wrap-around-porch—a type found in the American South. The porch becomes the central space of the house, where domestic scenarios, functions, and personal objects change and move over time. The structural fold becomes an inhabitable space that blurs the boundaries between inside and outside and allows for the porch’s bigness to appear.

300 Panels, 400 Cuts, 400 Bandages uses the full 50’ CLT blank vertically with one simple squiggle cut for each of the 300 panels. Assembled as a structural tube, the exoskeleton maximizes 5-story tall CLT Blanks and minimizes material waste. The project rethinks steel connections commonly used in mass timber construction, by re-conceptualizing the generic plate as a “bandage”. Usually hidden within the exterior wall assembly, the bandages are carefully designed, exaggerated, and exposed as compositional facade elements. Structurally and programmatically, the project explores ideas of lightness, the exchangeability of housing and office space, and the afterlife of materiality. The interior of the structural tube is comprised of four 25 meter zones with a gantry system of cranes built into each of the four ceilings. This system allows for the possibility to reassemble the interior floor plates and walls with endless variations.

Stranger in Moscow: The Diplomatic Illusive

Ian Miley (MArch I AP ’20)

Diplopia (n.) describes a disorder of vision in which two images of a single object are seen. Situated among other disciplinary -opias, diplopia is re-imagined to invoke a double place, more narrowly, a space for diplomacy. Our modern concept of diplomacy emerged in the Italian Renaissance in the formalization of epistolary exchange between sovereign states. Ancestral letters – or diplomas – on the one hand an official state document conferring privilege, on the other simply a paper folded twice over, fold revelation within the act of concealment. This is the duplicitous act upon which diplomatic practices are founded. Since its emergence as a genre of space, the diplomatic setting has been framed by dramaturgical and optical techniques intended to produce a doubling of reality.

This thesis considers the Embassy for the U.S. diplomatic mission to the Russian Federation in Moscow — a structure implicated in a history of espionage, riddled with listening devices, procured via labyrinthine construction contracts. The reciprocal subversions performed across the Iron Curtain during the Cold War — succinctly illustrated in MAD Magazine’s Spy vs. Spy comic strips — appear to have been recently reanimated. Through the interplay of illusionistic techniques drawn from the ecclesiastical chancel, 1960s Op-Art, and recursive computation, distortive methods propose a dialectic of concealment and revelation in architecture. Stagecraft and statecraft conspire to project the possibility of built form through the production of doubt.

Project Acknowledgments

Rhetorical support: Samantha Vasseur (MArch, MDes HPDM ’21)

Drawing support: Samantha Vasseur (MArch, MDes HPDM ’21), Ian Bankhead (MArch ’22), Aleksis Bertoni (MArch ’18), Cynthia Deng (MArch, MUP ’21), Isabel Tiange Wang (MArch ’22)

Rendering support: Jung In Seo (MIT MArch ’20), Dalma Földesi (MIT MArch ’20), Danmo Fu (MArch ’22), Glen Marquardt (MArch ’21)

A House is Not a Home

Qin Ye Chen (MArch I ’22) and Yiwen Wang (MArch I AP ’22)

“A House is Not a Home” addresses central questions that resonate in important ways with life in our cities today: “How can architecture offer a remedy to social isolation?” and “Can architecture organize different scales of community engagement over different time frames?”

This multifamily housing design redefines home as a space for knowing and engaging with objects and others for some amount of time. It acknowledges that the current housing system no longer responds to the need for community engagement or contributes to building higher levels of community attachment. The project manifests architecturally multiple time scales of knowledge, awareness, and engagement of one’s neighbors. Whether it is knowing your neighbors through windows over the years, a space occupied by different inhabitants for certain days of the week, or objects collected in treasure chambers changing by the hours.

This design combines a range of dwelling types in varying configurations, all seamlessly synthesized on the site. This range of apartment types and the idea of overlapping shared spaces that oscillate between private and public realms are used as an important component of community building and engagement. Furthermore, the aggregation of these varied units in different scalar configurations ranging from low to mid-rise building forms suggest choices in terms of living opportunities for different demographics across ages as well as income groups. Most critically, these aims and objectives are integrated into a form that is responsive to the urban fabric and context in which it is situated. The project suggests a new form of urban living that is socially inclusive and architecturally accommodative of varying lifestyles and cultural aspirations. In addition, the human-centric approach and experiential imagination of space have resulted in inventive places of encounters, which will “serve as a remedy to social isolation” through enhancing community engagement.

At The Dinner Table — Green to Orange: Building Ireland’s food security and identity

Jiyun Jeong (MLA I ’19)

Food reveals the culture and identity of the place. What and how people grow on the land constructs the landscape and what people consume shapes their identity and health. This study focuses on Irish farming and its relation to the Irish landscape, not only in the context of Brexit but also engaging with climate change. The current Irish landscape contributes in a major way to Ireland’s sheep and cattle farming. However, what if the Irish landscape becomes no longer green and placed at risk due to climate change?

The development of agriculture has moved away from crop growing to animal farming. Currently, dairy has become a specialized type of farming and less than 3% of Irish farmers grow vegetables and fruits. However, Ireland is predicted to be seriously impacted by climate change and it will put the unique feature of the Irish landscape and its current primary crops, like potatoes, at risk. In terms of Brexit, the deal could have a major impact on Irish fruit and vegetable importers and wholesalers, meaning shortages and higher prices for consumers.

This indoor landscape system would allow farmers to test and grow new potential species in preparation for climate change. One existing farm in Strabane is selected as a testbed since this farm has already started embracing new technology and innovative systems for farming. Cows’ steamy breath will be used as a form of heating and expired carbonic gas will quicken and promote vegetation. Moreover, the moisture from cow breath will save watering and the waste from cows will be reused as a form of fertilization. Oranges in the greenhouse will eventually come out to the field when the climate gets suitable in 60 years. The indoor landscape system will be reused for other species in future adaptations. This project will eventually establish Ireland’s food security and change their dinner table.

Creating Higher Ground in Boston’s Seaport

Amelia Muller (MUP ’20)

In September 2018, the City of Boston published estimates projecting the city’s population will reach almost 760,000 people by the year 2030. To meet the population growth and requisite housing needs, Boston has increased its overall housing goal to 69,000 units by 2030. Siting that growth requires significant land capacity in a city that is already land strapped. The industrial land between the Seaport and South Boston, east of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, represents a prime opportunity for development of new housing and amenities to serve those residents. However, this plan area and much of the surrounding land is under serious threat of sea level rise, projected along a similar timeline to population growth.

To develop housing in this area without addressing the threat of sea level rise would be deeply irresponsible. Thus, this plan seeks to create higher ground for development through “cut-and-fill” of the Reserve Channel and the inclusion of mediating green space between new development and the water. In addition to mitigating the harmful effects of climate events, this landscape will create a more enticing arrival experience from the nearby cruise terminal, provide a respite from the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, and build on the success of Lawn on D to create vital open space for the Seaport and South Boston.

The density scheme proposed in the plan seeks to mediate the superblocks and higher heights of the Seaport with the lower heights of South Boston through a step-down approach from north to south.

Diffusive Geometries: Vapor as a Tectonic Element to Sculpt Microclimates in Architectural Space

Honghao Deng (MDes Tech ’18)

An essential function of architecture is to control the environment around us. In practice, interior climates are discretized into self-contained units where wetness is kept in wet spaces and dryness in dry spaces. Contrary to nature’s weather patterns, architecture is often static, with no diffusion in between. As a result, weather conditions that exist in nature are not experienced inside. Vapor is a medium to bring microclimates that exist outside into architectural space in Diffusive Geometries: Vapor as a Tectonic Element to Sculpt Microclimates in Architectural Space. The unique characteristics of vapor allow users to modulate visibility, create cooling gradients, and produce spatial patterns in a controlled manner. This project encompasses three main elements: a point – vapor vortex ring, a line – vapor tornado, and a plane – vapor wall. The focused and diffused conditions of vapor enable both localized and global states to transpire through soft boundaries.

“Diffusive Geometries” was the 2019 recipient of a Core77’s Design Award in the Built Environment category.

Nourishing Captiva

Naoko Asno, Anna Curtis-Heald, Jenjira Holmes, Phia Sennett (all MLA I ’19)

On March 5, 2019, Captiva Island held a referendum on beach renourishment. 123 ‘yes’ votes catalyzed 30 million dollars in spending. 17 voted no.

In contrast to the erosive forces that actually grow coasts, beach renourishment is an erosion prevention technique used by Captiva Island for the past 50 years. In a predominantly sandy biome, what does erosion prevention mean?

Captivans are presented with a binary decision, YES OR NO, for or against. But as designers we like to imagine alternatives. In a context where the beach is invented and dredge is designed, why not imagine another placement strategy that works WITH the movement of the barrier, rather than against it?

We offer strategies for land building on the bay-side of Captiva, by using sand to support the natural landward movement of the barrier formation.

We imagine a political process that transcends the binary. Does sand belong on the gulf-side only? Is the only way to enjoy Captiva through a static 5 mile long beach? Why not distribute the 900,000 cubic yards of sand on the bay-side in order to jump start the land building that has been arrested by such erosion preventions measures?

Can sand act as a catalyst for mangrove growth, support dune habitat, and facilitate breach dynamics, supporting ecological richness and transformation? Can plants be allowed to act as space makers?

Our project illustrates this through nourishing in three areas: a sandbar, a golf course, and the narrowest and most vulnerable stretch of the island.

 

The New Generic

Daniel Garcia (MArch II ’20)

In, The Generic City, Rem Koolhaas asks us to consider the disadvantages of identity, and conversely, the advantages of blankness. He asserts that a city bound to its identity resists expansion, interpretation, and renewal. Koolhaas goes on to define and embrace the idea of a generic city as one that is liberated from the straight-jacket of identity, history, and context. “It is a city without history. It is big enough for everybody. It is easy.”

Miami’s strong identities and multiple histories beg for an architecture of multiplicities. For this reason, a project for the Miami Design District that provides adaptable spaces for living and working should be neither wholly generic nor specific; it should situate itself somewhere between the two. The project alludes to the low-rise urbanism of the surrounding context by dispersing a series of pavilions around a site on the southeastern edge of the Design District and continues by stacking the pavilions into two towers, creating a vertical mat urbanism that approximates the public and semi-public spatial sequences of the neighborhood. Courts, passageways, and stairways give the Design District its character but these features are deployed here as an inherent critique of the low-density development which lacks the programmatic diversity of a rich urban fabric. The facade is comprised of massive precast concrete panels that span two floors and are used to mitigate climate and solar exposure. Large arcades appear around the perimeter of the towers as abstractions of the pervasive balcony typology of Miami beach high-rises.

 

                   

Surface of Confluence, An Infrastructural Museum on the National Mall

Zi Meng (MArch I AP ’21)

This project intends to synthetize multiple architectural interests into a wholistic form. Several different aspects including typological organization, social activity, contextual influence and historical connotations are analyzed and instrumentalized to generate an idiosyncratic formal language – the confluence bundled roof system. The project proposes a new form of museum for DC that fuses the infrastructural quality of the bridge together with the singular characteristics of the museum. The geometry of the museum is a product of negotiation between its internal organization of programs and its circulatory bridging functionalities. The confluence roof system is a formal, structural and tectonic solution informed both by the site context and typological study of museums. Its geometry and structural property are adaptive to the complex contextual influences and programmatic requirements. The conflicting and conforming flow of the roof bundles formally responding to the poignant status of the highway severed site, at the same time creating a walkable roof surface that is bridging and suturing the fragmented site parcels. The roof bundle system also provides a porous surface, while walking on the roof bridge of the museum, the visitors can frequently drip down and experience the museum space without going inside of the museum.

 

    

    

    

 

Vegetation Orientation: Franklin Park’s Way

Chelsea Dombroskie (MLA I ’21)

Franklin Park is challenging to navigate. Vegetation Orientation asks how a design can bring clarity to a disorienting area of the park, a clarity that is embedded in the site and integrated with existing conditions. The result is a series of wayfindings defined by vegetation. The ways have their own micro-identities and in the context of the larger park, act as a threshold between existing zones of activity.

Way 1 is an observation of invasive Japanese Knotweed that currently exists in patches on site and is difficult to eradicate. Within this way Knotweed can stay, expand in the specified areas and have an identity that is reframed positively and can be maintained through harvesting driven by community engagement. Young shoots cut in early spring are edible. Jerusalem Artichoke, edible and believed to balance Knotweed’s invasive qualities, will be introduced along this way.

Way 2, is an expansion of gray birch that currently exists in small numbers on site. As the dominant red oak canopy in the park nears its end, mulch can be made to support the new birch life. Seeds need exposed ground to take root; a mulching pattern, will allow the birch to create a variety of spacing and experiences along this way.

Way 3 proposes directional breaks into the exiting parking lot asphalt to allow grass between, linking grassy playstead to grassy golf course. An integrated parking lot in which edges become diffused, better support the social space it already is.

Throughout this project I asked how our understanding and energy toward invasive species can shift from worthless to valuable. Olmstead is believed to be an early supporter of knotweed’s introduction into the US, is it our responsibility then to eradicate it or adapt with it? Can the dying canopy can support new plant growth? How can existing conditions be reframed to better support community use of the park?