 |
Fall 1994
This studio involved a study of prefabricated housing. Commonly known as "mobile homes," these units are usually moved only once, from the factory to a mobile home community. Everyone ended up with radically different interpretations of this housing type, so my project doesn't really offer any clues to what the other students did, like Adam Phillips' enormous projection screen or Sam Phaup's folding front lawns (which curiously resembled Joel's Pyle House project). Basically, what this image shows you, if you squint enough and use your imagination, is a two-level structure into which the homes are inserted, providing a communal space on the top, from which windows offer a view of a kinda fake lawn. The model was cooler. Throughout much of the semester, Joel and I kind of got on each other's nerves, but by the final review we were more or less on the same page, and I thought it all turned out great. This was the only studio where I really paced myself well that final week, and didn't have to pull an all-nighter at the end. This was especially fortunate considering I sliced off part of my thumb finishing up the model (it healed, don't worry).
 |
 |
 |
Spring 1995
For Mario's studio, we began with an examination of selected housing units by Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. I studied an obscure Mies project, the creatively-titled "House with Three Courts" (I used that "creatively-titled" joke in our final review and only Sam and Lupe Nickell laughed, which was worth it if only to hear Lupe's very amusing giggle). With the knowledge we gained from this analysis, we embarked on designs for apartment buildings for the northern section of Battery Park City, in New York. The final review, with all of our extremely different buildings on the same site, was truly a sight to behold. My project extended to the edges of the parallelogram-shaped parcels that Chris Orsega's site plan gave us, and, again, looked cooler in my model, even though it was hastily-prepared out of cardboard. I remember this being the worst final review for me, as I got slammed by our annoyingly smug dean, Ralph Lerner.
 |
 |
Fall 1995
As in Mario's studio, we began with an analysis of selected building types, in this case theaters and recital halls. Jorge Carbonell and I studied the Salle Alfred Cortot in Paris, an exceptionally beautiful room nestled into an extremely small space. After this, we all began separate designs for a theater on the Institute for Advanced Study campus. This is a 300-seat theater for the site south of Cesar Pelli's math building, facing the small pond. Unlike my previous examples, these drawings are much cooler than the model. I remember being complemented on my drawing skills after our final review, and I was like, "Um, thanks, but I did them on the computer." The plan's goofy-ass curves were actually too big to do with a compass, but I probably would have used AutoCad anyway, since I had mastered it fairly well in my summer job. I only wish I had been able to use it in the earlier studios.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Spring 1996
I won't bore you by putting my 88-page senior thesis online, so here are some pictures of me and my fellow seniors outside our lovely building on the day we handed them in. Happy campers include: Jeannie Kim, Drew Hudacek, Jocelyn Fredman, Nico Janberg, Alison Alessi, Anne Paas, Chris Lane, Adam Phillips, Jen Hurt, Noah Parsons, and Eiko Yoshihara.
Back to my home page
