A Room and a Garden

This semester in Patrick Down's 3rd year studio, we are designing a room and a garden located at the RDF. We started the first week of studio with intense design charrette. Our rooms must be fully enclosed and be a maximum of 400 sqft.

Here is 1/2" = 1' study model I built. We were instructed to build it in section so that we could work with the interior and focus on how the building meets the landscape. A challenge we were faced with involved noticing the details of walls, floors, ceilings, and roofs.


The main idea behind my room is directionality. The grade slopes at 2% towards the north. I wanted the entry of my room to be on the South side and as you enter the room, your focus is towards the North. My garden will be located on the north side of the room. Having a large glass window on the north side allows for a great framed view of the landscape and garden, while the room shields this window from direct sunlight.


I am planning on using a two layers of entry doors, one glass and one solid, to allow for flexibility in how much direct light is let in from the south side.

More drawings, models, and details to come!

Concrete Printing

These are my two concrete prints. The first one was a thicker pour and less detail came out, and the form of the slab was a little rough. The second pour had a better consistency and the form was much better. More detail came out, but it clouded the image of the airplane. That might just be an issue with the image and the contrast. I'm very pleased I was able to get two attempts cranked out before the end of the semester. Hopefully once Chris is back in a year we can do a lot more concrete printing!

Timber Frame Final

Concluding the Timber Frame proposal, I constructed a 1/2 scale model and an 18"x24" presentation board. To model I learned to pour concrete. My first attempt was alright but very messy and I had problems with leaking so I decided to pour a second time, which turned out much cleaner. I decided to just represent the structure of the roof instead of focus on the joints right now. If my proposal is chosen then I can work with a team to figure out the exact joints to use for my roof. For the poster I decided to explore Photoshop and create an image that shows what the roof looks like in the site. I wanted to represent the shadow that this structure will supply the space. I couldn't think of any text or alternate images that would enhance my poster so I kept with my theme of simplicity and remained with the single image.

Timber Framing Brainstorming

In our pursuit to design and build a Timber Frame roof for the four columns in Burchard Plaza, I cut scale pieces of the wood and began to play with different layouts. Realizing that the amount of wood we have could not solidly cover the surface of the space, I decided to approach a grid system. To expedite the process, since we only have 2 weeks to design, model, and "posterize" our ideas, I decided to create a scheme then photograph it quickly and then move to another idea. Generating multiple iterations helped me quickly narrow down what I want to make of this project. I'm trying to keep my ideas simple but elegant. I then poured a concrete base for my model and have started working with photoshop to really envision my design of the roof on the columns.

Library at Eberswalde

Here is a close up of the two concrete slabs that we have poured thus far. They are to scale representations of the actual slabs used in the construction. More to come!

Library at Eberswalde

For our Art of Building group, the five of us decided to study the Library at Eberswalde, Germany by Herzog & De Meuron. Our class was focusing on signage and we were all interested in screen printing, so we decided to study this building. The process includes screen printing a retarder onto the plexiglass with the desired image and then mixing the concrete and pouring it into the mold. Wait 48 hours and then voila! You have a concrete slab with your screen printed image. Our building's model is a combination of plexiglass for the windows and matte-board for the concrete surfaces which have been xyloled with the images from the original building.

Beginning Stages of the Salt Maker's Residence

When designing the residence for the Salt Maker, I prioritized the importance of preserving nature due to the location of the site and the Salt Maker's qualities. I chose to use the cave for the location of the residence. My initial ideas set the location of the bedroom in the back of the cave, just like a residing animal. I used the shape of the cave to progress from there. I want the residence to be simple and blend with the cliff face, causing a unified relationship with the natural monument.

I think it is important to create and document multiple questions throughout the designing process. Questions of design and meaning accelerate personal understanding and reasoning of the design. Also, questioning how to represent your design, such as what materials exemplify the ideas of the design, can help explore all avenues of potential. A question I am experimenting with is how to model the cave face. Creating many iterations is the only way to answer these questions, like I have started to do with roof design.