Search

My thesis is regarding the regeneration of identity and a sense of place on the unappealing nature of public open space, in terms of its urban context and architecture. A sense of place is related to the quality and character of making a place unique or special. It could be described as the established atmosphere or character of an individuals relationship with a place.  So a good sense of place becomes a place that people would like to be a part of and enhances a human's positive emotional attachment making people feel connected to a place. So creating a sense of place should be based on understanding the cultural identity, social activity, physical environment and heritage of a place. Shown on the left are two images captured from the movie "Lost in Translation"an American comedy-drama film directed and written by Sofia Coppola in 2003. The film revolves around an aging actor, Bob Harris, and a recent college graduate actress, Charlotte. These two Americans develop empathy after meeting by chance at their hotel bar in Tokyo. The movie explores themes of loneliness, insomnia, existential boredom and culture shock against the surroundings of a modern Japanese city. Both images from the movie show an unbalanced scale of the environment around the actor. These images reminded me of the first impression of disconnected or disappointed that I had of the atmosphere at the end of King Street in Alexandria, Virginia. The place was not comfortable to be in with its own character and the access to the water was hard to be sense visually. The first impression of this place still occupied my mind rather than any other attractive aspects within the area. This unpleasant experience arose from my own individual relationship with the place but later I figured out that it had already been seen as a public issue. These circumstances motivated me to think about how to regenerate a strong local sense of place in the area. The site of the project is an entire block from the Old Dominion Boat Club at the King Street Park to the Waterfront Park on Prince Street along the Potomac River in Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia. The main access to the site is at the end of King Street. King Street has been the dominant connection to the water and the main corridor, carrying most of the entertainments in Old Town. Currently though, it lacks designated routes to the water at the end of the street. This project, an urban park pavilion, is composed of four different programs: the roof park, plaza, community performance Theater and boat taxi terminal which will be treated as equal value by a juxtaposed arrangement and interconnected street grids. My thesis will narrates how to develop a sense of place through the interaction of quality of architecture, infrastructure, cultural identities, social activities and the environment.

The project begins with the elaboration of a single wooden joinery detail for a temple pavilion. A singular joint study became the basis for an interrelated series of elaborated joints forming a structural whole. A detailed model of a single structural bay was produced. The purpose of this model was to investigate the subtleties of its overall formal expression. Attention was given to both the hidden internal complexity of individual parts and the interconnections between parts. Knowledge of stereotomy was an important consideration ensuring precision in the marking and cutting of the poplar wood. Photographs, sketches and drawings accompany the making of the model as way to further its realization.

This thesis is about openness in the architecture. After traveling and experiencing many different cities in Europe, I was intrigued with open spaces in cities, which offer a stage for different public interactions. I discovered that all these public spaces are formed by the surrounding architecture. This made me wonder about how architecture, as it becomes more independent today, could express and embody this openness within itself. I picked up my site at the end of the King Street in Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia, which is currently unappealing to the public. I decided to create a urban plaza for the waterfront in an architectural way by generating a pavilion, which will provide various kinds of information and satisfy needs to the visitors and public. The pavilion has several different services and lies in an area with flood issues. In response to these conditions, I made all the projects suspended between columns and assigned them different heights according to the context of the site and their own functions. The different levels of the projects generate vertical open spaces in order to let the surrounding environment flow seamlessly into the pavilion. The entire project has been organized under a glass structured roof with a central staircase that ascends from King Street to the Potomac River, which has all the accesses to each level. There is a designed channel in the middle bay, placed within the girder to direct rain back into the river.

The buildings people inhabit everyday frame their existence and provide a backdrop for life. This relationship is inextricable and, as such, begs the question as to whether buildings can function as more than mere containers for life or whether they, at some point or in some capacity, can begin to bare influence over the life or quality of life of their patrons. This project is an intention to explore this qualitative, unquantifiable aspect of building. Through a manipulation of volume and mass, constriction and expansion, solid and void, light and shadow, and the qualities of interiority and exteriority an occupied space will begin to impress itself upon the user. The main objective of this project is to use these architectural properties to create a place that fosters introspection through self awareness. By choosing presence over practicality and content over convention, the construct proposed in this thesis attempts to create spaces that are imposing and unfamiliar yet somehow emotionally reminiscent. Confronted by these contradictions and juxtapositions, this building will stand as an object, in opposition to the occupant, and through that opposition inspire and promote a greater awareness of, and possibly a reflection upon, normally unconscious thought processes.

A study of how contrasting architectural elements can create a sense of presence. Contrasts constitute movement, feeling, and energy and are what could be the basis of an architecture that illustrates these principles. The transition between extremes creates a balance. Through the use of contrasting elements such as rectilinear and curvilinear, light and shadow, density and sparsity, transparency and opacity, small and large, light and heavy, and compression and tension, there is a static pulse, where architecture may live.

This thesis started as an exploration of spaces created with subtle light changes in atmosphere, spaces created for the sole purpose of lingering in, of relaxing in, during a hot summer day, winter or in a busy day, when all you want to do is get away from it all in a soul-comforting place. Soon after, I realized that these spaces should have no other purpose than their simple existence, thus the idea of pavilions seemed to be the best fit for such a description. After locating the pavilions in Ramnicu-Valcea, Romania, through the exploration of the place memory, the present conditions and materials, the project started to take shape. The final project became a room within an urban setting. The pavilions, a series of five rooms connected by shape and materiality into two buildings, created in between a new plaza, a new urban space, a sixth room.

Jerry Herron predicts “Detroit, once a symbol of American competitive vitality, is now a symbol of the first urban domino to fall.” The buildings reveal this uniquely volatile urban narrative via architectural methods such as program, construction technique, and form in contrast between the neighborhoods.Instead of disintegrating into a ruin, Detroit’s collective memory of place will drive the reconstruction of Woodward Avenue as a cultural landmark, defining the city as a tourist hub. Architectural climax defines the narrative of the city, from the industrial building phase, through the infrastructural surge, and to this proposed tourism phase. By divorcing historic form from the lost original use and context, a new story can be inserted within the now malleable framework open for redesign to morph passive artifacts into active monuments (at varying scales).The collective memory is revealed and exaggerated along Woodward Avenue, the central spine of the city both physically (in plan and section) and culturally. The methodology of temporal collage combines this collective memory with progression of change and future projection to design architectural interjections along the Woodward Avenue Tour at thresholds between distinct experiential segments of the 27-mile artery. These thresholds implicate spectacle and attraction to thresholds, monuments and voids. The climax (and start) of the tour is the Detroit Pavilion, showcasing the cities urban structure, experiential sequences and architecture, which is the form of this unique context. The pavilion saturates monumental empty space with individuality and significance to shape Detroit’s urban identity. The pavilion site is the node of growth and downfall in Detroit, which encapsulates significance and memory for locals along with an opportunity and interest for tourists.

An investigation on how architectural elements can direct movement and affect the way we perceive space. The idea is implemented in the design of a playground and pavilion for Elkhorn Lake, located in Jenkins, Kentucky. Wall, column, color, roof, and floor are explored to create a variety of spatial arrangements that affect ways of perceiving and moving through the pavilion and playground.