Space Cadet

Jazz Club Renderings

2011-11-12T12:36:00.000-08:00

I'd like to share some renderings for a new jazz club in Bellevue, Washington. I've had the opportunity to work on this project at SABArchitects. I rendered the scene with V-ray for sketchup, after importing the model from Revit.

It is pretty amazing what rendering programs can do for you, one feature I spent some time on was these translucent table lanterns (which uses the same material pattern as the walls and floor)

I always experiment with new techniques, and here I used photoshop filters to give a colored-pencil feel to the image. I made a copy of the original image and blended the colored-pencil version on low opacity with the original to give the right texture. I then added people and heavily filtered them so they would dissolve into the space and not be the object of focus.

In these renderings my primary goal is to convey the atmosphere, and as a result my renderings tend to be more "painterly." In my opinion most architectural renderings tend to be very sterile. I want to convince people this would be a fun place to be.

Hope you enjoyed seeing this project!

Brett

Urban Courtyard House

2011-10-03T23:35:00.000-07:00

I would like to share with you some early sketches of a project I've been thinking about; it is a modest urban courtyard dwelling on a vacant site a few blocks from my house in central Seattle.

It is designed with the idea of bringing nature into the city, and making it part of the life of the occupant, even for small lot. It looks out into a highly vegetated courtyard garden and natural pool in the center (landscaping is unfortunately not shown) and 100% extensive green roofs above. Around the outer sides I would wrap another layer of vegetation and large boulders artfully carved into the landscape to give it weight and texture.

It is also designed for sustainability. It is south facing, which is wonderful for getting sunlight and passive heating in the winter months (although in Seattle we rarely get the sun), and it has a light shelf that bounces light up to the underside of the ceiling of the main living room to create an ambient glow, minimizing use of artificial lights during the day, even in typically dark cloudy Seattle weather.

This house could potentially be designed as a Passive House, a house that insulates itself so well that it saves 95% of energy use, but this would require a significant reduction in windows, even those that are south facing. There is also a natural path for capturing water from the simple shed-style green roofs, I imagine storage cisterns at the corners.

The design is highly influenced by my love of Chinese gardens in which buildings look out to nature; and my love of traditional Japanese architecture. In many ways it is also consistent with what has become the ``Northwest Style'' of architecture -- a simple vocabulary of wood and glass, with exposed wooden structural framing, weighted with a beautiful outer wall of concrete.

For the concrete I am imagining something very similar to that used in the Seattle University All-Faiths Chapel:

It is a beautiful, subtly shifting color of concrete that is cast very smooth. Steven Holl designed this chapel, and I recommend visiting it, as it has very beautiful lighting.

Thanks for visiting, and I hope to generate more detailed drawings and renderings of the project soon.

best,
Brett

Mark Lakeman and City Repair

2011-04-25T21:44:00.000-07:00

I would like to share with you a video I created today with Mark Lakeman, designer activist, and Joe Le Sac, videographer, in response to an open TED talk audition to create a one minute video that has a great idea worth spreading, and uses an innovative visual presentation technique. My goal is to help get Lakeman up on stage for a TED talk, to discuss the great things that City Repair is doing to help communities take back their neighborhoods through the participatory creation of public spaces.

I believe that what City Repair is doing is the first step on a journey that will eventually reorganize American cities around great public spaces, clustering services, stores, and institutions into cohesive nodes that act as a public stage for daily life, promoting interaction, community, and democracy.

The Cambrian Lounger

2011-02-04T07:11:00.000-08:00

The Cambrian Lounger
Brett Holverstott, designer

Cambrian Chair Dining Set

2011-02-03T01:00:00.000-08:00


The Cambrian Chair Dining Set Brett Holverstott, designer

New renderings for the Cambrian Chair! I designed a matching circular dining table which is to be made using the same technique as the chairs. In the center of the table there is a 8-inch diameter hole, with a lowered platform, to allow a vase and flowers to sit lower on the table.

The Cambrian Chair - New Design & Renderings

2011-01-29T02:21:00.000-08:00


The Cambrian Chair Brett Holverstott, designer

The Cambrian Chair
Brett Holverstott, designer

The Cambrian Chair has been updated again! I have eliminated two pieces from the frame to simplify the piece even further. And my rendering skills continue to improve.

After consulting with some furniture builders it became clear that the molded plywood "Y" piece formerly joining the spine to the legs would not be strong enough. Instead, I am wrapping the spine underneath the seat and tying it to the legs with some hardware. This also serves to brace the legs, allowing me to eliminate a cross piece in front. Also, I increased the radius of the rounded corners to make the bending process easier.

I continue to think about how to simplify the production process for these chairs to make them faster and easier to build. Most modern, stylish chairs will sell from $700-1000 each, and my goal is to reduce that amount as much as possible without sacrificing the quality of the materials. If you are interested in this chair, please let me know!

best,
Brett

Robert Oshatz Teardrop House

2010-12-09T18:08:00.000-08:00

Upstairs study overlooking living room.

Upstairs master bedroom.

Look once - look twice-- these are computer-generated renderings! This project is an unbuilt spec house that Robert Oshatz has designed for a hillside site here in Portland. We will soon be looking for potential buyers, or clients who want to build on the five available lots.

I created these images using Revit and Photoshop, as part of an unpaid self-motivated project to learn Revit and get experience drafting and detailing a building. I am really excited to be learning about how Oshatz thinks about small details and makes them flow together beautifully.

While this house will be fairly expensive, Oshatz is interested and willing to work on projects of a more modest scale. A project he designed for his daughter came in at about 100 $ / sq ft. There is no reason why the middle class cannot enjoy great art!

hope you enjoyed seeing these images,

Brett

Solar Envelope and the Ideal City

2010-11-30T11:57:00.000-08:00

The International Living Building Institute is asking for submissions for the Living City Design Competition - Visualizing the Future of Civilization. I have many reservations about the premise of the competition-- I think that cities are not a result of Utopian planning but the slow and aggregate change of history guided by decentralized processes and relationships between millions of people.

Typically these competitions produce awesome but totally unrealistic visions that have no hope of being realized. Some of the best cities in the world are very conservative by the standards of these types of competitions -- they are made up of mid-rise, mixed use buildings that have a strong culture and a long history, like Sienna. But many of these are tightly-packed since they originally existed within a protective wall, and didn't have such things as urban forest, bioswales, green roofs, etc.

It has still got me thinking, what does a sustainable city really look like? I think a good starting point is to think about how natural light and passive heating suggest the ideal form of a building. The Solar Envelope by Ralph Knowles is a good starting point, this shows how buildings should reside within a form that prevents them from shading neighboring buildings or the street most of the time. I theorized that there is a plateau to the ideal density of a city-- a point at which the desirability of density meets the ability for us to enjoy direct sunlight, ambient natural light, private and public outdoor space, etc.

I gave myself the project of designing a condominium building in Portland's rotated 200 x 200 ft block grid in which each resident could enjoy direct solar exposure during the winter; lots of natural light, a private backyard that doubles as a green roof.

Some of the most interesting problems with city design is how to give people some of the basic connections to nature that exist in the suburbs, such as a sunning deck, a place for a small garden, views to trees, etc. Even just the ability to walk around outside in the sun is a basic connection to nature that is lacking in many Utopian proposals for cities, which usually involve giant high-rises.

There are lots of reasons for mid-rise buildings; that they create a strong connection to the street; they allow sunlight to reach the street; and this is the maximum height at which a fire department can rescue someone from a burning building. If these buildings successfully integrate a mix of uses and connect well to the street then you can create a vibrant street life that is essential to any city.

And you might be surprised that although the downtown core of a city greatly exceeds this level of density, most of Portland is below this density. So density does not necessarily mean that we have to pack ourselves into skyscrapers.

I hope you enjoyed this imaginative exercise!

Brett

Tribute to Fallen Soldiers

2010-11-12T17:01:00.000-08:00

I would like to share with you a project I recently designed; it is a memorial to the fallen soldiers of Iraq and Afghanistan. I submitted it as a competition entry for the Fallen Heroes Foundation, an organization planning to create the memorial near Fort Worth, Texas. I found out today that my design was not selected, so I am free to share it publicly.

Although I have strong political feelings about the war, it is important to remember that this is not a monument to war or a justification of war. Rather, it serves the families and friends of the lost; it is a place of memory and healing. What is left unsaid is as important as what is said.

My central concept for the memorial was to focus on the process of healing. I believe that loss can never be justified, the void left over can never be filled. Our wounds can only be healed with new growth, with new passions and love, which is to be found, above all, in each other.

"A memorial is a sacred place to come together to remember. In gathering we share our memories of the lost, and find strength in one another. Here each memorial has its own space of gathering; two courtyards carved within pyramidal earth mounds. To arrive in the center you encircle and descend into the center space, walking along the walls that reveal the faces of the fallen. The polished marble meets the sky on all sides."

The foundation wanted the memorial to display plaques of each soldier with photos; to avoid the cacophony of thousands of faces all at once, I designed the wall to be made of up turnable tiles, making the process of viewing the wall an interactive experience:

Memorial wall.

"Each plaque is a two-sided tile that can be turned in place. You turn over tiles as you walk along the wall. For a moment, through touch and sight, you absorb the unique individuality of a fallen hero. A trail of experience forms behind you. Each morning, the portraits of those who passed away on that day are revealed. On special days, all portraits are revealed."

View from inside memorial.

One of the difficult challenges of the project was to create two separate but connected memorials. My friend Jon DaVault, a veteran of Iraq, made the point that these are two different wars, taking place at the same time but with fundamentally different agendas. Yet, there ought to be a place where veterans of any war can feel they belong. This prompted a third element, the chapel:

View of approach to chapel.

"The two memorials are separate but connected. Uniting them at the center is an open-air chapel, animated by light and shadow. This centerpiece is a place of ceremonial gathering and quiet contemplation. Water gently trickles from a basin in the center. Figurative sculpture throughout the memorial will reflect on the journey of the soldier."

The chapel itself is a rotated square inscribed in an inverted pyramid made from marble blocks. The goal was to create something simple and powerful. I believe that monumentality comes from the clarity, weight, and honesty of a building's structure. Here, the roof is held up with two strong beams that sit on buttresses that penetrate the outer face of the wall.

View of inside of chapel.

View toward chapel from inside of memorial.

You may be wondering what I meant about the "journey of the soldier." I did not elaborate on this concept in my design submission because I didn't want it to overwhelm the project. But in essence, it was the idea of using four figurative sculptures to represent stages of the emotional or psychological state of a solider.

It is my belief that war is an inhuman act, that we thrust soldiers into this environment and they do whatever they must to retain some element of their humanity. Their initial feelings of energy and the anticipation of action give way to the suffering of the war experience. This suffering gives them a strong need for convictions that allow them to justify their actions, convictions which they sometimes retain, and which they sometimes decide to doubt.

I think my goal was to create a beautiful and tranquil space in which people could come to terms with their own feelings and open themselves up to the horizon of new joy.

Thank you, soldiers, for your sacrifice. I pray that we find diplomatic alternatives to war.

Revit at the Oshtaz Studio

2010-11-11T17:28:00.000-08:00

In these days of unemployment for all architects, I have been spending time at the studio of Robert Oshatz, a Portland architect, and building one of his projects in Revit to get experience. Revit is a drawing tool that allows you to make 2D construction drawings and 3D renderings simultaneously.

I am about half-done with this model of a spec house by Oshatz to be located in Portland. As you can see it has large elliptical glu-lam beams defining the main living space. Most of the structural framing, floors, and walls are in place in this model, now I need to complete the exterior and glazing. Special thanks to Michael Feinstein for helping me along in this process.

Revit has its quirks, and it has been interesting to build such a complex structure while learning a new program. I'll post finished drawings when I'm done!

Brett

Politics and Hope

2010-11-06T23:11:00.000-07:00

Another political season rises and sets. If you are a radical, like myself, there is little joy in politics. We have the potential for great energy and passion in the political arena; evidenced by the last presidential race when we propelled Ron Paul to being the best-funded republican candidate, despite his only comprising about 5% of the vote. But most political seasons I feel deflated and unimportant. I see little hope; I cast my ballot for radicals; and I see no progress. Such is the curse of having unpopular opinions.

But I have chosen a profession in the arts; the purpose of which is to give people hope. When I remember this, the questions that incessantly run through my mind get set aside, and begin to go quiet. I create a peaceful place, and in this place an idea is formed that does not react or respond to the actions of the people around me, but instead is generated at the center, in the middle of my being, and spreads outwards. This is how art is made. And it makes me realize that perhaps one of the most effective ways of changing society is simply to offer a vision of beauty; and let the indirect consequences of that vision unfold.

Sometimes artists dabble in politics, sometimes they comment on political events, sometimes they become the source of major tides of change. But they are always looking beyond the political idiosyncrasies of the day to produce a singular vision that challenges humanity in new and unexpected ways. We always need someone to expand and communicate the realm of possibilities.

Birdwatching Tower Sketches

2010-08-31T18:56:00.000-07:00

I have been going through old piles of drawings and scanning some of them. Here is an interesting sketch of a birdwatching tower project in which I was experimenting with Santiago Calatrava's technique of using human form to inspire structural form:

Eventually the tower manifested itself as something like this:

with small landings on each level, so as to view the surrounding tree canopy from many different heights.

War Memorial Concept

2010-08-23T22:24:00.000-07:00

I have started collaborating with sculptor Martine Vaugel on a war memorial competition. Martine designed a competition entry for the Korean War Memorial, and her bust of Mahatma Ghandi was used as a Nobel Peace Prize. I am enthused to be working with her!

Brett

Clogless Gutter

2010-08-18T21:57:00.000-07:00

I hate gutters. I've never known a gutter that doesn't clog over time and overflow in subsequent rain storms, often depositing its flood into the potted plants on my balcony, or worse yet, the ceiling of my apartment.

Here is a design of a gutter that never clogs. It takes advantage of surface tension, the natural tendency of water to follow a surface when it can. In this case, the water flows around the curve and into the gutter, allowing leaf litter to wash off the edge, falling to the ground, unobstructed.

This has been on my mind for some time. My father patented an invention he called "Gutter Baskets," a system that prevented leaf litter from clogging up the drain by suspending it in a basket over the downspout. The device would modify traditional gutters. Unfortunately it never took off. Maybe I will have better luck!

Brett

The Kitchen - Design Goals

2010-08-17T00:39:00.000-07:00

I once heard a story about a chemistry student who had the opportunity to meet Nobel-prize winning Linus Pauling in a cab. He asked Mr. Pauling, "how were you able to solve so many chemical structures? how did you do it?" And Linus replied, "its easy... if you know what they are."

I feel similarly about architecture. I feel like the creativity flows once I know what the design is, or rather, what the goals of the design are. The deeper you dig, the more the design generates itself. Ideally, I would spend 99% of the time programming, and 1% designing.

The first stage is the design goals. Let's use a kitchen as an example-- specifically, I have my parent's kitchen in mind, which is used for a still-rearing family of four. These are in no particular order.

1. Make cooking as much (or more) a social activity as eating, helping to bring the family together.

2. Help facilitate sustainable goals such as

Water conservation
Reducing material waste
Reducing energy use, both for cooking and for food transportation and processing.

3. Help promote a healthy eating, such as the reduction of processed goods and salty/fatty/sweet foods.

4. Make cooking a more comfortable, less stressful activity, by reducing:

Stooping and reaching
Clatter, beeps and alarms
Heat
Glare
Running into other people while cooking
Being distracted by other problems while cooking

5. Cultivate the love of food and its place in a balanced life

Create places to showcase beautiful food, recipes, objects of food making, methods of food making

6. Make the activity of cooking a spontaneous aesthetic response, not a chore.

This is my starting point. The list is by no means complete, but its a place to start.

best,
Brett

The Pivotal Sink - Sustainable Kitchen Sink for Water Conservation

2010-08-09T23:32:00.000-07:00

I've started designing a kitchen remodel for my mother. For me, even a project as small as this is an opportunity to experiment and solve problems. The problem: how to design a sink that helps conserve water?

In a traditional sink, the faucet is directly above the drain, which allows you to turn on the water and let it run straight into the drain, wasting water and the energy required to clean it.

My solution is to replace the sink with a basin, mounted so that it can pivot and spill into a second basin leading to the drain. Water collects in the basin whenever the faucet is running, encouraging the fastidious cook to use it for washing dishes with less waste. The second basin is covered with mesh to catch food scraps, and these can be easily scraped into the compost. There is no need for a garbage disposal, nor do food scraps accumulate in the sink if you don't manually pull the stopper.

Foot pedals are used to turn on and off the faucet. This makes it impossible to leave it running, and cuts down on water waste since you don't have to stop what you are doing to reach and turn on and off the faucet.

After you are done washing dishes, you can collect the dishwater with another pot, if you wish. The water can be used to irrigate outdoor plants, or fill a toilet tank. Mounted on the underside of the basin is a heating element which allows the water to be reheated-- this way, you can collect water in the basin all day, and reheat it at night to wash dishes.

Ideally, a small hot water tank would be immediately adjacent to the sink to remove the delay when turning on hot water. But on the other hand, I have a suspicion that the hot water faucet would be seldom used because the accumulation of residual water in the basin would make it unnecessary to pour hot water into the sink. Instead, you would use the heating element to warm the existing water.

I hope you enjoyed my design for a sustainable kitchen sink. If you stumble across this blog post and desire one, please contact me. I have no objections to home owners who would like to build their own home-remedy version of this sink (so long as you attribute me and send me pictures), but I ask that builders and manufacturers extend the respect of coming to me first, so we can discuss the project.

best wishes,
Brett Holverstott
Junior Architect

PS: After some research I found a similar concept by Maja Ganszyniec, the Plugless Sink, for the bathroom. Since the basin is small and easy to move, it sits peacefully on the sink. What a wonderful project! I also like her koko side table.

Design Portfolio

2010-08-08T19:29:00.001-07:00

My student design portfolio is now available online!
http://sites.google.com/site/brettholverstott/portfolio.pdf

Sacred spaces of gathering

2010-07-09T22:09:00.001-07:00

I am applying for the SOM travel fellowship -- the winner receives 50,000 dollars for travel. Below is my research proposal. A good question for discussion-- are you surprised that I am an atheist?

"Sacred spaces of gathering"

The nature of man is revealed through his artifacts. In architecture, the unique forces of time and place, tradition and culture, social order, and climate all bear on the form. But I believe there are also universal patterns, which can reveal how we experience space and how we socially organize ourselves.

A glimpse of these patterns can be seen in the formal commonalities between architectures of different regions. But more interesting are the experiential patterns (the dark approach, the framed view, the descent into the earth, the luminous sphere, etc) as well as thematic patterns (the foreboding gateway, the place of purification, the sacred mount, etc). These seem to say something important about human psychology. Joseph Campbell, in his study of world mythology, found commonalities of structure and meaning that led him to posit a universal prototype for human myth-- a unicultural artifact of mankind. I seek these unicultural artifacts in built space.

For much of the past, the building projects that received the most care and resources were sacred spaces of gathering such as temples and public squares, which allow people to unite in mutual appreciation of their community, faith, and leaders. These projects have been of particular importance to me; an emerging pattern in my work is the Great Room, a center space that facilitates social interaction and dynamic interrelationships between elements of the program. This has led me to study historical monuments, many of which exhibit a clear central space for gathering. What is startling is that these spaces have changed little since the emergence of the first cities 5,000 years ago, and have a remarkable relevance for the architecture of today.

The 20th century witnessed a struggle between regionalism and internationalism; between expressing the distinctiveness of the place, and expressing ever-more globalized building techniques and lifestyles. But in many ways the International Style is an emptying of the coffers of cultural distinctiveness, not a celebration of the universal elements of space-making discerned from the study of different places. Many architects sought meaning by designing modern buildings aided by their knowledge of ancient and premodern precedents. This is also my goal. But some meaning is derived from the nature of the place, and some meaning is derived from the nature of man. Concerning the latter, there is no reason why an ancient Polynesian earth mound and a Tibetan monastery cannot influence an American town square.

I propose to study sacred spaces of gathering from around the world, both buildings and public squares, selecting a cross-section of major human cultural traditions and eras. My areas of focus will be 1) functional organization; 2) relationship to context; and 3) spatial experience & meaning. I will document my work primarily though sketchbooks, containing perspectives and analysis drawings. I can think of no better preparation for a meaningful career than such a pilgrimage.

Final Renderings

2010-06-03T15:04:00.000-07:00

I'd like to share some final renderings from my masters degree thesis studio, a "Music Innovation Center." The studio was taught by Allied Works.

This is an interior of the great central room, looking up to the gallery spaces, which are contained within freestanding pavilions.

View of the interior of a gallery space.

This is an interior of the great central room. This space acts like a casual, salon-style performance space that is used throughout the day. A massive door between this room and the formal performance hall can open to join the two stages. Touch-sensitive floor tiles key projections and directional speakers to make the space interactive.

This is the formal performance hall, lit with a large natural-light skylight. As the light ebbs and flows with the clouds in the sky, it can affect the mood of the performer.

Hope you enjoyed seeing these!
Brett

The Design Process - part 3

2010-03-14T20:58:00.001-07:00

Here is the final installment in compiled design work for my thesis studio. Here I began playing with a circular atrium with the "epiphany room" directly beneath the atrium light. The structure was curved to create a dynamic tension that feels more like a musical instrument.

I brought this version to a fairly high level of development, with rendered plans to show the light washing along the surfaces of the wall. Again I worked with many different iterations of the plan.

Three days before the review, I changed my scheme once again!

Here, I shrink the atrium, and make the circulation occur around the outside of the building, with larger, more flexible exhibition spaces in the center. The circulation is a series of ramps, like the Guggenheim, except that the ramps are symmetrical on both sides of the building, forming a series of stacked rings that appear to wobble on edge.
Early on in the design process Annelise and I experimented with drawing music-- we listened to pieces by Beethoven, Bach, Dvorak Chopin, Massenet, etc and drew while we listened. The goal of this exercise was to explore what music "looks" like. For me, music is fluid, often spiraling and looping back upon itself as themes reoccur.
This fluidity began to show up in my idea of the exterior of the building. I felt the exterior should be a public landmark that was colorful, celebratory and joyful, and felt like a building that housed music.
Here I wrap the building in a colorful, perforated light screen that would cast ever-changing shadow patterns and colors on the interior as the sun moves across the sky. I had fun modeling this form out of plasticine clay-- a new medium for me.
Above is what I would want the interior to feel like. A space that changes throughout the day and throughout the seasons, with color and shadow patterns reverberating in interesting ways.

There is a notion, espoused by some, that a building is not a work of sculpture. I agree with this inasmuch as the interior experience is the primary purpose of most buildings (some buildings, such as a Japanese pagoda or the Eiffel tower, are designed to be public landmarks viewed primarily from the outside.)

For me, the interior experience is primary, but is there anything wrong with making the outside a beautiful sculptural object? No, of course not. Especially if it reinforces the purpose of drawing people to the building.

Then there is the issue of Gehry buildings, which in their sculptural form break most laws of structural engineering. One of my professors put it well-- Gehry buildings WANT to fall down. They require such an excess of steel to hold themselves up that it is almost ridiculous. Whether or not Gehry buildings are beautiful is a subjective decision, but my attitude is that an architect should be aware of structural efficiency and grace.

In this design, the perforated light screen is a lightweight steel mesh that is suspended by the structure and external to the enclosure. So it can be as free-form as you want, so long as points of attachment to the structure are clear. And unlike most Gehry buildings, the exterior represents a form that can be perceived clearly from the interior-- in all its color and texture.

Hope you enjoyed seeing my design process work for this project--- hopefully next term is as chaotic and fruitful as this one.

best,
Brett

The Design Process - part 2

2010-03-13T22:43:00.001-08:00

Continuing the presentation of in process work from my thesis studio... it is helpful in this process to create a scaled diagram of the program requirements showing all rooms, and then organizing that into an adjacency diagram that captures your design idea. Here I used the performance space as a pivot point for the rest of the program, placing it under an atrium that was used as an organizing element for the rest of the building.

Also in my thoughts at this point (although ultimately not very influential) was the structure of the flow of musical influence through history. It creates a tree diagram where various ends of the tree interact and combine to produce new variants. It is much like linguistic influence, actually, and because language and music are both integral to a culture, cultural interaction will produce pidgins and creoles much like linguistic interaction.
Here are more diagrams talking about the organization of the plan and the space at the center that could be a "symphony of interaction" for the musicians in residence. Also I am starting to think about how the music innovation center can be a bridge between event traffic and local pedestrian traffic.

Early in our design project we were asked to make an initial site proposal. When I first visited the site and walked up to a main plaza next to the Rose Garden Arena I noticed that a giant ugly grain silo blocked the view of Portland's downtown. So, my initial response was to cut a hole in the silo, framing a view of the city from the plaza, and adaptively reuse either side for the music innovation center. This would create a highly visible location in the city.

Soon afterward I came to realize that a better place for the center would be a spot that was reinforcing existing pedestrian traffic, both commuter traffic and event traffic.

Here is my siteplan, with my building immediately off the plaza, reinforcing it as an important urban node. This also describes my plotting of the surrounding area into Portland-sized blocks to help break down the massive scale of the urban fabric.

Above are some simple organizational diagrams that began to influence my design massing, of which the first significant iteration is below. The "plinth" of the building is a block filled primarily with educational spaces that look out onto the street, whereas the exhibition spaces are lifted above the ground, in a semi-sacred space that elevates them from the surrounding fabric.

As often happens, although I had one of the most sensible site plans in my entire class, it was slammed at the midterm and so I decided to consider other possibilities. One of which was a prominent location at the end of the Steel bridge. I thought that the location would allow me to "extend" the bridge into a sculptural colorful building that would be a prominent urban landmark.
Another possibility was in the middle of a three-way light rail junction. I explored this option in some depth, experimenting with various geometric possibilities of the triangle while maintaining the central atrium idea.
This is one of the first times that I have documented my design process in depth. As you can see, I jump around between different possibilities fairly often. This particular site left me with an extremely constricted building; I had trouble getting the program to work in this geometry. So while these explorations were useful, I soon moved back to scheme #2 and continued development from there.

I have one more series of slides to post-- but you will understand my professors' surprise at seeing my final project. He pointed at it and asked "where did that come from??" and this is a sentiment I have felt many times. I design about five or seven different buildings in a given studio class, often spitting out the final version in the last week or so. Keeps me on my toes. But ideally the final version incorporates insights and investigations of the earlier versions.

Hope you enjoy this journey into the mind of a scatter-brained architecture student! Stay tuned for part 3.

best,
Brett

The Design Process - part 1

2010-03-13T01:47:00.000-08:00

Here I am, half way through my final studio project at the U of O. I took the time to compile all the important work on this project to date-- everything from sketches to finished drawings, and the result is fascinating, even to me. It shows that I attack a problem from several directions, often changing sites, changing building concepts, going off on tangents, and then bringing those ideas back together to create a final product. I design several buildings in order to design one building.

What is awesome is that I'm only half way, which means that I can stop and reflect on this design process before plowing ahead again in a couple weeks. And I can share it with all of you.

The idea of the project is a "music innovation center" with a combination of performance, education, and exhibition spaces. Early on my ideas revolved around the evolving nature of musical innovation, and how music is closely tied with culture.

The project is based in the Rose Quarter in Portland, OR, which is a small armpit of space between the Willamette River and I-5, a stadium district that, 50 years ago, was a vibrant black community with a bunch of jazz venues. Which was demolished by the city to make way for the memorial coliseum, joined later by the rose garden arena. In essence, a stadium district with a lot of empty space, somewhat isolated from the surrounding urban fabric. So the first question is what the hell do you do with this place?

Part of this process was to think about scales of urban fabric.... the below images are all at the same scale:

You may notice that the fine grained texture of a European medieval town differs remarkably from the modern city.

Next we thought about what a "music innovation center" means, and I directed by thought to how the center can actually serve the creation of innovative music. My idea is to award fellowships to potentially innovative musicians who would be musicians-in-residence at the center for a limited period of time. I modeled this concept on a scientific research institute such as the Rockefeller.

Oddly enough, I temporarily shelved this concept through the midterm because I wanted to work very strictly with the program given, which did not support the variety of extra spaces required by a community of musicians.

Above I investigate possible relationships between the institution and live-work studios-- whether they would be on site or off site, etc.
One thing that annoyed me about the EMP-- Seattle's Experience Music Project, was that it was highly preferential to one type of music. I imagined this center being open to all musical genres and styles potentially from around the world. We conducted a lot of research into the Portland music scene-- primarily made up of indie rock, jazz, and classical.

This concept I briefly discussed in a prior post--- how can you make a music center a transformative experience? Here I thought about the role of music in human nature, and that the center could be conceived as an experiential sequence (not unlike Joseph Campbell's "Journey of the Hero"), the goal being to show this fact.

I imagine an "epiphany room" in which the same simple theme and rhythm is transposed into hundreds of musical styles and cultures, and these pieces are played simultaneously through directional speakers that isolate the sound to a specific point in the room. As the occupant moves through the room, he or she is walking through a sequence of musical experiences that show how similar we all are. Instead of celebrating multiculturalism I am celebrating uniculturalism, how beneath superficial differences there is a Truth to human nature, to the cognitive principles that allow us to appreciate music and the thematic role that music plays in life and ritual.

This concept took off in my mind as not requiring a significant change of program, but a clear hierarchical sequence in which exhibition spaces lead to the epiphany room. I often feel that a good architect adds one room to the program-- and that one room becomes the most important integrating force in the building.

I'm stopping here today-- more tomorrow!

Brett Holverstott

My Favorite Spaces

2010-02-05T02:50:00.000-08:00

I recently realized that the architecture that I love the most, and have the most genuine emotional response to-- and can therefore draw the most inspiration from-- is the kind that I have had personal, intense experience in. I don't mean Fallingwater, or the the Guggenheim, or any of the famous spaces that we visit for a day-- but the ones that have lasting meaning in our lives. So I am going to share with you some of my favorite spaces.

Entrance Hall by Newberry

#3) Back in 2002, I had the opportunity to visit my friend Michael Newberry in Rhodes, Greece. And not just visit-- but live for over two summer months at his studio which overlooked the old town. I remember the warm wind that pushed in through the loose curtains of the upstairs studio, the outdoor dining courtyard surrounded by herb plants and high yellow stucco walls. The blue of the sky would meet the yellow stucco directly, producing an intense contrast of pure colors. My memory of that studio is wrapped in warm thoughts of meeting wonderful people and having hours of conversation into the evening, of being in a beautiful historic town with cobblestones and high stone walls, of the energy of Michael himself, and of living, for a time, with a quantity of beautiful artwork that is more than most people see in a lifetime.

#2) At Reed College there is a 100-year old library that has been wrapped in successive layers of new building. In the original library hall, there is a small, unmarked set of stairs that lead up to a small, double-height room called the thesis tower. It is a square in plan, much taller than it is wide, with a small railing around the second floor to access books that cover the walls. Every student at Reed must write a thesis to graduate. It is a long arduous year that often produces a document of about 100 pages, and a copy of every student's thesis is placed in the tower. There are spaces for students to study and look up at the accumulated knowledge and creativity of a hundred years worth of young intellectuals. I always feel an unnamable, metaphysical presence when I am in the tower, and I remember always looking forward to when my thesis would be added to the collection (it since has). It is a sacred space in which I spent many a night studying (and often inadvertently falling asleep). It had a small window that, at the time, could be crawled out through to access ledges on the roof of the library. In many ways that room symbolizes my intellectual escape from the ordinary suburban life I had growing up; I was finally in a place where I was surrounded by other people who cared about ideas (and could put up a good fight in an argument!)

#1) For four years, a book sat in an honorable place on my shelf-- it was called "The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics" by Randell Mills. After three years of studying physics & chemistry, I applied to Mills' company, was hired as a summer intern, and went to New Jersey to meet the man himself. His company, BlackLight Power, is pioneering a new energy source, and a revolutionary new theory of the atom. It was kinda like going to work for a cross between Edison and Galileo. BlackLight has a large facility that had been owned by GE, and had been used for building satellites. (Out back there is this huge vaccum vessel that was used for testing satellites in space-like (very low) temperatures.) One of the rooms in the building is an enormous "high bay" that goes mostly unused, save for a fume hood that I needed frequently for a laboratory project. Boxes and old parts littered the rest of the floor. But walking into that high bay, with its soaring ceiling height, I would always get this enormous sense of anticipation, like the room was just begging to be filled with new technology on a large scale, that said technology would materialize from the static in the air, just to bring into being the reason for the room, to fill its void. The room itself was probably ugly and utilitarian, but I wouldn't know it. It was a giant space waiting to be filled, and I know someday it will be.

These three examples probably serve more to illustrate the subjective, personal experience of architecture than its objective qualities. There is probably little that is architecturally significant in each space. But each one accomplished a psychological function that perfectly interacted with its use; that created the feelings that one ought to have in the room. As an architecture student, it is easy to fall into the pattern of permuting the forms of famous architects. By remembering these places, I think they will help me ground my work in my own personal experience, observation, and feelings.

Brett

Music Binds Us

2010-01-24T18:54:00.001-08:00

I have started my thesis "terminal" studio, a final two-term studio project before I graduate. It is a fun project-- we are designing a "music innovation center" in the Rose Quarter in Portland. Part of our job is to decide exactly what that means.

I was asked to create a conceptual drawing that summarized the "spirit, soul, and essence"of the project. After scratching my head for awhile as to the meaning of a "conceptual drawing" and doing some soul-searching about the fundamental meaning of this project, I created this sketch:

Music Binds Us

This drawing represents the notion that music binds us as a species-- that music has permeated our species through every age, race, and culture, that it is written into our genes, and that the experience of music can be a binding force in human society.

I wish that I had live models available to me when I made the above drawing, but I think it captures what I was shooting for. Two dancers with one arm locked, looking different directions, spinning, the light emanating from their connection. Also in my thoughts was the structure of DNA and its double-helix.

My ambitious goal for the building is to create a temple of music, a place where a person can experience a profound realization and perception of the role of music in human nature. To do this I plan to walk the occupant through an experience of musical culture from around the world, progressing in time and complexity until you reach the present, at every stage aware of the universal cognitive principles that underlay music appreciation.

Like all temples, the goal is a spiritual transformation. Not an easy task. Think Hagia Sophia in place of the EMP. But I am drawing inspiration heavily from my reflections on temple architecture, and its relationship to Joseph Campbell's "Journey of the Hero," a sequence extrapolated from world mythology.

In a prior post I give a rough sketch of how the journey translates into architectural form-- this will be my first opportunity to employ it in a studio project.

Brett

If you need me, I am easy to find

2010-01-10T21:26:00.001-08:00

This year I am at the Portland campus of the University of Oregon. It is fun being in such an recognizable building... my studio is on the top floor, third bay from the left, right under the sign.

Blogging My Foot

2009-12-23T18:41:00.000-08:00

Today I have some fun drawings I discovered piled under the bed, along with a new drawing I made as a christmas gift.

My foot

Still life with book, scarf, and mug.

Exterior of a building at the University of Oregon

Peonies

A couple christmases ago my dad gave me a 400-piece Tiffany style stained glass lamp that he made about twenty-five years ago. I thought it would be fun to draw the lamp, and give him the drawing as a christmas present. Took about 12 hours, and I must say its the most difficult drawing I've made. I did it free hand, and in order to get the perspective right I had to constantly double-check my proportions by working between two reference points, and scaling the pieces to fill the space between the points. On many occasions I discovered that, to my dismay, the pieces were not filling the space properly. But with enough grunt work I managed to get an accurate representation of the lamp.

It was also fun to "interpret" the lamp by added emphasis to certain patterns over others, and try to bring depth to the flat surfaces, to make the peonies come back to life. I would like to eventually do an oil painting of the lamp-- but I've never painted anything, so I figured I would start with what I know. The flower in the vase beneath the lamp is, of course, a peony.

best,
Brett

BlackLight Power Poster

2009-12-13T23:01:00.001-08:00

I recently finished this poster for work. Of the hundreds of figures I've done for BlackLight, this representation of the electron orbitsphere is my favorite. Not only is it beautiful, but it took a lot of work to create. My boss Randy Mills created the pattern, and I had the pleasure of being a kind of computational assistant. I used Mathematica to compute and display the results of the spin matricies that he created; there was a lot of back and forth, a lot of good times. Hundreds of figures were created before this one could be made. The goal was to create a pattern of great-circle loops that would result in a uniform distribution. I liken the pattern to spinning a coin and watching it slowly wobble to a stop.

Scientifically, it represents how the electron is moving around the nucleus in an atom. The electron is spread out over a spherical shell, and made up of an infinite number of loops. Here I approximated it with 144 loops, just enough to clearly see the structure.

best,
Brett

Fall 2009 Studio Project

2009-12-01T13:08:00.000-08:00

This term I had the pleasure of taking a studio from some people at IDC Architects. The assignment was to create a R&D and Pilot Manufacturing facility which included both lab spaces and office spaces. The purpose of the building was the development of chargers for portable electronics that utilized solar cells in combination with lithium ion batteries. The site chosen was in downtown Portland, on the PSU campus.
Here is an image of the building with the facade removed. You are looking at the office spaces. The floor plates have been staggered to create many double-height spaces that would allow you to grow 30 ft tall trees indoors. There are a few scientifically proven rules for spaces that enhance cognition-- high ceilings, natural light, and views to nature. To achieve this in an urban context I created places for tree canopy on a cascading series of green roofs. This reminds me of how trees can grow out of older and bigger trees, even 50 or 100 feet above ground, their roots following the tree down into the soil below.

Here is a rendered interior of the office space. I was able to find the view out the window using Google Earth, and then drop that view behind the glass from the rendering. The model was built in Google Sketchup and then exported to 3D Studio Max.

If you look closely, you might notice some beautiful furniture... (see prior posts on the Cambrian chair)

Below is a section of the building showing the laboratory and manufacturing block on the left and the office spaces on the right. In a laboratories, I feel you want a very soft diffuse light in a very clean, simple space to offer no distractions from the exact tasks at hand. Wheras in the office spaces, you want complexity, dynamics, interest. Running through the middle of the building is a service and circulation core that shows all the piping that will serve all the needs of the laboratories, it is exposed and should be interesting to look at.

Some inspirational ideas for the design including a lot of study of how to use the tetrahedral structure of silicon, as a spatial and structural system. Silicon forms the basis of most of our current solar cell technology. Ultimately it ended up in the facade as a way to tell the world what the building was about.

And since mimicking photosynthesis is the future of solar cell technology, I also found this image showing chloroplasts inside a cell. I thought it was interesting how structures occur thorughout nature-- in this case hexagons are formed both by silicon lattices and organic cells.

Finally, I also looked at the vertical composition of mushrooms growing on a tree, in order to influence how I staggered the floorplates. There is a kind of sweep from the lower right to the upper left that I used in the building.

You might be able to see it better from this perspective:

It was a fun and difficult project. If you want to see all the details, feel free to download the Poster. Hope you enjoyed seeing this project!

The Building with a Thousand Facades

2009-11-04T22:57:00.000-08:00

Recently I've been reading Joesph Cambell's Hero with a Thousand Faces. He believes that the whole pantheon of human mythology, from every culture and era, can be distilled into a finite set of basic themes, often revolving around the journey of the hero who must undergo some kind of spiritual transformation in order to save the world.

Campell also suggests that these themes are tied to basic psychological needs. Although I completely agree that this must be the case, his psychology is a bit dated... a bit too Freudian. Nevertheless, it is fascinating.

From my point of view, myth --and art in general-- serve the function of communicating a sense of being, or orientating ones mind, in a way that cannot be articulated with fact. This is why, as an atheist, I find it hard to communicate the emotional depth of my being to someone who is religious. This is why Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead are so popular, they represent perhaps the first serious epic contribution to atheist mythology. The architect who fights off the world with his integrity as his only weapon. The railroad tycoon whose great joy is to feel the act of creative enterprise... etc.

Recently, it occurred to me that Atlas Shrugged is simply a modern reinterpretation of the myth of the flood. The gods are angry with the misdeeds of humanity and release a flood upon mankind to purify the world of evil. In this case, the gods are the great producers, and their flood is to withdraw their own services from the economy. Noah builds an ark-- in this case, John Galt builds Galt's Gulch, to keep the good guys safe. When the flood passes-- when the economy has collapsed-- they return to the world to begin anew.

This says something about the universality of art. Art is not art unless it comes with meaning, and the meaning is what is universal, not the form. Campell's goal is to uncover the meaning from the infinite variations that humanity has produced.

So now, let's talk about architecture. I believe that just like mythology, monumental architecture from every era and culture uses basic, universal themes. While reading Campell, I was working on a design competition for an inter-faith chapel. So I thought-- why not apply this to temple architecture? Why not let a building, like myth, allow an occupant to relive the journey of the hero? Here's how I thought this might work:

From afar, one sees the temple as a distant, symbolic mount, indicating the place where the gods life. When approached, the temple begins with the threshold into the spirit world. The threshold is often foreboding, filled with symbols meant to ward off the evil spirits (gargoyles, sphinx, etc), and might be a dark entry that one cannot see through. Passing into the threshold, the hero must go through a series of trials-- this could be interpreted as dark spaces, long corridors, impressive volumes or masses, large staircases, disorienting labyrinths... or (my favorite) a sacrificial fire.

Having defeated the trials, the hero enters into the place of purification in which the hero must transform (experience death and rebirth) before entering the world of the gods. The purification often involves water, such as crossing a river, or washing oneself, or being submerged in water (baptism). Then the hero is then allowed to enter the world of the gods (the sanctuary), a beautiful place wherein the hero is able to unlock the source of life, so that it can flow again out into the world. The altar is typically this life source, although it is often represented as a tree. Once unlocked, the hero returns to the world... which might be represented by a connection to flourishing nature, such as courtyard with a tree at the center.

Above: me, standing next to an awesome ancient tree in the middle of the courtyard of the San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo Mission in Carmel by the Sea, California.

Many of the motifs I've just described are seen in temples of various religions. Maybe someday I will do an exhaustive analysis of world temples, to study reoccurring patterns and symbols.

Other important ideas not mentioned in my above sequence are the use of common mythological symbols such as fire (symbolic for desire, life, and often associated with ritual celebrations and sacrifice), and the sun, symbolic for divine energy, and the unattainable. There are also reoccurring geometric patterns in temples around the world. Cambell believes that the transition from round dome to square base, or the "quadrature of the circle" represents the transformation from the heavenly realm to the earthly realm.

If one were successful in designing a temple that could be used, and loved, by almost all world religions, that would be a great accomplishment. The Greek Parthenon is an example of this: it was used as a Greek temple, then as a mosque, then as a cathedral. It didn't come to ruin until an explosion that occurred while it was being used as an armory. Perhaps also, a temple that could appeal to all religions might also appeal to atheists, not as an unintentional consequence, but as a primary function.

Brett

A little gem

2009-11-01T23:04:00.000-08:00

While working on the Zenith theater studio project for the Eugene downtown, I developed an idea for a cruciform plaza, below which was an art gallery with small sculpture courtyards on the corners. The outer walls of the courtyards would have "living walls," continuous walls of vegetation, to create an otherworldly feeling. You would walk into the gallery from the adjacent block, and look out to the small courtyards with sculptures against the wall of green.

This design, which I only had during midterm (and removed in the final version), is one of my favorite designs that I've done so far. There is a wonderful feeling that arises when a form is so simple that it could not be anything but what it is, it could not be changed in any way, since it fits its function so well.

I feel this way about some of William Morgan's designs, such as his Lagoon House. Morgan has taught me several things-- that formal geometries, which relate to an ancient past of human architecture, can sing with this efficient lyricism, and that working the earth is one of the primal and sacred acts of architecture. Morgan (and Kahn, of course) represent one half of my presently bipolar architectural attitude-- the desire for the formal and abstract. The other half is the desire for the organic, the biomimietic, the almost representational capturing of form from nature.

I stumbled across the plaza design while working on my portfolio, and decided to include it, even though it didn't survive past midterm. It is like a young, fleeting lost lover, met only once but never quite forgotten.

best,
Brett

Newberry Archive 700

2009-09-18T15:46:00.000-07:00

I just released a new, updated version of the Newberry Archive honoring my friend, artist Michael Newberry. Now users can sign up and create personal galleries of favorites, as well as other features. This is the result of over a month of work with the web development platform Drupal, and some assistance from my friend Ryan Phillips. Also, the archive has over 700 unique works of art, so this update is also a kind of anniversary celebration.

best,
Brett

Hillside House Sketch

2009-09-05T17:18:00.000-07:00

I've been playing with some conceptual sketch ideas for a hillside house on a friend's property in Portland.

Two load-bearing volumes anchor the house to the steep slope and provide a convenient place for services such as bathrooms or stairs. I like to firmly connect cantilevered structures to the ground so they don't feel flimsy from below.

The goal of the roof structure is to recreate the green phosphorescent light beneath a tree canopy. Structurally, it might consist of a skylight material like Kalwall (with a high R value) that has been folded like the leaves of a palm frond for added structural strength, allowing them to cantilever.

Folding the planes simulates a kind of truss where the top and bottom cords alternate. The idea is like that of "origami engineering" being used by Studio RMA.

The space would be very open, with the kitchen leading to a double-height main living space and a loft-style bedroom above, and bedrooms below. The spaces would look out to the forested slope at the height of the tree canopy.

best,
Brett

Government Intervention in Housing Industry

2009-08-30T13:36:00.000-07:00

Good brief article on the intervention of government in the housing industry. Lots of interesting discussion taking place in the comments section about how housing prices are inflated by our constant indebtedness.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204409904574350432677038184.html

Four-Quadrant Table

2009-08-03T16:13:00.000-07:00

A sketch idea for a breakfast-height dining table, where the leaves are broken into four quadrants that can be easily pulled apart.

Wonderful Life

2009-07-30T20:18:00.000-07:00

Meet Canadia spinosa. This beautifully small, segmented worm was likely a good swimmer, using its numerous, paired bundles of elongated scale-like elements (setae) for propulsion. This soft-bodied organism was found fossilized in the Burgess Shale. It lived in the Cambrian period, about 500 million years ago. I photographed it from the White Museum in Banff, Alberta.

There is something about the history of evolution that is fasinating to me. I have been enjoying Stephen Jay Gould's Wonderful Life, and his descriptions of the weird organisms found in the Burgess Shale, a small cleft of rock located in the Canadian Rockies. By stunning coincidence, I happened to have been embarking on a vacation for the rockies when I started reading the book, and was able to look up and see the fossil bed over Emerald Lake. I also attended a lecture about the shale, and the lecturer handed us some of the 500 million year old Cambrian fossils (which, by the way, are extremely rare) to look at. Wow!

You may recall that my chair design (see previous posts) is called the "Cambrian" chair, and the reason for this is that the Cambrian period marks the first occurence in the fossil record of our earliest known ancestors, the cordates. These organisms had a primitive spinal chord, or notochord. Actually, the Cambrian period marks the first occurence of many phylums of animal life, and chordates were by no means common at that time. I was also somewhat stimulated by the word "camber" which means to arch slightly; and this occurs in the chair when a person leans back in it, flexing the wooden joints and introducing a camber.

Gould's commentary on evolution is interesting, and he refines some of our ordinary conceptions. We think of natural selection as "survival of the fittest" when in fact we don't know for sure why organisms survive-- they happen to be more fit for survival at a specific time and place, but that does not mean they are more "fit" by any other standard, and chance events play havoc with the Earth's ecosystems. He points out that there are many, many more dead ends on the evolutionary tree, and after each mass extinction, the few survivers go on to propagate and diversify in a now much-less-diverse world. Species do not evolve in a continuous ladder of progress, species diversify and get wiped out, leaving only a few left. It makes you wonder just how unlikely it was for homo sapiens to show up.

best,
Brett

Cambrian Chair 2.0

2009-06-20T22:23:00.000-07:00

Behold! The design for the Cambrian Chair 2.0. The frame for this version is made from glue-laminated wood, which consists of layers of wood that are steamed to make them pliable, then glued together into a specific shape.

There are several reasons for the change:

When a solid piece of wood is cut in the shape of a curve, you end up cutting against the grain, which is a bad idea... this caused the spine in the last chair to break.
Further, curving the wood reduces the number of joints that need to be cut by hand. The last chair had something like ten mortisen tenon joints-- this version has two, plus a few glue-only joints. Which should make the chair faster to manufacture.
This reduces the amount of sanding that needs to be done. Last time I had to sand down all the curves by hand until they were perfect. Now, I just need to create the form for each piece (three forms total), and sand the edges and flat outer surfaces... a piece of cake.
This reduces (almost eliminates) waste, since the curves in the frame are constructed from strips of wood made with parallel cuts. The only part of the frame that generates the slightest waste is the wishbone joint on the back (although I may be able to tessellate the shape).

All this will make the chair easier to manufacture, and therefore cheaper to manufacture.

I've also eliminated the complex seat flex-joint, which didn't work as planned, and replaced it with an idea that I have yet to test... (sorry, trade secret for now).

best,
Brett

Community Design Perspectives

2009-06-17T20:35:00.000-07:00

Here are some perspectives that I created for my Winter community design studio, a project concerned with integrating farmland into medium density residential areas. These were not used in our final poster boards because we decided to use watercolor media. These were created from hand-drawn perspectives that were colored in photoshop, using a pen-tablet (which gives the artist greater dexterity in illustration) with some useful artistic suggestions from some of my classmates, including Haley Cook.

View looking West down the hill.

View looking up the hillside to an existing barn (a photo of which was combined with the illustration).

This is a view of a sediment pond that we had planned to restore into a small wetland habitat. Since we decided to use a living machine (a biological waste treatment system) to treat sewer waste from the community, the idea here was to integrate the plants of the living machine with the surrounding landscape, to create an experiential, functional landscape. Normally these plants are protruding from tanks in a greenhouse. But here I hypothesized that we could embed the tanks below-grade in the landscape.

I'm not certain that this setup would work in the northwest climate (the only examples I've had were from more arid climates), but if it did work, it would be an integration of waste treatment, public open space, and riparian habitat.

best,
Brett

Changing Demographics

2009-06-07T21:59:00.001-07:00

I am posting a new paper I wrote in my Community Design class last term:

Changing (U.S) Demographics and Implications for Design

If you are interested in this topic, you may also be interested in the community design studio project, see this post.

Conclusions:

I have attempted to identify some of the key issues that arise out of the shifting U.S. demographics. In reality, each area will have a demographic microclimate, with different local concentrations of minorities or levels of affluence. But broadly speaking, it is standard practice to build housing developments of expensive, identical homes, far away from services and from town centers, and segregated from large rental housing blocks—which may be no closer to services. This practice should change: we should integrate family homes and non-family homes into neighborhoods; use construction practices encouraging flexible housing capable of growth and subdivision; integrate owned units and rental units into neighborhoods; make more housing accessible to lower incomes; and locate neighborhoods more closely to places of employment and basic services—if not in mixed zoned areas where they can closely intermingle. It may also be advantageous to offer cluster housing for large extended families or small communities that share a common bond; reflecting not only the greater liberalism of lifestyle attitudes, but of the influx of minority groups for whom extended family is an important cultural heritage.

Cambrian Chair 1.0

2009-06-05T18:46:00.000-07:00

Presenting the Cambrian Chair! I consider this chair the 1.0 prototype, due to various things I intend to change in the next iteration.

Materials:
frame: Pacific Madrone
seat/back panels: Pacific Madrone with Madrone Burl verneer
flex-joints: glued layers of 1/32 inch raw Rift-sawn Red Oak verneer
Mortisen tenons: Oak.
Finish: oil-- combination of beeswax, linseed oil, citric oil, etc

This chair was praised by professional furniture designers for its comfort and innovative use of flexible wood.

I burned through about 50 square feet of 1/32 inch verneer prototyping what I call "flex-joints" that have high strength and flexibility. Typically, wood thin enough to flex easily is brittle, it will crack if too much force is applied. By using glued layers of verneer, the glue increases the strength of the material, so it can flex without breaking.

Being my first time building a piece of furniture-- and being a chair, which is among the most difficult pieces of furniture to build--- and it being a piece that by any standard is unusual--- many things went wrong during construction. A seat panel warped. The back panels had to be cut too small. A joint in the frame is starting to fail. A drill bit is broken off inside the frame (now a permanent feature of the chair), etc.

Changes to the next version will be a deeper seat, and possibly a rigid seat, or one that flexes only a little bit. The finish dramatically darkens the materials, so next time I may tone down the contrast, leave the madrone panels un-verneered.

If you want a chair, let me know. I have yet to determine the final cost, which is based on how I can streamline manufacturing of the chair.

Hope you enjoyed my little creation!
Brett

Trans-farmation

2009-05-20T19:17:00.000-07:00

Last term in studio, I had the pleasure of working with two landscape architecture students, Liz Weigand and Shannon Eldridge, and another architecture student, Jake LaManna, in a group community design project. Our client was Thompson Farms in Damascus, Oregon. Damascus has been asked by Portland Metro to densify their city to 6-12 units per acre, but meanwhile Damascus would like to retain its rural character and farmland. Their vision is to combine commercial farming with housing in a new model for sustainable urban agriculture.

Today, our team submitted this project to the ACSA Green Community Design Competition. Click on each board to view a full-size JPG of each poster board. Wish us luck!

Madrone Burl

2009-05-08T01:06:00.000-07:00

Today I bought a beautiful board of pacific madrone for the frame of the first Cambrian Chair. It is a very strong wood and has a wonderfully subtle reddish hue. I had anticipated using maple, but the maple in the lumber store was pretty knotty (naughty) and I didn't want to waste wood or money. I am thinking a great verneer for the back and seat would be madrone burl:

and lay it out so that the left and right side of the chair would have reflected patterns. I got this image from the site www.certainlywood.com. They sell lots of great raw verneers of beautiful woods.

Cambrian Chair - Update

2009-05-05T14:11:00.001-07:00

This is the new design for the Cambrian Chair. Recent changes: the front legs are new, and I've made the seat flexible. It hovers over the frame so that if the flex joint is strained too much, the seat will hit the top of the legs.

I have a full-scale prototype of the back, so far everyone has loved it, and praised how comfortable it is.

The Cambrian Chair

2009-04-27T23:03:00.001-07:00

This term I am designing and building a wooden side chair. My goal is to exploit the flexibility of wood in a creative way. Here is my current progress. Enjoy!

Breuer Chair

2009-04-12T23:44:00.000-07:00

For class I composed an 18 x 18 "analytique" of the Marcel Breuer slatted chair from 1922. Pencil on a rough grain paper. Click here for a larger image. Enjoy!

The Earth Abides

2009-03-15T00:57:00.001-07:00

"One generation passes away and another generation comes
And the Earth abides forever." Ecc. Ch1 V4

Manhattan: Year 80

I just watched a discovery channel documentary called Aftermath: Population Zero on what would happen to the world if humanity suddenly disappeared. It was enlightening; although it was not a terribly good documentary. Highlights were it showing what would happen to our built structures: concrete office buildings would collapse in about a hundred years; dams would take a couple hundred; and the Eiffel Tower would be around for about a thousand (I too was surprised that exposed steel structures would outlive reinforced concrete ones).

It was intriguing to see how over time, everything would slowly return to nature. Los Vegas would return to desert; London would return to a marsh; New York would return to forest.

Another interesting fact is that the first few years "after us" would be the worst: spent nuclear fuel facilities would run out of cooling water within a few days and release massive nuclear clouds that would kill forests within tens or hundreds of miles. I wonder if the Y2K survivors thought about wind directions from these facilities when building their underground bunkers.

There were certainly some important things that this documentary left out. While it was focusing on how zoo animals would react to impending winter; it forgot to mention that forest fires, now unimpeded by fire suppression, would burn hotter than ever before and wipe out many forests and urban areas within a few years.

Even the graphics-- the bread and butter of these documentaries -- was pretty sub-standard. I suggest the interested person look instead to the imagination of the book Earth Abides, the story of the survivors of a world-wide epidemic, who are watching the world around them return to nature. A book that offers important commentary on human nature, Earth Abides has stayed with me as one of my favorites.

I often think about how to knit together man and nature in built form. It occurs to me that the indigenous landscape of an area is never defeated, only held back. The wide riparian corridor that used to be the Willamette River here in Eugene is held back by 13 US Army Corps Dams and multiple private dams on tributaries. But how long will they last? And what is lost in the character of the local ecosystem and landscape?

For many of us, who never knew and loved New Orleans, Katrina was an obvious reminder that we shouldn't be opposing nature; we shouldn't be building in a below-sea-level valley in an area prone to hurricanes. But it holds the same for other places: should we be building in the middle of an alpine forest that is prone to forest fires? Should we be building in river valley floodplains? Should we be building in the mud flow paths of volcanoes? (Enumclaw, Washington being the case in point.) Should we be building on the coasts of major oceans, prone to tsunamis?

The Willamette River in 1857, painted by Paul Kane.

A good objectivist, I too tremor at the power of man to hold back natural forces and dominate nature. But perhaps that is the wrong attitude-- the attitude of a teenager reveling in his new power and freedom. Time heals all wounds; nature will reclaim its indigenous state and destroy our interferences, now or later. If we are smart, we will step out of the way before that happens; and use our power to devise new ways of living on the land that works with nature's indigenous states and ecosystems.

best,
Brett

PS: One group working toward that vision in the Willamette River Basin is the Pacific Northwest Ecosystem Research Consortium.

Passive House Concept

2009-03-01T19:20:00.000-08:00

Recently I heard a lecture on the "Passive House," a system of superinsulation and airtightness that allows you to reduce your heating/cooling energy by about 80%, to the point that you do not need to purchase a furnace-- making the system as expensive as typical construction.

Although ventilation is typically a problem with this type of system, the Passive House institute was able to design a system to meet ASHRAE's standard fo 5 airchanges per hour without loosing very much heat. An air-to-air heat exchanger is used (and in the diagram above, a ground heat exchanger to warm the air slightly).

Since solar panels and wind farms are still comparitively expensive technology, I've always thought that passive solar design (utilizing south-oriented windows and thermal mass to store energy) was an important way to REDUCE energy needs, rather than manufacturing high-embodied-energy technology to compensate for wasteful energy use. This combined with lots of insulation, superinsulated windows, and construction systems that reduce thermal bridging between the interior and exterior, give you a Passive House design.

During the lecture, there were photos showing how these superinsulated panels (OSB and fiberboard sandwich panels with blown-in fiberglass insulation) were fabricated offisite and erected to form the thermal enclosure of a building. Then, a light wood frame was built on the inside of the enclosure! This intrigues me because there is a conventional distinction between mass architecture and frame architecture-- but this system is mass walls attached to an interior, exposed frame.

It also appeals to me because I believe in exposing (as much as possible) the structure of a building and turning the structure into the architecture, a' la' Cutler Anderson Architects. If we pull the wall studs onto the inside of the wall, that exposes them, although I would like to find out whether they would need further fireproofing.

For more information see:
http://www.100khouse.com/2008/04/10/passive-house-passivhaus-standard-for-energy-efficient-design/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house

Brett

Compositional Principles of Nature

2009-02-22T21:02:00.000-08:00

I have not yet read Christopher Alexander's The Nature of Order, but I am excited to, having seen the blog post available at: http://www.katarxis3.com/Gallery2.htm. I am borrowing the graphic posted there which illustrates some compositional principles of nature.

Does the Portland UGB Work?

2009-01-20T20:15:00.001-08:00

Does the Portland Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) work?

Some interesting statistics that indicate to me that it doesn't, in that the vast majority of Portland-area growth is occurring in suburbs around the city:

http://www.demographia.com/db-porugbmigr.pdf

Planning by Consent

2009-01-12T00:51:00.000-08:00

In any field of the economy, intervention by government (in the form of price controls, subsidies, regulations, etc) represent an artificial adjustment of the natural balance of supply and demand. Often, interference in one sector has ripple effects through the economy that cannot be fully predicted. They cannot be predicted because the economy is controlled by millions of individuals (buyers and sellers), not a central planner. An act of government is necessarily an artificial adjustment because it is achieved through force, not through consent, and it forcibly alters the natural unfolding of the market. Every act of government intervention in the economy is an act that necessarily displaces the wants of buyers and sellers. It displaces them to certain groups that stand to benefit directly or indirectly by the change—usually special interest groups with powerful lobbying forces in Washington.

Basic economics is important to understand urban planning and urban design. Nearly every public work on the part of a governing body represents an intervention. The building of a road subsidizes development on that road and subsidizes the users of the road and the industries attached to them (i.e. automobiles, oil, etc). The building of sewer mains, zoning codes, and other acts of cities, counties, and states, interfere with the patterns of development that would otherwise occur.

Historically, the interference of government in the creation of streets and infrastructure has led to dramatic consequences. The subsidation of transcontinental railroads led to inefficiencies and excess that left them bankrupt, despite enormous subsidies and land grants. Of the five greats railroads, only one survived—and it was the only one privately funded and privately built by a serious entrepreneur. The ones that failed generated so much animosity that it lead to anti-trust legislation, which now (erroneously) targets private enterprises. The net result of this era was a huge subsidy of the western expansion. This would have occurred anyway, but perhaps in different ways, leading to perhaps less dramatic consequences for the forests or native inhabitants of the West.

Then, the US led a massive subsidation of the automobile, and the resulting suburban sprawl. Public funds were used to pay for roads and infrastructure, which in turn subsidized the automobile and led to the collapse of the streetcar system; the federal housing authority subsidized building homes in the suburbs through mortgages; and the federal deposit insurance corporation reduced the financial risk of expansion. Zoning eliminated multi-use blocks and further segregated our lives. Even tax law favors home ownership instead of rental units, making it cheaper to move into the suburbs than to live in the city. The consequences of suburban sprawl are described in many books—such as habitat loss, dependency on oil, degradation of the inner city, loss of the diversity of social life, and social isolation for some groups. And those who benefited from these changes, such as certain classes of builders and the automobile industry, benefited enormously.

But regardless of the downsides to suburban life, it has been fueled for nearly a hundred years by massive subsidy by public bodies, at city, county, state, and federal levels. The suburban lifestyle would simply not be possible at its current costs if the government agencies had not monopolized roads and infrastructure.

So what do we do now? How do we end the era of public subsidies, and allow the markets of land use to equilibrate?

My proposal:

1. Repeal all regulations on land use and any laws that bias some forms of land use over others
2. End all acts of publicly funded urban renewal
3. Sell off all public assets including land, roads and infrastructure to a variety of competing groups (either for-profit corporations or nonprofit groups). Use public officials to popularize consent-based groups such as private nature conserves or community organizations.
4. Introduce new courts that streamline litigation for land use claims and introduce mediation courts that attempt to resolve disputes.
5. End all property taxes and significantly lower other taxes where possible.
6. End all but life-saving disaster relief, supplanting it by private disaster insurance paid by property owners.
7. End eminent domain practices.

I believe this will, over time, lead to densification, the introduction of new mass transit, and more efficient use of resources. Over time, those who live in the suburbs will likely find suburban life more expensive, and urban life more socially desirable. Social groups will intermingle more. Businesses will pop up in previously zoned residential areas, giving urban character to those neighborhoods. Things will change quickly and with energy and freedom, allowing social and economic innovations.

Note that I am not against urban design. I think urban design is important. I am for urban design and planning by consent-- meaning cooperation and negotiation between developers, utility owners, and the consumers, for the sake of allowing us to build beautiful and cohesively planned places to live. But any urban designer must realize that over time, changes will occur in an often uncontrollable, decentralized fashion, and subsequent designs will need to be drafted to accommodate or steer those changes.

I welcome comments and criticisms of this vision.

best,
Brett

Fall 2008 Studio Project

2008-12-16T19:00:00.000-08:00

The Wellspring Friends School and Mennonite Church

Addition and Renovation

download full PDF poster here

This term I had the pleasure of working with the local Wellsprings School in Eugene, a small alternative high school that is outgrowing their home in a Mennonite church building, and will soon be starting the process of raising funds for expanded facilities. My goals in this project were to treat it like a real project, to closely investigate the wants and needs of the clients, including students, staff, and members of the church.

I also made an effort to articulate and detail the space; to invest time in the look and feel of the building; for which I used the metaphor of being beneath a willow tree hanging over a pond. The vertical slats (or mullions) you see in the image below are part of the clerestory windows and create a vertical rhythm like rain in a Japanese print. They spill out underneath flat roofs that, while atypical to the northwest, are desirable when using green (sod) roofs.

Sensitive to the wants of the church group, who loved the acoustics of the existing building, I kept the existing building and added a new wing for the school toward the street. The new wing wraps around a courtyard, which includes a meditative pond, and the spaces of the building look out to the pond, like in a Chinese garden.

The key purpose of this pond to make the Northwest beautiful in the winter. Rain falling on the pond, sunlight reflecting off the pond, and the light that bounces up from the cloudy sky, all become experienced on the inside. This is essentially how I want to design my house, as a grove of willow trees around the water, looking out to it, animated by it.

In retrospect, the pond may need to be smaller and the courtyard be more flexible to a variety of uses.

An interesting element of the scheme is an open library that serves as a wi-fi lounge and social gathering area, in addition to serving as overflow independent work space for the classrooms grouped around it. The existing library of the school was small and few would use it. Due to limited staff, it uses a system of self-checkout. Such a system makes unnecessary the idea of a closed or controlled library. It can be woven into the spaces of the school, used as a circulation space, and students would always be walking by displays of books.

The library has wall of glass looking out to the courtyard and pond, which butts right up against the building foundation. Small niches to sit and read surround the pond.

Classrooms were designed the way Wellsprings uses them, where they typically have group discussions from comfortable couches, instead of sitting in rows of desks (which are designed to minimize social interaction between students).

The renovation of the existing Mennonite church building was modest; merely accommodating the requirements for the church and school (such as expanding the kitchen) while minimally affecting the space of the building. I also added a small niche behind the lectern of the sanctuary, to give direction to the space and provide for clearer speaking acoustics from that position without affecting the accoustics of the overall space.

Personalization and art being important to the students, outdoor floor murals on paved spaces were suggested. The church and school could also work together to paint the large outdoor meeting circle that both groups would use. This was inspired by a lecture by Mark Lakeman here in Eugene on his efforts with "Intersection Repair" which brings life to neighborhood communities.

And green strategies being important to any design:
An interesting aspect of this studio was how much I learned about the nature of education, for instance, what ultimately matters is that a teacher care about their students and to instill character and social health as a prerequisite for learning. We are often lost in the institutionality of education, of whole human individuals being reduced to test scores, and teachers have little power to tailor education to student needs.

We are also lost in a value hierarchy, where knowing calculus is more important than knowing how to skillfully draw a human figure. Small alternative schools fill an important void, in caring for so-called "problem" children, and I really wanted to make a place that would foster the Wellsprings style of education.

Hope you enjoyed seeing my Fall studio project!

Brett

The "Light of God" Effect

2008-12-13T01:21:00.001-08:00

Wellsprings School Courtyard & Pond

At the end of each studio project, I set aside enough time to experiment with presentation media. Now that a new studio project is hot off the press, I'd like to share with you a media technique I developed, that my professor aptly called the "Light of God" effect. It involves a combination of hand sketching, digital rendering, and photoshop layering.

1. First, start with a digital model, such as Google Sketchup. This model took about 20 hours to create, and I left out things that digital programs are poor at, such as complicated landscaping and human figures. Be sure you turn on shadows.

2. Export your digital model as a dwg (line drawing), import into illustrator, and print as an 11 x 16 image. MAKE SURE YOU SAVE THIS EXACT PERSPECTIVE IN SKETCHUP, since you will need it later. I learned the hard way.

3. Put a layer of trace over the line drawing and sketch on top, being sure to add spatial depth indicated by line value, surface details, landscaping, people, etc. Here I got my people by photocopying figures from a book of architectural entourage, and magnifying the image on the copy machine until I got a good fit. This was a pain, so I recommend you scan in the entourage and magnify it digitally to fit.
As you can see I had a lot of complicated landscaping to add to this image; I was trying to create a Chinese-style garden with a Zen pond, involving rocks and foliage.

4. Next, scan in the drawing and open it in Photoshop. Proceed to add layers of color on top of the drawing that are semi-transparent, focusing on the stuff you added in the drawing. This is kinda like digital watercoloring.
5. Next, export a version of the rendered image from the same perspective that you used earlier, being sure to turn off the edges. This creates a nice color-value rendering like the one below.

6. Here's where the fun starts. Add the rendering as a layer to your photoshop image, and set the opacity so that it melts into the other layers, like below. You may need to erase unwanted parts of the rendering, like I did on the sidewalk.

7. OK, here's where the "Light of God" effect comes in. Create a color gradient in photoshop that simulates the color pallete of the place. In this color scheme I wanted to represent shafts of sunlight coming through the trees. I looked at lots of photos of the northwest, realizing that this is a very common color pallete for this region. This is the gradient I used for the image in my presentation.

In another, more dramatic color scheme, I simulated the glow of the sunset:

Finally, make this color gradient semi-transparent. In combination with your digital coloring, the rendering, and your sketch, it adds a remarkable layer of color-realism that you can play with very quickly, without doing rendering after rendering. Here is the layer at 30% opacity:

Here is the layer at 50% opacity:

Here it is at 70% opacity:

Can you feel dusk falling on the courtyard? Can you hear the insects chirping in the late summer afternoon, as the two talk into the evening? My goal here was to create a beautiful place where people could, among other things, fall in love.

While the above image is a shot of the courtyard looking into a classroom. In another perspective, I looked out into the courtyard from inside the classroom. This is at 20% opacity:

The following is at 30% opacity:

And finally 40% opacity:

Can you hear the choir singing? Its as if the student has just read some great philosophic truth, perhaps a quotation by John Locke. The gradient overlay simulates a shaft of light pouring through the window (hence, "Light of God"). It also makes me think of Rembrandt's Danae, where Zeus is entering through the curtains as a shower of golden light. Although this is fun to play with, I used the 20% version in the presentation. It is very subtle and almost unnoticeable, but it still adds life to the rendering, which can be somewhat sterile.

Perhaps next term I will import layers into Flash and generate animations with changing gradients, so that light streams in through one window, then fades out, then streams in through the other. Lots of possibilities.

best,
Brett

The Basilica and the Skyscraper

2008-12-12T19:48:00.000-08:00

The history of architecture is often the refinement of forms, small changes that occur over time; we break them into categories much as we break sequences of evolution into distinct species. The Early Christian Church in Rome borrowed the form of the Roman Basilica, such as the Basilica Ulpia, seen below:

Basilica Ulpia

and, over time, evolved the basilica form through a sequence of changes (Early Christian, Romanesque) until it arrived at the Cathedral of the High Gothic, such as Reims, seen below:

Reims Cathedral

The changes included more and larger clerestories, the replacement of lintels with arches, programmatic additions such as trancepts, side aisles that went around the apse, side chapels, etc; the replacement of roof trusses with vaulting, and the pointed arches and flying butresses that resulted from more verticality.

Another change that occurred in the Romanesque (with its roots in some Early Christian churches) was the bay system. Instead of a unchanging pattern of columns down the length of the basilica, certain columns were emphasized, and these columns were butressed to receive the weight of ribbed barrel vaults. The ribs fell on the special columns, and the roof was spanned between the ribs.

The bays also served the purpose of "slowing down" the eye, as you look down the length of the basilica, you see a composition more distinct (less continuous) units. Well, I couldn't help but notice that a compositionally, a skyscraper is much like an early basilica:

Auckland Skyscraper

Notice how your eye begins at the bottom and almost inadvertently slides up to the top. Not surprisingly, skyscrapers are evolving much like the basilica, and one of the goals seems to be breaking up the monotony of the grid. Consider the Bank of China by I. M. Pei:

Bank of China, IM Pei, Hong Kong

Notice how your eye slows down and moves back and forth over the diagonals. Incidentally, these diagonals serve an important structural role in bracing the vertical columns to resist lateral loads such as wind and earthquakes.

HSBC Building, Norman Foster

Here we see a more clearly articulated bay system, where the bays serve a spatial (programmatic) function in addition to their structural function. I believe every 8 or 9 floors there is a gallery level that is used by the adjacent floors. The structural trusses you see are actually used to hang parts of the structure... this skyscraper was the most expensive building per square foot to construct, ever.

Gherkin Building, Norman Foster

We're beginning to see the advantages of composing a skyscraper now: the freedom to transform the structure in three dimensions instead of two. Although this building also uses an 8 or 9 story bay system (due to fire code), we don't see it on the outside; what we see how the gallery / garden space spirals around the structure. The form of the spiral is, incidentally, also useful for resisting lateral loads.

Calatrava is taking a step forward structurally with the Chicago Spire, which emphasizes the spiral and, more than the Gherkin, is using the spiral to resist the wind forces in interesting ways. This is one of the latest advances in skyscraper design.

Chicago Spire

I must admit although I think this is a beautiful structure, we are starting to lose the bay system, my eye jumps quickly to the top of the building. Perhaps the best articulated vertical bay system is another work by Foster, completed in 1997:

Commerzbank, Norman Foster

Is this the future of the skyscraper? The bays are clearly articulated; every 8 or 9 floors is a gallery / garden level, and serves a role in the ventilation system of the tower. The structure is 9 story Vierendeel Trusses that span between load-bearing towers (in the manner of Kahn) and brace those towers against one another. The combination of the bay system and the load-bearing towers make it very cutting edge.

Prudential Building, Louis Sullivan

It is interesting to look back at the origin of the skyscraper and its chief proponent, Louis Sullivan. Sullivan taught us that a tall building should emphasize verticality, yet have a solid base, middle, and top. The bay system, as illustrated by Commerzbank, is a new compositional element, departing from Sullivan's basic tripartite rule.

It may be that the advancement of the skyscraper will be as slow and meticulous as was the advancement of the basilica. What, really, is new? Each century has a few basic innovations, the variations of which get explored in different ways. Occasionally a burst of innovation occurs and elements get synthesized and cross-fertilized until a new form emerges. In retrospect, we will probably wonder why it took so long.

best,
Brett

Japanese Joinery

2008-12-05T22:18:00.000-08:00

Today I began to appreciate the deftness of traditional japanese joinery. I am building a model tower that I will destroy on Monday, and making many tight connections between structural joints with nothing but basswood and string. I had an idea to dunk the whole thing in water before we test it, to expand the wood and tighten the joints. Unfortunately, when string is dunked in water it also expands, so it would loosen the joint connections. (Go to photo origin.)

Retreat House Design

2008-12-04T06:05:00.000-08:00

Hi folks, this design is from February of 2006, back when I was visiting the office of Robert Oshatz and applying to architecture school. Hope you enjoy!

Relaxation Retreat House

This house is a small, 600 square foot weekend retreat on a lightly forested site with a 20-degree slope leading down to a river. Robert Oshatz (Architect) is acting as both client and critic for the work.

As my first serious design-study project, the house has undergone about twenty major radical revisions over the last eight months. It probably will undergo further revisions, but lately I've been feeling very happy with the overall massing and design, and I feel like I've probably nailed the design to within 90%.

I'd like to take you on an oddessy of my imagination over the last nine months:

Here the idea was to have two load-bearing service towers that house the utilities, storage, and bathrooms. The goal of the towers was to preserve the sense of mass and monumentality of the house while lifting the structure into the air. I tend to feel that houses on thin stilts look shaky. This feature was highly influenced by William Morgan's Tower House type, and Louis Kahn's medical research towers in Philiadelphia.

The structural bridge provides space for a covered carport, and also allows construction of the house to proceed from the bridge instead of the ground below. On the lower floor is a space to throw the grand children when they come out for a visit. Beneath the carport is a patio area with a storage area large enough to house a kayak and canoe.

Problems with this design include the location of the service towers which oscure views from inside; also the balconies out front do the same. Unwanted separation between the kitchen/dining and living areas. Not enough protection from the western sun. Interestingly, the plan is very simple and similar to one by Richard Neutra. I still really like this design... (hmm... could it still work?). Also the flat roof is useless since the house is sited in the pacific northwest.

I tried several variations on this design and I couldn't get the house to balance properly unless the service towers were out front. A related design had one of the towers pulled out in front, and faced with glass.

The plan of this house was nicely developed, but I still wasn't happy with the entrance sequence, nor the confined stairwell, nor with the overall composition (hmm... could it still work?). I like the eastern balcony but needed another on the west side. Notice that the lower story dormitory has views of the stars at night (hopefully the northern light won't bake the interior).

In response to the views on the property, I rotated the design, resulting in a new geometry. Now a central cruciform serves as the circulation spaces; the cruciform is oriented such as to catch views to the groups of trees on all four corners of the property. The bedroom is open to the east so that the client catches the sunlight in the morning, and the living area is on the west. Interestingly, this creates a rotated nine-patch, with a symmetry I haven't seen before.

The stairwell is still in the service tower, except the tower is made of glass (is it still load bearing? who knows) because it is out front. This also provides views from the center of the cruciform directly down to the river.

You might notice that this and the first designs are bilaterally symmetric. Not only am I prone to symmetric designs, due to their monumental overtones, but the house is up in the air, which made it more difficult to balance the composition. If one side was heavy, there would need to be some shifting in the composition. Part of the reason why I rejected this design was because when i changed the proportions of the spaces to reflect the needs of the house it made the structure asymmetric and unbalanced.

Other problems with this design included not much room for expansion, a highly confined stairwell, and poor views for the lower story. I also wanted an entrance sequence that didn't give the best views right away and spit the occupant out right in the center of the house, thus prematurely terminating the sequence in the symmetric center of the design.

New developments in this design are a 45 degree rotated structural bridge leading to a large lower-story area; a large third tower in the back that houses the lower dormitory and the master bedroom; and a new plan with towers on the east and west side. A close approximation of this plan can be gotten by spinning the previous plan by 90 degrees. The towers are no longer properly "service" towers, but house the office on the east and the kitchen on the west.

As you walk from the carport into the main area on the lower level, you discover the stairwell on the back side of the service tower; you follow it to wind about the tower up onto the upper level, your views slightly obscured by the bulk of the house. You enter the house from the back and find an entry with a bench and a door to the bathroom, you continue in and find the kitchen on your right and dining area on the left. You work your way around the mass of the fireplace (behind which is the office) into the living room out front, where you can experience the full views. The 45-degree orientation of the walls allows the views to follow the river bank east and west instead of directly overlooking it, which also catches clusters of trees.

I developed this final plan by rearranging toy blocks on my kitchen table. I think the trick was to free the towers from the stairwell and utility spaces, but make them adjacent to those spaces so that piping can still be run through them.

There is a diagonal theme in the windows of this design. This began due to the need to modulate the light entering the master bedroom... I wanted to delay the penetration of light due to summer sunrises (5 am!), while allowing light immediately from the winter sunrise.

I hope you enjoyed my oddessy. I have omitted many designs that simply didn't work and quickly hit the wastebasket (em... delete key). There are a few others that only survive in sketches. Also, I have started working with a new 3D program google sketchup, which promises to produce much better images.

best,

Brett

The Fed Owns Oregon

2008-12-04T03:45:00.000-08:00

This image has made the rounds on libertarian blogs. Interesting fact: Oregon is a minority landholder of Oregon. It is actually one of five states including: Alaska, Nevada, Utah, Oregon, and Idaho, for which the federal government owns more than 50% of the total state land area.

The question that enters my mind is: what does this mean for democracy? I believe that democracy is not just the ability to vote in mass elections, it is the ability to enact change on multiple levels, including one's district, one's community, and one's street. While voting is alien, democracy starts with your front door-- by seeing change in one's immediate environment. This may seem like a weird idea-- after all, I can't so much as obstruct the sidewalk without being ticketed. But in Portland, communities are beginning to exert their autonomy through "intersection repair" projects, large floor murals that turn intersections into community gathering places.

But how can Oregon express its autonomy as a state if it does not have decision-making power over more than 50% of its total land area? It is possible that we have manipulated federal law with regard to the national parks, Indian reservations, and other lands, but it is worrisome that Oregon does not have direct control over those lands. As the population of Oregon increases more rapidly than states in the East, we will start to see a land squeeze. We should post a sign: "Go home, there's no more room in the great American West."

Brett

Japanese Gardens

2008-10-27T22:35:00.000-07:00

A really cool website about Japanese gardens. I am planning to go to Kyoto next year. I've also really enjoyed the Portland gardens, both the Japanese and (especially) the Chinese.

Mark Lakeman and City Repair

2008-10-25T22:08:00.000-07:00

Recently there was a fantastic lecture here in Eugene by Mark Lakeman, whose firm Communitecture, is playing a pivotal role in regenerating community in Portland. I must say that it was the first architectural lecture to "shake me to my core," through a combination of revolutionary ideas and a great lecture style that established a great narrative arc. I encourage you to view a short video about it here.

The essential idea is simple. We as Americans live in a Roman grid, which Lakeman says is a relic of military planning by ancient societies. The wikipedia discusses examples of ancient grid planning including Giza in 2570 BC. Whether or not this represents "military" planning, it is definitely a result of planning as such, in that "some of the earliest planned cities were built using grids."

However, Lakeman argues that aboriginal societies, some of which he visited create villages based on wrapping buildings around a series of plazas. These plaza's become the stage for human community activity. Extrapolating this idea, we might want to think of cities as a network of nodes, with important connections occurring between nodes, instead of intersections on a grid. Regardless, Lakeman pointed out that in Europe, plazas are common, whereas in America, public plaza's are extremely rare. Now, let's connect this to the observation that many American's feel they have very little community, and often don't know their neighbors.

So what Lakeman did was to help a community paint their intersection. They came together, had a party, and expressed their ownership of their own intersection. The initial act was one of civil disobedience, but since the whole community was coming together, the city backed off. Many of the top officials in Portland are now replaced with individuals who were involved in the first intersection painting, or "city repair" project. Apparently since an intersection was public property, no one was allowed to do anything to it. Now, there is a simple legal process by which communities can apply to paint their roads.

But it didn't stop there: public works of art, coffee shops, and other impromptu things began popping up around the intersections. Block parties occurred. People started meeting their neighbors. People began using the intersections for "sacred" activities such as weddings. With Lakeman's lecture as evidence, it seems that these community meeting spots had a profound effect on the happiness and social cohesiveness of the communities.

These ideas appealed to me on several levels.

First-- that the Roman grid is alien to human community completely reordered my thinking about urban design. Now we want to create public nodes with connections between the nodes, instead of grids.
Second -- as a libertarian opposed to centralized planning, and for private ownership of roads, I believe that communities (local individuals and groups) should own their roads, and that urban design should be the result of complex relationships between freely negotiating parties.
Third -- the example of a community taking control of its own intersection through a collective act of civil disobedience is a valuable insight into how to combat bureaucracies: start with your front door. It returns democracy to a tangible local level. When a local community exerts itself in unison -- even a single neighborhood-- it can bring a metropolitan city to its knees. Although we can vote, voting is almost lifeless and alien. We feel like a very small voice in a very large world. But when we control our sidewalks, our neighborhoods, our homes, our voice is amplified. We feel ownership, we feel power. That is what democracy should be.

So what is the next step?? Communities all over the west coast are taking ownership of their intersections and turning them into community gathering places. Next, I feel, is to take local ownership of the educational system.

We live in a world where we let bureaucrats 3,000 miles away tell us how to educate our children. We do it because we believe, naively, that we are getting a good deal in that other people are helping us pay for our kids' education. Redistribution of the wealth, right? How could we possibly afford to pay for our own kids' education? For this we suffer an inflexible system, outdated conceptions of learning and creativity, with up to 75% drop out rates at bad inner city schools.

My answer is that smaller, more local, and partially volunteer or home-based schools that use shared or rented spaces can cut the costs of education to a fraction of their existing costs, while forming local communities and fostering individuals with greater character and creativity than in the existing system. The goal of these home-grown solutions would to make highly flexible schools that are quickly responsive to the needs and values of students and families. Such schools would be highly variable, offering more school choice, and would be free to experiment in ways that might lead to new breakthroughs and innovations.

To do this, I expect we would need a community to unanimously rebel against its local school in an act of civil disobedience. It might be hard to resist the authorities from the city, county, and state, but all told, no one can force a community to do anything barring the implementation of a police state. It may also be difficult to make it work and pay the teachers good salaries while still living under the tax burden of the existing system. But in time, the community will have a good argument for freeing itself from that system.

My current studio project, the Wellspring School of Eugene, is a small alternative high school operating out of a facility owned by the Mennonite Church. It is a successful school that manages to exist within the current socio-political framework, and keep costs low. Further, the education it offers is free, based largely on private contributors. My thinking this term has been along the lines of transforming the school into a live-work village. Stay tuned :)

best,
Brett

New Energy Source

2008-10-24T22:14:00.001-07:00

For over 4 years I have worked (now part-time) for an alternative energy research lab, BlackLight Power Inc. I am happy to announce that they just had an independent replication, by Rowan University scientists, of their reactor cells, which are, in my opinion, one of the most promising sustainable alternative to fossil fuels or nuclear power. Go here for a video. Go here for more information.

Spring 08 Studio Project

2008-09-26T22:35:00.000-07:00

Community is an experience shared by a group of people giving rise to a sense of mutual benevolence.

Presenting

A community-based theater troupe,

The Zenith Theater

(View West from 10th and Oak in Eugene)

Coming Spring of '08

Starring Brett Holverstott as the helpless student,
and comedian Otto Poticha as the professor of ARCH 584

view poster in PDF format

--- ACT I ---

(View of first floor plan and nearby buildings, dotted lines show location of
the bridge to the library.)

(Enlarged first floor plan.)

The idea here was to layer the spaces like the concentric layers of an onion. You would move through the plaza, indoor multipurpose plaza, entrance ramp, and mezzanine before finding your seat in the theater. The grand (1/16) entry ramp takes you to a mezzanine awash with light from a double-height atrium, with views to the upper gallery level. When exiting, the stairs going up to the gallery level are directly on axis with the exit from the theater, encouraging use of the gallery during intermission.

(Entrance ramp to mezzanine, info desk on left.)

One important precedent was the mezzanine space of Alvar Aalto's Mount Angel Benedictine Library, with diagonal sight lines to upper and lower floors, and an atrium above.

(Alvar Aalto Library)

On a technical level, I am still proud of this design. Wheelchair access is provided to every third row of the theater. The theater has ample wings with easy loading access; a well-located stagehand break room ("Ed's room"); and a snack bar with easy access to the backstage catering kitchen. And below you can see that the spotlight booths have easy access from the staircase (and the elevator!).

--- ACT II ---

(Enlarged second floor plan.)

(Looking down to the mezzanine from the second floor gallery.)

One of my goals with this design was to put together the gallery spaces with the theater. When the stage curtain closes, a curtain pulls away from a series of "smart glass" windows, which become transparent when an electrical charge is applied. The guests look up to see the gallery spaces directly from their seat in the theater; they decide to check them out during intermission. Also, visitors to the gallery can look down through the one-way glass to the stage below, to see a production in progress.

(View in Theater)

(East-West Section of Theater)

Another touch was the addition of two natural light spotlights, which are complex, sunlight-funneling spotlights that can be manipulated using mirrors to act as a theater spotlight. I designed these lights in order to bring nature into the performance. The goal was to intrigue an experimental director to use the random variable of sunlight during certain scenes of a matinee to lend an unpredictable mood to the performance. As clouds move over the sun, the light ebbs and flows.

(Natural Light Spotlight)

--- ACT III ---

(Third floor plan.)

More of these natural light spotlights are used on the top floor of the gallery level to illuminate sculpture. Imagine walking through the sculpture gallery and seeing the light change over them, unexpectedly.

(View of Sculpture Gallery)

An important precedent for this is Louis Kahn's Kimbell Art Museum, where sunlight is reflected onto the underside of a concrete ceiling. I hear this lends a magical quality to the experience.

(Kimbell Art Museum)

Throughout the process of design, I was very sensitive to the site context, particularly the public library across the street. Discussions with library staff suggested the need for more freely-available meeting rooms, rooms to host workshops, and a place for teenagers to congregate where they would be allowed to "talk out loud," as opposed to the teen lounge in the library where they must keep quiet. The indoor plaza was a result of these discussions; it is a multipurpose space that allows teenagers to hang out, but still is closely interacting with the street and has views to the bus station that is kitty-corner from the theater.

Another idea proposed by the library staff was a bridge that connected the library to the theater, so that large herds of kids could be quickly moved across the street to hear lectures. In my design, the bridge connects to the second floor of the library, directly above the children's section, so that kids can be moved up and over. In retrospect, I feel that this bridge is unnecessary because the street is a small two-lane road, and various safety measures could be put in place to ensure a safe crossing. However, an arch might still be nice because it would mark the entrance to the cultural sector of downtown Eugene, which is filled with small art galleries and performance venues.

Although I tried many different designs, the final version was worked out on-site, over an intense 1-hour period where I was running back and forth between the bus station, library, and building site to catch various site lines and other details. The result was a simple composition of three curves: the bridge arch, the curve of the south wall that mimics the exterior wall of the library, and the curve of the auditorium.

(Cardboard Study Model)

This was also the first time I really experimented with colored pencils, and I found them surprisingly whimsical. This fits with my notion of a community theater offering such crowd-pleasers as Zorro or Indiana Jones, fun shows that people of all ages can enjoy. The name I decided on (the "Zenith") was a nod to the influence of natural light in the design.

I hope you enjoyed my Spring 08 studio project! Feel free to leave comments below. You can also view the final project presentation poster in PDF format here.

Friendly Invaders

2008-09-14T12:14:00.000-07:00

A recent article by the New York Times cites new research showing that, contrary to common knowledge, invasive species do not always instigate species extinctions. Rather, invasive predators are primarily responsible for extinctions-- invasive non-predatory species establish themselves in niches in the new ecosystem, resulting in a (sometimes as much as two-fold) increase in biodiversity.

Click here to read the article.

It is interesting to note that when our hunter-gatherer ancestors spread across the new world, it resulted in the extinction of several large mammals, who were easy to hunt because they had not evolved alongside human ancestors. But to what extent have we overcome our "predatory" nature? Are we able to occupy a niche in our current ecosystems without destroying them? If our transplanting has increased biodiversity, is it a good kind of diversity or a bad kind?

Biomimicry in Architecture

2008-09-13T08:27:00.000-07:00

After my first blog post on biomimicry, the site greenerdesign.com asked me to write an article going into more depth on biomimicry in architecture. With some helpful suggestions by my cohort at the University of Oregon, I discuss a range of biomimetic buildings and solutions. (Thanks to Andrew, Ed, Todd, and Molly.)

Click here to see the article

A leaf unfolds, its parts self-assembling from a slurry of nutrients, using ancient blueprints encoded on a molecular level to spread into a photosynthesizing, thermal regulating, pest-resistant and water-repelling surface. Our greatest technologies look mild compared to such simple, integrated eloquence. To modify an adage from Arthur C. Clarke, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from life.

Why Pixar Works

2008-08-25T13:19:00.001-07:00

I am a huge fan of Pixar Animation Studios, who made such movies as The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Finding Nemo, Cars, etc. Here is a great article in the Harvard Business Journal on the company's creative culture by Ed Catmull, president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios.

An interesting tidbit from the article: When Disney suggested that Pixar to release Toy Story 2 as a direct-to-video release, with a lower cost and quality, Pixar rejected the idea, as they felt that having two different standards of quality was "bad for our souls." When Disney and Pixar merged, I was afraid that Disney was going to ruin Pixar. But it seems to be the other way around-- Pixar is reorganizing Disney Animation in its own image. The first thing Ed Catmull did was nix direct-to-video sequels, such as Cinderella 3: A Twist in Time. What garbage! Walt Disney must be rolling in his grave.

The first movie to be released by the new Disney will be "Bolt," releasing this Christmas. I bet that it will be the best thing by Disney that we've seen in a long time.

best,
Brett

Learning from the Tree

2008-08-14T00:54:00.000-07:00

I grew up in the northwest, a land of big trees (the images are from a recent trip to Hawaii). Walking through the forest on a summer evening is like walking through a great cathedral. As the poet William Cullen Bryant puts it in A Forest Hymn, "The groves were God's first temples." Trees are perhaps the most common generators of architectural space in nature. So what can architects learn from trees?

1. Trees with a deep taproot (a tapering root that grows vertically downward) are able to survive tough windstorms. The taproot uses the soil around it to brace itself against lateral loads such as wind. This principle has become the basis for modern skyscraper design in which a deep central foundation supports a vertical core.

2. Trees utilize flexibility to give when hit with severe blasts of wind. However, modern skyscrapers are designed to counter this effect through top-heavy masses with a normal mode of oscillation that opposes that of the structure. Little thought has been given to designing in flexibility as a dampening force against lateral loads.

3. Roots also add structure to the soil. Robert Oshatz, a Portland architect, makes it a habit to leave as much root structure as possible on a site by elevating the building above cut tree stumps. Is there some way to build a foundation in order to reciprocally strengthen the soil and prevent such incidences as mudslides?

4. Tree bark contains several properties: water impermeability, fire resistance, pest resistance, and the ability to regenerate. We might be inspired by these properties to create new external building skins.

5. In school we are taught that cantilevered beams require a ratio of roughly 2:1 secured to cantilevered length. However, tree branches cantilever with a ratio of almost 0:1 by merging the cantilever with the supporting column, and (again) incorporating flexibility to withstand loads.

6. Trees (as all plant life) integrate service ducts with structure. Nutrients and water flow through the trunks, branches, and stems into the flesh of the tree. This has been a goal of modern architects such as Louis Kahn and his contemporary students such as James Cutler, who integrates service ducts with exposed light wood framing.

7. Although leaves are paper thin, they are able to regulate their internal temperature despite external temperatures. They do so by subtly adjusting their level of perspiration, and angle of exposure to the sun. We might be inspired by this to develop overhangs and roofs that naturally react to sunlight, perhaps through hydraulics that regulate sun angle depending on water temperature.

8. Trees obtain water from rainwater absorbed through the soil. Although many sustainable designs are now incorporating rainwater catchment systems, trees have the advantage of allowing groundcover plants and topsoil to filter rainwater, partially removing pollutants. Is there some way for us to mimic this process by naturally filtering rainwater with plants instead of mechanical filtration systems?

9. Trees survive entirely on solar energy via photosynthesis, a highly efficient natural process which generates oxygen as a waste byproduct. Scientists are working to mimic photosynthesis in order to generate high solar energy yields capable of powering human societies.

10. Many trees are deciduous; they lose their leaves in the winter and they fill out in the summer. Trees provide a comfortable human habitat in the summer for humans and other great apes. This process is mimicked with south-facing overhangs which capture southern light and block high summer light; a principle known since Mesa Verde.

11. Trees stimulate the human senses by responding to the wind, rustling and swaying. This provides calming white noise and visual stimulus in the swaying of branches and the dappled natural light beneath. Either opening a building to these natural effects or generating interior animation is a subject pursued by architects interested in creating stimulating spaces.

12. Trees are the source of a variety of natural chemical compounds. Eagles are known to line their nests with fir fronds to keep out pests; if we could identify and synthesize this compound, it would be useful in building finishes.

These are but a few of the useful properties of trees. Can you think of any more?

Why We Live in Cities

2008-08-06T22:49:00.001-07:00

This summer I've been reading Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel which is excellent, and seeks to answer the question: why did civilization rise so quickly in Eurasia instead of in the Americas? He answers this question by pointing out key differences in geography, such as the following:

Large-seeded grass species that later gave rise to cereals such as wheat and oats were much more available in the fertile crescent than anywhere else on earth;
Almost all of our domesticated animal species come from ancestors who lived in or around the fertile crescent. This is partially due to the fact that when humans moved out of Africa they confronted a variety of large mammal species who had not co-evolved with intelligent human hunters, making them easy to hunt and making them quick to extinction.
Eurasia is connected by a wide east-west axis with similar time of day and geography, making it easier for people and their domesticated plants and other technologies to move between neighboring civilizations; whereas the Americas is connected by a long and very narrow north-south axis.

These environmental factors made the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural societies much smoother than in the Americas. Food was easier to domesticate; animals such as sheep, goats, pigs, horses, and cows made farming easier and more productive, thus allowing more of the population to turn their attention to other pursuits and specializations. As members of the society became more specialized, they were able to turn their attention to art, science, technology, philosophy, and especially warfare.

It is also interesting that a sedentary society can accumulate material wealth without carrying it with them, and that reproductive rates of farmers were higher than hunter-gatherers for the same reason, no need to carry the children from place to place. Thus, over time, it is likely that the farming population merely out-reproduced the hunter-gatherers and either slowly displaced them or actively killed them off.

Another feature that plays a central role in Diamond's thesis is that nearly all of our diseases stem from mutated versions of germs and viruses particular to domesticated animals. So not only did these animals increase our food-producing abilities but were the source of major diseases that, over time, strengthened our immune systems. This explains why 95% of Native Americans were killed off with European settlement.

It is also interesting that highly populated sedentary societies bring about the state, because when a lot of strangers are interacting on a daily basis, family ties are insufficient for political unity. Political units under a strong leader would also have the advantage of long-term survival and expansion by conquering neighboring units. Hunter gatherers would have had little chance against disease, competition with wild farm animals, and politically organized societies with specialized fighters.

Over all, Diamond's thesis is an eye opener.

This led me to speculate about the origin of cities. As human societies became sedentary, why didn't they spread out evenly over the earth like hunter-gatherer societies?

Because agricultural societies generate food surpluses that can be used to feed specialists. With more specialists, it becomes more important to exchange goods and services on a regular basis. With more exchange, it becomes important to have central locations where individuals can select from a range of competing products and prices and where individuals can find employment in new specialized niches. In short, the answer is trade.

As trade networks expanded, the centers of trade would become hubs in which the farmers came from afar to buy and sell goods. The prices in the city were undoubtedly facing more competition, and less transportation costs, so living in the city was probably cheaper.

Further, highly centralized societies that taxed surrounding territory would tend to spend that money in the city (through the creation of monuments or the paying of soldiers), further boosting the wealth (and thus population density) of the city.

In the recently discovered city of Caral in Peru (a reconstructed portion of which is on the right), which existed about 5,000 years ago (making it the oldest documented city in the Americas), the city was growing plants in a fertile valley that were used to weave fish nets. These nets were being traded to neighboring societies, who would use them to catch fish and return to the city to sell the fish. Artifacts from a vast region around Caral are found there, making it obvious that there were extensive trade networks that fueled the city. There is an interesting documentary on Caral that concludes that trade, instead of war, was the cause for the rise of cities.

Winter 2007 Studio Project

2008-07-18T23:15:00.001-07:00

Community Partners International is a name you will forget in five minutes, but it was the focus of our winter studio project under professor Megan Haight. An urban multistory office building in Portland, Oregon to house several different nonprofit organizations and (of course) an art gallery (since all design projects have art galleries attached).

The idea of this building is integration-- of uniting all of the various purposes into a cohesive whole. You enter the building, pass by retail spaces and a coffee shop, and walk into a tall atrium space with skylights at the top. You hear the sound of water falling into a shallow reflecting pool. Multistory panels that hold artwork rise out of the pool, lit from above and beneath.

Off in the corner you find a half-flight of stairs to the first mezzanine. You walk around the atrium along an L-shaped corridor, looking at art in the center of the space and on the walls. The art is likely to be community or native artwork from around the world, associated with the peoples that nonprofits such as Mercy Corps assist.

As you round the corner and go up another half-flight of stairs you find an L-shaped office block, separated by a half-wall that displays informative posters showing the current and past projects of the organizations, and glass looking into the office space. Office workers meeting at small tables in the hall talk quietly as they overlook the atrium.

Note that all 5 floors and 4 mezzanines are handicap accessible, serviced by an elevator that makes an interesting three-way junction in order to also accommodate a mezzanine-mezzanine that is a meeting room, overlooking the atrium.

The office bocks are carefully organized to create a hierarchy of spaces. There are large work rooms for each nonprofit, and the axes of these meet at an informal work lounge. Offices and copy rooms create partitions to meeting small meeting rooms. Everything has close access to natural light from either the exterior wall or the atrium. I should say that the site occupies a corner-block, so the walls on the left and bottom (above plan) are street-facing, whereas the walls on the top and right are party walls.

The atrium, although small, is meant to be a uniting force of the building. You are never far from its light. Movement around it generates a spiraling circulation up through the building, hopefully encouraging chance encounters between occupants who have to go around in order to go up or down. The mezzanines allow more interaction and sightlines between floors. When you finally get to the top of the spiral, you open out to a rooftop sculpture garden with views out around the city.

The two section-perspectives (inspired by William Morgan's drawings) were done entirely by hand, but were done so neatly that they are almost indistinguishable from the versions that google sketchup can export. The below drawing was a last-minute printout from sketchup showing the three-way elevator junction

When your hand-drawings look indistinguishable from the computer, why not do them with a computer? Well, I plan to, and hopefully save the 8-hours or so each required. But I still believe hand-drawing is important.

Each studio project offers an opportunity to experiment with media.

The elevation of the building was a simple exposure of the building frame and the in-fill materials. Pretty uninteresting, but after a spring rain it would glisten with the contrasts of concrete, glass, steel frames, and wooden paneling. This drawing I did by rendering one section and making extensive use of "copy" and "paste" in photoshop.

I hope you enjoyed my winter studio project-- my third studio and my first urban design. Click here to see the final project poster in PDF format. The next update will be the Zenith Theater, my Spring 08 project, a far more complex urban building drawn with a new choice of media...

best,

Brett

The Philosophic Roots of Quantum Theory and the Fallacy of Interpretation

2008-07-05T18:24:00.000-07:00

I recently condensed portions from my undergraduate thesis in philosophy at Reed College into a short paper that I hope to submit for publication. The goal is to appeal to a wide audience-- laymen, scientists, philosophers.

View the article: The Philosophic Roots of Quantum Theory and the Fallacy of Interpretation (PDF) (Note, I recently revised the work and changed the name on 8/6/'08)

A historical narrative of the origin of quantum theory is offered. It is shown that quantum theory was motivated by “Mach’s Principle,” the notion that unobserved natural processes have no place in a physical theory. As such, quantum mechanics should not be interpreted, as it is often done, as a description of underlying physics, but rather as a computational tool for predicting observable quantities. Further, in the eighty years since its inception, the original classical problem of nonradiation of the bound electron has been considerably advanced. The implications are discussed.

For an extensive discussion of related topics, consult the full thesis: Scientific Realism, Empiricism, and Quantum Theory (PDF)

Lifecycle Building Challenge

2008-06-29T13:46:00.000-07:00

An interesting application of biomimicry: the ability to disassemble and recycle the parts of a building without "downcycling," i.e. without quality of the parts being reduced upon reuse.

There is a competition underway at www.lifecyclebuilding.org

However, I also think that if one were designing an important monumental work that you want to stand for hundreds or thousands of years and therefore survive changes in ownership and power, one may want ensure the permanence inflexibility of your design. Louis Kahn is notorious for pouring as much concrete as he could afford to create boldly monumental forms that would endure in the same way as ancient ruins.

Another thing to remember is that if a building is designed in a wonderful way, its owners will want it to last. And the embodied energy of concrete and steel may justify the longevity of the building. A cheaply manufactured building that is built and torn down quickly is a waste.

If you follow links to download the Design for Deconstruction pdf, you will see how lots of problems of disassembly are being resolved in construction. However, I was surprised at this quote on page 38: "The detailing of wood frame walls in seismic zones for deconstruction warrants further investigation and probably needs a technology breakthrough."

I seem to recall that traditional Japanese architecture, Polynesian architecture, and Northwest Native American architecture is highly earthquake resistant, by using large structural columns that are anchored deep into the soil in order to resist lateral loads. While this takes much more wood for the central columns, it takes much less wood for the non-structural walls. And it even might save embodied energy since you could harvest tree trunks until they are appropriately sized with little use of the mill. And as the document describes, larger pieces are easier to recycle.

best,
Brett

Biomimetic Architecture

2008-06-27T22:57:00.000-07:00

As an aspiring architect, and as someone with a degree in philosophy, I spend a good deal of time searching for a philosophical framework that helps me to establish goals. The most fertile framework that I've stumbled upon is that of biomimicry, a field first given a name by Janine Benyus. It is concerned with innovation inspired by nature-- using discoveries that took millions of years of evolution and applying it to our own technological problems. It is also heavily concerned with how humankind can integrate itself with nature in a sustainable way.

Here are some of the lessons we have learned from nature:

Nature uses life-friendly manufacturing processes.
Nature uses an ordered hierarchy of structures.
Nature relies on self-assembly.
Nature uses templating, i.e. templating crystals with protiens.
Nature does not use hard boundaries/edges.
Nature relies on sunlight (PS: it also relies on energy from geothermal vents on the ocean floor.)
Nature uses only the energy it needs.
Nature fits form to function.
Nature recycles everything.
Nature rewards cooperation (new ideas about evolution suggest that "networking" is just as important as competition between life forms)
Nature banks on diversity.
Nature demands local expertise.
Nature curbs excesses from within.
Nature taps the power of limits.
Natural mechanisms are multifunctional.
Nature builds in redundancy so change can be accomodated.
No one species can occupy a niche which appropriates all resources.

In studying the ecosystem of a prairie, we learn that:

A prairie is complex ecosystem of interacting autonomous parts
A prairie is self-fertilizing
A prairie is self-protecting (does not rely on pesticides)
The internal dynamics of a prairie can only be established with a successional history over time.
There is balance to the cycle of death and regeneration.

Unfortunately I don't have time to completely elaborate on these ideas now, but it is interesting to note that a few of these principles have been explicitly advocated by architects:

The form of a building must follow its function (Sullivan) or, the form and function are One (Wright) or, the form follows the psychological function (Kahn).
Limits are an architect's best friend.
A building should be of its site, built from local materials and with local labor.

But it is interesting to think what would happen if we were able to engage all of the principles of biomimicry in architecture, such as running on sunlight or self-assembly. Perhaps one day we will merely plant a seed, and from it will grow a house, built from the unique nutrients of the soil and driven on photosynthesis, interacting with and becoming a part of the local ecosystem.

A principle that Benyus fails to mention explicitly in her landmark book "Biomimicry" might be the one most obvious:

To the winner go the spoils.

With, I suggest, implications for free markets and rewarding innovation through competition. One thing that sets me apart from many of my peers is my libertarian idea that sustainable practices ought to be driven by free markets, instead of rigid regulations that are foreign to the system, quickly outdated, but maintained by force.

Regardless, I hope you enjoyed the idea of biomimicry and I hope you will see more of my attempts to turn it into an architectural philosophy.

best,
Brett

My Favorite Architects

2008-06-22T23:41:00.000-07:00

Here is my list of my favorite (dead) architects. Let's start with #3:

Alvar Aalto, shown here with his wife Aino

Aalto considered each project a unique experiment in light.

Mount Angel Benedictine Library (photo by Author)

He also infused his work with a sense of nature through undulating curves and natural materials.

Next, #2:

Louis Kahn

Kahn strove to give weight and monumentality to modern architecture, resulting in works that were timeless-- at once archaic and modern.

Trenton Bath House (photo by Author)
(this is a very modest work, a poem in mass and shadow)

I think Kahn to be one of the most difficult architects to appreciate. "Organic" architects in particular never talk about Kahn, even though he was tremendously influenced by Wright. I think this is because Kahn didn't "finish" his works with an articulation that is comfortable.

Also, he didn't break a building down into a series of horizontal planes like organic architects. Instead he broke the building down into a series of vertical columns-- something that is difficult to see in the facade. Kahn believed in a tight integration of space, structure, and light. He gave each rooms a unique independence such that they were freestanding structures with their own light and geometric order.

Kahn also thought deeply and philosophically about the themes of his buildings. He always returned to the origin of our institutions in the nature of man, and used metaphors to guide the design. For example, he described a school as a tree under which people gathered to hear someone share knowledge.

Next, #1:

Frank Lloyd Wright

This is probably not surprising to many of you. So let me surprise you with my reasons. First, Wright's spaces exhibit a freedom of movement, an interconnectedness and interpenetration of spaces. Spaces intersect, spaces nest within other spaces. You begin to feel like your surroundings are ambiguously defined. You sit down suddenly to find that you are protected and enclosed-- an entirely new interpretation of the space. It is important to note that this is not the free plan. The free plan feels like one giant room. You need both openness and enclosure to achieve interpenetration.

Wright's buildings also relate to nature in a beautiful way. Not only in cases like Fallingwater where you are thrust into a broad clearing awash with light-- but in cases like the Unity Temple which are enclosed and look inward, yet light pulses through the great sanctuary with the rhythms of the sun and clouds.

Unity Temple (photo by Author)

All three of these architects-- especially Wright and Kahn, were intensely philosophical about their work. A building was a blueprint for living.

I hope you enjoyed this brief introduction to my favorite architects. For interested people I recommend books on Wright and Kahn by Robert McCarter.

best,

Brett

Fall 2007: UO Crew Boathouse

2008-06-21T21:21:00.000-07:00

For the fall studio of 2007 we were asked to design a boathouse complex for the UO crew team. My studio professor was Bob Hermanson. We were given a site on Dexter Lake outside of Eugene, Oregon, and visited it several times to take topographical data. This is looking down toward the water from the road, behind the site.

The site is beautiful; when the crew team comes out to the lake in the mornings, a dense fog rolls along the lake and catches the morning sunrise.

The program included the boat garage, exercise room, locker rooms, and a large meeting hall that would serve as a multiuse space. I tried to imagine the meeting hall being used by local church groups, weddings, and other functions-- this reinforced the idea that space should be useable but in some sense, sacred. A feature that I added to the program is a hearth, large enough for a class full of rowers to sit in a more intimate atmosphere than in the meeting hall.

The lower floor plan, below, sits on top of the boat garage. The athletic facilities are at the south end (bottom), and the hearth is in the top middle, flanked on both sides by the locker rooms. The showers include small gang showers, top lit, surrounded by individual showers. The hearth steps into the earth with the fire in the center, and reflects a traditional way to conserve heat in Native American plank houses.

The upper floor plan, below, shows the meeting hall at the bottom. It is a cruciform with strong corners and extroverted spaces looking out to the surrounding forest canopy, with giant glu-lam beam supported roof above and light washing down along the underside of the ceiling. A double-height atrium space is over the hearth (top middle) and bathrooms that service the meeting hall are accessible from either side.

The boat garage is on the bottom level, pushed into the hill to help keep it cool and dark. It must sit back from the shore to allow room for the boats to be turned around on the launching area. It has four bays, 15 feet each, and this 15-foot module is used for the structure of the complex above. Above you can see exercise rooms and a large terrace, and above that the meeting hall with balconies cantilevering out from a 30 by 30 foot inner square. The large glu-lam beams coming out from the meeting hall correspond with axes produced by tree clusters on the site. The giant inverted roof is actually a three-dimensional truss, with a skylight in the center where the beams meet. Light washes down over the underside of the ceiling. The main idea of the building was a sequence of two contrasting spaces: the introverted hearth, connecting to the earth, and the extroverted meeting hall, connecting to the sky, both built from the 30 x 30 square.

Here is an elevation from the east with the lake down to the left. The entry in the center is marked by two hollow service towers, inspired by Native American houses of the northwest coast which mark the entry with massive columns.

Elevation from the front. A key concept of this design was the idea of creating a series of terraces overlooking the water, so that during regalias the people at the boathouse would be able to watch the races and the launching of the boats.

Perhaps the most important thing I learned in developing these plans was how to create strong axial compositions in the manner of Frank Lloyd Wright. I began diagramming the spaces as I drew them, and quickly realized where I was destroying my own axes. I left the diagrams of the spaces on the final drawings to give the drawings depth and hint at their articulation (go back and see).

The overall design was highly influenced by Wright's Unity Temple, but accidentally so. I didn't think consciously about the Unity Temple, although I know it well. I just looked down and realized my design was highly similar, so I went ahead and learned some lessons about where are good places for the stairwells.

In addition to a plethora of floor plan variations that I used to construct the final plan, I'd like to show some process tools.

Playing with blocks is a great way for me to personally unleash some creative juices. It sounds childish, but they really tap into a subconscious flow. Here I was experimenting with the stepping series of terraces with an overhanging roof and an elevator shaft (removed in the final design).

I immediately translated my idea into a google sketchup model,and I continued making variations in sketchup throughout the term:

I also built several cardboard models and a final wood model (unfinished in the photo below) and used a photograph of the latter to create the perspective seen above.

I hope you enjoyed my presentation of the Fall 2007 project. Please feel free to leave comments or questions. Next I will be posting studios from Winter and Spring of 08.

best,

Brett

Brett Meets World

1983-07-20T13:00:00.000-07:00

I was born today! Yeah!!!