Alex Mega Portfolio

ALEXMEGA

Social spaces, those designed to bring multiple people together, are some of the most frequently encountered environments. However, they routinely fail to encourage social interaction, arguably the reason for which they have been designed.

Part of the problem is the designing of social spaces according to preconceived notions of how those spaces are supposed to appear or function. Using a diagrammatic approach that delineates spaces while emphasizing their combination as a whole, this project relates to the formation

Urban Brew-

pubTranslation of Social Space

M.Arch Thesis2012

of communities as well as the brewing process itself.

The design is developed through a method where a relevant principle is applied, lessons are extracted, and the process is repeated. Conclusions from this investigation can be applied to other buildings and spaces that benefit from the interaction of people with each other and their environment.

A brewpub is a restaurant or pub that creates its own beer on site. Its goal is the creation of a product and an experience

that is a well-balanced whole made from unique elements. While grain, hops, yeast, and water are carefully combined to make beer, the establishment itself must integrate areas to eat, drink, cook, brew, research, and distribute.

This project will be located in Wicker Park, Chicago on the site of a former parking lot along North Damen Avenue, one of the city’s major corridors. This brewpub makes use of a diagram that divides space with mathematical logic as well as variety. The result of this principle of separating is surprisingly the emphasis of their

coalescence into a coherent whole.

This design is the also an investigation into the translation of ephemeral social space into a physical building. Instead of converting bubble diagrams into rectangular containers of space, a more intentional translation was desired. A three-dimensional voronoi diagram became an effective way of delineating space yet creating variety. The urban site boundaries truncate this logic, creating a degree of tension between the project’s interior and exterior, while maximizing space.

brewery

voronoi diagram basics

program and connectivity

place point place another and connect

draw perpendicular line at midpoint

split plane along line

place another point draw perpendicular lines at midpoints

plane is divided by region containing newest point

3D voronoi assembly

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delineate:

support:

separate:

The ceiling covers the entertainment areas while also holding the spaces below. It shapes space while hinting at boundaries. However, the ceiling does not relate to the structure of the building as a whole, nor does it permit vertical circulation to a sec-ond floor.

Here the structural diagram becomes the primary design element. Curvilinear mem-bers emphasize the supports’ permeability and continue from ground to roof. Yet, the structure does not integrate or organize ad-ditional functions such as technics, egress, and separation by program.

The structure becomes linear again to facili-tate partitions and no longer dominates the floor planes. Not pictured is an L-shaped building that wraps this entertainment area in order to accommodate stairs, elevators, kitchen and the brewery. While its non-or-thogonal geometry creates spatial interest, it inhibits practical use and steers away from the language of a unified whole.

schematic iterations

floor plans, 1/32” = 1’

1. office/training2. stairs3. elevator4. restroom5. labs

6. storage7. bar/restaurant8. brewery9. kitchen

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roof

exterior mullions

exterior glazing

2nd floor plate

structure

ceiling

‘servant’ spaces

bar/restaurant

office

The works of artist and designer Harry Bertoia serve as the starting point for an investigation of architecture in a natural setting. This exhibition space houses a collection of Bertoia’s works, and provides a work space for a sculptor-in-residence. Guiding factors include Bertoia’s translation of form across media, his architecture-sight synergy, and sensitivity to the the variety of his works.

Iterations of structural diagrams provided the framework for the investigation of the synthesis between building and site at the

Bertoia Exhibit Space

Graduate Elective Studio on Art, Nature

and Architecture 2010

Bertoia family estate. The final exhibition space is informed by the sculptural intentions of the art it holds. Similarly, the building distills the residence’s site forces while treading lightly. The result is a space for simultaneously viewing art and the landscape that inspired it.

While the entrance reaches to receive visitors as they emerge from the woods, the building’s angles and apertures frame views to the interior and exterior art. Ribbon windows invite the field and trees to interact with the gallery’s collection. Extensive clerestories

create a soft distribution of light that shifts in intensity and color throughout the day.

The gallery cantilevers over a pond on the Bertoia family estate in order to take advantage of the site’s diverse acoustic qualities. This reflects the sculptor’s relationship with nature and the multi-sensory experience that it affords.

Two concrete blades serve to both lift the building off the ground and to organize interior space. They contain technics while directing views and traffic. Exposed trusses in

the ceiling explain the building’s system of support while also maintaining a workshop-like feel. This allows the exhibit space to be a work-in-process and serve a variety of functions.

The exterior is covered in recycled wood while the interior is clad in lightweight aerated concrete panels. They provide a low maintenance surface with good insulative and acoustic qualities.

1. conceptual sketch

2. exterior rendering

3. construction axo

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This transformation of a former shaker farm into a field station for students of natural science incorporates the remaining vernacular into the technological progression of the site. Featured here is the barn, which has been adapted to hold the research spaces and greenhouse. Two louvered walls yield a gradual transition for people and light between the building’s disparate programs.

This project was explored through models and hybrid drawings. In the latter, plans, sections, and rendered perspectives

Shaker Field

StationResearch Center and

Residence, Order and Tectonics Studio

2009

come together to show multiple attributes simultaneously.

The more private and enclosed scholar’s residence provides a contemplative retreat after a long day’s work. The Shaker barn itself becomes a gradient of transparency and openness. A greenhouse to the south rises into a two-story laboratory. Between, the louvered walls give pause between the two spaces and allows for different light levels.

The motivation behind this project is to extend the pedagogical boundaries of the

university by creating a multi-disciplinary environment that will link students and faculty to a more natural site where unprecedented research and learning opportunities could occur outside the conventional classroom and laboratory setting.

The goal for this project is to design with a significant focus directed to the nature, question, and expression of the tectonic as related to architectural form. This includes tectonic notions of frame, mass, plane and hearth. These ways of understanding site and building are used to convey the relationship

between the two and to help blur their distinction. The desired result is to bring the outside in and the inside out. Integrating the building with the site means engaging and embracing its natural resources: 1.) connecting the draining swale with building placement; 2.) elevating a viewing platform to overlook the prairie, creek and wetland; 3.)using natural lighting to enhance views; 4.) creating transparency with the natural environment

Archaelogical Research Facility

Biology Laboratory

Dormitories

AdministrativeSpaces

The Biome House, sited deep within a temperate forest, recognizes and celebrates the diversity of wilderness. The mesh-enclosed extrusion winds vertically through the trees; a ‘hike’ that inserts residents into multiple biomes: combinations of light, wind, temperature, and organisms that create bands of distinct habitats.

The sights, sounds, and smells of these biomes permeate the building and define the phenomenological atmosphere at each level of the house. Dynamic terracing brings a physical awareness that nature is not made

The Biome House

House in the Wilderness, Shelter

International Design Competition 2011

to the scale or comfort of man. We are a part of a complex system of organisms, and it is this recognition that the Biome House seeks to attain for its inhabitants.

The goal for this project was to design a house in the wilderness for modern city dwellers. In ancient times we lived with the wilderness, fighting against its severity and its roughness, and receiving the benefits of its fertility. The wildness of nature was directly related to our lives. In our current age, we live in cities.

A city is a large, man-made environment in

which we no longer think much about the power of nature, except when we are shocked by occasional natural disasters, such as storms, floods, droughts and earthquakes. However, we still instinctively recall the lives of our ancestors, and have complex feelings of fear and yearning for life in the wilderness.

The Biome House is a trek separated from nature by perforated corten. This phenomenological transparency provides multi-sensory access to the forest while reminding users of their

supposed distance from it. As a result, they can reflect on their true connection to the outdoors and how they might prefer to alter it.

top window

audiovisual connectivity

1. interior stair view 2. exterior rendering

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Structure, Environment and

Construction Studio2009

Founded by Detroit philanthropists George and Ellen Booth in 1904, Cranbrook’s campus features the work of world-renowned architects such as Eliel Saarinen, Albert Kahn, Steven Holl, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, and Rafael Moneo and sculptors Carl Milles, Marshall Fredericks, and others. Critics have called Cranbrook ‘the most enchanting and enchanted setting in America’ and in 1989, it was designated a National Historic Landmark.

At Cranbrook, institutions were conscientiously developed and

Well-ness

Center

designed to encourage individual growth and excellence by providing a built environment that promoted artistic, cultural, intellectual, and spiritual ideals.

This project desires to join the practical with the poetic through the development of architectural research, anunderstanding of the practical forces at work on and within architecture, and an awareness andcomprehension of multi-scale design strategies.

Technology and building systems remain a process by which a load is carried, an enclosure

is secured, and the manner in which air or water are moved to and from a building. What technologies to employ, and what methods to consider, begin with issues that are raised by the process of design itself: the designer’s values and intentions for site, space, form and experience. Technology serves to realize the designer’s intentions, and at the same time, each technology manifests its own inherent characteristics for performance and form.

Filters and lids comprise the major strategies for this sectional study

of the wellness center. Walls of varying density and privacy were chosen for their appropriateness for the surrounding program. Rather than a string of events, the spaces are clustered to allow dynamic sectional interaction between the spaces. Apertures in the roof’s center permit it to bridge classification as either lid or filter.

Generative drawing techniques are here used to understand contemporary architectural precedents as a form of engaged research. The topics of research have been broken down into focused categories of detail, site, and volume, corresponding to scales of the hand, the site, and the body.

The goal is not only documentation and comprehension through this drawing research, but inquiry and destabilization of preconceptions. This yields strategies and attitudes that are embedded in the work and suggests how to employ them in future designs.

Rococo, from the French rocaille and coquilles (stone and shells, respectively), has reared its playful head in an increasingly mature era of digital architecture.

Math-driven curves and surfaces, until recently seen as a means to an end in themselves, have now given architects the ability to describe the manufacture of the forms they generate through computer numerical control programming software.

Our contemporary chisels are our cutting mills following not the Euclidean XYZ space of Modern dogma, but

Digital Fabri-cationGraduate seminar

in digital fabrication and biomorphism

2011

rather the inherent UVW space of the very forms we machine.

The ability to digitally parameterize pattern, texture and tactility opens up the door for designers to explore the architectural performance of building materials at a much finer scale.

This newfound sensibility allows us to use custom CNC programming, rather than modeling strategies to enhance existing performative benchmarks (daylighting, ventilation, drainage, acoustics, etc.) while introducing non-paradigmatic categories

for evaluation like grip, surface area, optical effect and more.

In this project a modular frame was developed that can assemble into a pre-defined structural armature. This frame accepts multiple inserts expressing variations in amounts of surface area. Variations in the inserts’ surface models affect the density and distribution of toolpaths and, consequently, the tactile and aesthetic quality of the machined material.

After creating a base surface, Grasshopper was used to populate it with features inspired by barnacles. This created

the component’s first level of detail. Then, toolpath patterns designed in Grasshopper were applied to the modular frame’s and insert’s surfaces. This created the second level of detail.

Powermill was programmed to force the CNC mill to perform a reduced number of passes, allowing artifacts from the bit itself to remain and become part of the design. This combined with the grain of the Baltic birch plywood to yield serendipitous textural and visual complexity.

aggregation:bench+shelter

biomorphic inspiration: cirripedia

bio_frame

tileable_frame

base_component

grasshopper_barnacles

grasshopper_pattern1

grasshopper_pattern2

post_milling_contours

The BB Tower is a boutique-scaled, purpose-built office headquarters for YTL, a Malaysian-based Corporation involved with high-speed rail, utilities, property development and construction.

This design for a dual-level lobby creates a dramatic faceted wall along the elevator core, giving a sense of movement, directionality, and order to the forty-foot space.

The building’s identity will be largely characterized by its extreme slenderness; the result of an unusually

Cor-porate Design

YTL BB TowerKuala Lumpur

Kohn Pedersen Fox2010

narrow site coupled with the lifting of typical office floors above an 8-story tall office lobby and 4-story garden-conference suite.

In addition, glass, crystalline facades will synthesize structurally critical, diagonal, mega- braces on building outer faces with folds accentuating the building’s height and lightness. The tower’s position at the V-shaped convergence of major avenues leading into the quarter will instate a strong identity for the district and Corporation.

For the images to the right, I modified

professional base renderings, adding people and different lobby design options. The result was presented to the client in order to convey different ways of distinguishing areas for reception, elevator access and escalator access.

I worked in Rhino and Autocad to progress the garage and lobby spaces through the design development phase. These areas focused on faceted walls that create visual movement, improve acoustics and address lighting issues.

Throughout my time at KPF, I developed

a physical model of the tower’s lobby and garage, crafting various iterations of folded wall surfaces.

I had the opportunity to work directly with my supervisor and project manager to create a living wall that separates the entry drive from the adjacent properties. Utilizing the faceted surface strategy, the cascading planter boxes create visual privacy and improve air quality.

modified Superview renderings

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professional exterior renderinghighlighted lobby and garage

1. aerial view2. north rendering

Along the property’s edge was a need for privacy as well as improved air quality. This solution created cascading planes of plants that echoed the the formal approach of the lobbies and the building’s envelope.

While at SHP, I worked on schematics, design development and construction drawings for a public elementary school in Western Ohio.

The Beavercreek school district was seeking more modern, energy efficient learning environments for its students in this district-wide improvement program. Key project specifics include renovations to improve school atmosphere and operational savings. The project aggressively addresses HVAC, lighting and mechanical systems.

This 700 student, 82,370 sf elementary school

Educa-tional

DesignElementary schoolBeavercreek, Ohio

SHP Leading Design2009

takes advantage of being on the same site as a new middle school while maintaining a separate identity. This project is pursuing L.E.E.D. Silver certification and will be completed in 2013.

I proposed multiple layouts, modeled them in Revit and analyzed their energy performance in Green Building studio. The results, seen to the right, were used to confirm the environmental soundness of the proposed schematic design.

I also generated numerous sketches that investigated the rhythm

of the building’s facade and the shape of the curvilinear entryway. Beavercreek Elementary needed to respond to the smaller, yet varied, human scale of its daily users. The goal was to visually break the building’s considerable mass while also providing a clear destination for parents and children to arrive and depart.

I detailed construction drawings in Revit, focusing on the school’s insulated concrete formwork (ICF) walls join with the rest of the building’s elements.

During the spring of

2009, I was able to travel to the construction site and see the ICF walls being poured and observe the flashing details that I had helped to draw.

I met with facility design committees comprised of community volunteers and school officials, who worked with the SHP to provide input for the preliminary designs of the new buildings. The school was constructed on a 50-acre parcel of land at the corner of Dayton-Xenia and Ankeney roads.

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4805 Montgomery RoadCincinnati, Ohio 45212

82 Williams AvenueHamilton, Ohio 45015

250 Civic Center DriveColumbus, Ohio 43215

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The following project was developed with the design-build architect Terry Boling of Cincinnati, Ohio. An addition for a house in Columbus involves building a new wing and stitching it together with the old. At this joint is the curved stair. Iterations were designed in Rhino in order to precisely meet code and the spatial restrictions of the house.

Renderings were generated for communicating with the client and technical drawings are being sent to a local steel fabricator. Three-dimensional visualizations were the main method for

Resi-dential Design

Steel StaircaseColumbus, Ohio

Terry Boling Architect2012

progressing the initial design sketches.

Terry Boling describes the design and construction of his projects as being simultaneous and creating “feedback loops.” This unique process of learning through making is requires the direct and critical engagement with the materials and methods of construction.

His projects often implement fabrication techniques within an inventive and engaged framework that revalues scrap material. He addresses sustainable design through creative

discovery rather than normative specifications. These leftovers, or trimmings, become the raw material for a variety of re-envisioned architectural surfaces.

This act of re-formatting highlights unnoticed qualities that were previously concealed. The pieces are then re-arranged in a way that addresses the particulars of the project.

These methods of reuse are more evident in ongoing projects, including a sink base and a custom door to be installed in the same residence. There, ordinary materials such

as plywood, homasote and cement fiber-board are being transformed into luxurious surfaces through a rigorous process of refabricating and assembly.

credit: Terry Boling

iterations

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