I have lived in a world where I do not know if anything is real: a complete figment of my imagination. I now part ways with the potential fallacies of this existence to enter a realm of truth and knowing. LION

Portfolio of Work

Garden of IndolenceLIONarchitecturecompetition entry into the pruitt-igoe now competition in march 2012

Badseed House: Urbavore farmLIONarchitecturean 800 s.f. house under construction in kansas city

Place for Weddings and BurialsLIONarchitecturea temple in the plains of kansas harnessing human ritual

Project Solar HouseKansas State University - 5th yearstudent lead international design build competition in washington, d.c

American Pianoforte’ MuseumKansas State University - 3rd yearmuseum centered around the sound of light in chicago, il

Urban Green-House ProjectLIONarchitecturetop-selected project for the d3 natural systems competition in 2011

SELECTED INDEPENDENT WORKS

Priory at Moyglare ManorMurray O’Laoire Architectsa 42-bed mental health clinic on an historic estate in ireland

SELECTED PROFESSIONAL WORKS

ADDITIONAL PROJECTS

ARTISTIC EXPLORATION

RESEARCH FOCUS

The metaphysical realm of architecture affords us a direct or indirect understanding of our relationship to the spiritual and cosmological universe through the means of an aesthetic experience. The pieces of work I produce are a theoretical and practical approach to understanding these poetic characteristics in architecture and how they relate to man and the cosmos. How do poetic implications integrate with aesthetic experience and existential understanding? Is there a parallel - how do we find these connections and what do they lend to contemporary art and architecture?

Architecture, at its core, is an integration of a physical object and man’s interaction with that object, which together evoke a conceptual response. Conceptual does not mean in this sense a concept or idea, rather a subconscious response that is beyond that conventionally perceived by our visceral senses. This conceptual response is an existential experience of man’s relationship to the cosmos; “who are we - why are we here?’

Over the course of human history artifact and thought have attempted to capture and promote these existential concepts: new grange, stonehenge, euclid, aristotle, and galileo. These instances of parallel thought and object represent the aspirations of my work: comprehension and representation of humanity. As I attempt to continue this tradition of existential expression in 21st century art and architecture, understanding these historical archetypes may guide me in my search.

Archetypal characteristics i define as the physical manifestation of architecture (the built object) transcending its own existence, through time, always. It is the seed that i speak of: a shelled potential of the site prior to construction. The places, before constructed, were pregnant with these “structures”. What helped our predecessors uncover such timeless examples of architecture?

Hence, the duty of the projects within is to probe artistic and architectural thought relative to poetic ideals, existential intentions, and hierarchical organization.

Research Focus:

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Garden of IndolenceG:I

St. Louis, United States

2012Independent Project

LIONarchitecturePruitt-Igoe Now Competition Entry

28,500,000 cubic ft.

Gar

den

of In

dole

nce

The Garden of Indolence is a competition entry into the ‘Pruitt-Igoe Now’ competition. It is a memorial to not only the people of pruitt-Igoe, but also the relationship between the man-made and the natural via human experience through light. The project’s intent is to create an experience; one that instills in visitors some of the pain, heartbreak, and sorrow that took place at pruitt-igoe, while simultaneously exuding hope.

Pruitt-Igoe was a place of pain, the Garden of Indolence is now a place of remembrance. Through remembering we learn to forget:

EVENTS

Former Pruitt-Igoe site

St Louis

By literally lowering the existing forest eleven stories below the city level the project highlights and emphasizes the relationship between man-made and nature. Not isolating the forest from the fabric of the city, this project rather accentuates its natural state via man-made intervention.

Man / Nature

Rather than attempt to memorialize or bastardize the Pruitt-Igoe housing project itself, the Garden of Indolence serves to forever isolate in time events that happened there, and more importantly the people that lived there.

People / Experiences

Bridges connect and create unique links between the different neighborhoods that surround the site that have been severed since the original construction of Pruitt-Igoe.

Links / Connections

Fabric of St. Louis

Before Pruitt-Igoe there was an urban neighborhood on the site; there were places to work, live, and play. Pruitt-Igoe covered this entire neighborhood with a concrete blanket. replacing it with a large-scale urban regeneration project that severed social, urban, and economic cohesion. After demolition, the site reverted nature.

Less than 8%

+8% - +39%

+40% - +200%

-8% -19%

-20% - 50%

Population Change

2,000-4,999

1,000-1,999

0-1,000

5,000-9,999

above 10,000

Population Density

below 10%

% below poverty line

10% - 30%

above 30%

Poverty Levels

Though an analysis of the urban structure and population trends in St. Louis, key areas for growth were highlighted. Furthermore, specific locations that have high potential for growth are indicated. Following the increasing trends of population change and property values in land near large open spaces such as Forest Park, the area around the Pruitt-Igoe site has potential to become a high-demand location with a large green-space connecting nearby neighborhoods.

Area for Growth

Near Green Space

Neighborhood1950

BlanketDevelopment

Pruitt-Igoe Natural Reversion

Garden of Indolence

The grinding of gravel underfootis an awkward intrusion in the dense and quiet air of the forest floor,

and I feel a slight relief when we reach the soft loam. She seems intent to read my lips as I mouth inaudibly the words on a nearby memorial:

“The well holds secrets, truths for those who may breathe water calmlyand see in the dark. I went into the well, but no one heard my unerring screams.”

The lines linger uneasily in my head as we start down the path. Movement is different here.

Time and distance are hard to gauge among the understory’s constant shifting light and shadow. To look up is dizzying. This breeze is dim compared to the sound it makes on the bridges above the canopy.

It’s an unsteady safety, and I want to stand in the wind,but she edges toward the river.

At this distance, it is as if the trees have covered a creek’s mouth–muffling its chatter with the rocks.

As we approach the valley wall, the river takes full throat,and I can’t hear anything–the water’s voice nervously taking every audible frequency

from low churn to tin splash.I know the exchange here: the trees inching closer to the alluring sustained sip;

the river, hungry for space and rock and soil,exposes and then tugs at proximate roots.

I stand.And she sits.

The rock feels cold and clammy on my skin–it, a lily pad; and I, amphibian.

I want him to wade in–to see the shade and sparkle blend him into the grey of rock and sand and trunk.

Though the water moves these boulders,it parts with ease around my legs. Night is coming.

He has his things and his shoes on.I can feel him think–

the whisper over the roar.The shadows grow so long they fall flat and disperse, and ours take their leave of us.

I float, lightened by this disconnect, up the hillside into the stand, again.Although it is warm, I can see my damp breath. It mingles with his heavy exhaust when I say,

“I am open in this close.”He toes the path now beginning to bear shadow again as the moon eases

toward the tree line along the ridge.“This place is a scar healed over a self-inflicted wound.

It stopped the bleeding, but ever a dark and beautiful reminder.”“I know. I need time.”

The day is March 16th, 2015. The same date, forty-three years earlier, the first tower of Pruitt-Igoe was demolished. The sun’s rays bounce off of the tops of buildings in downtown St. Louis. Traffic swiftly moves like rivers of light from the sun. A man and a woman enter different stone elevator boxes near a deep pit in the ground; both of them fall through the earth down into the curious landscape below. A forest has been lowered below the city. Not severed from the landscape, rather the forest finds a new home in a sanctuary from the external man-made forest above. Within the forest are silent glass memorials of light - and a large steel and concrete tower that erupts from the forest into the sky.

The man and woman leave the elevator, pass through the exposed Walls of Depression, and enter the Bridges of the Innocent. The man walks north along an elongated steel truss structure that leads from the walls towards the Tower of Light and Warmth. The woman walks southeast on another. The woman has been here before; she dwelled here half a century ago. However, this is the man’s first visit to the Garden of Indolence.

The man is hypnotized at the view through the portal ahead. The woman trembles at the sublimity below. Every ten paces an octagonal steel truss wraps the bridge, both enclosing and releasing it. Like a chain, these trusses connect the world of the living with the world of the past. Hope is within him. To her, only sadness and remorse.

The bridges end where the Tower of Light and Warmth begins. Each bridge enters the tower at a different level. The man arrives on level six, the woman on level eight. The man hears each of her footsteps on the dense platform above. Piercing through each concrete platform is a metal staircase; the members shimmer violently in the brightness of the sun. Something is different here. The man begins to ascend the stairs, the woman, shaken by her memory, peers out on to the forest below. The man reaches the eighth floor, he looks at the woman. He smiles. She cries. They both feel the significance of now. They climb to the top of the Tower of Light and Warmth together. They pause at each level to look out. Brushing against each other; their hands almost touch.

During the daytime the Tower of Light and Warmth is a silent steel structure puncturing the fabric of the site. At night it is a beacon of light. Cantilevering off of the top of the tower are two arms suspended in space. A metal chain is lowering a sphere made of solid, black Onyx. Inscribed on the outside of the sphere are the architectural drawings for what was once the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex. The sphere is a clock; it passes by each of the twenty-four levels of the tower every half hour. It slowly descends from the top of the tower beginning at 3:00am, it reaches the ground twelve hours later.

It is 3:00pm, the time the demolition of Pruitt-Igoe began. The Tower of Light and Warmth is located where this housing tower once stood. The sphere touches the ground and rests there for 60 seconds. The lights throughout the memorial erupt in an array of forgiveness, illuminating the forest and the tower. In twelve hours it will revert to darkness. It is the cycle of birth and death. The man and the woman together fall to their knees. A bit later, the man and woman leave sight and begin their descent down the stairs. Below them is the Forest of Remembrance. Something has changed; her pain is gone. A slow calm envelopes her like water. A subtle dread strickens him.

Procession as Experience

Stone Elevator Cores

Tower of Light and Warmth

Bridges of the Innocent

Memorials to Those

Who Came Before

Walls of Depression

11 s

tori

es

Bridges of the Innocent

Memorials to Those Who Came Before

Tower of Light and Warmth

The site is a dichotomous relationship between what was once man-made, and nature; the Garden of Indolence unifies the two mutualistically. Ultimately the effect of the memorial is a focused attention and awareness of the forest, and a calmness through the warmth of light.

Urban Green-House ProjectUG-H

New York, United States

2010-2012Independent Project

LIONarchitectured3 Natural Systems Competition Entry

Top Selected Project - Exhibited 201242,000 s.f.

N

Urb

an G

reen

-Hou

se P

roje

ct

Establishing a template for the Urban Green-House Project, the site is positioned in Manhattan at the intersection of ‘anystreet’ and ‘any-avenue’ on an 80’x225’ plot. The architectural solution is adaptable to suit many sites across many cities. Although the project integrates into the urban environment, lending itself to connectivity and unification, the project is also designed to be self-sufficient in the event of urban decay or collapse. It is integrated into the urban context, but not dependant on context.

Hitherto now green building design has been limited to either rural or suburban areas. The 21st century will see the most rapid increase in the population of cities in the history of mankind.thus The urban green-house project is a symbiosis of green design with these exponentially growing cities, while encouraging a social and community revolution. Using biomimicry of architectural and tectonic systems of the tree and forest, UGH is a new urban typology that integrates housing with the space where we grow food.

no agriculture

citywide

any street

any a

venue

any a

venue

any street

N

Rethinking the cycle: food and people benefiting from each other respectively; food and people sharing the same place. It is a new relationship between man and food: ‘i live among the trees, my waste is used to fertilize my garden.’ Similar to a forest, the Urban Green-House utilizes what would typically be considered waste, and converts it into opportunities.

Service core

1-bed unit

2-bed unit

Platform pod

Walkway

Garden pod

Vertical garden

Vertical garden

Human Waste

Primary Producers

Proteins

Nutrients

Dec

ompo

sers

/ D

etriv

itoru

s

expulsion of oxygen

expulsion of oxygen

oxygen with carbohydrates produce usable food and energy

water and nutrients from treatment area

carbohydrates produce usable food and energy

branches disperse the water and nutrients to the tree and provide

secondary support

leaves contain significant biomass, produce sugars, and feed plants and animals of the world

transpiration of water into atmosphere from soil - alleviates urban

flooding

transpiration of water into atmosphere from collected rainwater alleviates urban

flooding

xylem is the upward pipeline which water and nutrients from the roots and storage cells travel

to the branches and leaves

the trunk is the backbone that supports the tree from the roots,

withstanding lateral and gravitational loads

phloem is the downward pipeline that carries sugar, hormones, and

enzymes

the root system’s main job is to collect water and nutrients from the

soil and send them to the leavesvertical piles serve as the

anchorage for the pods and transport waste and water

biomass food for inhabitants

expulsion of oxygen

chlorophyll of the tree

photosynthesis

water from the soil

the support arm for the pods branch off from the

main columns

carbohydrates to all parts of greenhouse

carbohydrates to all parts of tree

food storage and anchorage

fibrous roots uptake water and nutrients

decompositionrespiration

orga

nic

nutr

ient

s

woody roots - food storage and anchorage

piles provide anchorage and geothermal energy

light energy +co2 to produce carbohydrates

light energy

light energylight energy

light energy

rainwater

co2

co2

co2

co2

h2o

h2o

Urban Green-HouseExisting Typologies

• lack of cohesion• limited space• limited access to light and air

Undulating facade

• distant from residents• no active urban edge• vulnerable

Empty parcel (pocket park)• distant from residents• limited space (1 floor garden)• occupies space of services

Roof garden

Urban Green-House• habitation within garden

The three existing typologies for green space in New York is the empty parcel, undulating facade, and the roof garden. The core problem with these existing typologies is their lack of integration; each denote different designated spaces for food and people. The Urban Green-House is an innovative solution which allows food and people to literally occupy the same space - unification in lieu of separation.

Typology Analysis Construction Sequence

Cores / Floor Walls / Dist. Piles Pods / Units Circulation Glass Enclosure

While converting waste into usable materials, the entire system of the Urban Green-House is designed to maximize air, light, space, and water. The elevated floor is covered with high-efficiency photosynthesis plants. The side walls are double-skin vertical gardens with herbs and vegetables. The garden pods cultivate plants, fruits, and vegetables. The cores, in addition to serving as the vertical circulation for people, also are the respiratory (air/ventilation), skeletal (structure), circulatory (water), and aerobic (energy) systems of the urban green-house.

Efficient Food & Living

Storage

Bedroom 1

Living

Dining

Dist. pile

Bedroom 2

Kitchen

Private garden

curvature of shell maximizes light distribution and air circulation

circular units maximise plan area while minimizes enclosing perimeter

radiant under floor climate control: hot water from geothermal piles - cold water from rainwater collectors

structural piles also distribute water, waste, and methane fuel

waste/sewage

water/fuel

rainwater is captured above each core

rainwater is distributed to the below ground treatment area via the cores

garden pods(fruits, vegetables)

recycled water is used to water the plants

methane traps to capture excess methane from decomposition

vertical garden

construction emits co2

no further deforestation for agricultural land

locally grown species of food

co2

saved biomass stores carbon

culturally significant biodiversity of crops

high yields allow reuse of gardens

crops cycle back co2

garden pod

biomass

biomass

biomass

co2 co2 co2 co2 co2 co2 co2 co2

Badseed House - Urbavore FarmBADSEED

Kansas City, United States

2012Independent Project

LIONarchitectureAward: Monster’s of Design Best Unbuilt Project 2012

Published: Lantern Vol I, Issue IIIClient: Urbavore Farm

Currently Under Construction$35,000800 s.f.

ROLE: Partner - Concept Development through Construction Documentation

BadS

eed

Hou

se -

Urb

avor

e Fa

rm

The BadSeed house is a holistic experience centered around an 800 s.f. house for a family of three, submerged into the earth, on a 15 acre site. Designed as a clock of the rotation and revolution of the earth, the house is based around the ritual of the farmer, and of light. The project also includes a semi-attached greenhouse and detached barn. The house is in its beginning stages of construction, and is expected to be complete in early 2013.

N

Badseed HouseFarm

Future Greenhouse FarmVineyardFuture Barn

Summer Winter Kitchen as Hearth

At the center of the house is the farmer’s hearth: the kitchen. Branching off from the kitchen are the angled walls that are aligned with sunrise and sunset on critical dates throughout the year: the beginning and end of harvest season, and the summer and winter solstices. Thus, during harvest season in the morning, when the farmer leaves to tend the farm, the space is directly lit, whereas throughout the entire year, the family experiences sunsets while sharing the fruits of their labor together in the evenings.

A daylight analysis was undertaken to optimize the design of the shell and apertures. During the summer months no direct sunlight enters the house with the exception of late evening; during the winter months, between harvest season, direct sunlight enters through a clerestory to heat the concrete slab, providing warmth throughout the night.

sunrise

sunset

october 21st

june 21st

morning

morning

evening

evening

bed

wc

wc

bed

bed

bed

kitchen

kitchen

Construction Sequence

Ritual of the Farmer

The Badseed House is a rectangular box within the earth. Its shell is two opposing concrete walls facing north and south, with two glass ends on either side. The roof releases its ties from the ground and breaches the earth’s surface, letting light into, and views out of, the main living spaces.

The roof of the house is supported by glulam beams and joists. The soil is a 50-50 mix of topsoil and vermiculite, which reduces the load on the structure while encouraging the growth of low-rooted plants.

Concrete

Structure

Earth Backfill

Roof

Glass

Place for Weddings and BurialsP:WB

Platte City - Kansas, United States

2011Independent Project

LIONarchitecture1,200 s.f.

A man and a child walk side by side down a gravel path - the crunching of the stones tickles the child’s feet, and his ears. Headed down the path, they have just entered the sculpture park. Ahead in the distance is a stone structure that circles the sky. The day is September 22, 2015. This particular day will see a wedding and a burial on the same day.

It is noon outside, and the sun is slowly working its way across the sky. This fall day, the autumnal equinox, will see twelve hours of sunlight, and twelve hours of darkness. The man and child are there for a wedding, to celebrate the rituals of life. The performance is to begin in twenty minutes. A crow flies by; in its blood it shares the significance of today.

Ahead is the Place for Weddings and Burials. It is the stone manifestation of the earth’s will. The folly, as part of the larger place site, is about connecting man/earth/cosmos. It emerges from the ground as the man and child continue their walk. The foot path, the length of 150 paces, leading to the Place for Weddings and Burials, started as an entirely gravel walkway slowly narrowing in width as it leads to the spiritual chamber. Today, similar to any other day a visitor experiences the site, a new stone is laid on the path. Each sunset a stone is taken away.

The man and child meet up with the larger group twenty paces before the folly. The group is beginning the setting of the stones. The setting of the stones is a ritual as old as the Place for Weddings and Burials itself. The stones comes from the local quarry upstate. Each visitor places a piece of blue-stone next to the other ones, creating a stone walk where once only gravel lay. The man and child wait. The entire group begins to walk slowly, in silence, to the center of the folly.

The pathway, now made of stone, is eight paces wide. They pass under the cusp of the folly. The structure looms above the man and child’s head. The folly is lifted and isolated by stone columns which elevate a circular concrete roof. The roof is composed of four cantilevered pieces. At the center a large circular opening illuminates the sky. The floor is also made of concrete. At the center of the folly, directly underneath the opening in the roof, lies a steel grate, open to the void below. The man looks left at the bride, the child peers right towards the groom.

The climax of the performance happens exactly at noon. For one minute bride and groom stand in silence as the sun strikes their heads in a halo of divine presence. The bride and groom are in sunlight, the audience is in shade. It is a moment of creation. They are here, it is just.

After the ceremony the entire procession makes its way south back into the city. The structure slowly buries itself back in the earth. The man and child smile, he at the vanishing sight of the place for weddings and burials, the child at the sight of the city ahead, they both feel the power of earth and man.

Later that night the man and child return to the Place for Weddings and Burials, this time for a burial ritual. The same piece of stone laid earlier in the setting of the stones is now removed from the path, and brought to the center of the place-site. The man looks through the column to the southeast, which is directly aligned with the sunrise on winter solstice. The child looks through the column to the southwest, which is directly aligned with sunset on winter solstice. At the center of the chamber the deceased body rests directly on a steel crate - below which lies only a void within the earth. The deceased body’s last ‘view’ of this world is a circular opening above, and the stars and moonlight it frames.

The ritual begins - the stone is placed on the deceased body and the body is lit aflame. The bottom of the concrete roof reflects the light from the fire below. It enters the eyes of the man. He remembers his father’s funeral much the same way. The deceased body is burnt directly on the screen; its ashes slowly disappear into the void below, as do the child’s tears. Isolated and alone on the steel grate, the single stone remains. Family stand around in a circle and watch - they sing the forbidden hymn.

‘Herein lies the path to perpetual timeless. We are one, on this journey. We have lived in a world where we do not know if anything is real; a complete figment of our imagination. We now part ways with the potential fallacies of this existence, entering a realm of truth and knowing.’

Plac

e fo

r W

eddi

ngs

and

Buri

als

The Place for Weddings and Burials is a site specific place - a place where the landscape bred a project that connects man with the earth. To the west of the town of Platte City runs a stream, framed by the view of the hills further west. Not only does water play a significant role in the ritual of the project itself, it has been a pillar of the forming of the landscape of this region of Kansas in general (not too long ago in the past this region was covered with glaciers and ice sheets, which literally was the driving force in creating the hills in the region.)

The project was revealed by the forces that created it. The sun, the life giver and force of the solar system, literally marks on the ground it touches it’s light, and the earth takes it shadow in a way that only this place has. Designed as a centrifugal entity, the Place for Weddings and Burials gathers its energy from the surroundings, whether it be the night sky or the sun before it, into an ordering principal of the project. It creates an opportunity for someone to be ‘here’, in this place, at this time.

Revealing the Site

Platte City To Platte City

NO

N-L

IVIN

G

LIV

ING

Sum

mer

Sol

stic

e

Sum

mer

Sol

stic

e

Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice

N

The Place for Weddings and Burials is an earth creation. The townspeople themselves are responsible for its construction, and also its reason for being. The project is designed to harness every moment that happens there, and to allow for each human to happen there. The ritual and the architecture speak as one, as if there is no other reason for its being. It is just.

The 30”x30”x30” laid-in-place limestone blocks, will be quarried locally. The sheer weight of the stones allow for them to be laid in place with no connections, minimizing complications during community construction.

Matching the size of the stones, the steel view-cages are to be welded on site with steel angles, creating a structural support with transparency to view key lines of sight at solstices.

The 48’ concrete slab on grade will be poured directly on the earth. Composed of four separate slabs, the concrete will form both the foundation for the stone columns above, and delineate the Place for Weddings and Burials as a space.

Laid-in-place Stones

Steel Cages

Concrete Slab

Construction Sequence

Project Solar HouseP:SH

Washington DC, United States

2006-20075th Year Studio Project

Kansas State UniversitySolar Decathalon-Design Build Competition

$450,000800 s.f.

ROLE: Lead designer, Light Well, Floor Plate, Structural Liasion, Construction

Documentation (details), Construction.

Proj

ect

Sola

r H

ouse

2007 Solar Decathlon is an international design/build competition. Kansas State’s entry, Project Solar House, is a single family dwelling powered entirely on solar power: a revolution in habitation by a redirecting of the expectations of living. After completion, project solar house was transported to the National mall in Washington D.C. where it competed in a series of 10 competitions against 19 international universities.

Manhattan D.C.

Mobility

VersatilityAdaptabilityAccept the nature of the home

as a mobile structure. The design not only integrates the solar array but every environmental system.

Project Solar House inherently needs to be adaptable; the house must be able to work fluidly in various types of site and climactic conditions.

Maximize livability without sacrificing convenience; the house will suit the various demands of not only the climate, but the client’s needs of habitation.

An inherent problem related to solar housing is how to maximize solar energy from southern light without sacrificing the quality of light within living spaces. While maintaining the linearity of form, a reverse light well introduces bounced light from a reflecting pool into specific areas of the house, highlighting changing light and climactic conditions. Each angle of the solar house has been designed to maximize one aspect of the climactic conditions: water - sun - wind.

Reflecting with LightAdaptable outside / inside living space

Thick storage wall

Outside eating space Kitchen Bathroom Battery BankReflection space with zen garden

To save time and money, the floor plate was prefabircated out of wood trusses, which also allowed for the mechanical and electrical piping/wiring to run underneath the substrate. Insulation was added and then the substrate was installed. The SIPS were then constructed to form the perimeter of the house.

Construction Sequence

Substrate & SIPS

Pipe & Insulate

Floor Plate

Structurally Insulated PanelsSIPS (structurally insulated panels) were used for the construction of the shell to achieve a high r-value through the elimination of cold-bridging. They are extremely light-weight, allowing for quick construction and a savings on transportation costs to the competition.

On axis with the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, clean sharp lines were used to enhance visual perspective and express the linearity of the prairie. The form of such a compact and sleek shape allows for easier transportation and less construction once on site. Adjustable column bases were used that could be easily adjusted on-site to match the sloping characteristics of each specific site. Each adjustable base is capable of carrying a vertical load of 4,000lbs.

Polycarbonate2x6 PT sill plateFloor plate

L6x6x1/4 SteelAdjustable Base

American Pianoforte’ MuseumAPM

Chicago, United States

20063rd Year Studio Project

Kansas State Universiry35,000 s.f.

Am

eric

an P

iano

fort

e’ M

useu

m

The American Pianoforte’ Museum is located on a 50’x100’ corner site in downtown Chicago, in the heart of the historic “Printer’s Row” district. To reinvigorate the area, the APM incorporates three disparate yet interconnected functions: a piano school, a recital hall, and exhibition galleries.

Sliding galleries from disparate character areas within the existing urban landscape collide with the site, transferring into variances in spatial experience through light, materiality, and volume. By projecting the galleries outward, views of each of the character areas are optimized. By offsetting the galleries, a hierarchy or spatial organization is visible from the urban realm, while simultaneously allowing light to pour into the museum from above.

State Street Urban Edge

Harold Washington

Library

DePaulUniversity

Entrance

Circulation

Gallery

A double-skin facade acts as a filter that allows and omits light, creating a piece of changing music in the form of notes of light on the gallery floors and walls. These notes play throughout the day, slowly appearing and disappearing as the visitor passes through the galleries. It is an existential connection of man’s place on earth, the weather, the earth, and with the cosmos.

Rapidity of Light & ShadowEmulating the expressive qualities of music in a visibe form, the variability of light both annually and diurnally replicates auditory sensation as the building becomes an instrument of light. The spectroscopy of the sun was used to order the fenestration of the gallery facades. These openings create a musical piece throughout the building through the SOUND OF LIGHT.

10:15am

11:45am

1:15pm

1 Storage2 Recital Hall3 Dressing Room4 Book Store5 Lobby6 Gallery7 Workshop8 Practice Room9 Conference10 Office11 Library12 Mech. Room

8

9

10

10

11

12

10

6

68

7 6

4 5

23

1

1 Recital Hall2 Pre-Function3 Dressing Room4 Restroom

1 Entrance2 Lobby3 Book Store4 Receiving

1 Library 1 Gallery2 Practice Room

1

1

22

1

2

3

4

3 1

3

2

4

4

2

The main performance space is the recital hall, which is located underground beneath the lobby. There are also inpromptu performance areas located off of the lobby.

Performance

The climax of the spatial experience occurs here. it is the progression through these galleriers that emulates the ever changing musical experience.

Exhibition

Located above the galleries is private areas of the building for school functions such as the library. Practice rooms and workshops are located opposite the galleries as a exhib piece ‘in-action’.

School

Apart from the exposed concrete, two different materials are used on the exterior: the outer skins of the galleries are basalt panels that absorb all ambient light, the remainder of the building is clad with sandblasted aluminum panels. Batt insulation is paied with a 1” outboard rigid board insulation. Although this method is more expensive, it elimnates cold-bridging at the stud locations, helping to keep out Chicago’s cold air.

20” ColumnsGyp. BoardStuds @ 16” O.C.1” Rigid InsulationAluminum PanelsConcrete Floor

Construction Sequence

Priory at Moyglare ManorP:MMCounty Meath, Ireland

2009-2010Project Architect

Murray O’LAoire Architects$42,000,000

40,000 s.f.

ROLE: Conceptual Design, Schematic Design, Design Development, Construction

Documentation

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Co. Meath

DublinMoyglare Manor

Existing manor houseExisting (demolish)

Looking N-NE from house

Looking S from house

NMoyglare House and demesne is located in south county meath immediately north of Maynooth. The site is just under 5 km from Dublin. Generally, the site comprises a wooded, narrow single carriageway yielding onto a forecourt in front of the existing house - built around the late 18th Century - along a N-NE/S-SW axis on an elevated plain mostly

surrounded by agricultural lands.

The proposal seeks to revive the relationship of the Georgian residence to its landscape, curtilage and attendant grounds, and seeks to use the new architecture to underwrite an overall landscape design strategy that activates the negative and positive spaces and forms within the collection to maximise benefit and pleasure for visitors, occupants

and working staff alike.

The Priory at Moyglare Manor combines a 40-bed residential care ward facility with attendant specialised treatment, therapy and support facilities. It is a combined hospital, day care and educational services centre where the new use will reinvigorate, refresh and sensitively animate one of Meath Counties modest Georgian estates. Seeking to provide a solution that renews the fabric of the existing Georgian house in its splendid context, while simultaneously stitching a state-of-the-art contemporary health-care centre into the fabric of the magnificent estate.

Existing House and Mews

A 3-d laser point-cloud survey was carried out on the premises, yielding a complete record of the protected structure inside and out as required under the planning acts.

An optimized building shape and orientation was devised that restores the traditional connection between the manor house and mews, while opening up the courtyard to permit use for patients. The project involves the removal of non-original converted stable apartments and an old stone wall located between the original coach-house building and the main house, to permit the new facility to nestle into the composition in the most sensitive, appropriate and low-impact fashion.

The original house, listed in the record for protected structures, is 3 storeys over basement and relatively modest for its time. The house, when revealed, is designed with much care from the occupants’ perspective. The positioning of the house maximizes its benefits from sunpath, orientation, aspect and other attributes’ potential.

As part of the redesign process, Moyglare House had a most comprehensive survey data set which taken alone constitutes a very valuable and comprehensive archival record of the site, its buildings, fabric and condition as it existed at the time of survey.

Pivot Point

Existing House

Views into countryside

Existing Stone Wall

Existing Mews

Public

Spatial Organization

Mews Link Link Manor house AdminWard wing

general psycheating disorder wards

children and adolescent wardservice spine

teachingtreatment

circulationleisure

recreation

circulationleisure

receptioncafe

hospitalitytherapy

day centresocial activity

officekitchenengine

The ward-wing is three parallel zones, each running the length between the main house and the Mews. The two outer zones are the patient rooms; the inner most zone is the service zone. In lieu of service rooms for each ward wing, a shared internal service spine connects both wards, maximizing building efficiency while minimizing the width of the footprint.

Collective Space Area of Interest Building Flow

A Tale of Two FacadesThe building must respond to two different types of external conditions while respecting the adjacent property. The east side of the ward wing presents a brick facade to the countryside, which offers a prominent facade to the approaching road. Although the manor house faces west, this facade becomes the ‘front’ of the new wing.

The opposing side of the ward wing, faced with stucco and lined with brick, creates the fourth edge to the courtyard. This facade presents a soft face for the children’s play area, yet creates a buffer for privacy in the patients’ rooms.

ADDITIONAL ACADEMIC EXPERIENCEThe ‘Usefulness of the Useless’ is an analysis of the characteristics (or techniques) of architectural design, which manifest existential understanding in an observer as if in a poetic image. Good buildings, landscapes, and spaces make us feel and think, but how? And in what way can the architect intentionally connect to such humanity? Are there craftsman like skill sets for making existential architecture? Is louis kahn’s

exeter library such a poetic building of individual creativity?

The Aviation Research Institute (ARI) is a research center located in the outskirts of Manhattan, Kansas, with an emphasis on the changing spatial experience through time, the library is submission as a didactic experience. The tectonics of the Aviation Research Institute is that of an airplane; an immense cantilevered truss system wrapped tightly by a lightweight skin. The spaces not only present a comfortable sense of place for reading

and research, but also execute the use of modern materials and technology.

‘The Ineffable Energy of the City’ is a short film I put together in 2006 as a response to the ever-changing conditions of the urban realm. The film’s focus is three-fold: the inherent nature of the city, the deterioration of the urban environment, and the reclamation of ‘the ‘touch’. With footage taken from across the united states and southeast asia, the film enters the realm of different types of city dwellers to better understand how architects and

designers can alleviate the problems in our failing cities.

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ADDITIONAL PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCEProject architect for a metro station in Dublin. As part of a larger network of the DART Underground, the Inchicore DART station will play a pivotal role as the terminus station into Irish Rail’s property. The station itself is composed of two stone boxes with a glazed bridge link. Construction completion expected in 2018.

Project architect of a Shortlisted Competition entry (4 of 80) for county offices and Navan Town council in County Meath, Ireland. by the shaping and harnessing of light and using an enhanced redirection of public space, the building becomes an unraveling of the landscape that is a centerpiece for the town of navan.

Architect for a competition winning entry to design, as part of a larger master plan, a chapel and housing for the St. Louis nuns to replace to existing nunnery in south Dublin. My role as an architect on this project was schematic design and graphics. Salvaging the existing copper roof, expanded adaptable space was created with a new face. - planning permission granted autumn 2011.

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The following two 1m x 1m paintings are a two-dimensional representation of three-dimensional space. It is a processional journey through the built world using light and shadow as a delineation of experience - an exploration into what it means to be in space: the individual experience in this specific place, at this specific time.

‘The Hall of Mothers and Fathers’Bond Paper and acrylic on canvas100cm x 100cm

An exploratory series into the inner struggle of the creative mind - to conform to societal protocol or harness the lion? These two paintings, part of a larger series of four painted from November 2007-july 2008 in Dublin, question the internal psyche that splits our actions and feeling of our daily lives.

‘The Hall of Those in Power’Bond paper and acrylic on canvas100cm x 100cm

This piece was a culmination of studies that parallels a written piece and exhibition ‘I am a Pagan’, which was published in Lantern Vol1 Issue 2 in 2012.

The 1m x 1m canvas was painted by knife with a deep red acrylic paint, serving as a base. 4 kilograms (10 pounds) of plaster powder was mixed with water, white acrylic paint, and a white matte-gel. This wet mixture was applied liberally across the entirety of the canvas to a depth of 2cm. The top coat of plaster was mixed with blue acrylic paint that was laid across the canvas.

My hands were then pressed deep into the canvas three times, while the plaster was still wet (each time getting deeper until the base of the canvas was revealed again.) Once dried, the piece has an exceptional three-dimensional topography that is expressive of the tension in the technique.

‘I am a Pagan’Plaster and acrylic on canvas100cm x 100cm

An exploratory series into the inner struggle of the creative mind - to conform to societal protocol or harness the lion? These two paintings, part of a larger series of four painted from November 2007-july 2008 in Dublin, question the internal psyche that splits our actions and feeling of our daily lives.

It is literally the imagery of the senses, and physical bodily movement, that becomes transformed with the mind to a new creation. Creation begets creation. Art is released from mere object via the imagining hand.

‘Untitled’Acrylic and wine on canvas plate65cm x 45cm

‘The Hand’Acrylic on canvas plate65cm x 45cm

This piece was painted in 2011 as an expression of the primordial in the human condition, our connection with our senses, and our relation to the cosmos.

‘Untitled’Acrylic, gesso, orange lead on plywood100cm x 60cm

The following 1.25m x 1m painting is the culmination of a series of nude studies that explore minimal darkness and light. 18 women were painted onto 35cm x 20cm birch wood panels. The final piece was subsequently enlarged. The series was exhibited in 2007.

‘Lust and lost’Oil on birch plywood125cm x 100cm

‘Woman 4’

‘Woman 11’

‘Woman 17’

‘The conversations take place between a naturalistic painter ‘x’, a layman ‘y’, and an abstract real painter ‘z’, who represents Mondrian himself. They occur during and after a country walk by moonlight, after the three friends have returned to z’s studio... y expresses his regret that such a beautiful walk had to end, but z replies:

The evening is over but the beauty remains. We haven’t just beheld with our eyes: an interaction has taken place between us and the perceived object. This interaction must have produced something; it has given rise to certain images. For us these images do not merely remain in existence, but gain in strength now that we are alone with them, now that we are away from nature. These images, and not the things themselves that we saw, are now for us the true manifestations of the beautiful... so in the artist’s work we see the image of the beauty develop and as it were break loose from things.

By freeing things from the object, the image grows from individual to universal beauty.’

-Richard Padovan, Proportion: Science, Philosophy, and Architecture

Photography

‘The Ineffable Energy of the City’ is a short film created in 2006 as a response to the ever-changing conditions of the urban realm. The film’s focus is three-fold: the inherent nature of the city, the deterioration of the urban environment, and the reclamation of ‘the touch’. With footage taken from across the United States and Southeast Asia, we enter the realm of different types of city dwellers to better understand how architects and designers can alleviate the problems in our

failing cities.

‘The Ineffable Energy of the City’ ‘10 Poems’

‘10 poems’ is a short film created in 2009 as a collaboration with American poet/artist Troy Payne from Oregon. This film expresses the explosive power of image in poetry, and the

ability for art to harness this power.

Film