/Experimental Research

/Experimental Objects

An ongoing series of experiments, objects and components that leverages ISF or Incremental Sheet Forming to create new forms from sheet metal. Custom tooling was fabricated for a Kuka KR30-60 to allow for smooth and controlled forming in a variety of metals. Various geometries and toolpathing strategies applied add to an empirical understanding of the potentials of this process.

These initial studies are intended to provide a basis for more robust design and fabrication endeavors. Functional objects, scaled architectural components and building systems will be produced as a way to test aesthetic potential and evaluate feasibility.

/Design, detailing, fabrication, installation: spatial component

Three large pivoting gallery walls provide dynamic spatial experiences and functional configurations for an architectural office located in a former manufacturing building. Attached to existing structural timber columns, the 10’ steel frame doors cantilever from their fixed hinges and can pivot 180°. Fabric covered infill panells allow for acoustic dampening and an easy pin-able display surface. Locking the doors into different positions provides for various functions: a continuous gallery wall, three separate rooms, fold away for added space, or any combination.

Integral features (pull/engagement lock) and carefully considered details domesticate the large components situated in an otherwise commercial/industrial space.

/Experimental objects

Currently work-in-progress.

Architectural hardware mediates our everyday interface with buildings and the designs are typically so standardized that our experience with them is nothing exceptional.

Hardwhere proposes a series of playful and empirically designed pieces that interrupt our typical non-remarkable encounters with common architectural hardware. Reconsidering tactility as a fundamental quality, Hardware leverages contemporary additive and subtractive manufacturing techniques to explore the relationship between ornament, form and function.

/Design, detailing, fabrication, installation

Engineered function, subtle detailing and atmospheric qualities make this operable door/window/canopy component both aesthetically fitting and easily operational. The design accommodates many requirements - security, privacy, ease-of-use, and ample daylight. Through carefully considered detailing and fabrication, the large 6’x10’ door lifts almost effortlessly into an overhead cantilevered canopy position for access into the interior shop space. It pulls down closed just as easily, sitting comfortably in the context of the vertically striated shop building facade.

/Design, detailing, fabrication, installation

A three-dimensional grid becomes the framework for a storage + display furniture suite. Selective removal of grid sections opens spaces within the grid, allowing for a custom spatial and functional composition – at once, universal + specific. Drawers were designed with modular dividers for customizable compartments. A wall-mounted mirror can also hang from the shelving in other configurations.

//IN PROCESS//

The Momentum | Intersection glass program is a collaboration of industry, design, and art. Inspired by the studio glass movement, The Arts Commission seeks to provide new collaborations between applications of glass as an artistic medium and manufacturing processes. The program is a partnership with NSG, Pilkington North America.

Student assistants:

Joseph Norman

Angelina Colasante

/Digital craft: useful objects

As craft beer continues to evolve, styles that were once precisely identifiable by distinct characteristics have strayed from their origins. An emerging culture of experimentation has taken styles into exciting and unfamiliar territory. Unfortunately, existing glassware types (the familiar and ubiquitous profiles) have remained largely unchanged and have yet to undergo similar explorations.

Other Vessels considers the experimental nature of contemporary craft beer and takes an empirical approach in the creation of new types of complementary vessels. Using classic typologies as a point of departure, Other Vessels plays on the qualities and traits (color, depth, turbidity, aroma, etc.) of certain beers through incisive yet playful manipulation of form with various aesthetic,tactile and olfactory ambitions.

*Other Vessels leverages CAM (Fusion 360) and CNC machining for ease of adaptability and rapid manufacture of molds in the production of small-run bespoke vessels. The precision-made molds coupled with the skill and craft of glassblowing allow for both clarity and control of the forms themselves, but also the distinctive qualities of hand-blown glass.

*glassblowing by Nate Watson/Public Glass

/Architecture

The development of Sea Ranch was founded on the rather subjective covenant that all buildings should exemplify 'living lightly on the land'. While specific requirements exist in formal design guidelines, the character of the early Sea Ranch buildings (referencing historical barns and utilitarian sheds) set the tone formally and materially for all future architecture within that landscape.

This New House for Sea Ranch neither violates the tenets set up by the guidelines nor does it submit to them entirely. The house works surreptitiously within established Sea Ranch typologies. Beginning with a basic shed structure and re-configuring the architectural features common to Sea Ranch (towers, dormers, bay windows, and fences), the house sits comfortably with its neighbors yet somehow apart. Vertically oriented siding and wood shingles cloak the house in a presentable and conforming materials palette but manipulations with the weathered boards reveal an unexpected playfulness. The interior diverges from the expected exposed timber frame tectonic (static) by instead modulating experience between spaces with continuous sweeps of surface and thickened poche.

/Digital Craft Workshop @ Cranbrook Academy of Art

Artifacts of Assembly proposes a collection of objects, each defined by its own ecology of connections and each exploring a set of material properties, machine operations or particular modes of interface as they converge at joints. Individually, the artifacts can explore a broad range of interests - process, technique, composition, geometry, etc. As a collection, the artifacts all share the desire to simultaneously express a detail or process, while remaining reductive and modest in means.

Cranbrook Architecture Students: Kapish Cheema, Lien Kuang Yeh, Jing Ye, Mark Wise, Zia Hooker, Jess Osserman, Gjergji Prendi. Special thanks to Head of Architecture - Ceren Bingol

*images are of student artifacts made over the course of a 2 day workshop. For most of the students, this was their first time using a CNC machine to produce work.

/Experimental objects

Rotation about a single axis is one of the most basic and fundamental ways of shaping material and produces solids of revolution. The lathe is in fact an ancient tool and yet remains essential to contemporary manufacturing…and while CNC technology allows production of complex parts well beyond simple solids, there lies an attractive simplicity inherent within symmetries of revolution. An ongoing collection of empirical objects, Axial Artifacts explores those attributes fundamental to form-making: symmetry, proportion, curvature, figure, profile, positive/negative space, nesting, etc.

/Design, fabrication, installation

An entry/security gate designed to fit within a similar language of previously installed domestic components and to work with an existing opening on a mid-century infill house in San Francisco. The design ‘slipped’ over the front of the house, keeping a thin planar language and allowed for minimal demolition in order to install the gate. Integral lighting, electric strike, security camera, mail slot and house numbers make the thin steel gate thick with function.

/Furniture

Just as Romulus and Remus were nurtured beneath the she-wolf, the visual and textural interest is on the underside of the Lupa bench. A simple grid intersecting the rectangular bench (machined from salvaged lumber) at a rotated angle varies the edge profile and appears more complex than it actually is.

/Design, detailing, installation

A large modular shelving system designed from steel sheet to house the clients extensive library. A reveal all the way around makes the system appear to float. Shelves can be added/removed easily to accommodate a range of book sizes and storage orientations. In order to access upper-level books a custom sliding ladder was designed as a part of the system. The thin profile frame disappears above and beneath the shelves so it too seems to float...nothing touches the floor.

*fabrication by Hicks Metal

/Digital craft: lighting

Named after Italian mathematician Vincenzo Viviani (who calculated the intersection between a sphere and a cylinder), the VIVI pendants exhibit a similar elegant curvature/cut. The cut delineates between the patina finished exterior and the raw brass interior - the warm glow inviting viewers closer. Added perforations visually lighten the enclosure and cast intricate shadow patterns.

The delicate materiality is the result of the fabrication process - the hoods are first 3D printed from wax, then cast in brass.

/ Digital craft: furniture

Often simplicity at the surface belies a complexity or rigor not immediately apparent. Immediately, there is nothing special regarding this unassuming piece. Upon closer investigation, the construction of the stool begins to reveal the carefully resolved connections which enable it’s novel yet intuitive assembly.

While this project references traditional wood joinery details, it builds on past knowledge by adapting the techniques specifically for contemporary fabrication methods.

In fact, the detailing of the joints is perhaps only possible with the capabilities of a 5-axis water-jet cutter. The intersection between each leg and the neighboring brace results in an oblique condition which is reconciled with a through-tenon joint. Five-axis cutting allows for an integral shoulder and a flush detail all from one single operation. Furthermore, the pin which ties the joint together (a flat head cap screw) intersects adjacent parts at another oblique angle and results in an elliptical (or conic-section) countersink - an operation that would be difficult if not impossible with traditional means.

/Design, fabrication, installation

A re-configurable shelving and storage system was designed to provide necessary storage - electronics, art supplies, clothes, shoes, etc. but also bring architectural scale and cohesiveness to an otherwise standard garden level room.

The steel frame allowed the system to be hung from the wall, thus freeing the floor (for easy cleaning) and giving the visual appearance of floating. The vertical standards were cut on a tube-laser, allowing complex cuts and precise placement of features including the possibility to route cables/wires for lighting, sound, etc.

/5x5 Participitory Provocations: Invited Exhibition

When surveillance and social media sharing become indistinguishable, the NSA can be understood not as an adversary, but as a public utility. The NSA branch offices provide privacy and voyeurism in a state-sanctioned space outside of the NSA’s ubiquitous surveillance coverage. A double-sided wall, a border, frames a void in the city that absorbs light and spatial definition. Within this ‘blind spot’ one has direct access to an underground server containing the NSA’s vast repository of data. The branch offices are an empty monument to the social contract: in exchange for access one becomes complicit with the NSA, making material our dilemma of security and narcissism.

*‘Blind Spots’ was a collaboration with Brian Price of Price Studio

*5x5 Participatory Provocations was on view at the University of Illinois (feb-mar 2016), the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (jul-aug 2016), RISD School of Architecture (oct 2016), and OMI International Arts Center (jan-mar 2017). It culminated with an expanded exhibit, featuring new research, at the Center for Architecture in New York (jul-oct 2017).

/Lighting

As an exercise in parametric variation + control, the CLOVE lamp was developed with nearly the entire process/work-flow defined within a single parametric model - every aspect, from the global form all the way to final fabrication layout is parametric and associative.

The final model is refined to accommodate specific size constraints, desired form, and maximum material efficiencies.

/Architecture Seminar: CCA

Architecture is seldom composed of homogeneous or singular materials - more often it deals with assemblage, or the bringing together of diverse and disparate materials in complementary ways. This course explores the idea of assemblage through a series of experimental prototypes and components by leveraging a range of fabrication strategies. The studies focus on physical making, exploring opportunities of exchange between traditional analog techniques and emerging digital ones. Select readings explore the relationship between aesthetics, craft and manufacturing and supplement the courses emphasis on fabrication and design-through-making.

Students oscillate between the physical and digital, creating a feedback loop where one informs the other. Primarily the class works at a 1:1 scale, which enables immediate feedback to design decisions as well as a better understanding of ‘real’ material properties (dimensions, weight/mass, stiffness, etc.), allowing us to bridge the physical and conceptual in a more meaningful and empirical way. Ultimately, systems or layers of components comprise final assemblages in the form of stools or screens. As set out by the course thesis, architecture is about the bringing together of several systems, so one of the main objectives is for students to develop a sophisticated interface (ones which emerge from specific material and fabrication processes) between individual parts and/or between larger sets of systems.

*Students 2015: Meshal Albuthie, Eleuterio Alfaro, Prerna Auplish, Jared Clifton, Dmitrii Kanivetc, Mikaela Leo, Julian Menne, Yasmine Orozco, Jude Simon, Kurt Stubbins, Dustin Tisdale, Daisy Villarreal, Dante Garcia De Oliver, Tien Yi Hsieh, Min Joo Noh, Ernesto Preciado-Canez, Jin Shen, Anh Vu

*Students 2017: Marwan Bamasood, Myrna Ehrlich, Mamdouh Khogeer, Elena Lazaretnik, Harsh Patel, Sabrina Schrader, Justin Smith, Eric Soifer, Timothy Stevens, Chang-Tse Sung, Jennifer Tai, Geordie Van Der Bosch, Nicolas Cilloniz Tanji, Zachary Fish, Shunta Moriuchi, Hai Pham

/The Secret Life of Buildings: Experimental Object

Resituated within the context of digital fabrication processes, traditional joinery details and techniques offer a diverse set of strategies and provide a starting point for novel explorations.

Obliqua explores oblique intersections (complex conditions driven by overall geometries, resulting in intense and highly resolved joints) and is one object from a proposed collection, each defined by its own ecology of connections and each exploring a set of material properties and machine operations as they converge as joints.

/Experimental Objects

Borrowing from mineralogical terms, the Geode Series explore the juxtaposition between exterior and interior; between surmise and surprise. These pieces’ began as CNC milling exercises to test out toolpathing on various milling machines, but later evolved into a deeper explorations of joinery and nesting between complex parts as well as studies in experimental finishes. Understated platonic solids in the form of simple pieces of ‘stock’ material belie complex and freeform ‘interiors’ with only hints of this contrast appearing on the side surfaces in the form of oddly shaped ‘apertures’.

/Lighting

The BEND lamps seek to achieve visual thinness and functional simplicity with minimal means. Using only a single piece of steel or brass tubing, both the wall, desk and floor lamp incorporate 2, 4 and 5 ‘bends’ respectively to give structure and form to the lamps. The tube bending was visualized digitally and designed around readily available die sets for repeatability on a simple manual bender.

Extending the linearity of these lamps, a slender fixture and bulb are used along with a 3D printed shade which subtly blends into the steel tube. The shades are printed from either flexible nylon material or solid brass.

/Furniture

The common coffee table type provides a starting point for intervention with the Caldera Table. By introducing a grouping of volumetric aberrations which deform not only the top surface, but also create an ‘interior’ space, Caldera expands our idea of how a table might perform.

Amplifying these distortions further is a set of unfamiliar inserts which sit within the craters nearly perfectly. At first the paired formations may seem functionally ambiguous, but by simply removing and flipping the lids to rest on their protrusions, one reveals a smooth convex underside and potential for any number of uses.

In terms of fabrication, the Caldera Table was used to explore precise double-sided milling, a variety of toolpathing / operations, and interface or joints between complex parts.

/Design Competition (Finalist)

Cloud Nine is an information-rich ‘cloud’ that hovers over San Francisco’s Pier 9 plaza along the Embarcadero. Fabricated from stainless steel, the cloud takes advantage of the site’s solar exposure to produce a shifting field of shadows for pedestrians to experience from below. Supported by eight slender columns, the cloud cantilevers towards both the plaza and street as a welcoming gesture to the public. Its geometry, together with a minimal pattern of painted grid lines on the pavement, works with the site’s existing benches to create a cohesive, inviting space for passersby on the Embarcadero.

Designed to be fabricated from stock steel components that have been customized with a series of computational design and digital fabrication techniques - specifically parametric joints cut from steel plate on a 5-axis water-jet cutter at Autodesk’s Pier 9 Workshop. The joints themselves are optimized for ease of fabrication, welding, and assembly; the precision of the 5-axis waterjet process ensures that they are self-registering/self-jigging with the tube members.

Cloud Nine’s materiality and lightness evokes the famous San Francisco fog, but also the paradigm of the data-infused cloud that now seems to permeate all aspects of contemporary culture. The installation itself is embedded with data, in the form of waterjet-cut perforations that communicate text via Morse code patterns. Throughout the day, the sun projects this data down to the plaza below, where pedestrians—knowingly or not—become immersed in a cloud of information. At night, the cloud is lit from below with LED lighting, providing an entirely different atmosphere than during the day.

Project Credits: Matt Hutchinson, Adam Marcus

/Advanced Architecture Studio: CCA

/2017:Prototyping Domestic Space

/2019:Prototyping Collective Space

/2020:Prototyping Common Space

This advanced architecture studio series focuses on the architectural detail as a locus for reconsidering contemporary domesticity in the context of new technologies of design, fabrication, and assembly.

The studio will looks to the recent past as a way to project forward into the future. In particular, the Case Study House Program spearheaded by John Entenza of Arts & Architecture magazine (1945-1966) as a model for how architects can re-conceptualize and re-materialize domestic space through an understanding of contemporary, innovative fabrication and construction processes. Just as the architects of the CSH Program crafted new prototypes for domestic living inspired by the postwar (modernist) logics of mass production, this studio speculates how contemporary (postmodernist) logics of mass customization can inform new models of domestic space appropriate for today.

The architectural detail serves as the primary site of research and experimentation. Rather than accepting the architectural detail as a predetermined assemblage of standardized parts or products, students speculate on the spatial, programmatic, and social possibilities of customizable, parametric, and bespoke details—and how such a paradigm can relate to contemporary domesticity. The studio focuses on the domestic component: the guardrails, jambs, sills, stairs, moldings, doors, cabinets, coves, reveals, partitions, wall bases, and other parts that, when assembled together, constitute “architecture.” In the context of new technologies of design and production, we reconsider the component’s definition, its construction, and its assembly into larger configurations of structure and space. The ambition is to develop new understandings of part/whole relationships that derive their formal, compositional, and spatial principles from logics of material, fabrication, and assembly. The studio positions architecture as a process rather than a product, and the architect as a designer rather than a specifier.

*Students 2017: Marlene Cacho, Viviani Isnata, Tianran Li, Yue Liu, Levan Maghlakelidze, Shunta Moriuchi, Lilliam Navarro, Hai Pham, Leon Trinh, Ania Burlinska, Jinda Guo, Haonan Jia

*Students 2019: Mia Candelaria, Jiaqi Cao, Samuel Kilpatrick, Yue Liu, Zixuan Liu, Jingyi Luo, Jae Hyun Seo, Jieh Jia Tan, Joshua Van Heidrich, Chuan Zhu, Vishnu Balunsat, Thomas Krulevitch, Ronak Patel

*Students 2020: Aljune Drequito, Cristian Laurent, Ireny Abrahim, Marina Rosolem, Mithila Jagtap, Navya Sharad, Valeriya Velyka, Amy Spanos, Brian Wu, Jiries Alali, Mahshid Tabatabaei, Mariajose Angueta, Michelle Boyd, Pietro Carini, Yuyi Zheng

/2011 Burnham Prize: McCormick Place REDUX (3rd Place Entry Horto in Urbs with Brandon Pace)

Horto in Urbs (garden in a city) merges modern relic with bucolic landscape. Once a discrete object lodged in the landscape, McCormick place now acts as a flexible framework for synthesizing natural habitat with architectural ambition. By stratifying park passages and circulation through the rationalist box, the elegant but looming mass of McCormick place no longer interrupts the lake shore experience. Each strata of the building – roof surface, plenum space, open floor and plinth all become distinct architectural environments. The building itself becomes a garden vitrine of urban leisure activity integrated alongside the lakeshore continuum.

When Chicago adopted the motto Urbs in Horto (city in a garden) in 1837, it was a very different place from the city that exists today. The "city" then existed within a pristine landscape of expansive prairie, lush forests, and a vast lake. Chicago's rapid and expansive growth has since inverted this relationship - the city has overtaken and enveloped these natures. Horto in Urbs begins with this observation - that the "garden" no longer surrounds the city, but exists as a network taking on multiple forms throughout it. Within McCormick Place, Horto in Urbs looks to extend that network and further the notion of Garden in a City. By creating new relationships between various landscapes, architecture, and people this project amplifies interactions with "nature" and allows for new forms of leisure.

/Applied material research

The LAMELLAE Series aim to strike a balance between the craft and risk of working with natural materials and the ‘control’ and precision of digital fabrication methods. The digital model does not fully simulate the material behaviors, it is only an assumption and a starting point. Because the projects in this series incorporate bending and twisting of the wood members (stressing the wood structure) to give them form and each piece is slightly different in terms of individual grain structure, an element of unpredictability exists throughout the process. Certain measures can be taken to minimize this, such as selecting consistent boards or steaming the pieces prior to bending, but in the end, it is a natural material and so limitations and potential flaws must be embraced.

/Process research + experimental details

Materials come together all around us; on the furniture we sit in, in the products we use, and within the spaces we inhabit - interacting by way of joints, overlaps, reveals and so forth. In their simplest form, these intersections are revealed as single lines. These studies use the interface, between two parts of a single material (in this case 3/16” hot rolled steel plate), as a locus for various expressions of a single line ‘joint’. Modulations in the line (stitching, zig-zagging, etc.) give assorted functionality to the parts - from a sliding to ‘latching’ to interlocking. By adding multiple layers, additional fastening options become possible. The LINEA Studies are not meant to be practical solutions to any perceived problem, but rather speculations on the relationship between expression and functionality of the ‘joint’.

/Process research

Typically, CNC programmed toolpathing is aimed at removing material in the quickest or most efficient manner - aspects which are essential when trying to streamline workflow and produce parts for production. CNC machining also allows for extremely high levels of finish - on a range of complicated parts - even surfaces with complex curvature. Machine Inscriptions looks at toolpathing for other attributes - to uncover potentially innate qualities in various ‘paths’ or bring new ‘readings’ to parts through expressive patterns or textures. These studies looked at several techniques specifically to leverage the unique qualities of aluminum.

/Architectural installation

Bayou-luminescence is an architectural installation that fuses material surface, structural volume and lighting effects into an immersive spatial experience. Its title is a play-on-words that refers to bioluminescence, a phenomenon whereby living organisms produce and emit light. Like a strange creature in the night, the installation glows from within, casting intricate shadows onto adjacent architectural surfaces. Temporarily sited at the end of a dark residential alley in the Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans, Bayou-luminescence invited passersby to cross the otherwise accepted boundary between the public sidewalk and the private space beyond, in order to experience its intensely haptic surfaces, both inside and out.

Cast from translucent urethane rubber, and highly differentiated in its pattern geometry, the ornamental synthetic skin is stretched over a curved steel framing system. Scaled so that it is larger than a single body, but smaller than a conventional room, the self-supporting volume is both a temporary skin for the individual inside and a lantern that through intricate illumination transforms a larger social space. Composed of two conjoined forms - one which embraces viewing from outside and another which is to be walked into - the overall volume suggest that, in morphogenetic terms, it may be a part of a larger, cellular condition, and that it is thus a part of a greater system. Structurally, the volume utilizes the tension between the elastic rubber surface and the rigid metal frame.

In terms of fabrication, details incorporating self-jigging and self-aligning components make assembly for a fairly complex form a straightforward process. At the scale of products, namely lighting, the designers are currently exploring how small objects of similar nature can have maximum spatial impact as they project intricate pattern geometries far beyond their footprint. At the scale of buildings, on the other hand, the aim is to innovate in the realm of tensile structures, to produce continuous, but highly differentiated custom membranes that respond not only to particular performance external criteria, but also allow for the embedding of multiple interactive technologies within. Integrated connections serve to reduce the number of separate pieces, while keeping a consistent tectonic throughout the piece.

Bayou-luminescence is one of ten site-specific installations commissioned by the New Orleans chapter of the American Institute of Architects and was included as a part of DesCours, the annual architecture and art event on view at various locations in city from December 2 through 11, 2011. The project is a collaboration between Igor Siddiqui, the principal of the Austin-based design practiceISSSStudio and Matt Hutchinson, the principal of San-Francisco-based firm PATH.

/Speculative architectural systems

(re)STOCK is an ongoing speculative design and fabrication investigation looking to exploit the potential in coupling the efficiencies of off-the-shelf standard stock sections with the adaptability of parametric design and digital fabrication. Specifically, this project takes advantage of emerging rapid prototyping technology which can effectively print various steel alloys – the prints therefore carry a measurable and substantial structural capacity, elevating them from model to usable prototype, machine-able, weld-able parts. In this sense, the project explores the notion of ‘file to factory’.

By the very nature of combining stock material with highly customized components, this system inherently exists at the intersection of digital and analog, offering new possibilities for a composite craft. The potentials for this system are many as it is reconfigure-able, scale-able, and highly customize-able – i.e. it could be the structure for a piece of furniture just as it could be a framework for a custom curtain wall

/Exhibition: An Olfactory Archive:1738-1969

/Design + fabrication

Design and fabrication for an exhibit - An Olfactory Archive:1738-1969 along with Brian Price of Price Studio. The exhibition is a collection of reconstructed historic scents, curated by David Gissen and Irene Cheng, to accompany the Test Sites symposium at the California College of the Arts.

/Architecture Seminar: CCA

Steel is used extensively in the products, infrastructure, vehicles and buildings all around us. Despite the prevalence of steel, especially in architecture, the design, detailing and general understanding of its properties often fall short of its full potential. This course’s intent is twofold: First - to better understand the material and associated fabrication processes through research, lectures/shop tours, hand’s-on making exercises (i.e. – welding, cutting, drilling, tapping, etc.) and experimentation with industrial digital fabrication processes (Omax 5-axis waterjet cutting at Pier 9).The second objective is to implement the knowledge and gain further experience through the fabrication of full scale prototypes. (i.e. furniture or small scale architectural components) Through these empirical modes of investigation, the ambition is to achieve not only a working knowledge of practical details and applications, but more importantly an intuitive sensibility regarding the unique qualities of steel when designing.

*Students 2015: Gabriel Ascanio, Kuan-Lun Chen, Jaiyu Fu, Mariana Mijangos, Chien Lien Pan, Arash Sedaghatkamal, Jamie Ung, Priyanka Bendre, Keith Edwards, Juan Mayer Goyenechea Nieto, David Ornvold, Kurt Stubbins, Mitchell Sweibel

/Architecture: Design competition, RBR:360 - 2nd Place

Concrete Garden looks to further the relationship that Bob Murphy’s American Federal Building began with its immediate surroundings and extend into the natural landscape, merging the Modern relic with a new environment, activating new experiences and producing affects that evolve with time. By first reducing the 120 panels of the American Federal’s brise soleil further still into even more elemental components (basic trapezoidal panels), this project attempts to shed any unintended associations or nostalgic recollections as well as allowing for more options when rebuilding. Lake Eola provides a setting to reassemble the panels into a new construction, a fluid assembly that mediates between paths, shoreline, lake and sky. This reformed assembly, lends itself to new interpretations functionally, as well as new experiences viscerally. Panels extend in groupings from the lake shore out into the water as a rock garden that offers shade and protection to plant and animal life, while paired panels scattered along the path become places to rest, view the lake, or watch climbers scale to the overhanging crenellations. These rolling, overhanging panels that are a backdrop for urban recreation cast ever shifting, changing shadows. Along with time, water level, reflections, and plant-life propagation, the new formation is always changing.

/CNC training: Autodesk P9

Understanding fundamental concepts and basic machine usage are essential to safely learning CNC no matter what machine. That said, each machine has specific protocols and particular features. I instruct on a number of machines at Autodesks Pier 9 Technology Center and am familiar with even more. I’ve designed and tested out several parts to run in classes that exemplify a number of types of operations and procedures.

/Digital craft: furniture

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stalasso: Greek, meaning “to drip” and “that which drips” (stalactite)

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Stalasso Table explores fluidity, continuity and deformation of surface through multiple digital processes. The conceptual ‘drips’ within the larger surface become the interface between multiple materials - the wood table top (CNC milled) and the ceramic ‘tray’ (3D printed and glazed). A single ‘definition’ accommodates the generation of surface, deformation, material thickness, variability and tolerances and even cost of 3D printing. The same ‘definition’ could be used to generate any number of configurations and variations, with very little preparation for fabrication.

A sectional-edge/overlap reveals the material interface and emphasizes the qualities and capabilities of the 3D printed ceramic. Light tool-marks from the CNC milling process are purposely left as subtle evidence of the fabrication process.

/Familial components

/Design, prototyping & production: display system(s)

Simple familial figures repeated and arrayed provide the basis for various shoe displays and other branding related components – from modular magnetic platforms and hangers and bespoke signage to freestanding freestanding displays. A minimal palette kept the formal vocabulary rigorous and limited.

/Applied material research

The STRAND Series explores the steam bending process, material capacities (for bending, twisting, and translation) and their relationship to digital design. The name refers to the stranded units of fabrication – strategically incorporating ‘waste’ or offcut pieces. Bending tests provide feedback which inform a parametric model used to generate the formwork (armature ribs) for the wood strands. Because the digital model does not fully simulate the material behaviors, it is only an assumption and a starting point. Parametric design is much about controlling specific variables and so the project begs the question – how can the material potential be fully exploited with the minimum amount of ‘control’ or ‘how much control is too much’?

/Interior Design + custom components

TEA Collection’s working process revolves around design, development, presentation, and review of a large volume of product and inspiration material on a seasonal basis. In-house presentations and reviews are done both formally and informally – this coupled with budget constraints and a continually evolving office layout called for a non-permanent or de-mountable solution.

A flexible system of autonomous work and office ‘component’ pieces was developed – from mobile pinup boards and worktables, to large swinging task lighting and ‘built-in’ installations such as sliding doors, screens, reception area, etc. These components which make up the system strike a balance between the budgetary constraints and the functional and aesthetic ambitions at TEA.

/Design + detailing

For the Barrier Island Residence, Sanders/Pace Architecture hired PATH to provide schematic designs as well as develop and fully detail a custom stair for a current residential project in Florida.

Several schemes were investigated before arriving at a continuous steel-slat design which conceptually “wraps” the staircase, integrating and scaling the stair within the large lofted volume.

Powder-coated steel, stainless steel, concrete. (Completion date: Winter 2011)

/Descriptive Geometry

An exploratory set of drawings produced to fully understand / uncover the spatial consequences resulting from simple orthographic projections. Projecting views of an object involves following a sequence of steps and a set of rules…these drawings attempt to spatial-ize those mechanics in order to better understand the process. A three-dimensional model provided the basis for fully describing the information underlying the ‘drawing’, thus making the final drawings of a model of the drawings.

*these drawings were chosen for the cover of the book ‘Drawing from the Model’ by Frank Melendez, 2019.

/Digital craft: furniture

Design and fabrication of the Vice table represents an interest in the testing of architectural ideas and techniques at the furniture scale. Fit, tolerance, and material properties were carefully considered and embedded in the computer model. Understanding the overlap between digital and hand craft was paramount in the fabrication of the Vice Table.

The flowing deformed surface of the Vice Table evolved from having specific functions into a more general depression -a removable tray for multiple uses. Transitioning smoothly from the wood surface into the cast aluminum tray became the focus of the table and the challenge in fabrication. Each piece was fabricated either directly or indirectly from the same computer model, making use of the large CNC mill exclusively. The results were extremely accurate and the aluminum-to-wood transition meshed into a virtually seamless table top.

The Vice Table was exhibited in Brooklyn’s “blockparty : art & design in the new urban home” show. It has appeared in articles in Interior Design (Sept, 2006), Metropolis (March, 2004) and Brooklyn Modern: Architecture, Interiors & Design.

Done in collaboration with Mark Hash at the Yale School of Architecture in the elective ‘Aluminum Design and Fabrication’

/Interior Design + feasibility

PATH and ACA provided interior design, space planning, programming and feasibility studies for Tea Collection on an historic building in San Francisco’s Pier 70 naval yard.

Designs options leveraged Tea’s unique and recognizable graphic prints for identity and wayfinding as well as the buildings own features – the top floor is suspended by tension rods from the roof trusses, making the third floor entirely column free. A system of display boards was designed to pivot off the substantial tension rods.

*Done in collaboration with Amy Campos

/Experimental craft

The Ornament series uses different geometric processes coupled with pseudo-random parametric tools on the computer to quickly create multiple configurations which can then be digitally configured into unique one-off jewelry pieces. The final objects are then printed using 3D rapid prototyping machines from Stainless Steel, Nylon, ABS or other materials.

The first experiments were done using circle packing - ultimately producing several bracelets and rings. A second round of prototypes furthered the exploration into rapid-prototyping technologies. 3D printed stainless steel ornament was again designed using a combination of scripts with parametric software. Hand-crafted processes (sand-blasting, polishing) were employed to further refine the pieces.

/Font

Pline is a custom font designed to be efficient for single line engraving operations with laser and CNC machines and easily recognizable.

Additionally, we made it into a TrueType font for our own branding and communications material including our ligature-like type logo.