TOZZER BUILDING

with Kennedy & Violich Architecture, Ltd.

Built | Cambridge,MA [2014]

The Tozzer Anthropology Building on Harvard University's campus creates a new public presence on Divinity Avenue, and provides public access to the adjacent Peabody Museum and the Peabody Courtyard. The project’s new massing design increases usable SF by 29% by adding two stories of new construction under a large copper roof volume, which strengthens a new reading of the building as a pavilion in the Peabody Courtyard.  The roof volume rotates to capture daylight for a large internal light well around which the program spaces revolve. 

project text by KVA

CHRYSANTHEMUM BUILDING

with Kennedy & Violich Architecture, Ltd.

In Construction | Boston [2015]

The project creates an affordable, sustainable new model for residential development in a dense urban infill site. The project includes 4 micro-units and 6 adaptable family lofts.  FSC wood framing, shaft and party walls sequester 32 M tons of CO2.  The building uses mobile app and social media networks integrated with efficient building systems to create a user culture that supports local sustainable services.  Construction cost is $220 SF at 50% CD’s, meeting the developer’s ROI goals.  

project text by KVA

LYTE Lounge

for The LYTE Collective

Pre-Design | Chicago [2015]

"The LYTE Collective is an organization that is defined by an expressed commitment to social justice and to the freedom for young people in high-risk situations such as poverty and homelessness to live their truth and have the support they deserve to discover their own unique and remarkable place in this world" (TLC 2015). We have begun a collaboration with LYTE to help them imagine, fund, and build the LYTE Lounge as a space that can support recreation, education, and employment services for young people in need.

Throop garden gallery

for Danby Properties

Pre-Design | Chicago [2015]

Throop Garden Gallery is a project situated in the heart of Chicago's art district in Pilsen. The project proposes a hybrid program of garden and gallery to serve as a communal space for both the residential and commercial tenants of the buildings that flank this exterior space. The design concept begins with a need for a space that is interesting for the local creative community to gather, but requires low year round maintenance, ...

Wall_E

submission for the BSA's BTAB Competition

Unbuilt | Boston [2015]

The lobby of 290 Congress Street is divided by an implicit edge between circulation and seating areas. WALL_E proposes to demarcate this invisible boundary condition with a physical construct - the wall. This thick edge serves to engage the two separate existing programs - walking and resting - through the formal and surface treatment of its faces. From the thoroughfare, the installation boasts an austere form, but a highly textured surface informed by the disparate thickness of the wall. Conversely, its opposing face is smooth but highly figured by niches intended for human occupation. Both faces are rhythmically punctuated by three apertures that again highlight the walls perceived variable thickness. 

Each design strategy that shapes WALL_E transposes one face onto the other. These generative geometric operations use the parametrically designed and robotically controlled fabrication techniques developed in Digital Rustication to investigate new spatial applications for architectural poche’ that champion postponement, duality, and difference.

Bent Wood Vault

with Kennedy & Violich Architecture, Ltd.

Built | Chestnut Hill,MA [2012]

This project is an expansion of the entry lobby of a school in Massachusetts that creates a new environment for informal learning and collaboration. An existing Guastavino thin masonry vault became the inspiration for the design of a new unifying spatial element--a bent wood vault. The wood vault combines aspects of architectural room making, structure, infrastructure and furniture. As a new spatial element, the new wood vault spans between the renovated main circulation corridor, lobby and entry, unifying spaces which were previously sub-divided by walls. The wood vault also provides seating, lighting and distributes electrical power and WI FI.

project text by KVA

marcus prize pavilion

with University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Capstone Studio

Built | Milwaukee [2008]

The UWM Marcus Prize Studio designed, fabricated, and built a pavilion for a local non-profit organization who used it as a public meeting place and tool storage space for a local park. Although it is a functional space, it is infused with subtle complexity extracted from studies of material and of the site. The pavilion is neither industrial nor organic, but rather, navigates the meaningful intersection created by the spaces between the two.

MVD LIVE/WORK RENOVATION

with Kuth|Ranieri Archtitcts, LLC

Built | Mountain View, CA [2008]

MVD was a renovation of an existing commercial space into a live/work family dental practice. The dental facility program includes a reception area, 5 operatories, a lab/sterilization area, an ADA compliant bathroom and a consultation office.  The dwelling portion of the program included a kitchen, bathroom, studio-style live/sleep space, and changing room. The addition of a shared courtyard space was introduced to the scope of work to reduce the square footage of conditioned space on the site in order to reduce the parking requirement. The courtyard, which became a focal design element for the modest project, included a steel security fence and bamboo landscaping to create a new private exterior space for the tenant.

great chicago fire festival

with Redmoon | Chicago [2015]

It was conceived in 2009 by Jim Lasko, Executive Artistic Director of Redmoon, as a cultural event that celebrated the diverse people of Chicago and the 77 neighborhoods that they represent. In 2015, the festival took the form of a 4 month long citywide initiative that included a series of free public events featuring local talent, seven youth residencies in partnership with Chicago’s Park District, and several collaborations with local youth organizations to produce art and design objects to be featured in a closing ceremony.  This closing ceremony held on the northern portion of Northerly Island, adjacent to the recently opened landscape designed by Studio Gang, was created as a figurative platform for the city’s poets, dancers, aerialists, musicians, markers, architects, artists, designers, theatrical performers, photographers, artisans, and local startups. It was, as intended, a celebration of the City of Chicago - its Grit, its Greatness, and its Resilience.

The project's production required design, engineering, construction, and installation of new elements for the festival, as well as site, collaborator and partner coordination. From a strategic standpoint the project proposed to use art and community as an impetus for design and development instead of finances and politics, which resulted in a hybrid process and product that rendered the event similar in many ways to a work of architecture.

Angles of incidence

with AAIS | Madrid [2012]

Angles of Incidence 40° 3° at the Matadero Madrid was an experimental event conceived of and produced with  the Architectural Association's Interprofessional Studio. The project was a 24 hour creative exchange where professionals and the public interact in an original and ongoing performance. The project was a platform for collaboration across the creative disciplines that featured music, dance, architecture, cuisine and design - a congregation of local movers and makers of culture in a dynamic environment that activates the potential of the creative network across borders and genres. 

The exchange consisted of 5 events - a supper, salon talk, concert, marketplace, and dance finale. 

Collecting Chandelier

for Redmoon with After School Matters

Chicago [2015]

The Collecting Chandelier inaugural design/build project for Redmoon's home in Pilsen. The elevated sculpture of glass and steel was constructed by teens participating in a After School Matters program. Glassware donated by the community was fixed to upcycled steel frames that were hung at different lengths to create an undulating canopy in the room. The array of glass was both illuminated at its center and from the perimeter to emphasis strange and delicate topography overhead. The project was featured at Redmoon's annual gala, Spectacle Lunatique, in  2015.

// Desk

Cambridge, MA [2013]

// Desk is a 55" x 26" hardwood work surface braced by two steel storage niches and solid steel legs. The project was an exploration impermanent joinery for mutli-material assemblies. 

The wooden work surface was fabricated by ripping down several warped boards of Maple and White Oak into strips such that they could be planned and jointed to create edge joints. Once glued up, the large composite board was run through a wide belt sander several times to level the surface for milling. Two curves, //, to receive the under-mounted steel shelves and two pockets to receive the legs were then milled into the surface on a CNC router. The router was also used to perfect the perimeter faces and then, finally, the edges were softened with block plane.

The steel niches were made of sheet metal cut on a waterjet and then joined via torch welding.  The steel legs were created as seamless units via careful joint design, welding, and finishing. All steel was finished in a antique bronze patina. All parts were then assembled with only 9 bolts, 6 screws, 2 wood blocks, and a steel plate.

deformwork

with Sean Leake, Timothy Pingree, Nicolas Rivard, Nathan Shobe, Emmet Truxes, John Nastasi, and Rachel Vroman

Cambridge, MA [2012]

DEFORMWORK is a pavilion proposal that seeks to engage and enrich a existing spatial syntax by form finding through material behavior. This intention is explored through the use of plywood, a stock material, as a vehicle for tectonic invention to produce both material and site identity. 

Three double skin plywood shells shape an inwardly focus a forum by day, and render an externally visible theater by night. The busy corner site space desires a response that is simultaneously site specific and publicly available - a self referential but urban gesture. The proposed design responds with a considered acoustic/visual environment that is a moment of private porosity, or what Giuliana Bruno has termed public intimacy.

Aluminum Bottle Opener

Cambridge, MA [2012]

Design inspiration was taken from a nearly 100 year old solid brass bottle opener still in use at a local pub on Milwaukee's East Side. Prototypes were milled out of plywood to test the shape, fit, and feel of the opener before the final test article was milled. The final product was milled out of aluminum, which is much too soft to hold up as a bottle opener. A stainless steel insert was developed as the wearing surface. The final opener was waterjet from aluminum plate, flipped milled on a vertical milling machine, and riveted together with a waterjet stainless steel insert. An aluminum block was placed in a custom made vice and milled down to the final shape.

50°6° Tables

for AAIS | London [2011]

The 50°6° Tables are 3 individually unique hi-top tables that were created through a jigging and tacking system. The system was designed such that a single fabricator using stock material of a pre-determined quantity and size to create a visually complex functional object within tight budget limitations. 

For each table, less than 100 sections of pipe were assembled to form each table such that it reached a height of 42” and a weight less than 75 lbs. The individual stock pieces were welded according to a folding logic inspired by oragami techniques. Using the 3 custom jigs, unique V-shaped angled components were fashioned. Those components were then slotted into one another via the jig’s spacing system to reach the desired height. The two part process produced 3 different spiralling towers of steel that were then capped with a piece of custom cut glass to fit the geometry of the top most plane. The tables were designed for and featured in Angles of Incidence in Köln, Germany  (2012). The were also featured at the Nigeria House during the Summer Olympics in London 2012.

dis[course]4

with James Coleman and Craig Boney

Cambridge [2011]

The conceptual goal of Dis[Course]4 was to break down the (often isolating) vertical stratification of MIT. By occupying a building stairwell, one of MIT’s few sectional anomalies, the project is poised to generate inter-floor/interdisciplinary discourse.

Lami Shelf

with Hal Wuertz & Instructor Panagiotis Michalatos

Cambridge, MA [2011]

Lami Shelf is a materially optimized storage device for mundane personal effects. Its ornamental surface aesthetic is produced by a hybridized optimization process based on an object's multi-functional potential. Using Topostrut, a digital optimization tool, we were able to analyze a simple singular form in three different mounting and loading scenarios. The load paths generated by the software represented  the material essential for the structural stability of each layer and were offset to satisfy material tolerances of the waterjet. The offsets were then used as toolpaths to manufacture the steel layers that were then laminated with mechanical connections to allow for each layer to perform independent of the other. The resultant object is super-thin, rigid, and boasts unique honest ornament.