project the first

So here it is, the first studio project of the semester and it's already winding down.

The Site: Santa Fe, New Orleans, Minneapolis, or Seattle (but the same site plan for each)

The Client: a pianist, sculpture or large canvas painter of your creation

The Program: A studio, an outdoor performance/gallery, living space (eating, sleeping, peeing...), a stargazing area, and a wine cellar.

Personally, I have a Pianist heading up a music collective, who's a bit of a rebel and a lot of a night owl. She chose Santa Fe as her geographic and climatic existence.
The concept I concocted for her home and studio in Santa Fe, is a lantern plugged in to the landscape, allowing her to enjoy her surroundings at night. The lantern will be contained/framed by shifting punctured planes of concrete.
The concrete planes and cubic shape of the studio lantern reflect the volumetric forms found in the area. Their punctured and shifting nature allows focus to be placed on the glass encased in them, promoting the idea of my client as a structured yet dynamic and creative individual. The shape and position of the concrete is in response to climatic variables such as the position of the sun and direction of the wind.

Here's the sketch up model. Real plans, sections and perspectives may find their way here as well.

And finally: MoMA

MoMA is sweet. We can all give Yoshio Taniguchi a large round of applause for desiging it's expansion and renovation. According to MoMA.org, Taniguchi's plan for the museum was to incorporate the original pieces of the museum into a unified whole. The renovation greatly increased MoMA's gallery space as well as added a research and education portion to the museum.

A bustling lobby reflects the busy street life of the NYC.

Visual and circulatory connections between the old and new.

Taniguchi punched out sections of wall to allow visitors to get glimpses into other parts of the museum. Not much of the galleries that the punch-outs lead to are revealed, and they all seem to be filled with the same quality of light. This makes the punch-outs feel like ambiguous lanterns cut in to the wall.

Taniguchi continues the idea of punch-outs in to exterior views as well.

roflcopters

The most exciting gallery space, in my not-so-professional opinion, was the industrial design and architecture portion of MoMA.

It incorporated installments from famous architects like Frank Gehry

and Phillip Johnson



to the likes of Evan Roth (UMD what?!) and the Graffiti Research Lab.






This is only a taste of MoMA. It's filled to the bursting point with amazing art and exhibits, but unfortunately that must be saved for some other blog.... well, o.k. here's this stuff...

Dear MoMA,

Thanks for that great night in NYC. We'll have to do it again some time. How does spring break sound?

Yours sincerely,

Me

CCTV tower may have been too fresh hot...

A rogue firecracker seems to have lit up the Beijing Mandarin Oriental Hotel, designed by Rem Koolhaas as part of the CCTV headquarters in Beijing. Tears.