University Projects — TANGENT + HYPERBOLE

UNIVERSITY PROJECTS

UMKC 2008-2010
KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY 2010-2013

SPIRITUAL SANCTUARY

THESIS - KANSAS STATE - 2013

This is the capstone project from my fifth year in architecture school. Technically, not a thesis, but we spent a whole year doing it the last year of grad school and had to defend it in front of a committee, so what do you call that? Anyway, the brief was to create a “Spiritual Sanctuary” on top of the hill in Budapest. This presents its own challenges as the site has ruins nearby, is the tallest point in the city, the national library is next door, safe to say, whatever was put there would be an instant landmark. So, naturally, I shoved the majority of the 110,000 sq ft site underground to avoid becoming an eyesore or damaging the historical context.

My goal was to create a spiritual sanctuary for the public, having been pretty poor my whole life, public spaces are one of the only places where you can get out of your tiny terrible apartment and recharge yourself. So I created a sunken park, devoid of hotels, spas or juice bars. There’s a small tea room at the entrance to grab a coffee, but the rest is open for people to walk, sit, talk, meditate, and just be free to exist in a space that is outside the ordinary.

The “sanctuary” itself rises up as a giant copper tower providing dramatic lighting onto a hidden pool. Below that, the glass bottom allows the water to play on the rough stone. The hard surfaces purposefully chosen to enforce silence.

In the end I created a 60 page book that goes into more detail.

Programs:

Lamy Studio Fine w/Pilot Iroshizuki Kon Peki
McNeel Rhino w/Grasshopper
3ds Max w/V-Ray
Autodesk AutoCAD
Adobe InDesign
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Sketchup

MKS FABRICATION LABORATORY

KANSAS STATE - 2012

Per the project board written by fourth year me:

This project address the needs and concerns of the site, according to the guidelines of new urbanism. Most prominantly, in the addressing of the street, in particular, the corner in this case, and the issue of vehicle circulation. According to new urbanism, a building needs to have an intimate relationship with the streetscape. This promotes pedestrian traffic, since you don’t have to walk across a see of empty parking lots, and gives a vibrant streetscape that provides interest and services. The parking, no longer is held up as a temple in front of the building, but rather, is something to be hidden, away from view as the vehicle is no longer the sacred object that it once was. Promoting the use of more sustainable menthods of transportation are key, in providing bike racks, changing rooms, and the like, for the members who choose to commute in such a way.

From this point, I considered design aspects that would compliment these initial conclusions. I began with dividing the desired location of the building into a nine square grid, and assigning the various uses and zones to it. This parti carries through to the end design, with the modification that it was expanded to a twelve square grid, to better facilitated the circulation.

Circulation in the space was the first major design aspect that I approached. Due to the program, I felt that circulation was probably the most important aspect of the building, because being that it is a workshop, the building simply MUST work. There could be no consessions of function to form in this matter, but everything about the building should be there to facilitate the workflow of the end user. To this end, I created two spaces within the building. One, a large void, divided into three sections, metalworks, woodworks, and an assembly area, with completely open circulation between the three, but the wood and metal sections remaining adjacent, yet seperate due to the safety concerns. The second being a large mass, that would wrap around the void, providing the neccessary support services. From there, I mapped out anywhere that a project may be moved throughout the space, and opened up the circulation by using full ten foot wide garage doors, and placed these secondary spaces in direct access to the void. This allows for complete freedom of movement throughout any of the workspaces.

The final concern was the factor of heat gain. While we are in a climate that favors the use of passive solar gain, the program calls for a large amount of machinery that emits a lot of heat. Through my own experiences, these workshop areas become very hot, and will many times have their doors open even in the winter. Therefore, I needed to devise a solution that allowed for the natural light exposure to be harnessed, yet prevented the solar gain. This lead to the shaping of the void to the curving structure now shown. By using the roof structure of the mass as a giant light shelf to reflect light up, I overlapped the roof of the void in order to catch the reflected light and bring it into the work space.

Programs: