halt:blog

Final design thesis presentation happened.
In an unexpected way, it was about the seduction of sexy architecture.

archdaily is rockin

Right now, I vote for this architecture blog as being the best. . . archdaily.com
The site has more projects than you’ll ever need and each project has a lot of images, some high-res.
It also has great communication abilities and some excellent interviews.

Here is an interesting art project. A kitchen that rotates.
A video of the event can be found on the blog todayand tomorrow.net

In real life this site model is 24″x24″. As a model it is scaled to show 4000 feet square, almost one square mile, of the lower Duwamish Waterway. The thesis site is shown as a green box in the east side of the river (north is up).

It’s been a long time since my last post. Mainly because I fucked up the text somehow and I’m not tech enough to fix it.

Fall is near and I am working on my graduate thesis. This project by Steven Holl has been influential. I found the project in an excellent book called Hybrids ll, and a+t publication. The book presents projects that have multiple uses. Mixed use buildings that explore the varied functional solutions blended together creating uncertainties in the shared spaces.
The actual project is under construction in Shenzhen, China

project link

Opportunity

It started a few months ago with an independent thesis proposal to the department of architecture at the University of Washington. I had been thinking about it for a year or so and proposed a thesis that considers the possibility of creating a new neighborhood close the center of the city somewhere in the industrial areas south of downtown. I started by looking at a large area south of downtown Seattle as shown in the image below. I have a personal fascination with old industrial buildings and neighborhoods.

The reason for using this area starts with my fascination with old industrial buildings. Over-sized, clunky behemoths, these structures of industry are found on land and water. Cranes, container ships, flat-bed trailers, and a person favorite; trains. Maybe it’s a guy thing, but I find the industrial part of town of the most interesting places to wander. Could people live in these areas?

Project Area Defined
My goal for this area of the city was to look for a place were people could live and work. Going by the current zoning laws it is not permissible to live in most of the area but I did not let that stop me. I am not against proposing a change in zoning. I was able to narrow down to a region that has a long history of habitation. Before Seattle was “discovered”, before the Duwamish Waterway was dreged, straightened, and polluted into submission the river was home to the Duwamish Native American Tribe.

Click on the image for a great interview from the architects who did this building.

Click on the image for more renderings (opens new browser window).

This is where I would like to live - in one of the top ten floors of the new Herzog & de Meuron residential skyscraper in Tribeca, NYC. This is a rendering - the building is under construction. The tower looks precarious but I’m sure I would eventually get used to its perceived instability. The website is amazing. . . check it out here

I’m taking a class at UW that is called Digital Design for Fabrication and Construction. We are using the program Solidworks and these images are from my first project. The roof was created in Solidworks and the rest was modeled and rendering in 3d Studio Max.
Click on image for more. . .