Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Thesis Schedule
Conclusions:
This semester, I have extended my research on the Beaubourg Plateau into a series of site models, design intentions, and lectures (for Peter Waldman’s class) that will lead to the design of a civic space on the site of the defucnt Cemetery of Innocents. My research included an understanding of: the evolution of urban mapping, the emergence of civic spaces, the material flows that founded the city, and the spatial origins of the city. This research has helped me understand the Beaubourg Plateau as the Urban Laboratory of Paris, a layered site and index for the preconditions of the city. Today, the site exists as a static, isolated, “interior city,” which no longer functions as an Urban Laboratory, yet is subject to an increasing influx of tourists and immigrants. My design intentions are to use my research in material operations and processes on the site to revitalize the Urban Laboratory. The design will reveal the underpinnings of the city and will respond to the hyperdense nature of the site as the largest transit hub in Europe (a place of immense displacement).
Project Proposal:
I will design a hybrid program: a transit gateway and market (flea market of clingancourt) for the site of the Cemetery of the Innocents on the Beaubourg Plateau. The design will also include the development of a general masterplan for the Beaubourg Plateau, based upon my research/design intentions of this semester. The design may also include smaller scale interventions on the site and around the city.
Schedule:
January 17-31: ULI Hines Urban Design Competition
February 1-4: Site Strategies, Data Gathering (visitors, traffic, public space, etc.) Meet with Shilea Crane
February 5-11: Design Iterations – Site Scale, Link to Metro, Sections
February 12-18: Design Iterations – Site Scale, Link to Metro, Plans Meet with Beth Meyer/Maurice Cox
February 19-25: Design Iterations – Architectural Scale
February 26-March 3: Design Iterations – Architectural Scale
March 4-10: Design Iterations – Architectural Scale Mid Review
March 11-17: Design Iterations – Tactile Scale
March 18-24: Design Iterations – Tactile Scale
March 25-31: Synthesis
April 1-7: Synthesis 3/4 Review
April 8-14: Synthesis
April 15-21: Synthesis
April 22-28: Production
April 29-May 5: Production Production Review
May 6-12: Production
May 13-19: Production
Final Review
Thesis Book
I’ve attached a digital book of my Design Research Seminar work below.
Bibliography
URBANISM
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin, 1990.
Cinar, Alev. Urban Imaginaries: Locating the modern City. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.
Clark, W.G. “Writings.” Clark and Menefee. Richard Jensen. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000.
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
De Landa, Manuel. A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. Brooklyn: Zone Books, 1997.
Goldberger, Paul. Building Up and Tearing Down. New York: Monacelli Press, 2007.
Harvey, David. “The Right to the City.” New Left Review 53, 1998.
Koolhaas, Rem. Delerious New York. New York: Monacelli Press, 1994.
Krauss, Rosalind. “Grids.” October 9 [Reprinted in: The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985.
Le Corbusier. The City of Tomorrow and its Planning. New York: Payson & Clarke, 1929.
Morrish, William. Civilizing Terrains: Mountains, Mounds, and Mesas. San Francisco: William Stout, 1989.
Mostafavi, Mohsen, and David Leatherbarrow. On Weathering : the Life of Buildings In Time. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993.
Mumford, Lewis. The City in History. New York: Harcourt, 1961.
Raban, Jonathan. Soft City. Glasgow: William Collins Sons, 1974.
Rowe, Colin and Fred Koetter. Collage City. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1978.
Lefebvre, Henri. Writings on Cities. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1968.
Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1991.
Pope, Albert. Ladders. New York: Phaidon, 1996.
Vidler, Anthony. The Writing of the Walls. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 1987.
Vidler, Anthony. The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992.
Virilio, Paul. The Vision Machine. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994.
PARIS
Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades project. Translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Boudon, Francoise. Système de L’Architecture Urbaine Le Quartier des Halles à Paris. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1977.
Bougnoux, Florence et al. Les Halles: Villes Intérieures. Marseille: Éditions Parenthèses, 2008.
Clément, Alain and Gilles Thomas. Atlas du Paris Souterrain. Paris: Parigramme, 2001.
Couperie, Pierre. Paris Through the Ages. New York: George Braziller, 1968.
De Moncan, Patrice and Maxime Du Camp. Baltard: Les Halles de Paris 1853-1973. Paris: Les Editions du Mécéne, 2010.
De Sacy, Silvestre. Le Quartier des Halles. Paris: Le Temps, 1969.
Harvey, David. Paris, Capital of Modernity. New York: Routeledge, 2006.
Large, Pierre-François. Des Halles au Forum: Métamorphoses au Coeus de paris. Paris: Édition l’Harmattan, 1992.
Lemoine, Bertrand. Les Halles de Paris. Paris: L’Equerre Éditeur, 1980.
Michel, Christian. Les Halles: La Renaissance d’un Quartier 1966-1988. Paris: Masson, 1988.
Ovenden, Mark. Paris Underground. New York: Penguin, 2008.
Papayanis, Nicholas. Planning Paris Before Haussmann. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
Pinon, Pierre. Les Plans de Paris. Paris: Le Passage, 2008.
Poisson, Michel. Paris: Buildings and Monuments. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999.
Russell, John. Paris. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1983.
CASE STUDIES
Shinjuku, Tokyo
Rockafeller Center, New York City
Interior City, Montreal
Peter Eisenmann, Cannaregio
Peter Eisenmann, Memorial for the Victims of the Holocaust
Bernard Tschumi, Parc de La Villette
Peter Zumthor, Kolumba Museum
Carlo Scarpa, Castelvecchio
Weiss/Manfredi, Columbus Circle Competition
Weiss/Manfredi, Seattle Olympic Sculpture Park
Lexicon 10
exoskeleton (n) – a stiff, calcified defensible edge that controls movement/flows across its boundary.
“Human populations began mineralizing again when they developed an urban exoskeleton: bricks of sun-dried clay became the building materials for their homes, which in turn surrounded and were surrounded by stone monuments and defensive walls. This exoskeleton serves a purpose similar to its internal counterpart: to control the movement of human flesh in and out of the town’s walls.” in Manuel de Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (Brooklyn: Zone Books, 1997), 27.
friction (n) – an urban dynamic (delays, bottlenecks, conflict, uneven distribution of resources) that plays a crucial role in generating self-organization.
Manuel de Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (Brooklyn: Zone Books, 1997), 41.
bifurcation (n) – the instability of a single system that results in a division into two or more smaller systems (e.g. the forking of a river into its tributaries, the division of cells).
subduction (n) – movement whereby layers of material are destroyed to create new matter-energy.
Manuel de Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (Brooklyn: Zone Books, 1997), 41.
Lexicon 9
igneous formation (n) – crystallization/hardening of matter-energy, which results directly from the rapid deceleration/congealing of material (e.g. from a liquid to a solid state).
Manuel de Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (Brooklyn: Zone Books, 1997), 57-60.
mineralization (n) – the sudden emergent/synergistic conglomeration of matter-energy into geological, biological, or linguistic material. Mineralization is a result of the stagnation of an accelerated material flow.
Manuel de Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (Brooklyn: Zone Books, 1997), 26-56.
endoskeleton (n) – a calcified central scaffold of matter-energy that focuses interior movement/flows along its spine.
“Primitive bone, a stiff, calcified central rod that would later become the vertebral column, made new forms of movement control possible among animals, freeing them from many constraints… While bone allowed the complexification of the animal phylum to which we, as vertebrates belong, it never forgot its mineral origins: it is the living material that most easily petrifies, that most refily crosses the threshold back into the world of rocks. For that reason, much of the geological record is written with the fossil bone.” in Manuel de Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (Brooklyn: Zone Books, 1997), 26-7.
Lexicon 8
GEOLOGICAL OPERATIONS are geological processes that result in the layering of the city: an urbanism of ceaseless fragmentation, collision, superimposition, and contamination of successive generations of social space—a collage city in Colin Rowe’s terms.
aggregation/accumulation (n) – the fluctuations, bifurcations, and extinctions of heterogeneous and homogeneous aggregates of matter-energy (geological, economic, and linguistic content).
Manuel de Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (Brooklyn: Zone Books, 1997), 25.
metamorphic formation (n) – a process that renders matter-energy unstable (a rise in temperature pressure, energy, etc.) and transforms material into a new state. Metamorphic formation always transforms materials into the closest direction to restore equilibrium.
Manuel de Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (Brooklyn: Zone Books, 1997), 57-60.
sedimentary formation (n) – a sorting mechanism of small pieces of fragmented matter-energy that are compacted and cemented together by layering and pressure.
Manuel de Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (Brooklyn: Zone Books, 1997), 57-60.
Lecture for Lessons of the Lawn: The Urban Laboratory
I’ve attached my second lecture to Peter Waldman’s Lessons of the Lawn on my thesis work below.
Sparkman_LessonsoftheLawnLecture_10.18.11
Design Research Seminar (Sparkman) 
