Thesis

Investigation and Development of Architectural Process through the Adaptive Reuse of "Big Box" Architecture.

Abstract
Through the exploration of adaptive reuse of residual, no longer viable, commercial buildings in economically challenged urban zones develop an over arching guide and process upon which to base future architectural practice, solidifying design principles that have the potential to define specific approaches to architectural strategies and form making. The adaptive reuse of architecture, specifically "big box" architecture, in a form that captures and utilizes natural daylight, artificial light, and inspires the human spirit addresses many key issues prevalent in today’s practice and design discourses. The notions that the proper lighting of space effects its occupants is not new, but one that is very seldom maximized in the built environment that we occupy. In addition, the importance of recycling building products and materials is at a peak in the world today. The building industry is one of the largest contributors to the degradation of our planet. Adaptive reuse of buildings is quite simply the recycling of architecture.



fracture of rigid form
thin outlines of light
natural and artificial
of worlds on a journey
who grin at the day
to the evening breeze

Monday, June 16, 2008

motion mapping is...

... a tool for design process, generating a point of departure from which the box grid, fascade, and site are informed... the shape of the recycled form... an ephemral quality of motion that is a form generator...

... the structure must work within normal constraints of program, budget, materials, etc... issues become scale, sight lines, city grid.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

crit comments: intensive 6.7.08

Selected comments to work from moving forward...

  • More of the point of view of box being efficient in terms of economic model. Big box will not necessarily have a franetic overuse, but one moment that changes a piece of it.
  • Solution will be a clever transformation of space in a very efficient amount of steps.
  • Relationship of zone of parking? Begin to inhabit those areas? The 15/16ths of the rest.
  • Edge condition of the big box? Richard Wilson... something unconventional... study about skin... wrap... edge condition.
  • How you can really attack the site is not clear.
  • Size of the big box in scale, size and volume is immense... How does this really fit a dojo?
  • Big generic space and placing a small program in it and amount of change... insert into small space... then have other use.
  • What is thesis about? Big box or aikido?

Now... move forward

motion mapping model











motion mapping

Ai - Harmony, the principle of harmony and integration.
Ki - Spirit, centralized , coordinated energy considered the energu of life itself.
Do - Way, the method a discipline and philosophy with both moral and spiritual connotations.

Motion mapping of technique or teachings to analyze and document the harmony, spirit, and way that embody the philosophy of aikido. Through analysis of the movements of the uke and nage (the person being thrown and the thrower) we start to glimpse at the energy being expended between the two along with the tension, compression, mergence, and resolution of the "space" that lies between the two. The video below is one of three that were studied and mapped, shomenuchi ikkyo or first teaching.

Motion mapping can be extruded from the two figures by following key points of the body through the key still frames in a sequencial order, producing the motion map.

motion map




single frame motion map