Thom Mayne

I wrote a paper on this architect from Morphosis a while back and his work still seems to always amazing me. Here is a picture of the Caltrans District 7 Headquarters building in Los Angeles. The architect pays much attention to the wall, which is a unique blend of curtain wall and perforated metal panels. In addition, the wall becomes the roof over the outdoor space, which is something that is also in the San Francisco Federal Building.
One of the former Stanford students who was at our critique on Tuesday mentioned Morphosis' San Francisco Federal Building, but I thought I'd throw the Caltrans Building out there because both are very similar. The first image is of the LA building and the second is of the SF building. Both pay a lot of attention to the outdoor space, which is meant to connect the building to the community. Also, a lot of the design has to do with angles and straight lines, which could work for our current project. Finally, both buildings just look pretty interesting. The SF building has an interesting "hole" right in the middle, which I believe is meant to bring in some ventilation and allow for the growth of trees.
For those interested in seeing the building, it's on the corner of 7th and Mission and can be seen from Highway 101 as you approach the Bay Bridge.
Here is the website for the firm: www.morphosis.com
Also, I believe he is still a professor at UCLA's architecture school, for those interested in applying.

Group 1- Roof Project Summary

This first project was a huge success for us. We were able to communicate our ideas effectively throughout the design process and build upon each other's critiques and opinions. One special tip we discovered was that in team projects, you should begin the brainstorming process without any team members having already thought about ideas. It's great to have everybody start from absolute scratch and then begin to think as a cohesive group, combining the creativity and insight of four members.

I will reiterate the design constraints, themes, and challenges that drove our project from start to finish.

1. Site context - Community Center + Classrooms

This important constraint led to a desire for a youthful, playful environment with an organic feel. However, we were restricted to flat, orthogonal materials, which made creating an organic space very challenging.

2. Roof vs. Ceiling

As a team we struggled with the issue of which is more important, the roof or the ceiling. Although in a model it is often the roof that is most prominent, ultimately it is the experience of a person inside the space which is most important, which led to us focusing mostly on the ceiling. This meant we had to work on a human scale, keeping our design integrated well within the existing walls.

Both roofs began from a simple grid placed upon the site plan, from which we created all of our proportions.

Our Fehn roof began as a honeycomb grid which then could be pulled in and out of its modules. We then moved to the idea of floating Fehn grids within the structure of a larger Fehn grid. We decided to make it irregular to heighten repetition with variation, and considered adding unique installations like the bench and tree piece. In class, we were introduced to the ideas of using different materials and possibly working with vertical aspects of the roof as well. However, we wished to keep with an open, youthful feel and simplified our design to purely horizontal, floating, homogeneous panels.

Our Pinos roof started with the one constraint that the space in front of the community hall's facade could not be tampered with. We wanted a roof which wrapped around this open space with the image of interlocking fingers. The first goal was to wrap around the existing trees and somehow creep into the entrance area. The second insight was to introduce different heights which paralleled the different heights of floating panels in the Fehn roof. At first some were to be placed on top of the existing roof, but in order to preserve the site's integrity we later pushed all roofs under the height of the flat roofs. The third insight was to push the Pinos roofs into the exit area, the outer classroom wall, and the entrance wall. The fourth decision was to introduce varying flap sizes, sometimes leaving open gaps for light to filter through. The final addition was a skeleton structure of floating beams which gave the impression of sweeping tunnels at the entrance and exit.

From a large scale, the Pinos roof is integrated well with the Fehn roof because its overall mass is placed in symmetry with the Fehn roof's diagonal axis. It also has a generally square placement, sometimes jutting right through the roofs. Although all the pieces are flat and jaggedy there is a very organic feel because of its humanistic scale, looking almost like rolling hills inside the courtyard.

This was a great project in terms of design insight and building process. Feel free to leave comments or questions!

Sick beams at Raleigh Durham Airport

Saw this last Spring quarter, but haven't had a reason to put it up anywhere before (most people don't care about this stuff).

Anyways, the Airport in Raleigh just recently got redone, and it has these HUGE sweeping, curved, beams holding up the roof, that span an incredible distance. Can't tell if they're really wood, or just made to look like it, but they were very impressive, vibrant, and wood-looking in person.

Roof Projet Debrief

Process: Ideate, Prototype, Higher Resolution Prototypes, Construction
Ideate: We struggled in the brainstorming phase of this project because of difficulty in communicating our ideas to each other efficiently and the fact that it's difficult to get 4 people to like one idea. Better rendering skills, and a common architectural and spatial vocabulary probably would have greatly helped us to generate more ideas in a shorter period of time. We spent a longer time in this stage than I think we wanted to.

Prototype: This is where stuff got a little more fun, and productive. We decided the best way to move forward would be to break into two groups, and have each group conceive, prototype, (and eventually) build their ideas. We started extremely low res on prototypes: drawings, then paper "models" to test out questions such as whether or not a certain grid would work, and then progressed to foam core, and then l loosely cut bass or balsa mdodels.

Higher Res Prototypes: We finally progressed to Revit and Sketchup models, and prototyped our construction process by building a jig (see previous post). The jig was used for ensuring right angles would be right, and that the beams were evenly spaced.

Construction: What a process. We cut, and laser cut, and then glued for days. Though I know I speak for our group when I say we're all happy it's done, in a lot of ways it's just another prototype, another iteration that still has areas for improvement.

Roof Project

We had a great time working on this assignment. It was so neat being able to go from our drawings to an actual model of the roof. Our main goal was to refine, refine, and refine. We wanted to make a roof that was simple. For the Fehn roof, it was important to keep the same pure qualities of the original roof. For that reason, we stuck to the grid pattern and the visual of long fins spanning the building. While we made modules of floating panels, from above or below you can still be beams that seem to be starting on one end and reaching the other side. For the pinos, we wanted to simplify the original system. Sticking to the module idea, we decide to repeat our tapering triangle and by doing so, we create a beautiful fan like roof structure. In order to celebrate the cuts in the roof we decided to cut squares into the roof. This also helped to tie to two roofs together. In order to match the detailing in the Fehn style roof, we also added some details to the side of the Pinos. We raised the Pinos and placed dowels on the edge of the roof that would serve as supports. These dowels mimicked the strong frame of the Fehn style roof towering above it.

To honor the trees that were such an integral part of the s

pa

ce, w

e decided to create a grid of its own that was perpendicular to the existing grid. This wa

s inspired by Fehn splicing of one of the walls to accommodate the tree in the front of the pavilion. Three diamonds in the Fehn mimic three diamond cubes in the Pinos.

In all, I think our group was very satisfied with our design!

System Cohesion

It was important to us to create a certain cohesion between our different roof elements. The underside of our Pinos roof mimics the Fehn style with the addition of the cross beams. The entryway is a hybrid of both the Pinos and the Fehn with the angularity (Pinos) and the beams on the underside (Fehn). The vertical supports that hold the structure up also reference the nature of a tree with its diagonal branches. Finally, the bird's eye view of our system shows how we melded the entryway with the Fehn roof. Even though there is a physical break within the structure (which we wanted in order to keep the courtyard open), the overhang fills in the "gap" and creates a cohesion between the two structures.

Creating a Level, Dropped Ceiling

We started by making the strings especially long so that we could carefully lower the dropped ceiling within the space. Then, to ensure that the ceiling was completely level, we created a foam core cube to rest the wood on while the strings glued themselves to the roof.