urban context strategy

Image- Roof plan at 1/64:

Connecting the Naguchi gardens with the Peter Walker fountains and trees to the corridor of the new OCMA. Repeating the form of the Peter Walker's fountains I wish to activate the corridor with outdoor bar (orange lounge) and restaurant pavilions while the grid of Peter Walker's trees breaks up simultaneously-- also an arena for impromptu performances and informal socializing.

I also looked at the existing roundabout on the Avenue of the Arts and the Palm trees and thought about Karen's knitting bandits perhaps intervening on that avenue. In this same sense, the roundabout trees should be wrapped in a sign too with the trees spilling over.

Big Stilts- but not the OCAD

Unlike the OCAD, I intend this facade to have a very sensual nature.

For now this starts to generate the idea.

OCMA in PLAN

This is my essential plan which I think I will commit to and will readjust accordingly.

Pragmatically, and borrowing from Nancy Rubins, the condos are still precariously held up 8 stories on column stilts which meet the Avenue of the Arts and now have the full 72 units.

I have two elevations in progress right now which give volumes and establish the various relationships I am creating within the program. I am setting out for the condo block to be set against the backdrop of the sensuous administrative spine and setting the permament museum collection into the ground slightly, slipped into the admin spine as is the temporary galleries.

I really want to charge the museum spaces now to reinforce my idea art concept of the artists (and their galleries) facing the elements of the real world far more than their patrons-- which provides them with their inspiration, hints at their hardships and also the envy/pride of their patrons looking down onto below.

This is all a bit hard to describe on a blog... let me upload more images when I get more access to a scanner.

In terms of PRESENTATION, I am creating my drawings such that they open up like a flattened box, a plan with four elevations and one reflected ceiling plan perhaps, all emphasizing views towards the interior since I am taking the position that the best views are internal towards the museum- up towards the condos displays- or down towards the art collections and administrative wall. So, I also thought my panels should follow suit and be in a folding tryptich so that they face towards one another and there is an experience of being within the building as one views. More details to come.

Musings in Plan

This is the main street level I am working on right now- to start to analyze how the entrance demarcates itself to the plaza and how the interior courtyard is programmed. The temporary gallery is framed time and time again by the other museum buildings and the materiality of the framed volume against the other musuem volumes will heighten this contrast.

I want to use the structures f the looming condos and the permananent galleries and admin of the museum to create a relationship to each other whilst accentuating the more spontaneous nature of the corridor of space in between these volumes... terminating at one end with the projection screen and at the other, a framed view of the "temporary exhibition" building. I thought about having a hanging garden of sculpture too in this corridor or even the possibility of a circus school as extra program with tight rope walkers the length of the corridor.

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I started to work out what is happening one level under street-level. Essentially, placing the orange lounge makes sense because thsi program is active by night and need no daylighting. The glow of light coming from below will serve as an attraction and hidden gem to the plaza- and there should be light emananating above through the open patio and sunken courtyard. It also makes sense because it locates the orange lounge and bar close to the parking with valet and facilitates coming to the bar after the museum has closed. I started to think that perhaps having a darkroom photo studio or public gallery space close to the orange lounge would be a good idea too when I recall the vernissages I have been to in Toronto and Montreal and how they are really thrown as a big party and add to the lounge atmosphere as well as how they reinforce the "comtemporaryness" I am trying to build in corridor between buildings.



I thought about connecting the temporary exhibition to the permenant exhibition on the top level so that visitors who paid for the temp exhibition could travel back through the rest of the museum collection or leave directly too.



This was purely to help me start considering the heights of things.

Approximate Scheme in Plan

Of course I need to massage the volume sizes and materiality plays a big role, but this sketch gives a sense of how I envision the buildings coming together. Freight and delivery happen at the south end, the North Western corner is access to the lobby where ticket sales happen in the service block as well as public restrooms and coat check. There is s selection between the temporary exhibition and the permanent exhibition- though the temporary exhibition will catwalk into the permanent on the way out. Gift shop is under the temporary exhibition. Admin is located near the freight elevator. Parking all happens below grade and directly into western condos or north/west corner into lobby.

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These images are essentially investigating into the structures of the museum. Obviously the materialities of the various building volumes are crucial and deciding the heights of interior museum space. Right now, I making the main museum block's western facade (to the centre of performing arts) of mostly frosted glass windows, floor to ceiling in all galleries with moments of clear glass framing small views into the gallery to the public. The exterior condo facade to the street (east) then would be of a similar language but with bigger aperatures. The two interior facades facing one another need to I think have a skinning or cladding- which continues to allow in light. I think wood screens might even contrast well against the hyper colours of the temporary exhbition building volumes... more working out is necesary however.

I decided that the laid condo tower couldn't be placed on the permanent museum space-- it was too imposing and the "permanent" program had to be broken up. This series shows how they could be propped in the air and their structure filter people into the museum lobby from the Avenue of the Arts. I started playing with the structural members supporting both the gallery spaces and the condos- if they are of the same steel support language that they can best define the negative space of the lobby/ event space in between that links the four building together.

The relationship of these two volumes- one higher and one lower- recreate one my earlier design schemes. If the two structures were joined together at varying heights they could support other volumes like that of the temporary exhbition box and energize the museum interior courtyard overhead.

Design Development Musings

Artists:

Lenses of the world
Unknown to some
They might know society’s worst fears -
hunger, poverty, social injustice-
intimately.
They confront these.
Gather inspiration from personal experience.
Express and embody these ideas—
creatively, passionately, physically.
Embed them with political insights.
Frightful social truths
yet so potent,
universal,
seminal to others who
yet do not know –
might never know,
but wish to know,
for they have an inkling
and consume with hope.

OCMCA:

This proposed museum design includes four distinct volumes.

The largest is laid horizontally along the western perimeter of the site. This is the "permanent" museum collection, as such it houses the permanent collection, and the condominium tower (as well as the administrative services on the southern end of the volume.

As such, the required heights of the gallery spaces of 18 feet inform the facade of the condo tower, where I have decided each condo will acquire its 3000 square feet within a 18 feet high volume. The lower floors (the first five) are museum and museum support space and the upper eight stories are condos. The idea is to make the condo collection part of the museum collection. For me, contemporary art is particularly smart at shedding light on the inherent politics within culture- and so I am proposing a scaffolding in which pre-fabricated condo units of 18' volume are inserted. The expected condo buyer audience is appreciative of contemporary art and thus should get excited about buying into the museum, the scaffolding structure and the pre-fab condo unit- which could even be taken away with them if ever they moved out. (My model pictures as of yet do not show the levels of condos-- I have tried 4 variations of detailing them so far at 1/32 scale and am not happy yet with the results- but the levels will sit a top of the largest, "permanent" block of the museum and frame the museum entrance under their cantilever)

The next crucial volume is the floating box on the south side of the site. It is the "temporary' exhibitions space- for the traveling shows, events and exhibitions. (It could be leasible too since I have left enough space for the temporary exhibitions to be integrated into the permenant collection building). The skin of this building is crucial-- right now I am envisioning a double skin- the exterior skin being a small pixelated silk screen adversing whatever the show is. Holding the temporary show outside of the building lets the museum showcase the newest exhibits-- presumably how the museum can generate more revenues from Californians who have already seen the rest of the museum collection a few time-- I suppose I am thinking Los Angelenos especially. The south side of this volume might also be a projection screen for events or a surface for those building climbers at museum events and gala openings.

I am also really considering how this "temporary" volume can be framed by the "permament" collection volume mostly from the western and eastern ends of the plaza. People coming or going to the Performing arts building of the Segerstrom bldg will see the "temporary' volume framed by the museum without interruption of the Serra sculpture. Only as they draw closer to the museum does the Serra sculpture come into view and it, the temporary exhibition and the volume of condos above create an entrance plaza into the lobby of the OCMCA. Approaching the building from the Eastern part of the plaza, the framing strategy still works to frame the Serra sculpture and the temporary exhibition against the permanent volume of museum.

Three building volumes are integrated into one common transparent volume on the rest of the site. (Not yet shown in pictures) The effect is like Mecanoo's School of Ecomomic in Ulright that Sheryl suggested-- Two of the three volumes pop out of the transparent casing- that of the Temporary exhibition and that of the theater, freight and delivery, curatorial, etc services (on the east side of the far south side of the site) This encasing allows the museum's ground floor to be always public and allows for the museum to operate independently. The middle volume which is the only one that does not break the encasement and is grounded would be ticket sales, coat check, public bathrooms on the north side, and restaurant service space and canteen on the south side. Eating takes place atop this level and enjoys sights into the two museum buildings within the glass atrium-encasement.

The opem interior lobby between the temporary and the services volume is large enough that it could accommodate gallery openings, dinners, other events, without interrupting the lobby and other services in the museum.

Continued with other building context--
* missing full height of museum with condos- right now I am working out the museum building relationships

Design Development

Process Ianges Since Friday at scale 1/32 in Chronological Order

Article 2: The Getty

According to Wikipedia :
The Getty Center, designed by architect Richard Meier, is the $300 million flagship museum of the J. Paul Getty Trust, the largest arts endowment in history (at over $3 billion).[1] It has a seven-story deep underground parking garage with over 1,200 parking spaces. It is located on a hill in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California overlooking Interstate 405 and is open to the public for free (although there is a charge for parking). The Getty Center is high enough that on a clear day, it is possible to see the snow at Big Bear as well as the Pacific Ocean and the entire Los Angeles basin. Much of the buildings and grounds are made of travertine. Other parts are made of white or beige enamel plates. The design is based upon a 30 inch grid with all wall and floor elements composed of 30 inch squares or some multiple of it. (The smallest elements are 7.5 inch floor tiles.)

USGS satellite image of the Getty Center.
The galleries are housed in four separate two story towers which sit on a main three-story building which is closed to the public. Central to the design is a main entry hall, with a circular design which mediates the 22 degree angle between the grid of the gallery buildings and the grid of the administrative buildings to the North.
The north axis is anchored by a circular grass area which serves as a heliport in case of emergencies, and the south axis is anchored by a cactus garden.
A grand central staircase in the entry hall lures visitors to the second floor galleries which display paintings using natural light from computer-controlled skylights. The second floors of the four gallery towers are connected by glass enclosed bridges offering views of the hillsides and of the central plaza. Numerous outdoor terraces and balconies allow visitors to stop and appreciate the views.
The first floor galleries house light-sensitive art, such as furniture or photographs. The sequence of these gallaries are interrupted by various lobbies which invite visitors to return to the central plaza.
Throughout the design, numerous fountains provide white noise as a background.
The initial design has remained in tact, except that benches and fences have been installed around the plaza fountains to discourage visitors from wading in the pools and fences close off the entry ramp to discourage skate boarders. An automated, three-car tram takes passengers to and from the museum.

Central Garden

The central garden in November.
The 134,000-square-foot Central Garden at the Getty Center is the work of artist Robert Irwin. The design of the Central Garden re-establishes the natural ravine between the Museum and the Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities with a tree-lined walkway. The walkway traverses a stream planted on each side with a variety of grasses and gradually descends to a plaza where bougainvillea arbors provide scale. The stream continues through the plaza and ends in a cascade of water over a stone waterfall into a pool in which a maze of azaleas floats. Around the pool is a series of specialty gardens, each with a variety of plant material.
The process of creating the Central Garden began for Irwin in 1992, when he started working with Harold M. Williams and Stephen D. Rountree of the J. Paul Getty Trust in consultation with Richard Meier. Irwin also worked closely with Richard Naranjo, the Getty’s manager of grounds and gardens, and the landscape architecture firm of Spurlock Poirier, in finalizing all facets of the garden.

Current Exhbitions:
The Getty Centre in LA: Icons from Sinai
The Getty Villa in Malibu: Stories in Stone: Conserving Mosaics of Roman Africa, Masterpieces from the National Museums of Tunisia
Also on View: http://www.getty.edu/visit/exhibitions/

Article 1: Thom Mayne's DRHS- Betsky, Aaron

DIAMOND RANCH HIGH SCHOOL
PA 1997 AWARD
DIAMOND BAR, CALIFORNIA MORPHOSIS WITH THOMAS BLUROCK ARCHITECTS
Architecture; Nov2000, Vol. 89 Issue 11, p132, 14p, 7c, Betsky, Aaron.

A folded surface undulates across the site in a geometric abstraction of existing contour lines--this creased plane became the building's roofs.

The Diamond Ranch High School unfolds out of the landscape in waves of fractured form to become a civic structure of astonishing beauty. Confronted with the pragmatic challenges of moving more than a million cubic feet of dirt around a steep site in suburban Los Angeles, a budget of $145 a square foot, and a society in which secondary education often takes place in prisonlike bunkers, architect Thom Mayne of the Santa Monica-based firm Morphosis has excavated a significant civic structure with the capacity to edify, educate, and delight.

Diamond Ranch is a stretch of hills that Californians euphemistically call "golden" (i.e., nearly barren, except for a few lonely oak trees). While the rest of the area is fast succumbing to sprawl, the Diamond Ranch High School's especially precipitous, 72-acre site was considered unbuildable because its unstable soils were likely to slide into the road-cut of a highway. The Pomona School District capitalized on the site's supposed uselessness, acquiring the land for a dollar from a nearby municipality's redevelopment agency and then obtaining $5 million from the state to stabilize the hillside. In negotiations with the state and environmental pressure groups such as the Sierra Club, the school district agreed that no soil would be removed from or added to the site.

"It all worked out, because in a high school you have to start with the playing fields anyway," comments Mayne, referring to the vast amounts of space most high schools devote to sports. Working with Thom Blurock of Blurock Partnership (a California-based firm with a specialty in schools) and Olveri Engineering, Mayne won a limited design-build competition that the school district staged in 1994. He proposed to tame the 380-foot drop across the site with three terraces: an upper playing field, the school, and a lower playing field. Further grading provided access and parking for 770 cars to the south of the main building site.

Mayne did not treat the site work as separate from the design of structures, but rather saw the whole task as a refolding of the land into a building. "I am interested not in making isolated objects, but in how plates can become forms," he explains. Working closely with project architect John Enwright, Mayne developed the concept of a folded surface that undulates across the site in a geometric abstraction of existing contour lines--this creased plane became the school's roof. Because of the way Mayne and Enwright manipulated them, the forms make visible the site's inherent topography, while at the same time appearing to be monumental and abstracted versions of the waves of pitched roofs covering the suburban homes below.

A particular program governed the making of spaces within this derived landscape. Superintendent of the Pomona school district Patrick Leier was concerned from the beginning with "how we keep students connected in such a large school; how we keep things smaller; how we blend with the site." He and his team proposed breaking the 2,000-student school down into small clusters with no more than 300 students in each, and asked Mayne to think of the facility more as a campus in the collegiate sense.

Mayne responded by cutting through his plates to create three separate wings for the ninth and tenth grades. These thin bar-buildings cantilever out over the slope and open up to playing fields on the north. On the south side of the building, he organized classrooms for the remaining two grades around small, internal courtyards. Teachers also have offices associated with each cluster. While the southern classroom buildings exhibit all the assertive exuberance of modernist construction, the back wing creates intimate and introspective spaces that mine the hill for small oases of academic gathering.

An internal street winds its way between the row of classroom wings on the north and through the class clusters on the south. The street twists between the roof's folds and the functional spaces, tying the volumes and the roof plane together into a coherent assembly. It is a canyon, but also a village street with activities. Periodically, the roof plunges down to meet buildings placed at slightly different angles, in a choreography of vertical measure and horizontal flow. Because of the separation between the wings to the north, the views always make students and faculty aware of the world outside, while the density of forms to the south roots the communal gathering space in the site.

The school's organization is thus rather conventional. The northern and southern classroom wings open on a central spine between the eastern and western wings. At the east end of this central corridor are the main entrance and gathering spaces: a library and administration building, a gymnasium, a cafeteria, and a multifunction room. Here the steel trusses holding up the roof are visible both inside and out, and the stucco-clad walls and glass planes rise up to announce the school's identity. These large spaces are what the public sees first and what students can use to orient themselves as they return periodically to them for communal activities. They introduce the school and give it an identity like a pedimented and columned entry in your standard Central High. The facilities can also be used by the community.

Mayne has in many ways done no more than find the central idea of a conventionally organized school-with its long, double-loaded corridor with classrooms on either side and a controlling facade of administrative space-buried within the logic of the school's program. Rather than cladding this shape, he has treated the corridor like a cut in the ground, excavated one arm of classrooms and cantilevered the other, and then unfolded the formal front using his system of site analysis.

"At this stage in my career I am more involved in how you set up a strict system, and then open it up," Mayne claims. "I am concerned with how you create both difference and coherence out of the manipulation of a set of conditions, rather than adding them on to a simple shape."

To Mayne, this is not just an abstract working method. With two sons in high school, he understands such institutions as places where students learn about a tense cultural and political system that somehow remains coherent, and he wants his buildings to be part of that education: "By cutting into the lines we set up, which were based on the landscape, we initiated accidents and exploited them," he explains. "The result is heterogeneity and even conflict within something that still hangs together."

Superintendent Leier, who has gone on to expand on the "college campus" model in several other schools in Pomona, one of which was previously a shopping mall, agrees that the school should be "a place where students learn just from looking around themselves. It is really a model community," he says. What at first appears to be a confluence of tortured planes rising up out of a barren and banal landscape finally resolves itself into a model for civic architecture. Thanks to Mayne's structural expression, response to site and program, and a few willful gestures, the school offers intricacy, complexity, and a sense of discovery appropriate to the act of learning.
DIAMOND RANCH HIGH SCHOOL, DIAMOND BAR, CALIFORNIA

CLIENT: Pomona Unified School District, Diamond Bar, California-Patrick Leier (superintendent) ARCHITECT: Morphosis, Santa Monica, California-Thom Mayne (principal); John Enright (project architect); Cameron Crockett, David Grant, Fabian Kremkus, Janice Shimizu, Patrick J. Tighe (project team); Sarah Allan, Kaspar Baumeister, Jay Behr, John Bencher, Mark Briggs, Frank Brodbeck, Takashi Ehira, Magdalena Glen, Ivar Gudmunson, George Hernandez, Martin Krammer, Ming Lee, Francisco Mouzo, Christopher Payne, Kinga Racon, Robyn Sambo, Andreas Schaller, Bennet Shen, Mark Sich, Craig Shimahara, Tadao Shimizu, Steve Slaughter, Brandon Welling, Eui-Sung Yi (project assistants)

ASSOCIATE ARCHITECT: Thomas Blurock Architects--Thom Blurock (principal); Tom Moore (project architect); Mark Briggs, Kevin Fleming, Nadar Glassemlou, Chris Samuelian, Kristina Steeves, Jose Valentin, Wendell Vaughn, Lis Zuloaga (project team); Gregory Aston, Colleen Bathgate, Mike Blozek, Vince Coffeen, Karen MacIntyre, Kathy Sun, Brady Titus, Robert Trucios LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT: Allen Don Fong ENGINEERS: Ove Arup & Partners (structural); Andreasen Engineering (civil) GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Bernards Brothers COST: Withheld at client's request

(unfortunately these pictures did not come with the article so I have attached some other photos of the same subjects)

PHOTO (COLOR): Evoking the piazza of a Tuscan hill town, the courtyard at the heart of Diamond Ranch High School overlooks the suburbs of Los Angeles.

PHOTO (COLOR): ARRIVAL The school's principal entrance sits at the corner of a two-sided forecourt (above). Students proceed from the parking lot, past a gymnasium, cafeteria and multifunction room (left, at left) to a staircase alongside a library and administration block (at right).

PHOTO (COLOR): THRESHOLD A small courtyard (facing page, bottom) at the head of the entrance stair terminates a central, external corridor (or "street") that winds through the school. Ramps connect two levels of cantilevered classroom wings on the north side of the corridor as seen looking toward the landscape (facing page, to right) and backward toward the school (facing page, top left).

PHOTO (COLOR): MOVEMENT Mayne formed the school's central corridor with tilted, corrugated-steel walls to create an abstraction of a natural ravine or of the false storefronts of an American main street (facing page, top left). Breaks in the walls provide views of the surrounding landscape and suggest gathering places for student's (facing page, top right and bottom).

PHOTO (COLOR): PERMEABILITY A monumental angled roof and glazed farade denote the school's principal gathering space, the multipurpose gymnasium (left). A large opening in the wall of the band room (top) allows it to double as an impromptu stage. Daylight from tree-planted courtyards (above) illuminates 11th- and 12th- grade classrooms.

PHOTO (COLOR): EVENT Exposed steel structure and artfully controlled lighting provide simple animation in the principal gathering spaces--the gymnasium (facing page, top) and library (facing page, bottom left)--as well as in classrooms (facing pages, bottom right).

PHOTO (COLOR): SITE WORK Three classroom wings cantilever over the playing fields (facing page, at right). Staircases (top) cut into the hillside and connect the school to the playing fields A ramp (above winds down from the library and administration block.

you can see plans at: http://www.arcspace.com/architects/morphosis/diamond/index.htm

final product photos

post-academic symposium crit

Just as the light started to beam down onto the screen/rail for the afternoon, my crit took lieu. What a nice coincidence.

The discussion ideas that were particularly interesting focused on:

-What if the joining detail happened in the centre of the tires rather than on their rims? If so, could more of the recycled bike be used by using the essential triangular frame of it?

-The recurring question of when does this cease to be a railing? It is in fact in so many ways a screen. (and as a screen, it could be suspended)

-Could the joint which sometimes refused to really hold the tires flatly in two rows be embraced and its want to push in and out embellished?

-In alignment with Nancy Rubins, does she ever consult with structural engineers of structural analysts or does she learn by process.

symposium product continued

When my support footings-- the precarious little legs I wanted to support the whole structure gave out I had to cut them off and build more durable legs. I ended up taking solid cylinder steel and threading it 2 inches deep myself to thread in the 1/2 inch threaded rod (just under the 3/5 inch hollow tubing at the foot of each footing)

I assembled and disassembled the railing probably close to 4 or 5 times and was never able to put it back together in the same way twice-- even when I lay the individual detail pieces on paper towel right next to their joint when I painted them. This is both advantageous and disadvantageous-- it speaks about the capacity of metal objects to be easily constructed with the "kit of parts" mentality. The difficulties in reassembling it every time really made me sympathize with Nancy Rubins in that building an object that hovers is really tricky in the matter of seeing where the centre of gravity will be. This could be mathematically calculated with great efforts with varying rim sizes and diameters but I am certain she also uses trial and effort technique in building her sculptures like I did (hence why three of more of her earlier built works have reportedly fallen down) I even managed at one point to have 9 wheels all hovering on the ONE footing with no other contact with ground. The only reason I disassembled and added more ground support is that I am a realistic and know that it would not withstand three days worth of symposium curious touching.

Also illustrated is the testing of painting all the rims black. I liked the sillouette that it created but opted to polish all the rims instead and paint the detail in a chocolate matte brown paint to draw attention back to it. It is actually quite beautiful to reveal the mix of aluminum and steel frames and how the rust of where the washers hold the sprockets on the rim gather rust that is not easily sanded down. The play of light during sunset in the school is remarkable now that they are all shined up too.

I also lay the railing down yesterday-- pictures to be in the next update.

symposium

Of course fellow Luce Studio colleagues will be fully aware of my work thus far but I wished to update anybody outside of the Studio of the progression of my work since my last entry.

For starters-- these three panels make up the final panel which explains a short history of how the project was inspired through- Nancy Rubins, Ferrous Metals and the element of "railing".

Hmmm...

I am not sure this if this how I envision the railing or not. I like how it feels to the hand and the extra girth to the hand. I also think I will be able to make a smoothe connection piece to tie the rims into one continuous railing-- but it visually reads as a bike tire. Whether I like this contradiction or not is what I am considering now--- any thoughts?