joshua john frickportfolio of art and architecture

master of ARCHITECTUREmiami university

bachelor of science in ARCHITECTUREfairmont state university

contact information:

1209 resaca place, apt 6pittsburgh, pennsylvania 15212

412.596.3036

joshua.j.frick@gmail.com

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contents:academic work:

mobile archaeology [architectural thesis]

screen building

visitors center

art & fabrication:

woodworking

drawing

professional work:

mixed-use development

oliver building

21c hotel-museum

multi-family development

low-income housing

wexford home

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2005 - 2011

miami universityand

fairmont state university

ACADEMIC WORK

MOBILE ARCHAEOLOGY

2010 - 2011

A mobile archaeology lab and community; this project is the end-result of a written thesis exploring the possibility of architectural placemaking within a mobile context - asking the question: can an architecture that has no specific site relate itself to place, or is it inherently placeless?

The building packs itself into the dimensions of a standard truck-trailer, and the form is a function of the unfolding and layering process necessary to create a large, humane, multifunctional space from that limited footprint. When it arrives on site, the legs reach out and raise the structure from the truck. The rest of the building (in three nested shells) extends and hangs from these telescoping, adjustable legs, inspired by construction crane booms and outriggers and adapted with elements from biological structures. Multiple functions of the inte-rior space are facilitated by furniture that can be hoisted into the sleeping loft area to reveal other layers of function in order to avoid having to clear delicate artifacts and instrumentation from the work tables for every meal or meeting.

The project also includes a mobile museum/community center, to provide a level of transparency within the archaeological process. If the community around the dig site is allowed to see or perhaps even participate in the process then the archaeological team might be seen as preservers rather than appropriators of valuable artifacts, and less as outsiders to the community memebers.

Though technically site-less, the buildings are placed in a remote, cliffside desert site (a fairly difficult site climatically, topographically, and functionally) to test the extremes of their adaptability.

BB

AA

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Section B

-BScale: 3/8 =

1-0

MOBILE ARCHAEOLOGY

lower floorplansections

section-perspective

Flying TableScale: 1/2= 1-0

Adjustable FootScale: 1- 1/2= 1-0

Cocoon BedScale: 1/2= 1-0

Accordion WedgeScale: 1/2= 1-0

Tension Rod ConnectionScale: 1 - 1/2= 1-0

MOBILE ARCHAEOLOGY

animation stills

exploded axonometric

exterior perspectives

MOBILE ARCHAEOLOGY

interior perspectives

physical model

articulated foot mockup

SITE

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A A

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MOBILE ARCHAEOLOGY

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physical site model

siteplan and sections

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MOBILE ARCHAEOLOGY

section-perspective

exploded axonometric

floorplan and sections

SCREEN BUILDING

Summer 2008

A communication center for Miami University. This project was an introductory charette to my graduate architecture career. Earlier in the Summer, before thinking about a building, before considering a program or a function, we studied nature though sketches, photographs, and models. A common thread immerged in these studies: an attempt to capture the layered, filtered, animated quality of light through tree leaves.

A building developed from these nature studies. I intended to use the tree-shadow phenomenon to shape the built object - without resorting superficial bio-mimicry or literal tree-image applique - to reduce the experience to a set of logical steps. The final iteration incorporates layered transparent, translucent, and opaque surfaces and a three-level glass stair hall to allow the shadows of the people passing through to overlap and combine like the shadows from the leaves of a tree. Reflections of the surrounding trees on the transparent and translucent surfaces add another, ever-changing layer to the effect.

physical model

SCREEN BUILDING

layered glass stair

physical model

SCREEN BUILDING

nature photo &study model iterations

SCREEN BUILDING

massing model

sections

elevations

VISITOR CENTER

Fall 2008

A visitors welcome center for Fairmont, West Virginia, located along the highway at the entrance to the city proper.

The form is derived from two common West Virginia sights - a bridge across two hilltops and the room-like space created in the valley of those hills. The building is composed of two massive concrete walls, one straight and one curved, which are sunk into the hillside and either penetrated or attached to as needed to shape the interior space. The long hallway made by these walls terminates on a caf and observation deck with a view of Fairmonts Downtown skyline and the Monongahela River.

Offices, conference spaces, and restrooms are suspended from the curved wall and cantilevered over the hillside. A thin butterfly-type roof covers the hallway, and collects rainwater for use in the building.

The steel entrance canopy acts as a softening of the mass of the building, a gradient from the open space on the hilltop to the extreme mass of the concrete walls, and reaches over and into the split reflecting pool that flanks the entry path.

physical model

VISITOR CENTER

perspectivesentrance canopy

VISITOR CENTER

exploded axonometric

UP

upper plan and sections

VISITOR CENTER

lower plan and sections

entrance perspective

ART & FABRICATION

WOODWORKING

2008 - 2012

The process of making, and the understanding that comes from that process, is critical to the design of architecture. Without knowledge of how an object can be made, how is it possible to intelligently design that object, to question why and how it might come together, to consider the possibilities of its making?

These projects all start with a specific need, take their form from that need, and that form is then refined as they are influenced by the process of thier own making and the materials available at the time. They are constructed almost entirely of reclaimed or salvaged wood and steel, with either handmade or simple off-the-shelf hardware. Artificial finishes were avoided in an attempt to celebrate the natural properties of the materials themselves, not a simulation or over-exaggeration of color or texture. Thin coats of hand-rubbed polyurethane or natural beeswax were used to deepen the natural grain patterns and to protect the pieces.

Through this reciprocal relationship of designing and making, the smallest detail begins to inform the entire design, and the totality of the object influences each detail. Form and function follow one another, informing and influencing as the cycle continues. Each piece is a snapshot of some point within that cyclical development.

computer chair

WOODWORKING

WOODWORKING

scrap bench

rockinghorse

WOODWORKING

Sallie Gardner at a Gallop Eadweard Muybridge

WOODWORKING

easel

tripod harvestman lamp

WOODWORKING

DRAWING

2006 - 2014

Hand drawing is the quintessential architectural skill. The simple directness of hand drawing and the inherently filtered reductivity of digital media are not mutually exclusive processes. A young designer in our technology-infused world must be proficient with both approaches.

The decision-making and communicatory skills honed by hand drawing are useful in themselves, but are also vital to good digital image creation the clarity of information in a construction drawing or the painterly touch guiding a digital rendering and are often conspicuous in their absence.

DRAWING

barn entrance canopy, graphite & ink

fallingwater, ink & watercolor

DRAWING

castelvecchio detail, graphite & ink

grain silos, graphite

DRAWING

haddad riverfront park, graphite & ink

cinque terra, ink & watercolor

2007 - present

perfido weiskopf wagstaff + goetteland

LAIarchitects

PROFESSIONAL WORK

MIXED-USE DEVELOPMENT

2012 - ongoing

219,000 sf

$25,000,000 (projected)

A full-block development in the Over-the-Rhine district of Cincinnati, OH. The project consists of: a 300 car parking garage, rehabilitation and conversion of seven existing 1890s tenement apartment buildings into a single mixed-use apartment/retail building, a mixed-use condo/retail building which incorporates an existing building facade into its massing, conversion of a partially demolished existing tenement apartment building to a single-family rowhouse, conversion of an existing duplex into three split-level apartments, 9 new single-family row-houses, and a courtyard area for all residents of the block. The existing buildings were in a state of extreme disrepair, even structural failure in some areas, and no original documentation existed.

Responsibilities: Existing Conditions documentation and Field Measurements Massing/Feasability Studies and Programming Masterplan and Streetscape studies SD documents Historic Preservation Tax Credit application documents Client marketing images Planned Unit Development application documents

street view

MIXED-USE DEVELOPMENT

existing block

proposed block

MIXED-USE DEVELOPMENT new townhouses

parking garage

new condominiums

existing building (future expansion)

existing apartments

rennovated apartments

adapted townhouses

preserved facade

adaptedapartments

exploded axonometric

parking garage

townhouses

condominiums

apartments

MIXED-USE DEVELOPMENT

birds-eye

street elevations

OLIVER BUILDING

2013 - ongoing

560,000 sf

$30,000,000 (hotel conversion) $2,500,000 (exterior restoration)

A hotel conversion and exterior cleaning/restoration for the Henry W. Oliver Building, a Twenty-five story office tower originally designed by Daniel Burnham and Co. in 1907. Our task was to document the existing building conditions for the hotel design architects and the structural engineer responsible for the facade inspection. Extensive drawings and records were kept by building management, including a nearly complete set of the original hand-drawn linen architectural and structural construction documents. An inspection of the entire building facade was completed using swing scaffolding platforms, and areas of terra cotta repair, patching, or replacement were identified. A new canopy was also studied for the hotel entrance.

Responsibilities: Field documentation of existing conditions3D model of the building shell, structure, and vertical circulationBackground plan and elevation drawingsExterior restoration documentationStudies to alter non-code-compliant exiting patternsHistoric Preservation application documents

entry canopy study

street perspective

photographs

OLIVER BUILDING

OLIVER BUILDING

metal storefront

OLIVER BUILDING

cornice restoration

21C HOTEL-MUSEUM

2012 - ongoing

98,500 sf (90 guestrooms)

$24,000,000

An adaptive reuse project in Lexington, KY, designed in conjunction with Deborah Berke Partners from New York, which converts an existing historic bank and office tower to a boutique hotel with integrated art galleries woven into the public and guestroom floor spaces. Historic tax credit funding makes up a substantial portion of the project budget, and I was closely invloved with the various submissions and reviews which are included in that process. The building, dating from 1912 and designed by McKim Mead and White, had few surviving drawings available, so complete field documentation was required before the design process can begin.

I have also included images from 21c Cincinatti, which I had involvment with late in the construction administation phase.

Responsibilities:

Field measurement and documentation of existing conditionsRevit modeling of building interior and exteriorSD documentsDocuments for Zoning and Historic District applicationsDocuments for Historic Tax Credit approvalDD documentsPreliminary Non-Structural Demolition drawingsCD documentsBidding documents and addendaConstruction Administration

street perspective

21C HOTEL-MUSEUM

primary elevation

historic photo & proposed restaurant interior

sculptural lampposttotally in love by pieke bergmans

21C HOTEL-MUSEUM

custom wood storefront

steel entrance canopy

21C HOTEL-MUSEUM

21C HOTEL-MUSEUM

guestrooms

21c cincinnatiphotography by deborah berke partners

21C HOTEL-MUSEUM - CINCINNATICINCINNATI

MULTI-FAMILY DEVELOPMENT

2014 - ongoing

475,000 sf

$70,000,000 (preliminary estimate)

A large multi-family housing development for Pittsburghs Robinson Township area. The driving idea of the project was to create a single building design that could be flipped and rotated around the site to create the illusion of five distinct facades. The site slopes considerably from North to South and the lowest floor of each apartment building becomes half-buried. This creates two slight variations in the template (an A and a B type) depending on which side of the building is the full five stories and which is cut off at grade.

The buildings will be all wood-framed construction, with a patchwork of several cladding materials (brick, concrete block, metal panel, wood, fibre-cement plank, and cellular PVC - all in various colors) to break the large mass into a further illusion of smaller, connected buildings. The program also includes a single-story clubhouse and pool, articulated somewhat more honestly as a wood-framed building.

Responsibilities: Revit modelling of site and buildingsFacade studies for apartment buildingsFacade and massing studies for clubhouseDetailing of wood construction and cladding materials

building type B

MULTI-FAMILY DEVELOPMENT

building type A

site plan

clubhouse

LOW-INCOME HOUSING

2007 - 2008

10,000 sf

$1,750,000

Housing commissioned by the North Central West Virginia Community Action Agency (NCWVCAA) for low-income families in Fairmont, WV. The project was designed and partially fabricated by LAIarchitects (now BuildingLABinc). Formally, the units act as a transition point from the verticality of Downtown Fairmont to the more suburban fabric, taking on a wedge-shape in section.

The interiors and exteriors are clad in simple, inexpensive materials, detailed with a delicate and attentive touch to elevate otherwise utilitarian components to something that one might be proud to live in, to call home. The units read as individual volumes, to give a sense of ownership to the tenants, who would often be marginalized and homogenized in similar housing situations.

I was present for the design effort and early construction coordination, before leaving the firm to attend graduate school.

photography by derek hudson and myself

LOW-INCOME HOUSING

WEXFORD HOME

2015 - ongoing

2,100 sf

A single-family home in the Wexford, PA area, constructed on a long, narrow, sloping site. The building digs into the hillside, to create space for itself and to take advantage of the warmth of the earth. The material palette is intentionally reductive, and based on simple, natural materials that will age gracefully and inexpensive cladding to add an industrial aesthetic reminiscent of the Pittsburgh areas past.

The windows and glass walls are all custom-made from mahogany wood by the home owner and myself, and flashed with thick lead sheeting. The butterfly roof form will, in the near future, be channeled via an artful scupper to a cistern, from which lawn and garden irrigation will be drawn.

WEXFORD HOME