Eric Burnside

California

New Mexico

Arizona

SALINE VALLEY CIRCUITDeath Valley Resort

Instructor: Akari Takebayashi

Tasked with designing a hotel complex in Death Valley National Park, California, we had to take into consideration extreme climatic factors, as well as the challenge of designing on a site simply devoid of other built context. Initially we conducted an exhaustive series of material studies. I chose an off-the-shelf material, common spandex fabric, and explored the properties of the material to develop a means of creating space in a controlled, organic and responsive manner.

The material studies presented a number of possible architectural concepts from which to choose. We were encouraged to begin with a concept that would allow us to negotiate programmatic needs yet generate a unique, sensory, and phenomenological space.

The characteristic features of the Saline Valley Circuit are the height field of posts and the undulating, fabric-like interior. Like the models from the material study, the height of each post in the field corresponds to a translation of the fabric interior. This pulling and pushing, and stretching generates the occupiable hotel interior.

Saline Valley Circuit

Material Studies

Saline Valley Circuit

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Although rainfall is exceptionally rare, the canyons of death valley

The racetrack provides the canyon while a drainage system at the periphery collects the drainage for treatment and reuse

Rainwater, Ground water, and gray waste water can be collected underground then treated for reuse

Channels running the length of the hotel, creating an airspace. Skylights allow the heat of the desert to enter and be stored for the cold nights

The airspaces also allow natural light into interior rooms and act as a passive duct for air circulation

The entire project is undergroud to take advantage of the earth’s thermal mass. Due to the desert locale, heating and cooling costs to adjust to the climatic extremes would be very high. Therefore as many passive and active strategies must be used to minimize energy demands

Saline Valley Circuit

[ A - Section ] 0 1 46 08

[ B - Section ] 0 1 46 08

Roof

B1

B2

Roof

B1

B2

Responsive relationship between posts and the resulting transla-tion in fabric

Saline Valley Circuit

Parking

Spectating/ Club Lounge

Main Mechanical

Restaurant

Fitness

KitchenBar

Ballroom

Gallery

Lounge

Lounge

MechanicalHouse-keeping

Storage

[ Program ] 1/32” : 1’

[ B1- Plan ] 0 1 46 08

Saline Valley Circuit

Parking

Main Lobby

Reception

Admin

Retail

Retail Storage

Cafe

Kitchen

Library

Ballroom

Gallery

Spectator

Restaurant

KitchenBar

Racing Garage

[ B2- Plan ] 0 1 46 08

Saline Valley Circuit

CENTRESPORTECommunity Sports Complex

Instructor: Anne Filson

Town Branch Commons SCAPE

Space Group

SCAPE

EOP Architects

Space Group

Rupp Arena Renovation

Arts and Education Campus

CentrePointe MasterplanCentreSporte Site

Arts and Theater District

Thoroughbred Park

CentreSporte is a compnaion proposal to the extremely controversial CentrePointe project in downtown Lexington. Furthermore I designed this project to anticipate many of a most influential developments currently under consideration, which are shown below. I intend CentrePointe to contribute to a vision of Lexington put forth by the current city government and groups like the Fayette Alliance, which suggest that Lexington must grow up, grow more dense and prevent urban sprawl. Lexington is blessed in that it possesses a growing urban center yet its iconic Bluegrass Landscape is within a short driving distance in any direction. CentreSporte will, therefore, contribute to refocusing Lexington’s economic and cultural energies downtown, by helping to overcome downtown Lexington’s deficiencies in places to live, places to park, and become a center for recreation and health and wellness for the city core.

CentreSporte

Urban Residential ZoneCentral Business District

Urban Threshold Site

ResidentialCommercial

Public Services

Retail

Restaurant

Hotel

Cultural

Site

Downtown Lexington is quite interesting in that there exist many distinct barriers, or thresholds between areas. The CentreSporte site is located on once such threshold. On the Vine Street side of the site is the Central Business District Proper of Lexington, and the High Street side faces the beginning of Lexington’s Urban Residential zone. Since the two conditions are only separated by one block the transition from fast, high volume urban center, to residential and vice versa is very sharp. Therefore I wanted CentreSporte to negotiate the dichotomy between urban zones delicately, by taking into consideration scale, material, light and traffic and conditioning them to each of CentreSporte’s faces.

When you break the city down by program, the threshold becomes even more precisely defined, and once an see the clear line between urban residential and commercial zones. One of the clear shortcomings is the lack of high-volume downtown residences. Where there are several businesses or shops that offer second floor apartments for rent there are relatively few places to allow many residents of Lexington to actually live downtown. If we hope to refocus Lexington’s energies downtown, then it should be an area of town people can live and want to live. The model of development for Lexington for the past several decades has been low desity, single-family dwellings - the suburban model - but the efficiency of mixed use developments is beginning to catch on. CentreSporte combines various price levels of apartments, a fitness center, marketplace and grocery, downtown parking and public space.

CentreSporte

Missing TeethSite

Highlighted are Lexington’s “missing teeth,” and many residents will tell you how detrimental they are to the appear-ance of Lexington’s downtown landscape. Most, including the CentreSporte site, are pay-to-park lots not owned by the city parking authority and are essentially lots ripe for development. Through CentreSporte I would like to stress the importance of using the land and resources within Lexington’s current bounds and protect our iconic cultural landscape by reducing the impact of suburban sprawl.

Examples of Lexington’s growing food truck market, a testament to the strong grass-roots movement taking hold

CentreSporte

CentreSporte’s main feature is the multi-level fitness center, open to members and building residents. Because the building faces both High and Vine Streets there occupants can enter in a manner of ways. Cars enter the parking structure on the High street side, while downtown pedestrians enter through the open level public plaza facing Vine street. Both means direct occupants to the atrium, providing them consolidated access to their destination, whether that be the fitness center, grocery, or their apartments. The Public Plaza was designed to accomodate Lexington’s growing number of food truck operators, attracting businessperson’s during lunch and providing the trucks with a centrally located and reliable venue.

HIGH

VINE

H igh

S t r e e t

Ma i n

S t r ee t

Vine

St reet

Dec. 21

Jun. 21

CentreSporte

Solar Diagram and Site Section

CentreSporte

Vine Elevation

High Elevation

CentreSporte

Limestone/ East Elevation

Upper/ West Elevation

BRIDGE TO THE MOONSatellite Tangency

Instructor: Akari Takebayashi

THX 1138

//: Approach vector theta Distance remaining to lunar destination: 384476 km travelling currently at:0 km/hr

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THX 1138

//: Approach vector theta Distance remaining to lunar destination: 384476 km travelling currently at:0 km/hr

qjiewjf

THX 1138

//: Approach vector theta Distance remaining to lunar destination: 384476 km travelling currently at:0 km/hr

qjiewjf

THX 1138

//: Approach vector theta Distance remaining to lunar destination: 384476 km travelling currently at:0 km/hr

qjiewjf

THX 1138

//: Approach vector theta Distance remaining to lunar destination: 384476 km travelling currently at:0 km/hr

qjiewjf

THX 1138

//: Approach vector theta Distance remaining to lunar destination: 384476 km travelling currently at:0 km/hr

qjiewjf

THX 1138

//: Approach vector theta Distance remaining to lunar destination: 384476 km travelling currently at:0 km/hr

qjiewjf

THX 1138

//: Approach vector theta Distance remaining to lunar destination: 384476 km travelling currently at:0 km/hr

qjiewjf

THX 1138

//: Approach vector theta Distance remaining to lunar destination: 384476 km travelling currently at:0 km/hr

qjiewjf

THX 1138

//: Approach vector theta Distance remaining to lunar destination: 384476 km travelling currently at:0 km/hr

qjiewjf

THX 1138

//: Approach vector theta Distance remaining to lunar destination: 384476 km travelling currently at:0 km/hr

qjiewjf

THX 1138

//: Approach vector theta Distance remaining to lunar destination: 384476 km travelling currently at:0 km/hr

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We were tasked with simply using a series of images, like a comic or film strip, to illustrate the spectacle and experience of scale one would have if one could travel from earth to the moon. My proposal plays with one’s notion of perspective and how bodies in space travel about each other in orbits, but what if one could travel in a truly straight trajectory.

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What we perceive as travel in a straight line is actually travel

along the surface of the Earth...

...you could depart along a truly straight vector from your current

position.

But what if...

The surface of the earth would begin to fall away from view as you moved closer and closer to the moon. Furthermore, if one could

set a straight line trajectory from the “top of the earth” to the “bottom of the moon,” you would depart right side up but arrive on the moon upside down, with respect to the moon’s gravity.

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OBLIQUE STRATEGIESI n s t r u c t o r : M i k e M c k a y

The objective is to develop a flexible and dynamic system through the use of repetitive elements or the repitition of simple operations, without the aid of parametric software. The task is reminiscent of contemporary Emergence Theory, the concept that complexity grows from simplicity.

Taking five pages of text, I marked every letter e, and then spaced the pages evenly. Finally I drew continuous lines down through each row of e’s, passing through each consecutive point. The resulting field study, while random, shows areas of varying density. To control these conditions I designated several different grouping types.

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System input groupings

System Output: Bundling begins to occur as an unintended, organic consequence of the initial rule set

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System Output: A result of attempting to control bundlng into spatially interesting configurations

EMERGENT STRUCTURESI n s t r u c t o r : J a s o n S c r o g g i n

unit assembly

unit variat ions

u n d e rO V E R

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The standard unit . The tr iangular form al lows the system to modu-late in three dimensions without having to change the angle or orientat ion of any piece. The length of each unit remains the same, only their posi t ion changes. This throws an element of i rregu-lar i ty into the system. Therefore any areas of void or sol id in the system, unal tered, are omission or increased densi ty but only accord-ing to the implied system capabil i -t ies at large. Alter ing the unit by sl iding one, two, or three members introduce al ternate t rajectories , a long which the system can grow. These al ternate t rajectories can be corrected and real igned with the s tandard system by introducing the original al terat ions opposi te .

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TRANSLATIONSW o r k s h o p S e r i e s

I n s t r u c t o r s : K y l e M i l l e r + B r e n n a n B u c k

Using parametric design software, we were tasked with designing a pattern based on visual complexity composition alone, which was then projected through a cube. The pattern carves out negative and positive space within the bounds of the cube, leaving a register of the full cube. Then using digital fabrication techniques to cut the necessary pieces, and hand assembly we were able build a physical model of a complex and precise object.

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