PORTFOLIOPORTFOLIO

Steven Pitera

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Thesis.Record; the urban fabric:

Extracting dense urban fabric using tools and information gained from vinyl records

Furniture Design/Woodworking:

Personal furniture designs for clients from concept sketches to final product.

3 Bowery Information Center:

Accessing and understanding tome information.

4 Brooklyn Housing: Housing project in Brooklyn.

5 City Island Learning Center:

Rethinking the concept and organization of what it means to learn within a space.

6 Record Houses Exhibit:

Model of Rick Joy’s Tubac House for the exhibit “50 Years of Recorded Houses.”

7 Record Houses Exhibit:

Model of Rick Joy’s Tubac House for the exhibit “50 Years of Recorded Houses.”

THES

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Concept

The objective of this thesis was to provide an opportunity to open up questions of how we interpret and resist past events. These events, characterized by the piercing and breaking of the city fabric, release a set of tectonic information that could then be used for architectural analysis.

Essence of Railway Insertion Into Fabric Impact of Insertion

STUD

Y OF

Record Groove Analysis

HOW ARCHITECTURE CAN READ

The project was segmented into a few moments to help provide an example as to how the pressing of vinyl records could pro-vide a beginning. This starting point into how one might extract tectonic information, was achieved by intro-ducing a moment to pierce the urban fabric, a moment that integrates with the fabric, and finally a moment that builds upon the aftermath of the previous two actions.

ARCHITECTURE INFO PIERCES

INTERGRATION + PIERCING OF

TECTONIC RECORD DEFINES

THESIS.RECORD

FURN

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Concept

The piece was designed to provide analternate to both custom and IKEA furniture. The materials were found or taken from past project scraps but were treated with the same care that a designer builds using fresh materials

Drawings

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Many libraries today are too linear, with an entrance progression containing a threshold, a security device to keep books from being stolen, and a pathway to the front desk.

My feeling is that they are too closed up, which in turn, limits the person from engaging his/her goal of obtaining information. This yearning for information is so primitive that the rich, poor, well, sick, etc., all try to get it.

So this library should encompass this idea, that one should have the ability to engage the space from any angle he/she wishes; from the subway, from the street at the corners, from the adjacent buildings, and from the street if one feels the need to jaywalk .

Concept

Iteration One

The visitor enters from any location on the ground level. From there the visitor has the choice of which path to take to find the stacks or books.

The library’s facade, with its open cuts and overlapping cantelieves, gives the feeling that one is entering building made up of stacks of books.

The only goal of the visitor is to obtain the book. Everything else is confusing, but structured. The library is also the end result of the previous two iterations. Using extending balconies and free circulation, the library takes the form of stacking.

Iteration ThreeThe visitor has a personal experience in the library. Since the Bowery belongs to the residents and it’s their home, the library belongs to the visitors looking for information.

The library interacts with its surroundings. Its balconies and walls touch other buildings and provide a cover over the sidewalk.

Iteration Two

5th Floor2nd Floor

1st Floor3rd Floor

4th Floor

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6.

This project is based on the idea that “man interacts with machine; machine produces thought; machine shapes the way we see and feel.”It also related to the story “The Secret Miracle” by Jorge Luis Borges both metaphysically and literally. In the story the main character tries to “design” his own death with the many possibilities in which he could die. This is manifested in the display machine in that the user can place the book in any position he or she chooses. The book I speak of is “Labrinths” by Jorge Luis Borges which contains “The Secret Miracle.”

Book Display

BRO

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Shifting Combination

1st Floor

2nd Floor

3rd Floor3

Concept

Using Le Corbusier’s standard housing unit in Unite’d Habitation with it’s dual moudular space, I modified the original unit and created my own apartment complex. This showed me it was possible to provide a community feeling on a crowded Brookyn plot while providing the maximum amount of space for rent. Each unit is situated in a way that their orientation generates roof gardens, balconies, and situations in which light and air can move freely through the building. The building’s two masses rise up while a mass of empty space “karate chops” a space for it to exist. This opprotunity givesme the option of providing the essential program space to provide egress stairs, elevators, stair shafts, and an entrance.

Elevation and Details

3rd Floor1st Floor

Plan

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2nd Floor

CITY

ISLA

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Concept

After studying Aldo van Elck’s Orpanage Home and also taking some inspiration from my past studies of Roman Townhouses, I felt that the classroom was an important part of a kindergarden. It’s the reason such a building is designed and built. The question then was how can I elevate the importance of the classroom to the kindergarden and how can the kindergarden relate to the surrounding neighborhood?

Since the classrooms are an important part of my kindergarden, I placed them at the top. Taken from my previous study models, I believed the classrooms were the most private and, therefore, needed to be raised to absorb most of the sun, wind, and views that the site offered. They were contained along an axis of privacy that stretched from the corner of Fordham Street and Fordham Place. This privacy zone moves from street to street which radiates out exploring the site. The classrooms cannot function without the proper functional spaces. So spaces like the administration, music, cafe/multi-purpose, and bathrooms are not contained in a moduale like the classrooms. Instead they represent the “indigestables”, morphing to the privacy on the site is forgotten, they are structural and support the classrooms.

Roof Plan

3rd Floor

2nd Floor

1st Floor

Plan

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Entr

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Cro

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Sections

MO

CAPE

ConceptThe fundamental goal of the entry is to maximize the possibility of artistic and intellectual exchange while respecting the inherent programmatic and environmental constraints of museum design. This involves the delineation of distinct zones- collection and non collection, public and private, service and served. Each zone is assigned to either MOCA or PE.1 Based on the need for specific circulation, environmental, and structural considerations for each zone a simple topological strategy is deployed.

MOCA Tube

PE Tube

Circulation

The concept of box and tube provides a simplediagram for circulation. As a tube has an opening at each end, the MOCA and PE each havestaff and visitorsentrances. Accessfor the staff and parking is throughone end of the tube (facing the Civic Center to the south) and entry for the public is through the other (facing the Youth Activity Hall to the North). Although the entrances are grouped together, they quicklydiverge after ticketing. Within the museum the tube provides both vertical and horizontal access to the exhibition spaces. These paths are divided in length and width into public and private zones. In this way, the public, staff, and professtionals share the connective tissue of the knot. This continuous throughfare encourages the exchange of ideas while providing a formal language for navigation to MOCA or PE exhibition spaces.

Site Context

North Elevation

East Elevation

South Elevation

West Elevation

HO

USE

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Rick Joy Record Houses

Exhibition Model

In collaboration with Architectural Record, a series of models were constructed to showcase 50 years of the magazine’s Record Houses feature. This particular model is Rick Joy’s Tubac House in Arizona.