roberto jenkins tanzi portfolio

Roberto Jenkins Tanzi

Academic / Professional

Commercial / Mixed Use / Residential / Pavilions / Cultural + Educational

Commercial Pavilions

Cultural + Educational

1 4Piaggio Center Pinch

Aqueous Mass

5NCCA

Wildwood School

9000 Wilshire

Mixed Use 2

Boston City Hall

New Keelung Harbor

Diamond City

Residential 3Guardsman Lodge

Island Incubator

[email protected]

Roberto Jenkins Tanzi

Yale School of Architecture / Critics: Greg Lynn + Nate Hume

Piaggio Center

CLUSTER OF PODS

TRADITIONAL LINE

RECONFIGURABLE PODS

RECONFIGURABILITY OF FABRICATION COMPONENTS

3D PRINTING PAINTING ADDITIVE MANUF. WORKER TRANSPORTRAW MATERIAL TRANSPORT

MEZZANINE VISTA

CLUSTER OF PODS

TRADITIONAL LINE

RECONFIGURABLE PODS



MEZZANINE VISTA

CLUSTER OF PODS

TRADITIONAL LINE

RECONFIGURABLE PODS



MEZZANINE VISTA

Piaggio CenterSomewhere in ItalySpring 2015Lynn+Hume Advanced Studio

Piaggio Center is a hybrid factory+showroom that highlights the reconfigurability aspect of the contemporary fabrication process. The typical process is broken down into re-configurable components that are housed in a series of pods, each with its own function. The pods aggregate around three central nodes of production, which are constantly being reconfigured into new production lines.

The project explores the concept of moving architecture versus fixed people, highlighting the movement of these inter-changeable pods throughout a cavernous interior space. This inner “machine-world” is hidden and mysterious from the exterior, and revealed to visitors through an overall vista in the main lobby.

The perimeter of this dynamic inner world acts as a coastline condition between visitors and factory workers, converging at each assembly node.

The larger pods can be reconfigured with different fabrication methods, ranging from painting booths to 3D-printers and additive manufacturing.

The smaller pods transport raw material and pre-assembled components to each of the fabrication pods, as well as workers and visitors to each of the assembly nodes.

Commercial / Mixed Use / Residential / Pavilions / Cultural + EducationalCommercial / Mixed Use / Residential / Pavilions / Cultural + Educational


Neil M. Denari Architects

9000 Wilshire

9000 Wilshire is located on historic Wilshire Boulevard in the heart of Beverly Hills. This project is designed for the highest market level tenant in a city known for luxury space. The sensibility of the design emerges from many lessons learned from NMDA’s HL23 project in New York including the use of clear, low iron glass, bead blasted stainless steel and a geometric language that is clean yet optically and phenomenally ambiguous.

The conical corners with triangulated rustication along with the material finish, dramatize the play of light on the surfaces. Meanwhile, the basic rectangular shape of the floor plates allow for the greatest amount of flexibility for the tenant.

My involvement was focused on developing a new proposal due to the clients’ discrepancy with the amount of leasable space lost with the previous scheme. Working as the sole 3D designer under the guidance of Neil and a project manager, I developed a new façade and massing system that would adhere to city codes yet produce a highly-detailed formal language.

Beverly Hills, CA2014Proposal

9000 Wilshire

Yale School of Architecture / Critics: Marion Weiss + Michael Manfredi

Island Incubator

Island Incubator rethinks the existing master plan for the Cornell-Tech campus on Roosevelt Island, proposing a heavily landscaped plinth with a figural network of bars floating above. The project is broken down into three discrete objects: an infrastructure axis, a ground object, and a floating network.

The infrastructure axis arises as a critique of the current scheme, where a boundary road disconnects users from the river coastline. The proposed solution is to create an underground axis that runs down the middle of the island, freeing up the ground level for pedestrians.

Each of the four hubs is centered on a main lobby that spills out onto the landscape. Together they frame a series of intimate spaces that connect the neighborhood along its main axis. From north to south, there is an arrival court, a ferry station, a main quad, a courtyard, and finally an overlook plaza that adds a subway station and frames Manhattan views of the UN.

In the upper floating network, each of the hubs creates a pause in the continuity of the bars, allowing for different types of program to meet and share a series of communal spaces and vertical circulation.

Current Scheme Proposed Scheme

Moscow SOM Precedent Study

Roosevelt Island, NYCFall 2015Weiss/Manfredi Advanced Studio

Island Incubator

Ground ObjectInfrastructure Axis Floating Network

Yale School of Architecture / Critics: Ed Mitchell + Aniket Shahane

Boston City Hall

The vision for Boston City Hall is greater than that of an individual government building. The proposal is a mixing chamber that encourages interaction through shared public programs. In other words, the project becomes a gathering hub for urban life; a microcosm of the city that brings in a multitude of public amenities.

The project engages with the existing site by creating a “ground” figure that organizes access into our site. It links the three nearby existing subway stations into a dynamic urban plaza with a centralized location in the city and a connection to existing infrastructure (leading to the airport and other major landmarks.) It follows the pedestrian flow from the neighboring Faneuil Marketplace and creates a central courtyard adjacent to each of the 4 lobbies created for the additional programs.

The aggregation of program stems from a couple of issues identified in the existing scheme. Mostly, the existing building and plaza don’t engage enough to encourage movement throughout the site, and having a singular governmental program leads to a singular mass with a centralized entry point and a limited number of visitors.

By adding a hotel, commercial offices, a subway hub, and a series of urban amenities, the aim is to create more interaction between urban life and the traditional functions of City Hall.

Partner Credit: Eunil Cho

Boston, MAFall 2014Post-Pro Intro Studio

Boston City Hall

New Keelung HarborNeil M. Denari Architects

The international competition for the New Keelung Harbor Service Project, won by NMDA in September 2012, presented an opportunity to expand on issues such as mass, shaped windows, and clean yet complex developable surface geometry.

My involvement with the project was mostly for the design development stage of Phase 2, which houses the Harbor authority, police station, a large post office, transfer facilities, a weather station, and a vast array of harbor support offices, in a 53,000 square meter, 70 meter tall structure. Based on a courtyard type, the building is a distorted and punctured form with specific cantilevers and surface orientations. The punched windows move across two floors and in various directions; two attributes that change the perception of the size of the building.

Most of my logged hours consisted on modeling and rendering different massing schemes, as well as working on the production of the DD set. I helped draw a new plan set in accordance to the latest 3d model, as well as 2 detailed plans of the entry lobbies.

Keelung, Taiwan2014DD Phase 2

New Keelung Harbor

Tom Wiscombe Architecture

Diamond City

Proposal was based on the concept of a giant interior city carved out of a mysterious diamond-like object. This approach stands in opposition to conventional master planning, where a set of reductive instructions such as building use, open space, and setbacks inherently undermine any tendency towards massively dense or monolithic forms. Rather than infilling the site following the European model, or sprawling across the land following the Jeffersonian model, this project is about singularity.

The design is based on nesting a complex crystalline object inside of simpler exterior object. The inner one is too big to fit fully inside, and therefore it sometimes cuts through the outer object. The resultant figural cuts open up the outer object to the city, revealing the increased complexity on the interior.

Personal emphasis was placed on developing the final massing in order to accommodate a series of proposed cultural programs while maintaining the original concept, of a carved interior space. I also produced a series of diagrams and plans that represented the different environmental, programmatic and schematic concepts proposed for the competition.

Adelaide, AustraliaSummer 2013Open Competition

Diamond City

IBI Group

Guardsman Lodge

Guardsman Lodge is a proposal for a 26-unit ski-in condominium building in Park City, Utah. Working directly with the Office Director and a Project Manager, I was the lead designer carrying out the project from Pre-Design through Schematic Design.

Developed over the course of 11 weeks, the process consisted on weekly client meetings and site visits to discuss the project’s intention, followed by a series of studies relating to unit layouts and core+fire stair distributions. As the sole designer, I was responsible for creating the entire plan set, as well as the 3D model, renderings, elevations, and sections.

Although the project was being worked on mainly in the SLC office of IBI Group (one of the 5 largest architecture firms in the world), the interesting part about the design process was that there was constant feedback from project specialists in other worldwide offices. Through online meetings, they would provide suggestions and bring up any significant issues.

Park City, UTSummer 2015Pre-Design - Schematic Design

Guardsman Lodge

Pratt Institute / Critic: Gil Akos

Pinch

Using the physics-based engine Kangaroo for Grasshopper, the seminar explored the parametric possibilities of grid shell simulations. Inspired by initial explorations on analog machines and parametric structures done by Antonio Gaudi and Frei Otto, the seminar moved seamlessly between analog and virtual paradigms. The goal was to produce prototypical architectures both effective in nature and efficient in its distribution of forces. Thus simulation becomes tangible, to-scale, and non-representational. These simulation techniques concluded in a pavilion structure organized along a distorted row of hexagons, producing a primary interior circulation as well as three separate entry circulations. Details explored in the earlier stages of simulation led to the creation of a series of design process that influenced the overall shape and curvature of the grid shell structure.

Brooklyn, NYFall 2012Seminar: Form, Force, Matter

Pinch

Mark Foster Gage Architects

Aqueous Mass

Design was a collaboration between Intel, VICE Magazine and W Hotels, thought of as a series of installations designed to showcase Intel Ultrabooks in six W Hotels around the globe. It’s made from folded aluminum that doesn’t need any welding, and folded together efficiently as possible in order to facilitate shipping and construction. It’s about mobility, plugging into different kinds of atmospheres, and taking you to another place.

I helped design and optimize the final scheme developed according to the clients’ feedback. Personal emphasis was placed on designing and prototyping different structural methods for the overall installation, optimizing the geometry in order to maximize material efficiency and human interaction, and producing a series of material options while coordinating with the fabricator for production.

Multiple LocationsSummer 2012Built Installation

Aqueous Mass

Tom Wiscombe Architecture

National Center for Contemporary Arts

This proposal is a continuation of Tom’s body of work named ‘objects wrapped in objects’, which deals with discrete, chunky objects gathered and squished together in a sack. This strategy creates complex interstitial spaces and layered interiority, making the contemporary museum a space of surprises and discrete experiences rather than one of an endless continuum of paths.

The interstitial spaces between objects and sack are technically exterior space, but they are enclosed with infill glazing deep inside reveals. These spaces are inhabitable and contain the primary circulation of the building. The sack is articulated with architectural tattoos that subvert subdivision logics in favor of the free-form figuration allowed by composite construction.

Tattoos are executed in such a way as to blur the edge between discrete objects and visually re-establish the larger object, as if qualities from the black objects begin to loosen and drift onto the sack.

I developed various design proposals throughout the rapid competition schedule, and produced all diagrams and sections of the final scheme that was submitted.

Moscow, RussiaSummer 2014Open Competition

NCCA

Neil M. Denari Architects

Wildwood School

I was part of the team that worked on the winning competition entry for a new high school campus called Wildwood School. We developed a proposal tailored to the specific needs of a high-end private school by focusing on elements such as agility, connection, and community.

My involvement was mostly in the production of a series of conceptual diagrams that highlighted the different aspects of a flexible program being proposed, as well as the visualization of interior and exterior spaces, and assisting in writing the RFP that detailed construction costs, budgets, and coordination with various consultants.

One of the biggest achievements about winning this competition was not only the short amount of time available to produce a convincing proposal (about 3 weeks), but the fact that we were able to beat other high-profile firms such as BIG, Gensler, and Koning-Eizenberg. The project is scheduled to start construction in 2017.

Los Angeles, CA2014Invited Competition Winner

Wildwood School

roberto jenkins tanzi portfolio

Documents

fabrication pods

use of clear

larger pods

series of pods

material finish

different fabrication

interchangeable pods

painting booths