Sine Screen is a winner of the Insite 2020 international competition which asked artists and designers to propose a site-specific, temporary public artwork in the Downtown St. louis core. The project is part of a partnership between the Regional Arts Commission, Downtown St. Louis, and Explore St. Louis for a new public art plan to support revitalization efforts in the area. The Insite 2020 competition charged artist to consider how we see downtown St. Louis “…from the actual physical character to different views and sightlines, to our views or perceptions of what this area is and can be – encouraging exploration, curiosity, and a new way of seeing.”i
Sine Screen is a digitally designed and fabricated reconsideration of architectural ornament in the form of a 3d printed masonry screen wall. The project lies at the intersection of Locust and 7th, on the property of Adler and Sullivan’s iconic Union Trust building, now Hotel Saint Louis. The Union Trust Building was built in 1893, one year after the more well-known Wainwright Building. Like its predecessor, the Union Trust building is largely known for its elaborate architectural terracotta ornamentation. The original terracotta pieces were formed by casting clay in individual hand carved molds, a process that has largely remained the same for centuries. Through the integration of old and new technology, ceramic 3D printing has the ability to change both how we design and realize architectural ornamentation. The project explores the role of emerging digital technologies with an understanding of the ways humans have been constructing buildings for millennia. This work replaces the unsustainable, fixed plastic materials of traditional 3d printing with clay: a sustainable, locally-sourced, and reusable medium with deep roots in St. Louis’s rich architectural history.
Sine Screen engages the historical understanding of terracotta as a cast process that can be translated into a material-additive process. The project is comprised of 592 uniquely formed clay units which aggregate to form a self-structuring hypersurface. The geometry of both the individual modules and wall as a whole is drawn from parallel logics that are both tectonic and historically referential. The sculpted form of the units and aggregated system produce patterns of light and shadow, textural fields, and novel optical effects around the sculpture. Sine Screen references Sullivan’s ornamentation, while aspiring to engage passersby and instilling a new relationship with this historical building and downtown St. Louis.
In recent digital discourse, we have seen the ability for endless variation and customization through the use of parametric design software. This work intends to underscore a thoughtful consideration of the relationship between technology and adaptability. Through material behavior and calibrated irregularities, we have the capacity to make each form unique.
Strata is a digitally designed and produced totem comprised of eighteen aggregated cylinders. Each layer of each cylinder is based on the same sine curve radiated around a circle. The variation in pattern and texture of each cylinder is based on the directionality of multiple lofted curves.
This project explores the territory between drawing and installation through the interaction of geometry, materiality, color and perception. The proposed installation exists in two-and-a-half-dimensions - a middle ground or in-between space between two-dimensional lines and three-dimensional surfaces.
Our proposal features a vinyl print comprised of two-dimensional lines and surfaces that envelope the room as a graphic wallpaper and 3d printed ceramic tiles that will emerge from the background graphic as a relief. Both the density and intensity of the graphic pattern and printed tiles will emerge and recede in a cloudlike formation around the perimeters of the room through a series of layered lines, planes, and ceramic volumes. Here, points become lines, lines become surfaces, and surfaces become volumes to create new spatial potential. The 3d printed ceramic tiles can also be read as an embodiment of the line formed through the continuous extrusion of a line of clay into a multi-layered object. The 3d printed hexagonal tiles - smooth on the outside and textured and colorful on the inside – highlight, amplify and emerge from the graphic geometric background pattern. Colorful ceramic glaze, applied to the inside of the tiles, is reflected onto the surface of the graphic background while shadows cast from the relief of ceramic tiles build new geometries on the patterned wall. The tiles absorb and radiate different qualities of light to produce an experience for the viewer that is both temporal and sensorial. The multi-perspective quality of the installation invites the viewer to walk around, continuously enveloped by a geometric fog, instead of being a passive observer.
Veil House explores the concept of brick as a veil - something that appears to drape around space, concealing parts while also revealing. In this project, the brick facade serves as an experiential filter, providing a connection between interior and exterior, public and private.
Designed as a live/work space, the work space takes up the entire lower floor with an entry at the front. At the entry, I created a large tear like opening so that the brick veil seems to pull away, revealing the entry and pulling visitors to the interior. The second two floors are dedicated to living space with semi - outdoor balcony space on those two levels. The facade provides privacy on the living levels but also engages the dynamic streetlife of Cherokee street with the patterning of the bricks.
Looped blurs the boundary between sculptural object and spatial framework. By wrapping the visitor on all sides as one passes through, the project presents a continuously shifting spatial experience that overlays and frames the park context, ground, walls and roof. The pavilion is made of bent aluminum rods and rope forming a lightweight structure that sits delicately on the ground. The layering of taught ropes creates a moiré effect that, when superimposed on the garden’s landscape, suggests another layer of textural canopy that responds to the observer’s movement. As visitors move between the pavilion’s curving spaces, the existing landscape is constantly altered providing a new way to view the garden.
The agricultural Missouri landscape is a tapestry shaped by nature, economics, and engineering. This installation reinterprets this pattern as a field for play, comprised of discarded portions of carpet.
Around four billion pounds of discarded carpet goes into landfills each year. 36.9, 89.6 uses carpet remnants, recomposed into a pattern geometry derived from the agricultural landscape of Southeast Missouri. Offcuts in shades of green, gray, yellow and brown will be collected and cut to form the landscape pattern. The previously unusable pieces are given new life through the exhibit’s design.
This project represents, for us, a rare opportunity to explore the duality of timelessness and temporality through the cycle of presence yielding to absence returning to presence. Sukkot commemorate a time of wandering; a temporary condition ending with the arrival at a permanent refuge. Sukkot also commemorate the harvest festival wherein the period of abundance is celebrated in the agricultural cycle.
Our proposal for the Sukkah embodies these ideas in its assembly, physical form and constructed condition. The geometry resembles a hut with three openings alternating with three walls. The walls and openings are not of a traditional wall/void relationship, but rather a lifting of the structure from the ground allowing for passage. This emphasizes the condition of being detached from the ground. This detachment and its implied impermanence is reinforced by the fading materiality of the construction. The screening layer has a defined bottom, but becomes increasingly porous, disintegrating towards the top. Like the waning moon, the implied form is understood without the total presence.
with Urban Improvement Company (UIC)
Sited on a corner lot in the historical Botanical Heights neighborhood of St. Louis, the “Double L House” features an L-shaped configuration in both plan and section. The roofline of the house recalls the “flounder” style roof typical of the historical St. Louis city neighborhood. The three bedroom single family home incorporates Botanical Heights’ strong traditional context, however, the block has a mix of architectural styles that allow the new construction to fit well within the streetscape.
The house takes advantage of the double lot site with still maintaining a fairly modest footprint. The L shaped plan allows for a private courtyard in back providing precious outdoor space in the city. Additionally, the plan incorporates a separate volumefor the master suite. The intersection of the one story and two story volumes is articulated through the slotted entry to the house.
with Axi:Ome
Nine Network is a space for public events, educational programs and media seminars within their existing KETC office space at Grand Center. New construction for the 1,800 sf unfinished space added a kitchen, conference room and one enclosed office along with furniture designed for educational programming, an on line newspaper and public media viewing events. The existing floorplate was expanded with the extension of office space over the existing double height breakroom and the cantilever of the conference room over the same space. In addition, the western wall was visually opened with glazing to create views through the double height space to the neighborhood and basilica beyond.
Conceptually, the spaces are banded together through various light media. The spaces of KETC interiors are colored through light. This includes LED bands of light along critical surfaces, slots of linear light over open workspaces, paint-source lights and the light of projected media.
