1st PLACE – $1200

suckerPUNCH: describe your project.

euibeom LEE / keunyoung RYU / kunho KIM:
Urban parks provide rest and comfort to people who live in the city regardless of its size or location. In addition, parks are where people can reconnect to the mother nature in the midst of busy city lives.  Parks also serve as romantic dating spots, and sometimes create dramatic atmosphere. The urban parks bring out the most synergies when they are fully integrated with infrastructures, nature, climate, and events and add more livelihood and dynamics to the city.

The site of Williamsburg is a place where a music festival is held annually within Manhattan, and it provides relaxation to every visitor. This place can create different atmosphere based on the characteristics of events, the density of people at the events, and the time.  Though, it is utilized in many different ways such as a venue for events, its primary purpose is to provide rest to people and create community for them.

Despite that a physical program, a concert hall, is added to the site of Williamsburg, the park has to maintain its natural atmosphere of the waterfront which is attributed to a harmonious combination of the purpose, surface area, east river and the site. The concert hall should have not only plans that enhances spatial completeness and software completeness as it serves as a medium that links Manhattan city and programs of the park.
To achieve these goals, origami methodology is used to the entire landscape. With this design methodology, the park can preserve its physical area and become the hub that connects tensions of festivals and ambience of city by planning a concert hall using landscape.

< To combine the park, concert seats, stage and Manhattan City as its background into a single place >
Such plans allow various performances to have different level of urban activism. We plan the main concert hall with a stage inside and the park outside. This plan has the east river as its background. Performances at the main concert hall will be sensational and powerful at the same time when people sit at outside seats utilizing slope of the roof. Such plan is different from standard methodology that separates performances from events dedicating a part of the park for events only. The plan we are suggesting is to combine the park, concert seats, and stage into a single place. The concert hall will stay equally energetic as before with the Manhattan City as its background and preserve its functionality as a resting place by not separating the park and events.
The extended space of the landscape will be used to hold various amenities, such as swimming pool and restaurants. The park, festivals, and service programs will be blended graciously at the space and operate simultaneously. Though this methodology, events will become space as well as programs and connect the place with the city. Secondary and tertiary concert halls and programs planned on many levels will have various views. It will be planned to enable for people to watch festivals and participate in events and bring them fun and rest at the same time.

As we preserve the characteristics and area of the park with landscape design and by adding programs to the extended space through the plan, we will make the events that are held intermittently at the park and characteristics of the park coexist harmoniously.

sP: what or who influenced this project?

Installation arts : Tokujin Yosioka, Christo and Jeanne Claude, Michael Heizer, Field Operations

sP: what were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?

Reading
L.Moholy-Nagy_vision in motion (1969), BIG_YES IS MORE (2010)

Watching
Tokujin Yosioka_ SPECTRUM, Atta Kim_ON AIR, Christo and Jeanne Claude _ARTWORKS,

sP: whose work is currently on your radar?

BIG, SANAA, CHN Arquitetos, 3XN, NL architects, Field Operations, West8..

2nd PLACE – $800

with joanna-maria HELINURM + rangel KARAIVANOV

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project:

justin DILES: Lenticular Field is a low-flying cloud of steel and fiber-reinforced iridescent Mylar hovering over East River State Park. On the ground, a concrete plinth houses program and bends toward a waterfront stage while the voluptuous canopy shades and zones the park, its surfaces absorbing Apollonian power by day and releasing this energy in a Dionysian frenzy at night.

The project’s variegated volume and dramatic shifts in character share an affinity with both lenticular clouds, known for their peculiar shapes and coloration, and lenticularly-printed images that morph animatedly from one state to another.

Parti
The current park is a vast sloping lawn, punctuated by concrete pads, flowing from street to waterfront. The project organizes this lawn from above into several primary interconnected outdoor rooms: market, glade and ballroom. This is accomplished by spreading an imaginary plane, originating from the top of the site’s lone building, over the park and then cutting, torquing and tessellating it with a pentagonal pattern of varying density. This tessellation becomes the template for an intricate, canopy structure that pushes up and down from the datum established by the top of the existing building. The preservation of this low datum within the canopy binds the park to the existing neighborhood and stands in opposition to the mediocre high-rise development to the south. The canopy is accompanied by a concrete plinth that maintains the level of the street as it pushes into the site to become a pier in the landscape containing program: storage, restrooms and a multi-level lounge that occupies both the top and interior. An outdoor room with sports courts and a lawn for sunbathing are given shape by their adjacencies to the plinth and the canopy.

Canopy System
The canopy design consists of a tubular steel and cable space-structure and iridescent shades. Unlike pure tensegrity structures that illustrate the same structural concept regardless of configuration, this system permits less-efficient moments of bending in order to better integrate multiple design goals. Structural performance is balanced with the collection and release of energy, and the shaping of a diverse set of vibrant, atmospheric outdoor spaces. The entire canopy thickens and thins as needed to shape outdoor rooms and accommodate spans of varying distances. The canopy also irregularly touches the lawn and plinth to form columns that reinforce the spatial layering of the project.

A fiber-reinforced Mylar shading system is attached to the steel members. This system forms a perforated, kaleidoscopic skin for the internal structural cloud. Individual shades actively shape space by modulating the contour of the canopy as needed at local moments. The shades vary in height and area, compressing or expanding spaces with convex or concave curvature. Additionally, bottom shades provide acoustic reflection at the stage while top shades integrate solar collection to power integrated LED lighting. At night the LEDs work in concert with the translucent iridescent surfaces and reflective structure to liquefy the canopy into a vaporous, glittering mass of light.

sP: what or who influenced this project?

jD: Louis Kahn, Robert Le Ricolais, Konrad Wachsmann, and Constant Nieuwenhuys
These architects and artists assigned incredible importance to space-frame and tensegrity systems in the 1950s and 60s. The sense that society could be directly transformed by designing with them was seductive and pervasive. I wanted to revisit that moment with this project now that space-structures are less tied to their idealistic origins and primarily understood as independent architectural devices. I’m personally fascinated by the intricate qualities that can be elicited from these systems when sensitivity to form, color, heterogeneity and even surface are fore-grounded over preoccupations with optimized structural performance and material efficiency. And while these systems are now largely divested of the social meanings that originally popularized their use, this legacy is still an important node in architectural thinking. Jelly’s Pool Parties, in a small way, have offered the type of free-space for play and culture so imaginatively explored by artists like Constant but so often noticeably absent in contemporary life. There is a resonance between the Utopian fantasies of the 60s and the type of space that East River State Park could become through a smart combination of design and programming.

sP: what were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?

JD:

(re)Reading
The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays by Colin Rowe
Packed with discerning and inspired analysis of a rare order.

Listening
Mostly an eclectic mix of old favorites: Charles Mingus, Big Star and My Bloody Valentine
Lenticular Field should feel like Big Star’s ‘#1 Record’ during the day and My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Loveless’ at night.

Watching
The Daily Show online is my digital umbilical to the US while working and teaching in Vienna.

sP: whose work is on your radar?

jD:

Jenny Deller (filmmaker)
Angelina Gualdoni (artist)
Greg Lynn (architect)
Bruce Pollock (artist)
Kenneth Snelson (artist)
Ruy. Klein (architects)

Project Team:
justin DILES
Design & Production Assistants:
joanna-maria HELINURM
rangel KARAIVANOV

maxi SPINA: Very Interesting approach to cope with the issue of providing shelter for a large crowd through a modular structure -yet flexible enough to create singular moments due to the easiness of malleability of the textiles. The project captures the atmosphere of festive events through a formal and materially active ceilingscape, which becomes, together with the skeleton, depository of representational values such as light projection and mutant coloration. In this way, project successfully creates a space which is at once at the same time supple, yet full of character, generic while locally differentiated. This capability allows the structure to simultaneously accommodate a variety of events.

jose GONZALEZ:interesting idea of a superframe which is modular and ever changing, just like the program. it would have been good to see more development on how the actual spacial conditions of the site change as the frame changes.

THIRD PLACE – $300
williamsburg waterfront performance venue competition

suckerPUNCH: describe your project.

sahand AHMADIAN TEHRANI + dena SAFFARIAN: Inspired by the mechanisms of self-organization and bottom-up adaptations of cities, we propose (instead of a final answer to the program) a network of “infrastructure” capable of hosting a multiplicity of configurations for the original program as well as undetermined scenarios and future programs.

The trellis and the landscape together – the infrastructural network – will create a highly differentiated field of qualities and atmospheres, enabling and encouraging event designers (or the end users themselves) to improvise ad-hoc stage setups, enclosures, etc. according to the needs of each event and in relation to specific spatial qualities of each spot in this heterogeneous field.

Design Strategy:

Stage 1: The landscape is the only part having a top-down design, and acts much like a zoning master plan for the second stage. 
Stage 2: The trellis is grown over the landscape by a swarm of interacting semi-autonomous agents, interpreting the qualities of the landscape in each step and reacting to these qualities (discontinuities, openness, etc.) and to each other (density, structural combination, etc.) to create a framework, a base for improvisation. 
Stage 3: Provided with adequate information on the structural and technical capacities of the framework (color-coded on the structural elements), event designers are encouraged to improvise their design and “complete” the building for the single event. The infrastructural network will ensure a coherent architectural image for the waterfront venue, independent of how each event is spatially and materially designed.

sP: what or who influenced this project?

Urban Dynamics / Agent Based Modeling / Self-Organized Growth of Cities.
Constant’s New Babylon / Lebbeus Woods’ Freespace / Yona Friedman’s Spatial City.
 
sP: what were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?
 
Reading:
Non-Plan, Cities and Complexity

Listening to:
Faramarz Assef’s Haji, Grim Fandango OST, Chris Clark, Aphex Twin

Watching:
Salvia Dreams

Thanks to araz AZARNEJAD and saj

maxi SPINA: Very interesting approach to frame the space that houses large crowds of people through a piping mega structure. In doing so, the project brings up infrastructural memories of the recent past of Brooklyn related to the railroad and the port. While the assembly strategy for the structure is definitely a plus of the proposal, it would be interesting to see how some of the space between the piping could be covered in order to provide real shelter below.

HONORABLE MENTION – $100
williamsburg waterfront performance venue competition

suckerPUNCH: describe your project.

inés MOLINARI/mercedes PERALTA/dana SÁEZ/cecilia SEGAL/carolina TELO: The project presents an architecture investigation is inspired by geometrical models: Chinese traditional techniques such as origami and the tan gram game, geodesic investigations developed by B. Fuller, and other mathematical models such as fractals.

Williamsburg became a rich information source to produce a material that would be enough flexible and light in contrast with the skyscraper landscape that gave us a hard background together with an industrial imagery of degradation. As a result, it feeds on local imagery, playing with existing aesthetic traditions that we found in the site: industrial landscape, bridges, American kiosks tradition, and contemporary independent musical culture. At the same time, it aims to produce both an aesthetic effect on landforms and a spatial structuring pattern to organize and distribute program into territory.
There are three differentiated systems:

01_KIOSKS. Program system

(program) Mobile devices distributed homogeneously by a grid that interferes with landscape and a new artificial topography “inspired by” Tschumi´s follies at la Villete Park
(behaviour) Generative spatial grid produces a family of prototypes that respond towards different needs. Mutation states: from open to close bearing in mind program flexibility.
(materialization) Spatial framing structure such as balloon frame.

02_ORIGAMI. Shading system

(Program) a variating covered field integrates the main and secondary stage with differentiated standing areas as well as intermediate waiting areas
(behaviour) Stages, standing areas and stages are covered by shading leaves that can be opened in the winter and closed during summer. The same may apply during day and night, allowing for special effects to take place in further technology development.
Intermediate waiting areas are partially-covered areas where the roof structure releases shading patterns during day-light and artificial led patterns during the night shows
(materialization) is a light-weighted tensed structure that emulates bridges structural behaviour. The tensional structure is covered by textile “translucent” leaves that can be opened and closed to regulate light, air and temperature.

03_TAN GRAM. Topography system

(program) An artificial topography adapts to existing landform, taking its way even into the river. The system works with different actions such as: standing, sitting, laying, playing, sleeping and many other variations that could result from these genres.
(behaviour) Each item produces a different effect. It may act as a plane floor, or as a slope which invites to relaxation activities. The strategy appeals to repetition and difference due to variation. Tangram game’s logic resides in dissection of seven different figures which altogether fit as a square. It allows to create different combinations, without overlapping. This model influenced the arrangement of topography items in the site.

(materialization) The puzzle is organized with independent items built as prefab concrete.

sP: what or who influenced this project?

iM/mP/dS/cS/cT: Buckminster fuller, Emergent, New York, Japanese metabolists, Bedford avenue, Coney Island, retro futurism, Pithagoras, origami, Woody Allen, YMO, Electric Eels, Biomimicry, Patterns, star wars, xkcd (web comic), theo jansen, delirious new York, robots, fractals, legos, Stanley Kubrick, glow in the dark, FOA, bits, nylon mag, wes Anderson, the jetsons, powers of ten, gego, mgmt, daft punk, space invaders, outer space, symmetry, burle marx, ps1, twinkies, zombies, rubies, tangram, gentlemen broncos, arizona ice tea, david bowie, awkward family pictures, ffffound, sweets, pyramids, system theories, smithson’s, Anton Perich.

sP: what were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?

iM/mP/dS/cS/cT: Phylogenesis: FOA’s Ark, Mgmt, Yo la tengo, the magnetic fields, daft punk, jonathan richman, little joy, the strokes, david bowie, the royal tenenbaum’s soundtrack, Roxette, gorillaz’ pastic beach, ymo, devo, talking heads, city noises, Gentlemen Broncos, jazz, random conferences at TED.com, AD Patterns, Phoenix, The Alan Parsons Project, Deformica, Trueno blanco, Bob Dylan, Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd.

sP: whose work is currently on your radar?

iM/mP/dS/cS/cT: Ciro Najle, Emergent, SANAA, Archigram, OMA, Buckminster Fuller

Juror Comments:

maxi SPINA: The project provides and interesting approach to cope with large scale spaces through ideas of self-organization and mutability at the micro scale. This capability allows it to create different ranges of porosity through the bending of the ‘umbrella’ pieces. While this idea creates a field effect that can respond to individual desires, the resulting configuration seems to be overly generic and lacking of identity for a prime city shoreline.

jose GONZALEZ: I like the variation in scales of the project, how the shifts within the ceiling structure translated to the ‘pods’ below and how the different combination/organization of those modules allow them to host different programs.

HONORABLE MENTION – $100
williamsburg waterfront performance venue competition

suckerPUNCH: describe your project.

alberto FERNÁNDEZ ZEQUEIRA + francisco RODRÍGUEZ SUÁREZ: The concept for the project came from the park’s unique industrial past. Drawing inspiration from the original and forgotten railroad lines of the site, a new system of rails was designed for the project’s numerous stages and kiosks. This network provides for an infinite number of possible configurations depending on the size and type of venue while maintaining and enhancing the parks sense of open, natural and inclusive space. Maximum flexibility with minimal infrastructure. Innovation through historic interpretation.

Park Entrance:

A new public plaza along Kent Ave. provides much needed open urban space for the growing residential community and a Queue area for park events. Care was taken so as to maintain the unobstructed views of the river and Manhattan skyline from the street. 

Visitor Center:

The Visitors Center serves as the main terminal for both park and community activities. It’s bearmed, green roof gently slopes down towards the river providing additional seating area with spectacular elevated views of the park and riverscape. In the Center, visitors will find administrative and support spaces, bathroom facilities, a café and a large, open, multipurpose, main exhibition hall. The center protects the only original tracks left which now extend through the center from the river to the plaza connecting both physically and symbolically with the park’s industrial legacy. 

Main Stages Rail:

The Main Stage can be divided into two 30′ x 20′ units which can be positioned along the park at strategic points allowing for maximum flexibility in venue types an sizes. The Sculptural bearmed roof of the Center Stage provides a dramatic backdrop for the concert inside the park while discreetly respecting the residents on the other side. 

Secondary Steges Rail:

Not all events are mega concerts. Two 10′ x 30′ stages traverse the site offering gathering spots for a variety of smaller events. These stages pass through the Visitors Center ending on the new public plaza allowing for free entertainment even while the park grounds are closed. 

Food and Bar Rail:

In conjunction with the stages, the Food and Bar Kiosks can be positioned for easy and efficient access by the visitors. Their flexibility alone allows for spectacular waterfront dining at a variety of culinary events such as; local organic markets, food and wine festivals, barbecues and Oktoberfests. 

Vendor Kiosks Rail:

10 kiosks flank the park on two separate rails, 5 on each rail, and as with all other stages and kiosks, can be discretely put into storage when not in use

sP: what or who influenced this project? 

aFZ + fRS:The history and expansiveness of the site along with the raw and dynamic energy of the pool parties. 

sP: what were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project? 

aFZ + fRS:Rita Indiana y los Misterios, The Clash, Fang Island and watching Spain win the World Cup 

sP: whose work is currently on your radar? 

aFZ + fRS:Office dA, BIG, SANAA, DS+R and Chilean Architecture 

Juror Comments:

simon KIM: Interesting premise of activated landscape as machine, with programmatic reconfiguration.

MIKE szivos: The idea of program moving around on rails is great. I wish the overall proposal investigated this more and relied on this to produce an interesting condition on the surface of the site, rather than a formal approach to the landscape that suggests movement.

suckerPUNCH: describe your project.

yashin KEMAL: [myoo-tuh-buhl] mu·ta·ble
–adjective
1. liable or subject to change or alteration.
2. given to changing; constantly changing;
 
The urban proposal ‘Mutable Layering’  is a bus and metro transport interchange that links Beijing’s expansive 2020 masterplan with the city’s increasing problem with water shortages and drought.

The bus terminal redefines the transport interchange typology by removing the existing insignificance and monotony of travel through Beijing.  By creating a dramatically layered landscape each visit to the interchange creates a different experience than the last – a mutable landscape.
The harvesting of rainwater celebrates the importance of water within Chinese tradition and culture by creating a series of interior and exterior cultural gathering spaces as an oasis within the dense urban fabric of central Beijing.
Mutable Layering’s architectural agenda is to choreograph people’s movement vertically and horizontally through a stacked / layered space between the bus terminal and the metro line. The most exciting ‘moment’ for the visitor will be travelling through an undulating, topographical building landscape where the rainwater harvesting roof meets floor level creating spaces for waiting, resting, eating and social encounters. 

sP: what or who influenced this project?

yK: The project was influenced by my initial experimental studies involving fluid aggregate and fabric formwork  which consequently  developed an interest in urban networks, nodes, flows and transport interchanges. Design tutors Andrew Yau and Andrei Martin (Urban Future Organisation).

sP: what were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?

yK:Catalytic Formations, Digital Tectonics, Yes Is More, SMLXL, Phantogram, Crystal Castles, Eluvium, Hearing Aid.

sP: whose work is currently on your radar?

yK:AL_A, Moh, JDS Architects, MAD, B-A-N-D, Urban Future Organisation

SOFTlab: After a month of printing, kickstarting, laser cutting, and binder clipping we are done! CHROMAtex.me will be opening this Thursday night at the bridgegallery. Thanks everyone for your support through kickstarter! It has been a ridiculous amount of work, but also a lot of fun. The people that have volunteered to give a hand have been great. We all can’t wait till Thursday night.

opening thursday august 26 6-8pm
bridge gallery 98 orchard st NY (between broom & delancey)

suckerPUNCH: describe your project.

bryan SCHUTMAAT: For the past few years, I’ve been taking intermittent trips westward. I’m moved by the mountains, the open spaces, and all the other natural beauty the American West has to offer. But I’m also moved by the places in between—the old cafes, motels, gas stations, and so on. These days, both the wilderness and these small businesses seem to be in peril as developers move in and alter the physical and economic landscape. So, through photography I aim to preserve these aspects of the West that seem to be vanishing. From my trips, I developed this series, Western Frieze, which examines America’s cultural identity and how it relates to the landscape and whatever mystique the West has left.

sP: what or who influenced this project?

bS: The main motivation for this work comes from a simple sense of affection for the landscape and what I find around me when I’m out traveling.

sP: what were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?

bS: Townes Van Zandt and Wim Wenders.

sP: whose work is currently on your radar?

bS: Dorothee Deiss

Pratt Architecture School Degree Project 2009/2010
Circus on the Edge: Nomadic Architecture as a creative aid and Distribution platform

suckerPUNCH: describe your project.

guillermo BERNAL: A creative aid and distribution platform, the nomadic equipment can be positioned as momentary anchoring. Their goal is both to situate themselves on the exterior in order to open new trails, and to weave, or even to repair certain links. to put holes in the public space using the invasive, nomadic presence of the war machine, or any other technique of sudden appearance invades and overcomes everyday life.

Located primarily in a decaying city. The Circus on the edge makes do with what it finds, enveloping and adapting found structures, resources and technologies to infiltrate, innovate and construct space for community, as well as community itself, in unusual and provisional ways. It also intends to confront creation with the public, in all of its diversity and contradictions, as well as its occasional tensions, and to confront it with the public space, as well as its complexity and richness.
The Circus on the Edge is not one complete city, but a constantly moving and fleeting fragment. Acting as an agent for change, it provides an instant dynamic system for the production of new urban and cultural space, seemingly disintegrating and connecting the local and global, and the real and not so real. The reciprocal relationship between Circus and everyday life becomes a state where society can negotiate its own future.

sP: what or who influenced this project?

What: Algorithmic/Parametric Intelligence, Circus Life /// Who : Thom Mayne, Federico Fellini, Yael Erel, CHRISTOPHER KUMPUSH

what were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?

Reading: Circostrada Network, Morphosis : buildings and projects., D2A, digital to analog//Listening: Two door cinema, Chromeo, Kid Cudi, MAD DECENT RADIO, Control Z volume 1, Minus the Bear.//Watching : 8 ½, the imaginarium of doctor Paramus, Top Gear.

whose work is currently on your radar?

LEBBEUS WOODS, Morphosis, BIG, Herzog de Meuron, Easton+Combs, Lorenz Lachauer

Credits:
Crits Yael Erel, Christopher Kumpush
Pratt Institute Architecture School

suckerPUNCH: describe your project.

kadri KERGE: Toxic Garden is an artificial landscape for plants to investigate the nature of new paradigms in structures. Synthetic Structure is a new structure system that generates new species of formal behaviour. Toxic Garden is looking possibility of form generation as an autonomous act and new conditions of structure behaviour. The Structure contains toxic plants. The Growth of the plants and toxic miasma effects structure.This two functions together creates an autonomous system.

sP: what or who influenced this project?

kK: synthetic structures, skin mutations and skin disasters, cancer -
systems behind the geometry

sP: what were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?

kK: Listening: psychedelic music

sP: whose work is currently on your radar?

kK: Francois Roche, Hernan Dias Alonso, student/academic work