Tonight:

here is the site with program volumes sited. Somehow whoever designed romney (the lower building) or Montana Hall (upper building) decided that these two buildings along a major axis did not need to "precisely" line up


what I did to transition this strange dual axis was to stretch the south half of program and constrict the north half. The green taller form tapers to allow each end of the building to align... the inherent problem of building in the middle of traffic patterns is that the structure would obstruct movement.

the solution is to push down the building (previous study model)

also to blatantly rip off big.dk and their diagramming technique (which, obviously, I like)

Study Model

a higher quality study model. The better the representation of a space the further my imagination seems to be able to travel.

Constraints + Inspiration

Olympic Park, Seattle Washington, Weiss / Manfredi

Previos scheme, courtyard at bottom that would act as a terminal between different studio areas... low courtyard experience very dull, static...




The most recent edition of Wired magazine had an article about design. Essentially the people at wired boiled design down to one thing: constraints. Without constraints anything is possible but nothing is really, for lack of a better word, correct. When everything is right nothing can really be done.After reading that article I found some constraints, and more importantly engaged with them. The most formative for this last round has been the 1 :20 slope where a sloping plane becomes a ramp. I used this (along with some inspiration from Weiss / Manfredi 's Olympic sculpture park) to create the scheme i have now.


The south slope is much more gentle than the north. This arrangement keeps the building from self shading in the winter and spring months. The cuts in the ground could be windows or doors for the studios and restaurant below...

Architectural Intervention

Recently I have been thinking a lot about architecture as intervention. Without doing any research on the term or the word (which is my inclination) it seems like it is mediation. What I believe architecture should be. A set of materials bound together to create something that solves human problems and advances humanity. Solves a problem, even if that problem is not evident... or especially if that problem is not evident



the goal is to create an intervention that binds people together and provides a space for them to work. Esentially a message from the University to the students that says, "we appreciate hard work, innovative work, and here is a place for you"

Shade and Shadow on a Narrow Site

these sun studies were actually quite hard fought.
Here's what doesn't work:
importing the Rhino files into revit... they are all some bizarre polysurface that very much does not like to interact with anything or anyone


Measuring sun angles in rhino with a spotlight... (this would actually work if I got the spot far enough away and big enough... like however far away and big the sun is...)


What does work: (and this will save someone out there two-four hours of their life)
Just draw the walls at the accurate height around the plan (this is in Revit), use advanced model graphics (a little white curved plane button at the bottom of the screen) and within that dialog you can change latitude and longitude, time, etc.

now here is the important part:

do not do it in plan view


do the advanced graphics in your site plan view...


otherwise you will waste a fair amount of time trying to figure out why the shadows all go the same distance regardless of wall height... i would imagine

Amphitheaters

based on the turn of the century plans by cass gilbert I am trying to create a space in front of Montana Hall that will create the same feel that the original plans would have created. Where I am currently is a scheme that is too fragmenting. I think that the square in front of the mall still needs to allow for, and encourage, interaction. Now it is cutting the space in two (or three)

the two precedents up top are alvar aalto, the double amphitheater is an excellent idea...

and a bridge near the bibliotheque national in paris. I really like how it handles verticle circulation.

Campus logic

this might be sort of an ironic title given that the images are pretty scattered

Publish Post

and hard to read. (and... i guess also inverted...) Anyways, the original intent of the Mall was that it would be part of the a capitol complex (when bozeman could have been the state capitol) Now it is something else... very jumbled and without a whole lot of order. I am really surprised that the axis of the mall has stayed as intact as it is. The old plans (more to come later) are very classically inspired and much different than the current pink snaking routes that the paths now take.