CONCEPTUAL PROJECT:
ONE ROOM
SPRING 2025
UIC, CHICAGO, USA - The project brief was simple, "Choose a pre-existing art exhibition and use it as a reference to create an architectural one room building, of whatever scale and function.
One Room is a single family house project that takes the lessons learned from the following art gallery, challenging the conventional ways of design and living, treating the design process through a focus on individual objects, typology, and communication.
REFERENCE - MIKE NELSON - HAYWARD GALLERY
The purpose of Mike Nelson's exhibition was to immerse visitors in different and unique spatial, psychological, and sensory experiences.
Mike Nelson's main exhibition room contains 3 entirely differently designed atmospheres, all inside of one singular room.
Hayward Gallery Room: minimal, white, clean, structured, and equally spaced out, bright, spacious, geometric, silent, cool, orderly, neutral, calm, symmetric, soft-lit, bare, monochrome, measured, pure.
Desert: chaotic, abandoned, left-to-will, fragmented, windblown, submerged, dystopian, deserted, corroded, tattered, weathered, displaced, topographic, eerie, oppressive, still, echoing, dreamlike.
Photography Red Room: secretive, sinister, experimental, isolated, surreal, uneasy, distorted, improvised, enclosed, ad-hoc.
3 Case Studies
1. IIT Crown Hall - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe:
The interior of Mies's Crowne Hall teaches us that the actions that take place on the interior are more important than the actual built project, everything that appears on the architectural drawings, the steel beams, the glass facades, is all just a frame for the actual facade, which in reality are the students, the messy tabletops, and the countless of architecture models and projects scattered throughout the building.
2. Fire Station Number 4 - Robert Venturi:
The station's flat-faced façade communicates directly to the linear road ahead like a billboard, "this is a fire-house!"
Subtle decisions like leaving a single black brick on the white façade convey the importance of the two-dimensionality that is meant to communicate typology.
3. Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans - Claude-Nicolas Ledoux:
Salt Mine building, constructed of extractions mined nearby.
Demonstrates the importance of vernacular architecture.
ONE ROOM - POST STUDY MODEL
ONE ROOM's post study model capitalizes on three lessons learned from the previous case studies.
¹ (Crown Hall) The actions that take place on the interior of a building are important in communicating a buildings typology, therefore visibility through large glass windows into the interior is crucial.
² (Fire Station Number 4) The silhouette of a given building should be able to communicate a buildings typology. Whereas in a firehouse, the tall hose tower is symbolic, the simple gable roof is likewise the same for single family houses.
³ (Royal Saltworks) Communicating location and typology through vernacular architecture is a way to reinforce typology.
ADDITIONAL GABLE ROOF STUDY MODELS
FINAL MODEL
FINAL DRAWINGS
FLOOR PLAN 2
FACTS
Completed Spring 2025 Semester, under the guidance of Paul Andersen
Physical model constructed with 1/16" basswood
OTHER PROJECTS
