J1931 is an alteration and addition to shingle- style, pattern-book, late 19th century house built on a generously-dimensioned city lot with a 65' tall, 4' diameter oak tree standing near its north edge. The project extends the interiority of the house on the one hand, by including the north yard as a "room" with clearly defined edges, while also re-casting the oak tree as the virtual center of the house. A pocketed, operable glass wall on the first floor allows the project to act both as a room within the house and a sheltered extension of the yard, which is used primarily as a plot for growing vegetables and grapes.
The exterior surfaces of the project (roof and walls) are clad in recycled, fluted, reflective aluminum shingles (manufactured in the U.S. using coil stock that is 99% or more recycled) whose tone and hue mimic fluctuations in their surroundings. The interior is clad in white-washed oak (walls & cabinetry) and black-stained floors (concrete and bamboo). The new interior spaces defined within and adjacent to the house are surrounded by thickened walls housing storage, appliances, insulation, wiring, plumbing, and lighting - all the trappings of domestic life.

Research & Development Grant, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, 2011

Praxis X; Thresholds 35: Difference; Flip Your Field, ACSA

Anchoring Dispersion provides a spatial and physical framework for the questions of the competition program, and for an ongoing dialogue about catastrophe, and memory. The pedestrian fabric of the boardwalk itself is dispersed upwards, to the sea, and anchored by structural masts and a curated exhibit pathway. Each dispersed fragment of boardwalk is identified by a place name, from the Holocaust, distinguished from, but interspersed within, sites of genocide worldwide. As these place names are revealed by the lifting boards, we are given to believe that the entire boardwalk hides an ocean of names and dispersals yet to be anchored.

HydroCity Busan is an ecological, recreational and urban development master planning proposal for Gadeokdo Island. Boasting the largest port in Korea and a continually expanding, reclaimed coastline, Busan is literally a city built on water. By using the island's topography to full advantage, HydroCity creates a new ecological urban model for Gadeokdo that includes both urban density and natural habitat continuity. This allows both the scenic and environmentally valuable coastline and mountain peaks to remain undeveloped and used for the future as a natural and recreational resource. The water resources of the island are actively managed, drawing on both ancient Korean hillside farming techniques and contemporary resources in water management technology. HydroCity gives water a central role as an ecological, recreational, and development resource. Just as the use of water is planned from coast to mountaintop, the terraces provide landscape links between the peak zones and the coastal zones, allowing for a natural continuity between this range of habitats and making both readily accessible.

HM46 explores the possibilities of vertical wood siding as a cladding system. The project is one in a series of small addition projects - including J1931 - which mimic and extend the existing vernacular cladding systems (shingles, shakes, siding) of their architectural hosts. Doing so involves examining the systematic qualities of the existing cladding system and identifying opportunities for altering or expanding its inherent architectural possibilities. Through this process, the traditional cladding system may be revised through substitutions in materiality, enhanced versatility, or altered application methods. HM46 represents both a reconsideration of traditional cladding techniques, and an adaptive renewal of these techniques enabled by material and technological advances.

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SplitFrame consists of two integral pieces - a floating Observation Deck and an elevated Viewing Station - connected via a hinged staircase. It is situated at the end of a long weir, a vestige of the wildlife sanctuary's former use as a commercial cranberry bog. Working with only hand-held power-tools, all on-site construction was completed without the use of heavy equipment. Informed by student research on sustainable construction technologies and building materials, design precedents, and the project's 19-acre site, the studio worked collaboratively to develop and implement the project following the final client review. Using an innovative pre-cast concrete pin-foundation system for the elevated Viewing Station and a floating aluminum frame assembly for the Observation Deck on the water, the project was designed to minimize its impact on the site, both in construction and over the projected life of the structure. Together, the two platform components provide an immersive site experience, bringing visitors out onto the water, and offering an overview of the sanctuary from the maple tree canopy above.

Jones Winery Sited among a cluster of historic farm buildings on a site continuously farmed by the Jones family for six generations, the Winery Tasting Room and Event Space involved the adaptive reuse of a large 19th century dairy barn. The initial efforts of the project involved preserving and exposing the rich, historic textures and materials of the barn, many of which had been covered over, including a massive fieldstone retaining wall and the barn's multi-phase, timber-frame structure, while also emptying the interior both visually and physically. Following this process of editing the existing conditions, the base of the barn was visually cut away, while the envelope above the base was left in its monolithic, unaltered state. From the black concrete slab flowing from the interior through the expansive exterior terrace to the large glass overhead doors which fill or open the cuts in the side of the barn, the adaptive new components spliced into the barn extend and repurpose its visual and symbolic envelope.

The Tangshan Earthquake Memorial Park is an accumulation of landscape components - from a modulated collection of ten - which are brought together to form both the Park and Memorial. Each modulated component represents a specific ground condition, with the monument ground as the most important within the set. The Earthquake Memorial is made of three of these landscape components: the monument ground, the memorial pools, and the living groves. It is a place of reflection and remembrance where loved ones can gather, drawing water from the memorial pools to write the names of loved ones upon the monument ground. The ground of the Earthquake Memorial extends to the East and to the West as a series of interconnected pathways, built of the same staggered components as the memorial ground. To the west, the ground extends over the ruins, via a series of elevated pathways, offering visitors an opportunity to move through and look over the ruins and providing the possibility for connecting the memorial to the planned Square of the New Era (Master Plan 2005-2010). To the East, the staggered memorial ground extends through the park, connecting the memorial to the local infrastructure. While the memorial pools separate the monument ground from the ruins to the West, the living groves extend through the park to the east, connecting the landscape of the Earthquake Memorial with that of the large park surrounding it. It is also proposed that the future museum be built on the Northeast corner of the Earthquake Memorial, in the center of the Park on the primary North-South pathway. Throughout the park, the ground is the area of focus for which the variation and repetition of staggered landscape modules provides a strategy for creating a unifying and moving experience.

Drawing on a picturesque tradition concerned with the concealment of boundaries, scenic contrast with minimal visual transitions, and surprise, PARKSLOPE merges landscape and equipment. To this end, slope is the principal means used to produce a crafted topography in which play- and park-scapes are consolidated.

The immersive environment that results supports an extensive variety of play experiences through a careful synthesis of complementary organic and synthetic materials. Slopes blend into benches, balancing beams, scaling inclines, climbing walls, and transition into slides and tubes which connect the synthetic play surface at the top of PARKSLOPE with the surrounding organically surfaced play areas below.

Engaging tactile and sensory experiences are provided both by the materials of PARKSLOPE and by the connections they create with the surrounding lawn and stately trees gracing John Leigh Park, which remains visually connected across the shallow fosse defining the southern edge of the play area.

There is a legend that lace was born of the sea, in Venice, through the gift of an exotic and delicate water plant brought back from a distant voyage by a young Venetian mariner for his lover. She cared for the plant carefully, her adventurer again at sea, but it inevitably began to fade and give way to age. Seeking to preserve its memory, and that of her absent beloved, she is said to have taken needle and thread and meticulously copied the intricate patterns and lines of the plant, creating a material translation of its every detail.

Overlace proposes to extend the rich history of Venetian lace, creating an architectural experience intimately tied to the city's past by translating the materials of this craft for which Venice was once famous into both a structural system and urban strategy. Structurally, the density of the lace pattern is tied to the physical load it needs to support, reaching maximum density at the areas of highest moment and shear stress, while becoming more open and transparent where these stresses are lower. At an urban scale, Overlace acts as a fabric accommodating both a complicated program and navigating a series of difficult transitions on and over the Grand Canal. The structure is stretched and modified to engage the conditions of the site, directly connecting the Campo S. Vidal and Campo d. Carita while seamlessly integrating both the required program and the spaces that occur along the route that is created. At once a space of transition and a programmed structure, Overlace is a projection for the future of a city of revived and reinterpreted traditions.

A joint project between the City of Middletown and Wesleyan University, the Green Street Arts Center was conceived as a local arts destination, offering after-school programs, access to studio and recording space, and arts courses. Situated in a transitional neighborhood, the Center's welcoming interior opened directly onto a poorly lit parking lot. North Studio was asked to seek out possibilities for enhancing the Center's visibility and its relationship with the surrounding streetscape and neighborhood. Through an initial research project, the studio sought out opportunities to extend the perceived safe space of the Center's interior beyond the limits of its exterior walls in an effort to enhance the identity of the neighborhood, and engage the broader Middletown community. The result was a report in the form of a Playbook, presented to the Center's board and community partners.

Following the presentation, North Studio was asked to focus on developing potential improvements to the Center's entrance and parking lot. Site analysis revealed that the parking lot drive aisles were significantly oversized. By reducing these to standard widths and reconfiguring the Center's parking lot, a new "site" was created between the parking lot and the building's front door. At 14' wide and 48' long, it was proposed that the site could be programmed for outdoor projects for the Center's successful after-school programs. As an exterior room complementing the Center's interior spaces, the site would be used as both an outdoor classroom and a mediating space between the center and the surrounding community. The project was carried out by the City of Middletown's Department of Public Works.

INTERTIDAL is a park in perpetual flux. Its topography carefully calibrated to the amplitude of the tide, it is a park free of objects where use is tied not to space but to relative tide and topography, their interrelationships rendered as patterns in an endless, fluctuating loop. Responding to the sea's ebb and flow, the intervening wetscapes and landscapes reveal the cyclical and recurrent processes of a nature that is more effectual than picturesque.

The park oscillates between three distinct states during any given tidal cycle: pools, stripes, and islands. At low tide, the park consists of a series of linear pools that act as circuited reservoirs for marine life. The pools spread across the designed topography as the tide rises, leaving a series of stripes that form north-south connections between Main Street and the canal path. At high tide, a collection of islands emerge, which contain intertidal's programmatic elements, including a celebratory green space, a bandshell, a visitor center and arboretum.

Situated between the Cape Cod Canal and Main Street, the site holds the possibility to connect two of the town's most important resources and attractions. In making the connection, intertidal also responds to two distinct scales - acting as a gateway to the system of linear parks along the canal and as a catalyst for main street retail activity. Connecting Main Street and the canal, INTERTIDAL is an accessible and didactic wetland, and also a fully accessorized park. In addition to a crafted range of wildlife habitats, the park is marked by a series of open green spaces and augmented by specialized attractions.

Stationed Overseas is a research project focusing on the architectural, planning, and development initiatives for the reuse and conversion of decommissioned United States Military Bases and other land holdings in the Republic of Panama and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. These sites, while typically outside the purview of architectural study, are part of a long tradition of military camps, outposts, and fortifications built and strategically planned on a grand scale. With over 135,000 acres of former U.S. Military positions between them, a combined area that is nearly ten times the size of Manhattan, Panama and Puerto Rico offer a rich collection of case studies in large-capacity planning, land use and programmatic conversions, and environmental rehabilitation, all of which are critical issues not only for developing countries and communities, but also for the architectural profession at large.

As systematic structures of organization and regulation, codes set the terms for architecture's amenability to an ever-widening web of internal and external forces. Nevertheless, codes generally - and building codes specifically - are frequently dismissed as onerous requirements to be met and inhibitions to the free undertaking of design. This myopia overlooks the reality that codes are neither neutral nor objective documents. Physically ambiguous, yet charged with political, social, and formal intent, codes operate as the architecture of architecture, creating its preconditions and shaping its production. As they continue to exert such power, architecture cannot remain uninterested in the production of codes, nor disengaged from their directives.

Traditionally, in architecture as in other fields , codes have been treated as a tool of choice for the imposition or explication of order. How does architecture codify its boundaries, and how should those boundaries be mediated? Is there room for social, political, or economic agency in architecture, and how might their terms be negotiated? What role could architectural production play in shaping - through tactful engagement with the codes that intersect it - the systems behind these codes? Such questions are as expansive, and as unavoidable, as the possibilities of codes themselves.

Built to circumvent the interruptions and encumbrances of the Manhattan street grid, it is of the utmost importance that any strategy for reengaging the highline within the broader cityscape of Manhattan must go beyond the linear condition into which the high line was designed - as an extension that could easily be severed. It is therefore proposed that the Highline must be grafted onto other urban structures and programs for which it is particularly well suited - parks, the waterfront, athletics - as an integral component within a system of continuous loops. The highline and its adjacencies are particularly suited to a range of activities and programs that the general grid condition cannot accommodate or encompass. In presenting a supplementary form of organization, the loops join these eccentricities of New York - the Park, Broadway, the shoreline - which coexist with the grid, but are never subsumed by it.

The looping strategy operates at all possible scales, ranging from the standard block (an island within streets) to the entire island of Manhattan itself (an island within an archipelago). Central to the proliferation of this looped system are programmatic events that punctuate the loop and three dimensionally activate the specific blocks they occupy. The multiplicity of nested loops within these blocks provides for the simultaneity and layering of infrastructure, circulation and program that transcends the limitations of the single-datum and vector-based Cartesian grid, and allows for the reintegration into the streetscape of a new topography.

These variations within the platted pattern are but moments - the strategy of loops seeks to effectively establish another pattern altogether, woven through and within the flat, rectilinear framework of streets and avenues through out the city. It is a pattern which does not respect the singular division between the street infrastructure and the blocks of stacked interior, nor does it encourage the base condition of object-oriented, plot-line development. Instead, the gradual blurring of the grid and the multi-level looped systems allow for the possibility of another Manhattan.