Chicago Woodburning

A piece created for my wife, recalling wonderful times in Chicago.

House Design Competition: New Harmony, IN

This entry for the New Harmony Bicentennial House Design Competition was recently awarded Third Place.  The 1,200 square foot house is designed to be durable, energy efficient, affordable, and in keeping with the character of the historic houses of New Harmony (a small historic city in southern Indiana).  The competition was initiated by Historic New Harmony and the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art, and was supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.



Restoring Trastevere

Detail Plan, New City Gate, Piazza Perspective, and Aerial Axonometric

The aim of this project was the redevelopment of a poorly designed and rapidly decaying area of Trastevere, in Rome.  The area historically lay outside the city walls, and is adjacent to the Porta Portese, on of Rome's city gates.  Modern high-rises, constructed on the site in the mid 20th century, are quickly falling into disrepair and are eyesores in an otherwise beautiful area. 

The new neighborhood plan is based on the formal planning of Renaissance and Baroque architects (who utilized straight streets with formal relationships to important buildings and piazzas).  The buildings of each block are arranged around planted common courtyards which offer space for gardens and for children to play while under supervision.  Finally, a new outdoor theater is created on the banks of the Tiber, framed by two pedestrian bridges and a dramatic stair on the opposite shore.

Site Plan

Existing Conditions

Site Section



Students for Classical Architecture: 12-Hour Esquisse Competition

This entry was recently awarded First Prize in the inaugural design competition of the Students for Classical Architecture.  We were given 12 hours of design time between reception of the program and the submission of final drawings online.  Entries were to be hand drawn/painted and designed with Palladian precedence in mind.  The site is in the Veneto region of Italy, across the river from Palladio's Villa Foscari.

This drawing and the other winning entries will be exhibited at the Snite Museum of Art on the University of Notre Dame campus between June 5 and July 21 in conjunction with Palladio and His Legacy: A Transatlantic Journey.

For more information on the Students for Classical Architecture, visit: http://www.studentsforclassicalarch.com/ 

Villa Lante

Here is a new watercolor of the plan and section of Villa Lante in Bagnaia, which I visited today!  The painting is very small, at 5.5" x 8.5".  It took 1.5 hours to draw (freehand) and paint.

Lucca

Lucca, Italy: a view of the city wall from another part of the wall.  Lucca has a wonderful and intact circuit of walls on top of which its citizens regularly walk and bike.

Piazza Margana

A plein air view of  Piazza Margana, in Rome.

Washington D.C.: National Museum of Science and Technology

This new museum for the Smithsonian Institution is proposed for the current site of the J. Edgar Hoover Building (offices of the FBI) on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C.  The aerial perspective above shows the building as it would appear from the top of the Old Post Office tower.

This section cuts through the large galleries and rotunda and shows one of the large permanent displays, an interactive scale model of a through-arch bridge.
 

The building contains two large permanent display galleries on the South side of the building, an IMAX theater, a central rotunda and vertical circulation core (a grand circular stair and 4 elevators), a whisper chamber (the eliptical room in the plan), and flexible exhibit spaces on the North side of the building.  There are also two main entrances (as in many D.C. museums).

These perspectives illustrate the central rotunda and one of the large permanent display galleries.  Click on any image to see it in high resolution! 

The Previous Post contains a large charcoal rendering of the portico of this museum.  Duncan Stroik was my professor for this project.

Charcoal

Click Image to Enlarge

This half portico detail is for a new Science and Technology Museum in Washington D.C.  The drawing is over 6 feet tall and was drafted at 3/4" = 1' scale in graphite.  The figures in the tympanum are, from right to left: an Allegory of Wisdom, an Allegory of Science, a Biologist, a Chemist, and an Astronomer.  The piece is fully rendered in shade and shadow with charcoal.

Habitat for Humanity / ICA&CA Competition

This 1,236 square foot home was recently awarded Honorable Mention in the Dream Dallas Home Design Competition administered by Habitat for Humanity and the Texas Institute of Classical Architecture and Classical America. It is designed to be affordable and energy efficient, but also beautiful and enduring. Dr. Christopher Miller of Judson University was my sponsor for the competition.

For more information, visit: http://blog.classicist.org/?p=1157

Public Library

 (click to enlarge image)
This 60,000 square foot public library is designed for a corner lot in South Bend, Indiana. It is designed around a central sky-lit atrium containing a grand stair. Large windows light the shelves and reading room, and are organized to align with standard stack spacing. Small pedimented aedicules are centered in each arched window and express the shelves they are aligned with (and by extension the use of the building as a home for books). A theater/lecture hall, which contains murals of St. Joseph County, terminates the procession of the staircase as it arrives on the second floor.
The project is rendered in India Ink (mixed with Lamp Black and New Gamboge).  The design and rendering took five days. 

Tuscan Arcade

This one week project for a small brick and limestone garden pavilion is rendered in watercolor. Vitruvius' three ideal qualities of architecture, Firmitas (durability), Utilitas (functionality), and Venustas (beauty) are inscribed in the frieze.

Rockford Charrette

These are a few watercolors from a charrette that I recently participated in for Rockford, Illinois. Under the leadership of the Rock River Development Partnership and Live Work Learn Play LLP, we worked on a plan for the revitalization of a focus area near the river. Brendan Herr, Dr. Christopher Miller of Judson, and I drew the scenes, and then I painted them.

The subject of the paintings is a new central market for the city and the restoration of several downtown buildings.

Chelsea Barracks

My studio project this year has involved developing a master plan for the site of the Chelsea Barracks in London. The plan grew out of a thorough study of the peculiarities of London urbanism, and subsequently included a wide range of building types from mews houses to large apartment structures. After completing the urban design portion of the studio, I focused on the design of one of the buildings in the master plan, a four story mixed use building designed to house a church, multi-use space, offices, and a child care facility.

An animated fly-through of the scheme can be found HERE.

House

The finished watercolor from the last post.

Future Watercolor

Sometimes it seems like a shame to do anything to a nice line drawing (even if it is transformed into a watercolor). For that reason I decided to post this one before I start painting! The drawing is of a house I designed last year. It is drafted on Arches 140lb cold pressed paper using a .3mm 2H pencil.

Orangery

15x22 Watercolor Analytique of the Orangery at Hestercombe Gardens, Lutyens

Watercolor of US Custom House

12"x17"
Cass Gilbert U.S. Custom House, New York
Unbuilt version
Drafting: 8 hours Painting: 10 hours

Orders

The Tuscan Order, in green Florentine marble

The Corinthian Order from the U.S. Capitol Building rendered in a monochrome mix of French Ultramarine and Payne's Grey

AIAS & AARP Competition Entry

My American Institute of Architecture Students/AARP Livable Communities competition entry. The project is a mixed use (but primarily senior living) building arranged around a courtyard in an urban context. The design was awarded Honorable Mention in the competition this spring and exhibited at the AIA National Convention in San Francisco in the summer of 2009.