Tower Slideshow

Here's a brief slideshow of the "Bang!" Tower integrated with the neighbouring River Tower, by Peter F. Chiang.

Final Tower Presentation

-Gasp!- At last, after days of painstaking diligence, the Bang Tower is complete, along with drawings and video! Hoooray for everything! It was an epic display of determination, madskillz and moxy on all of the group's part in the final few days of what I like to call the hardest studio ever. In the end, the group pinned up excellent projects and none of us will suffer a triple F- as threatened. Finally we can all return to so called reality and sleep for more than 3 hours a night. Can I get a woot!?

All the models were snapped into place on the site but this turned out to be completely pointless, unfortunately because our prof demanded the models be placed next to our pinned up drawings which meant it was impossible to see the buildings in context. This was a bit heartbreaking because some of us attempted to integrate others' towers into our own which was lost in this move. Nonetheless, we presented our towers one by one after a flashy introduction of the concept and program on a video we created in the dying hours of the night with panic sweats keeping us awake.

All of the towers were criticized for their weaknesses -- none for their strengths. My tower was criticized for having too rational a structure for so unpredictable of a conceptual phenomenon (i.e. atom smashing). Granted, there was a huge opportunity for a truly ridiculous structural solution but I felt that my floor plates were already overly aggressive and an irrational structure would just make things too incoherent. At the same time, I thought it wasn't really a fair criticism because had I chosen an unpredictable structure they would have equal reason to say I could have chosen a more rational structure. This kind of debate can go both ways. There was nothing to say about the actual final structure I ended up designing, unfortunately.

Aside from this, the question "why the mini tower?".
My tower sits on one of the main crossroads of the Hudson Yards, where pedestrians intersect at all levels. Because of this, I thought it would demand a greater footprint for commercial and pedestrian use, and also a higher density to encourage all the surrounding towers' programs. Secondly, based on the explosion concept which implies that energy is created and destroyed at the same time, one tower is for expending energy, the other for renewing it. It also had to do with setting up a "gateway" that looks down the entire site, while harnessing wind energy in the gap of both towers. It's also sitting on the "throne" of the site and so hierarchically I felt it demanded more presence, imposing a organization of the rest of the scheme.
They didn't quite bite down on these justifications, but it was probably because I was seconds away from falling asleep and could barely articulate these things.

The remaining criticisms were all over the map and weren't entirely useful to be honest. In fact to be totally honest, the critique was probably the biggest anticlimax we could have asked for. For such a brutal studio for its demanding level of production and quality, we didn't really get anything in return except euphoric relief to be finished. That in itself is priceless. (So is waking up in the same position 13 hours after the crit).

So, I won't bore you anymore. Here's the final video as I presented it at the crit (photos of the group project to follow).


This video is for educational purposes.

Dress Rehearsal

The "found object" model as I've been mentioning has been sailing through its golden age the past week or so. After a preliminary hunt for scrap materials, we've collectively made a second wave for more metal and plastics, this time with a jackpot find -- a photocopier machine from one of the engineering buildings. It felt a little primal bizarro when this machine was wheeled in to studio, because like a pack of hyenas, we pounced on it and tore the thing to pieces. I've never seen a more crazed group of students in my life. Like a wounded wildebeest, we gutted the thing in a matter of minutes -- blood was spraying all over in the form of black ink powder. Just look at the carcass as we left it:

This tower is proudly brought to you by Sony, Xerox, Kenmore, and HP. At the base is soccer dad's Sony camcorder framing the tower's convention centre, with busted out lens indicating a water purification tank, trim from the Xerox machine rising up the central vertical axis providing sky gardens, and another part of the Xerox providing sun shade for a Polish Bistro at ground level.

The group has achieved a lot over the past couple of weeks and we're all at roughly the same level of completion with the exception of one of two who bypassed the flu bug and are a week ahead of the rest of us. I decided that a dress rehearsal was in order to test how well the group's models snap in to place, since we hadn't initially tested the fit of our bases. When all the models were rolled in to place, we were pleasantly mesmerized by its surreality. Each of us has had some kind of image in our minds as to how the models would look when they were in context with the other towers but we were blown away by how much larger it was in reality than in thought. Bearing in mind that each of the towers is approximately 6' tall, the level of detail and saturation of space with objects and structure was so uplifting. In this glorious state of euphoria, we then discovered that the elevator had broken down in the process and our models were stranded out of reach from our studios...####!

Aerial view of the site looking South.


Explosion Tower, looking towards the Hudson River.I was lucky to snag the site that I did because it's smack dab in the middle of the overall scheme. It sets up a pedestrian gateway to the main public space + having twin towers is great in this situation to lighten the visual density from ground level + frames views looking both ways.

With seven days left from today, it's crunch time to get the drawings done and touch up any of the model that is incomplete. Ohh, the relief to be done...

Back to the Future

After coming down with a nasty flu a couple weeks ago, I've been seriously playing catch-up at school. Four days away from my model is pretty devastating. To bounce back, I pressed down on the big red emergency button returning to studio, summoning all nearby siblings to my aid. To my shock and awe, the key-phrase "I was hoping you could help me with some manual labour..." was a tough sell. Who knew? At any rate, I successfully bribed an undergrad with beer to help me catch up (a more enticing deal - building on the former lesson). For future reference to all those in town with two hands, manual labour + tedious + totally unenjoyable grunt-work is available......for BEER!!!







During March break, we had an exhibition of student work. Some of the work was from our prof's past studios, which typically include life drawings and the huge 6' drawings of skyscrapers. Our tower drawings should hopefully end up looking something like this one below, but after twelve weeks of life drawing, my pastel drawings look nothing like these ones.







As part of the exhibition, I also found my competition panel for the West End Pedestrian Bridge proposal from 4th year pinned up. Gotta love the bee theme:

Now, after a couple weeks of endless hours soldering copper wires into place, I've finally designed my 3D structure for the tower. At last! (The image at left is outdated). Even though most of the group had no idea how to design such a complex structural system, we knew some basic principles: a triangulated structure is the most efficient form of bracing, the steel columns should intersect at every first, third, fifth, or seventh floor so that they can be pinned into the floor slab in reality. Also, in places of greater stress (i.e. predominant wind loads, cantilevers, south-facing elevations etc) and nearer to the crown of the tower, there should be a tighter web of structural steel. Last rule, don't breathe in the solder fumes...the kids depend on that. Otherwise, the structure can be a very plastic, sculptural expression of the tower.

For the next three weeks that are remaining, we will have to paint the structure, integrate each tower into the overall site which is simultaneously under construction to complete the model. Then, just draw like a fiend to finish a 6' elevation and section, with a flashy video. Crunch time!!!

Skyscratcher Model Vid

Here's a rough-cut video of my tower as its coming along in studio these days. The unsightly blocky section has yet to be cut down like the rest of the tower - wait till next week for that get trimmed down.


All of the three dimensional design work is so much like making a sculpture. This is where our life drawing skills are starting to overflow into studio, in the likeness of shaping an anthropomorphic figure. Each tower should possess the innate beauty of a human body. In my situation, I have one and a half towers which raises the challenge of avoiding an obese looking building. This will likely be the ongoing struggle with my design -- to give the illusion of Olympian physique on a Siamese twin. I was able to get away with adding a half tower to the requirements because it satisfied my conceptual narrative. Ofcourse, that means 1.5x the work, but the proportion and contextual scale of one and a half towers to the site is appealing to me.

Haha, this video really is crappy, worthy of a professor's boot in the behind, but who cares. I don't want to reveal too much of the model just yet. At the very least, just to share some ongoing progress of the design.

The Birth of a Skyscraper

...And...twins! The main one will stand 65 storeys tall, and the mini tower, at around 35 floors. Putting together the elevator cores took about an hour a piece. Each floor has to be scored into the plywood core about a centimeter deep on all sides and then split down the middle for the section cut (you can see the section line at the opening in the base which runs through the center of both cores).
Floor plates are added to the elevator core of the 65 storey tower. At the bottom is a 10 floor parking garage that collides into the tower, with the craziest circulation plan I've come up with yet. When that's presentable I'll give you a peek...

Here's a sneak preview of a 4th year student's tower they're finishing up now from last semester. Once all of my plates are chopped, I'll be moving onto soldering the structure together, like this one.

Found Object Model

Part of the requirements for our skyscraper is to model the tower out of found objects. This includes anything out of metal or plastic that we can take apart from its original form. So far, a group of us have scavenged the hills of junk metal in Ottawa for anything of apparent value for our models. I picked up a 60 lb engine block as one potential unit to take apart, as well as a number of parts from car transmissions, a couple head-lights, a gas tank and a gear shift. This all probably sounds mad at first, but as the model develops, you'll see how the tower will come together. It turns into a three-dimensional collage.

Tower Revisions

The sketch I posted a week or two ago describing my tower's program never really saw any fruition whatsoever. My prof half-glanced at it and repeatedly demanded I hide it from his sight. It was a bit premature in that it was way too detailed for that stage in the semester. So, it's inches away from the trash pile now. Since then however, the project has developed quite a bit in a slightly different direction.

Monday was a major pin-up in the Pit and our group was theatrically maimed in front of an all-school audience. I was able to show a near-finished site plan which was a plus, but I was obliterated for my sectional drawing, not for completion, but for common sense. I got a little hung up on articulating the tower's profile, without enough structural support or even conceptual justification. (I'll show just a rough sketch of the section because the full two-meter drawing has already changed a lot overnight...and I can't get a decent photo of it either).













In terms of the concept, I've been having tons of fun exploring 'colliding particles'. I've seen a number of clips of the Large Hadron Collider in Cern Switzerland which is completely fascinating. As of recently I wanted to literally put in an atom smasher in or around my building as part of its function, but never mind being ballsy, it's kinda ridiculous. It's gigantic to begin with and costs six billion dollars to build. So, instead I'm taking the cheap route: metaphor. In declaring people as particles, I'm using the Highline as the metaphorical particle accelerator, sending people whipping around my entire site, as shown in the site plan above (outer green circular line), eventually colliding with oncoming pedestrians at the very center of my tower, giving the tower its explosive form. In the explosion, energy gets destroyed (to operate certain programmatic uses, such as a ferris wheel, drop zone, etc.) and energy created as well (wind generators, photovoltaics, solar panels etc).

Since I haven't really talked enough about the Highline, here's a brief description of its redevelopment project by Friends of the Highline, showing the winning design by Diller & Scofidio. There's also an interview with Edward Norton. Huh?



Why the atom smasher? Well, it works. As for being appropriate for New York City, maybe not at all...particularly the exploding skyscraper part...yeeeesh. As an urban gesture, it's great -- the tower becomes an illusion brought to life out of a big bang (like the proton accelerator in Cern). The tower emerges as a fragmentation of the block grid of Manhattan, a universe on its own. This goes along the lines of Koolhaas' theory in Delirious New York of Manhattan becoming lobotomized in its overlay of fantasy skyscrapers on the mundane NY grid giving the city its core identity.

Colliding particles is a sub-human phenomenon, in that we don't physically experience this sort of event in nature, but rendering the idea inspires the imagination to create its potential 'observed' experience for the human senses. Applied architecturally, the idea of colliding particles works well. Based on the behaviour of particles in their collision, I can start drawing out circulation patterns, programmatic transitions, structure. As mentioned before, the idea of creating energy to be consumed and consuming energy to be created is an extremely powerful idea for a skyscraper, which will continue to evolve in the latter half of the semester.

Stand by.

Tower Concept

I've momentarily completed a draft of my tower brief...it will likely get chewed apart tomorrow, but I might as well celebrate that for the world wide web to gawk at.

Schematic Tower Concept:
“Colliding Particles”
A dialogue of: destruction and creation, stability and agitation, the fantastic and pragmatic.

The block grid of New York represents the rational human imposition on topography. Both city and tower combine their destructive energy to create a purely human environment that directly reflects his/her total desires. The skyscraper is the radical emergence out of the rational grid order into a realm of irrationality and fantasy.

The Colliding Particle tower will attempt to disrupt the man-made topography by means of broad tears in the proposed deck over the rail yards and affect other neighbouring towers by a radial-explosive gesture. The tower will terminate the Hudson corridor and redirect pedestrians through a fragmented landscape towards the water and ferry terminal or eastward to the Farley corridor. Pedestrians will experience entry to the tower by crossing numerous bridges over the exposed rails passing under or through the tower below grade.

* * *

Split-Core Tower Program:
Approximate Floor Area = 4200 sq/m, 70 floors total.

Initial Sectional Sketch

Here's the first sketch of what I'm imagining for this tower's programmatic use. It's all over the place at first, but that's okay -- the program and design will change continuously throughout the semester. The first touches however include some key programs such as a public school which is apparently in high demand for Manhattan. Also, a bird sanctuary extends the atrium use at the center of the building, and yes that's right, there's a ferris wheel mid-height. I think it would be pretty sweet to have a ferris wheel go through the tower's central atrium, graze a bio-dome and then overlook all of New York City. When we all get our assigned sites, I want to try and negotiate with the group to design a continuous rides park including roller coasters, drop zones, and outdoor water slides as part of the an overall sub-scheme for our towers. At the very top of my tower, I'm still trying to come up with a fun use for the best seats in the house. Our prof was all smiles at the thought of a crematorium at the top of the building, thinking of people's remains getting sucked up into the wind turbines. Bad joke, but true story. At the moment I have an insane asylum, again, playing up the black irony of entrapment at the very summit of New York City. Other ideas: american gladiators gym, a slaughterhouse, or a playboy mansion. I think I'd better let this one stew for a bit longer...all suggestions are welcome -- the blacker the humour the better!

New Tower Project

We are a couple weeks in to our new studio project. This semester, we are designing a 60-storey skyscraper in west Manhattan on top of the Hudson Yards. The Hudson Yards is the end of the rail line in Manhattan and represents the last frontier of development on the island. The scope of the assignment is huge as it is integrated into a formal urban regeneration plan issued by the New York Planning Department. This is the kind of proposal that New York developers and architects dream of. There's more floorspace in this project than Ground Zero and the site footprint covers two full blocks. Each student for this studio will be primarily concerned with one of 11 towers on a designated plot of land on either the east or west yard for their site which can embrace or reject the NYC planning proposal. At the end of the semester, each of the towers will snap into place on a giant site model.

The project has already gone through an official open design competition, but the city is requiring a second review of new submissions based on the initial lack of interesting proposals. Steven Holl has submitted the most developed of the schemes, and the design seems quite logical. The other proposals are done mostly by major New York developers and haven't quite struck the right chord with the site's potential yet, hence the second review.

Steven Holl's proposal:

Brookfield Properties’ proposal, led by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill and Field Operations, with a large group of contributors including SHoP Architects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and SANAA:


The Tishman Speyer and Morgan Stanley proposal, designed by Helmut Jahn and Peter Walker:


Kohn Pedersen Fox, Arquitectonica, Robert A.M. Stern, and West 8 collaborated on the proposal from the Related Companies and Goldman Sachs:

From reading a number of different blog sources, New Yorkers can't stand any of the proposals. The general climate is a rejection of glass and steel buildings which are generally alien to New York, in place of the art-deco style masonry buildings. The reality is that concrete or masonry is way too expensive for this scale of project. At the very least, New Yorkers want to preserve the certain 'character' they know best, of which none of the proposals seems to grasp.

This studio term will be the heaviest yet. Not only is the breadth of this project immense, but our prof is the most demanding in the school by reputation. We have an integrated life drawing course as part of the tower study as well as a trip to New York city. As our first assignment, we have had to draw up a site plan that adds a bit more spice and flavour than the developers' projects. Our prof truly is a no bullshit kind of professor. The more theory or cerebral mumbo jumbo in a building, the harder he hits. If he heard a peep out of me from last semester's project, he would have triple dropkicked me in a heart beat. Instead, he favours the one-liner, or one-word concept. Ultimately, it's what you show, not what you say that gets the best critique. So, my concept for this term is colliding particles. I found the following images which are quite seductive and inspiring for the site plan. It seems to capture the site's axial arrangement really nicely. The concept of creation that emerges out of destruction has interesting possibilities for an architectural project. While a bit too image specific for my liking, the image of collided protons appears like a city arrangement in itself and the patterns produced are beautiful arrangements of circles and squares, which is right up my alley. With these ideas in mind, I'm planning to rip open the proposed deck over the rail yards rather than seal it completely underground. I want the gashes in the landscape to allowing the towers and people to come right up to the rails.

Here is an image of my site plan to date. Eleven represents my tower footprint, with ten other classmates aligning with my tower. The cultural centre is essentially a horizontal skyscraper which another student will design. Hopefully you can get the feeling of collision from this scheme. The dark scrapes represent openings in the landscape to the train yard below. In our pin-up on Monday, it was seen as being too "candy-ass" so I need to run them right through the buildings themselves, no holds bars. The surrounding buildings also look too much like "little wimpy muffins", so that's up for changes as well. For next week, we have to hash out a 1:200 section of the tower (which happens to be enormous), all on vellum.

Check out these other sources on the topic:
//Gothamist//
//Urban Toronto//
//Link to all 5 Proposals//