Kevin Parzych - Selected Work

Kevin ParzychSELECTED WORK

Table of ContentsEverything

03Kevin Parzych - Selected Work

HOW DO YOU START?

Home + OfficeHousing Tower in the Short North

I A Story of a PoolHeadquarters for the Waterkeepers

II

The CyclopsWinning Entry - “Cool Stool” CompetitionIII

Expanded RealityArchitectural Abstraction and FiguralityIV

High(er) GroundMontreal Cultural CenterV

Precise Yet VagueRetail Shell ProjectVI

04

A STORY OF A POOLBoston (MA)2009ARCH 841

The project describes the core assumption of the Waterkeeper, which is that the public has a right to access fresh, navigable water, where water is a resource of the public domain. The manifestation of that principle is a continuity of horizontal surface, where levels of the headquarters become connected through public space and the building functions as a collector and purifier of precipitation. The floors of the headquarters act as a water filtering device, as the depth of the floor holds a series organic filters. Water storage occurs where floors converge in what was once un-useable space in typical surface based projects. More importantly, the continuous nature of the floors allows for public space to become internalized within the project, and a public swimming pool exists at the center of the headquarters.

The pool hovers over the entry level of the building, and the harbor walk pathway is removed from the ground and brought

through the center of the project. The internalization of the pool accentuates the voyeuristic qualities of a swimming pool, and establishes the pool as a social, dialectic device, engaging the occupants of the headquarters, swimmers, sunbathers, and public passersby in a constant awarenessof water. The project becomes a literal “keeping of water” and provides a resource water and access for it public navigation.

Drinking water, filtered through the systems of the floor, is provided at the base of the project at a water bar. While purified, the water’s source floats above the heads of its drinkers, creating an anxiety or certainty about what is being consumed. A user could potentially drink the water they have been swimming in.

A STORY OF A POOL

05Headquarters for the Waterkeepers

PREAMBLE

06A STORY OF A POOL

Piloti + Equal Field = Disassociated Stage Repeat in Section

Continuous Surface as Promenade Water as Poche + Pool

Top: Organization Development Above: Longitudinal Sections

07

ORGANIZATION

Headquarters for the Waterkeepers

08A STORY OF A POOL

Above: Project Sequence

09

SEQUENCE


10A STORY OF A POOL

Top: Filter Concept Center: Floor Details Above: Second, First Floor Plan Right: Third Level Plan

11

CONFIGURATION


12A STORY OF A POOL

13

DIALECTIC


The approach to the problem of Home + Office, or a work from home situation, was focused upon providing the resources of a typical office headquarters to residents of the tower as a shared, communal amenity. This office resource could potentially facilitate the operation of a small business from a tenant’s home. The tower is massed as eight volumes on a core, where each volume contains a unit type or specific office program. The volumes are composed on the core create contextual relationships through their height differences, and the patterns of the fenestration create banding within the residential volumes and graphic distinction of the office program.

Within each unit, an office work space exists at an expanded presence to act as a gasket or threshold within the domestic space. This creates an overlap of use within the unit, establishing a similar hybridization of use

at a domestic level that the project holistically possesses. Rather than a typical extrusion where floor slabs repeat without vertical limits, the tower is a composition, where volumes proportional to the contextual make up of the neighborhood are assembled on a core.

The core of the tower becomes more than a simple elevator lobby, as it opens to multiple floors to create a visual connectivity in the vertical orientation. The shared space becomes an overlap between unit types and the adjacent office spaces, blurring the boundary between resident, worker and visitor.

HOME + OFFICEColumbus (OH)2010Arch 842

HOME + OFFICE14

INTRODUCTION

15Housing Tower in the Short North

16HOME + OFFICE

Above: West Elevation Left: N/S Section


COMPONENTS

18HOME + OFFICE

Top: Detail Elevation, Section Above: Typical Details


CONFIGURATION

20HOME + OFFICE

Left: Typical Plans Right: Structural Diagram


SPECIFICS

22HOME + OFFICE

Above: Code Analysis; Occupancy, Seperation, Opening %


DEVELOPMENT

24HOME + OFFICE


IDENTITY

26THE CYCLOPS

“Cool Stool” Competition2011Chicago (IL)THE CYCLOPS

The Cyclops is a winning competition entry for a stool for a seat in the crowd at the TedX 25th Ward Conference. The conference proposes “Architecture or Revolution,” so the furniture for the event needed to propose an architectural concept. The competition appropriately asked “How Cool is Your Stool?” as an architectural object. The Cyclops acts as an Archi-character, a combination of stool, building, object, and monster. Formal relationships across the

object bring the elements of the composition into a close set of coherences, and a notion of movement or freedom is described by the tangency of the stool to the ground.

The stool needed to hold the weight of a sitting person, so the material used in construction was various wood products, most commonly plywood that was shaped and carved.

27

ARCHI-CHARACTER

“Cool Stool” Competition

28THE CYCLOPS

29

YELLOW


30THE CYCLOPS

Above: Construction Sequence

31

CONSTRUCTION


32THE CYCLOPS

33

REALIZATION


34EXPANDED REALITY

This project seeks to revive the discipline of architecture as an aesthetic adventure, but in such a way as not to oppose or criticize the Neo-utilitarian values we will prize in The Future, but to augment them. The project desires to explore the potentials of figuration to produce affect, both in the first person experiences of buildings and in the autonomous point of view in plan. This work builds upon the initial work of the re-laskerites, extended into a public institution (a museum), and was fostered out of a collective bohemian demimonde, and is only interested in furthering the ambitions of a group of like-minded colleagues.

What makes this project disciplinary is the capacity of architecture to rhyme, both within the field of architecture and in a project itself. Moreover, this project aims to capture the figuration and abstraction produced by painting, in particular in the manor of Jonathan Lasker. The paintings

suggest a vague anthropomorphism, where its figurality is active. The paintings are not referential, but rhyme, as there is not direct correspondence of the elements to color, stroke, figure, and ground. This becomes a powerful effect that can allow for multiple readings and potency.

The building absorbs the ability to rhyme, where the stuff of architecture resonates throughout the project. The project has the ability to produce an affect through figurality, as the suggestion of a face occurs at an architectural scale. The facades rhyme with each other, and the plan has a similar sensibility. The project conveys similar effects in elevation and plan, while understanding the salience in each is not the same.

Arch 8442010The FutureEXPANDED REALITY

“A Domestic Setting With Post Partum Anxiety” by Johnathan Lasker

35

POTENCY

Architectural Abstraction and Figuration

36EXPANDED REALITY

Top: First Floor Plan

37

AUTONOMY


38EXPANDED REALITY

Top: Second Floor Plan

39

FIGURALITY


40EXPANDED REALITY

Top: Third Floor Plan

41

ATMOSPHERE


42EXPANDED REALITY

Above: Cross Section Right: Plan Rotations

43

RHYMES


44EXPANDED REALITY

45

ABSTRACTION


46HIGH(ER) GROUND

The Montreal Cultural Center is an experiment into the nature of ground. The goal of the project was to create an extreme ambiguity about what the ground of the project is. There is also an experimentation between horizontal and vertical, where an equivalence can be drawn between the two, yet distinct differences occur as well.

The site of the project is a pier which connects to a park, a pre-existing transition between artificial ground and civic land. The post-industrial pier is both a plinth and a ground, and the exhibition space is a duplication of the pier, to create a kind of equivalence. A slab tower is then placed at the end of the horizontal, to turn a duplication into a rhyme. The ground, tower, and pier are then activated to become more figural, suggesting a malleability. Two surfaces then enclose the project, creating atmospheric conditions facing the city and the river.

The pier becomes activated as a layer of transportation, as a ferry terminal and dock. The “in between” zone between the pier and exhibition level is a giant performance space, a transition between civic space and cultural space. The exhibition solid is supported by Verindeel trusses, and works as habitable poche. The greenhouse level exists under the canopy, creating atmosphere and a new public zone in the city.

The Tower acts possesses a duality that the horizontal cannot achieve. The river side has open air balconies, to create a freckled condition on the eastern face of the tower. The large terraces on the western side offer large forms of collectivity, hidden from the city during the day, and exposed to it at night.

Arch 8442011Montreal (CA)HIGH(ER) GROUND

PIER = PLINTH + GROUND

DUPLICATE ACTIVATE

ATMOSPHEREHORIZONTAL TO VERTICAL

47

CONCEPTS

Montreal Cultural Center

48HIGH(ER) GROUND

Above: Project Organization

49

DISPOSITION


50HIGH(ER) GROUND

Top: Greenhouse Plan Above: Exhibition Plan Bottom: Project Section

51

COMPOSITION


52HIGH(ER) GROUND

Top: Tower Section

53

FREE SECTION


54HIGH(ER) GROUND

55

ATMOSPHERE


56PRECISE YET VAGUE

26 E. 5th Avenue is an incredibly precise location with an equally vague future. The urban situation of the enormous vacant site to the west is a sleeping giant. At some unknown time, an unknown entity will manifest a known, developing architectural type - the hybrid retail-condo-loft. The sleeping giant will eventually become a conglomerate of forms, reduced to mimic the scale of the surroundings, but pumped up to generate a maximum square footage, and thus profit.

How can a small building exist as a neighbor? It has a moment of opportunity to grab attention across the vast vacant lot, and align itself with the High Street corridor. Can it create a visual gravity, to pull attention to its western elevation and jog the relentless canyon of the corridor? Moreover, can this gravity cause the future intervention be obligated to recognize the new condition, and generate

multiple street fronts, and turn an alley into an avenue? Can the shell set up a collaboration between the now sleeping giant? If not, at the least, this small building must be able to compete with the giant, if not collaborate with it.

26 E. 5th Avenue also has a vague future. Who will occupy this precinct, and how many will there be? Might they be unable to produce signage? The shell cannot be a bill-ding board, but must be recognizable, but also abstract. The corner condition must be exacerbated, and made more apparent to produce some sort of recognition.

Neighborhood Design Center2009Columbus (OH)PRECISE YET VAGUE

Top: Existing Conditions - 5th Avenue @ High Street

57Retail Shell Renovation

URBANISM

?HIGH ST 5th AVE

58PRECISE YET VAGUE

SUMMER WINTER

Top: Sun Conditions Above: Corner Shading Right: Skin Studies

59

VARIABLES

Retail Shell Renovation

60PRECISE YET VAGUE

Top: Elevations Above: Corner Framing Top Right: Unwrapped Corner Lower Right: Corner Details

61

PROPOSAL


62PRECISE YET VAGUE

63

IDENTITY


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Kevin Parzych - Selected Work