A FEW SHARP LINESCampus as border crossing

GSD 0160100 Macau: Cross Border CitiesInstructor: Christopher Lee with Simon WhittleTeam: Gabriel Tomasulo

Fall 2013

The geographic and urban features that define and align with Macau’s northern border with China describe an axis of untapped economic and cultural potential. Drawing a straight line from southwest to northeast, the new university campus makes a precise incision into the disorganized patchwork of northern Macau. It unifies disparate zones of program, and makes them accessible. Rather than acting as a merely visual backdrop that superficially reveals difference, the project integrates with and amplifies the existing richness of Macau. Its insistence on the clarity of the single line allows inhabitants to experience these adjacencies as a coherent sequence, despite the complexity of Macau’s nested and interwoven densities, topographies, and histories.

ASHLEY TAKACS atakacs@gsd.harvard.edu 716.909.4521

S T R E E T

S T R E E TM A R K E T

M A R K E T

THE LONG CONbending the rules

GSD 0120201 Urban FictionsInstructor: Danielle EtzlerTeam: Rae Pozdro

Spring 2013 Part II

This project is a response to a fictional urban code that seeks to separate and conceal. The code demands a continuous street wall whose idiosyncrasies and misalignments distract from the space concealed within each block. Most significantly the code mandates a 15’ sectional separation between street level and commercial program embedded in the block interior. By bending the datum of the street we produce a market that exists on multiple levels, which allows us to develop continuities between street and market. The irregular form of the block, with its long attenuated fingers, plays a key role in the con. While the perimeter is quite long, allowing for gradual sectional change, connections can be easily made across the pinched portions of the block.

ASHLEY TAKACSASHLEY TAKACS atakacs@gsd.harvard.edu 716.909.4521

This project investigates the role of digital media within the broader context of digital practice and to examine the generative capacities of the medium to design and communicate ideas in the virtual realm. At this location in Boston’s North End, highways, rail lines, and the Charles River converge. We investigated various means of representing these elements of the city that are not typically highlighted in renderings, allowing us to explore infrastructure at different scales with various atmospheric effects and levels of material abstraction. We used a number of modeling tools to manage large data sets -- including a variety of vegetation. The images were produced with a Rhino modeling workflow, scene management, population, and rendering development in 3dsmax and Vray, and a post-production workflow based on After Effects and Photoshop.

DIGITAL MEDIA 2223 | KRISTINE ERICSON DREW SEYL ASHLEY TAKACS

NORTH ENDRendering the city

GSD 0222300 Digital MediaInstructor: Christopher HoxieTeam: Kristine Ericson, Drew Seyl

Fall 2012

DIGITAL MEDIA 2223 | KRISTINE ERICSON DREW SEYL ASHLEY TAKACSASHLEY TAKACS atakacs@gsd.harvard.edu 716.909.4521

Spontaneous and improvisational play is at the core of the Berklee student experience. My proposal aims to foster this creative spirit. The building, which is centered around all aspects of play is not whimsical for the sake of whimsy; but rather, represents a serious dedication to the design of spaces that inspire communal and individual creativity. A menagerie of forms on the class levels are arranged in an open floor plan to promote creative occupation of space. Throughout the building, occupants are encouraged to explore undulating surfaces and sectional variation. Traditional notions of scale are challenged in the dorm rooms by furniture that verges on landscape, conversely, in the academic zones, rooms take on the scale of furniture, while larger vertical elements begin to function on the scale of infrastructure.

BERKLEE SCHOOL OF MUSIC Vertical campus

GSD 0120103 Core: Integrated Building Studio Instructor: Jonathan Levi

Fall 2012

ASHLEY TAKACS atakacs@gsd.harvard.edu 716.909.4521