Jaclyn Zaborski

The studio site was located in Mott Haven, a vibrant neighborhood in the Bronx, New York.  After visiting the site and researching the area, we came to the conclusion that Mott Haven was in need of a cultural center.  The Mott Haven Museum of Cultural Arts (MOCA) offers an outlet for arts education, dance classes, office spaces, an auditorium, exhibition halls, a café and a bookshop.  Local Mott Haven artists will have the opportunity to live in affordable artist residences that offer individual as well as communal artist workspaces in the apartment building.  The artist residences are attached to the Mott Haven MOCA through an exhibition hall on the first floor.  The complex is an extension of the existing Mott Haven Houses, a New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) campus located on the site.  The buildings already have a central courtyard that is large and underdeveloped.  Programming of this space will begin to give more pride and identity to the area offering a more lively community gathering space that attaches to the new MOCA.  The courtyard will house a series of pavilions that are designed to be a structural system that can be manipulated for a variety of uses such as a playground or a temporary stand for a farmer’s market.          

Partner: Carmen Petersen

Instructor: Roy Strickland

The studio focused on understanding and designing dense urban housing projects.  More specifically understanding how different streets typologies around the world could be used to develop an efficient, communal and vibrant living condition.  

We developed a housing complex made up of four courtyard buildings, sited in Harlem, New York.  We took our inspiration from Brooklyn brownstones and the Brooklyn stoop.  By flipping the brownstone condition, the front facade and the stoop are brought to the courtyard side of the building.  We were interested in introducing a more communal courtyard space that is enhanced by enlarging the stoop and extending it throughout the entire building.  The faux-facades are an abstraction of the gated garden area common in front of most brownstones.  The faux-facades are inspired by many historic homes in Brooklyn and their ancestors in Amsterdam.  

Partners: Omar Ali and Michelangelo Latona

Instructors: Vivian Lee and James Macgillivray

See it on KooZA/rch and Cloudz Watching

The architectural strategy of my manufacturing company town is based off of walled cities.  Here the wall is filled with the factories and residences.  The wall does not act as a completely impenetrable force, rather I use it to contain the city.  The most successful pockets of Detroit, are those areas that can be considered as islands within the city.  Therefore, the design was intended to become another island in Detroit, however, one where people and industry cohabitate in one space.  There are three factories located within the town.  The first is a factory that manufactures dredgers. The second is a sand to silica factory.  The third and anchor enterprise is the glass blowing factory that makes chandeliers and other fine works of glass.  The sand from local dredging will then be used in the sand factory that will convert the sand to silica which then in turn will be used for the glass blowing process.  The industrial courtyard is the only place where motor vehicles are allowed in the town, this allows for an easily walkable, efficient city to develop.  I anticipate approximately 400 people to be employed and living in my town.  These jobs would include working in the manufacturing of the dredgers, working in the sand factory, artisan work in the glassblowing shop, teachers in the glassblowing school, retail employment and other jobs to support the town.  There are two types of options for housing, town houses within the city center or apartments which are contained within the wall overlooking the Detroit River or the canal.  Unlike most communities in Detroit, my town offers a secure environment where people can live and work.     

Instructor: Heidi Beebe

This studio's goal was to break us out of our comfort zones. 

The first project was a triptych, where my partners and I were asked to illustrate the situation of a 50th wedding anniversary dinner in the site of a bank vestibule.  Our triptych became the past, present and future of the couple's relationship taking inspiration from Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights.     

Partners: Omar Ali and Lauren Tucker 

The next three projects were solely models.  Every student was given the same three sites: a parking garage, a public pool, and the University of Michigan Museum of Art's atrium.  We were tasked with selecting a situation to be held within the site.  Our situations were swings, stalactites and stalagmites in a reflecting pool and a surreal world, respectively.  The situations were not as important in this studio so much as expanding our understanding of different materials and methods of making models.  

Partner: Lauren Tucker 

The culmination of the studio was designing a community art center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Considering how an event, or situation, in my case a slamball tournament could be held at the site before construction that would help promote, sponsor and fund the development of our design.   

Instructor: Thom Moran

This studio's goal was to introduce us to design and a few key players in the architecture world.  My precedent was Louis Kahn and his Norman Fisher House (1967) located in Hatboro, Pennsylvania.  

The first project was a single room addition to the Fisher House.  My addition is a library and reading nook that fits into the negative space formed by Kahn's cubes.

The next project was a 3D diagram that contained three vignettes stacked on top of one another illustrating the regulating lines Louis Kahn had produced from the interaction between two facades.  The regulating lines then formed intimate spaces within the room which revolved around his built-in furniture and the specific geometries of the room.  

For the final project we were given a specific site condition that involved a wall on one side.  I became interested in building off of the wall while exposing the circulation of the house.  The house evolved into an extremely narrow and vertical building.  I was inspired by SANAA, Gordon Matta-Clark and ant farms.  Similar to the diagram model, the house is the stacking of vignettes which are contained within each room.  I have formed my own series of regulating lines which were formed from the interaction of either two facades, the circulation or both.  Furniture was then designed to respond to these geometries.  

Instructor: David Moon