Assignment 02 - Individual Design
LINEAR SEQUENCING
Beach_61

The initial approach to this site was achieved by biking to the location and attempting to find the site. Easily seen from the elevated U-bahn train, the beach club was very hard to locate from the ground level. It was on my way back to the apartments, after giving up when I followed a biker who led me to the hidden, secretive entrance to the park. Walking down this path, I was overwhelmed by the previous industrial usage of the site. The path itself was not very wide with abandoned parked cars with broken windows and flat tires lined up wherever there was space. Along the path were also junk yards and auto body shops. The spaces were filled with scrap metal, old car parts, junk and stacks of used tires.
I began my design approach by documenting the experience of not the site itself, but rather the entranceway leading to the site. I wanted to work with this entranceway, which is a much smaller scale than the site, but one which had a bigger impact.
I started with the materials available on the site, and in simplicity, I chose just one, tires. Rubber tires were a great source to work with as they have a thickness and depth to them, giving them structural support as well as the flexibility to mold and create intricate forms. By adding two horizontal layers and stacking these tires as one would lay bricks, I was able to play with the form in many different ways, even subtracting certain tires to play with the transparency of the wall. Eventually, I succeeded in a wall whose form curves up from the entranceway, attracting visitors, mechanics and volleyball players alike. This form then continues to flow, splitting in different areas providing storage space for car parts on one side, while creating a lounge area and shade for visitors on the other.

Assignment 01 - Historical Research
Karl Friedrich Schinkel

Born on March 13 1781 and died on October 9 1841, in the province of Brandenburg, Schinkel was a Prussian architect and painter who was one of Germany's most prominent architect and the “best example of neoclassicism”. Schinkel studied architecture and the arts under Friedrich Gilly and his father David Gilly. After his return trip from Italy in 1810, Friedrich started making a living as a painter and even started to make stage sets for different plays. He even made a set for Mozart's opera, The Magic Flute. However, Schinkel soon realized that he could not continue his work as an artist with so much competition during the time, and turned to architecture. After the defeat of Napolean, Schinkel oversaw the Prussian Building Commission and was also in charge of rebuilding the then young Berlin, into a representative capital for Prussia. Schinkel's style is mainly influenced by Greek Architecture and can be seen in his famous buildings such as the Neue Wache (1816-1818), the Schauspielhaus (1819-1821) and the Altes Museum (1823-1830).

Neue Wache
An old guard house located in central Berlin, dating from 1816, it was designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and completed in 1818. It is located in the north side of Unter den Linden, a large intersection located in the center of Berlin. Originally built as a guard house, it is a very good example of neoclassicism and has been used a war memorial since 1931. King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia ordered a guard house to be built to replace the old Artillery Guard House. Schinkel was commissioned and he said of his design, “The plan of this completely exposed building, free on all sides, is approximately the shape of a Roman castrum, thus the four sturdier corner towers and inner courtyard”. There is now a sculpture in the middle of the building, Mother with her Dead Son, as a memorial piece representing the soldiers who suffered in the war. It sit right under the open oculus and is completely exposed to the outside weather such as rain, snow, sun to represent the sufferings of the civilians during WWII.

Schauspielhaus
Also known as the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Schauspielhaus in situated in Gendarmenmarkt Square. It's predecessor, the National-Theater was first designed by Carl Gotthard Langhaus in 1802. In 1817, due to a devastating fire, the building became almost completely burned down. Karl Friedrich Schinkel was commissioned to rebuild the concert hall, and worked on it from 1818 – 1821. Then in 1977, after the Battle of Berlin, reconstruction soon started on it due to the bombings and fire from the war in 1945. It then reopened as the Berliner Sinfomie – Orchester in 1984. Today, the Schauspielhaus sits the Berlin Symphony Orchester and it is a grand hall consisting of a pipe organ with 74 stops and 5811 pipes. The Schauspielhaus showed Schinkel's success of reviving Greek styles for new civic buildings with its ornamentation, ionic columns, and the pedimented attic story on top of the columns which hold the auditorium. The building is located between the two towers of the German and French Cathedrals which help to further emphasize the Schauspielhaus as a public theater.

Altes Museum
Originally called the Neues Museum, the Altes Museum “embodied Schinkel's commitment to monumental civic architecture as a vehicle of the Enlightenment's cultural imperative”. Built from 1822 – 1830, the museum was another great example of Schinkel's form of the Enlightenment, the romanticized form of cultural and self-cultivation which was represented by the ancient Greeks. The German movement at the time was to move away from French idealism and rather to embrace romantic movement of the Greeks. This neoclassical style of the Greek revival was represented in the Altes Museum through its 18 ionic columns topped off with a double-headed Prussian eagles. There was also a double-height drum that was placed in the center of the building, no unlike the Pantheon. However, this dome was encased in a square box shaped room in order to not compete with the Cathedral and its great dome next to it. The Museum was designed as a rectangular block with two interior courtyards and a central space. It is the oldest museum on the island it is located on, Museumsinsel, named after the many museums that are located there.

Assignment 02 - Individual Design
LINEAR SEQUENCING
Beach_61

The initial approach to this site was achieved by biking to the location and attempting to find the site. Easily seen from the elevated U-bahn train, the beach club was very hard to locate from the ground level. It was on my way back to the apartments, after giving up when I followed a biker who led me to the hidden, secretive entrance to the park. Walking down this path, I was overwhelmed by the previous industrial usage of the site. The path itself was not very wide with abandoned parked cars with broken windows and flat tires lined up wherever there was space. Along the path were also junk yards and auto body shops. The spaces were filled with scrap metal, old car parts, junk and stacks of used tires.
I began my design approach by documenting the experience of not the site itself, but rather the entranceway leading to the site. I wanted to work with this entranceway, which is a much smaller scale than the site, but one which had a bigger impact.
I started with the materials available on the site, and in simplicity, I chose just one, tires. Rubber tires were a great source to work with as they have a thickness and depth to them, giving them structural support as well as the flexibility to mold and create intricate forms. By adding two horizontal layers and stacking these tires as one would lay bricks, I was able to play with the form in many different ways, even subtracting certain tires to play with the transparency of the wall. Eventually, I succeeded in a wall whose form curves up from the entranceway, attracting visitors, mechanics and volleyball players alike. This form then continues to flow, splitting in different areas providing storage space for car parts on one side, while creating a lounge area and shade for visitors on the other.

Assignment 01 - Historical Research
Karl Friedrich Schinkel

Born on March 13 1781 and died on October 9 1841, in the province of Brandenburg, Schinkel was a Prussian architect and painter who was one of Germany's most prominent architect and the “best example of neoclassicism”. Schinkel studied architecture and the arts under Friedrich Gilly and his father David Gilly. After his return trip from Italy in 1810, Friedrich started making a living as a painter and even started to make stage sets for different plays. He even made a set for Mozart's opera, The Magic Flute. However, Schinkel soon realized that he could not continue his work as an artist with so much competition during the time, and turned to architecture. After the defeat of Napolean, Schinkel oversaw the Prussian Building Commission and was also in charge of rebuilding the then young Berlin, into a representative capital for Prussia. Schinkel's style is mainly influenced by Greek Architecture and can be seen in his famous buildings such as the Neue Wache (1816-1818), the Schauspielhaus (1819-1821) and the Altes Museum (1823-1830).

Neue Wache
An old guard house located in central Berlin, dating from 1816, it was designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and completed in 1818. It is located in the north side of Unter den Linden, a large intersection located in the center of Berlin. Originally built as a guard house, it is a very good example of neoclassicism and has been used a war memorial since 1931. King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia ordered a guard house to be built to replace the old Artillery Guard House. Schinkel was commissioned and he said of his design, “The plan of this completely exposed building, free on all sides, is approximately the shape of a Roman castrum, thus the four sturdier corner towers and inner courtyard”. There is now a sculpture in the middle of the building, Mother with her Dead Son, as a memorial piece representing the soldiers who suffered in the war. It sit right under the open oculus and is completely exposed to the outside weather such as rain, snow, sun to represent the sufferings of the civilians during WWII.

Schauspielhaus
Also known as the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Schauspielhaus in situated in Gendarmenmarkt Square. It's predecessor, the National-Theater was first designed by Carl Gotthard Langhaus in 1802. In 1817, due to a devastating fire, the building became almost completely burned down. Karl Friedrich Schinkel was commissioned to rebuild the concert hall, and worked on it from 1818 – 1821. Then in 1977, after the Battle of Berlin, reconstruction soon started on it due to the bombings and fire from the war in 1945. It then reopened as the Berliner Sinfomie – Orchester in 1984. Today, the Schauspielhaus sits the Berlin Symphony Orchester and it is a grand hall consisting of a pipe organ with 74 stops and 5811 pipes. The Schauspielhaus showed Schinkel's success of reviving Greek styles for new civic buildings with its ornamentation, ionic columns, and the pedimented attic story on top of the columns which hold the auditorium. The building is located between the two towers of the German and French Cathedrals which help to further emphasize the Schauspielhaus as a public theater.

Altes Museum
Originally called the Neues Museum, the Altes Museum “embodied Schinkel's commitment to monumental civic architecture as a vehicle of the Enlightenment's cultural imperative”. Built from 1822 – 1830, the museum was another great example of Schinkel's form of the Enlightenment, the romanticized form of cultural and self-cultivation which was represented by the ancient Greeks. The German movement at the time was to move away from French idealism and rather to embrace romantic movement of the Greeks. This neoclassical style of the Greek revival was represented in the Altes Museum through its 18 ionic columns topped off with a double-headed Prussian eagles. There was also a double-height drum that was placed in the center of the building, no unlike the Pantheon. However, this dome was encased in a square box shaped room in order to not compete with the Cathedral and its great dome next to it. The Museum was designed as a rectangular block with two interior courtyards and a central space. It is the oldest museum on the island it is located on, Museumsinsel, named after the many museums that are located there.