paul christiansen - architecture portfolio

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ArchitecturePaul Christiansen

2 | Paul Christiansen

Paul Christiansen

I am currently a undergraduate student at Northeastern University majoring in Archi-tecture Design. I have a strong passion for architecture design and technology. The following portfolio is a compilation of the work I have produced in my fresh-men year as an architecture student with projects ranging from the study of spaces, materiality, and the overarching funda-mentals of architecture design.

[email protected]

619.971.0066

www.paulchristiansen.info

10832 Quail Canyon Road, El Cajon CA, 92021

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Spaces Project

Museum Project

Miese Courtyard House

Villa Savoye Transformation

Jacobs’ House Study

Website Design

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Contents


Spaces Project

Assignment:This project was a simple project that focused on the study of creating spaces using only 9’ and 15’ walls to create overlapping, interlocking, and adjacent spaces. I elected to design my building with one roof covering a circulation path that flows around two 15’ U shaped wall pieces

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6 | Paul ChristiansenSection 1 Light Diagram

Parti Diagram

The parti diagram above shows the

overarching idea of my project; to

use two U shaped unroofed walls that

would serve as the basis for creating

a circulation path that moves around

them in a way that creates interlocking

and overlapping spaces that work with

eachother

The light diagram below shows one of

the main ideas of this project, which

was my decision to leave the two 15’

U shapes unroofed to let a great deal

of light into the circulatory spaces that

they create. I wanted the circulation

around the two U shapes to blur the line

between inside and outside spaces.

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1 5 10 feet

1

N

The above rendering shows the south

side of the building which acts as an

entrance to the space, but encloses

the circulation path through the use of

transparency between the two spaces.

The tall wall shown is the back of the

central U shape

The image below is the final floorplan of

the space, and by using a strict rectilin-

ear grid I was able to achieve multiple

spaces that incorporate quality of

spaces, circulation through them, and

an overall sense of connectivity through

the use of 4 wall pieces that do not

touch.


Museum Staircase Project

Assignment:This project focused on the design of a staircase for a museum gallery that would house two paintings: John Singer Sergent’s Daughters’ painting and Saint Luke paint-ing the Virgin and Child by Rogier van der Weyden. The staircase would act to cre-ate spaces that worked with the composi-tional elements within the paintings.

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I started by analyzing the artistic elements John Singer

Sergent used in the painting of the Daughters and spe-

cifically looked at the directionality and use of light.

The top right diagram shows the main idea behind his

painting and how he used the daughters as objects

in their respective fields of the painting. I incorporated

how he created a well lit foreground with a mysterious

dark background that leaves the viewer curious as to

what lay behind. In my design for the stair I made a

literal recreation of this by placing the painting on the

bottom gallery next to the entrance to the staircase,

which emulates the mysterious dark space in the back

of the painting to pull the viewer towards the stairs.

11Framing Diagram

The second painting dealt with use of perspective, framing of

objects and the idea of multiple layerings of spaces. Again,

I took a literal approach to recreate the idaes behind the

painting by eroding the wall in the upper gallery and placing

the painting in the upper space. The viewer looking at the

painting sees the layering in the painting and then realizes

that the painting is used as an object in the composition of the

view toward the main gallery and to the outside. The way to

approach the painting makes it so that guests coming up the

stairs to view the painting are moving objects in the composi-

tion of the view out from the space.


Circulation Diagram

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Another important element I incorpo-

rated in the creation of this project

was quality of light as the visitor moves

through the spaces to the second floor.

I incorporate the layering present in the

two painting and create literal represen-

tations of it by layering spaces through

the use of light directionality. In section,

there is a mezzanine level created that

allows views to the outside, views of the

main gallery, and creates a middle layer

between the main space and upper

gallery.


Mies Courtyard House

Assignment:This was a short project that dealt with the analysis of Mies van der Rohe courtyard houses. I looked at his use of materials, simplicity and light quality and produced a series of renderings of the spaces to il-lustrate some of his main ideas behind the courtyard houses he designed. I also cre-ated a few short movie clips of circulation paths through the houses to show how these ideas are related in physical motion. 14


The rendering to the left shows a summer day in the

courtyard house where I was analyzing how Miese

created transitional spaces that act as circulational

space, but create views of other spaces and outside

and blur the line between inside and out.

The rendering to the right shows the house at dusk.

This specific rendering shows how the materials Miese

chose to use work with eachother to create interest-

ing spaces. I used Kerkythea Rendering to add in

polished chrome, marble textures, contrasted with the

simplicity of the roof.

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The series of images shown above repre-

sent one of the videos I created to show

creation of views as a visitor moves through

the house. The movie starts in the very

dark kitchen and moves out to the main

living space, bordered on both sides by

long glass walls. It then shows the views of

the outside and quality of light created by

moving toward the front door.


Villa Savoye Transformation

Assignment:One of the main projects of my fresh-men year, this was a long project where I deeply analyzed the successful elements present in Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye. I then recreated a new Villa Savoye on a site given to me by my professor and had to incorporate shifts in the program and placing of elements on the new land-scape 18


Service Rooms

Patio

Living Room

Kitchen

Hanging Garden

Master Bed

Sons Bed

Guest Bed

Entrance

Roof Garden

These three axonometric diagrams

are studies of some of the main ideas

behind the villa savoye, and the image

on the left shows how I incorporated

them into the programatic design of

my villa on the elongated landscape. I

spent a great deal of time diagraming

the different ideas behind creation of

space, light, circulation, and program

before even starting my project so that

I could create a villa that had the same

functionality as the Savoye, and once I

had developed a deep understanding I

started to design my villa.


Afternoon

Noon

Morning

East

West

Noon

Morning

Afternoon

1st Floor

2nd Floor

The diagram shown at left is an exploded axonometric of

my final design. Since the site is so long and one half of the

bottom floor is buried i moved the entry to the unburied

side and made it a curved ramp to replace the sculptural

service stair present in the Villa Savoye foyer so that the

service stair could still serve the same functionality it does in

the Savoye. The bottom diagram is a light study and shows

how I use the patio as a central field to bring light into all

the spaces of the house.

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16 x 5 1/4" = 6'-11 3/4"

1 2

2. Section looking East

1. Section looking West

Private

Circulation

Public

The comparitive diagrams at

left show an analysis of how

the Villa Savoye and my villa

share the same programatic

ideas and that even though

the site is elongated, the ideas

behind circulation and sepa-

ration between public and

private spaces is not compro-

mised.

The section cut shown below

is cut through the ramp at the

center of the house to show

the circulation path that one

would take through the house.

Once proceeding up the

curved ramp, a guest enters

on the second floor at the

junction between the patio

and living room, as it is in the

Villa.

My Savoye

Villa Savoye


Jacobs’ House Study

Assignment:The first project I completed in my fresh-men year was a study of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Jacobs’ house. I was given a plan of the building and using online images and research I created multiple section cuts through the house and using these, diagramed various elements present in the house.

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Public Public-Private Private

Carport and Utilities

Social

Backyard

Living

Parti

Grid vs Wall

Alignment

The three images above look at various elements Wright incorporated into the plan

of the Jacobs’ House. The section cut shown below, created in Autocad, demon-

strates the layering of the project in section from the public street to the private wing

of the house and backyard. As a first project in architecture, this study helped me

understand some of the fundamental principles in architecture and how they are

physically implimented in a house.


Website Design

I went to a high school called High Tech High, and as the name suggests there was a strong influence from technology in the projects I did throughout my four years there. Two of the projects displayed at right are digital portfolio’s I created to showcase my work online. The third was a website I designed while taking an internship with the Resource Conservation District of Greater San Diego 26

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The website at left was one of the Digital

Portfolio’s I created in my four years

at High Tech High. I used Macromedia

Flash to create an interactive website to

showcase the projects I had worked on

throughout my sophmore year. By elect-

ing to create my portfolio in a software

that allowed me to create an interac-

tive page as opposed to a static page

with text and images I learned a great

deal about the possibilities of website

design.

The image shown left is the website

I designed for the Fire Safe Council

of San Diego County, who works

in association with the Resource

Conservation District which I took

an internship with. I worked with

the president of the organization

to create a template for what they

wanted in a website and then used

Macromedia Dreamweaver to cre-

ate a website that could be handed

over to an employee and would be

easy to maintain after the end of my

internship. www.firesafesdcounty.org

This website was another Digital Portfolio that I creat-

ed in my senior year that showcases all the important

projects I did throughout my four years as a student

at High Tech High. I used this as a basis for a thirty

minute presentation I gave as a thesis at the end of

my senior year showing how much I had learned in

the four years at HTH. I used Dreamweaver again for

this site but used a lot more of the functions I had not

previously experimented with. It can be viewed at:

www.paulchristiansen.info


2009Architecture

Paul Christiansen