PortfolioKate Morgan

2008 -2012

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Urban Intersections: Engaging Dualities in Shanghai

Towers of TerroirExploring Contrasts

The New Generic

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Kate Morgan713.851.4913katieemorgan@mac.com

CONTACT

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Urban Intersections: Engaging Dualities in Shanghai

Towers of TerroirExploring Contrasts

The New Commons (Allmenningene)

The New Generic

CONTENTS

Urban IntersectionsEngaging Dualities in Shanghai

Thesis, Fall 2011Advisor: Neyran Turan

Caught in a partially transformed condition, Shanghai’s urbanism is defined by the confrontation between the old and new. Embedded in this confrontation, and now occurring at unprecedented extremes in China, is a collision between the urban models of context and erasure/ tabula rasa. My thesis examines the false duality manifest by this conflict and seeks to eliminate it. The futile choice between the seemingly agonistic approaches has only produced either a conservative, preservationist tourist attraction or a totalizing, vertical city, both of which threaten the idea of the city as a multiple and collective space of possibility. Moving beyond contextual preservation and tabula rasa, this thesis engages and creates another reality, using that juxtaposition to open new relationships within the city.

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Isometric Projection

Plan,75’

By adopting a broader view of context and collapsing present dualities, this thesis creates complexity and new confrontations through an urban morphology shaped by architecture.

Using strategies from the two urban models, this project proposes the insertion of a new type of university on a single superblock in Shanghai. Located in a rapidly developing area around the historic center of the city, this thesis embraces the new development’s ensuing generic conditions, but uses architecture to shape it.

Breaking apart the expanding evenness of solely residential or commercial fabric, the insertion of a university program into the traditional center allows the project to be a model for programmatic densification and diversity within the city.

Left: The Dominance of the Tabula/ Vertical Development Model, the diagram depicts ar-eas of extreme growth and erasure at the city center’s periphery

The diverse ground and insertion of public, collective spaces contrast with the open-ended generic bar buildings that house the majority of the university program.

The diverse ground and insertion of public, collective spaces contrast with the open-ended generic bar buildings that house the majority of the university program.

Allowing for a larger footprint and accommodating a high degree of public legibility, the seven collective spaces (inserted into the bar buildings) include a range of typologies and programs (the public programs include a library, a concert hall, a large lecture hall, a dining hall, an exhibition hall, a stadium, and a gymnasium.)

COLLECTIVE SPACES

Stadiumplans and section perspective

Theatreplans and section perspective

Left: Individual Plans of Collective Spaces

Above: Perspectives, The further separation of the super-block ino a smaller grid allows for an openness to the city (contrasting with typical vertical development).

Section through Center of Site

Existing Fabric

Insertion of University Buildings

Erasure

Addition of Collective Spaces

Application of the Grid

The CompletedProject

Strategies and Process

Contextual Relationships

Above: Axonometric diagrams depicting a taxonomy of urban relationships.

Contextual Relationships

Above, Top: The serialized Open Forms, placed through an infill strategy, define and differentiate horizontal space.

Above, Below: The Collective Spaces break up the determi-nate structure of the grid.

Conceived as an exercise in a synthetic integration of form, program, and technology, this studio pushed a comprehensive approach to designing a restaurant/ urban farm in Houston, Texas. Towers of Terroir proposes a machine-like grouping of towers that support a high level of diversity, not only in the growing conditions (both light and dark), but also in terms of the program and circulation. Utilizing and subverting the limiting tower-plinth typology, each tower is split into two separate parts, maximizing contrast, and creating a new type of tower organization and core.

Exploring Contrasts

Honorable Mention, Margaret Everson Fossi Traveling Fellowship

Towers of Terroir

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Totalization Studio, Fall 2010Critic: Troy SchaumProgram: Restaurant/Urban Farm

SECTION A0’ 4’ 8’ 16’

0’ 6’ 12’ 24’’

0’ 2’ 4’ 8’

Section Perspective

This diagram depicts the building’s organization, as

well as, the autonomy of the dark and light cores.

The stark distinction accomplished in the towers is the result of a division that splits the towers into two parts, each with their own core. A “dark” core supports ed-ible fungi, and a “light” core supports the green plants. The dark cores cut across the building, serving as a primary circu-lation for both the towers and the central plinth.

Above Right, View from the elevator inside the dark core

Below Right, View of bar in the central plinth

This diagram depicts the building’s organization, as

well as, the autonomy of the dark and light cores.

The stark distinction accomplished in the towers is the result of a division that splits the towers into two parts, each with their own core. A “dark” core supports ed-ible fungi, and a “light” core supports the green plants. The dark cores cut across the building, serving as a primary circu-lation for both the towers and the central plinth.

Above Right, View from the elevator inside the dark core

Below Right, View of bar in the central plinth

Cuts in the cores allow for

complete, unencum

bered access to

the central plinth/ restaurant area.

PLANS

Cuts in the cores allow for

complete, unencum

bered access to

the central plinth/ restaurant area.

Above: Section Perspectives and close-up of central plinthRight: Street View Rendering

The division between the “light” and “dark” halves of the towers is further emphasized by the building’s skin, with two types of louvers—concrete and fretted glass—sustaining the different growth needs.

The New GenericIntellectual Production in China

Option Studio, Spring 2011Critic: Martin Haettasch

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This studio addressed the phenomenon of live-work factories in the Yangtze River Delta, which, with China’s explosive growth, have increased in scale to become self-contained cities in themselves. My proposal modernizes and transforms the danwei (the communist-era work unit/ village arrangement), adapting it to accommodate the current intellectual production in Shanghai. Adopting a vertical arrangement, my project critically examines the relationships between the individual and collective within the mechanized and urban context of the contemporary “factory.” Huge slabs consisting of highly transparent individual spaces featuring bulging, opaque strips of collective programs highlight the tense relationship between the two.

Diagrammatic Section through Slab

Above: Aerial PerspectiveLeft: View from Intellectual Factory Worker’s Perspective

Though separated from the city by the raised vertical slabs, the park and retail present on the ground level are projected up through the building, causing inflections in the surface to allow for small collectivities. These spaces become the basis for moments of relief in the project. Each slab contains the tension between the reduced public collective and the overwhelming individualized, but not private, spaces.

Minimums and Maximums, Plan, Level 14

The repetition allows for the project to create a blankness in the city. The transparency and people merge together, creating an empty rectangle in Shanghai, countering all the contemporary towers striving for unique forms.

Right: Diagram depicting the “flip” of the tradi-tional live/work unit (danwei) within the proj-ect. The vertical transformation gives a stronger and more contemporary relationship to the city, but the separation with its surroundings is still maintained.

Below and Left: Section Perspective and its Close-up, The collective spaces are highlighted in the section; the rest are the individual live/work units.

Edge vs. City

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The New Commons was produced by NEME Studio for the Europan 11 competition. The abandoned space in Haugesund, Norway was an unusual site, being neither edge, nor center, but requiring a large-scale intervention that embodied the attributes of the two. Proposing three scales of interventions that provided a different legibility at each scale, the project maintained cohesiveness through a common frame typology. With a “doll within a doll” approach, the architectural, urban, and territorial frames allow for the overall strategy to act with complexity on multiple levels.

I designed and produced, alone and collaboratively, all drawings and models shown.

Edge vs. City

The New Commons“Allmenningene”

NEME Studio, Summer 2010, designerEuropan 11 Competition

Interior ViewsAbove Left: Sculpture Park in “Museum Frame”Above: View from Pool in “Housing Frame”

The City Park: Byparken Stadium

Green Hill:Hollenderhaugen

The Main Square: Radhusplassen

Establishing Territorial Frame Territorial Frame Territorial Frame Phasing

Housing Types

Territorial Frame

Territorial Frame Phasing Program Dispersion

OFFICEHOUSING

MUSEUM&ART GALLERIESCONVENTION CENTER

HOTELLIBRARY

FOODRETAIL

PARKING

Section Perspective of Entire Site

Ground Floor

First Floor Plan

Location

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Basement Plan

Left: PlansThe urban concept flips the typical urban void typology. Instead of merely being situated on the edge of the site and keeping an inner green void, the buildings are surround by thick forestry and public programs, allowing for an uninterrupted public ground within the city.

Below: Model

CONTACTKate Morgan