"I'll Buy The Flowers Myself..."

Reflected Ceiling Plan

Floor Plan

Side Elevation

Section A

Section B

Front Elevation

Section D

Section C

Back Elevation

Section E

Section F

Final Pin-Up

Final Model [side elevation]

Final Model [back elevation]

Inspired by the work of Oscar Niemeyer and the notion of suicide as a shift from the natural order comes this flower shop design. Located on a given site across from a cemetery in Brooklyn, this flower shop is meant to be an experience; a place where the sublime lives. Leaking from the perfect rectangular geometries of the back elevation comes the curving front elevation resembling a droplet. Within this droplet is the public flower shop. The public and private spaces are separated save for a doorway between the two near the entrance. A visitor enters from the south east corner and descends two feet below ground down a curving ramp. Passing through what appears to be a gap where the twenty foot high wall meets the ceiling, a visitor is immediately confronted with a light fixture composed of hundreds of suspended singular illuminated glass flower vases of varying lengths. The ceiling and walls themselves glow due to the transparent concrete used in construction. Buckets are inserted into the wall and a curved cash wrap marks the end of the circular progression one follows inside the public space. One exits through the same entrance gap and ascends towards ground level. A special feature of this public space is the private consultation platform located off the exit ramp where the only view outside the building exists (otherwise, one's concept of space is lost and feelings of floating through the space come into play). The working space is located in the back and follows the elliptical line through the building's entirety.

Shifting Process

exploratory scroll

concept sketch

concept sketch

concept model

concept model

line generator

drawings from line generator

drawings from line generator

3D rendering of line generator

shift concept

concept sketch

analogous model

flower shop concept

We were asked to think of concepts of death and dying. I have been drawn to the life of Virginia Woolf; therefore I began to examine her suicide. I began the final semester project with a death scroll documenting the drowning of Woolf; her portrait becoming more disfigured as the scroll unravels until it is completely darkened by graphite. Suicide as a means of death is a shift from the natural progressing of life. It is someone taking life in to their own hands and away from fate. To explore this notion of shifting, I took the perfect form of an egg and cracked it. Using a make-shift line generator, I explored shifts through a 2-D field and then translated those shifts into a 3D string model. It was my job then to employ this examination of shifts, suicide, and death into a flower shop.

Flooding the Palazzo

Performance model concept

Model reference

1/8" - 1' Axon showing water depth

Performance model artifact

Gel wax model

A human floats between 4 feet and 1 foot below ground level within the Palazzo Stampalia Querini. Using plexi glass, museum board, dye, glitter, and water I flooded a 1/8" - 1" model of Scarpa's first floor renovation. Rather than controlling water like Scarpa did, I unleashed it to illustrate the levels below ground that a human can occupy. The darker the water, the farther below ground level a visitor is. I then re-made the 1/8" model and flooded the space with gel wax in order to have a solid version of what was shown in the first flood. The varying densities of the gel color illustrate the dye within the first model.

Carlo Scarpa: Palazzo Stampalia Querini study

1/8" - 1' Constructed Drawing

Floor plan 

Section A

Section B

1/8" - 1' Axon

Elevation of gates

Begun in 1959, Carlo Scarpa's renovation of the first floor of the Palazzo Stampalia Querini in Venice, Italy is an ode to the canal. The gallery space that occupies the first floor is prone to flooding. Rather than try and prevent the natural rising and falling tides of the Venetian canals within the space, Scarpa invites the water in. Employing varying levels of foot paths, walls, and guard rails - the water is controlled. Similar to the way in which the tides fluctuate within the space, so too does a human. The teak bridge entrance brings a visitor about a foot below ground level. Once inside, a visitor is essentially floating through space; hovering between 4 feet - 1 foot below ground level. It isn't until they reach the garden in the rear that they are above grade.