Joseph Sandy

Last Studio Project

Joseph — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 21:23:58 +0000

Quick preview of my final studio project, will post more drawings later.

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Studio Project – Ramp House

Joseph — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 02:31:26 +0000

This house design while still in its infancy is an attempt to design an ADA accessible house that has multiple level changes. This lead to an interior ramp that organizes the project and provides accessibly to all spaces.

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New School Garden Drawings

Joseph — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 22:40:56 +0000

New drawings for the LAUSD School Garden project.

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$300 House Workshop

Joseph — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 18:48:23 +0000

This post is a little late but I wanted to share the outcome of the $300 House workshop. With over 40 people from around the world gathered at Dartmouth the workshop started with a truly inspiring speech by Dr. Jim Kim(see below). I had the pleasure of working in the rural house group with: Susannah Drake (DLandStudio), Eric Ho (Architecture Commons), Vicki May, Chris Scovel (MASSDesign), Dr. Astrid Jules, Nachiket Thakur, Patrick Vilaire, Karolina Kawiaka, and a few other people who rotated in from other groups.

After leaning the about the cultural needs and expatiations of a housing in Haiti, we set to work in identifying a strategy to address the idea of creating a $300 house. The Haitians expressed the need not of extremely cheep housing but that of jobs. So how could our house design spur job creation. This along with getting local material costs led us to identifying an idea that we would only spend $300 on imported goods and then $1,700 on local goods and labor. The house ends up costing $2,000 but it can create jobs which was more important to this location. The building was designed to California earthquake and structural standards. If the house was to use more experimental foundations and walls (earthbag) the cost could be brought way down but these have not been formally tested so while they may be good options but are not what we have chose to use for the initial prototype. The design/structural strategy was to create a core from compressed earth block, attached to that core the rest of the walls would be built using traditional Haitian wattle and daub, and woven screens. Also part of the overall idea was that we were creating a building strategy not a specific design, so that each house could be customized to a family’s needs.

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Field Trip – Watts Towers

Joseph — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 02:11:25 +0000

Watts Towers in Watts district Los Angeles - Built by Simon Rodia over 30 years starting in 1921.

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USC Coliseum & Exposition Park Final

Joseph — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 22:59:16 +0000

Final drawings and models for Exposition park and USC Coliseum studio project.

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Exposition Park & USC Coliseum Redesign

Joseph — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 19:47:38 +0000

Our studio project this semester is to design a new master plan for Exposition Park (which is just south of USC), and redesign the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for USC football. The studio is run by Dan Meis (Senior Principal at Populus) and Greg Otto (Director Buro Happold).

My proposal is an attempted to keep the historic museums and rose garden, but reorganize the park into a cohesive place that attracts both students and members of the residential community. A new aerospace museum which is needed to house the space shuttle will be added to the collage of existing museums. Along with the redesigned Coliseum a new soccer stadium for Chivas USA, and aquatics center are planned.

The major hurdle to designing the stadium is its historic nature. To upgrade the coliseum to the level of other top national football programs the seating bowl will need to be replaced, and suites and club seating will need to be added. This is in direct conflict with the historic building because the bowl is the experiential part of the building. Since we were tasked with removing the bowl, some of the historic building would have to be removed, so what else do we remove or not remove. I have chosen remove most of exterior but keep the peristyle entrance. Then by designing my project around the entrance I have made it more prominent and important to the site than it currently is. This way I can respect the sites past and remind visitors of the historic events while still creating a modern stadium.

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First Grasshopper and CNC experiment

Joseph — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 04:02:06 +0000

This is my first stab at using grasshopper(a Rhino plugin) and a CNC router.

First I created a rolling surface by lofting between two curves. Then used grasshopper to analyze the surface for its curvature, this is represented by holes on the surface.

The holes are filled with plugs, the relationship of these plugs height above or below the surface is determined by the diameter of the circle.

The cut didn’t turn out perfect, the 1/4″ router bit couldn’t get between some of the plugs. So for the next round I have set the holes at least 1/4″ apart.

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Press – Petaluma Studio & $300 Hybrid House

Joseph — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 19:52:14 +0000

Exciting week, first project featured in a book and first newspaper article/interview.

The Petaluma Studio was featured in the book Ultra Low Tech Architecture

The book is available from MONSA

I also did an interview for El Mundo about the $300 Hybrid House project. You can read the article here -link-

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$300 House – Earthbag walls

Joseph — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 03:57:07 +0000

This design variation utilizes an earthbag thermal mass wall instead of the compressed earth block wall. This option is good for building when an earth block press is not available. Since these walls are much thicker I was able to bow them outward six inches. This adds to the stability of the walls and also has a comforting spacial effect. The roof has been updated from my last post so that it has small upper exterior shutters on the left, and the interior gable has louvers to provide ventilation when needed.

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