JOSEPH SANDY

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

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

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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.

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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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-

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.