Field Day

Located on East Warren Avenue this two-story mixed-use building is in Detroit’s Morningside neighborhood. Its curving brick and limestone facade, including its trademark sculptural crest, contributes significantly to the historic architectural character of the East Warren Corridor. By fully renovating this vacant building, four ground floor commercial spaces and three residential units will contribute to East Warren’s revitalization, providing high quality renovated retail spaces and one- and two-bedroom apartments. Thoughtful material selection and open storefronts will restore the historic and pedestrian-friendly character of the building, while activating the streetscape and enabling new commercial activity.

Our self-driven projects are guided by initial impressions, hunches and sometimes a fair share of impulsiveness. After the dust settles (literally), we slow down, gather our thoughts, ideas, materials and inspiration and get to work.

This project began when we purchased a partially collapsed building in a tax auction. We were drawn to its site: a commercial building adjacent to the historic Boston Edison neighborhood. Our first step was to stabilize the building. By removing the collapsed portion of the building, we were left with two new buildings: a tiny storefront and a small building in a big field - quite an uncanny sight! Inspired by the intricate masonry of the neighborhood and the availability of a unique periwinkle glazed brick, we studied traditional masonry patterns to design a new masonry facade. The facade will be completed with a matching storefront system with divided lites, further articulating its affiliation with the historic neighborhood.

Field Day’s design work book-ended this campus improvement plan for a local chemistry company. Our early work focused on master planning the overall campus to accommodate anticipated growth. The master plan included a schematic design proposal for a 40,000 sq. ft. building housing new laboratory and office space. Several years later, we were brought back into the project to assess changes to the initial proposal, including the addition of 20,000 square feet. The final phase of the work has included modifications to the interior build-out as well as assembling a full interior design package for the client. We turned to color to enliven and enhance the communal areas of the building: shared open offices, communal kitchens and conference rooms.

The post-and-beam structure of this mid-century ranched allowed for complete flexibility in reconceiving the interior spaces. By removing all interior partitions in the public areas, we created a light-filled open-floor plan. The kitchen is the activity hub around which eating, socializing and relaxing occur. A centrally located S-shaped island contains the sink, range, a tall counter, and a dining table table for six while the cabinets and refrigerator hug the eastern wall. Using locally harvested walnut, we designed a seamless surface that wraps the island to accentuate the furniture-like quality of the reconfigured kitchen.

This project exploits a zoning loophole to achieve higher density in a typical residential neighborhood. Historically, accessory dwelling units (ADUs) were written into zoning codes to allow wealthy homeowners the ability to house their domestic help on-site in a separate apartment. Only the property owner’s workers or blood relatives (max. 2 ppl) are allowed to live in the ADU. To enforce this regulation would require an invasion of privacy no building official is likely to undertake. However, obtaining a permit to build such a structure is completely legal. This site uses two vacant lots to build a mini-village of four small houses -two primary dwellings with two-detached accessory dwelling units above each garage.   

Built sometime before 1894, this 560 s.f. beach bungalow is located in Rockaway Beach - near NYC’s famous surf beach. Previously a two-unit summer shack, it was converted into a year-round two bedroom in the 1950s. The property had not not been updated in over 60 years, and was in dire need of repair. Because initial bids were significantly above budget, we did the work in-house. During the construction process we discovered original tongue-and-groove ceilings. Original hardwood floors were exposed and painted to unify a mash-up of patch repairs from years of wear and tear. A wall separating the living room from the kitchen was removed to join the spaces into one open area. Original cove molding, picture rails and base moldings were preserved to maintain the charm of the old bungalow.

This project was part of UCLA cityLAB's LA Times 10 exhibition at the Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles, Feb-April 2017. Our proposal sought to increase density and affordability in a market known for its high prices.

Our project statement sets the tone and aspiration of our proposal:

Architecture is owned. It is financed and governed. The protocols for producing architecture such as zoning ordinances, deed covenants, mortgage financing, et cetera are actively but invisibly dictating the architectural object. This spatial DNA of the city, while seemingly fixed, is incredibly precarious. Do Not Disturb Occupants approaches architectural outcomes in Los Angeles through the manipulation of property ownership, policy loopholes, tax dodges, political coups, and collective development strategies.

This project re-imagines an existing building - 1600 Vine - located at the corner of Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles, and home to a dozen top Vine stars. Vine was a social media app purchased by Twitter that allowed users to upload six-second looping videos. The architecture of 1600 Vine serves as the backdrop for these short sketch videos. Apartment interiors, banal parking garages, and public spaces such as the pool area become stage sets. This project addresses the following questions: How can architecture participate in the digital culture of Vine videos? What can architecture learn for Vine? And can we speed up architecture to the rate that digital content is consumed? 

The goal of the design is to amplify, exaggerate, and make new possibilities for the production of Vine videos by providing residents access to all areas of the building and allowing the transformation of architectural space. A series of infrastructural interventions were made to the building such as permanently installing window washing cranes and scaffolding with an attached camera boom allowing residents access the equipment. To make architecture as fast as possible -both in construction and deconstruction- a renovation machine is created to constantly loop around the building making alterations to the architecture and interior. The machine can transform an apartment by circulating new furnishings through the balcony windows or hoisting in gold columns to the parking garage to give it more bling. 

Rounding the corner from 6 mile to Woodbine Avenue on the outskirts of Detroit, commercial gives way to residential.  The irregularity of building form yields to the precise duplication of housing stock. The first facade becomes the rest, save for minute evidence of personalization. The curb is punctuated every 40 feet to make way for the family car, which reveals more about consumer preference, financial status and personality than the houses ever could. On the outskirts of Detroit, this site is neither fully residential nor commercial, neither city nor suburb; but a spatial, formal and programmatic threshold. 

You Are Here Now investigates the role that transaction, dislocation, material approximation and strange mobilities play in the creation of transient urban conditions. Elements of a halfway house expand into a study of materiality, mobility, scale, and transience. Like the building site, the occupants of the halfway house occupy a liminal, between state that opens new potentials in societal structures based on participatory engagement.

Produced for the UAE Pavilion at the 2015 Milan World Expo, The Secret Life of Date Palms is a collection of scientific, empirical and anecdotal research compiled from design workshops, experiments,  tests, samples, site visits and countless conversations with scientists, farmers, students, researchers and makers.  

For at least seven thousand years, the date palm has sustained and fostered life in the Middle East. As a food source, a shelter from the sun and wind, building materials for housing and raw materials for tools and utilitarian objects. The exhibition is an initial study, an inherently incomplete survey of a subject which has become increasingly unfamiliar despite its historical significance, cultural relevance and material value within the UAE. 

Structured around six date palm characteristics (Form, Shades & Shadow, Methamorposis, Hydration, Fruit, Sex), the exhibition draws on Emirati traditions and tacit knowledge to share a narrative that is infused with sensitivity, genuine curiosity and human inventiveness.

Ann Arbor’s Kerrytown is one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, combining Victorian and Dutch colonial homes with old light industrial buildings. Our client’s gambrel-roofed colonial created cramped second-story interior spaces, and a bathroom shower that did not accommodate our 6’2” client. By vaulting the bathroom ceiling, we exposed the geometry of the roofline on the interior without changing the exterior appearance of the house.

Once the height issues were resolved, we had three primary goals: to work with locally sourced material, to create a simple and elegant monolithic form, and to find and maintain a horizontal datum to make the space feel more expansive. We sourced a massive 72” x 20” x 9” slab of unsawn walnut and found a saw mill with the capacity to cut it to specifications to create a CNC-milled sink. Walnut also formed the medicine cabinet before turning the corner to wrap the window opening. 

A college dean and car-company executive live in the in a two bedroom apartment with sweeping views of Lafayette Park and Detroit. Both individuals need private home-work spaces but are limited by their two-bedroom layout. In addition, their living room and master bedroom had recently been renovated by another architect, and a new intervention needed to respond to the existing design framework.

Our proposal consisted of designing and fabricating a custom desk, free-standing shelving unit, filing cabinet, and installing curtain room divider in the master bedroom. Maintaining the same material palette as the existing design, we focused on the sensory experience of using the desk, creating a chamfered edge for maximum comfort while typing. Visually, we accentuated the thinness of the birch plywood by designing the thinnest possible desk legs, post-tensioned with stainless steel cable to increase the desk’s rigidity. We elevated the shelving unit on a 6” stainless steel frame to match the existing datum line of other birch-plywood furniture in the room. Limited by the dimensions of the freight elevator, the shelving unit was fabricated in two pieces, requiring a structural redundancy in shear panels.Seizing on this design opportunity, we incorporated a series of hidden compartments, without visible hardware, to reduce clutter and increase private storage: a secret space.