I completed this project in Fall Semester 2009 while studying architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago.
The project brief was for a Montessori school at a fringe urban site in Chicago. My concept for the design was to draw on the urban fabric of the area to create a structure that sits sensitively within its context, while also creating new public spaces and city experiences for the school.
I explored these concepts through a variety of material explorations and study models.
One of the primary materials that I explored was plaster, developing a variety of casting techniques to create study models to explore form and space.
Using an iterative design process for formal explorations, I created hundreds of study models before arriving on the final form!
The forms were informed by diagrammatic studies, guiding the placement shape and adjacencies of programmatic elements.
These models were used to convey design concepts and digitally collaged to create perspective vignettes.
The final presentation model used a refinement of modelling techniques to represent the building form. In my final presentation (in the landmark IIT studio building S. R. Crown Hall), I presented an overview of the design process with an array of study models!
Images by Jonathan Choe
