THESIS

Overall Studio Insight: In contemporary architectural culture, form is posited as merely one possible option, a fork in the path defining an architect’s ideological and professional progress. We are therefore told as designers that we must choose our allegiance to formal autonomy, program, social engagement, or advanced technology.

As a counter-argument, this studio proposed form as an overarching disciplinary problem encompassing all others. Students were asked to consider the role of architectural form in the construction of corporate identity through the alteration of an existing building in Pasadena’s Technology Corridor.

Focusing on the formal concept of deformation, we looked to architectural history as well as contemporary digital culture as a guide to how we might inhabit the subtle zones located between the responsive and the willful, the automatic and the authored, the indeterminate and the deterministic, the imagistic and the performative.

Launching Point: For my thesis, I tasked myself with creating an RFP (response for proposals) and competition with a set of guidelines to follow for a technology-based company seeking a physical identity. In an age where brick-and-mortar companies originate from basements, they struggle to create a physical presence in the world. The true intent behind my thesis emerges as a result of the restrictions set in place.

Request For Proposals: “The Organova Corporation 6275 Nancy Ridge Dr., San Diego, CA 92109 Sept 3, 2013 To: Saul S Archila Re: Request for Proposals (RFP) for ideas competition The Organovo Corporation is accepting proposals from consultants to write a brief and design a supporting online advertising campaign for an architectural ideas competition. The resulting competition will solicit entries for the design of a Research and Development facility to support the development and testing of 3D Printed Human Tissue, a product that is part of the company’s core technology mission.

As an advanced technology company, The Corporation encourages architectural designs that make use of computing technologies in both the design of the building itself and the creation of a distinct and recognizable corporate identity. The competition brief should solicit entries in which architecture plays a key strategic role in the company’s transition in the public eye from existing solely as an entity in cyberspace to a part of the bricks-and-mortar physical world. We believe that a company’s physical environment plays a key role in creating its corporate identity.

The Corporation has always been committed to promoting the city and urban life. In this way, while this new facility’s primary operations demand privacy and security, we envision this complex as an integral part of the urban landscape and civic life. Moreover, our environmental policies encourage the reuse of existing buildings. It is therefore assumed that the new facility will make use of architectural and natural resources. We are looking for a facility in the Pasadena area, and we are particularly interested in the historic center. Recently, we acquired the Bank of America building at Marengo and Green Streets in Pasadena. This building, originally designed by Edward Durell Stone for the Pasadena Redevelopment Agency and completed in 1974, is part of the region’s modern architectural heritage, but it is also neutral enough that we feel a bold approach to its alteration is appropriate. We are, however, open to proposals for the reuse of industrial buildings in the area between S. Arroyo Pkwy. and Raymond Ave., from Del Mar Blvd. at the north to Glenarm St. at the south. We encourage you to submit written questions to our online question-and-answer board (available shortly). We look forward to receiving your proposals for this ideas competition: it promises to be a landmark event in not only the history of our company but in the culture of building in the Los Angeles region.

Sincerely, Keith Murphy Director of Special Projects”

The Competition: Organovo Bio-Medical Research Facility Competition Brief Re-imagining replicated patterns for specific functions

“Replicating native form and function for greater predictive capabilities”

• Organovo Holding Inc.

“Not the object but the process to generate the object”

• Michael Hansmeyer

Organovo, a leading biological research company that specializes in the replication of human tissue using 3D printers, is seeking proposals for the new construction utilizing an existing building for a corporate facility dedicated to pre-clinical and clinical trials. Currently, we focus on developing a range of structurally and functionally accurate bio-printed human tissue models. We have achieved our greatest strides in research through the investigation of hepatocytes that replicate and fully restore livers to their original state by recreating geometries defined by the existing matter. The competition proposal needs to create a space that can facilitate the exploration of recreating geometries through the simplification of the existing environment and test them for human compliance.

Our ultimate goal is to create a corporate facility that works homogeneously to create an environment that synchronizes directly to both the needs of the surrounding environment as well as itself. We have been heavily influenced by Cedric Price’s Fun Palace philosophical ideal for “environments that would anticipate and accommodate change,” as well as Rob Ley and Joshua G Stein’s Reactive-VOID that reacts to the fundamental principle of reacting to users on a personal level using the architecture as the primary medium. Utilizing light as a transformative agent, we juxtapose its characteristics of composition, visibility, modeling, focus, information, intensity, direction, movement, reaction to textures, color, radiant energy, luminous energy, and sources. Please explore all the potential qualities that light can have on environments from both an introspective and externalized outlook on the rest of the environment and how this can replicate pattern for specific functions.

We anticipate that the proposal will generate conditions to break the barriers between the highly diversified suburban and industrialized zones. This should be addressed by creating socially interactive spaces for educational purposes that can explain to the surrounding community the benefits of our new proposal for the future of medical research. The proposals need to take on the existing urban attributes just as the hepatocytes do to fill in the missing matter through the recreating of geometries. The systems proposed both structurally and systematically need to have the capability to exponentially reorganize to react to the site. The city of Pasadena has a long history of keeping buildings maintained historically; with this in mind, the language of the building should address this but still create its own identity within the context of the city.

Site: General Location: The site is located just south of the Huntington Hospital between a suburban and an industrialized zone of Old Pasadena; this provides a multitude of opportunities utilizing the convergence of these distinctly different zones. We would like to reuse the current Municipal for Light and Power located on the corner of S. Raymond Ave. / 43 E. Glenarm St. by means of functionality through technology, in other words design not the form but rather the process to create the form. The breakthroughs in technology that have seamlessly bridged the gap in medical research are to be employed to break the barrier between suburban and industrialized zones.

Immediate Area: Directly north of the Municipal of Light and Power is the home of Hometown Pasadena, an organization dedicated to building community awareness. Directly to the East of the site is the Art Center’s South Campus, which originated in “a courtyard of buildings on West Seventh Street in Los Angeles” to now a former aviation wind tunnel which opened its doors in 2004. The school is currently looking to enhance and expand their industrial and transportation design programs. Alongside the College is the metro link gold-line that links Pasadena to Union Station in Los Angeles. Union Station is the primary departure point for all public transportation in the city of Los Angeles. Direct