CHARLES A. KANE II

Yale School of Architecture | Fall 2015

Critic: Elia Zenghelis with Andrew Benner

Description:

This project straddles the intersection between park and city--between university and residential. In addition to occupying a trapezoidal site, this project attempts to address some of the issues facing Greece today. The building is meant to perform as a city within the city. The circular form offers space for classrooms, offices, and workshops in hopes of spurring innovation in a struggling economy. The objects within the circle offer woodshops, performance space, communal meeting, and athletics. Finally, the courtyard and rectangle that appears to attach to the circle provide housing. In this way, the building attempts to offer a place for the advancement of new ideas and the preservation of existing knowledge.

Yale School of Architecture | Fall 2014

Critic: Martin Finio

Description:

This proposal for a new design building at the University of Pennsylvania questions the insularity that often characterizes architecture programs and their buildings through a variety of formal operations. The section of the building promotes connection between the currently segregated disciplines. All studios inhabit two main floors that serve as the field condition in which classrooms and offices hang. These volumes create sectional diversity on the interior and allow for visual connections between programs. The exterior also balances insularity and openness; thick walls with deep aperatures respond to historic buildings but large opennings at the ends of the building expose the innerworkings of the studio environment.

Yale School of Architecture | Spring 2016

Critics: Kersten Geers of OFFICE KGDVS with Caitlin Gucker Taylor

Description:

In search of the commons in the 21st Century, this project is strategically nestled within a stand of trees and between an airport and highway--the site, a placeless bedroom suburb. Therefore, the goal was to work within this frame.

This project bolsters the idea that sports are one of the few moments of both shared space and shared interaction still exist in a measurable scale. However, these fields and courts are normally tucked behind schools or deteriorate adjacent to a community church. This project attempts to reach a critical mass through agglomerating seemingly adversarial sports in close proximity. Hopefully, this project (with additional dormitories for teams and restaurants for the curious visitor) could foster some semblance of a contemporary village.

Yale School of Architecture | Fall 2013

Critic: Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen

Description:

Situated along the Mill River and adjacent to a historic dam, the site is part of a research and historical campus that commemorates Eli Whitney’s impact on New Haven. This project extends the museum’s territory to the waterfront and creates a series of discrete ecosystems that trace across the landscape to direct attention to the few remaining structures from Whitney’s thriving manufacturing town. The manufactured landscapes connect the user with the environment in a variety of ways: raising up to enclose the visitor, sloping down into the tidal river and projecting out to visually connect to the dam.

Yale School of Architecture | Spring 2014

Critic: Peter de Bretteville

Description: 

Before entering the collaborative stage of the Jim Vlock First Year Building Project, each student considered the brief individually. This project brief emphasized a small square footage (900 sq ft) for both an owner and a tenant. This project focused on compactness and deception. By restricting the building to a tight footprint, the building maintains a proportional massing despite the much smaller square footage. The owner’s interior space circulates around a central core that is lit from above by a sculpted skylight. The land owner occupies the ground floor, so that the living space can extend laterally across the landscape. The tenant, positioned above, has a much smaller living quarter, but retains a large exterior terrace to allow the renter to use the exterior as living space. The skylight does not allow for visual connection but reminds each inhabitant of each other’s presence.

Yale School of Architecture | Spring - Summer 2014

Design Selected for Construction - member of winning team

Critic: Alan Organschi, Adam Hopfner, Avi Foreman

Description:

The Jim Vlock First Year Building Project is an annual undertaking performed by the Master of Architecture students at Yale University. At the end of the semester, this design was selected for constuction. This project brief emphasized a small square footage (900 sq ft) for an owner and tenant. The exterior of the pure cubic volume was sculpted to both conform to setback restrictions and create unexpected spatial conditions on the interior. This tight three story volume maintains a small footprint and the lot serves as an extension of the living space. The owner occupies the ground level and second floor loft, and the tenant occupies the third level. Spatial diversity was a guiding principle throughout thd design. 

Collaborators: Lila Jiang Chen, Anthony Gagliardi, Cynthia Hsu, Anne Ma, Seokim Min,  Madelynn Ringo, and Caitlin Thissen

*Construction Documents and Building Construction executed by entire M. Arch I 2016 Class.

Yale School of Architecture | Spring 2014

Critic: Ben Pell and John Eberhart

Description:

A temporary installation at the entrance to the Art and Architecture Building that encourages gathering and interaction on the once vibrant grand stair. The installation not only formally encouraged pause but also focused the users’ views up toward the towering shear walls that are too often unnoticed. The seating pieces lock into the nosing of Rudolph’s steps and were designed for mobility and reconfiguration. The shape and color of the pieces were meant to catch attention of passersby while subtely referencing the contours of the bush hammered concrete. 

Collaborators: Dov Feinmesser, John Kleinschmidt, Kristen Nothwehr, and Andy Sternad  

Yale School of Architecture | Fall 2013

Critic: Peter Eisenman

Description:

By using Eisenman’s analysis techniques, this series of drawn historical studies of architecture from Alberti to Le Corbusier attempts to extract deeper latent meaning out of the various projects. Over the course of study, a search for continuity, questioning and departure linked the projects together. 

Year: Fall 2013

Yale School of Architecture | Spring 2014

Critic: Peter Eisenman

Description:

This class applied Eisenman’s analytical to the work of Le Corbusier. Through the course of the semester, I explored Casa Crutches - located in Argentina - through drawings and models. The house is a unique duplication of contradictory elements. The columnar Domino diagram exists simultaneously with the wall-based Citrohan diagram. The two diagrams slip past each other, intersect, attract and repel each other throughout the house.

Yale School of Architecture | Summer 2014

Critic: John Blood and John Eberhart

Description: This project - part of a course based on blending the digital and analog in architectural representation - imagines the future of Richard Meier's seminal Smith House, located in Darien, CT, in a post-apocalyptic environment. The project combined both individual and group work (group work is denoted with an asterisk).  

* = Collaborative Image with Sarah Kasper and John Kleinschmidt

Yale School of Art | Spring 2016

Published in Yale Alumni Magazine

Critic: Henk Van Assen

Description: 

“Between the Lines” is a typographic installation for a graphic design class. The plexiglass verse is an excerpt from Pablo Neruda’s poem, “Ode to Things.” Each line of the poem is frosted in a soft matte on one side, edged in white, and suspended within the concrete channels of Rudolph Hall’s facade. The content of the poem celebrates things built by hand; here, the lightness of the installation stands in contrast to the building’s rough, bush-hammered concrete. The ethereal text oscillates into and out of focus as the sun and the passerby change position in relation to the installation. 

Featured on the Yale Alumni Magazine

Yale School of Architecture | Spring 2015

Critic: Turner Brooks

Description:

This project focused on the ambiguous interplay between perception and light. Initially inspired by the decaying and ominous spaces of the abandoned Winchester Repeating Arms Factory, the project evolved into a study of misreading, multiplicity, insinuation, and intersecting spaces. The work of Esher, Josef Albers's Structural Constellations, Piranesi's Carceri etchings, and Goya's Caprichos were all sources of inspiration during the study. 

Clemson University | Spring - Summer 2010

Critic: Robert Miller

Description:

This two-fold installation in historic Charleston, SC required both providing a secure bike storage for city employees and revealing the latent history of an area that was scorched by urban renewal in the 1960s. The bike lockers were all fabricated by the class and performed on a counterweighted system. In order to expose the historical layers of the site, the team developed an historically based mural and ground treatment that reveals the cyclical pattern of construction and removal.

Collaborators: Joel Babcock, Alex Defee, Daniel Hutcherson, Jon Jones, Andrew Pardue, Katie Sedor, Lindsay Shelton, Joel Travis, Barak Yaryan

Clemson University | Spring 2011

Critic: Dave Lee

Description:

This exhibition for a seminar class that used the letter sized document as the format was exhibited in a working metal shop in the industrial district of Greenville, SC. Therefore, the team used both the format and the context to create a structure that could hold all of the documents meant to be displayed. The conical ribbon hung by steel cables formalized the triangulation of constraints.

Collaborators: Michael Deere, David Macaulay, Megan McCarthy, Chris Wilkins

Clemson University | Fall 2010

1st Prize Entry to the USITT Theatre Design Competition 

Critic: Robert Bruhns

Description: This project envisioned a satellite training and performance theatre for Clemson University's Drama School. The team selected the site of an abandoned 3 theatre cinema as the kernel of intervention. From there the team built out a classroom tower that had direct interaction with the new blackbox theatre. This allow for classes in performance or lighting to spill out directly into the theatre. During the performances nights, the tower doubled as a glowing beacon for the community. 

Collaborators: Evaline Dadulla, Michael Deere, and Allender Stewart