Invisible Buildings: architect Victoria Meyers and hMa collaborate to design buildings that 'disappear' - in plain sight. How do you make the 'slight of hand' work when the object you are trying to 'disappear' is a building?
hMa does this at Won Buddhists through details that mask their buildings, and blend the reading of the buildings into landscape. A series of screens act as camouflage, and make building edges that have the thickness and non-specificity of trees. Trees and plants have very complex edges. By studying the biological edges of plant matter, hMa developed a series of operations that screen their buildings from public view.
In addition to non-specific edges of buildings, hMa's roads are gravel, from the original gravel pits on the site. And the landscape plans for the site include the planting of tall meadow grasses and trees to mask the built areas of the site.
Meyers is in discussion with artist Mary Temple, about possibly painting one of Temple's shadow paintings, on one of the buildings to enhance the aspect of 'invisibility' - by creating false shadows, to further mask the built form on the site. Below: artist Mary Temple produces one of her famous shadow paintings, for Rice University.
Mary Temple, artist, installing 'invisible trees' - through shadows - at Rice University, above.
Won Buddhist Temple: wood column as a tree.
Won Buddhist Retreat: wood column as a tree.
Won Buddhist Retreat: wood buildings sit among trees.
Trees + buildings blend. That blending = invisibility. Invisibility = Infinite Bleed of Edge. Infinite Bleed of Edge increases the perception of the 'space' of the retreat - to an infinite horizon.
It is the 'infinite horizon' that hMa was seeking in their development of the Buddhist project.
At Won Buddhist Retreat, hMa focused on an idea of invisibility and how invisibility is related to zero carbon footprint. But also literally - a series of wood buildings, placed on a wooded site, possibly the way to make them disappear is by installing wood screens in front, to blur the line between building and trees - using Asplund’s Woodland Cemetary as a precedent, for this procedure.
Let’s look at wood screens, and - what hMa refers to as: ‘Infinite Bleed of Edge’.
Above: A diagram of hMa's courtyards at the Won Dharma Retreat. hMa designed the courtyards to incorporate diagonal walking paths, building to building. The concept was that practitioners walk from void to void - in a z-shaped path.
The Diagram shows three variations on walking paths: a ‘loop’ linking residence halls 1 and 2; a walking meditation sequence linking permanent residents to an outdoor sitting area behind their building; and finally, the walk connecting dining and meditation.
hMa had extensive conversations with the Buddhists who saw these sequences as the primary experience of the retreat.
Aerial View of Residence Halls 1 and 2 showing the dynamic relationship of the courtyards.
Let's walk through courtyards:
Fractal roofs - announce buildings and courtyard entries:
Entry into the Permanent Residents' courtyard (above):
In the courtyard (above):
Porches and steps: everything is sustainably harvested wood:
Porches and steps: Won Buddhist Retreat is as much about the materiality of wood, as it is about the effort required to attain Zero Carbon Footprint. (the project is also a Brownfield Mitigation project).
back to where we started the journey: at the Won Buddhist Retreat Administration building courtyard.
To demonstrate the idea of Design as Energy Waves - I am showing hMa's Won Buddhist Retreat in Claverack, New York, also referred to as ‘Absolute Zero’. Won Buddhist Retreat is a project designed with Zero Carbon Footprint. The Energy systems used by hMa cancel all Carbon Emissions
hMa also refers to this project as: Geometry and No Space in the Landscape’. This is a project where hMa Designed the site master plan, in addition to five buildings on the site: a Meditation Hall that is a place of stasis, and four Residential Buildings that are dynamic in form, with fractal roofs.
Shown above: the site master plan model. The site was an abandoned rock quarry. The Satellite of the site (below) shows how hMa kept the existing drive into the site. hMa then sited the five buildings for the Retreat where the quarry had been. This is a Brownfield Mitigation project.
Above: the Retreat Meditation Hall, next to the Dining Hall / Administration Building. These two buildings create an entry courtyard, the first Retreat space visitors encounter.
Above: a wood bridge that connects the Dining Hall to the Meditation Hall Porch. When you go to the Won Dharma Retreat, visitors are allowed to speak in all areas, except the Meditation Temple
The Bridge was requested by the Clients as a transition space to bridge the gap between everyday life, speaking, and meditation, spiritual practice, and silence.
Above: Won Buddhist Meditation Hall this past August, with a silent yoga retreat. You can see the Meditation Hall with practitioners in yoga poses as part of the retreat. Half of the focus in the photo is on the wood column. In addition to energy, this project is very much about the materiality of wood.
hMa also designed the master plan for the 700-Acre site. The Buddhists requested that we use the residential buildings as places to initiat walking meditation. They requested that we layout a series of paths between buildings to guide where people walk. The diagonal shape of the paths mimicthe diagonal relationships between the four courtyard buildings by hMa.
Above, the Dining Hall: part of the Buddhist spiritual practice is centered around natural foods, and a plant based diet.
The Dining Hall is an important space in the Buddhist’s Ritual Beliefs. Whereas Meditation is a collective space where people gather for shared practice in silence, the Dining Hall is a collective space where people gather to eat and speak.
Meditation Hall and Dining Hall sit - side by side - as a contrast of elements.
Architecture itself Is education and references ideas by its existence. For education, we present work by hMa Principal Victoria Meyers' students at the University of Cincinnati. Above: Images from Meyers' Seminar, 'Sound Urbanism/ Sound Ecology', at the University of Cincinnati. Meyers' seminar spent Spring 2014 ‘mapping’ sound sections through significant neighborhoods in Cincinnati.
Above, top of the image: student drawing of the Bridge over the Ohio River, separating Ohio and Kentucky. This is an area of intense industrial activity and shipping. Below, left side of the drawing: the Viaduct that crosses train tracks that lead to the main train station in downtown Cincinnati. When the Mid-West was a center of industrial manufacturing, there were hundreds of trains /day passing below this viaduct. Today there are a few trains/ day, and the train station is a museum. The sounds generated by trains coming through Cincinnati are different than they were 100 years ago.
In addition to drawings, students also made sound recordings of each section. The goal was to generate sections that explore visually and through sound, areas that register significant change to Cincinnati.
Above: Meyers' 2012 Graduate Studio at the University of Texas: Manhattanville M(w)EE. Students were asked to design a new Subway Station for the 125th Street Subway Stop in Manhattan. This is an area where the NYC Subway is elevated above ground. 125th Street is the lowest elevation in NYC.
This has become a significant stop on the # 1 Train because Columbia University is building a new Campus here. Students were asked to design a subway stop capable of handling 10,000 people /day. Each Student also developed a program to go with their stops.
We show two projects: one imagines a new Bio-Engineering Lab as a linear bridge over the elevated subway. The other project is a translucent Cube - an arts building - that hovers around the stop, with the subway passing through the base.
Meyers' Spring 2014 Studio, above. Meyers asked students to design a ‘Hacker-Maker’ building in downtown Brooklyn. The studio concentrated on the design of roofs, and open spaces for working.
The project from Meyers studio above, has a roof with fractal openings, where crystalline shaped skylights drop through the roof into the Hacker-Maker space. Hacker-Makers get randomly placed cubes to work in. The interface between two systems of form: the formalism of cubes and rectilinear space, juxtaposed to fractals and crystalline forms - creates a dynamic space for creative work.
Research is how we test our environment. It is ultimately - how human cultures grow. We are showing, above, hMa’s project - DWi-P - opened in 2014. DWi-P is a building that presents a complex overlay of Sound Composition / Glass// and Cell Phone Technology. DWi-P's glass Wall has a score etched on it, is embedded with Bluetooth, and has an App. The DWi-P App will read where visitors are in space, and visitors can point cell phones at the wall, and play the Schumacher composition, WaTER, etched on the glass as a frit pattern.
The image above shows Dr. Lene Hau, at Harvard. Dr. Hau is a Physicist doing research on the speed of light at Harvard. In 2006 hMa Principal Meyers wrote ‘Designing with Light’. For research on DWL, Meyers had several conversations with Dr. Hau.
hMa continued our conversations, and Dr. Hau had great influence on how hMa designed Infinity Chapel.
Victoria Meyers architect, hMa, is pleased to share this recently published feature on the Won Dharma Center in GreenSource magazine. The article focuses on the project's use of green design and natural materials. Below is an excerpt:
"Zen Getaway: A retreat in upstate New York reinforces the Buddhist mantra of simplicity and connection to nature.
By Fred A. Bernstein
March 2013
Whether President Obama has had an impact on carbon emissions isn't
in doubt among the Won Buddhists of North America, part of a sect
founded in Korea in the 1920s to promote interfaith understanding. The
group's meditation center, in Claverack, New York (in the Hudson River
Valley, two hours north of Manhattan), was already under construction
when one of its leaders, Reverend Chung Ohun Lee, attended the United
Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in 2009. She was so
inspired by Obama's speech—in which he vowed to cut emissions by 80
percent over 40 years—that she asked the center's architects to switch
from the conventional building systems they had already ordered to such
energy savers as geothermal heating and solar hot water. The late
changes increased the construction budget by about 8 percent, to
approximately $6.5 million, according to architect Thomas Hanrahan, who
designed the 22,000-square-foot complex with Victoria Meyers, his
partner in New York's Hanrahan Meyers Architects."
view of Meditation Hall from Administration porch : Won Dharma Center. Victoria Meyers architect
Victoria Meyers architect, hMa, is pleased to announce that the Won
Dharma Center has won an Honor Award from the AIA NY Chapter. Won Dharma Center is a 28,000 square-foot spiritual and recreational retreat
in Claverack, New York for the Won Buddhists, a Korean
organization that emphasizes balance in one's daily life and relationship to
nature. The center is located on a 500-acre site on a gently sloping hill
with views west to the Catskill Mountains.
The buildings for the Center, including permanent and guest residences, an
administration building and a meditation hall, are sited as far as possible
from the local rural access road, and oriented west and south to maximize views
and light. The symbol of the Won organization is an open circle, suggesting
both a void without absence and infinite return. The buildings are
organized around the dual concepts of void and spiral.
view of Meditation Hall and Administration from west : Won Dharma Center. Victoria Meyers architect
The 3,000
square-foot Meditation Hall is conceived as a simple rectangular void and a
lightweight frame to the natural surroundings. Its wooden structure is
exposed on three sides to form entrance and viewing porches, while the interior
offers expansive views of the mountains.
The
four residential buildings include the dining hall/ administrative building,
and three residential dormitories for guests and permanent residents. The
design of the residential buildings draws on the formal organization of grass-roofed
Korean farm-houses, loosely clustered and organized internally around a single
central void. The roof shapes of the 4,000 square-foot residence
buildings transform in section around a spiral organization, from a simple
slope in section to a complex triangulated geometry where the roof transforms
into an open-air entrance porch. The internal organization of the residence
buildings allows silent walking meditation from courtyard to courtyard.
The courtyards act as passive cooling systems, and when the sliding doors
facing the courtyards open, cross ventilation through the public areas and guest
rooms provides passive cooling. All of the residential buildings are wood
construction, like the Meditation Hall, and deeply shaded to the west and south
to allow natural daylighting without excessive heat gain.
view of guest residences 1 and 2 : Won Dharma Center. Victoria Meyers architect
Victoria Meyers architect is pleased to announce that her firm, hMa, is featured in the latest issue of elemente magazine. To see the article, featuring hMa's Won Buddhist campus, go to the link:
Of Spirals and Voids .... The main meditation space was designed with special acoustical properties, to allow the sounds of the Buddhists bells to reverberate within the room. To read more about architecture and sound, look for Victoria Meyers architect's next book, 'shape of sound', to be published April 2014.
In upstate New York resides a very zen-like, very un-New York-like retreat. ... (to read more, visit elemente magazine's site, above).
FSC cedar used on all buildings. Zero-Carbon Footprint for the site design. To see more, visit element magazine, http://issuu.com/AngusMacKenzie/docs/elemente_iss17_finalnov1/93. The buildings were designed to weather naturally with the weather. The buildings are light unstained cedar. By next year, the buildings will all have weathered to a natural grey color.
Entry into the Meditation Hall. View toward Catskill Mountains, Claverack, New York.
Every building at the retreat (all five buildings) includes a large, commodius outdoor wood porch, as an ancillary, extra room.
Porch connecting the Dining Hall / Administration Building to the Meditation Hall.
Won Buddhist is a 30,000 square foot Buddhist Retreat in Claverack, New York. The Retreat has five buildings: four residence halls, and one meditation building. The four residence halls all have a spiral shape (which is why the article is titled: 'of spirals and voids). The meditation hall is rectangular (the inspiration for the meditation hall was the sculpture 'untitled' by David von Schlegell at Storm King Art Center, in upstate New York).
Won Buddhism is a Korean sect, and the Retreat is sponsored by Won Buddhism of North America. The Retreat includes permanent housing for retired monks from the Won Buddhist sect.
To read more about the Won Buddhist Retreat, follow the link to the article in elemente magazine, or visit the hMa website: www.hanrahanMeyers.com.
At the Won Buddhist Retreat designed by hMa, Victoria Meyers architect, there is a discrete split between the live spaces and the meditation space. Meditation was seen by the Won Buddhist clients as a space of slience, and live as a place for the sounds of living.
This difference created an extreme difference of Sound experience in the two spaces. Within the Live Courtyards, there would be sounds of people talking, eating, preparing food, and discussing ideas about the lessons taught at the Center.
The Retreat was seen as an educational campus, where visitors would learn the ideas embedded within the Won Buddhist meditation techniques. hMa also saw the Retreat as an example of the firm's ideas around Sound Urbanism: the creation of spaces that frame different qualities of sound.
The Meditation Hall frames silence, as well as the sound of the Buddhist Abbot's bell, imported from Korea as part of the sect's importation of their very specific concepts around meditation. The Residential buildings are arranged around courtyards, designed as areas for outdoor discussion, where visitors can share the day's lessons, and discuss the sect's philosophy. Walking paths through the site, where resident monks and visitors can walk, and hear only the sounds of the Nature of the site.
Victoria Meyers architect has developed ideas around sound urbanism after several years of work with sound spaces, and after collaborating with sound artists, including Michael Schumacher (the composer who developed the sound piece WaTER, for the hMa building DWi-P in New York City); and Stephen Vitiello, who Ms. Meyers worked with in New York prior to 2001, who she assisted in his first foray into Marfa, Texas.
The Won Buddhist site was designed by hMa to have Zero Carbon Footprint, and is a mitigated Brownfield site. The campus includes four Residential buildings that float as spiral pavilions in the landscape. The Won Buddhist Retreat is located in Clavarack, New York. All buildings on the site are built using FSC cedar, and the project includes geo-thermal heat and cooling; a solar panel field for electrical supply, and a central bio-mass boiler for hot water and heat.
In 2007 hMa's Pratt Pavilion opened to public praise and attention. The project has been recognized with awards from the Architectural League of New York City, the AIA NYChapter, and from Build Brooklyn. In 2009, Pratt was included in the Phaidon Atlas of World Architecture.
Pratt Pavilion: showing hMa's 3-D design study, next to the finished project. Post: Victoria Meyers architect
Pratt Pavilion was designed by NY architects hMa, with design Principal Victoria Meyers looking at various precedents for the building. These included projects where sculptural objects suspended above people who moved below them in the landscape.
For this reason, Victoria Meyers architect refers to the Pratt Pavilion as 'visceral space', as the building gives visitors the sense of walking beneath a suspended object.
hMa's Pratt Pavilion, next to a photograph of Michael Heizer's 'Levitated Mass' at LACMA. Post: Victoria Meyers architect
To see more information about Victoria Meyers architect, Pratt Pavilion, and hMa, visit our website: www.hanrahanMeyers.com.
View looking up at the Pratt Pavilion, from below, next to hMa's bird's eye view of the pavilion, during the design phase. Post: Victoria Meyers architect
hMa's Pratt Pavilion was designed as the first building to fulfill the Pratt Master Plan, on the Pratt Institute campus in Brooklyn, NY. The building is open to the public, daily. hMa were also part of the Master Plan design committee, and developed many aspects of the Pratt campus master plan, including design guidelines for all new buildings to be built on campus, from 2005 - the future.
Clients for Pratt Pavilion include Juliana Curran Terian, Pratt Board member and the building's donor, as well as President Thomas Schutte, the President of Pratt Institute.
Victoria Meyers: Designing With Light
New York Architects Victoria Meyers and Thomas Hanrahan believe that architecture is an environment, 'pure space', manifested in nature. The principals of hanrahanMeyers architects (hMa) have established themselves as unique visionaries, incorporating light and sound into their arresting designs of pure forms. Founded in 1987, the firm specializes in residences, art centers, and community spaces. They design spaces from a vision that connects visitors with the natural world.
www.designingwithlight.us
Victoria Meyers: Shape of Sound Architect Victoria Meyers analyzes the shape of sound; architecture and sound; form; materiality; windows; the urban sound scape, its politics, aesthetics and social character; reflection; virtuality; sound art; and silence.
Shape of Sound on Amazon
Victoria Meyers: Shape of Sound Victoria Meyers architect (Los Angeles, Ca.), principal of hanrahan Meyers architects (hMa) explores sound as it effects architecture, urban spaces, and landscapes. Contributors include hanrahan Meyers architects (featured on the book cover), Stephen Vitiello, Michael J. Schumacher, David Mather, Neil Denari, Bruce Pearson, Howeler and Yoon architecture, and Joseph Ketner.
hMa : Green Initiatives / Sustainable Architecture
United Nations Environment Programme "Environmental Knowledge for Change" this site is an incredible resource on environmental and social issues around the world
Greenopia NY hMa is proud to be featured as a "Greenopia Distinguished Business"
41 Pounds A campaign to stop junk mail (named for the number of pounds of junk mail the average American adult recieves in 1 year!)
The Conservation Fund As part of our nature based vision for architecture, hMa gives a percentage of the firm’s annual revenues to nature initiatives. This year, hMa funded ‘Wildlife Corridors’, through the Conservation Fund. ‘Wildlife Corridors’ provide natural zones through cities and towns that link animals with adjacent nature preserves. This initiative is one of several cutting-edge planning initiatives that forward thinking architects will be adopting as we seek to harmonize human habitats with nature and create sustainable development.
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