Benjamin Tasistro-Hart
ARCH 4885: Landhugger Studio
Athanassios Economou, PhD
Fall 2018

‍Keywords
‍Landhuggers studio; Visual computation; Typology; Variation; Shape grammars

The I-75/85 Midtown corridor is a fourteen lane strip of Interstate that runs parallel to the campus of Georgia Tech and serves 289,000 vehicles per day. It is an incessant flow of vehicles, goods, and people and still a divider of the main campus of Georgia Tech and its new Midtown extension. This divider provids for an incredible opportunity for a marker of the institute to be grafted. Within this marker which takes form as a singular line pulling away from retaining walls of the interstate, traditional mediums of learning in the form of reconfigurable study spaces and lecture hall are negotiated to heighten the experience of fluid movement at the human scale. Joined to the pavilion of traditional learning by the makers’ garden, a new mode of academic engagement emerges in the form of a lightweight makerspace which fosters education as learning-by-doing which contributes to the culture of experimentation present on Tech’s campus. Through architecture which better connects the existing campus to Atlanta, Georgia Tech will gain new academic spaces for students and faculty and simultaneously embed itself in the eye of the traveler as an institution dedicated to bringing the future.

Anya Ray
ARCH 4885: Landhugger Studio
Athanassios Economou, PhD
Fall 2018
‍Keywords
‍Landhuggers studio; Visual computation; Typology; Variation; Shape grammars

A building that hovers over the site, with minimal connection to the ground expresses the need for imagination and ideas to be able to grow and become a reality. Through the use of one simple spatial relationship, a light, delicate, complex, highly expressive, highly aesthetic, and highly performative structure grows. The spatial relationship is approached in three different ways, as the building mass, as a skin system, and as both\ the structure and circulation of the building. The GT Nest will highlight academic, entrepreneurial, and performance spaces. This expressive building will reflect the aspirations and knowledge growth of the students who inhabit the space, designing the next innovative technology. The performance space will enable students to showcase their work, which the community can come, witness, and be a part of the evolution of the designs. There will also be temporary housing for guests, such as visiting professors. In order to create privacy, the housing units cannot be reached by the main circulation, but by its own separate entrance.

Reem Alshamaa
ARCH 3885: Landhugger Studio
Athanassios Economou, PhD
Fall 2018

‍Keywords
‍Landhuggers studio; Visual computation; Typology; Variation; Shape grammars

The underlying parti of the design is based on a variation of network patterns inspired by Stiny's ice-ray grammar. The rules here are deployed in a combinatorial fashion connecting alternating sides of a square frame that is divided in five equal increments on each side to produce 25 different possible variations. These rules can be expanded or contracted on different angular shapes. An overall urban frame envelopes the complete bridge and both its flanking sides overlooking the i75/85 producing two structures on the ground level on either side of the bridge unified by a great canopy on top. The networks of the ice-ray recursively divide both parts into smaller networks to accommodate the complete program of the university innovation hub and hotel.

Annie McCarthy and Erin West
ARCH 6051: Landhuggers Design Studio
Athanassios Economou, PhD
Fall 2011

‍Keywords
‍Landhuggers studio; Courtyards; Housing; Typology; Variation; Shape grammars

The underlying compositional strategy of the dormitory is drawn by a fusion of modular strategies derived from a three-dmimensional version of Tetris and interlocking housing modules, and actual precedent work drawn from the Whale at Amsterdam, NL by Fritz Van Dongen, the Schots 1+2 at Croningen, NL by S333 and the Simons Hall at Cambridge, MA by Steven Hall Architects. The housing grammar produces a rich set of variations of modular interlocking neighborhoods developed around vertical cores along with their own public spaces and all around an inner courtyard addresing the whole complex. The project remains within the five storey limit to emphasize its landhugger morphology and bound within a human scale the North st and Techwood Ave, the two streets bounding the housing complex.

Keyan Rahimzadeh and Jessica Marquardt
ARCH 6051: Landhuggers Design Studio
Athanassios Economou, PhD
Fall 2011

‍Keywords
‍Landhuggers studio; Courtyards; Housing; Typology; Variation; Shape grammars

A set of L-shape modular blocks combine in various ways to produce a rich set of configurations in planar and sectional space. These configurations are readily translated in nested courtyard schemes at various scales ranging from the unit itself to the complete assembly. The selected scheme from the housing grammar is developed above the 75/85 interstate that bounds the GT campus to provide a visual entry to the campus at North street and a symbolic presence of the institution at the highway below. The programmatic core of the project consists of graduate housing for GT students along with community space and retail at the ground floor. The GT housing requirements include 107 units to accommodate 238 beds in various arrangements of one-, two-, three- and four-beds per room at a total area of 90,000 sq.ft.

Brittany Utting and Crimson Changsup Lee
ARCH 3012: Visual Computation Design Studio
Athanassios Economou, PhD
Fall 2011

‍Keywords
‍Learning spaces; Landhuggers; Plato; Light; Shape grammars

This learning space for the future is conceived of as a conduit of light. Hovering above the landscape, it uses both light and shadow as expressions of both geometry and occupancy. The oblique cube represents the lesnses within which reality can be re-represented. This CAVE, the oblique cube, serves as the stage on which the ritual of learning is projected. Inside this cube, the algorithms of the light machine generate a drama of light and color, exploring reality and un-reality. The occupant, suspended within this virtual medium, experiences a new representation of reality - something abstracted and surreal. This immersion in an alternative reality expresses the dynamism and mutability of human perception and our understandings of reality and our awareness of the artifice.

Eric Morris and Annie McCarthy
ARCH 3012: Visual Computation Design Studio
Athanassios Economou, PhD
Fall 2011

‍Keywords
‍Learning spaces; Landhuggers; Folding; Vignoly; Shape grammars

The multi-valency of the proposed brief - an educational space that interfaces problem-based learning, collaborative learning, discourse areas and informal learning spaces, lends itself to a compositional strategy that uses principles of folding to seamlessly connect the discrete programs. Robert Viñoly’s beach/tent house project is used as a case study to derive such principles and formalize them in a shape grammar to control formal variations of folded planes. The scores and the angles of the folding planes create a large set of spatial possibilities for the programmatic usages in both plan and section and a multivalent space to facilitate the dicerse modes of learning.

Chandi Jundal and Charles Woodbridge
ARCH 3012: Visual Computation Design Studio
Athanassios Economou, PhD
Spring 2010
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‍Keywords
‍Learning spaces; Landhuggers; Duality; Shape grammars

"After comprehending the outside of the object, the child likes also to investigate its inside; after a perception of the whole, to see it separated into its parts; if he obtained a glimpse of the first, if he has attained the second, he would like from the parts again to create the whole" (Froebel, 1896). The classroom of the future is envisioned here as janus interface with two divergent faces, ambitions and compositional strategies: the exterior makes reference to the site adn the GT campus and expresses regularity. The interior creates a new personal identity and expresses change. The threshold between the faces serves as an inviting transition between the urban and individual experience. The educational spaces are formed out of a rule set that transforms lines into space and specifies the emergent transitional space around the courtyard as the core of the project.

Matt Williams
ARCH 3012: Visual Computation Design Studio
Athanassios Economou, PhD
Spring 2007

‍Keywords
‍Glass studio; Light; Configuration; Landhuggers; Shape grammars

The proposal for the Doraville Glass Art and Community Center creates a literal and metaphorical new center for the community functioning as a new public garden and a unique three-dimensional lenses to capture light and celebrate the program of glass art. The organizational parti is derived by the spatial relation of horizontal and oblique zones and their resolution in variants of the helix form. The project seeks to create a unique experience through an ascending and descending movement within a constantly changing volume completely immersed in light. The embrace of natural light furthers the dynamic qualities of the project whereas daily and seasonal changing moods are captured and expressed through the facade and structure and onto the space within. This further enables the freedom of expression whether it is through the actual making of glass for specific lighting conditions or the design of gallery displays.

Kim Jensen and Michael Kolodgy
ARCH 6051: Landhuggers Design Studio
Athanassios Economou, PhD
Fall 2003

‍Keywords
‍Landhuggers studio; Multi-modal transportation systems; Courtyards; Urban modules; Shape grammars

Atlanta is anticipating a 2M people growth over the next twenty years. This growth can be accomodated over highrise buildings in the center of its core or it can be dispersed in over a larger area of low rise, crawling mat buildings over the exsiign networks as well as in close proximity to the interstates prividing new opportunities for urban morphologies. These new sites can restructure the urban fabric of Atlanta both at its interstate intersections as well as in its central core once full of transfer stations for the trains and nowadays a void, empty space with no function ir identity. The project proposes a vast injection into downtown Atlanta that features organizational rigor and iconographic markings. The site is the Gulch and the program is connected to the systems and stations of the Multi-Modal Passenger Terminal. The different networks of program, pedestrian, vehicular, Marta bus, taxi, Greyhound bus, GRTA bus, Amtrak feeder bus, metro, Amtrak rail, Georgia commuter rail, are all intertwined, each keeping its identity and still combined spatially in a crawling urban mat mega-structure.

Jeffrey Schilds
ARCH 2011: Architecture Design Studio
Athanassios Economou, PhD
Fall 2001

‍Keywords
‍Educational spaces; Functionally driven design; Rule-based design; Shape grammars; Landhuggers

The narrow strip of land on the Sullivan Island, SC, overlooking the Atlaocean exemplifies the fragile nature of the landscape in east US and its annual exposure to the weather elements during the summer hurricane season. The design for the meteorological center exemplifies this fragility by focusing on the detail of the architecture of the project and the ways this detail is carried out through out the project at various scales. A Scarpa-esque sensitivity in the articulation of the details is worked throughout the project from its overall parti and the dimensionless grid of the constellation above to the ways this scheme is carried throughout the project in the articulation of the site strategy, the programmatic distribution of the program and the landscape features to the articulation of detail in wall-making and the apetures of the center. The community classroom of the meteorological center is situated remotely in a pier fomation at the waterfront.

Katie Newell
ARCH 3011: Architecture Design Studio
Athanassios Economou, PhD
Fall 2001
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‍Keywords
‍Educational spaces; Functionally driven design; Rule-based design; Shape grammars; Landhuggers

The design proposal of the regional and meteorological center and field center on Sullivan Island, South Carolina, takes on the theme of time and weathering to suggest an architecture that begins from order and gradually gives in to fragility. The spatial relations between building components are compressed and shoved one against the other to further imprint the given site's proximity to the Atlantic Coast, and by extension its susceptibility to inclement weather during the summer hurricane season. The overall scheme is completed by generous ramps / dunes that tie the project to the site and allow the pedestrians and visitors to explore the project from a variety of angles.

Jean Kim and Simon Lee
ARCH 6051: Computational Design Studio
Athanassios Economou, PhD
Spring 2001
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‍Keywords
‍Housing; Urban highways; Urban modules; Landhuggers; Shape grammars

Urban space (housing + working + shopping + parking + entertaining) is conceptualized as a dynamic construct engaging multiplicities of speeds and degrees of engagement of public and private interfaces. This project envisions such structures over the interface of Atlanta I-75/85 highway with the city itlsef in the fom of rhizomatic spaces that spread obliquely to it. The highway paradoxically cuts through, divides, but also structures the city. Starting from a typical zoning program the project is organized transversally, aiming to connect existing sparse programs along the highway (public transportation, student housing, parking lots, football stadium, social housing, popular restaurants). Spaces and paths function as a fluid whole floor plates distort, shift, merge and split to create hybrid open spaces that maximize the presence of the site. Its order is not generated by static forms, but by transient deformations and discontinuities, within which fragmentation and difference occur.

Jeffrey Green and Yi Lo
ARCH 6051: Computational Design Studio
Athanassios Economou, PhD
Spring 2001

‍Keywords
‍Landhuggers studio; Housing; Urban highways; Urban modules; Shape grammars

Freeways cut through cities dividing previously knitted neighborhoods leaving aside each time two “sides” relegated to isolated development and turned in on themselves leaving a wasteland along the edge of the freeways comprised of a patchwork of parking lots and billboards. This work seeks to tackle the possibilities of this edge condition and the ways in which the boundaries between the vehicular nature and the speed and scale of the highway and the pedestrian nature and the speed and scale of the city can be mitigated. Specifically, this work proposes a prototype that would address both the edge itself and the two dissimilar sides in a flexible and adaptable way that can deployed in many other cases as well. The parti consisits of several layers a serian nested way: The first layer is that of the large glass billboard which lines the highway. Its scale and placement augments the driver’s experience of driving in a chasm through the city. The next layer is an in-between zone that consists of vegetation. This hanging garden means to provide a buffer between the residences and the noise and air pollution created by the constant flow of traffic. This zone actually subsumes the existing frontage road which doubles as the service drive for the retail and commercial development. In turn, a new street is created on the opposite side of the building that conforms to the existing urban fabric and architectural language. The proposed building intends to fill in gaps and may vary in length depending upon existing conditions. The building would provide ample underground parking and street-level commercial and retail development. The second floor acts as a buffer zone between the public program of the first floor and the private program of the upper residences and houses all of the amenities for the residents. It includes fitness and laundry facilities, and multipurpose gathering spaces for a variety of sizes and diversity of activities. Also incorporated into this transition zone is a space fully equipped with computers and supplementary equipment intended for both occupational and recreational use of the residents. The result is a building with two distinctive faces that attempts to address and conform to the needs of the language of the modern highway and that of a traditional city.

Steven Shaw
ARCH 6051: Computational Design Studio
Athanassios Economou, PhD
Spring 2000

‍Keywords
‍Opera house; Architecture and music; Fugues; Shape grammars; Landhuggers

A design proposal for the new Oslo opera House. The multiplicity of the building program covering an entire range of genres – from opera, ballet, musical theatre and dance productions to operettas, concerts and guest performances, is all veiled under a prominent urban skin, a landmark in the city of Oslo facing the harbor. The configuration of the urban curtain foregrounds even more its effect over the skyline of the city of Oslo. The skin of the building folds into itself to generate a Pormanesque atrium to bring light in the entry of the opera house and add a sense of drama appropriate to the species of opera itslef.

Ryan Deatton-Crooks
ARCH 6051: Computational Design Studio
Athanassios Economou, PhD
Spring 2000

‍Keywords
‍Opera house; Architecture and music; Fugues; Shape grammars; Landhuggers

The opera house is envisioned as a spatial analog of a music compositional process - perhaps the most parsimonious and recursive one, the fugue, with its maximum self-sufficiency of content. In the fugue, the more such self-sufficiency is manifested in the form of unity, the more all the shapes stem from one basic idea, that is, from a single theme and the way it is treated, and the more artful it is. In its highest form, which may perhaps be a merely theoretical construction, nothing would claim a place in a fugue unless it was derived, at least indirectly, from the theme. (Schoenberg, 1975, Style and Idea). A stretto fugue, from stringere, meaning to draw close or tighten, denotes, in music, the temporal compression in the repetition and development of the theme and its imitation in a fugal composition. The response begins before the original theme is completed. This layering of tones creates a relationship that binds the two lines together in perfect relations (unisons, octaves, fourths, and fifths), though both progressions are distinct. When this relationship is continually stressed, the composition can be termed a stretto fugue. The opera house here is modeled after a spatial relation between two triangular prisms, a spatial idea that produces a continuous and oblique perception throughout the building through all its scales - from the urban to the detail.

Ian Carlton
ARCH 3011: Architecture Design Studio
Athanassios Economou, PhD
Fall 2000
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‍Keywords
‍Educational spaces; Functionally driven design; Rule-based design; Shape grammars; Landhuggers

The proposal for the education center at Bartram forest, an educational forest in the wider Milledgeville, GA, envisions a scientific apparatus for learning, a light machine that barely touches the ground creating a delicate educational space that hovers above the ground while inflicting the least damage and impact to the site. The apparatus itself is thought as a generative machine consisting of kinetic pairs is driven by program reconfiguring itself in a wide range of spatial positions before it stabilizes in the most suitable location and disposition in the site.