Freight warehouse to architecture school: a representation of ideas in hardline, sketch, and text

Abstract

The Freight Warehouse Architecture Studio is adjacent to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Although designed as an adaptive reuse, it is a direct result of two things: a reading of Eisenman's Koizumi Project and working in the office for a few weeks immediately proceeding commencement on the studio. The reading was the onset of the theory necessary for the study, and the experience in the office offered the opportunity to establish the direction for the project.

The question of culture, understanding, and reading yields the question of the reconciliation of personal history and community history, how an architect intervenes in a location fraught with tradition. As a result, there is "a condition of a space evolving from within, not an insertion, from without.... So what is interesting about this space is we set up the mechanism of interplay, but we did not know what was going to happen. In other words, I am not saying it is a beautiful design.... In a sense it is mediated because the hand of design is taken away..."