Double Jeopardy

View of interiors of the West Lounge.

Project Details

• Project Name: Double Jeopardy
• Client: Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning
• Project Type: Interior Design
• Principal Designer: Karen M'Closkey, Keith VanDerSys
• Design Team: Mark Davis, Neil Thelen, Matt Saurman, Leigh Stewart
• Date of commencement of project: May 2005
• Date of completion of project: January 2006
• Location of site: Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
• Built-up Area: 600 square feet
• Cost of Execution: USD 60,000

View of interior of the East Lounge.

The Project

The commission to design and build two student lounges with the students as employees allowed for the possibility to explore whether the opposition between machine and craft could be re-negotiated through technologies available within a school of architecture.

The two sites for the lounges were located at opposite ends of a symmetrical building.

Double Jeopardy - Site Plan [opens in a pop-up window - 46.3kb image]

The East Lounge is more concealed and thus used for intimate interaction.

The designers adopted a similar orientation at both sites instead of mirroring it.

The use of a single diagrammatic strategy afforded a conceptual efficiency while retaining a high degree of spatial diversity.

Unlike the "mirror", which imposes site priorities to the diagram, the "slide" allowed for a better mediation between the identity of each site allowing for repetition and thus optimization.

View of the East Lounge from the corridor.

The diagram also changed the lounges' relationships to their surroundings and created variations in the interior character and programmatic emphasis.

The East Lounge is a more concealed space since it has less exposure to the main corridor than the West Lounge.

The result is that the East Lounge is used for small group and individual activities while the West Lounge is used for larger meetings and social events.

Double Jeopardy - Site Plan [opens in a pop-up window - 184kb image]

Sunlight is modulated through holes of varying depths milled into the stained plywood.

This strategy was extended into a diagram which could generate the character of surface, pattern, and light.

The lounges are located along a south facing wall retrofitted with interior plywood sunshades.

These screens were incorporated into the surface with their shades modulating sunlight through holes of varying depths milled into the stained plywood resulting in an indeterminate geometry.

A repeatable non-uniform use of patterning which could regulate form, material, and light is seen in the surface. This geometry enabled efficient replication of standardized and non-standardized construction elements.

Double Jeopardy - Surface Development 1 [opens in a pop-up window - 116kb image]

View of the West Lounge from the corridor.

This strategy also enabled the designers to minimize construction time and cost by duplicating the fabricated elements.

The changing yet precise relation of surface to form demanded digital modeling and fabrication.

Crafting the digital work as a process of "full-scale" design necessitated a closer link between the craft of hand-work and the efficacy of mechanical repetition.

The West Lounge is used for large group meetings and social events.

The designers experimented with the relationship of pattern to surface by unfolding and refolding the form to create a family of surfaces which adapt to the formal contours.

The subsequent design of the panels and supporting structure was directly transferred via RHINO models to numerically controlled systems.

Using Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator and RHINO they were able to efficiently generate a diverse set of techniques that could be used in a variety of materials and instances -- structural framing, tufting buttons, acrylic lenses and plates, fabric patterns for bean bags, and heater grilles -- enabling a controlled variety between the two sites.

Double Jeopardy - Surface Development 2 [opens in a pop-up window - 201kb image]

Surfaces were unfolded and refolded to adapt to the formal contours.

The lounges contain 6,854 custom cut acrylic pieces - 5,060 for light lenses and 1,794 for tufting buttons used in felt cushions.

Credits

• Text: Courtesy of the architect
• Photographs by Beth Singer, Courtesy of the architect
• Compiled and edited by Varun Ajani