Chloe Blain

The introverted island

The immersive seven meter structure functions as a community space and a new landmark, joining SANAA’s Marine Station and Kusama’s Red Pumpkin near Miyanoura Port. The town of Naoshima consists of 28 islands and this one completes the archipelago with a 29th one.

‘’Outside, it resembles an irregular stone, floating like an island on the ground’’ - Sou Fujimoto

An irregularly-formed polyhedron frame is wrapped in a delicate white stainless steel mesh. It appears soft and surreal, suspended like a bubble in the landscape, on the line between the sea and the mountains.

From the inside, an rolling topography allows for a playful interaction with space. While our vision to the outside world is blurred by the translucent membrane, other senses are enhanced, enabling a better experience of the wind, sounds, and smells of the port.

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The five small houses of the new day-care institution in Copenhagen. appear as a series of “flower pots” placed on the site so they retain all existing trees and recreate a green environment on the roofs in form of lush roof gardens. From the outside the day-care institution appears as a village for children with the five downsized houses, but from the inside coherent with efficient floor plans. 

The aim is to make daily life safe and familiar for children, and therefore the building is decomposed into small, integrated compact units. These units are placed close together and oriented in relation to each other, varying in experience since they differ in height and the way they are placed on the site. The result is an exciting landscape for children that remains highly functional and flexible.

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Ordrupgaard is an existing museum by Zaha Hadid, hidden in a forest near Jægersborg Deer Park. This project is an underground extension which hosts Scandinavia’s largest impressionist collections. 

The expansion is a valley with strong connections to the garden above. The roof is designed as a crackled pattern similar to a pointillist painting. The galleries pierce the roof, filtering light to the collection below and being part of the composition of the garden elements above. The roof surface thus becomes a garden in the park and the visitor, through their journey, becomes a part of the pointillist picture.

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Rest area in Utah's salt flats

The character and the appeal of a desert lies in its uniform emptiness. Adding any new element to it can only remove from the streght of its landscape. This proposition reconciles the anxiety of building in that environment, without suggesting an egoless non-architecture that  simply disappears into the landscape. The site is of nothing but a road; by repeating the only element that is already there, it’s essence is preserved.   

This is a proposal for a net zero energy rest area in the Great Salt Lake Desert. It engages with a proposed land art, and with the specific aspects and constraints of the desert’s extreme conditions. The program is integrated into the structure of solitary exit ramps that branch on both sides of the interstate. 

Public library in NDG

‘’The idea is thrilling: that everything we know, everything we beleive we can know of this chaotic world, might be reflected in an orderly way on the shelves of a library. I can think of no other place that justifies such jubilant optimism.’’ – Alberto Manguel

This is a proposition for a cultural center and a library in NDG. The library is a model of the universe, but an ordered one. This project tries to express the idea that many disordered elements converge into one monolithic, monochrome, compact, still mass of knowledge, that seems to be floating above the crazy world below. 

The strength of the cube conveys the institutional program of the library, but its mass is deconstructed from within by veins of light to create an atrium. It is a complex carved space filled with light that contains the books and represents the acquired knowledge of men.

The Museum of the Human body in Montpellier is conceived as a confluence of the park and the city - nature and architecture - bookending the Charpak Park along wiht the city hall. Like the mixture of two incompatible substances - oil and vinegar - the urban pavement and the parks turfs flow together in a mutual embrace, forming pockets of terraces overlooking the park and elevating islands of nature above the city. Like a seismic fault like, the architectural crust of planet earth are lifted and mingled to form an underlying continuous space of caves and niches, lookouts and overhangs. A series of seemingly singular pavilions that weave together to form a unified institution - like individual fingers united together in a mutual grip.

Rather than a single perimeter delineating an interior and an exterior, the facade is conceived as a sinuous membrane meandering across the site, delineating interior spaces and exterior gardens in a seamless continuum oscillating between the city and the park. The roofscape of the Museum of the Human Body is conceived as an ergonomic garden - a dynamic landscape of vegetal and mineral surfaces that allow the parks visitors to explore and express their bodies in various ways - from contemplation to the performance, from relaxing to exercising, from soothing to challenging.

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A city thrives on its rich intermingling of spaces that allow for informal social encounters and gatherings across demographics. - places to work, dwell, learn and play. The library is a contemporary indoor urban public space expanding the urban public fabric. It turns the ‘city library’ building into a ‘library city’. 

The library is deconstructed into smaller human scale entities, creating a multiplicity of characters and qualities and intertwining spaces of diverse functions. It is organized similarly to a city structure, with defined boxes as buildings and interstitial spaces as public space, all united by the library collection itself. It is a porous filter that addresses and connects the flow of people coming from all corners of Helsinki, creating an active city edge towards the park, blurring the boundary between indoors and outdoors, private an public, building and city. 

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Modular shading device

The assigned windows have a south-eastern exposure, exposing the studio space to intense direct sunlight in the afternoon, conflicting with the highest activity levels. In an effort to relieve the problematic glare, students have used a variety of paper and other materials to block the sunlight on their individual work spaces. 

These student interventions served as the initial inspiration for our sun shade device, which called for an ultra-light form work in which transparent material could be suspended in order to diffuse but not block the direct sunlight.  The result is a space frame that does not impede the view to the outside. Onto it is applied a modular system which can be parametrically modified for maximum efficiency and effectiveness, and allows for users to alter the light diffusing elements depending on when and where they are needed.

Collaborators: Hubert Lemieux, Stephanie Huss, Kelly Ann Kaulfield, Yousef Hussein, Evelyn Velghe

Prinsessegade Kindergarten is a city for kids at the heart of Copenhagen. It is a large institution, hosting more than seven hundred children, it is the largest daycare center in Denmark. It is not conceived as one single factory like building, but as a cluster of many small, varied buildings grouped around two central streets connecting to the surrounding city.

Just like Copenhagen, it is characterized by a number of different neighborhoods, each catering to different age groups, and dotted with special buildings that carry a particular history or meaning. It is composed of a variety of houses, public spaces, squares and parks, a city hall, a fire station, a restaurant, a stadium, a factory and a golden ball sports cage on the roof.

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Multipurpose building for the cultural and artistic hub Quartier des Spectacles

“If we want to build in a more flexible and varied manner, the architect must give up the idea of being personally responsible for every detail of every building he designs, he must design at a higher level of abstraction - specify rules and boundary conditions, and leave the concrete installation to the end user or to chance”. - Scha and Vreedenburg

The art scene at Quartier des Spectacles is too institutional and restricted. Its large scale leaves no space for spontaneous and human scale event that would create a real sense of belonging to the site. Less planned, less controlled ans even illegitimate spaces are more suitable to the development of creativity. Art is simply better when it is free.

The idea of flexibility and of playfulness is only made visible when inserted or juxtaposed next to a more rigid and institutional environment. That tension between these two qualities, spatially, programatically or in terms of materiality is the focus of the project. 

"75 Howard is an exclusive LEED® Platinum condominium tower located on one of the last remaining sites on the downtown San Francisco waterfront. Located at the corner of Howard and Steuart streets, the 335,000-square-foot, 220-foot-tall tower will contain 120 residential units on 19 floors above a 5,000-square-foot premier restaurant space. 

The design capitalizes on the fundamental opportunity of an urban tower—the multiplication of the ground plane—in a way that uniquely expresses the indoor-outdoor lifestyle of the California dwelling. Working from a complex zoning envelope, the architectural massing of the building strategically integrates private outdoor balconies and terraces with required setbacks to provide seamless indoor-outdoor living spaces. The locations of the outdoor spaces are coordinated to break down the vertical orientation of the tower into horizontally-proportioned volumes that relate to the panoramic waterfront landscape they face. 

The facade is composed of an elegantly proportioned, shifting grid of cubic limestone pilasters and lintels. The depth of the stone grid gives the building an appearance of solidity when viewed obliquely, while preserving views from within the units. A minimally reflective, ultra-clear glass facade takes advantage of the abundant sunlight and cool ambient climate in San Francisco to passively heat the units and reduce energy consumption. 

To facilitate the panoramic views and unobstructed wrap-around terraces, the building's structural design comprises stepped flag columns along each elevation and sculptural corner column capitals, along with a computationally-optimized post-tensioning layout, to allow the eight-inch flat slab to cantilever as much as 20 feet. 

The project was approved in 2015 by the San Francisco Planning Commission and is scheduled to break ground in early 2017"

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Collaborator: Sara-Jeanne Dagenais

Installation on material play

The soft space is an investigation of the memory of the material deformation. It is a tactile and interactive space which puts into focus physical and spatial reactions to the forces exerted by the human body. Through a sequence of stretching and squishing, interactions are embedded in the final form, creating an altered surface which in itself documents each action that was executed upon it, recording behavioural patterns and social interactions through time.

The project seeks to reintroduce the individual to his environment, to make one conscious of the reactions of his actions and aware of one’s own body and of other bodies by making him directly responsible for shaping his own space. Its interactive quality creates a stronger sense of belonging to one’s personal space (place identity).

Collaborators: Sara-Jeanne Dagenais, Brian Muthaliff, Darren Soobrayen, Vi Ngo, Veronica Soncini
 

Europa City offers, on an unprecedented scale, a mix of retail, culture and leisure around a defining theme: Europe, its diversity, its urban experience and its cultures. Rather than orienting Europa City towards the highway, we propose to integrate it as the natural center of a new business district. We propose an urban form that combines dense city with open landscape, exploring the urban and green potentials of the site at once. We propose a comercial city that becomes a gathering point for the surrounding neighborhoods - a new kind of commercial center that is blednded into the urban texture, and includes rather than excludes the surrounding city.

The programs of Europa City are organized along an internal boulevard with a mix of retail, entertainmentand cultural programs on both sides. The boulevard forms a continuous look travelling through six different areas themed as the various regions of Europe. The central boulevard becomes the Rambla, the Regent Street and the Champs-Elysées of Europa city. Along the boulevard, public bicycles and electric public transport bring visitors quickly around. The circular street creates at the same time surprising spatial experiences and a clear overview - it allows you yo get lost, and still find your way. 

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“I conceived the idea of surrounding thee with thy discovery, and thus, somehow, surrounding thee with thyself” – Boullée

Our proposal is prototype for a living unit in the Arctic.The independent satellite mobile capsules are designed for one, and enable both physical and virtual travel in their environment. The capsules’ augmented mobility counters stresses linked to remoteness, isolation, and dependence to existing camps scattered in the Arctic.

The proposal is an extrapolation of the consequences of the current immersive technological trends and societal norms. The augmented habitat and its individualistic qualities are both utopic and dystopic.

Collaborator: Sara-Jeanne Dagenais
 

The reconfiguring of Parc de la Ciutadella area proposes a critical stance vis-à-vis the urban infrastructure development which has—for decades—fragmented the city’s multilayered ground plane. Drawing upon initial studies of the city’s lighting network, flora, fauna and underground construction, it became clear that a singular connection over rail lines, highways and buildings would fail to adequately connect the Parc de la Ciutadella to the city’s beach. 

Building upon Barcelona’s multi-layered ground plane, the scheme modifies the nature of existing infrastructure to create a soft landscape which blurs boundaries across the site. After analyzing current circulation patterns across the site, the existing light-rail station and its adjacent rail yards are modified and re purposed to accommodate the area’s main function as a place for education and leisure. The railway pattern is pulled in various directions across the site, allowing for the extension of the neighboring parks and gardens, in addition to the proliferation of micro-facilities for a new school of gastronomy.      

Collaborators: Hubert Lemieux, Stephanie Huss
 

Birds on a wire is where I prototype and experiment with 3D printed designs and ideas. The evolving collection is inspired by birdies and architecture, and walks the wire between edgy and elegant.

https://www.shapeways.com/shops/birdie-architecture