“I call architecture frozen music...” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Joshua A. FosterArchitecture | Design Portfolio

2 Philadelphia, PA

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Joshua A. FosterAbout:As a native of Philadelphia and now a seasoned New Yorker, I have a great affinity for the city-life. Some of my fondest childhood memories are from the drives through the city of Philadelphia in the back seat of our family car. As my parents now tell me, they can remember me sitting in the back with the window open, intently looking at all the buildings, studying the people going in and out of them, listening to all of the sounds of the city, and telling them all about it when we reached our destination. In hindsight, this particular memory of a reoccurring experience would shape my present-day passions. Many people find the noise and congestion of cities to be a problem. Yet for me, that noise made music and that congestion was nothing more than people interacting with each other and the dynamics of the city. So from a very young age until now, the sights, sounds, and liveliness of cities have fueled three big passions of mine: architecture, music, and people. Over time, I continued to learn more about those three passions while studying architecture through school and work experience, learning to make real music, and finding ways to engage with different types of people. Through all of that I realized that the harmony of human interactions with architecture created a music that I wanted to replicate in my own ways through urban design. This idea of architectural music is precisely captured by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s statement that “Architecture is frozen music,” and is one that I firmly believe.

Contact Information: joshuafoster38@gmail.com

www.joshuaAfoster.com

Joshua A. Foster

4 Midtown, Manhattan4

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Table of Contents

About----------------------------------------------------------------------3

Design Projects------------------------------------------------------------7

Presentations-------------------------------------------------------------13

Art Drawings-------------------------------------------------------------21

Conceptual Designs------------------------------------------------------25

Personal Photography------------------------------------2, 4, 6, 12, 20, 24

6 Chelsea, Manhattan6

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Design Projects

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Re-imagining the Library: Barnard College

This project was completed in my Design 2 Studio course at Columbia University. The task was to redesign Barnard College’s library which was in the process of actually being redesigned by the school. In designing the new Barnard library it raised an opportunity to explore and re-imagine the university library from a contemporary perspective. In particular, by inventing new relationships between spaces of learning and social spaces; between current and new technologies; between information storage and information access; as well as between cultur-al, social, community, and contextual factors. My main area of focus for the library design was education. Education should be the core focus of every academic institution’s library. The library should be the academic, social, and cultural capital of the institution. The academic portion will be fulfilled through the books on and off site, the study rooms, and the classrooms. The social portion will be fulfilled through the various meeting rooms, the gallery, and the event spaces. The cultural portion is the part that will be fulfilled by my proposed Program X. I feel that many libraries are lacking a connection to not just the past but more importantly current cultural events and topics. The best way to keep up with a constantly changing world is to have a space that constantly changes with it. So Program X will be an interactive exhibition room open to students, faculty, and the general public. Exhibits will be changed on a month-ly basis focusing on different cultural topics. This will complete the academic, social, and cultural needs of the library.

Site Plan: 1/32

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ReadingRoom

1st Floor Plan: 1/16

Admin

Admin

BR

Larg

e Po

ds

Program X

Lobby

Cafe

3rd Floor Plan: 1/16

Program X

Reading Room

Smal

l Pod

s

4th Floor Plan: 1/16

Circulating

Archives

BR

2nd Floor Plan: 1/16

Research

Med

ium

Pod

s

Program X

Gallery & Event Space

Detail Section: 1/8

B: Cross Section: 1/16

A: Long Section: 1/16

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East Harlem Community Center

Site Plan (1/32)

This project was completed in my Design 1 Studio course at Columbia University. The task was to design an addition to P.S. 101 in East Harlem making it the next Edible Schoolyard of NYC. The first Edible Schoolyard project was started by chef Alice Waters, of Chez Panisse fame, in Berkeley, CA. Established in 2010, Edible Schoolyard NYC partners with public schools to build gardens and kitchen classrooms where children can engage in hands-on learning. So using this framework, I created an addition to P.S. 101 calling it the East Harlem Community Center. Sited on the west side yard of the school, the East Harlem Community Center provided space for the Edible Schoolyard programming as well as recreational space for the children. Due to the normal constraints of New York City construction, I had to densify and multiply the ground in a way that traditionally horizontal programs could occupy vertical space. With this approach I was able to successfully incorporate the normal components of the Edible Schoolyard as well as a basketball court, an indoor soccer field, a green-house, a rooftop garden and a playground. The new East Harlem Community Center is a space for learning about food production, preparation, and distribution, but more importantly is to be seen as a healthy agricultural and recreational public symbol in a dense and underprivileged urban environment.

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Ground Floor Plan (1/8)

Recreation

BR

Market/Cafe

Lecture AreaBR

FoodStorage & Receiving

Reading Center

Fitness Room

Second Floor Plan (1/8)

Recreation

Hydroponic GardenRaised/Potted Beds

Storage Space

Demo Kitchens

BR

Hothouse

Classrooms

Third Floor Plan (1/8)

BR

Vertical Garden

Greenhouse

Playground Exterior Garden

Cross Section (1/8) Longitudinal Section (1/16)

Recreation

BR

BR

FoodStorage & Receiving

Reading Center

Seating

Recreation

BR

Demo KitchensClassrooms

Recreation

Storage SpaceHydroponic Garden

HothouseRaised/Potted Beds

HALLWAY

Students & Administration

Administration

All Users

Students

Community

Community & Administration

User Plan Diagram

BR

Circulation

Greenhouse

Playground Exterior Garden

Market/CafeLecture Space

12 Chelsea, Manhattan12

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Presentations

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The Evolution of ExhibitsIn this course, Curating Architecture, we examined curating practices in relation to architectural exhibitions and publications. We looked at many types of media as mechanisms for presenting and distributing information as well as production of ideas and discourse. Using Adobe InDesign, we broke into groups and cre-ated a visual catalog of exhibitions from a chosen institution. My group chose the Canadian Center for Architecture and created a visual catalog that portrayed the evolution and variety of exhibits the center curated over the last 15 years.(Group Project: Joshua Foster, Quentin Hollis, Denzel Hill)

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The City of Doral In a course called Spatial Analysis for Sustainable Development we separated into groups and conducted an assessment on the growth of the urban tree canopy in the City of Doral in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Ac-cording to the city’s Green Master Plan, the urban tree canopy is of critical importance to decreasing the city’s environmental footprint and increasing its potential as a sustainable city. The tree canopy is considered one of Doral’s defining resources and provides its residents with many benefits. So we used ArcGIS to analyze and create tables and maps to show our findings. We concluded that there has been a 24 acre growth of tree canopy in Doral which represents a 12% increase. This tree canopy growth occurred primarily in the residential and public use city zones. These findings were then given to the City of Doral so that they could use it for their ben-efit. (Group project: Joshua Foster, Erida Tosini-Corea, Grant Gutierrez)

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In order to complete this assess-ment we did the following: Cleaned up points from 2009, 2012, and 2014, discovered tree point den-sity for 2009, 2012, 2014 using a 30x30m Landsat base, rasterized percent tree canopy for each year, acquired Miami-Dade county zon-ing boundaries, clipped the county zoning boundaries with Doral boundaries, rasterized the clipped zoning data, grouped and created layers for 6 different types of zones, assigned color and numerical inte-ger values for each zone, calculated percent canopy for each zoning type, and compared the tree canopy growth between the three years.

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New Babylon Utopian visions play an invaluable part in the architectural discipline. By proposing radically new ideas, forms, and rela-tionships, utopias show us alternatives to present problems and enable larger disciplinary questions. In this assignment for a course called Architecture, Nature, and Technology, we separated into groups of two, chose one project from a series of Utopi-an projects from the 1960s, and studied it through the lens of nature and technology. Our chosen project was Constant’s New Babylon and we created a video of our research on it. To create it we gathered information and made diagrams using Adobe Illus-trator and combined them along with photos in iMovie to show our critique of the Utopian project. Below is a selected group of slides that summarize the project. The full video can be found at: https://youtu.be/uWoJmdlnU8c (Group project: Joshua Fos-ter and Kari Fox)

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20 Barnard College- Morningside Heights Manhattan 20

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Art Drawings

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Colored and Drawing Pencils

Watercolors & Drawing Pencils

Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator22

23Charcoal Pencils Watercolors & Drawing Pencils

Charcoal Pencils Drawing Pencils

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24 Williamsburg, BrooklynWilliamsburg, Brooklyn24

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Conceptual Designs

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Earl Hall Steps Transformation

The objective of this Architectural Representation: Perceptions studio proj-ect was to chose an entrance on Columbia University’s main campus and transform it into a more functional and practical use of space. I chose to focus on the Earl Hall steps at 117th and Broadway. Earl Hall is the reli-gious and community service center of the University and is a place where world religious leaders come to speak. So I thought this was an ideal place to create a second plaza such as the main one at Low Steps. As the most direct pathway from the Barnard Campus to Columbia’s, this concept com-bines gathering, passage, and news in a way that can highlight the impor-tance of the univeristy through Earl Hall’s entrance.

Seating Seating

Campus News Stand with school newspaper and handouts

Original Earl Hall Entrance

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Lower East SideTime Bank

In this Architectural Representation: Abstractions studio project, the task was to create a conceptual “Time Bank” in the Sara D. Roosevelt park on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The concept of a Time Bank is a place where the community could receive useful services from other commu-nity members for a price. The price though is not paid in monetary value but instead in time. The amount of time spent gaining something from the Time Bank is the amount of time one is expected to return by leaving or teaching something to others. So through on-site analysis of not only the types of people that use the park but also the activities and pathways through it, I created this mobile Time Bank.

Expected Movement Diagram

Short Stay:

Long Stay:

Passing:

This particular Time Bank focused on the sharing of three things: meals (eating area), knowledge (meeting space), and personalities (graffiti wall). In order to “purchase” wall space, meeting space

time, or table space in the eating area, one must go to the banking exchange and commit to sharing their talents in the same way. As the Time Bank is moved around the park each day, more and more

users will begin to interact with one another thus creating new daily audiences.

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Hall of Biodiversity

inverted circulation: american museum of natural history: hall of biodiversity

AMNH floor plan Hall of Biodiversity floor plan Hall of Biodiversity section

The objective of this Design 2 Studio project, “Hall of Biodiversity: Inverted Circulation”, was to explore storage systems and logistics. This can be any system that contains a series of physical artifacts collected and stored for future use. The storage system chosen by my group was the Hall of Biodiver-sity at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. We chose to focus on the idea of circulation through the hall and how it created an inverted layout based on the density of people through a given area. Images were cre-ated through Adobe Illustrator. (Group project: Joshua Foster, Emily Tobin, Naima Dejoie)

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Container Contained“Container Contained” is part two of the “Hall of Biodiversity: Inverted Circulation” project in the Design 2 Studio course. Continuing the ideas of the previous exercise, we undertook a focused investigation into the relation-ship between space, program and material. The objective of the exercise was to explore systems of making and ordering space. In particular, we studied and invented new dynamic relationships between spatial containers and the spaces, activities, and objects contained within them. Images were created through Rhino and Adobe Illustrator. Model was created with basswood and thin burlap strips. (Group project: Joshua Foster, Emily Tobin, Naima Dejoie)