SEAN CHRISTIANSENSELECTED WORKS 2008-2012

DOHA EXHIBITION CENTERExhbition Center | Doha Qatar | Wilmotte | Spring 2012

On my first day working as an intern at Jean-Michelle Wilmotte I was given the task to redevelope the interior of a project under construction in Doha.

I was working directly underneath the Project Architect for the in-terior redesign, Emmanuel Brelot. My responsibilities were to be as wildly creative as possible with figuiring out how to change the project from a Fitness Spa into an temporary exhibition space.

Natural Light became the driving idea behind our design. How do you get natural daylighting into a museum located in the desert? In order to avoid the negative impacts of tradition daylighting systmes I reccomended we investigate a Fiber Optic Daylighting solution.

This resulted in creating two galleires: one for temporary installa-tions on the lowest level, and a second large gallery completely bathed in natural light.

This project was indicative how the type of work my team would do at Wilmotte; our team specialized in interior redesign of buildings at various levels of completion. I was responsible for the technical documentation and development of the Fiber Op-tic Daylighting system on this project. Over one week we went from just starting the project to client proposal. Currently this project is in permitting.

LUCCIANA MUSEE MARIANAArcheology Museum | Mariana, Corsica | Wilmotte | Spring 2012

This project was a competition design for an archeo-logical museum in Corsica, France. I was brought onto this project to work on the interior design and museog-raphy of the main exhibition space.

The program for the museography was given in a sequence of six time periods of artifacts for display. In order to create a more engaging experience between artifacts and display we created a platform where visitors would walk and displayed artifacts supported from the floor (mimicking an archeological dig site).

An ancient Roman city is under excavation at the Museum site, over the next decade archeologist will work in full view of the public. In order to connect the interior museum space to the dig site a large window frames the ancient city as viewers enter the main gallery.

VILLA CAPRICEPrivate Home |France | Wilmotte | Spring 2012

This project was a competition design for an ar-cheological museum in Corsica, France. I was brought onto this project to work on the interior de-sign and museography of the main exhibition space.

The program for the museography was given in a se-quence of six time periods of artifacts for display. In order to create a more engaging experience between artifacts and display we created a platform where visi-tors would walk and displayed artifacts supported from the floor (mimicking an archeological dig site).

An ancient Roman city is under excavation at the Mu-seum site, over the next decade archeologist will work in full view of the public. In order to connect the interior museum space to the dig site a large window frames the ancient city as viewers enter the main exhibition space.

LOUIS VUITTON FOUNDATIONArt Museum | Bois Du Bologne|Paris|Gehry and Partners

The Louis Vuitton Foundation is the project I spent the most amount of time on at Wilmotte. Frank Gehry designed the build-ing for Bernard Arnault in the Bois du Boulogne outside of Paris. The museum is designed to connect the Bois du Boulogne to an ‘activity garden’ and be a new public museum in Paris. Wilmotte and Associates was brought in to re-imagine the interior of the building at the request of the client.

Since the project was already under construction we had to re-imagine the space with-in the existing limitations of Gehry’s design. This was an incredible challenge as what we were given to work with was an incomplete Frank Gehry building...

For this project I was given complete freedom to come up with schematic designs as long as they fit within the existing structure of the project. We created new designs for the Lob-by, Forum, Cafe, Library (book shop), and circulation spaces. I spent countless hours going between site photos, construc-tion documents, and the 3d models in pursuit of a solution.

The most demanding element of the project was the need to cre-ate a simple elegant solution for the client’s aesthetic preference, Bernard Arnault is the current president of the Louis Vuitton cor-poration. Over 5 weeks we came to the designs on this page.

PHILHARMONIC HALL

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Cultural Space | Chicago IL | Fall 2010

“Make no small plans”-Daniel Burnham

Located on Lake Michigan in Chicago this design for a Philharmonic Concert hall is no small plan. This stu-dio was lead by Wojciech Lesnikowski, and the main focus of the studio was to design buildings to be literal machines; buildings that could respond to changes in their environment.

The concept for our design was to create a new public space on the lake front that could be used year round. We chose to place our building on the water for two reasons. The first was to preserve the existing urban-ism along the lake front. The second was to use the water to change our building throughout the year.

The Philharmonic Hall is surrounded by a boardwalk; in the summer this board walk is open to the outside air but in the winter it creates an enclosure to allow people to still use the concert hall even in the harsh cold of Chicago in January. This movement is made possible through an extensive system of ballast tanks located inside of a large concrete caisson below the building. Water is pumped into these tanks to force the structure above to rise and lock into position. The design of the structural system was an architectural opportunity to create a unique aesthetic that is also a high performing design. Instead of attempting to levitate the entire walkway in one section it is broken down into isolated parts that reduce the complexity of the system.

By creating a large public walkway around our building we take a normally private program and give it back to the public in a meaningful way. Anyone can come to this building year round and experience the lakefront in a new way without buying a ticket. The lakefront in Chicago is meant for the everyone’s enjoyment, not just those attending a concert.

The overall aesthetic of the building was driven by its relationship to the Modernist skyline of Chicago; in the city of Mies Van der Rhoe this building is meant to be a contemporary take on the Glass Box with Steel struc-ture found throughout the city.

FILM NEW ORLEANSCultural Film Center | New Orleans LA | Spring 2011

People, Place, Film.

This represents my project for my Comprehensive studio at the Univer-sity of Kansas. We were asked to design a Film Center in New Orleans. To me their is no greater style of film than Neo-Realism; directors like Fellini, De Sica, and others I will IMDB later used real people, real plac-es, to create incredible films that are capable of telegraphing so much about that part of the world. For me a Film center in New Orleans would have to be a place to tell the real stories of the Crescent City.

The main focus of my Film Center would not be a production site, in-stead it would be about generating community involvement and con-nection between Film makers and the people of New Orleans. The pro-gram of the building is designed to create a magnet for the community. A public screening room, cafe, bar, and art galleries are all at the low-est levels of the building to pull people in. On the second floor there are class room spaces, sound recording rooms, and a digital lab. The third level features an outdoor production yard and a soundstage; these spaces are intended to also double as a reception and exhibition space respectively.

The placement of the building on the site is intended to cre-ate a large outdoor courtyard as well as an outdoor screen-ing area. This also has the benefit of reducing the amount of impermeable surface area on the site to improve drainage.

The exterior finish of the building is a Fiber Concrete rain screen. This protects the building from the tropical climate and severe weather of New Orleans. The decision to use varying shades of grey is intended to help reduce the mass of the building.

EXH IB ITION

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At The University of Kansas each student is required to take studio 409 Design Build. The intent of this studio is to create an exhibition reflecting the student work throughout the se-mester.

My studio focused on two buildings as the basis of our spatial study: The Barcelona Pavillion and the Tempietto. We viewed these two projects through the writing by Robin Evans “Para-doxical Symmetry in the work of Mies Van Der Rhoe”.

Throughout the semester ideas were discussed during studio and then developed in groups to be rediscussed the following day. Through this process the ideas of Symmetry, Proportion, and Reflection came to be the focus of our project.

Tempietto sectional analysis

“We may choose to believe that squarish, simple things are tokens of rationality in some wider sense, and that curvaceous, complicating things are tokens of irrationality” (Evans 59)

The single section of the Tempietto is broken into eight seperate sections suspended throughout the length of the project. The sections are connected with a series of string thatencloses a dynamic space and directs spatial movement.

looking back toward entrance

looking in from entrance

Barcelona Pavilion sectional analysis

“At Barcelona the reversibility derives from the most unlikely source: symmetry. It is unexpected because Mies had gotten rid of vertical bilateral symmetry (the kind we expect) making a conspicuous show of its absence. He then reintroduced it, in quantity, in another dimension, where no one would think of looking for it: Horizontally” (Evans 63).

The project parti is derived based on the tectonics of the cruciform column as well as its function in the Barcelona Pavilion.

section

parti for new plan

column section

column section vector drawing analysis

Barcelona Pavilion sectional analysis

“At Barcelona the reversibility derives from the most unlikely source: symmetry. It is unexpected because Mies had gotten rid of vertical bilateral symmetry (the kind we expect) making a conspicuous show of its absence. He then reintroduced it, in quantity, in another dimension, where no one would think of looking for it: Horizontally” (Evans 63).

The project parti is derived based on the tectonics of the cruciform column as well as its function in the Barcelona Pavilion.

section

parti for new plan

column section

column section vector drawing analysis

Tempietto sectional analysis

“We may choose to believe that squarish, simple things are tokens of rationality in some wider sense, and that curvaceous, complicating things are tokens of irrationality” (Evans 59)

The single section of the Tempietto is broken into eight seperate sections suspended throughout the length of the project. The sections are connected with a series of string thatencloses a dynamic space and directs spatial movement.

looking back toward entrance

looking in from entrance

“What kind of world is it, we might ask, that could be turned upside down without our noticing? This is the most serene of derangements” (Evans 63)

“Either the walls are interfering with the roof or the columns are interfering with the walls”(Evans 58)

“At Barcelona the reversibility derives from the most unlikely source: symmetry. It is unexpected because Mies had gotten rid of vertical bilateral symmetry (the kind we expect) making a conspicuous show of its absence. He then reintroduced it, in quantity, in another dimension, where no one would think of looking for it: Horizontally”(Evans 63)

By taking a section of the Barcelona Pavillion and turning it into plan we literally ‘Correct’ Mie’s use of symmetry and reflection in the pa-villion to the vertical axis.

By exploding a section of the Tempietto we define an a symmetric space inside of a symmetrical design.

Construction of the Walls of the exhibition maintains the proportion and relatonships found in the original construction of the Pavillion.

Completing this exhibition space in 2 months using only found ma-terials and supplies tested our ability to work as a group. We used recycled billboard covers as sheathing, Egg cartons as a drop ceiling panels, and railroad ties as structural ballast.