Thermatherapy

by Christopher Beck April 28, 2022

Inspired by Roman baths, artisanal local materials and craftsmanship, and other facets of the ancient city of Segovia’s history, this project transforms a former episcopal palace into a public pool complex that doubles as a live-in rehabilitation and hydrotherapy center for people with physical and mobility-based disabilities.

This design was created as a project for Design Studio VI – The Existing at IE University, which focused on the redesigning of an existing structure with the stipulation that it must include a residential component for a disabled demographic of the student’s choice.

Site and Demographic Analysis

The palace was constructed in 1550 by Juan Arias Dávila, Count of Puñonrostro as a residence for his family. It was later purchased by the Salcedo Dynasty of León, before changing hands again to Diocese of Segovia in 1755 to serve as a new episcopal palace. During this time, the palace and its adjacent church and plaza flourished as a bustling center of the city, and the palace accrued an impressive collection of metalwork, ceramics, glass and religious artifacts. The diocese eventually moved to a new headquarters, the building became a museum and a restaurant. As it stands today as of the spring of 2022, the entire plaza is abandoned save for cars using it as a parking lot, as the museum, restaurant and church have all closed indefinitely. The only building currently in use on the site is the Casa Familiar Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación, a care facility and social center for people with mental disabilities operated by the Order of Saint Francis.

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This project seeks to address the needs of Segovia’s aging population local residents who are attached to their city and desire its improvement, the growing but generally transient population of students attending IE University, and the some 9,000 people with physical disabilities in Segovia province who require physical activity, social aid and occupational therapy.

Project Themes and Goals

Provide an outlet for physical activity for all demographics, responding to Segovia’s lack of adequate exercise facilities and the growing issue of sedentary lifestyles among Spaniards, particularly older and those with disabilities.
Decrease social stigma among the different groups through the use of a shared general program and a high level of visibility and transparency between public and medical spaces (without sacrificing privacy).
Connect the palace, which has long been underutilized and cut off from the more socially and commercially active parts of the city, with the modern city in a meaningful and intentional way.
Occupational and physical therapy programs focused on building independence and providing practical skills for the patients.

All of this will be achieved through the use of soft and transparent materials, in particular a type of structural glass which can vary in transparency through layering, landscape features based on edible and fragrant plantings, and water through the central program of a public pool facility.

Architectural Strategy

The building today is a highly traditional Renaissance building with a heavy emphasis on the front-back axis, a simple, square geometry, and very thick, heavy materiality.

The main gesture will be to create a new axis connecting the building, through an adjacent street, to the main areas of the city. This also allows the building to connect horizontally with its neighbor, the Cruz Blanca house, for collaboration and shared program.

To create this new axis, selective but minimal demolition of the existing structure is undertaken.

This demolition allows more room for the core programs.

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Final Design

Click here to view the project in more depth, or see the highlights below:

The ground floor plan features a main axis anchored by two lobbies, with the cloister serving as a way to get between different pool rooms. The floor materials accentuate the axes, and structural glass walls are used to create visual connections between spaces and give varying levels of privacy.

The main vertical circulation core is a spiral ramp designed for two wheelchairs to go up side by side, and to give every user the same circulation experience regardless of ability.

The ramp lets out into a public dining area where both residents and locals can eat, and the kitchen is a teaching kitchen that serves as occupational therapy for residents.

Some of the residences are designed for those who need less medical attention, with an emphasis on community-building and socialization.

Larger units optimized for wheelchair users and others who require more constant medical care.

All selected plants in the garden are native and local, with the bulk of them also being edible so that residents can grow their own food and use it in the kitchen.

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Simple diagram showing some of the sustainable practices of the building's construction and program.

Nearly all materials are sourced from within Castilla y León, cutting down on environmental damage caused by extraction and long-distance transportation, as well as feeding into the regional economy so that local material usage can become more feasible for more projects over time.

Architecture

Inwood Community Health Pavilion

by Christopher Beck January 20, 2022

This project was created during a one-week intensive workshop at IE University. It features a plaza in East Inwood, Manhattan, which activates the busy intersection of W 204th Street and Nagle Avenue with a sculptural pavilion that engages not only pedestrians, but also passing cars and trains. A series of canopies catch and distribute rain water while guiding pedestrians around a miniature map of the neighborhood. The map bleeds out onto the street, prompting cars to slow down and train passengers to view it while passing by. Rain captured by the canopies flows down to create a wall of water, illuminated by lights whose colors correspond to the water’s pH, before being taken down into a cleansing machine which makes it potable.

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The water is then supplied to drinking fountains on and near the site. An associated website accessed by QR codes at these fountains gathers data from the pavilion to provide real-time data about the water’s quality and resources to help locals advocate for climate solutions. In all, this intervention will provide Inwood’s residents with over 38,000 gallons – or 173,000 liters – of fresh drinking water annually.

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Each user of the site is given a vastly different experience, from pedestrians to cars to trains. People walking through the site experience an airy, open plaza and an immerse map of their neighborhood which they can walk through. Water fountains on the miniature map correspond to other real fountains outside the city. For the cars driving by, the experience is of a textured façade with wall of water, and passengers on passing trains above get to view the map in its entirety.

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Architecture, Landscape Design

Reserved Channel: Reconnect, Revitalize, Regenerate

by Christopher Beck December 20, 2021

Reconnect, Revitalize, Regenerate is an ambitious mixed use neighborhood proposal at the head of South Boston’s Reserved Channel which expands on the City of Boston’s Climate Ready South Boston initiative by integrating working landscapes which mitigate flooding and rehabilitate soil while providing recreational and community-building opportunities into the existing network of Boston’s open spaces. It is bolstered by a series of public amenities, transportation infrastructure and economic development which provide for a historically underserved and isolated area and reconnect it both physically and socially to the greater Boston community.

Site Analysis and Project Overview

Our site is on almost entirely infilled land, meaning that its soil is highly impermeable, poorly drained, and flat. If sea level rise continues at its current rate, it will be entirely submerged. Even before climate change, existing flood patterns already cause water to pool on the site; climate change will only exasperate this. In addition to flooding the site also contends with lead contamination in the soil, especially on the southern side of the site. The City of Boston is aware of these issues and is proposing, in dialogue with residents, natural flood mitigation and green infrastructure spaces such as living shorelines and boardwalks that also serve community and recreation functions.

The site also sits at a point of transition and of tension – between old and new urban fabrics, between residential, industrial and commercial-dominated uses, and between different demographics and cultures.

Three-Pronged Planning Approach

Reconnect the site to the greater area of South Boston, both physically and culturally.
Revitalize lost community and social infrastructure.
Regenerate the environment and economic opportunities.

Design Proposal

Click here to view the project in more depth, or see the highlights below:

Architecture, Landscape Design

Work with Build Health International

by Christopher Beck August 6, 2021

My professional work with Build Health International, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Beverly, Massachusetts, includes four major projects over the span of a year and a half, from July 2020 to the end of August 2021. Visit https://www.buildhealthinternational.org/projects/ for these projects and more of their work.

Koidu Maternal Center of Excellence

The Koidu Maternal Center of Excellence is a state-of-the-art maternal health complex in the Kono District of Sierra Leone, the first of its kind in the nation. On this project, I contributed to the design of the main waiting
pavilion and other outdoor spaces including a comprehensive planting design scheme, the design of the roof structures for various buildings of the complex, as well as the cataloging and preparing the layout of medical equipment and furniture.

Hôpital Universitaire de Mirebalais Diagnostic Center

The Hôpital Universitaire de Mirebalais, which is located in the Mirebalais Arrondissement of Haiti’s Centre Department and opened in 2013, is the largest public hospital in Haiti. In 2021, a small BHI team designed a new diagnostic center addition for the complex equipped with an x-ray and CT scanning space. I was one of three on the architecture team, and contributed to the design of the facades, roof structure, building and equipment layout, and connection to existing structure; as well as research and detail work pertaining to the radiation-shielding of the screening spaces.

L'Hôpital Wesleyan de La Gonâve

Wesleyan Hospital is a large teaching hospital owned by the Wesleyan Methodist Church, near the city Anse-à-Galets on the Haitian island of La Gonâve. BHI is developing a master plan for the hospital, which had been struggling due to inadequate infrastructure, lack of medicinal resources and facilities, and the COVID-19 pandemic. I contributed to the master planning report, including creating site analysis and preliminary development strategy diagrams, writing text, and formatting the report.

St. Rock Hospital

St. Rock Hospital is an addition to an existing clinic in Carrefour, a suburb of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. The existing clinic has inadequate space and resources to treat Carrefour’s population of over 500,000, a critical need that this new development will address. It is expected to increase the facility’s capacity by over 400% and provide new facilities for much needed types of care including HIV, dentistry, and mental health.

Renderings and photos of the Maternal Center of Excellence. Via Build Health International and Partners in Health Sierra Leone. See https://www.buildhealthinternational.org/project/maternal-center-of-excellence/ and https://www.pihsierraleone.com/mcoe for more information.

Planting plan of Maternal Center of Excellence campus.

Landscape Design

Planted Meadow Design

by Christopher Beck June 12, 2021

Long Island Planted Meadow Design

Residential lawns, despite seeming innocuous, are one of the largest contributors to environmental damage in the West. According to landscape architect Owen Wormser in the 2020 novel which inspired this project, Lawns into Meadows: Growing a Regenerative Landscape, the average gas-powered lawnmower creates more carbon dioxide pollution in a single hour (maybe half of your weekend mowing session) than a car using an entire tank of gas. Factoring in the effects of fertilizer and other upkeep on the groundwater and local wildlife, the way that continuous maintenance weakens both the soil and the grass itself, and carcinogenic properties of many of the commonly used lawn treatments such as gylphosate, lawns overall are a serious issue worthy of our consideration as architects. And this is not to mention all of the social and cultural implications of “lawn culture”.

This project is a hypothetical proposal for transforming a typical lawn on eastern Long Island, New York, into a planted meadow which uses native plants, aimed at rehabilitating the soil with phyto-remedial techniques.

The preparation for this design included some site analysis and precedent study. Thankfully, I know this area well and had the chance to go out and study it during my time working on this project so I was able to get a good understanding of the needs of the site and the types of plants that would thrive here. This region is characterized by having tall, rocky-cliffs in the north and west that give way to low-lying, flood prone land, and being very densely populated with a strongly entrenched culture of well-kept lawns. The soil here is slightly acidic, moist, and well-drained. According to the Long Island Pocket Guide for Landscape Soil Health from Cornell University, the soil association for the area is made up of soil types known as Carver coarse sand, Plymouth loamy sand and Riverhead sandy loam. The average temperature ranges from below freezing in the winter to just above 80°F in the summer, and the island’s cold hardiness zone is 7. Due to Long Island’s coastal location and generally more temperate climate than the rest of the northeast, it is considered a transition zone where both cool and warm-season grasses thrive, although cool-season is preferred. The meadow planting is assumed to be in the backyard of a fairly large, flat property, which allows for more height variation than a front yard.

Given these conditions, the plants chosen are tolerant of poor soil conditions, adaptable to temperature changes, high moisture and precipitation, and useful for the existing wildlife which includes deer, gulls, wild turkeys, and butterflies. Many of these plants, such as the eastern bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) and the woolgrass (Scirpus cyperinus) provide larval hosting for migrating butterfly species and food for the declining bee population. Also, a few of these plants perform ecological services including nitrogen fixation in order to heal the soil which has been battered by a century of urban sprawl and harmful lawn treatments. Inspiration is taken from local beaches and parks such as Cupsogue County Park in Westhampton and Cedar Beach Nature Preserve in Mt. Sinai as well as existing planted meadows such as the Theodore Roosevelt Audubon Center in Oyster Bay. In order to preserve local identity and visually tie the garden to its surroundings all of the plants are native to the area except for one, the Shasta Daisy (Leucanthemum x superbum), although it is a common foreign plant already used in the area. The plants are divided into three main layers, as a high layer with many of the most vibrant and attractive plants, a low layer that is more subdued but still visually interesting and whose bloom times complement those of the high layer, and a groundcover that keeps a consistent backdrop for the project.

See my data, sources, and other information in the spreadsheet below:

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Architecture

Chain Forge Market and Hotel

by Christopher Beck May 13, 2021

Cities and towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally accessible public spaces and community institutions; urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and building practice.

Charter of the New Urbanism, 1993

The Chain Forge Smithery at Charlestown Navy Yard served as one of the forefronts of American naval innovation from its construction in 1903 to the Navy Yard’s decommissioning in 1974. Among other important roles in naval history, this building was the site of the invention of the Die-Lock anchor chain in 1924 and had a hand in the Lend Lease program of 1941-1945, contributing to the Yard’s ship construction. The building, with over one hundred industrial machines remaining inside, has sat dormant from 1974 until recently, when a hotel proposal was greenlit for the site. This hypothetical project, completed in a studio focusing on architectural conservation and reuse, proposes a way to integrate this hotel into the urban fabric while also inviting Charlestown residents back to the Navy Yard, as they are now separated from their old workplace by a highway, the stigma of tourism, and a lack of community amenities. A major goal of this project is to spur interaction between various demographics that would otherwise not interact, namely tourists, businessmen, and locals, which will hopefully change the perception locals have of tourism and the perception tourists have of locals.

Through a phased development timeline, the Chain Forge Smithery will be transformed into a combination of a flexible community space, a public market, and a hotel. The factory floor, approximately 40,000 square feet, is almost completely open save for a selection of the machines and a series of mobile “follies”. These follies range from a simple moving platform to a fully enclosed, multi-story miniature building within the shell of the factory, and are the model for a dynamic public market that can be rearranged at will. These follies – both to demonstrate their “newness” in contrast (and subservience) to the old and to call back to the yard’s history – are made of a dark red metallic material reminiscent of the Gleaves-class Destroyer ships designed and constructed at Charlestown during World War II. All of these follies are rentable, specifically targeted towards local small businesses, farmer’s markets, and startup incubation. They are able to be combined and arranged to suit whatever the renter’s needs are.

This model will persist on its own for about one to two years, with the follies and more permanent structures slowly coming in over time. Only then, once this space is established as a valid community center, will the commercial development come in. Using reclaimed brick from demolition elsewhere on the site, the upper factory floors will be given over to the hotel program. The hotel features large factory windows, balconies, and catwalks the prompt the hotel guests to be “good neighbors” to the marketgoers and vice versa.

View the entire project below:

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Landscape Design

Hall’s Pond Planting Scheme

by Christopher Beck February 23, 2021

Hall’s Pond Sanctuary is a 3.5 acre nature preserve in Brookline, Massachusetts. The pond is connected to the adjacent Amory Park by a pathway which links it to the parking lot in the north and Beacon Street in the south. This is a simple tree and shrub planting scheme for the stretch of path between the parking lot and the pond entrance, along with fact sheets on each of the five selected shrub species.

Site analysis diagram showing the existing tree cover in the Hall's Pond preserve.

Site analysis diagram showing land usage within the Hall's Pond preserve.

Tree planting scheme for the parcel between the parking lot and boardwalk entry. Existing trees in this area assumed to be removed.

Shrub planting scheme for the parcel between the parking lot and boardwalk entry, set below the designed tree planting.

Architecture

Sustainable Modular Living

by Christopher Beck April 21, 2020

“The bedrock attribute of a successful city district is that a person must feel personally safe and secure on the street among all these strangers.”

Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

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A large, walk-up multifamily housing development in Boston’s South End. Focused on resolving the tension between privacy and community-building, it uses abundant outdoor space, private terraces, and communal circulation to encourage spending time outdoors and interacting with neighbors. Though this specific development was required to be completely residential, the ground floor is open and flexible enough to be converted to retail or other uses if needed.

The building is constructed of mass timber and features abundant green roofing, giving both interiors and exteriors a rustic and homey feel. In order to balance conflicting interests of density and privacy, the units are spacious and multi-floored, while still being oriented towards the outdoors and the communal spaces.

“The first fundamental of successful city life: People must take a modicum of responsibility for each other even if they have no ties to each other. This is a lesson no one learns by being told.”

Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

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View the entire project below:

Architecture

Boston Public Library – Chinatown Branch

by Christopher Beck December 10, 2019

Boston Public Library - Chinatown Branch

The traditional library model is becoming, in many ways, obsolete. The majority of its functions can be done in easier and more convenient ways online or through other physical avenues. This new library concept in Boston’s Chinatown provides one possible solution to bring this important archetype into the modern age.

This design highlights the library’s function as a center of the neighborhood and a “home away from home”. Specifically, the building is highly accessible because of the open colonnade allowing entry and exit from either side and features multiple large open spaces and community centered programs. This function is amplified by the addition of an allotment gardening program which helps the new building fit in the context of the pre-existing parks and create another community focused activity. These garden plots can be rented by residents yearly.

The first phase of this project was to design a temporary summer library in Chinatown Park. The design is based on a 6′ square grid system and is made of wooden trellis, where residents can plant. The plan is meandering with many crevices for people to sit in or walk through.

The final library design is approximately 30,000 square feet, optimized to serve the specific needs of the Chinatown residents. The park concept evolved into a community garden, where residents can rent a garden plot to plant fruits and vegetables. The library is centered around a courtyard filled with plots and encased a colonnade with hydroponically-grown climbing plants. It retains the meandering quality of the previous iteration, having multiple means of circulation on multiple levels.