ANTHONY SCHMIDT DESIGN WORKS

Type: Single-Family Residential

Senior Research Studio: University of Calgary (2018)

Critics: Graham Livesey

Project Brief:

With conceptual grounding in the 1974 publication, The Place of Houses, Rift House takes a critical stance on the traditional single-corridor residential arrangement. By separating the more fluid ‘service’ programs on the West side of the site from more prescriptive ‘served’ programs on the East, Rift House maintains the notion of the central corridor but re-imagines the fundamental purpose. Looking beyond pragmatic circulatory functions, the rift created between the two rectilinear volumes fostered an opportunity to inject a lush vegetative layer that mediates the physical and visual interface; maintaining privacy while sensitively regulating daylight infiltration. Reinforcing the linear rift gesture, two full-length skylights along the East and West peripheries of the dwelling cascade daylight down the monolithic board-form concrete walls adding dimension and texture inside. Bordered by full-height glazing, the central vegetative rift is juxtaposed against the mass and raw material quality of the board-form concrete and timber cladding on the North and South facades, evoking a sense of domestic introversion that strengthens the dialogue between the served and service volumes.

The Haywood Health House seeks to impart physiological and psychological benefits to the clients, while respecting and celebrating the temperate West Coast environment in which it is situated. As two discrete, yet inherently connected dwellings, the design is grounded in the notion of interpersonal and environmental symbiosis. Inspired by biophilia and biomimetics, the dwelling is highly responsive to climatic forces and engages the site in ways that promote a multi-sensory connection to nature and context; in turn optimizing the benefits of our intrinsic biophilic response mechanism. Guided by Net-Zero and LEED principles, the home minimizes its ecological footprint by incorporating PV energy generation, rainwater harvesting, passive cooling and ventilation, and architectural elements mitigating energy consumption and temperature fluctuations. The selected material palette is composed of timber, concrete, white aluminum panels and raw aluminum mullions; in conjunction creating a light and airy indoor environment that both absorbs and reflects ambient environmental qualities. The home thus becomes a ‘canvas’ for it’s surroundings.

Type: Installation

Senior Research Studio: University of Calgary (2018)

Critics: Graham Livesey

Project Brief:

The [L] Wall is a multi-use modular screen system capable of adapting to countless spatial parameters. Influenced by explorations of Richard Neutra's Theory of Biorealism, the [L] Wall synthesizes elements of this theory along with biophilic and biomimetic design principles. The layered assembly is derived from the morphology of fruticose lichens (more commonly known as Reindeer Moss); a unique and highly efficient example of symbiosis between a fungus and algae. The dendritic surface articulation + underlying voronoi tesselations were generated by mimicking the growth, reproduction, and aggregation patterns of lichens as it occurs in nature. There is no question that we need nature in a deep and fundamental fashion, however, we have often designed our cities and suburbs in ways that both degrade the environment and alienate us from nature. The [L] Wall seeks to question both how and where we can introduce natural elements in the domestic environment, and in turn, how we can optimize the benefits of our intrinsic biophilic response.

Type: Cultural

Urban Design Studio: University of Calgary (2017)

Critics: Jason Johnson, Francisco Alaniz-Uribe, Martin Jones

Project Brief:

The central architectural component of the Junction 3 Masterplan (developed by myself and two other Landscape Architecture students), the Junction 3 Public Library is situated in Portland’s South Waterfront community. The main conceptual driver for the masterplan was the identification of dominant axial trajectories and intersections on the site. The location and intensity of intersections created a hierarchy of nodes that informed our programmatic focal points, of which the Library was central. In alignment with this underlying concept, the library engages angular geometries with strong linear gestures and exhibits a high degree of porosity. The design is influenced by origami formal characteristics that highlight a balance between simplicity and intricacy. These characteristics resonate with the functional premise of a public library, which has to achieve balance between civic formality and community informality.

Type: Cultural

Comprehensive Studio: University of Calgary (2017)

Team: Anthony Schmidt, Callum McClure

Critics: Keir Stuhlmiller

Project Brief:

A celebratory gesture towards the Indigenous peoples of Calgary and it’s vast hinterlands; the Moh Kin Tsis Indigenous Gathering House seeks to unite Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in a spirit of growth, understanding, education and healing. Situated on the Fort Calgary site, the project is uniquely positioned between the burgeoning East Village community and the historic Inglewood community; mediating a transition between the City’s intense urban sociocultural dichotomy. The project holds tremendous significance as a gesture of respect towards the Treaty 7 Nations and as an important contribution to nation-wide efforts centred on truth and reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous population as a whole. 

The design concept is strategically and sensitively imbued with information derived from the site itself. Derivation of geographical and topographical information inherent to the landscape yields an architecture that is responsive to, and representative of, the site and it’s traditional occupants. The building footprint is an abstraction of the physical boundaries of the site, bordering the Bow and Elbow Rivers at a historically charged confluence of geography and culture. 

Earth, water, air and fire are deployed as a series of elemental ‘pods’ along the symbolic East-West axial trajectory to honour the elements of the Indigenous Medicine Wheel and the path of the sun. The interstitial space between these elements mediate entry and exit and serve as primary venues for informal and spontaneous interactions essential to strengthening community.

The building’s formal characteristics are derived from the site’s topographic profile, through which notions of subduction and tectonic movement are eloquently conveyed. Mountain pine beetle-killed lumber defines the project’s structural system and surface qualities, emitting rich hues and characteristics that recall a deep and meaningful connection to the Canadian landscape. The inherent properties of this material imply a process of growth, disruption and resilience; a process that genuinely encapsulates notions of recovery and reconciliation.

Embedded in the site as a physical and ephemeral extension of the landscape, the project offers a programmatic and perceptual gradient along the North-South axial trajectory that magnifies juxtapositions between public/private, prescription/fluidity, and opacity/transparency. User experience of place is fundamentally informed by the interface between these qualities. Intimate and spiritual programs to the South are spatially and perceptually separated from more active public programs to the North by a circulatory hierarchy which is reinforced by material and system applications promoting incremental daylight permeation and feelings of transparency before opening entirely to the Bow River at the Northern periphery of the site.

Type: Deployable structure

Tensile Membrane Structures: University of Calgary (2017)

Critics: Mauricio Soto-Rubio

Project Brief:

an·ti·clas·tic

“Having opposite curvatures at a given point; specifically : curved convexly along a longitudinal plane section and concavely along the perpendicular section.”

A lightweight deployable structure in the University of Calgary’s Taylor Quadrangle, the AC Pavilion frames a number of high-traffic pedestrian walkways while sensitively responding to the pond and artificial wetlands below.  The structure offers a unique weather-protected venue for public interaction and re-animates an under-utilized space on campus.

Type: Design/Fabrication

Graphics II: University of Calgary (2016)

Team: Anthony Schmidt, Joe Kaplan, Daniel Szymanski, Kristina Mackenzie, Graham Oewerkerk, Winston Yueng, Alex W, June Caluza

Role: Fabricator

Critics: Jody James, Matt Knapik

Project Brief:

Effervesce is a vertical wall installation that uses a delaunay network frame to support a vacuum formed polymer skin. Manipulating the parameters of the delaunay network informed by an image map of Pluto’s horizon produced the resulting bubbled effect. Point data was extracted from the image based on pixel differentiation and brightness. This unique and enticing form uses interior lighting to enhance the qualities of the horizon and forms the first of five unique sectional representations of the image. The project was a collaborative effort of 10 students and was featured in INVERSE magazine.

Type: Mixed-Use

Studio III: University of Calgary (2016)

Critics: Philip Vandermay

Project Brief:

What is flux? Flux is defined as a state of constant change, passage, or movement. It is the staging of uncertainty. The project is a conceptual response to Rem Koolhaas’ “Whatever Happened to Urbanism?” which suggests that urbanism reinvented will require the cultivation of uncertainty, of enabling processes, and of infrastructures that lend themselves to interpretation and manipulation. Artist’s have traditionally sought these infrastructural conditions, and thus represent a microcosm of urbanism reimagined. Artists create place in the otherwise placeless. Flux seeks to cultivate the flexible, collaborative and inspiring aspects of industrial artist’ space in concert with synergistic programs to encourage new creative outcomes that will positively contribute to the vibrancy of Calgary’s urban fabric. The provision of a structural framework promotes the authorship of creative processes both within, and to the infrastructure itself. By creating an infrastructural field that can be endlessly interpreted and manipulated, flux will challenge market forces and empower through a new model of artistic space.

Type: Digital Exploration

Taylor Workshop: University of Calgary (2018)

Team: Anthony Schmidt, Juan Palacios

Critics: Dana Cupkova (Carnegie Mellon University, EPIPHYTE Lab)

Project Brief:

Contemporary building practice tends to describe architecture as objects situated in spatial and cultural fields. The ecology posits that all entities are bound together in thermodynamic relationship of energy and information exchange: ecosystem. This project aims to investigate the effects of natural behaviours within a bio‐synergetic context on shaping of architectural constructs. Using simulation of environmental data sets related to landscape formation and water flow, we employed computational modelling and analog 3d printing to investigate new emergent architectural forms within given fictional landscapes. At the forefront of bio‐technological frameworks of architecture, we set out to negotiate differences between organic and inorganic, formal and performative, cultural and ecological, zones and boundaries, solids and gradients, proximities and tendencies, objects and fields. Using abstraction as a codifier of geo‐spatial data sets we sought to re‐scribe the invisible forces into formed constructs, with hope to shift the focus of design away from singular contextual 'truth' of data, towards the constraints of perception and spatial aesthetics.

Type: Illustration

Gilmor Workshop: University of Calgary (2017)

Critics: Clare Lyster (University of Illinois at Chicago, CLUAA)

Project Brief:

Contemporary logistical networks, along with the various gizmos that support them, have manifest an urban condition that prioritizes expedience, anonymity, individualism, and above all else, consumption. No longer is the consumer expected to purchase at a specified point in space defined by a merchant; a phenomena that has catalyzed the dematerialization of physical retail in favour of expedient home delivery. The population is now unconsciously and unemotionally bound to a consumer behaviour that preferences anonymity over social interaction and quantity over quality. The limitlessly complex distribution centres characteristic of internet-era commercial giants are no longer found on the periphery, they are invading the centralized city and decimating conventional retail infrastructure in their path. Dystopia: Delivered explores these logistical notions and anticipates the potentials of reclaiming and reanimating fatigued infrastructures for collective uses that challenge pervasive individualism. 

Urchin is an interactive installation designed for the annual Toronto Winter Stations competition. Conceived of by Dustin Couzens, Co-Founder and Principal of Modern Office of Design + Architecture (MoDA), my role in the project was to take conceptual sketches and produce a detailed working digital model along with supporting diagrams and visualizations for the competition submission (unrealized). The design features a double-skin synthetic polymer envelope encasing a series of timber ribs through which wood 1” dowels puncture. Manipulation of the dowels in and out of the skin offers the user a highly engaging experience that is constantly defined and re-defined.This experience is elevated further by the spatial and formal inversion occurring within the cylindrical envelope when one is manipulating the dowels from the exterior. This interplay fosters an exciting and communicative dialogue between both sides of the cylinder and engages users in new and unforeseen ways. 

The Lakeview Residence was designed in Summer 2017 by Modern Office of Design + Architecture (MoDA).

Excerpt from www.moda.ca:

"The Lakeview Residence is a two-storey 4,400 square foot home in Calgary's Lakeview Community. The sit itself is unique in that it fronts onto a public road and backs onto a park with a well-used public greenway directly adjacent to the rear property line. The multiple schemes developed for this project took as their point of departure the client's desire for privacy in an overtly suburban and highly public context. However, this need for privacy was not to come at the expense of natural light, nor the desire for nuances views in and out of the home. Our initial studies leveraged this dichotomous relationship between privacy, light and view through formal manipulations of the typical suburban home typology."

Working alongside fellow intern and photoshop wizard Brant York (Ryerson University), my role in the project was to produce a series of visualizations and a physical model for the project. Model 1:65 scale, handcrafted basswood.

Type: Exploration

Graphics II: University of Calgary (2016)

Critics: Jody James, Matt Knapik

Pin cushion is an exploratory project investigating the potentials of deploying parametric articulation on banal form. Grasshopper for Rhino3D was used to define parameters of manipulation through which iterations were performed until the point of system failure. The exploration began by looking at how the form of typical dome could be augmented and reanimated by introducing another banal form: the cylinder. Performing iterations on the distribution, density, and length of the protruding cylinders yielded curious conditions of overlap and intersection that offer different readings of the underlying dome form. 

Type: Installation (Unbuilt)

Graphics II: University of Calgary (2016)

Critics: Jody James, Matt Knapik

Project Brief:

The Voronois Crayola is a wall system exploring the emergent effects of Crayola paraffin wax and Polyethylene. The design employs methodologies of vacuum forming polyethylene (PEt-G) sheets and melting paraffin wax crayons. Melted into the rigid poly forms, the multi-coloured wax assumes the spatial characteristics of the voronois articulation and bleeds unpredictably in a mosaic of colours. Once the forms are removed the vibrant wax amalgamation assumes its own structural identity. The formal condition of the voronois articulation lends itself to an endless array of possible depths, configurations and sizes.

The Lakeview Residence No.2 was designed in Summer 2017 by Modern Office of Design + Architecture (MoDA).

Excerpt from www.moda.ca:

"Our initial explorations looked at how to both conceptually and programmatically turn the house inside out to drastically reduce the issues associated with privacy and overlook. To this end, we began with a cylindrical massing that minimized the amount of surface area facing both the park and the front street. Defying convention, there are only a few moments where the exterior is punctuated by an opening, allowing the facade to read as a quiet, monolithic entity."

Working alongside fellow intern and photoshop wizard Brant York (Ryerson University), my role in the project was to produce a series of visualizations for the project.

A selection of constructed physical models from various projects worked on in both academic and professional contexts. Various scales and materials.

In Order:

GROW (MoDA): 1:100, Handcrafted basswood

BLK60 (MoDA): 1:100, Handcrafted basswood

S.R. Crown Hall: 1:25, Mixed-materials

Junction 9 Sectional (MoDA): 1:50, Handcrafted + laser cut basswood

Switch|bloc Sectional (MoDA): 1:40, Handcrafted basswood

Type: Methodological Analysis

Senior Research Studio: University of Calgary (2018)

Critics: Graham Livesey

Project Brief:

Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann Desert House is analyzed through the lens of a methodology developed by synthesizing  the 1974 publication, The Place of Houses, by Charles Moore, Gerald Allen and Donlyn Lyndon and Richard Neutra’s Theory of Biorealism (described in Survival by Design, 1954, and Life and Human Habitat, 1956). Among several things, The Place of Houses speaks to architectural order, spatial typology, mechanistic integration and psychology as it relates to the human experience of space and form in a residential environment. At it’s most elemental understanding, Neutra’s Theory of Biorealism applies biological and psychological sciences to foster solutions for the built (specifically residential) environment under a recognition of the inherent and inseparable relationship between man and nature. Described as a four-fold approach to architecture, Biorealism is based on mutually supportive ideas that environments, good or bad, make an impact on the human race, and that employing physiology in the service of design could ensure verifiably healthy design and optimize psychological fulfillment. Influenced by the experimental psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, Neutra argues that architecture serves to choreograph the sensory and emotional responses of the human body, and in turn, the purpose of design is to control the senses to clarify the body’s position in space. Through this lens, Neutra places special emphasis on the psycho-physiology of the eye and on ocular-centric reflex responses to external visuo-spatial stimuli shaping involuntary bodily responses to space and form. In essence, he suggests that if the eye is involuntarily drawn to see something, the head is automatically triggered to turn towards that visual stimuli, which will in turn change the movement direction of the entire body. For him, the vital signs of our original human nature, including our acute sensorial responsivity to the environmental stimuli impinging on us from all sides, must be monitored, analyzed, and interpreted. The Kaufmann Desert House is described by observers and Neutra himself as being the most successful embodiment of his Theory of Biorealism. By analyzing the desert dwelling through this lens in conjunction with ideas explored in The Place of Houses, findings indicate that while much of Neutra’s work is grounded in speculative psycho-analytics, it finds concrete support in traditional architectural discourse. 

Type: Multi-Family Residential

Studio II: University of Calgary (2016)

Critics: Dustin Couzens

Featured: University of Calgary EVDS Gallery (Spring Show)

Project Brief:

The Arete collective housing project developed in response to the defining metrics of TOTAL CITY. Developed by Modern Office of Design + Architecture (MoDA), TOTAL CITY is an all-encompassing framework under which multi-family housing diverges from conventional practices of speculative development and challenges the axiomatic demands of the city. The Arete specifically addresses the TOTAL CITY metrics of Collectivity, Locality and Diversity. Responding to Collectivity and the recognition of Calgary’s fractured social condition, the Arete employs a formal logic that highlights collision. Points of collision are emphasized as the social and collective hubs of the project. In response to Locality, the Arete seeks to bifurcate and stretch the natural urban fabric; establishing a strong communication with the natural landscape and promoting agrarian land usage in the urban environment. Responding to Diversity, unique spatial offerings attract a diverse demographic population that contributes to the formation and maintenance of a strong local identity.

Spatial subdivision and programmatic organization was informed largely by the emphasis on social amenity provisions. Aligned with the ramp infrastructure, these collective spaces follow a staggered vertical organization on every second floor. Residential dwelling spaces unfold around these points of confluence, producing a varied array of unit sizes and configurations that attract a diverse range of occupants. On the ground level The Arete features a workout facility and cafe that serve as gathering spaces for individuals living in the building as well as those living in the surrounding community. The uppermost level of both central buildings features an indoor garden and reading room that overlooks the site and further towards downtown. Material selection aligns with the design intentionality of natural integration. Extensive use of glazing promotes transparency and porosity in the neighbourhood context, while cor-ten steel mullions and panels evoke natural tonal characteristics. Use of concrete and hardwood flooring reinforce these natural ties.

Type: Industrial Design

Integrative Design: University of Calgary (2018)

Critics: Khalid Omokanye

Project Brief:

The O|R lamp capitalizes on intrinsic yet subconscious human responses to form, materiality and light to choreograph a series of assumed visual reflexes. As the light turns on, the observer is involuntarily compelled to look at the artifact’s literal and ephemeral focal point; a circular frosted lamp surface nested in the delicate grasp of thin polished aluminum. Diffused by frosted glass, the cool-blue luminescence imparts a sense of calmness and visual appeasement. The light is reflected down the narrow aluminum structure, with an easing curvature reinforcing the sense of motion that guides a visual trajectory to the base of the object. The concrete sphere anchoring the luminaire draws visual attention as a point of imbalance in a system that at first glance appears to be symmetrical. Together with the material quality of the concrete, the spherical shape conveys latent messages of wholeness, connectedness, and again, movement. The three material finishes; concrete, glass and aluminum react differently to the light and in turn evoke different visual responses. The light emitted downwards reflects off the polished aluminum structure, serving to dematerialize the component while amplifying the visual potency of the glass and concrete elements.