This PORTFOLIO presents

segments of STUDIO and on-going

PROFESIONAL work produced

DURING and AFTER my time as a

student of the Irwin S. Chanin School

of Architecture at THE COOPER

UNION.

MAILING INFORMATION:

James J. Hamilton424 Henry st. apt #4

Brooklyn, NY 11231 USA

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Cell: (646) 633-2555E-mail: jamesjhamilt@gmail.com

WORK EXPERIENCE AND INTERNSHIPS

Fabrication and furniture design at Personal studio and wood shop: Brooklyn, New YorkFree-lance design consulting fabrication and furniture design

Junior Architect at OCV Architects: New York City, New YorkDevelopment of construction documents, details and administration for restoration and new construction projects for low income housing.

Junior Architect at Nelligan White Architects: New York City, New YorkDevelopment of construction documents and details for masonry restoration projects. Construction administration and site visits for ongoing projects.

Internship with Young & Ayata Architecture / Urban Design: Brooklyn, New YorkConstructed a model for the renovation of an up state New York family home. Researched textured and perforated facade systems and developed formal studies for alternate circulation spaces.

Internship with Situ Studio: Brooklyn, New York Participated in the construction, design development and documentation of the Solar One Pavilion III.

Internship with City Council of Melbourne: Melbourne, Australia Development of Analysis, site studies, and 3-D modeling of civic space in urban environments. This included sports fields and areas like the South Bank of Melbourne’s Central Business District.

Model maker at OMA: New York City, New York Constructed models for the Milstein Hall project at Cornell University, Ithaca New York. Researched and contributed to the development of collages for an analysis of world towers.

Full time fabricator for Essex Works: Brooklyn, New York Restored individual stone details of New York City land marked buildings using sculpting, carpentry and mold-making techniques.

2010 - 2011

EDUCATION

2005 - 2010The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture,New York City, New York

2001 – 2005Xavier High School New YorkNew York City, New York

2004Volunteer construction work. Lokitaung, Turkana Province, Kenya.

2002Exchange Student at Xavier College. Melbourne Australia

TEACHING`2006 - 2010Drawing Instructor at Cooper Union Saturday Program. New York City, New York

2011Visiting Instuctor for Third Year Studio at Cooper Union. New York City, New York

Summer 2009

Summer 2008

Summer 2008

Summer 2007

Summer 2007, 2010

2011 -

PROFICIENCIES

Adobe: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Bridge, After EffectsCAD: AutoCad, RhinoFabrication: Full scale prototypes, model making, furniture, mold making, basic construction

2011 -

MUSEUM FOR SCULPTURECIRCUMNAVIGATIONNAVIGATIONAL TOOL WIND HOUSEGALLERY FOR THE COOPER UNIONMUSEUM ANALYSISTHE TOWER AND ITS DOUBLE

THE BALDACCHINOTHE ACROPOLISA HOTEL ALONG BROADWAY

Museum for Sculpture : The intersection of Madison Avenue, Broadway and Twenty fifth Street. New York City, New York.Gallery for The Cooper Union : The intersection of Astor Place and Third Avenue. New York City, New York.Hotel Along Broadway : The Length of Broadway. New York City, New York

Museum Analysis : The Mu-seum of Roman Art. Merida, Spain.

The Baldacchino : St. Peter’s Cathedral. Rome, Italy.

The Acropolis : Athens, Greece.

MUSEUM FOR SCULPTURE

Third Year. 2nd SemesterLarge Program, Urban Project.

Professors: Stephen Rustow, Felecia Davis, Michael Young, and Elizabeth O’Donnell

The museum was the programmatic subject. A complex site adjacent to New York City’s Madison Park was selected for the design project. Questions of volume and light, of sequence and materiality all had to be confronted at a certain level of abstraction. The emphasis throughout the year was on the formal and tectonic possibilities that reside in site and surround, in structural systems, and in materials.

Floor plans first through eighth. Plan view of vertical circulation.

Program development

The organization of the back of house programs are based on the necessary adjacencies of each individual program. Program is an object disrupting the open gallery spaces.

Section development

By adhering strictly to this rule, the logic of the programmatic organization clashes with the simple, open exhibition spaces. The conflict reveals the two in one nature of the museum and the complex relationship between production and display.

Facade development

West facade

The structure of the floor is oriented North / South. It intersects the edge irregulary. At each end point the floor connects to an intersection of the structural skin of the building.

South facade East facade

Vertical circulation from below

Vertical circulation from within

Transverse section

Longitudinal section

Night

Facade study of transparency and opacity

Evening Night

CIRCUMNAVIGATION AND THE TOOL

First Year.Inhabitation: Buoyant Voids.

Professors:David Gersten, Anne Romme, Anthony Titus, and Suzan Wines

We began to experiment empirically with displacement and buoyancy. Displacement created temporal voids, constantly shifting. Each cut in the surface of the water would result in a new displacement and consequently a new buoyancy and relation to the horizon. Within the dynamic condition of buoyant inhabitations an Architecture with a horizon in flux emerged.

Transverse sections through the void in motion.

The transformation of the section explores the dynamic spaces of an inhabitation in motion as it rises and falls through the waves and its relationship to the horizon changes.

Transverse sections through the void in motion.

Longitudinal sections through the void in motion.

Longitudinal section through the tool in use.

The tool was developed in conjunction with the boat. It was our first experience with drawing and making.

Exploded axonometric of the construction.

Longitudinal section of the tool in use.

The tool is for the navigation and redefinition of horizons. Its relationship to the development of the boat and its program emerged slowly and subconsciously.

Plan of the tool in use.

WIND HOUSE

Second Year, 1st SemesterParti.Professors:Ricardo Scofidio, Jennifer Lee, Pablo Lorenzo–Eiroa, and Caroline O’Donnell

A weekend retreat for a couple, located on a grassy, rural plot. The dramatic changes in temperature and brutally strong winds make for extreme weather conditions. Gender, vocation, and avocation are unknown. Each individual is fiercely independent, and each requires an area that is territorially their own.

The house traces the effects of the wind on the field before and after an object distrupts its natural movement.

Photograph of model at 1’-0” : 1/32”

GALLERY FOR THE COOPER UNION

Second Year, 1st SemesterParti.

Professors:Ricardo Scofidio, Jennifer Lee, Pablo Lorenzo–Eiroa, and Caroline O’Donnell

An exhibition space for the community of Cooper Union, in which the Architecture, Art, and Engineering schools each have a space, located on the corner of The Cooper Union Engineering Building site. The issue of the exhibition of the work produced at Cooper Union and its relationship to the city are considered as integral to the architectural problem, enabling a permeability to the city while presenting the institution.

Plan and sections of the gallery in context.

The design of this project focusses on a connection to the community and the neighborhood. It seeks to diminish the barrier between exhibitions and the pedestrian.

Photograph of model at 1’0” : 1/8’

A short-cut through the site becomes the gallery. The space of the gallery integrates itself with the space of the street.

Detail showing entrance and exhibition space.

It diminishes the threshold and embraces the pedestrian.

MUSEUM ANALYSIS

Third Year, 1st SemesterThe Museum of Roman Art

Professors:Stephen Rustow, Felecia Davis, Michael Young, and Elizabeth O’Donnell

Raphael Moneo’s Museum of Roman Art in Merida, Spain, was the topic of my analysis.This portion of the work culminated in a presentation of plans, sections and elevations at 1/4” scale, as well as physical and computer models that documented an “analytic concept:” an original hypothesis or physical conjecture intended to reveal an aspect of each building’s meaning.

1’-0” : 1”

1’-0” : 1/2”

1’-0” : 1/14”

1’-0” : 1/32”

Movement, the Fragment, and the Museum.

1st floor plan and longitudinal section.

The historical fragments of my analysis were the aqueduct and the columbarium. These historical fragments embodied the essential choreography of the design: to move past and to move through.

The analysis focused on the repetition of elements, openings and their mimetic relationship to the historical fragments found on the site of the museum. Each fragment corresponds to a dominant axis of circulation.

Columbarium Aqueduct Juxtaposition

Locating the fragments in plan and section

Model with moving parts, 1’0” : 1/16”

A pair of short walls at a constant proximity to each other repeat along the long axis. They delineate the primary space of the museum through which pathways cross.

Detail of joint and mechanism for motion

The movement of this space is both perpendicular and parallel to the movement of the primary space. The repetition is parallel. The compression is perpendicular.

Detail of model with moving parts. 1’-0” : 1/16”

Model with moving parts. 1’-0” : 1/16”

The approach to the columbarium.

Turning away from the primary axis of movement towards the columbarium space compresses. There is no repetition and the object becomes the focus.

The path through the space.

THE TOWER AND ITS DOUBLE

Fourth Year, 1st SemesterTOWER/ACROPOLIS

Professors:Diane Lewis, Peter Schubert, Thomas Tsang, and Mersiha Veledar

The architectural expression of a tower and that of an acropolis has great potential to the intrinsic character of Manhattan. This project program is TOWER/ACROPOLIS. A proposal for these recognizable forms was to be defined in a relation between intervention and context, and the formulation of a contemporary civic architectural program situated in regard to a select specific site in the structure of Manhattan.

Opposite: Mapping the vertical growth of the city.

Model of the Tower’s Double at 1’-0” : 1/4”

Model of the Church and Tower at 1’-0” : 1/4”

Thesis book.

THESIS: CINEMATIC SPACE IN THE CITY

The pages of the book.

Fifth Year, 1st SemesterThesis Research

Professors: David Turnbull, Hayley Eber, Urtzi Grau and Lydia Kallipoliti

The Baldacchino operates at the scale of the assembled component details, which in their transformation and juxtaposition create an allegory that references a series of events that took place before the construction.

THE BALDACCHINO

Over lay of sectional details of the Baldacchino.

Morphology of the section.

THE ACROPOLIS

The Acropolis is a complex choreography of sight and body across and through an architectural still life composed of interior and interstitial spaces that address each other and frame places and objects within and beyond the hill.

Fifth Year, 1st SemesterThesis Research Pt. 2

Professors: David Turnbull, Hayley Eber, Urtzi Grau and Lydia Kallipoliti

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The path through the Acropolis.

The views of the path.

A HOTEL ALONG BROADWAY

Fifth Year, 2nd SemesterThesis Design

Professors: David Turnbull, Hayley Eber, Urtzi Grau and Lydia Kallipoliti

Broadway is a spatially and historically rich experience with the potential for the implementation of a deconstructed montage theory that has been re -framed within the context of architecture and the city, creating an experience that connects the traveler to the city. The “Path” of the eye, mind and body, moving through a multiplicity of spatial and sensory phenomena.

2 mi

To begin: The reading of the city is inverted. The entrance into it is Broadway, not the harbor. A section of the path is extracted.

Selection of sites to insert a series of rooms.

Isolating a prototypical area.

Re-orienting the plan of the city.

Extracting the site from the city.

Along the path individual structures are isolated. From each structure the is a potential view along Broadway. They become structures the program will inhabit.

3rd and 4th rooms.

2nd and 3rd rooms.

1st room in a sequence of 4.

The formal development of the project started from visually linking points in existing structures along Broadway.

Detail of the path and the views from a point.

Sight connects the rooms.

2. PROGRAM

3. SIGHT

Formal progression of the thesis

Program replaces a point.

The point becomes a space. It is embedded within the vertical structure of the city. The rooms and views disrupt the vertical structure in the same way that Broadway disrupts the horizontal structure.

3. SIGHT

Point. Space. View.

It is a flip. Fragments are transposed from the horizontal to the vertical. A cut through the enclosure of the existing structure opens the spaces to the City.

The rooms are independent from the program of the existing structure but depend on it for stability. Each room has an individual fragment of the program of Hotel.

When strung together in a sequence they provide for the needs of the traveller along Broadway.

Plans of the rooms .

NELLIGAN WHITE ARCHITECTS

SITU STUDIO

OMAESSEX WORKS

Nelligan White Architects : 20 West 20th Street, Suite 1100. New York City, New York, 10011.Situ Studio : 20 Jay Street, Suite 203. Brooklyn, New York, 11201.OMA : 180 Varrick Street, Suite 1328. New York City, New York, 10014.Essex Works : 483 Meeker Avenue. Brooklyn, New York, 11222.

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6. 5.

1. 4.

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These axonometric drawings were constructed for Nelligan White Architects as part of a lecture to the New York Historic Council. Each drawing examines a structural typology found in New York historic structures.

NELLIGAN WHITE

SITU STUDIO

Working for Situ Studio i contributed to all phases of the design and construction of the Solar One Pavillion. The proccess revolved around full scale prototypes.

The testing of those prototypes and the developement of new methods based on our successes and our failures.

ESSEX WORKS

Working for Essex Works I was responsible for the management of several simultaneous projects of small to medium scales.

Managing these projects entailed re-sculpting details, fabricating patterns for molds and tracking production.

FREELANCE + FABRICATION

FREELANCE + FABRICATION

FREELANCE + FABRICATION

A sofa for a Lower East Side apartment.

A foosball table for PITCH : AFRICA,

A bed and work surface for a Williamsburg apartment.

FREELANCE + FABRICATION

This two person sofa was designed and fabricated for a small Lower East Side apartment. It is made of 3/4” birch plywood. Determening the proportions was a mitigation of the body and those of the space.

FREELANCE + FABRICATIONInvited by A -TOPIA, two classmates and myself undertook the chalange of designing and fabricating a transient foosball table. The table was to be an attraction at The Homeless World Cup, and a tool to progress the PITCH : AFRICA projecte being developed by A - TOPIA.