MITTAG - MCNAUGHT
Has a background in Sculpture & Printmaking from St. Olaf College (B.A. 2020), and a Masters of Architecture I Degree from the Yale School of Architure (M.Arch I 2025).
Currently living and working in Mexico City, Mexico.
An (in)Formal Stack
Fair Haven, Connecticut
Fall 2023, Core III
Yale School of Architecture
Stella Betts
This project begins on Grand Avenue with the observation that where social condensation happens in this community are the spaces inbetween the architecture, or the urban void. Here, this almost entirely takes the form of the parking lot, which hosts a wide range of activities such as car washes, ice cream vendors, concerts, and normal gatherings. Considering this, my building stacks the program on a condensed 48’ x 48’ floor plate, leaving 90% of the ground plane open for the community. Using CLT panels to create a tower of walls, the building further challenges the typology of the tower, denying the open stacked floor plate, and favoring idiosyncratic spaces with varying scales of division.
Permeating throughout the adaptation of the existing library and the site is the idea of a ‘light touch,’ where minimal adaptations are made to preserve the richness of the existing conditions. The conceptual ‘lightness’ is found in the porosity of the tower form, as well as its ‘informality,’ whose core fluctuates in use to best serve the programmatic and spatial needs of each floor. In this sense, the ‘lightness’ also takes on a playfulness.
After all, it’s lighter than you think...
Donald Judd, Untitled (Progression), 1965
Lina Bo Bardi, SESC Pompeia, 1977
Peter & Alison Smithson, The Charged Void,: Architecture, 2001
Parking Lot activity on Grand Avenue
Plans
Core Model Render
Section
Ground Floor
Model Render
Worms Eye Section
Daylight Model:
Existing Library
6th Floor