Padraic Mittag-McNaught

Has a background in Sculpture & Printmaking from St. Olaf College (B.A. 2020), and is currently a Masters of Architecture I Candidate at Yale School of Architure (M.Arch I 2025). Through architecture, I explore ideas of urbanity, with an unwavering belief in the city. 

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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