Sebastian Thor


Team: Reed Donaldson, Kevin Xu
Type: Data Center+Ecology Library
Advisor: Jennifer Chen


programs: rhino, unreal engine 5, illustrator, premiere pro

Strata is a hybridization of the Data Center and Library typologies. The form the result of data mining distorted images using the Processing program. The Processing script automates a method of image manipulation called pixel sorting, where pixels are taken and dragged a certain distance in an image. This produces a ‘corrupted’ effect. Pixelsorting is used frequently in the arena of ‘Glitch Art’.

In Strata, my team and I used the sorted images to generate planar and sectional diagrams. This created unique opportunites to explore the project while adherering to the criteria of either program acting as poche of the other. Our project uses the premise of three dimesional fusing to blend the programs. Simliar to layers of sediment producing a geologic object, layers of information and programs produce an architectural object

Strata attempts to reconcile a realtively new typology and a more established one, the data center and the library. Both act as methods of storing and accessing information. the schism occurs in the medium and methods of human interface. Strata embodies the collective memory of data, returning the form of the library to the cave, where the first human recordings were scrawled onto stone walls. 



schoolscape

Type: Educational, K-8th
Advisor: Angelica Lorenzi


programs: rhino, photoshop, v-ray, illustrator

This project is designed to probe the current conditions of an educational environment in response to COVID-19. Drawing on early and contemporary precedents, the studio asks students to design an open air school in Los Angeles. In the first half of the studio, students explored open air precedents in pairs, as well as learned techniques for how one might interact with the ground on site. After the research phase students designed their proposals independently using what they had learned from the previous exercise. My project attempts to understand folding and splitting masses and uses the layering and intersecting between regular grids to produce irregular systems of organization.


Team: Reed Donaldson, Kevin Xu
Type: Speculative
Advisor: Jennifer Chen, Kordae Henry



programs: rhino, unreal engine 5, premiere pro

imagines an iconic piece of architecture ruinified, either through time or post-catastrophe. The first phase was conducted by modeling and drawings in rhino and illustrator and then moved into Unreal Engine 5 for rendering and animation. Heavy emphasis was placed on the development of nolli drawings to analyze the relationship of the building to the site, both pre and post ruinification as well as representation of the project through narrative based story telling.






Type: Furniture
Advisor: Ramiro Diaz-Granados, Jackilin Hah Bloom



programs: rhino, grasshopper, v-ray, photoshop, illustrator, qlone, autodesk recap

specification and representation focuses on the transformation of an naturally occuring object, such as a fruit, into a manmade object, like a chair. The course highlights the differences between representational techniques like line drawings and renders, for example, in contrast to a specific set of instructions that result in a built piece of furniture, similar to a set of IKEA construction diagrams. The course seeks to study the loss of fidelity during the steps of translation between the original object and the effects of the new object.




Type: Sculpture
Advisor: Curime Batliner



programs: rhino, grasshopper

Mixed Resolutions experiments with workflows involving augmented reality, parametric design, and robotics. Students utilized script based design to create a roughly one meter tall sculptural object in two resolutions that where then superimposed on eachother. this workshop explored the opportunities and limitations possible when introducing technology-based methods of fabrication and design to the creative process


Type: Speculative
Advisor: Ramiro Diaz-Granados


programs: blender, rhino, grasshopper, photoshop 

a visual studies course designed as a crash course to the ethos and ethic of studio classes at SCI-Arc. in this class, students experimented with massing, scale, and structure. the three week course was split into three parts. the first part focused ond blender and designing a celestial body. next students were tasked with landing the body.



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Sebastian Thor 2024