Gradient, in partnership with Spotify, was asked to design a music experience space for Ronald McDonald House in NYC.

The space is intended to allow children visiting the house to find inspiration and comfort through the power of music. Many of the visitors have terminal illnesses and stay at the RMDH as a 'home away from home' Gradient feels strongly that music is one of the most powerful tools to heal the soul and was honored to donate their time to this extremely important cause. The project is in the final stages of development and will be constructed in the coming months.

Team:

Principle: Ben Krone

Designers: Sarah Wolf, Joseph Piorkowski

The “leftover and in-between” studio aimed to exploit under-used spaces found within the city fabric.  Tar Beach Music Center exploits unused roof area and lateral air space.  It was created by a component logic using woody vines as an informing natural system.  

It makes use of context through the urban vernacular and houses the music programs for three New York City schools, particularly for elementary and middle school students.  The overall design incorporated joint reciprocity, spatial sensitivity, and street art desicion making.

Some may see route 676 in Philadelphia as a fissure that divides the city negatively, but it presents a positive site for an architectural intervention.  Urban Culture is a ~50,000sf housing project geared to activate the vacant void directly over route 676 between 11th and 12th streets, formerly the throughway of the Reading Viaduct.  

Urban Culture is not just a general reference to city life, but an industrial plant processing algae biomass from CO2 emissions of autos travelling on the expressway underneath.  In this, the project incorporates one part housing, one part industry, and one part urbanity while exploiting three cyclical themes in its execution- urban flows, green flows, and water flows.

Conceptually, the building is a vector connection between north and south, center city and the adjacent north neighborhoods, and a vertical and horizontal extension of urbanity -- an architectural threshold welcoming travelers, visitors, and locals.

This recent project examines the work of sound artists John Cage and La Monte Young. Extending the body of knowledge developed for the preceding Halo project, this piece becomes a two-order dialogue between human and machine, to then machine to machine.

As with much of Cage's work, we are investigating chance as a notation or indexical document. For this experiment, we are applying a simple test from Theory of Mind, and placing two machines in different galleries in different cities. The ongoing exchange of dissonant and phased sound between them is offset with unscheduled interactions with visitors who have their own persistence of view. 

An ongoing collaboration with artists Steven and Billy Dufala, and Mark Yim at the ModLab.

Credits: James Leng, Kordae Henry, Melissa Cho, Helena Slosar, Joe Piorkowski, Andrew Gardner

Urban Terraform is an experiment in deeply sustainable, urban architecture. We define sustainability broadly as a multi-layered composite of urban, architectural, environmental and economic considerations. The project uses everyday program typologies as a point of departure for new hybrid conditions, and looks to wire them into the existing energy of the city as a method for creating a busy, twenty-four hour precinct for both locals and visitors. We look to invite the vibrant red umbrella markets adjacent to our site as a new connective tissue to enliven surrounding urban streets.

Our overall goal is to create a new hybrid urban building that is equally attractive to both locals, business people, students, and tourists without the stigma of projects customized to any one group. By bringing this diverse set of actors into close, comfortable proximity – economic, social and cultural advantages are achieved.

Principal: Brian Phillips

Credits: Josh Freese, Joe Piorkowski, Ryan Wall

Originating from arc welding, ARC (Art Resource Community) supports a bridge of incoming and existing community as common ground for interaction.  ARC features the metal arts as it offers community facilities capable of large scale steel fabrications to smaller scale arts such as fine jewelry making.  

The site is at the intersection of W. Oxford and N. Howard Streets in Philadelphia, Pa, once a desperate vacant lot.  The project aimed to increase land use and serve as a community center, a public sculpture grounds, and picnic park area.  

The Social Distortion project re-conceptualized Avery Fisher Hall’s lobby and façade based on an approach to blur the lines between social hierarchies, high brow and low brow art, and an interest in the effects of musical distortion.  

A found graphic was used in the design’s execution, specifically a microscopic view of tree bark, to reinforce the design concept.  The existing orthogonal façade was re-sampled in the form of a distorted matrix that skewed the idea of column and beam, beam or column.

The design offers new views from the interior, exposes a VIP bar and restaurant in the basement level, and incorporates an open air pavilion.  In addition, a designated graffiti wall, à la Banksy, was designed for the lobby entrance to dynamically stage one of the world’s oldest art forms adjacent to ballet and operatic performances.

Disclaimer: This video was recorded live.