Benjamin Vassar
brv2105@columbia.edu +1 [646] 453 9301
501 Seminary Row Apt D4, New York, NY, 10027
Education
Sep ‘22 – May ‘25
Sep ‘17 – May ‘21
Sep ‘13 – Jun ‘17
Columbia GSAPP
M.Arch – Avery Scholar Core I Core II Adv IV Adv V Adv VI
University of Michigan Taubman College
B.S. Arch, Minor Art History – Cum. 3.85 GPA, Summa Cum Laude, James B. Angell Scholar
The Bronx High School of Science
Cum. 4.0 GPA, AP Scholar with Distinction, Excellence in Spanish
Work Experience
May ‘18 – Aug ‘24
Ivan Brice Architecture
Associate AIA
Net 3+ years experience — 5,000 hours [AXP Completed] working on 60+ exterior restoration and adaptive reuse projects across NYC — co-ops, subsidized housing, senior care, public schools, government facilities, cultural institutions, etc.
Sep ‘24 – Dec ‘24
ICNCLST/
Design Intern
Created/updated marketing decks for artist FUTURA 2000, designed concepts for product display cases for artist/brand store activations, created social media assets for Futura Laboratories
Sep ‘24 – May '25
GSAPP Housing Lab
Research Assistant
Researched impediments to affordable housing development in NYC and created GIF visualizations for lab website for presentation to City Council Land Use Committee
Jun ‘23 – May '25
Skills
GSAPP Making Studio
Wood Shop Assistant
CNC master-user, skilled with table saw, wood joinery techniques, moldmaking, welding
Software:
Assets: Languages:
Spanish (Highly Proficient)
Adobe Creative Suite, AutoCAD, Revit, Rhino 3D, V-Ray, Grasshopper, Microsoft 365, Keynote
Natural leader with aptitude for including/encouraging others
Efficient and organized working across multiple projects
Knowledgeable of NYC building/zoning codes and LPC
Attentive to craft and presentation in all mediums
Comfortable collaborating with colleagues
[contents]
CIVIC INFRASTRUCTURES
[Un]Belonging Inheritances
[collab w/ Brandon Gil]
DARK_UNDERBELLY
Linear Monument
Poster Logics
MAKE
Tracing Shifting Contact
URBAN DESIGN // POLICY + HOUSING
Element
[collab w/ Dana Mor]
Performance Zoning
GSAPP Housing Lab
MEDIA MANIPULATIONS // URBAN EXTRACTIONS APPENDIX
SCHOLASTIC ENGAGEMENT
GSAPP Wood Shop
GSAPP Adjacent
Karla
Joseph Zeal Henry
Giuseppe Lignano + Ada Tolla
Christoph a. Kumpusch
Adam Lubinsky + Calvin Brown
“Oral Infrastructures” “Civic-Sacred”
“Contested Territories”
“Damage Control”
“Make”
“Broadway Stories”
“Housing”
“Performance Zoning”
“Housing Lab”
“Shop Monitor”
myself + others
“Vice President”
Galia Solomonoff
Regina Teng
Yonah Elorza + James Nanasca
Galia Solomonoff
Esteban de Backer
Rothstein
project symbol [all pp]
[1]
[1] layered urban fabric
trenched skatepark
bike-in movies
[4]
[2]
[5]
[3]
[6]
CIVIC INFRASTRUCTURES
[UN]BELONGING INHERITANCES
Adv VI: Civic-Sacred
Prof. Karla Rothstein
Collaborator: Brandon Gil
Spring 2025
As New Yorkers, we are handed down all the layers of physical infrastructure built by previous generations of citydwellers.
One such common inheritance is the subway system — belonging to both no one and everyone.
This liminal status informs our perception that the subway is something to be passed through, skipped over, a means to an end, Rarely allowing for a chance to pause.
But in a system and city that belongs to us all arises a growing need for a new type of reflection. A dignified, visible procession of mortality woven into the everyday, where the frenetic energy of the city collides with moments of stillness as an urgent reminder that we are all mortal.
[1] shifted point grid — roof vaulting parti sketch
[2] nodes-lines-mounds switchback ramp parti plan
[3] nodes -mounds bridge-landscape, plan + section sketch
[4] procession circulation from 6th Ave to train, section
CIVIC INFRASTRUCTURES
DARK_UNDERBELLY
Adv V: Oral Infrastructures
Prof. Joseph Zeal-Henry Fall 2024
DARK_UNDERBELLY speculates four possible cultural uses for the underbelly of the BQE in Brooklyn, a stretch that otherwise decimates the landscape for human use. Permanent interventions include excavation for a skate half-pipe and movie theater to raise the low 12.5’ ceiling of the highway to feel more expansive and cathedral-like.
Alternatively, a long ADA ramp leads users up to a highly-compressed nightclub space, in which the regular rhythm of cars 2 feet overhead join the club’s soundscape, making for an ecstatic celebration of the music’s direct return to its machine origins. A fourth space is a fashion runway, painted with car traffic markings dictating models’ movement through space.
[1] physical process diary, 100 p, spiral-bound [2] diary spreads
[1] full animation scroll
[1] street furniture skatepark
[2] sculptural void cinema
[1] compression nightclub
[2] asphalt runway
CIVIC INFRASTRUCTURES
LINEAR MONUMENT
Adv IV: Contested Territories
Prof. Esteban de Backer
Spring 2024
LINEAR MONUMENT is a connective bike and pedestrian infrastructure for Staten Island.
Drawing a 3-mile-long line across the landscape of Freshkills Park, it connects communities around the park physically, visually, and socially.
A continuous 50’-tall advertising billboard occupies the north side of the structure — carrying images across the landscape like the ancient aqueducts of Rome carried water.
[2]
[1] “landscape signals”
[2] “transmission lines”
[3] “billboard bridge”
[1] “oppressive interiority” [2] “stereotypes” vs. “reality”
MEDIA MANIPULATIONS + URBAN EXTRACTIONS
POSTER LOGICS
Core II: Damage Control
Prof. Regina Teng Spring 2023
No one is regulating new media’s communicative power. We receive the images all around us fluidly and without interruption.
POSTER LOGICS intervenes on this seamless transmission of meaning. Through a series of physical experiments with wheatpaste posters — compared to screens, a tangibly material medium — it exposes cycles of image generation, destruction, and re-appropriation within high fashion advertising.
An array of speculative architectural fragments suggests an expanded application and spatialization of the affects discovered in the physical material manipulations.
[2]
[1] poster cushion
[2] construction fencing chair, 18”x24”x48”
[1]
[2]
[1] mediums inside mediums
[2] poster cutting logic
[3] sculpture garden axo sketch
[1] decay logic speculative fragment [2] material research studies
MEDIA MANIPULATIONS + URBAN EXTRACTIONS
MAKE
Make
Profs Ada Tolla + Giuseppe Lignano Fall 2024
MAKE is about MAKING and DOING before THINKING and allowing this to be the starting point of an unraveling creative process.
I found various discarded objects common to New York City’s streets — a hi-vis jersey barrier, a steel NYPD barricade, construction netting, etc. — and performed simple operations expressive of these objects’ basic materiality.
How can highly-recognizable objects be warped, cut, re-contextualized, etc. to create simultaneous awareness of their former identity and their openness to wholly new forms and functions?
MEDIA MANIPULATIONS + URBAN EXTRACTIONS
TRACING SHIFTING CONTACT
Core I: Broadway Stories
Prof. Christoph a. Kumpusch Fall 2022
Speaking generally (thesis):
The city is an accumulation of humans and manipulated earth continually wearing on one another, push and tug.
Tracing the contact point between humans and the city enables us to see the contested, evolving nature of the built environment, technology, and the human itself.
More specifically (Core I):
Columbus Circle is a nexus of accelerated turn speeds and disorientation, incessantly cycling cars and trucks around its vast circumference, relegating humans taking alternative modes of transit to wary interlopers waiting for a chance to cross.
How will humans negotiate their relationship to this urban landscape that seems to disavow their very existence?
[1] traffic marking research photographs [2] process photobook w/ tire marking, 100p
