Katelyn Bussey Portfolio 2022-2025

collaborative

Given a rectangular infill site that cuts through New York’s Hichline, our task was to create our own program that caters to local residents and minorities.

Soundscapes Collaborative provides a music-focused community center where enthusiasts of all ages are invited to learn, anjoy, and share their musical interests. Featuring practice rooms, recording studios, classrooms, and performance spaces, the center offers a variety of services to all within the community - regardless of age, race, class, or gender.

Musical motifs inspire the form, with the two performance spaces being linked by the shape of a treble clef. This extends into a musical note in the form of the grand stair, which frames the ground floor stage as it carries the sound up through the building. Platforms along the stair encourage an audience to form along the floors, creating a rhythm of movement. Similarly, a music park on the ground floor features a walkway inspired by musical notation, with nodes where interactive music structures offer artistic opportunities for local children.

Inspired by music and inspiring through music, Soundscapes Collaborative invites the community to partake in this artistic expression.

New York City, NY

NDSCAPES COLL ABORATIVE

NDSCAPES COLL ABORATIV

SOUNDSCAPES COLL ABORATIVE

TIVE

Katelyn Bussey

Model Details

SCAPES COLL ABORATIVE

Katelyn Bussey ARCH 3001

The class was assigned a site in Morgan City, LA - a location highly susceptible to flooding - and given the program for a multi-purpose media center. Titled MCX for Morgan City X-Change, the project brief emphasized the importance of resilience and accessibility in our design.

MCX: Bloom features tiered, snaking forms that extrude from a central core, stacking in an asymmetrical manner with the others as they grow from the ground in a way symbolic with that of nature. This allows for plenty of exposed roof space as well as shaded outdoor space, providing opportunities for green roofs, stormwater storage, solar collection, and shaded balconies. The ground floor continues the language of these forms via a permeable green wall system, which allows stormwater to pass under the building, and creates a visual barrier of the parking lot. Pedestrian and vehicle ramps weave through the surrounding trees and curve up to the form to offer accessibility to those in need, as well as the opportunity for emergency outreach in the case of a storm.

Overall, the design prioritizes the opportunities for resilience features with an organic form, and creates a unique and pleasant experience for each of its user groups.

Morgan City, LA

Katelyn Bussey

STRUCTURE PROGRAM

As a studio structured around the Volume Zero Little Big Loo Competition, we spent the semester focusing on a small-scaled public restroom project. We chose a site that would benefit from sanitation services, and designed a restroom that would be clean, sustainable, and welcoming. The facility must also serve a secondary purpose to the community.

Sited in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Poolacio draws from the local culture and architecture to influence its bold yet classic design. Sanitation services as well as a creativity hub and rest area are housed within grand, arching forms. The creativity hub features a vibrant mural that extends into chalkboard tables, which invite visitors of all ages to contribute artistically.

Local, sustainable materials craft a vibrant atmosphere while reducing the structure’s carbon footprint. Further, rainwater collection, compostable toilet systems, solar energy collection, and passive ventilation are integrated into a resilient design. Glazed terracotta breeze blocks decorate the facade while allowing cross-ventilation and providing a visual barrier between public and private spaces.

Poolacio transforms the public restroom into a colorful, welcoming space that meets the needs of the underserved.

Buenos

Aires, Argentina

Model Details

Stone House

Precedent Study

Each student studied a residential project that utilized passive design stategies. We each composed a board that communicated the environmental approach via sections, diagrams, and a section model. Stone House is located in Shimane Prefecture, Japan, in a temperate climate; thus it takes advantage of elements of the indigeneous design of pueblos. It is named for the mound of stones its first floor is nestled within. This thermal mass keeps heat within when needed and provides protection from extreme cold. The dramatic angle of the roof maximizes sun exposure in the winter with its large openings, while protecting from excessive heat gain in the summer. Finally, openings across the structure allow for cross ventilation.

To provide focus on each element’s part in the passive design strategies, I extruded them to hang along the board in the section model. One can see how each element stacks upon the next while recognizing the importance of each.

Mixed Media (a)way home

This studio was structured around what “home” truly means. Each student considered their own perceptions of home and was given an 8 foot tall wooden box to project their experience onto. All that accompanied would be a 100-word story on home.

I explored how objects and relationships relate to where one finds home. It is not always a place, some times it is a feeling, comfort, or recognition. I used three facades of the structure to display a relationship that related to my experience of home, revealing how they intersect into my identity on the fourth facade. I chose to use hands as a symbol of this phenomenon, as the objects symbolic of these relationships fall from a set of hands above. I utilized color as a way to create distinc tions in these relationships, completing the final facade with an array of colors and objects both drawn from my relationships and uniquely my own. On this final facade, the hands reach out from the wood, just as my identity has sprung from where I have found home.

As a child, I grasped onto the hands which offered protection and guidance. I sobbed as I passed between my mother’s and my father’s each week. I grabbed at my sisters’and brothers’ reinforcing the bond instilled within our blood. Then it was my own hands which led me from one home to the next, as I steered down I-10, that familiar feeling of tears soaking my cheeks. I held tightly to my friends’ as they led me through crowded bars. I gravitated towards the ones whose hold brought warmth, comfort, love.

I’ve found home to be in the hands.