Jason Van Nest
Hello
Happy Winter! I am back in New York City after a fellowship at the MacDowell Colony, and other holiday travel. Lots of great oppertunities are on the horizon for 2009, and it includes a few travel plans. If you're in New York, Princeton, or Detroit drop me a line!
Bio
I have worked as an Architect in New York since earning my graduate degree in 2005. This work at H3 includes designing and developing the construction documents for several buildings in the New York area. In the first two years, I was lucky enough to help design a courthouse, an historic pier, two restaurants, an academy of science, and six theaters; H3 specializes in theater design. They are also forward-leaning about adopting new technology to architectural production (and there is plenty of room in our profession for this type of exploration). The exploring opportunities have kept me busy.
There was a strong need to start my own architectural design business in 2007, for other professional pursuits. The resulting company, Mobilis in Mobili, exists as a conduit for participation in design competitions for moonlighting work. Just in the last sixteen months, Mobilis has seen work for a townhouse in Brooklyn (through CDs), consulted on a few theater designs, entered two competitions, and fielded a welcome load of extra drafting.
To nurture design ideas outside the field of Architecture, I co-founded Anomalus Design Studio with a friend and former classmate. The efforts at that startup are guided by an appreciation of the power that technology offers and a specific ethic about how we should adapt technology to serve our 21st Century needs. Already Anomalus has started a few exciting web-based and product-oriented projects. Next year promises to be even more productive.
For architectural research, I have just completed a residential fellowship at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Ostensibly, the grant was to write software for designing custom architectural cladding and then using the software to design a handfull of single-family homes. A portfolio of those effort will be posted here in the coming months. The fellowship required a body of research that continues to mature. That research about rapid-prototyping and architecture is somehow even more exciting; I am formatting it for a seminar or for publication in 2009.
For previous architectural research, I have developed Genetic Algorithms to model city growth in the Processing programming environment. That research, supervised by Professor Ed Mitchell, visualized and simulated rudimentary city models, primarily focused on zoning envelopes and use. My work at the MacDowell Colony will take these tools in a different direction; I plan to write web-based software from which users can export models of building components, not cities!
In 2005, I obtained a Masters of Architecture from Yale University after earning a Bachelors of Science in Architecture from Georgia Tech in 1999. I have worked in architectural firms in Atlanta, New York, and Key West. I have also helped build over fifty homes with the Atlanta Chapter of Habitat for Humanity and with a construction firm on the Upper East Side of New York City.
Most of the work mentioned above was done in Revit, Navisworks, Rhinoceros, Maya, Grasshopper, Generative Components, Maxwell Render, 3D Studio, AutoCAD, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, InDesign, Processing, and several other programs. In additon to these pages, I maintain a presence at Facebook and LinkedIn.
For inquiries about the blog "Do You Want Some Coffee?" write to the email address on this page. I have put all new postings on hold recently to tend to other business, but the hope remains that DYWSC will become active again as early as next year.
Contact
Email: jason (dot) vannest (at) gmail (dot) com