Cole Kazuo Masuno
Cole Kazuo Masuno is a Los Angeles based designer who has received his Bachelors of Architecture (B.Arch) from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc).
He is currently working at Formation Association, and has co-taught as a teaching assistant for various design studios, visual and applied studies seminars at SCI-Arc. Prior to working at Formation Association, Cole worked at award winning offices such as Eric Owen Moss Architects, and Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects.
Cole is the principal/founder of Alterity Studio.
He is currently working at Formation Association, and has co-taught as a teaching assistant for various design studios, visual and applied studies seminars at SCI-Arc. Prior to working at Formation Association, Cole worked at award winning offices such as Eric Owen Moss Architects, and Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects.
Cole is the principal/founder of Alterity Studio.
Things Worth Looking At — What Constitutes A Project...︎
Index
2024
(Air)rings
Jewelry
2023
AO Table
Furniture
exterior view
UBIQUITOUS DIFFERENCE
Exchanges Among SystemsLos Angeles, California
Type: Affordable Housing
Instructor: Ramiro Diaz-Granados
At a certain scale and density, housing articulates an interplay between issues of extensive, logistical (social), and intensive, image (political) problems. Urban micro units call into question both quantitative and qualitative aspects of design - how can architecture negotiate an exchange across three scales: an individual unit, a cluster of units, and the architectural unit? Design strategies that grapple with a subdivision logic – top down, versus a logic of aggregation – bottom up, or the negotiation of both determine what the architectural expression of housing might look like.
operational diagram
kinnetic model
study model
The project began by smapling the interlocking subdivision logic from DS+R Slither Housing in Gifu, Japan. Design itterations were developed through operational diagrams, in order to produce variation of form through chance physics. Further massing strategies grappled with organizing scalar arangements.
massing strategies
model photos
An introspection on technique has led me to search for how digital tools might produce different formalisms and aesthetic effects. While digital experimentation has been important for me to produce formal dexterity, it is not contingent upon it. By reorienting new digital tool sets, my interests argue for relevance by utilizing techniques and workflows to supplant traditional architectural viewing modes. Utilizing tools such as Grasshopper has allowed me to unlock an alternative working space through a customized workflow. How you build your own techniques to interface between areas of interest for productive exchange - accept, use, misuse, ignore - all strategies impart other ways of seeing.
elevation
