Syracuse Co-Living
Small Lots, Big Impacts Competition
Syracuse Abroad Campus
Orange Robotics Branding
Venice Biennale Reflection
Landform Simulation
Syracuse Youth Hostel
Ecological Research Center Public Fashion Exhibition
Collecting Collectives: Syracuse Co-living
ARC 307 Studio
Instructor: Marcos Parga
With the I-81 viaduct scheduled to come down in the near future, the entire class of 307 is tasked with designing housing to occupy the soon to be empty sites along the highway’s path. This project is a co-living project designed for an imagined collective of diverse age and background. The building aims to provide flexibility and comfort to individuals and groups by providing many shared amenities and opportunities to choose one’s own level of privacy. The individual units dissolve the living space into private areas along the street-facing facade, a strip of service spaces, and an operable living area in each unit that can be completely opened up to a larger band of shared space in each floor. This allows residents to choose how they interact with their peers and gives them flexibility day over day.
The large rear strip of space provides myriad opportunity for connection between groups of units, the floor as a whole, and the different levels through secondary vertical circulation and key spaces such as balconies and shared kitchens. The front facade presents a more typical appearance, reflecting the more rigid private areas within. The rear facade is much more detailed and dynamic, expressing the ever changing needs and happenings of the residents.
Small Lots, Big Impacts Competition
Work Completed at FreelandBuck
While taking part in a work placement as a part of the course New York City: In Practice I had the opportunity to be a part of FreelandBuck’s submission for the Los Angeles Small Lots competition. We focused on bringing a varied, adaptable, colorful, and desirable multifamily housing scheme for denser sites. The form of the structure is comprised of two larger volumes of housing with a courtyard between them and a highly open ground floor with the potential for independent commercial spaces. These areas and volumes are then supported and unclosed by a porous shell wall. The resulting building uses tile and bare cross laminated timber to bring texture and life to the space the form creates. The shell wall, made of CLT serves as both structure and facade, creating dynamic moments of privacy and reveal. The structure includes thirty units. My contributions to this project include site and materials research, massing design, unit layouts, facade design, renderings, and the perspective section. The renders were created with a combination of Enscape, Blender, and V-Ray.
As the floors rise, the system encases more of the space, lending more privacy and inward focus to the these spaces. The view out towards the main road is always preserved on the main face of the building.
Orange Robotics Graphic Design
This work was completed as a part of rebranding efforts for Orange Robotics. For this student organizations, I worked on creating a new text logo and a series of illustrations and updates to our mascot originally designed by Alex Callo. I worked to maintain the club’s existing personality while refining the visual language of our brand and introduce playful designs to be used in various club materials and merchandise. The main focus was on a crisp update that could be used to attract new members and work as a part of official organization documents and promotional materials like social media posts, posters, and stickers.
Mascot Illustrations
Club Text Logo Merchandise Mock-up
Syracuse Youth Hostel
ARC 108 Studio
Instructor: Edgar Rodriguez
The final project of first year studio was a youth hostel for the Syracuse area. This design is set in a mixed use area, bordering a residential neighborhood and a commercial street. It is based on a triangular grid, angling the views from inside towards the social, public street and the views from the exterior towards the neighboring community garden space.
The project is also formed around a progression of privacy, where the building reflects the typology of the typical suburban home, progressing from a public “porch” and proceeding inside to social space before continuing further to reach the private rooms. This hostel design brings life and community to the neighborhood while responding directly to the existing precedent of its urban location.
Bode Runway Exhibition
ARC 208 Studio Instructor: Jess Myers
Bode is a fashion label focused on using classic elements of fashion design in new and exiting ways. For this design project, the aim was to create a hypothetical public runway exhibition for this designer based on their design styles and motifs. Set in Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, this temporary structure exists to allow many overlapping views of the runway and the famous landmarks in the area. The core inspiration for the runway design came from the arrangements of views to frame the runway and models at multiple distances and highlight the existing city in the far distance. Working with Bode’s strong historical influence in mind, drawing on these existing site elements was the natural course to take. Further, as Brooklyn is a historical center of transit, bridges are used to allow car traffic through in limited amounts, bringing a new way to view the show from the rich American tradition of drive through attractions.
As a part of this assignment, our studio was encouraged to explore the presentation of our architectural drawings. In keeping with bode’s ethos, the elevations here are presented in the style of lithographic travel posters that could be used as promotional material for the show itself. The section (following page) draws from silver age comics for a bold look referencing bode’s inspirations and the city itself.
The curving form of the building is based on a module derived from the existing steel structure on the site, of which we chose to keep a portion of as a nod to the industrial past of the pier. The rounded forms serve to create inviting terraces for pedestrians to meander between and occupy with no sharp corners to deter visitors from finding their own path.
