SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
ARCHITECTURE PORTFOLIO
This is a community housing building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Based off site research, it is a neighborhood passionate about the arts, so the project is intended for residents who enjoy music. There is a public program in the lower floors for residents to play, record, and teach music to other residents or those outside in the community. The floors above have housing units. Some are duplex and triplex levels, meant for people with interests of more roomates or starting a family. None of the units have kitchens. Residents instead have to utilize shared kitchens offered every other floor. The units surround an atrium and are connected by an exterior walkway on alternating floors as well. This is to force sharing and help create informal interactions. The goal of this project was to experiment with how we can create a community, both within the building and with the town. The project development was inspired by model making, including a frankenstein model which was edited throughout the design process and helped influence many of our decisions. This project was in collaboration with a partner. The overall design and models were worked on together, while my personal tasks inlcuded floor plans , oblique views, and diagraming the multi-level units.
This project was done during a study abroad program in Florence, Italy. The design proposes a summer camp on the island of Marsala, Siciily. The goal of the camp was to be a filter for interaction between the West Sicilian environment and school aged children from Marsala. The camp is located off the physical island and serves as a temporary archipelago that in the off-season allows the wildlife of the island to venture onto it just as the campers do on the island in the on-season. The camp during the on-season utilizes boats as the main cabins for sleeping and as classrooms for learning about the wildlife. The boats are intented to be detachable from the dock so that they can sail for other use. Dock pathways are also intended to be temporary so that if not needed in the camp off-season, can be removed. This project was an overall experiment on how a campground or “gathering area” can be designed in an unconventional way with the theme of temporality. Incorporating the enviormental aspects of the site gave an oppurtunity to look at sustainable ways to approch and learn about the wildlife that surrounds us. This project was done in a group of three students. The overall design and model making was done as a group, and personal responsibilites included representing the masterplan, temporality of the archipelago, cabin design, and bathroom design.
This project’s program includes both gallery and studio spaces. The given site was a corner of an intersection in Downtown Syracuse, New York. The building’s facade is intended to look like it was carved out from a larger mass. This is achieved by experimenting with digitally stacked boxes and pushing and pulling their edges, which resulted in this grid like elevation of different slants. Some of the triangular platforms formed by these new geometries were turned into balconies. To continue the language of the facade in the interior, angled cutouts were made in the floors, allowing people inhabiting the spaces to see up or down to other levels. The slanting language also occurs in section, like ramps to view exhibits or access studios. This project had a focus on facade design how to relate it to the overall building.
FOURTH FLOOR PLAN
This project researches Cocoa Beach, Florida and shows a proposition for an educational facility in a flood-prone region. The beach floods the most in Summer, and waters are becoming occupied with Algae, killing marine life. Research presented filteration properties of terracotta clay and activated carbon inspiring a design of a structure made by these materials that cleans the water of Cocoa Beach. This design will serve as a habitat for Oysters, an Algae eating species. Oysters can be bred and dropped into the water to latch onto the exterior of the building and grow. The building’s process will also educate guests on how the properties of oysters and the building materials help clean up the water. The building design is porus, like most oyster habitats, and responds to flooding by allowing water to seep into the hybrid spaces. These spaces are where guests physically see oysters latched on the building and interact with the water. Spaces become more private closer to the center of the building, unable to be flooded. This is where people gather to learn before exiting towards the hybrid spaces for a hands on experience with the oysters and water. This project was in created with a partner, where my personal responsibilites included flooding research, plan drawings, and circulation. Design and study models were collaborative work.
STUDY CLAY MODELS
This project design is for local markets and gatherings in downtown Syracuse. The site’s shape and surrounding roads were used to form the shape of each of the levels in the building. Open air spaces blend the interior and exterior to fit the definition of what a commons is, which is a space meant for all groups of people and adaptable to several occasions. Thus it is important that the building flows into its context. The west facade faces an amphitheater embedded in the ground. Enclosed levels are able to host gatherings or markets during cooler times of the year. This semester focused on the idea of “commons” and understanding how to design for a community. This project also helped to experiment more with rendering and representation.
SHORT SECTION USED TO INSPIRE SECTIONAL MODEL ON FOLLOWING PAGE
1/8”:1’
RHINO,ILLUSTRATOR,LASERCUTTING,MODEL-MAKING,SKETCHING PARTNER PROJECT
This project was done under the guidance of Drawing Architecture Studio through a Visiting Critic Studio Program. The project is an apartment building, in Syracuse, NY. The design had to follow set parameters such as the number of floors, location of stairs, and site. Based of this, floor plans and “famous historical tenants” were decided. Our tenants were Vincent Van Gogh, Edgar Allen Poe, Marie Curie, and Mae Jemison. From there a model of the exterior of the building and a relief model of the rooms was made. Over time the project began to follow the idea of “trace,” shown through the history of our site, building, and residents. The building facades were marked with traces of now gone buildings, along with additions of stairs, chimneys, and porches. The interior has traces of each tenant, which ranged from spilled paint in Van Gogh’s room to broken floorboards in Poe’s. This project gave a lesson on how narrative can be built through representation. With that we were able to form a material language where the use of textured and tissue paper created different effects on the rooms, matching them to the personalities of the tenants and the theme of trace on the facades. This project was in collaboration with a partner. The overall design of the house and the relief model was done together. Personal responsibilites included designing elevations, building parts of the house model facades, and half of the rooms’ representation in the relief model (Van Gogh and Jemison rooms).
VAN GOGH ART STUDIO, BEDROOM, AND STORAGE
VAN GOGH KITCHEN
JEMISON KITCHEN AND LIVING ROOM
