Architecture is the intersection between the built envrionment and the people which interact with it. I am fascinated by the way that people inhabit spaces, and the way that well-designed spaces respond to their users.
Over the past few years I have developed an intense passion for designing experiences. I look forward to a future where I can continue observing how people experience spaces, and using these observations to design well thought out and useable spaces.
LAS RAICES MARKETPLACE, pg 6-9
GREEN GATHERING, pg 10-13
Architecture Student
about education
Architecture defines the relationship between people and the world that surrounds them. I am particularly fascinated by human interactions with buildings and environmentally conscious approaches to design.
To enhance my education, I am interested contributing to a large architecture firm. I am eager to utilize my current skill set as well as understand varying approaches to the field.
www.linkedin.com/in/ amelia-atwell
BACHELORS OF ARCHITECTURE CANDIDATE
CALIFORNIA STATE POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY, POMONA
AUGUST 2021 - PRESENT
• Completed first three years of architecture school on the Dean’s List.
• Studio work has been presented design awards.
• Third-year housing project nominated for the Jack Marilyn Zuber Remembrance Award.
• Coursework includes Design Studios, Building Construction, Structures,
• Environmental Controls Systems, & History of Architecture Before & After the Renaissance
HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA
CAL POLY ROSE FLOAT
activities & achievements experience
Worked as part of an award-winning team of CAL POLY students to successfully plan, fabricate, and decorate parade floats for the Pasadena Rose Parade in both 2023 and 2024. 2023
Appointed the position of design Element Lead, where I managed the design and production of multiple float elements.
2024
Selected for the Executive position of Design Chair, placing me in charge of the design of the float and management of all element leads in 2025.
2025
Selected to be the President for the 2025-26 Float Year.
skills
• Fluency in Rhino, Adobe Suite
• Experience in Revit, AutoCAD
• Leadership
• Team Player
• Enthusiastic
UNIVERSITY CITY HIGH SCHOOL
JUNE 2021
• Dean’s List
• 4.17 GPA
CREATIVE DANCE THEATRE, TEAM TEACHER
JUNE 2018 - AUGUST 2021
• Utilized teamwork and knowledge of dance to lead dance classes for students aged 3-13.
• Responsibilities included choreography creation, demonstrations, prop organization, writing tuition invoices, and handling parent-teacher relations.
SERVER, HOST, CASHIER, LIVING FOODS KAUAI
JUNE 2023 - AUGUST 2023
• Stepped into various customer-facing roles to assist in the business operation of a local grocery store and restaurant.
• Provided a positive customer experience by showcasing accuracy, efficiency, and expediency in every role.
• Effectively worked alongside a rotating team of employees.
DZN PARTNERS, ARCHITECTURAL INTERN
JUNE 2022 - AUGUST 2022, JUNE 2024 - AUGUST 2024
• Assisted firm architects in the drawing of elevations in AutoCAD.
• Completed a full working drawing package for an ADU.
• Attended multiple residential field measurements, then created existing 3D models in Revit.
• Responsible for utility plans in Revit.
• Participated in and led team meetings.
Cal Poly Rose Float
2022-present
Cal Poly Rose Float is a full student-run interdisciplinary effort between Cal Poly Pomona and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Each year, students design, plan, build, mechanize, decorate, and drive a parade float in the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade. Students involved in the program take part in a year-long process and see the float through from conception to parade day. I have recently been elected as 2025-26 President.
Design Chair: Nessie’s Lakeside Laughs 2024-25
The Design chair manages one of the 4 departments within the program. This includes a team of approximately 100 people weekly. Some of the main responsiblities of the Design Chair include
- leading cross-campus and cross-department meetings to determine the design for the parade float.
- mentoring a team of design leads through the planning, building, and concealment processes for elements with pencil steel, wood, and foam.
- leading weekly meetings, coordinating timelines, and planning for necessary dealines throughout the build process.
- commissioning a professional artist to portray the float design with an artistic rendering of the float.
- leading a team of professional contractors to cover portions of the float with insulation spray-foam.
- working with a lead to create a comprehensive 3D model of the float in Rhino software
- extracting scale drawings from the 3D model to distribute to element and mechanism leads.
In order to be selected as Design Chair, I went through an application process which included giving a speech at an open forum in front of my peers as well as attending a professional interview with a commitee of advisors and peers.
Design Element Lead: Shock ‘n Roll 2023-24
As an element lead, I worked as part of the design leadership team to design, plan, and build the 2024 parade float. I was specifically responsible for two 9’ tall electric guitars and a large speaker.
As an element lead, I managed a team of 7 student team members and was responsible for teaching them to weld, shape steel elements, use lab tools safely, and make foam elements. In order to ensure the pieces I made fit with the scale of everything else on the float, I read and translated scale plans into real-life dimensions. I also taught my team members how to read scales. I also worked closely with the decorations department, as the guitars housed fresh flower stems and the width of the instruments had to match the height of their rose vials. Additionally, I was a section lead during “Design Week,” meaning I was in charge of ensuring a portion of the float was well-coordinated and decorated to plans.
These experiences taught me many leadership and management lessons, and also helped me to find my voice as a leader in a large-scale operation.
Team Member: Road to Reclamation 2023-24
In my first year of the program, I worked under an element lead to build the large snail on the front of the parade float. During this year, I learned how to stick and MiG weld, how to shape pencil steel by hand, and how to carve insulation and sheet foam into organic shapes.
Since I fell in love with the program and attended lab days each week, I was promoted to the position of team member for the rest of the year.
Understory Park, Boyle Heights
Bobby Brooks Memorial Studio, Fall 2024
mixed media collage, hand ripped paper with digital media
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
An “Understory” describes the forest floor beneath a protective covering of trees. Understory Park, nestled under the Sixth Street Viaduct, was inspired by the rich cultural history of Boyle Heights, which is often overlooked. Instead of hiding beneath the bridge’s cover, Understory Park embraces and excentuates the roof it provides by creating a community space beneath a thick tree canopy of trees and between a rolling topography. In plan, the shapes of the park were inspired by abstracted tree canopies, with circulation paths occuring in the negative spaces they make. The winding paths are meant to allow users to get lost in nature, but corners are designed with reveals as people make theor way through the landsape. As a visitor walks the paths of Understory Park, hidden monuments, quiet spaces, gathering places, and even entire buildings will be revealed. Each of the three buildings designed on the site were made with an intentional tall point that reaches above the thick canopy of trees. This not only provides picturesque views across the park and to the Los Angeles skyline, but also helps with wayfinding as users circulate through the different districts of the park. Access to the park starts in Boyle Heights with a forested pedestrian bridge that crosses three freeways and ends on the roof of Las Raices Marketplace, which filters visitors through the tiered atrium and onto the park. From the Arts District, guests can enjoy the green spaces provided in the Botanical Garden. A second pedestrian bridge takes users across the Los Angeles river and onto the main walkway through the park.
This masterplan was designed in partnership with two other architects, as well as two landscape architects. Each of us designed a district and coordinated with one another to ensure that each area of the site was well coordinated, followed the same design rules, and added to the overall feeling of Understory Park.
Las Raices Marketplace, Boyle Heights
Bobby Brooks Memorial Studio, Fall 2024
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
On the East side of Understory Park, Las Raices Marketplace reveals the hidden history of Boyle Heights by creating a space to celebrate community entrepreneurs and help them grow. These goals are achieved through the building programs which include office and meeting rooms as a space for planning and learning, studios and makerspaces which create spaces for artisans to hone their craft and produce hand-crated items for sale. The bottom four floors house marketspaces whish offer storefronts to be fiilled by local small businesses, artisans, and food vendors. Each of these programs are tied together by a central atrium which penetrates through the entire building, culminates in the central community meeting space.
The building form is inspired by the shapes and elements of a large, long standing tree. The central atrium space at the base of the atrium represents a rich beginning of roots with deep ties to the community. The undulating shape of the building is representative of the branches of a tree canopy, and the perforated corten steel panels are inspired by leaves rustling in the wind. The perforation as well as the overlapping offset of the panels filter light into the building while also creating a dappled forest floor affect on the interior.
By providing spaces for local entrepreneurs and small business owners to hone their craft, organize their operations. and sell direrctly to their friends and neughbors, the community is united within Las Raices Marketplace. The successes which occur within the building will help locals plant the seeds of their dreams, nourish their goals, and thrive.
view of pedestrian bridge which connects Boyle Heights with Las Raices Marketplace section
Green Gathering: Apartments for the Previously Unhoused
Third Year Housing Studio, Spring 2024
Project Nominated for the Jack and Marilyn Zuber Rememberence Award
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
This master plan proposal is centered around the production of fresh produce to be used by the community in and surrounding the site. The promenade space directly in front of the building proposal is covered in orchard space. The massing of each building on the site is oriented towards the central paths and growing spaces to encourage visual connection to the green areas. The building designed for this promenade is intended for the previously unhoused population in the area. A job rehabilitation center on the first floor is intended to help residents acquire jobs on site, employing people to work in garden maintenence and harvesting, or in one of the other buildings within the community. The ground floor also houses a food bank, intended to process the produce grown on site and redistribute it back into the community.
The unit design is also centered around creating a community centered around sharing food. Units are placed in pairs, every two units sharing one exterior living and dining space. These shared spaces are directly connected to the unit kitchens, encouraging people to cook and shared meals with one another outdoors. Each pair of units also has access to balcony planter boxes to encourage production of fresh produce on a more personal level. Units are all 18’ tall in the kitchens to give that area hierarchical definition. The floor heights in the two branches of the massing are staggered by half a floor height, creating more opportunity for visual connections between exterior circulation spaces. The two buildings are connected by a central exterior stair that begins in the orchards and then reaches each balcony level. The two faces of the building which face away from the promenade are configured with a system of catwalks and hung green facade panels. The catwalks are accessible from the shared dining space between each pair of units and are intended to ensure that the plant growth supported by the facade panels is well maintained.
By wrapping this building proposal in gardening spaces and orienting the building around a thriving orchard, the project aims to foster a community centered around the production and sharing of fresh produce.
Mount Wilson Observatory
Fall Studio, 2023
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
This project is designed to act as a threashold between a user’s journey up Mount Wilson and their view back down the mountain. In order to create somewhat of a doorway condition with the massing of the building, the design is a tower with a large cantilever that visitors must pass underneath when they approach the site. The other side of this doorway is created by a separate building holding the public program and the ampitheater seating.
The first two floors of the tower hold work spaces, with research labs on the first floor and offices on the second. This first work area features two double height spaces, one in the front entrance and lobby area, and one from the offices down into the lab spaces to promote visual communication between the two. The upper three floors of the tower hold living spaces. The more permanent and private housing for superintendants is placed on the third floor, and more flexible housing for scientists and visitors is held in the cantilever volume on the fourth and fifth floors. The end of this cantilevered volume has a double height space as well as a secondary stair to provide more connection and ease for the people staying in the space. Additionally, these top floors have balcony access which also features a double height space for the lower balcony.
The facade system in contructed of horizontal fire-treated wood battens overlayed with vertical wooden slats placed with varying spacing to give texture to the facade and control the natural lighting that enters the building. The second floor of the tower and the top of the ampitheater both have outdoor roof access. The facade treatment is continued around these spaces and guests are able to interact with the site below through apertures which are also treated with the wooden screen of the facade. The use of a building as a threshold on this site makes this structure an interactive part of a visitor’s experience, ushering them through the final steps of their journey up Mount Wilson.
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
EXPLODED AXON: ASSEMBLIES
Museum of Contemporary Japanese Art
Fall 2022
Project Awarded “Outstanding Student Second Year Design Award”
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
This design is organized around a central axis which holds the main circulation path on each floor. Program is pushed to either side of this axis and organized so that users must constantly cross over the datum as they move from one program space to the next. These program volumes often cut into the main path of travel, framing views from one end of the axis to the other. In some instances, the top of a volume is accesible by way of the landings above it, creating open spaces nestled between enclosed volumes. This also provides users the opportunity to step off the main path of travel without being enclosed into a volume.Circulation paths along the axis are sloped, each straddling two levels of the building. Four additional stairs can be found housed in volumes along the exterior walls which connect these over-arching paths. These vertical paths provide not only a connection for the intended way of travel, but they alwo introduce relationships vertically between programs. Apertures are placed to draw users down the axis of travel, providing lighting queues as well as a view out into the city as enticement. The entries on either side of the building are set at an angle in line with the organizational axis, intended to draw visitors off the street and directly onto the building’ s axis.
The use of a central axis as a guide for this museum design provides not only rules for the organization of program and circulation, but it also begins to foster a sense of discovery in visitors. As one travels down the datum, they cannot see what the upcoming volume holds in ftore for them , or whether they will come upon a stair volume. This encourages users to weave through volumes and explore all the spaces created in-between.
