Portflio

Undergraduate Portfolio 2011-2016

Andres Gandara

Texas Tech University

Born (June 20, 1993) and raised between neighboring countries. Lived half of my childhood In Juarez, Chihuahua and the rest of my life in El Paso, Texas. As I grew older I learned how these cities coexist and flow together. Even so there is a huge gap in the quality of living between cities. I was so interested in learning how and why it was that in twin cities, many differences existed. I decided to pursue architecture in order to give back to a scarce form of living that can only exist in the borderland.

ANDRES GANDARA | DESIGN PORTFOLIO

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Transparent Boundaries Brainery for the City of El Paso

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Acclimate Housing Housing for Global Warming Refugees

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Social Wall Wall Skin for Social Interactions

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Flash Installation AGENCY’s Beaux Arts Ball Hackable Infrastructure

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Selfie Wall AGENCY’s Public Space for Private Data

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Transparent Boundaries El Paso and Juarez El Paso and Juarez are sister cities located in the West Texas border and Mexico. These cities share economics and population as many cross the border every day for work, school, health and family. Any matter happening on any side of the border percolates into the other.

Certain sectors in the city of Juarez are classified as poor. These informal sectors are built by the community for the community. Water quality is poor, containing high amounts of arsenic since February 2012. Through this location for think, design, build (brainery), locals will have access to learning, prototyping, and testing facilities to improve sectors of the cities that have been abandoned by the municipality. The building’s enclosure is a mix of metal, frosted, and clear glass that assimilates transparency. Depending on your view angle you can see what activities are happening on the interior, engaging and disengaging the exterior crowd through literal and phenomenal transparency.

ANDRES GANDARA | DESIGN PORTFOLIO

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The Portuguese Co-founder of Cubism, Georges Braque, would fragment and reconstruct geometry. Through the process, the foreground and the background blur into each other creating a literal and a phenomenal transparency.

The Portuguese

ANDRES GANDARA | DESIGN PORTFOLIO

Contrasting levels

Inputing defined parameters outputs strict data.

Analog to digital

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The Clarinet Player Co-founder of Cubism, Pablo Picasso diluted a man into a background. Tonal contrasts and the background forming inside the geometry of the clarinet player remove distances between the background and the foreground.

The Clarinet Player

ANDRES GANDARA | DESIGN PORTFOLIO

Constrasting levels

Analog to digital

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The Portuguese

Strokes to pixels.

ANDRES GANDARA | DESIGN PORTFOLIO

Given authorship to output through a set of parameters.

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The Clarinet Player

Strokes to pixels through a set of rules.

ANDRES GANDARA | DESIGN PORTFOLIO

Defined parameters and ideas configure output.

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Building Through Transparencies Through merging planes, boundaries exist within each other. These boundaries have become a phenomenal transparency while exerting literal transparency. Just as these paintings, the facade for the brainery is able to perform equally. Patterns of blurring in the paintings are used to form exterior walls and plans. As you walk towards the building, you experience literal and phenomenal transparency as the facade blurrs and clarifies with each new perspective opening to ideas and enclosing for execution, then reopening to produce and output a product by the community, for the community.

Unfolded elevations to view each facade as diagram from painting.

ANDRES GANDARA | DESIGN PORTFOLIO

Floor plans are generated from enclosures of transparency on the paintings.

THE BUILDING HOUSES A GROUP OF SCIENTISTS, ENGINEERS, ACCOUNTANTS, AND MARKETING AGENTS. PEOPLE WITH AN IDEA CAN RESEARCH AND LEARN HOW TO PRODUCE THEIR IDEA. IF IT WORKS THE IDEA IS PRESENTED TO A GROUP OF ENTREPENEURS OR TO A COMMUNITY GROUP WHICH THEN CAN BE ASSEMBLED BY THE COMMUNITY AND KEPT OPEN-SOURCE, OR IT CAN BE SOLD TO A COMPANY FOR FURHTER MARKETING. THIS WILL GIVE LOW INCOME COMMUNITIES THE CHANCE TO JUMP SOCIAL CLASSES AND HAVE A BETTER QUALITY OF LIFE.

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Acclimate Housing Housing refugees from Berlin, Germany in Medellin, Colombia. Acclimate housing is designed and tested to accommodate climate refugees while they adapt to a new environment. Berlin is cold, windy and humid while Medellin is hot, humid and wind speeds are unpredictable throughout the day. This refuge tends to any climate needs the individual may need regarding humidity levels and air filtration without the use of a conventional mechanical system.

Site selection was based on wind direction. The site was very specific in wind patterns throughout the year having wind direction from the northwest and southeast of the mountain almost every day of the year.

ANDRES GANDARA | DESIGN PORTFOLIO

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SOFTWARE TESTING AGAINST PROTOTYPE TESTING Software testing through models was very difficult as every run through the program gave different results. After deciding to have different iterations of a single unit performing at the same time, the result is used to compare with prototype testing.

ANDRES GANDARA | DESIGN PORTFOLIO

By hacking an air compressor and a machine that detects leaks in the evaporative system of motor vehicles by making white smoke from baby oil, two prototypes were tested in a controlled environment.

By analyzing the results from prototype testing, I was able to design a system that is able to operate without the need of electricity.

These air chambers are a product of testing and manipulation of air. These chambers have multiple operations. Air flows a certain way to pull humidity from restrooms and from the kitchen area while ventilating rooms and living areas.

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Acclimate Housing Hacking a car battery to power a machine that makes white smoke from baby oil, and an air compressor, I was able to demonstrate to the jury that the air chambers perform as intended.

ANDRES GANDARA | DESIGN PORTFOLIO

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Acclimate Housing The bottom floor serves as testing grounds for wind prototypes that may further optimize the HVAC system.

Wind data modified to fit human criteria.

ANDRES GANDARA | DESIGN PORTFOLIO

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Acclimate Housing

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Visible chambers gather air from the same orientation due to wind that is flowing down the mountain.

ANDRES GANDARA | DESIGN PORTFOLIO

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FOG UNIT PLAN 1. BEDROOM 2. STAIRWAY 3. TERRACE 4. Office 5. Kitchen 6. living room 7. restroom

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FOG UNIT PLAN 1. BEDROOM 2. STAIRWAY 3. TERRACE 4. Office 5. Kitchen 6. living room 7. restroom

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Air compressed and sped up by gradually reducing the surface area of each chamber. Each chamber is calibrated to remove a precise amount of humidity from the air as needed. Once it reaches the kitchen, back pressure sucks exhaust air from appliances.

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Social Skin The rhythm of nature is portrayed at the cellular level.

Cells work together in order to keep a balance in water levels between each other. They arrange in a manner that channels of water run around them. This interaction between neighboring cells is used to design a skin that mimics cell interaction at the human scale.

ANDRES GANDARA | DESIGN PORTFOLIO

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Social Skin

Authoritarian rules developing authoritarian social uses.

SKIN DESIGN WAS TO BE HAND CUT TO ACQUIRE CRAFTSMANSHIP. PROTOTYPE MADE OF 36”X48” CHIPBOARD.

ANDRES GANDARA | DESIGN PORTFOLIO

Differential sequence of information was mapped and arranged in a manner that best fitted the project’s intentions.

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Social Skin

ANDRES GANDARA | DESIGN PORTFOLIO

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Flash Installation The project repurposes common roadway barriers and reflectors, giving infrastructure supplies multiple uses. I was part of the assembling and quality assurance team.

Infrastructure lost its defined effect.

Assembling and securing a group of barrels to the canopy.

Project drawings and pictures by AGENCY Architecture

ANDRES GANDARA | DESIGN PORTFOLIO

Flash Installation, El Paso / Ciudad Juarez Border | Temporary Event Space | 2015

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Flash Installation The event took place under a bus canopy that has been abandoned. Texas Tech took advantage of the canopy for their annual Beaux Arts Ball. AGENCY decided to adapt infrastructure onto infrastructure.

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SUSPENDED BARRELS

Project drawings and pictures by AGENCY Architecture

ANDRES GANDARA | DESIGN PORTFOLIO

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Selfie Wall The project took place during El Paso’s Chalk the Block event, where local artists compete by creating elaborate chalk art on the sidewalks of Downtown El Paso. Selfie Wall served as a point of interest for all social media users. Lighting color varies for photographic lighting.

Using a hash tag, data was gathered and showcased at the Digital Wall, where people could see their own pictures being found and collected. Information that is uploaded and is not floating around in virtual space as many might think.

Project drawings and pictures by AGENCY Architecture

ANDRES GANDARA | DESIGN PORTFOLIO

MoMA PS1 YAP 2017

SLEEPER AGENTS

Informal data channeled through architecture.

Architecture informed by photography.

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Selfie Wall I led the volunteer on-site construction team in assembling the CNC-milled units of the wall and site installation. Stephen Mueller (AGENCY Principal) and myself prepared the stilt foundation for Selfie Wall.

Project Drawings and pictures by AGENCY Architecture

ANDRES GANDARA | DESIGN PORTFOLIO

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Selfie Wall

REFLECTION ANGLES

STRUCTURAL CROSSES

ANDRES GANDARA | DESIGN PORTFOLIO

MoMA PS1 YAP 2017

Project drawings and pictures by AGENCY Architecture

SLEEPER AGENTS

STRUCTURAL EDGES

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