André Valdez Landscape Architecture Portfolio

Andrè Valdez Academic Portfolio

Cal Poly Pomona

Table of Contents

2

Resume

3

Tongva Learning Center

4

Excarvernous

10

Water Tunnels

14

Central Park

16

Diagrams of Keyaki Plaza

18

Perspectives

20

Andre Valdez

Address 34 Sweet Bay, Irvine CA, 92603 Cellphone (949) 892 - 7849 Email mavaldez@cpp.edu

Education California Polytechnic University Pomona, CA 2015 - 2019

Orange Coast College Costa Mesa, CA 2011 - 2014

Irvine Valley College Irvine, CA 2009

University High School Irvine, CA 2007 - 2011

Experience Uber Technologies Inc. / Lyft Inc. • Driver • Orange County, Ca • 2016 - Ushered people to various locations in Orange County and Los Angeles Self Employed • Plant Grower • Irvine, Ca • 2011 - 2016 - Propagated plants from cuttings, seeds, and rhizomes - Grafted fruit trees - Delivered plants to costumers

Armstrong Garden Center • Cashier • Irvine, CA • 2015 - Advised customers with pests, cultivation techniques, plant identification, and landscaping services - Maintained and ordered indoor house plants - Installed and maintained monthly/seasonal displays

New United Tech Inc. • Warehouse Associate • Tustin, CA • 2010 - 2014 - Organized inventory, packaged and shipped out orders - Assembled car connector pieces - Maintained web site, web servers, and network for warehouse software Resolution Biomedical • Seasonal • Tustin, CA • 2010 - 2014 - Processing lab supplies - Filling, capping and inspecting vials with various solutions - Boxed, packaged and placed on palates to be shipped out Skills - Hand Drafting - Video editing

- 3D rendering - Plant Identification

Software Skills Photoshop CC Illustrator CC Premier Pro CC Dreamweaver CC Final Cut Pro Microsoft Office

- Horticulture - Computer repair

InDesign CC After Effects CC AutoCAD 2016 Sketchup Pro Rhinoceros 5 3

Tongva Village Learning Center

Torojoatngna 4

“Place under the snowy mountains� was the meaning of the original name given to present day Clairmont by the Tongva. The Tongva tribe were the original people of southern California. Their range expanded from Malibu, down to the area around Laguna Beach, Palms springs, and most of Los Angeles.

Their lives depended on the health of the local wildlife and flora. There was not a single species of plant they native to the region they were not aware of. Not only did they have knowledge of the plants, they also tended to them like gardeners. Much of their food also came from the ocean, streams and rivers.

The existing learning center is in need of enhancement. It is currently confined to an area the size of a small classroom with one hut, a sweat lodge and a Ramada over a bench. There are two large oaks, some native vegetation used by the Tongva, and a dancing circle.

It is fenced off from the maintenance area which takes most of the space withing the agreed project boundary.

5

Concept

The design was inspired by the creation myth of the 7 turtles that was passed down to children. It is a tale that reflects their core beliefs.

The tale starts with the great spirit who gathers up the 7 turtles and tells them they will have the great honor of carrying all of the land of the planet. At one point, the turtles started to bicker and started to move away from each other, created the continents we see today. They were not able to get very far

6

from each other and so they simply settled but every once in a while they will bicker again causing California’s earthquakes.

We looked at the anatomy of a turtle and outlined major organs and associated them with major parts of a typical Tongva village. The heart corresponds to the religious structure at the center of the village. The stumach corresponds to the foraging garden and the liver to the medicinal garden.

Garden Zones Woodland

Medicinal

Pine Forest

Rock Garden

Grassland

Foraging Garden

Riparian Coastal Islands

N NTS*

Garden zones are based on some of the most important plants the Tongva used for everyday life, from food, to rope, building materials, poisons for fishing, and medicinal plants. One of the gardens includes plants only found on Catalina or San Clemente island.

Site Plan

B F A C

D

J

H

I Legend

K

A

Chief Ki-ish

B

Ki-ishes

C

Yoovar (Religious structure)

D Dry Stream

G

E

Canoe Experience

F

Rite of Passage Playground

G

Stone House

H Kiiy (Ramada, Shade Structure) I

Gallery + Bathrooms

J

Bus Parking

K Sculpture

Materials

E

0 N

Scale 1” = 40’

10

20

Asphalt

Decomposed Granite

General Planting

Native Soil

40

80

Excarvernous

10

This project is focused on the process of repetition. We started by taking measurements of the alley and the buildings and making plaster castings of the volume. We then made 6 iterations of the alley with different ways of creating porosity.

Porosity is not something you think of when you think of LA. The goal is to repurpose the alleys to activate spaces not only for the local community but also to have permeable pavement that gives rain-

water a chance to perculate through the oavement, the soil and eventually helping to repleanish the groundwater. The idea of porosity was taken further into the design by making voids to create spaces creating the porosity of sound through the openings of the materials.

Project Area

Arts District, Downtown L.A.

11

Occupational Space

Unit (OSU)

12

Outside the Environmental Design building at Cal Poly is a large abandoned fountain. The concept was to build a structure sturdy enough for human use. Our studio partnered up with the dance studio, tying many concepts of space from landscape architecture to dance. Readings of Lawrence Halprin was a significant source of inspiration.

The image above is a built frame

based on the ideas of David Hockney and photographs. He believes photographs do not capturing everything that is happening in real time like video does. The concept is by that by taking photographs at different times, focused in specific places within the image, you can capture more information and a sense of time

13

Design Process

Water Tunnels

Flip

The designWATER beganTUNNELS with a landscape thatTheincorporated the movement design began with a landscape that not only incorporated the movement ofthe water,importance but also to symbolize of water and symbolizes of water for life. This influenced the initial shape of aRichard fishSerra. fromThiswhich the rest of the became the lower landscape. The upform was per made using Richard Serra’s landscape includes features from the previous plan and was carved out as if it had been eroded by water verb list. Specifically from curbs, to twist, overtime. It is a landscape that can be described by many differ, flood and to enclose. To enclose to enclose. But the main two verbs that moved forward was the verb influenced double was tothat spill and of symmetry. It the has many opening allowing creating water to spill down into the lower landscape like landscape, a landscape within a the cenotes in Central America, exposing a whole new world underground. In this lower landscape, water mostly pools landscape. this lower landscape, there are also openings where water can travel yet to another lower level, a third landscape.

These are symmetrical landscapes carved out by water but also controlling the movement of water through all the curves and openings.

14

This closeup reveals an opening from the top landscape into the lower landscape where there are more openings that potentially lead to lower landscapes.

The wood was grinded down with the idea of water movement in mind.

Some parts of the landscape allow for opportunity for water to settle and pool, while allowing the excess to overflow into the lower channels.

The layers of the wood reveal the sense of depth within the landscapes, and places where water will settle and where it will flow.

Central Park

Heckscher Playground The Umpire

Section A-A’

The Umpire

Hecksche

A Heckscher Playground

Heckscher Ballfield

0

1” = 30’

15

30

60

er Ballfield

A’

N

1” = 160’

0

40

80

160

Keyaki Plaza, Saitama

Central park is the first plan and section cut drawings fully completed fully in autocad. The circles represents the canopy diameters of the mature trees and are an approximation from satellite images. Most of these trees are over a century old and have canopies that are nearly 70 feet in diameter.

The park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, considered by many to be the father of landscape architecture in the United States.

18

Keyaki plaza was designed by PWP Landscape Architecture in 2000. It is a plaza designed on the roof of a shopping enter connecting adjacent buildings, the arena, and the train station. 220 Zelkova trees were plated in a grid aligning with the building. This was the second assignment and the purpose of it was to get familiar with making diagrams and using AutoCAD and illustrator. We traced Keyaki Plaza to scale initially and worked in a team to come up with a series of diagrams. We decided to show how the Zelkova trees change throughout the seasons within a year. The second diagram shows the type of circulation that occurs in each area. It also shows how Keyaki plaza works on the second floor to move pedestrians across roads and train tracks.

Winter

Spring

Summer

Fall Zelkova Trees

Stairs

Lawn

Pond

(Not to scale)

Bridge

Photoshopped Perspectives

Cal Poly Pomona Quad area, during a theoretical medieval festival.

The perspectives were created using Photoshop different sources from the Internet for the entourage, the custom sky, some of the scenes