262.470.3882 andrewmercier3@gmail.com
University of Minnesota
2015-2019
B.S. Architecture
Landscape Design & Planning Minor
DIS: Copenhagen Spring Semester 2018 Urban Design
Pratt
2021-2024
M.Arch
SE Asia: Altered Estates Summer Program
School Work: The Golden Mile Chasm
A building addition
Dodgers’ High Tide Housing
Housing as parking
Twilight Tectonics: A Raumplan Exploration
Dual dimensional chunk model
Death, Waste, and Reuse
A human composting and recycling facility
The Plinth School
A middle school in Red Hook
Professional Work: Calyer St. Apartment
The Golden Mile Chasm
Singapore
Critics: Jeff Anderson, David Erdman, and Hart Marlow
Partner: Julia Young
This project was created with my fellow peer: Julia Young. The first half of this summer course was spent in New York working through the mediums of collages and video editing. We started by studying concepts and issues around housing, urban density, exterior urban spaces, and additions to existing buildings. These issues where compared between New York and Singapore. For the second half of the class, we traveled to Singapore to study these issues in more detail. While there, I toured local firms, buildings, and developments in the process of learning about public housing in the city. We then chose the Golden Mile Complex in Singapore to design an addition onto. The aim was to increase the square footage of the building within the same plot while creating exterior public spaces. My partner and I focused our addition around the interior void that ran through the building.
We decided to better define this space and to open it up to allow more of a connection to the outside. The interior condition of the waffle pattern was brought up onto the addition to create a continuity between old and new. Lastly, a public garden was wrapped down into the heart of the building to further democratize urban space.
Los Angeles, California
Critics: Jimenez Lai and Po-Yao Shih
The site for this project was the parking lots of Dodger Stadium. During games, these spaces are filled to capacity with cars. However, on the other 284 days of the year, these lots lay mostly vacant. In a city where land prices and housing costs are steep, unused space is a luxury the city cannot afford. Before we where to propose a dual use for the parking lots, we began researching various precedents and topics around parking and car culture. One of the precedents I started with was Marina City in Chicago. This unique building is two cylinders in which the lower levels are for parking and the upper portion is for housing. Through drawing out the floor plans, it was discovered that the building’s radius was determined by the minimum radius that would have been needed for a parking structure in a circular geometry. Thus the layout and size of the condo units where determined
by the constraints of the parking. I began to then superimpose the units, rooms, and furniture onto the parking spots to get a direct comparison. In doing so, the vision of my project came to be about seeing a parking spots latent holding capacity of housing. My proposal for Dodger Stadium was a system in which affordable housing would act both as housing and as parking. Residents would be able to rent out their rooms as parking spots on game days to generate an extra income if desired. As a result, parking would become an agent of economic mobility. The layout of the development is laid out accordingly to the constraints of parking. Intimate courtyards would connect each room and allow residents to pick which rooms they desired to give up for a day while still being able to use the house while fans would access the spots from the outside.
8th car is above the poverty line for a 3 person household
6th car is above the poverty line for a 2 person household
5th car is above the poverty line for a 1 person household
parking spot = $3,240 a year
The angled rooms act like a V: where the rooms on the second floor will shift more to create balconies
Angled rooms allow for balconies to be created on roofs
Angled rooms allow for rentable outdoor pockets
Draping elements break dominant line across facade
Space for left objects
Pushing and Pulling creates dominant forms in the facade and across the development
This class project initially started with modeling a portion of Higgins hall in Revit. At first we explored what was literally there but soon came to modify and build off of the chunk we had created. I had picked a section that included a ramp and as a result, my explorations became about creating a procession through thresholds while paying close attention to the relationships between each space. Working on rendering skills, I wanted to represent the chunk as a subterranean world where one could lose oneself in the labyrinth. Further developing this project, I then chose a smaller portion to develop as it’s own chunk. While changing the design further, but keeping to some of the characteristics of the larger chunk, the smaller one became being about representing a corridor. It was then brought into
ZBrush to differentiate surfaces to emphasize the threshold and procession through the space.
Bronx, New York
Critic: James Slade
Partner: Simon Salamanca
This project was created with my classmate Simon Salamanca. The studio course required us to take a look at New York’s trash and recycling infrastructure. For the design, we where given three programs being recycling, a trash incinerator, and an educational component. In addition to these three programs, we where to propose an additional program that we thought would be complimentary. Thinking about the recycling and waste to energy process, we began to look at it in terms of a life cycle. We where already looking at this with society’s discarded objects but decided we wanted to do this with organic matter as well. To be more specific, the life cycle of a human body and how it can be repurposed. Just as trash can be burned and turned into energy a fly ash, and turned into a concrete building and then torn down; a human body can be composted, turned into nutrient
rich soil, absorbed by a plant, and then eaten by an animal. At first we looked at three different burial processes in human composting, alkaline hydrolysis (water cremation), and the use of a mushroom suit. On the following page we began to map out their inputs and outputs to get a better idea of their shared synergies. In the end, we decided to go with the human composting and alkaline hydrolysis. Our design began to explore how we would fit all these programs on the site both efficiently and respectfully together. Paths brought the public onto the site to learn about the waste to energy and composting process. The compost and water created would rather be given back to the family, used on site in the landscape or greenhouse, or would be shipped out to a regional rewilding project.
Platform to Raise Bodies into Ceremony Space (Hole in Floor Plate)
Elevators to Access Urns
Upper Level Visitor Entrance (Fl. 4)
Compost and Water Storage (Fl. 3)
Loading Dock for Taking Compost away (Fl. 1)
Guest Elevator
Lower Level Visitor Entrance (Fl. 1)
Greenhouse Garden Compost Storage
Back of House Spine
Small Ceremony Space
Visitor Side Entrance Lobby (Fl. 4)
Grieving Rooms
Hearse Entrance (Fl. 1)
Back of House Elevator
5: The process creates an average of 400 lbs. of compost that is then given back to the family, used on site in the landscape or greenhouse, or sent away to be used in parks and habitat restoration programs.
Composting Pods
3: The body is placed in the compost pod with a mulch mix that decomposes the body over thirty days. After this, the compost sits for a further 30 days occasionally being agitated to break up the rest of the remains.
6: The Alkaline Hydrolysis process dissolves the body in a heated water solution. In total, it takes 3 hours for the body to dissolve. This produces a nutrient rich soluble water solution that then gets used for plants on site.
Brooklyn, New York
Critic: Hart Marlow
This studio began by taking pictures of objects and then creating a line logic. While creating the drawings, I soon began hybridizing the drawings to create something entirely new (pictured above). Then taking this weaved drawing, I began to explore how this could create a 3-dimensional massing. At this point I was focused on how to do this in relationship to our site. The massing became embedded in the ground inviting people to climb up on it or to transverse through the cavities and valleys it had created. This massing was to be further developed as it was turned into a middle school. Working on many ideas, the emphasis came to be about how parts could come together and interlock/intersect with one another and how this could suggest interior spaces. Situating the project better within the site, the building on one side rose up to meet the block context of the city while then
terracing down to meet the park on the opposite side. For the final faze of the project, I focused on articulating the facade through creating physical models, painting them, and then re projecting images if the physical model onto the facade in the digital model to create a new effect that plays with perspectives and distortions.
EXISTING FRONT YARD
ZONING DISTRICTS: M1-2/R6B
MX-8
SITE AREA: 2,849.25 SQFT
60% LOT COVERAGE: 1,709.55 SQFT
AREA W 30’ REAR YARD: 1,859 SQFT
AREA W 20’ REAR YARD: 2,109 SQFT
This was a residential project that I worked on at Slade Architecture during my time as an intern in 2023. The client brought this project to us with the desire for us to explore several different designs. There was an existing building on the site that we where to re-purpose and the primary concern for the client was to keep the curb cut and garage that took up the front of the building. We where to work this into the three different proposals. Furthermore, this lot had special zoning restrictions as it use to be an industrial warehouse. In the initial stages, we where unsure of whether we would be required to create the living spaces as a caretaker apartment that sat above/on top of the main space. Two of our designs explored this while a third assumed we could renovate the existing space into living quarters. For this project, I worked directly with James Slade (one of the
partners) to create these three initial designs. I was responsible for doing initial code research to determine setbacks, FAR allotments and other code regulations. I worked closely with James Slade to model out the designs and contribute ideas in Rhino and was also responsible for doing interior and exterior renderings and for putting together client presentations and creating the material in those presentations. In the end, the project did not go beyond these initial designs due to complications that arose due to the zoning of the lot.
This is a renovation project that I am working on at B+W Architecture. It is of a large office space for Santander Bank. I started on this project in it’s initial stages after the firm received the project. This involved working with the client/manager to determine the scope of work in the transformation of the office. It includes private offices, conference rooms, a cafe area, an ATM lab, as well as a podcast room along with other more specialized rooms. I developed a complete construction set for the project in tandem with my coworker. Throughout the process, this included creating presentations for the client and refining the drawing set from feedback on these presentations as well as through weekly meetings with the client. As the project progressed, I would coordinate our drawings with the MEP and structural drawings; carefully checking every detail in the drawings for
discrepancies, errors, and misunderstandings. Furthermore, I worked with vendors such as the signage company to develop and coordinate the design further. After the project was bid out to a GC, my responsibilities included attending weekly meetings with the contractor as well as collaborating with my coworker to answer RFI’s and review submittals.
