In Collaboration with: Virserius Studio, Studio Munge, and Celano Design for all interior spaces.
Primary Role: Project Architect analyzing city’s ordinances and codes applicable to the site. Understand what’s allowed based on client’s desires and further coordinate with consultants and city officials during the design and approval process.
Embodying the architectural style of Tropical Modernism in a contemporary way, The Ray, a LEED Certified Boutique Hotel proposes a new-iconic architectural style in Delray Beach deeply committed to the environment and sensitively linked to the architectural history of this important South Florida community.
The style takes advantage of symmetrical and asymmetrical massing and details to break up a large urban block into smaller, pedestrian-friendly elements and spaces. Landscaping also acts as a major component of this style, working to both prevent urban heat islands and to afford people integral, highly considered public and private gardens and plazas.
Lifting portions of the building away from the ground plane and opening up to the environment through elevated masses, terraces, balconies, roof gardens and decks enable the building to take advantage of passive cooling and keeping ventilation away from street level.
Of all the building elements most impactful to Tropical Modernism, the facade and its environmentally conscious systems are paramount to the style. The brise soleil, a sun shading device designed to significantly reduce building heat gain through the deflection of sunlight, is a major element of the Tropical Modernism style. These systems covering the exposed building surfaces, which can include louvered fins, perforated screens at a range of apertures, overhangs and awnings at appropriate depths, and active and passive fin walls have major performative benefits for Tropical Modernism architecture.
Overall Site Plan and Ground Floor Plan
West Courtyard Aerial View
The Ray Hotel continues in the tradition of this style, incorporating many of the major performative building systems to maximize sustainability and decrease its carbon footprint, while rendering a visually captivating architecture that is specific to the South Florida environment and architectural history.
Perforated screening and brise soleils minimize heat gain, open terraces and balconies take advantage of passive cooling while connecting patrons to the beautiful environment, roof gardens courtyards, and boulevards fully integrate landscaping as a component of the architecture in order to significantly reduce the possibility of urban heat islands. The hotel’s occupants and the community as a whole have access to the public plazas and gardens that encompass all of the vital elements of the property.
As a whole, the project brings design-focused Tropical Modern sophistication and iconic architecture to Delray Beach, featuring large-scale sculptures, immersive art installations, living walls, and lush open-space areas perfect for outdoor dining, lounging, and fitness.
Rooftop Level Floor Plan
Enlarged Section Stair n.5
Wall Section along Building Perimeter
Section Detail of Planter at 2nd Level Terrace
Glass Parapet Wall and Planter at Rooftop Level
West Elevation Looked from accross the street
Delray
Beach
Market Delray Beach, FL
Architect: Gonzalez Architects
Client: Menin Development
Year Completed: 2021
Project typology: Market Food Hall with above parking levels. In Collaboration with: Celano Design Clique Hospitality for some interior spaces.
Primary Role: Project Architect analyzing city’s ordinances and codes applicable to the site. Understand what’s allowed based on client’s desires and further coordinate with consultants and city officials during the design and approval process.
Combining Masonry Modern, an Architectural Style found in the city guidelines, together with the vibrant colors and lush greenery of Tropical Modern, Delray Beach Market plays with its geometry and carving of solid masses to create a facade that appeals to the human scale.
The lush greenery appears in forms of planters along the facade, with bougainvilleas and sky vines, creating a contrast against the building colors and facades. In addition to the added planters, mesh screens have been carefully placed along the parking level facades in order to provide a buffer to the parking area from patrons walking along the property. These, along with a secondary mesh cladding material will give additional depth and dimension to the facades.
For the overhangs, a more dynamicshaped, fixed overhang was designed that plays with the solidity of the building in a minimal manner while providing shade to the patrons of the Delray Beach Market.
For the facade colors previously mentioned, hues of green have been selected to highlight the bottom portion of the building, giving the overall project more of a Miami-Tropical feel. Material-wise, smooth stucco is the primary finish throughout all of the facades, with a complementary greenhued cement tile has been introduced at the Pedestrian level facades, adding an additional layer of textures to the building.
Enlarged Partial Elevation - Overhang
Program-wise, with an overall square footage of 150,000 total, the market will provide a 200-space enclosed parking garage, and it’ll feature over 25 local and regional eateries with a rotating lineup of smaller artisan vendor pop-ups throughout. The floor plan will be quite open to allow for optimal interaction between the kitchens and visitors and will include a staging area for cooking demonstrations and classes. The building will also feature an outdoor seating area for up to 200 people, collapsible folding glass walls, and an al fresco dining layout. The Market, besides being a project thought for its patrons, is also an immense opportunity of creating job opportunities for the region that will ideally benefit the community.
THE DELRAY
BEACH MARKET
Willis Tower Chicago, IL
Designer: Gonzalez Architects (Tenant Space Designer)
Client: Blackstone & Equity Office
Year Completed: 2017-2018
Project typology: Renovation and Reconfiguration within the Existing Tower
Primary Role: Help drafting all elevations using the renderings and plans as starting point, and helping coordinate changes all in drawings.
As part of the renovation and transformation of Several areas of the Willis Tower, approximately 460,000 square feet of existing space within the Tower was reconfigured. This includes 150,000 square feet of space for exclusive tenant use, including a full-service fitness center, expansive tenant lounges, private event space and concierge services to create an inspiring and energetic work environment.
The mission of the redevelopment was to create an all-season, urban destination that brings the surrounding community together and creates a true neighborhood that is the heart of downtown Chicago. With its new design, Willis Tower will create a sense of place, not just a place to work, allowing people to own their experience in the Tower.
Marketing Center
Lounge Center
Fitness Center
Lounge Center
1
East Elevation
1 1/8"=1'-0" East Elevation
Marketing North Elevation - Corridor
2 1/8"=1'-0" South Elevation
2 1/8"=1'-0" South Elevation
Lounge East Elevation
Lounge Elevation - North Corridor
3 1/8"=1'-0" West Elevation
3 1/8"=1'-0" West Elevation
Overall 33rd Floor Plan: Marketing (NW), Lounge (NE), and Fitness Center (South)
4
DD Set: Not For Construction
4 1/8"=1'-0"
Fitness Elevation - Men’s Locker and Restroom
Fitness Elevation - Corridor North Elevation
WORKSTUDENT
Leveraging Exchange
Suwon, South Korea
Columbia University - MSAUD 2015 Team: Ross Brady, Cristina Bustamante, and Filiberto Viteri
Leveraging Exchange aims to transform Suwon’s identity to become a platform for the international exchange of knowledge-based businesses and humanitarian services.
A dynamically built environment, composed of a flexible framework of spaces, is proposed to host collaborative activities, leveraging Suwon’s local assets such as research institutions, IT companies, business incubators and medical services.
Based upon de city’s high concentration of medical, research and educational institutions, a Medical Knowledge Exchange Campus is proposed in a site prominently suited for social interaction. This center will be arranged around public spaces with flexibility for expansion, contraction and reconfiguration.
The project will be situated within 2 kms of Suwon’s primary transit hub, which offers connections to the Seoul metro as well as national and international railroads. Growth can be initiated quickly and easily by taking advantage of recently vacated buildings that can be re-purposed with little investment for a variety of uses. Possible sponsors for this development include corporations and national or local governments. These organizations are expected to send their professionals in the fields of medical research, treatment and technology to Suwon to take part in a collaborative exchange of knowledge and specializations and for the enhancement of their skills. At the same time, these institutions will fund the construction and maintenance of the development, essentially buying a stake in the project, which will allow them to guide how it develops in the future. In exchange, these organizations will gain a pipeline of broadly-experienced, internationally-focused professionals for employment and policy inputs.
City of International Medical Knowledge Exchange
Free Economic Zone
On a global scale, the proposed development can become a platform for international exchange since Suwon is strategically located within South Korea. Suwon would act as a global interface between the nation’s specialized cities and the rest of the world.
Situated exactly halfway between the international airports and seaports of Seoul and cities in the Southern part of Korea that specializes in medicine and research. At a nation level, industrial sectors in Korea are divided such that cities form a network of specializations, raging from the exchange of goods in Busan and Incheon to the financial exchange and currency trading in Seoul.
The proposal for the Medical Knowledge Exchange Campus features a mix of parcel types, intended to create a pedestrian scale neighborhood that can also host institutional uses. Parceling of land is completed around existing buildings that are set to be re-purposed.
PROPOSED DESIGN GUIDELINES
Madang
PARCELS
Can be combined or subdivided for greater flexibility, and cannot be smaller than 170m2.
MADANG
Buildings in the madang need to have frontage on public space with at least 30% porosity on the ground floor.
CORRIDOR
Buildings along the main corridor must have frontage onto it, with the first and second floor dedicated to commercial service use.
HEIGHT
Buildings along the main corridor must not exceed 7 floors or 25m, or 5 floors or 18.5m for the rest of the development.
ALLEYS
Edges of parcels not abutting a street must have a 1.5m easement on each side to form 3m alleys between buildings.
CONNECTIONS
Connection between madang must be maintained with alleys throughout the development.
LOT COVERAGE
It must not exceed 70% to ensure space between buildings that allows for open space on the ground floor.
HOUSING
Development that is exclusively residential can only occur along secondary streets.
SOCIAL SPACES
Social spaces must be created at higher levels of institutional buildings.
After the parcels are set, they can be bought and building design can begin. Any new buildings must follow a set of design guidelines to ensure that a certain minimum criteria will be adhered to, with the main goal of developing the desig with certain desirable spatial qualities.
Newburgh Path Newburgh, NY
Columbia University - MSAUD 2015 Team: Ross Brady, Nans Voron, and Ye Zhang
NEWBURGH, a city caught in the grasps of a vicious cycle of recentlyreleased inmates unable to find jobs due to their records, making it difficult to sustain themselves and their families. With a population of 30,000 people, nearly 10% of the people gel arrested every year. The city’s outsize role in cycling incarceration con be seen as nearly unnecessary in light of the fact that almost one third of all inmates in New York ore serving sentences of 3 years or less for nonviolent crimes. This portion of the prison population, if diverted from penitentiaries and kept in rehabilitation programs within active society, hos a much greater chance of breaking this cycle.
The time to act and change the path is now. The place to start is Newburgh.
The Newburgh Path allows offenders of nonviolent crimes with sentences of three years or less to be diverted from traditional imprisonment and instead be housed under various levels of observation and engagement within Newburgh. Through a series of steps, candidates in the program are reintegrated into society incrementally through job training, adult education, and other initiatives. The infrastructure used to facilitate this process is shared with and available to the public in the form of vocational workspace, recreation and meeting spaces.
Such effort, if successful, could help eradicate this region’s problem with cyclical incarceration by shifting the focus from addressing its symptoms to addressing its cause. The funding mechanism is based on an experimental system called Social Impact Bonds. In this system, a non-profit organization is the coordinator between a private investor and the operators of our program.
The investors are re-paid only if certain quantifiable goals are met (reduced the recidivism rate by 15%, while also increasing the rate of high-school graduates in Newburgh by 20% both over 10 years). The private investors are paid back by the non-profit organization with the money that has been diverted from the prison system. The goal of this mechanism is that the beneficial effects of the prison money can shared by the candidates in this program and the cities that host them. If successful, we could expect to see a long term decrease in recidivism and subsequently a drastic decrease in the cost of maintaining the prison system in the region. Along the path, we define a threshold for interface between the public and the candidates. We start by retrofitting vacant and abandoned buildings to house first-time parolees and to accommodate public programs on the ground floor that can be run by civilian employees or the candidates themselves. This is the step that generates the most interaction between the residents and the candidates.
INCARCERATION FLOW
Hudson Valley Medium and Maximum Security Prisons
New York State Department of Correction
FUNDING MECHANISM WITH SOCIAL IMPACT BONDS
LIGHTING
TRANSPARENCY
OPEN PROGRAMS
We believe that the radical steps outlined here can put this region, and cities like Newburgh, onto a path to success, pulling them out of the cycles of incarceration, crime and poverty that currently detract from the image. The only path to doing this is not to look for ways to replace the current population but to address the social circumstances perpetuating these situations in innovative ways and to heal these communities in place with the most efficient use of resources that are already ted uo in them.
Monhegan Studio Monhegan Island, FL
University of Miami - School of Architecture
Monhegan, a small, rocky Island ten miles from the mainland is only accessible by boat. There are no cars or paved roads on the Island. Its economy is ruled by those who make their living from the sea, namely fishing and lobstering. For more than 100 years, Monhegan has been a summer paradise for artists and other visitors who appreciate its isolation, the beauty of its wilderness areas, its relaxed atmosphere, and its unhurried pace.
Monhegan Studio, a project designed for artists to help them find inspiration for their work. Located in Monhegan Island, the cabins are the perfect place to translate the island’s atmosphere and beauty into works of art. In addition to the cabins, a central space that connects them can be used as a place for collaboration and interaction with other people staying in the cabins. An ADA compliant cabin is also part of the design, located in the least steep part of the island to facilitate access to the cabin.
Basement Floor Plan
Ground Floor Plan
Cross Section Reflected
UM Lounging Pavilion Miami,
FL
University of Miami - School of Architecture
Team: Katherine Flores and Zhe Wen
The UM Lounging Pavilion consists on a ramp system that will aloow students experience their way down the hill, all the way to another side of the campus
The seating area of the pavilion is attached to the structure and designed in a way people can pay down comfortably. A pergola follows the pavilion with the same structure and materia to give a sense on continuity anf to allow the notion of one structure.
