Undergraduate Portfolio

ARCH I T ECTURE PORT FO 2016 2021 L I O JUL I AN LEDOUX

Architecture is really about well-being. I think On the one hand it’s about shel - Zaha

k that people want to feel good in a space … lter, but it’s also about pleasure.

Hadid

Education University of Illinois at Chicago Graduated with a BS in architecture Plymouth High School, Canton MI

Work Experience UIC Involvement

Practice player/manager for UIC’s Women’s Basketball team 2018-2019 season and the 2019-2020 season UIC Library of the Health Sciences | 8/26/19-3/16/20 Desk worker

Non College Employers Meijer | 4/13/20-Present Stocker and Receiving Team Walmart | 7/1/19-8/22/19 Asset Protection/ Customer Host

Auto Cad Rhino 3D Adobe illustrator Adobe Photoshop Adobe Acrobat Adobe Indesign Handrawing

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Julian LeDoux

I am a graduate at the University of Illinois at Chicago with a bachelors of science in architecture. Having gone through the architecture program at UIC, everything I thought I knew about this field was thrown out the window and was shattered on the pavement below. I am open to a wide variety of entry level positions and as someone who is actively looking for more experience I will be able to learn from any professional environment I am placed into.

I am someone who looks at the big picture and stares at the finer details, someone who thinks outside the box and designs right by the cube, but most importantly I am someone who is willing to learn any and everything I can while never giving anything less than my absolute best because those are the standards I feel I need to abide by if I am going to succeed.

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C O N T E N T S

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Cinematic Casino

Southeast Chicago Historical Society Museum

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New World Monestary

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Wilshire Blvd.

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Cinematic Casino

For this project the goal was to create an interior urbanism with a casino. Focusing solely on the plan we were tasked with creating a two minute cinematic “trailer” which was comprised of shots in models we made to better understand the spaces. The theme behind my project was a romantic horror/thriller type of vibe which is the reason I decided to go with night and day shots. The theme was also a big inspiration for the colors I chose. The balance between thrilling and warmth was one I felt I needed to express through the model and I believe I have done just that.

The images to the right are a model representation of how these spaces roughly would look. Each texture and color was meticulously planned out to convey certain emotions and to achieve various imagery.

For instance the sparkly ceiling is reminiscent of the sparks from a burning fire. The smooth reflective material for the wall in the day helps increase the feeling of space when one is navigating through the casino. At night the bounds of the actual dimensions of the hallway start to disappear as you are engulfed by the darkness only guided by a singular light source.

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Day

Night

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On the right is a full plan of the casino which is just the one floor. The space covers about 700,000 sq. ft and is divided up among multiple different programmatic spaces such as casino games, dinning, entertainment, convention halls, pool areas, and shopping.

All the red spaces are for circulation.

They are 30ft wide which is why they double as gambling areas filled with various slot machines. The purple spaces are for casino games like black jack, poker, craps, etc. I partitioned them off from the main hallway to create more of an intimate feel as a sort of an escape from the massive scale of the rest of the building.

The rest of the brown spaces are for any business or areas allocated for non-casino areas. The upper left areas are a mix of dinning, shopping, and one large convention hall at the top. In the two other corners they top right one is the pool and spa area while the rest of the convention spaces take up the bottom corner. Lastly the round brown identical spaces are for sports betting.

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Entrance

To the left are two enlarged views from the plan for better visibility. As you can see my plan is very heavily influenced by the lighting. This plays into the theme of horror by keeping everything directly out of the light almost as if they are hiding. The curved entrances further incorporate the horror/thriller genre by making the individuals in these spaces very aware how many different paths they could take down these long hallways just like in so many different films within this same genre.

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Below are the lighting diagrams for the brown spaces to give a little more perspective of how I chose the specific forms for each separate business. Every curved wedge shaped spot light in the plan corresponds to one distinct light from the hallway. Each private business has two windows, one that looks back into the hallway and another one that sits all the way up at the ceiling letting in natural light. In the model I deliberately chose three separate colors for the floor, walls, and ceiling. The reasoning for this decision was so that at night all those colors would merge into an ominous yet warm red glow caused by the light from the hallway once again playing into the overall theme.

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Day

Night

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Southeast Chicago Hi

The Chicago Historical Society Museum wants to move the location of their museum to the corner of 101st St. and Ewing Ave. The location is not the only thing that will be changing, the museum wants to take the vacant plot of land and add a residential and commercial piece to the new building. My spring semester Senior studio was tasked with designing a finished building proposal that could realistically be chosen for further developement. Along with a newly constructed building we were also tasked with giving the whole block a makeover, well just the façades facing Ewing Ave. For my blockwide façade renovation I incorporated the same building materials from the new museum to give the project a more cohesive aesthetic. There are three destinct materials along the façades which interlock with each other like a puzzle symbolizing unity among the neighborhood.

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istorical Society Museum

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The massing strategy for this project was to completely separate the museum space from the residential and commercial space. Two L’s divide the space up with the museum space being on the right side and the residential and commercial spaces on the left with a circulation pathway running in between the two sides. On the plot of land where the new building will be located already contains a building that we were able to keep or incorporate within our new project. For my project I decided to keep the existing building and just add on to it. I put the museums offices and garage one this level as well as the front help desk. The first level also features a glass solarium with a small café attached.

On the second fl level of the museum the artifacts and libr On the residential ha are the one bedroo apartments for this ern side are two tow all three levels. The two bathroom pair o family style of living

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1st Floor 16

2nd

loor is where the main m will be. Here most of rary will be on display. alf on the eastern side om one full bathroom s floor. On the westwn homes that take up ese are a two bedroom of townhomes for more g.

d Floor

The upper level of museum features more gallery space with three public unisex bathrooms. Because the original building was only two stories I decided to utilize the roof to make it too functional.

There is roof access for museum patrons for them if they want to take in the view of the neighborhood. Patrons can even look back down into the solarium.

3rd Floor 17

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West El

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levation

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Detailed Sectio 20

on Perspective 21

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New World Mones

In cities across the US lots of places have mixed traditional and old world building styles to reflect the culture or ethnicity that happens to be inhabiting that area.

What comes to mind are the structures in various China Towns, Greek Towns, and any other various towns sprawled across the country. One building I’m sure no city has though is a monastery. For my 5th semester in my junior year we were tasked with incorporating a monastery into a piece of land chosen by us from a list of places. This was a partner project through the semester and for me and my partner we were given a Weehawken shore line. We had the only dense urban terrain for our studio so our job was particularly challenging. We both decided that having the monastery floating over the water would be ideal that way it is isolated from the city but still accessible.

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stary

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The Monastery is attached to an already existing public park which my partner and I felt most comfortable placing it because a lot of other sites along the shoreline were private properties. The project consisted of two parts, an earlier stage where we designed cells for the monks to live in and then eventually designed the rest of the monastery. This project was a very history involved research heavy assignment which was meant as a unique design exercise that would challenge us with creating a complex that many only will ever read about.

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Top Floor A

This monastery houses 12 monks with twelve individual cells on the top floor and communal spaces on the bottom floor. We were also tasked with incorporating some type of commercial space into our monastery’s so what my partner and I did was we put a boat rental company to utilize the space along the water more effectively.

These commercial spaces even though being apart of the same structure cannot go into or interact in any way with the monks spaces inside the monastery. The section drawing along the bottom was taken viewing Manhattan to show the juxtaposition between the old world and the new urban world.

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Bottom Floor

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Wilshire Blvd.

For my first urban design project it came in the spring semester of my freshman year. This was actually a partner project up until the create your own square mile city portion. The main lesson our instructors wanted to instill in us was to learn how to understand the environment before we start designing something for that environment. By mapping everything out and documenting the different building programs it really gave us our first insight into how cities are actually planned and layed out. This gave us great context to refer back to when we designed our own cities.

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The map to the right is the programmatic drawing made by my partner and I and the top portion above Wilshire Blvd. was my half. In the Wilshire group there were a total of twelve members who collectively traced 10 square miles. Visually it was one of my favorite university projects, but time wise it was one of the most lucrative.

Residential

Civic Government Services

Houses

Public Indoor Spaces

Apartment Complexes

Recreational Spaces

Condos

Commercial

Parks

Parking

Businesses

Public

Hotels

Private

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10th St.

Wilshire Blvd.

Wilshire Blvd.

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These maps were to show the distinction between cities with heavy population density and cities who have been run down the last few decades. Since the whole LA area is continuously growing practically no buildings in our whole groups map were vacant.

In Use Vaccant All Parking

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10th St.

Wilshire Blvd.

Wilshire Blvd.

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Here are detailed Elevations and a detailed plan showing how much into the small details this project got for us. Because of the location we all decided as a group that the elevation would be enhanced with the mountain range in the background. The mountains really put into perspective how little the buildings are within the context of the location.

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These eight sections of cities were from all the other groups city plans. Our objective was to recreate a square mile of a fictitious city we created from the parts of already existing cities. I did have to go through each groups massive plan drawings and select the strips of city I felt I could recreate but would still add unique forms not many others would implement within their own work.

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The collage of the city streets was meticulously planned so that certain diagonal streets aligned with other wonky roads so that the plan has a distinct old town eastern city feel to it. I felt if I created a bigger story for why the plan looks the way it does then it would make for not only a better plan but a more logically thought out project.

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The finished project was primarily what I had set out to do. A lot of the streets make no logical sense but that is exactly what I wanted. Just like a lot of the older eastern cities many roads are unpredictable and random. That randomness though I think adds a level of character to my fictional city which initially I thought would not have been possible.

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Thank You

Julian LeDoux JuDoux22@gmail.com