META '23

NIKE .SWOOSH CONCEPT

Location: Monaverse

Type: Recreational + Retail Space

Client: Nike

LAMBORGHINI CONCEPT

Location: Monaverse

Type: Education + Commercial Space

Client: Lamborghini

Oshea Chapel

Location: Monaverse

Type: Gallery

Client: Andre Oshea

Veteran Adm. Campus

Location: Los Angeles, California

Type: Mixed-Use

Instructor: Tom Wiscombe

The studio centers on the Veteran Administration campus in Los Angeles, the largest such campus devoted to veterans in the United States. On this site, numerous and often competing functions intertwine, including hospitals and housing, parks and parking lots, recreation, and rehabilitation. The VA campus in West LA seems both extremely full and incredibly empty at the same time. It is the vital center for thousands of vets and their families who require mental and physical therapy, housing, social services, and public re-engagement. But it is also a campus filled with vacant buildings, outdated facilities, and empty lots.

Our studio takes this new masterplan as a starting point. And we also take the entire campus, its historic buildings, and topographic landscapes—all of its current complexity—as a starting point. Our hope is to engage the idea of the masterplan through a collaborative effort, not designed by one mastermind that eradicates the old, but by an entire class of collaborators who engage the current and historic contexts to develop powerful and visionary ideas. Based on the surrealist exercise of the “exquisite corpse,” students will design chunks of the campus plan and collate them together to produce a truly collective and inclusive campus that mimics the complexity of our cities.

Mass Experiments

I began playfully moving, rotating, and scaling two thin plates which were then booleaned and sliced in an oblique in order to create new compound figures across multiple objects. The resulting graphic silhouettes and cut figures constitute a formal type that explores against contemporary functional types such as vast creative spaces and racks of tiny housing.

These forms create new ground and new outlooks for confined COVID citizens and new spaces for social action. The horizon, with its sense of infinity and freedom, and calm, will be used not only as a sentimental backdrop or view, but rather as a way of thinking about large architecture and buildings with silhouettes so strong they constitute their own skyline.

Site + Program

The final composition of objects was then placed onto the site almost leaning against one another for support. Then the shape of the shadow projection from the objects was then used to create a civic plaza onto the existing site. The plaza creates space for an open market that promotes public engagement and revitalizes the park underneath. Space is filled with kiosks and other amenities that allow for circulation and space for future development. The overall organization of the project allows for a hybrid distribution of conventional office space, healthcare facilities, housing, as well as an educational space while not removing the existing site.

The office space incorporates large communal and work spaces, gardens, and advanced tech space that allow for a more modern working environment. The housing is composed of micro-units with support facilities distributed across multiple levels to allow for more residents to engage with each other. The healthcare facilities are composed of clinics and more public resources in the mega mat while more private spaces are located in the towers. Lastly, the agricultural building incorporates spaces for indoor farming and green space that teach residents and visitors about agriculture while providing resources for the residents of the campus. With the implementation of these programs, I believe that we could revitalize not just the park underneath but the entirety of the Veteran Administration campus to improve the lives of residents who live here.

Ground Floor Plan

Upper Floor Plan

Temporary Contemporary Extension for MOCA

Location: Los Angeles, California

Type: Museums + Exhibit

Instructor: Mira Henry

Partner: Stella Buckmann

This project examines the role of multiple interiors within a single, monolithic building mass. The studio asks how the architecture of the museum, as much an accumulation of spaces as of the objects that populate them, can contain a collection of withdrawn interiors no longer connected nor related to the surrounding metropolis. From the vast to the intimate, the studio will examine an idea about a museum that no longer constructs a white-box neutrality seeking to move architecture to zero, but instead posits distinct environments and worlds that maintain architectural interest beyond their contents.

This project focuses on the individual quality and particularity of each space, in order for the visitor to experience the museum in moments, in a more episodic sequence, be it formal or casual. And when facing all these unique spaces, one can find a moment to share their experiences with others. We aim to create a museum that is favorable to human confrontations, situations of intimacy as well as a push towards encounters. In our museum, the social space, the individual’s space, the artwork and the city are all merged.

Precedent Study

The Original Cabinet:

We started looking into cabinets, more specifically engraved furniture designs from the Book of Prices. From the original cabinet, we were interested in the idea of objects within objects, the nesting of different volumes, where basically you have a frame which nests drawers, which nests dividers. So there is this idea of compartmentalization - a series of small rooms that present different scale, thickness and typological conditions, and therefore are all different and unique. We were also interested in the idea of color coding of highly smooth surfaces that when aggregated would produce systems of layering.

We want to spread and expand this idea of public interaction, participation and accessibility in our project. And therefore, we want to keep the experience of Geffen and stack new experiences on top and adjacent to it. Our massing deals with a series of hybrid conditions, that is, a conversation of thick and thin spaces, big and small, opened and closed, formal and informal. We want to create a museum that nests gallery spaces that are all spatially unique.

We oriented our building according to the different pressures of the site. The five highlighted dash lines here are the different streets that positioned our project into the site. By not producing a coplanar orientation according to the adjacent buildings and streets as well as the existing museum, we create multiple focal points of which our project can be viewed in the city.

Experience

The Vision:

We designed a building to accommodate all types of visitors transitioning in the museum by introducing a combination of rapid and direct, efficient, accessible or even experiential stairs and escalators. And apart from that, we introduced a series of in-between stairs that would allow the visitors to go up and down in between spaces and experience the building in a more informal and casual way.

An essential point of our project was to create unique experiences in the building by having a series of different spatial conditions throughout the museum. So, each space has a distinct form, tonality, texture and saturation that makes them very particular. Our vision of the design was to create a space that promotes engagement and collaboration, and therefore community and public spaces are very present in the project.

Our main argument on our project was to take this bourgeoise piece of furniture, that is usually manufactured for the individual use and transform it into something social and urban, emphasizing on the collectivity, the community.

New FACE Apts.

Location: Los Angeles, California

Type: Micro Unit Housing

Instructor: Darin Johnstone

Partner: Stella Buckmann

This project focuses on the typology and relationship between the buildings composition of microunits and the users perception and experience of the architecture in Chinatown, Los Angeles, California. The project engages with the urban context allowing for large communal and open spaces that could act similarly to a YMCA or a Boys and Girls Club where members of the community may connect with eachother and the site. The studio questions the predictability of housing and how the disruption or ambiguity of types can begin to reintroduce new forms of residential architecture.

Through a series of explorations between building types and precedents, we developed different possibilities of building envelope. We were not interested in the outcome of this type and precedent mashup, but rather the misbehavior, disruption and peculiarity it generated.

Mass Development

The Pile:

Of the 36 iterations of the Field of Scheme, we chose the mashup that highlighted the most misbehaving condition. The hybridity of the tower type and the Star Apartment precedent by Michael Maltzan, generated a new type component because of the porosity present in the envelope. Therefore an ambiguity of components is introduced: tower VS courtyard. Closed VS opened. Building VS site.

The contrast of opposing elements is what pushed our project further. We disrupted the tower logic typology of stacking, by introducing a less orderly arrangement. We took part of the individual clusters of the building, pushed them out of the tower’s original composition and piled them onto the site, reinforcing the idea of type misreading. This pile assemblage of unit clusters produced new programmatic conditions for the building.

Field of Schemes:

All units have an average of 350 square feet and they are arranged into three different types: horizontal, vertical and hybrid configurations. They all have views to the city and are accessible through the open courtyards. These courtyards don’t behave as only circulation space, but are where the interactivity of units occur. The clusters are composed of an interlocking system of the units. The units are adjacent or mirrored to each other.

The perforated mass assembles 158 units throughout the building and the envelope porosity visually connects the building to the site. We are interested in designing a building that utilizes the sites boundary, rather than merely colonizing it. Through the permeability of the envelope, the landscape slips in and around the building. The open spaces offer vistas and wide open- ings for communal patios, as well as allowing wind and light to enter the building. We want to break with the monotonous building blocks around Chinatown by introducing a building that has no identifiable facades.

HaGo Esports Arena

Location: Los Angeles, California

Type: Sports + Entertainment

Instructor: Zeina Koreitem

Partner: Madellin Gomez

This project focuses on the relationship between a building’s interior program and complex contextual constraints. The proposed eSports Arena was designed around a the mediating spaces and interfaces between urban exterior, public and private programmatic spaces. The project engages excessively detailed surveys of the given site and defines methods of operation for the interface between designer and data. The contemporary architect has access to a massive and rich quantity of data through lidar scans, GIS, and crowd-sourced content through the internet. The studio questions the ability of the designer to intelligently leverage this data as information. The project attempts to re-think the Monolith, wherein a seamless design is a seemingly apparent thick mass that is void of space.

Thresholds were extracted from the two precedents, Markthal Rotterdam by MVRDV and Biblioteca Vasconcelos by Alberto Kalach, in order to produce analytical drawings. Each drawing highlights specific threshold conditions that allow for a better understanding of the program. The various drawings explore circulation, hierarchy, and dynamic threshold conditions.

Site Analysis

Site Information: Area: 75,000 ft²

Project Area: 60,000 ft²

My project site is located in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles which is know for its government buildings, theatres, parks, and other public attractions. I am interested in the main paths of circulation and how that may begin to alter the program while allowing for a large public space.

Program Massing:

Using our mobile phones, we are able to use images taken of the site and regenerate the images as data that reforms into point clouds through the implementation of photogrammetry.

While analyzing the site, we began extracting various details from the existing buildings allowing the point clouds to project onto the exterior facade causing the mass to decay. Features were extracted from the point cloud of the site scan. These profiles were used to subtract space. The remaining mass then became a host for various pockets and paths for circulation. The projection of the point clouds also creates the carving of windows and skylights allowing for natural light to pass through the monolithic exterior.

The point clouds generated from the site scan were used to subtract space highlighting the main paths of circulation. We began with pockets of volume that create bridging of various heights as well as introduced large communal spaces while enclosing particular areas allowing for private spaces as well. With this idea, the organization of collective versus individual program in the building became monumental

Section

Augmented Reality

AR Application:

AR technology allows us to explore the possibilities of an eSports Arena with communal spaces that act as “virtual playgrounds” that create what we call a fully immersive gaming experience.

Using Unity and Vuforia, I designed an AR app that would trigger the activation of the “virtual playground” and architecture can begin to shift itself to the users liking. This transformation within the architecture can reimagine the function of the form itself.

This exploration of AR technology further questions whether the architecture can become the portal to the virtual world. With the use of AR technology we can see how walls can break and shift until they eventually open into the virtual world of Super Mario Bros. Goombas, Bullet Bills, and Bowsers that were once playable through television screens in our living rooms can now interact with the architecture of our building by means of the virtual playground. This could open possibilities of what the new typology of the Esports arena can provide and how we begin to immerse ourselves within architecture and the gaming experience.

AR Application Diagram:

Homelessness Charrette

Location: Los Angeles, California

Type: Public Housing + Medical Center

Instructor: Zeina Koreitem

Partner: Stella Buckmann + Madellin Gomez + Luz Llano + Leena Alsalem

There is a common misconception that city planning and architecture seek to provide “solutions to end homelessness.” These solutions include various types of supportive, affordable, and shared housing as well as small scale structures providing temporary shelter. Independent of the quality of design thinking such projects and structures can be met with opposition by the communities coming from the prospective occupants and the existing community.

How can homeless communities become a part of the strategic design process that is engaging and beneficial for them? How can architects produce mutually supportive environments for houseless communities? How can community-driven processes contribute to responsible and comprehensive design solutions? How can schools of design and architecture encourage the success of such initiatives?

Public Housing

A main concern of this project is to make all aspects of the homelessness condition evident in the eyes of the city. Mental illnesses are a abundance in the homeless population. Our proposal for a new form of public housing is adapted to architecturally compensate and provide comfort to people suffering from these conditions. The flowers give the building a welcoming feel as well as give ease to the guests that visit providing a place of solice.

Programmatic Diagram: