SUMMARY: Recent M.Arch graduate from UCLA with a previous career in the technical side of filmmaking, rich hands-on experience, and a deep interest in issues of urban design, infrastructure, housing, and transportation. A people person with the ability to work steadily in a variety of environments.
UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design
M.Arch, 2024
GPA: 3.90
Faculty Executive Committee for School of the Arts and Architecture
University of Texas at Austin
B.A. Government, B.S. Radio-TV-Film, 2012
GPA: 3.86, High Honors, Phi Beta Kappa
UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design
2021-2024
TeenArch Studio Instructor
Taught in a UCLA summer ‘24 program which introduced high school students to a university architecture studio environment for course credit
Teaching Assistant
Spring 2023 Structures III, Winter 2024 Undergraduate Studio
Research Assistant, UCLA CityLAB
Ongoing work on a grant-funded research project analyzing every affordable housing development in LA built between 2010-2022 to determine relationships between formal elements, cost, and production timelines
Shop Tech, UCLA AUD Model Shop
Independently managed CNC milling projects and assisted students with 3D printing, laser cutting, carpentry, and general shop management
Architecture Internships
Casey Hughes Architecture (June - September 2023)
Housing and commercial projects in various phases of development
Wolcott Architecture (June - September 2022)
Office and commercial projects in various phases of development
Lucky Wheels Garage
2015 - 2017
Founded and operated a community motorcycle garage in DTLA
Upstart small business adapted to changing cities and transportation
Hand-built custom choppers, hot rods, and vans
Film/TV: Grip Department
2012 - 2022
Worked on major Hollywood motion pictures, TV, and commercials
Experienced in lighting design, camera control, rigging, basic carpentry
Expert Skills
Rhino 3D
Adobe Creative Suite
Model Building
Software Proficiency
AutoCAD
Revit
Sketchup
V-Ray
RhinoCAM
MidJourney
Stable Diffusion - A1111
Microsoft Office Suite
Slack / Zoom / Teams
Hands-On Skills
Digital Fabrication
3-axis CNC Operation
Powder 3D Printing
PLA 3D Printing
Laser Cutters
General Shop Tools
Carpentry
MIG Welding
Structural Rigging
General Fabrication
PV solar charging systems
Lighting Design
Photography
Cinematography
Automotive
Graduate School Projects
DTLA Super-Battery
Commons
Previous / Personal Work
DTLA Super-Battery
Research Studio Instructor: Neil Denari
In 2023, the Los Angeles City Council rezoned the downtown area to allow for 250,000 new residents. This represents 20% of the additional allowed housing in city limits, but it occurs on only 1% of the city’s landmass.
This will result in extraordinary densification of downtown Los Angeles.
The DTLA Super-Battery proposes a way to accommodate this population growth by replacing the 110 freeway with a regenerative urban district that bundles energy, water, and housing into a single thermodynamic system which supports the radical densification of downtown LA and expands the concept of infrastructure.
Decommissioning the freeway produces 88 acres in downtown LA for:
Housing (3000 units)
Large Hydropower Storage (165 MWh)
Solar Energy Production (2200 MWh/year)
District Cooling
Public park space
Shade Circulation
Stormwater Management
This infrastructure bundle achieves:
- Power grid resiliance
- A culture of density unique to Los Angeles
- Improved proximity to energy storage
- The survival of a hot climate
By drawing the systems that support urban life right into the middle of the densest part of the city, we bridge the metabolic rift that currently exists between cities and their surrounding ecologies.
Hedging the Commons
UCLA
AUD Studio Project Instructor: Katy Barkan
To explore strategies for densification in LA, this project refutes the dominant historical narrative of boosterism and suburban fantasy of Los Angeles. To this end, I envision this community as a prototypical design for a mixed-use development appropriate for new modes of ownership including TIC’s, Co-Ops, or community land trusts. The basic form is a rectangular array of multifamily modules which range in square footage to accommodate varying household sizes and needs, but I also focused on a ubiquitous feature of LA’s suburban landscape: the hedge. Historically hedges in LA have been used to enclose and delineate private space; Here I employ them to blur the distinction between public and private, as well as residential and commercial. Circulation through the site is managed by the hedge, and the hedge continues to weave throughout the development, which obscures not only the privacy of each area, but also the boundaries of the units and floors. Unit module rotation allows for a Venn-diagram effect, in which neighbors might share a staircase with one neighbor but a porch with a different neighbor. My overall ambition for this project is that by creating a blurred spectrum from public to private and by utilizing a tool of private enclosure to create shared areas, we can explore new typologies for a dense and resilient Los Angeles.
Comprehensive Studio Collaborator: Sam Merecicky Instructor: Georgina Huljich Site.Bound
This retrofit project proposes a university-affiliated material research lab built on the site of an existing concrete plant. Bearing in mind that no site is a blank slate, my partner and I considered the site as the fundamental driver for this project by designing the project around aesthetics of earthen materials like ceramics, concrete, and rammed earth. In construction these materials are often comprised of aggregate and binder, so we imagined the facility as an array of monolithic aggregated volumes unified by a lightweight canopy above, the binder of the project. These two contrasted elements are linked by the angle of the existing warehouse roof, which is carried through the project on all sides, and the sense of compliment between the lightness of the roof and the heaviness of the volumes emerges as the motif of the project.
We continued to draw the site into the project by designing a facade system based on a ceramic tile module which we suggest slip-casting on the soil of the site itself. This tile system also underscored our dialectic of lightness/heaviness: since the tile is perforated, it contributes to a heavy earthen look for the building volumes in daytime lighting, but at night it appears as a light rainscreen, with interior light spilling out.
Goals for this project included a high degree of technical resolution and significant verisimilitude between drawings and models. We consulted with structural and facade engineers to contribute to project precision.
Extreme Environments I
Advanced Topics Studio Collaborator: Katie Angen Instructor: Kevin Daly
In this project we used a straightforward tectonic mechanism to address complications introduced by the extreme desert climate of Joshua Tree, California. In this case we used individual volumes of housing and artist workshops to support huge stressed skin roofs which shade the entire site, producing a series of castellated beams. Thermal massing is achieved through partial underground stories, gabion walls, and rammed earth, which contrast the stressed skin roof in both aesthetics and tectonics.
The gateway to the site is a small art gallery - the partial subterranean story of the building not only improves thermal massing, it also provides integration with the landscape. Upon approach, the stressed-skin roof beyond is just visible hovering above the berm that makes up the planted roof of the gallery.
The rest of the site is organized around an artificial arroyo across which the program morphs from public to private and urban to residential. The roof system has a crossgrained panelized system, producing a basket-weaving style lighting effect. The water drainage from this system reinforces the arroyo, transforming the site into a process landscape which settles into the larger ecology of Joshua Tree.
Environments II
Advanced Topics Studio Collaborator: Katie Angen Instructor: Kevin Daly
For this second iteration of the same program, we adapted our tectonic approach for the extremely cold cliamte of Mammoth Lakes, California. Rather than using rammed earth volumes, 3 CLT mechanical cores act as the structural supports for this efficient triplex, turning the whole mass into a castellated beam. This structural system supports a snow load and allows for an open floorplan and a cantilever of about 25 feet off the edge of a sloped plateau, creating a dramatic site strategy.
In addition to the siting strategy, the triplex embodies the dual nature of summer/ winter in Mammoth Lakes by presenting as a mute black bar wrapped in black paneling upon approach, with a warm wooden interior evident from the opposite side.
Water / Power
UCLA AUD Studio Project
Collaborator: Jane Wu
Instructor: Jason Payne
This studio project is a LADWP electrical substation situated in a synthetic landscape which introduces a shallow flooding technique borrowed from Owens Lake into a Los Angeles golf course. Our intention with this approach is to examine the political economy of the relation between LA and the Owens Valley by flattening any hierarchy between people, land, water and power, and converting an exclusive golf course fairway into a synthetic floodplain by excavating an extant channelized and buried creek and reusing the water to demonstrate the behavior of a floodplain under varying saturation conditions. This dynamic hydroscape mirrors the ephemeral and unpredictable drought/flood cycles of Los Angeles and California as a whole.
Advanced Topics Studio
Collaborator: Riley Hammond
Instructor: Simon Kim Symbiotic Biomass
This project began with a reverse process: We examined the physical qualities of substances not typically seen as construction materials, including sourdough bread, balloons, and ceramic follies. Then we used the tectonic logics of these materials to inform the design of a future public commons in an unusual site: the La Brea Tar Pits. This exercise in world-building led us to develop a commons which obscures the distinction between humans and non-humans, and instead expresses itself as a node in a larger system of heat and nutrient exchange, projecting a world where the tar pits are positioned not as a site of death, fossilization, and carbon emissions, but as a domain of compost, fermentation, and fecundity.
Previous / Personal Work
Lucky Wheels Garage
In 2015 I co-founded, designed, and opened a community motorcycle shop in a former manufacturing facility. We offered tools and space at an affordable price to motorcyclists who were lacking a shop to work on their machines. Lucky Wheels presented an accessible, inclusive, and affordable co-working space for people in the community to gather, work and learn, and became a social node within the motorcycling community in central LA.
Photo courtesy of Ruben Riermeier
Photo courtesy of Alicia Elfving
These custom shelves fit together with housed lap joints, so they don’t require any tools or hardware for assembly. No-Hardware Shelf
Custom Autos
Hand built chopper made from vintage parts locally begged and borrowed
Camper van designed and built in the smallest available van, a Ford Transit Connect
