Christopher Kirch, AIA
Hospital Tower
Houston, TX
Description: The Memorial Hermann Woodlands Hospital Campus expanded its delivery of surgical services with the addition of a new eight-story patient tower. Tying into the existing hospital’s structure, it added 138 patient beds and five operating rooms.
Role: Drafter on 10 person team during CDs with primary focus being on the surgical operations and recovery suites (Revit + Blubeam).
Walk-In Clinic
Houston, TX + Olympia, WA
Description: The 30,000 SF expansion-renovation project is designed to transform the Harris Health Casa de Amigos Health Center into a ‘'healthcare beacon' in Houston's historic Northside. All departments will become located in a single location to best serve the community.
Role: Primary drafter on a 4 person team through CDs, Project Architect for CA, Project Manager throughout project (Revit + Blubeam).
Houston, TX
Description: 158,000 SF, six-story medical office building located built for Houston Methodist’s Clear Lake Campus in Nassau Bay, TX. The program called for a clinic with exam rooms, an open physical therapy gym, an outdoor training yard, a therapy pool, and staff support spaces. Role: CA phase support on 2 person team for Project Architect including submittal review and revision changes (Revit + Blubeam).
Emergency Centers
Olympia, WA
Description: Each MultiCare Off-Campus Emergency Center provides convenient emergency care for the local community. Each one-story facility is approximately 10,000 GSF with up to 11 exam rooms.
Role: Project Architect and Manager for multiple new locations, assisted with drafting, 2-3 person team per location. Provided feasibility studies and pre-design services for new and future locations (Revit + Blubeam).
7 South Street
Waltham,
MA
Description: Hudson, MA is preparing for a new 36,000 SF mixed-use project to revitalize their downtown and become a precedent for future development projects along both South Street and the riverfront. The proposal includes plenty of space for a restaurant, retail stores, business offices and seven residential units, each with their own private deck.
Program(s): Revit, Adobe Photoshop
Role: Modeling and drafting from pre-design through permitting, coordination with consultants, creating presentation material, and detailing of the exterior envelope.
Left: Proposed front and side elevations printed for client sign-off and AHJ approval during design development. Below: Revit rendering of the view from the street, post render editing done in Adobe Photoshop.
Description: Located in Cambridge, this new 200,000 SF facility centralizes advanced experimentation, adds chemistry labs, and creates both new connections and outdoor spaces for the MIT campus. 2,000 MIT researchers, faculty and students now have access to the most advanced fabrication tools and materials processing capabilities.
Program(s): AutoCAD Architecture Boston, MA
Role: To bring eleven sections from 65% CD to bid documents. This required the creation of new section cuts through the BIM model and to independently seek out the information necessary for cleaning and filling in the critical information missing from the model.
Left: Portion of an enlarged building section of the west pavilion. Below: Portion of a full building section running north-south.
Outdoor Classroom
Description: Over the course of several semesters, our 5 person studio provided non-profit design-build services for the Frank Black Middle School. The project added an open-air structure to the school’s existing garden, providing a formal space for outdoor teaching. The covered. elevated platform is designed as part of the garden, encouraging multiple methods of instruction for a wide range of class sizes.
Role: Collaborated as part of a 5 person studio during the design and permitting process. This included meeting and presenting to the school board and meeting with the building department to discuss rain capture requirements. As team lead, created the fabrication set and coordinated with fabricator. Fabricated and welded channel drain as part of sitework.
Program(s): Rhino, AutoCAD, Adobe CC, V-Ray
Food Access
Houston, TX
Description: The result of a community workshop elective where we learned how to research/analyze complex socio-economic problems. This included the dos and don’ts of community outreach in an efffort to maximize the potential efficacy of our proposals. My team chose to look at addressing food insecurity within Houston through equal access to helathy food and collaborative, community-led development.
Role: The research, design, and final presentation was a collaborative process as a 3 person team. The slides shown below are samples of my contributions to the final presentation. After the semester had concluded, we were offered to present our proposal to community leaders, after which they requested a copy to help in their efforts.
Program(s): Adobe CC, ArcGIS, Microsoft Office 365
High Bar
Houston, TX
Description: The end result of a studio with Lawrence Scarpa as guest co-instructor where we learned the history of affordable, multi-family housing in the united states. This included multiple, precedent-focused, affordable housing design strategies. Our design proposed a 10-story, mixed-income addition with a 2-story, community centric renovation of the existing building, including a new branch of the public library.
Role: While the initial neighborhood specific research was done by me, the design and presentation was a collaborative process as a 2 person team. My efforts were focused primarily on the programming, planning, structural, modeling, and rendering aspects of the design through final presentation.
Program(s): Revit, Adobe CC, Climate Consultant ArcGIS, Twinmotion
Houston, TX
Description: The project focused on creating alternative design-build methods to promote greater public access with the end goal of increasing the living density of Houston. The design examples presented used a combination of current regional modular construction methods (pre-fabrication and 3D printing). During programming, the needs of each neighborhood and non-profit were also considered.
Role: First semester focused on independent research to establish the basis of my thesis project. The second semester was continued research, site selection and analysis, creation of a clear design system with multiple examples, space planning, digital modeling, and graphical presentation.
Program(s): Revit, Rhino, AutoCAD, Adobe CC, ArcGIS, Lumion
New England + Brazil
Below: Examples of non-architectural watercolor work.
Top Right: Watercolor and ink, Breaker Children’s Cottage in Newport, RI [Peabody and Stearns]. Bottom Right: Acrylic on wood, Cultural Center in Goias, Brazil [Oscar Niemeyer].
