Daniel Zalles Architecture Portfolio 2021

DANIEL ZALLES SELECTED WORKS 2018-2021 DZALLES@PRATT.EDU

TABLE OF CONTENTS 00. RESUME 01. ARTIFICE 02. CYBERPUNK MUSEUM 03. UNIFICATION CEMETERY 04. ST. JOSEPH’S DORMITORY 05. BIO.- FAB. CENTER

DANIEL ZALLES

Architect + Designer

dzalles@pratt.edu issuu.com/danielzalles (512)-869-9563

About

Education

I am an architectural designer and recent graduate from the Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture with a minor in interior design and a background in graphic design and photography. I am a highly organized and self-motivated individual eager to apply my design knowledge to solve and address contemporary issues and needs. I have a love for hands-on projects and objectmaking design.

Pratt Institute School of Architecture

Brooklyn, NY (August 2016 - May 2021) Presidential Merit-Scholarship Michael Hollander Drawing Excellence Award Winner

Westminster Prep. School

Miami, FL (August 2012 - May 2016) AP Student (3.8 GPA) - National Honors Society

Columbia University Summer Program

New York, NY (July 2015) Enrolled in prep architecture studio and theory courses

Oxford University Summer Program

Oxford, UK (July 2014) Enrolled in marketing and photography courses

Skills

Work Experience

3D Modeling Rhino 5 and 6, Grasshopper

Assistant Photographer at Leica Store Miami

2D Rhino, Autocad, and Revit Adobe Creative Suite Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign and Lightroom Rendering Vray, Maxwell, and Twin Motion 3D Printing / Laser cutting 3D Builder, Cura, and Slicer Fabrication Wood working, welding, 3D printing, laser cutting

Tested and photographed used and new merchandise + aided full time photographers on shoots.

Office Assistant at Howard Design Group Aided architects, draftsmen and interior designers with preparing presentations, photo editing, and cataloguing material library.

Monitor at Pratt Institute Fabrication Facilities Employed at production facilities at the school of achitecture monitoring the shops with experience in wood working, metal working, 3D printing, casting, and laser cutting.

01. ARTIFICE

TYPE: Degree Project CRITICS: Michael Szivos + Abigail Coover Hume ROLE: Partnered Project - Team of 2

This thesis project is a study of architecture’s role in subversion and anonymity. Inspired by research on Freeports and Cryptography- Artifice questions the role of identity and authorship in the art world through the speculation of future art consumption, exhibition, and storage.

DESTABILIZING THE ART WORLD Artifice is an anonymous art compound that uses spatial encryption based on drawing and projection methods to create an untraceable arttrade facility located behind the Tombs’ impenetrable walls in lower Manhattan. This facility acts as a clandestine platform that allows buyers, sellers, and artists to trade, produce, and exhibit their work anonymously, free of outside interference or regulations.

Artifice challenges the need for legitimacy and authorship in the art world and utilizes anonymity to give increased freedoms to its users.

As a way to render the power of provenance and authentication futile, all works of art produced, exhibited, or stored within the compound operate with complete anonymity. The creation of anonymous work removes all forms of authorship, allowing freedom of expression for artists while removing the influence of fame or rarity for viewers and collectors. Artifice achieves this anonymity through the use of deception- visually, graphically, and spatially. By researching the discrepancies and distortions caused by architectural projection methods, both in drawing and reality the inner workings of the art compound are layered and maze-like to conceal the covert art facilities within.

Architectural elements and perspectival effects are manipulated to create an architecture that fools and confuses viewers at first glance. Spaces may appear uninviting and disorienting to occupants unless they take the time to deeply explore the art compound and its hidden galleries, studios, and storage facilities.

Artifice’s cryptic and opaque architecture allows it to create a new condition of anonymity where occupants can vanish into the building and become virtually untraceable. This characteristic of Artifice’s architecture enables the project to act as the physical manifestation of encryption.

DECIPHER-DRAWING STUDIES

SECTION REVEAL

MASTER DRAWING

UNROLL REVEAL

3D REVEAL

Artifice is primarily represented through the (unrolled) section “Master Drawing” sets which offer a collaged and distorted view of the project’s interior architecture. Each master drawing is juxtaposed with a “deciphered” drawing revealing the function and space behind the initial section(s).

SITE OF OPERATIONS

The Tombs (Present)

Expansion (Proposal)

Artifice utilizes the Manhattan Detention Complex (The Tombs) as its base of operations. The site is currently under speculation to be redesigned and expanded into a 40-story detention center to hold the overspill from the closing of Riker’s Island. Establishing the art compound within the Tombs, Artifice simultaneously thwarts the site’s use for further incarceration and violence while repurposing its reformative infrastructure. Instead of serving the incarceration and punishment of inmates, Artifice now utilizes the site to give agency to artists and viewers. The Tombs’ lasting stigma and its violent past remains and acts as a front to misdirect any unsuspecting bystanders while secretly tapping into the city’s underground art world.

Cell Block 02

Cell Block 01

Cell Block 02

Cell Block 01 Cell Block 01

South West

North East

Cell Block 02

ENCRYPTED 22.00

8.63

27.35

13.50

37.00

187.00

136.27 40.73

17.00

22.00

22.42

23.00

41.75

20.00

REVEALED 13.50

8.63

22.00

27.35

136.27

37.00

40.73

187.00

20.00

41.75

22.00

22.42

23.00

17.00

ENCRYPTED

REVEALED

RENDERS

02. CYBERPUNK MUSEUM

TYPE: UG Advanced Design Studio CRITICS: Chi-Fan Wong + Richard Sarrach ROLE: Individual Project

As a contemporary art museum located in the heart of Tokyo, the Cyberpunk Museum is a curated collection of art inspired by the themes and aesthetics of the dystopian science fiction subgenre Cyberpunk, which originated within Japan.

CASE STUDY: CYBERPUNK In modern Japan, there has always existed a unique balance between reverence for tradition and technological fetishization. Cyberpunk reimagines these dynamics, exaggerating the issues prevalent in human nature and society through narratives of dystopian futures. The aesthetics of cyberpunk center around hyper-detailed depictions of advanced technology in stark contrast to the decay and destruction of the natural worldit is through these aesthetic criteria, the 3 artists featured in this collection were selected. Tom Sachs, Daniel Arsham, and Sandra Cinto all embody major thematic characteristics of cyberpunk; be it through reappropriating consumer and technological objects, decay and deconstruction, or crafting speculative narratives and futures through art.

CYBERPUNK AESTHETIC

Experimental illustration of the representational style of Cyberpunk - done as an analysis the blurred lines of natural (human) forms and technology for the elective class Cyborg Ecology (taught by Jason Vigneri-Beane).

ART-WORKS

APOLLO L.E.M. 277 x 263 x 263 inches steel, plywood, electronics, tools

MARS EXCURSION ROVING VEHICLE (MERV) 90 x 120 x 43 inches steel, plywood, electronics, tools

ERODED DELOREAN 45 x 166 x 73 inches Stainless steel, glass reinforced plastic, quartz crystal, pyrite, paint

FUTURE RELICS various sizes (true to size) Crushed glass and plaster

UNTITLED 2017 27.5 x 22.5 inches acrylic and pen on canvas

UNTITLED 2017 78.5 x 78.5 inches acrylic and pen on canvas

Sited beneath the Teppōsu Children’s Park in Ginza, the Cyberpunk museum heightens the experience and immersion into these artworks and artists’ narratives by isolating viewers within a series of somber subterranean spaces.

Inspired by the beauty of deconstruction within Arsham’s work, the first gallery immediately immerses occupants into a disorienting and semi-occupiable space. The retaining walls of the gallery suspend the floor more than 4’ beneath the artwork; to move from the entrance to the gallery’s exit, one must duck and navigate cut-out pathways from the underside of the artwork displays. The spikes on the outside act as a brise soleil to diffuse direct light and create a contrast in visual experience from the exterior versus the interior.

Occupants are brought further into the depths of the museum into the maze-like exhibition of Sandra Cinto’s works. The gallery is set up to create a journey for the occupant where they must navigate space and rely on the artworks and line of sight between them as a means of circulating to the most prominent central painting.

The Sachs gallery is indicated by the enormous enfilade and build-up created in both the plan and section of the museum. The entirety of this approach to the lunar lander takes place across 60’+ of elevation change to represent the process and narrative of the Sachs studio. The lunar lander is the final object of the exhibition and the museum and is meant to stand as the ultimate monument to humanity’s accomplishments in duality with technological achievement.

03. UNIFICATION CEMETERY TYPE: UG Advanced Design Studio CRITICS: Dagmar Richter + Ceren Bogac ROLE: Individual Project

Located in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in the Korean Peninsula that operates as the official border between communist North Korea and capitalist South Korea, there is an opportunity to acknowledge a common heritage and rekindle relationships over the shared ancestral funerary traditions of the once unified Korean Empire.

SUBVERTING THE DIVISION During the split of Korea into North and South individual nations, hundreds of thousands of families were separated by the divide. Many of these families completely lost connection, and with time, more and more from this split generation have passed away. To this, The Unification Cemetery provides a common burial space and accommodations to nation-torn families to come together to lay their kin to rest in a neutral jurisdiction.The unification cemetery uses the familial unit, the ceremonial burial of the dead, and the shared funerary traditions of Korea transcend this border between the nations and reconnect the nation’s people and resources.

AERIAL VIEW

CONEALING LANDSCAPE

The Unification Cemetery facilitates the many traditions and customs surrounding the funerary process in Korean culture. The various ceremonies and preparations to honor the dead require extended family gatherings for group meals and prayer. Korean cemeteries are sometimes placed in mountainous and hilly areas to exalt the spirit of the lost family member. They are seen to become one again with nature by becoming a literal part of the natural landscape. Inspired by synthetic landscape camouflage used during World War 2, the Unification Cemetery integrates a network of somber concrete caverns of gathering and mourning beneath the earth, creating a synthetic hillside. The long, gently winding paths and rolling hills of the cemetery make a monumental Taegeukgi (Korean symbol of peace and unification) from an aerial view.

ENTRY PERSPECTIVE

Two large accommodation centers flank both entrances to the cemetery.

The structure of these centers and their reception spaces, administration offices, and lodging are hidden beneath the artificial landscape of the cemeteries hills. The hospitality structure merges into the cemetery’s landscape, creating a network of tunnels, chambers, and burial space within the concrete landscapes.

CONCEPT MODEL

STRUCTURE

The overhanging artificial landscape called for the development of a structural section and unit. This structural section corresponds to each exposed structural unit and acts as the brace on which the overhanging landscape leans. This axon shows how the structure slivers slot into the primary structure of the accommodation centers.

A concrete tunnel veneer runs over the cemetery’s landscape with intensive green roof infrastructure for outdoor burial while simultaneously providing space for shrines and cremation.

04. ST. JOSEPH’S DORMITORY TYPE: UG Core Design Studio CRITICS: Beth O’Neil ROLE: Partnered Project - Team of 2

The St. Joseph’s dormitory is a high-density student dormitory for St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn, New York- located on the border of Dumbo and Brooklyn Heights. The dormitory is next to a historic landmark building and discreetly connects to it from the back while keeping its facade intact.

MACHINE FOR LIVING Using the beauty of modern high-density housing pioneered by such architects as Le Corbusier, the St. Joseph’s Dormitory aims to function as a machine for living. In this dense and communal dormitory environment, occupants are heavily enticed to engage in collaborative spaces which vastly vary in program and flexibility to fit the needs of a wide variety of students.

The center of this solid concrete facility is a dramatic skylight that pierces all seven floors into a reflecting pool at the center. This hollow core is the primary circulation ramp for the building and an intensive Greenwall and hydroponic system that allows students to farm fruits, veggies, and spices communally.

Each block of bedroom units also has “solar chimneys” that protrude from the roof like smoke-stacks; these tunnels reflect light downwards into units below.

On top of an occupiable roof ampitheater and greenhouse, the dormitory provides students communal kitchens, study spaces, reading rooms, music rooms, a library, woodshop, yoga studio, bike-repair shop, theater, and laundry facility.

Biofab. Stem Cell Clinic [ Exterior Perspectives ]

05. BIO.-FAB. CENTER

TYPE: UG Intermediate Design Studio CRITICS: Ajmal Aqtash ROLE: Individual Project

Street Perspective

In the not-so-distant future, there exists a potential reality where medical technology will advance to the point where we can heal seemingly incurable ailments. Located in Manhattan’s Chinatown, the Bio-Fabrication Center acts as an essential clinic to treat the growing populations of lower manhattan and Chinatown through the modern miracle of regenerative medicine and bio-fabrication.

HEALING + DISCOVERING

The Biological Fabrication Center was designed to serve as an archival space for the history of Biomedical technology and a meeting place for researchers and doctors worldwide to present news and discoveries on the field and development of regenerative medicine and bio fabrication. However, the heart of this facility is the patient rehabilitation pods that house patients undergoing procedures such as organ transplants or stem cell regenerative medicine. At the top of this facility is where the biomaterial is stored and produced and infrastructure for 3D Bioprinting for the growth of organs and cells for transplants and treatments.

PORTFOLIO

DANIEL ZALLES SELECTED WORKS 2018-2021

DZALLES@PRATT.EDU Copy Right 2021 by Daniel Zalles All Rights Reserved