Graduate Architect Portfolio 2021

David Cadena

Portfolio of work from the Aeolian to the Oceanic 2021 Sydney, Australia

Featured Projects: 1. Pandemic Memorial 2. Immersion 3. Totem 4. Ram 5. Kheirourgos, Scenography 6. Tony’s Utopian Dream 7. Ashes’ Urns 8. Sports Complex 9. Workers Auditorium

Pandemic Memorial Space for remembrance and Landscape Redemption

Architizer’s drawing competition Finalist 09.2020 Sydney, Australia As a historical site of first contact, a place of immigration and a tourism destination, Sydney Cove (Circular Quay) acts as a key interface between Australia and the rest of the world. The isolated island continent rendering its inhabitants vulnerable to foreign diseases brought ashore.

A smallpox epidemic in 1789 believed to originate from the First Fleet’s arrival was responsible for the death of an estimated 70% of the aboriginal population in the Sydney region, who had no previous exposure to the virus.

On the 19th of March 2020, the 290m long cruise-ship “Ruby Princess” docked in the Overseas Passenger Terminal (OPT) at 11:00am, delivering 2700 passengers. About 662 people linked to the ship tested positive for COVID-19, comprising 10% of the infections in Australia at the time and triggering a pandemic.

a wild coastal pool emerges

The site of the OPT and its related cruise ship industry have become a symbol of the pandemic spread in Australia, a capitulation to private profit and interest over the public good. Our proposal aims to return this space to the public, ceasing this mass tourism activity and re-designing the shoreline (through interpretation of pre-settlement landscape), submerging the existing structure as a landscape memorial to the pandemic.

Landscape operation/ Cruisehip Eviction

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Immersion

Re-worlding Post Cruise-ship Scenarios Graduation project USYD 2020 Awarded Inaugural Brian Patrick Keirnan Prize by AIA in collab. with Architect A. Portier 02.2020 Sydney, Australia Existing Landscape

Proposed Landscape Location Plan

Early vision/ animated

Circular quay can be read as the City and Harbour’s key interface and Sydney’s most iconic public space. In a city that markets and celebrates its relationship to a Harbour, the project offers more than the opportunity of approach, proposing instead sensory immersion.

The proposal responds to the particular context of Circular Quay, lowering the existing waterfront sea wall and repurposing the concrete platform and structure of the Overseas Passenger’s Terminal to form an underwater artificial reef. This artificial reef, home to marine life, will be observable from Immersion. The proposal takes the shape of a floating island, detached from the shoreline and partially submerged.

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Transverse section

Transverse section

long section

Section Detail

Located opposite, the high platform and grand stairs of the Sydney Opera House were designed with influence from Mayan pyramids, aiming to “free and raise buildings and people above everyday life”.

Extending this narrative, immersion proposes an inverted monumental gesture - a playful counterpoint to a site seeming to call for an iconic object.

‘Immersion’ reconsiders the conventional approach of cultural spaces in Sydney. Offering an immersive experience of the quay below sea level, and drawing critical attention to the Harbour as a living element within the City. The project offers a space within the public domain to consider the Harbour’s role in the life of the city, and its future, both ecological and economic, in the face of climate change in the Anthropocene.

landscape operations diagram/ re-purposing of existing infrastructure

Totem is a primitive initiative for efficient workspace structures inspired in rocket launching platforms.

Totem

MegaCore/ Floodable building Typology Experimental Tech. Research Studio

Totem creates a landscape as a podium that may transform into a water reservoir when sea level rise allows.

11.2019 Sydney, Australia

As sea levels hunt traditional architecture dryness, Totem imagines rocket-like architecture, going upwards, limitless, flying up into the sky. no skyscrapers but water tanks, humid and mouldy (Co2 sequestrators), reservoirs.

General plan in relation to Barangaroo shorelins

transverse section

In this pages, Totem is tested upon sacred land .

As a place holder - “preCrown tower,” Totem would retain its environment and construct a cave-like ecology of ground spaces masked by the traditional productivist office typology.

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Section through floodable space

Eccentric Megacore Ressembling a Rocket launching Platform, the core tapers towards the top.

The connection to the public rvealm in Ground-level is larger and capable of higher operational volume. At higher levels a geometrical reduction takes place alleviating top loads and momentum.

Perforations on the outer shell (south) were inspired by Gaudi’s cateary structural resources which optimise load transfer organically.

notions of plan variations at different levels

Ground plan

Exploded Axonometric

Ram

Topographies of memory and void Potentials Sustainable Landscape Research Studio 05, 2018 Angelholm, Sweden

there’s little hope.

Immersed in an endless chain of unsustainable frequencies, the struggle for production continues its shameless creation of voids in the urban fabric.

Undoubtedly, Angelholm joins an infinite web of complexity that may have left this former industrial town in the middle of an era that tends to go faster than its capacity to cope. Rushed decisions though, like the demolition of a former Slaughterhouse Facility, have created precious empty space.

In front of Central station, first thing you might see after stepping out is a pebble mountain, product of current developers’ excavations.

An exciting artifice that inspires an alternative to a rather flattened topography: the topography of memory that has been inhaled by a modernization vacuum running tirelessly since about 100 years. Today, while we dream of alternatives, builders are about to break ground.

topographic memory de-layering

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Jeremy Rifkin, Author of “The 3rd Industrial Revolution”, argues that around 2050, our network society will reach its threshold. Similar to the car revolution explosion, Cities will lack space for the ubiquitous internet of things, water internet, electricity internet and so on.

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Pierre Belanger, landscape architect author of “Going Live: from states to systems”, highlights the transit from an “intercity” society to an internet commonality.

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[RAM] Towards a topography of memory, is an attempt to simulate an artificial landscape that pretends an injection of organic life and death into a perceived void. A machine for producing an imagined density developed through the collaborative commons tools. Wiki houses, Massive silos and box culverts, are grafted into land fills. an industrial scale recycling facility inspired by Dutch “Harvest Map”, Australian “Reverse Garbage”; overall, an illusion, A simulation, a wait space reminiscent of a Random Access Memory Behaviour.

Urban Section Fragment

Kheirourgos, Scenography Speculative model produced for “Time, Space, Existence”

Venice Biennale 2016: “Reporting from the Front” 06, 2016 Venice, Italy Exhibitor

[April,1975] MARIA REICHE (Nazca Lines researcher) walks the Peruvian desert with an aluminum stair on her shoulder.

-Later BRUCE CHATWIN (Nomad- Photographer) captures a picture of REICHE, who is suspended in a precarious equilibrium staring at the horizon from the top of the step ladder.

[Flash Forward] YEAR 2016. VENICE BIENNALE. AUDITORIUM ALEJANDRO ARAVENA(CURATOR), Points at REICHE’S picture: “for those of us standing on the ground looking at the desert, It’s just stones, it’ s random gravel but from the height of the stairs, this woman finds a new point of view, a new perspective from where stones become birds, flowers, trees.”

1:1 Model exhibited at Tin Sheds Gallery

Maria Reiche Photographed by Bruce Chatwin

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Internal Truth. Silicon + foam filling of Platonic plaster cube

[fade in] A still-frame captures a pendulant mass swinging at the rhythm of chirping metals. A moment of potential energy. [Undefined], could be an instant away from release, collapse. Might be seconds before a successful coupling. [close up] SUBJECTED BODY Zooming on this landscape of metals and plastics, a body is being taken by a surrounding network of bending wires. A species of tethering machine composed of simple mechanisms of control: levers, spirals, inclined planes and wedges. An apparatus measuring, separating and at the same time unifying and reassembling. [wide shot] HIATUS The apparatus tries to couple while dismembering, dissecting the subjected body. Simultaneously a space, a Hiatus is emerging. [fade out] The body oscillates in a state of suspension, a zone of indifference. In that caesura, a Bare Life is emerging as the centre and fundament of the system.

1:1 shipped model exhibited at Palazzo Mora

Tony’s Utopian dream Community Architecture in the age of Selfishness

Sustainable Architecture Research Studio 12.2014 Sydney, Australia

An opportunity to “imagine a city connected with bike paths, trams and public transport at a density that encourages neighbourhood identification and engagement, walking to shops and facilities with people and places genuinely connected in both time and place… in a post car world” In this context, Rockdale is approached as an operating urban lab. On this page: experimental diagrams that examined the current state of the city and explored the possibilities of urban life production through community interaction and re-empowering existing landscapes.

“Market Up-Cycling “

In an omni-present marketing environment, this urb the celebration of commercial landscapes, for instanc an effective social hub. Punctual landscape manipulat would rescue underground qualities and transform th recreational centre.

“Awakening

Simulation of the d through a planned structure with view operation aims to c observation deck. O scape and re-activa

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Ideas for the densification of human interaction and space recovery, originated during walks that revealed a detailed view of landscape precedents in Rockdale. On- field drawings became an absortion medium to understand relationships between urban space and people in a complex environment.

an scale simulation, advocates for ce, a 7/11 shop that already works as tions like the gasoline tank recycling, his hard corner in an urban pool and

Slept Ecologies ”

dynamics between time and action in the production of public realm invasion of a sleeping space: An abandoned private park . A mobile ws to the city will become an after-hours Child care facility , a landscape connect the ground level with an inhabitable terrace that will serve as Over time, activities and living beings will start blending with the landating a currently dormant ecology.

Temporal progression of a private park awakening

Ashes Urns Terrace

Space for reflection and spawning of urban ecologies Developed in collab. with Camila Gaviria Architects 06.2011 Bogota, Colombia

a. Added volume, 3 visitation rooms b. Original volume, access to the cafe- urban life c. Memorial garden: Reticular system green roof d. Vitral art work: Integrated and celebrated in the proposal. e. Space for Reflection

7/9 The competition consisted of renovating, adding visitation rooms and ashes urns space to the Funeral building attached to San Juan de Avila Church. a building listed as architectural heritage of Bogota.

Our proposal comprised a new volume on top of the original structure, reducing costs by preserving the pre-existing building structural and historical qualities.

On top of the new Volume, a memorial garden, containing the Urns for ashes was proposed as a green terrace that serves as space for reflection. pocket park and celebrates urban life. A grid of concrete prefabricated modules that will evolve according to

Cali Cali Country CountryClub Club

Speculative Model at Time, Space, Existence. Venice Sports Complex Biennale 2016.

Developed in collab. with 06.2016 CamilaItaly Gaviria Architects Venice, Exhibitor at Venice Biennale “Reporting from the Front” 07, 2011 Cali, Colombia

Located in a vast tropical environment,. the building is a labyrinth of terraces where wind and birds fly throughout perforated structures.

Cali’s 21 degree celsisus average temprature and humid nature during the whole year, allow for the creation of an ecology where plants and topography take over architectures.

Over time, a spontaneous layer of camouflage may grow over concrete. Birds

Long section / bowling room

Birds eye view

bowling room impression/ space depth and linearity

cafe terrace impression/ birds viewing platform

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Bowling room and terrace section detail

Landscape, massive trees and natural elements, essence of this place, get inside the building through voids and light pockets; the spaces are permeable and allow the nature to participate of the interior’s architectural compositions.

Brisoleils and other architectural elements work as light filters that ensure optimal conditions of inhabitability.

Worker’s Auditorium Workers Architecture Auditorium “Community in Palcesar Industrial Complex

the Age of Selfishness” Developed in collab. with Camila Gaviria Architects Sydney, Australia

12.2014 Sustainable Architecture Research 07, 2011 Cesar, Colombia

Transvese section

Long Section

The small auditorium, has place for 40 people. The project consists of events room and toilets faciIities.

Permeable facades. calculated voids and substractions contribute to optimal comfort conditions of the space.

An urban precinct takes shape. allowing for a pedestrian scale of activities. This building grouping, humanises a section of the Oil Plant and celebrates the local feeling and people’s attitude. Animals from the region visit. The landscape operations, allow for a re-connection with wild and domestic life. Small voids, provide controlled sunlight. The concrete frames block criticall sun rays at specific hours during the day.

Plan Section

9/9 written and collated by David Cadena. 2021 Sydney, Australia

@david.hcg @sadd_collective

david.hcg@gmail.com m. 0452160148

for more work reels please visit: imaginarydisciplinesinstitute.org