submission for 2025 HOK Design Futures Competition
design charrette for Peter Pennoyer Architects
sample of architectural drawings created in Autodesk Revit
Critic : Winka Dubbledam
In collaboration with Taely Freeman
Nominated for Publication in Pressing Matters
Barrio Padre Mugica, Buenos Aires’ largest informal settlement, is shaped by makeshift structures, informal economies, and the constant circulation of salvaged, abandoned, and discarded construction materials. This project reimagines these materials as catalysts for transformation, drawing from Jane Bennett’s concept of “agentic assemblages.” By integrating salvaged materials into a structured salvage and redistribution network, the project reduces waste, creates jobs, and strengthens local construction practices, fostering long-term economic resilience.
A central processing hub sorts and refurbishes demolition materials, while educational programs merge formal and informal building knowledge, equipping residents with technical skills and reinforcing vernacular practices. Reimagined markets integrate salvaged
Reassembly Lines Research Studio
materials into the broader economy, shifting perceptions of waste as a resource. A pedestrian bridge extends the material assembly line beyond the barrio, physically and symbolically linking it to Buenos Aires, while also improving mobility and access to resources.
The design prioritizes openness and adaptability, using ramps and scattered volumes to create a dynamic, interconnected campus where manufacturing, education, and community life intersect. Salvaged clay bricks, recycled concrete, and other repurposed materials define the architecture, while perforated facades enhance ventilation and visibility. By bridging informal and formal economies, Reassembly Lines transforms waste into opportunity, empowering the barrio with economic, social, and architectural agency.
Full Model Photo
1/8” = 1’
Gradient of program from public to private corrosponds to change in building porosity
Model Photo
Elevation of 1/8” scale model
Model Photo
Ramp navigating volumes under roof
Section Drawing View through ramp, volume, overhead rail, and roof
Neighborhood Analysis
Barrio Padre Mugica possesses a distinct visual and material identity, shaped by its reliance on salvaged construction materials for building and repair. By analyzing this practice alongside recycling networks and accessibility challenges, we developed programmatic feedback loops that enhance the neighborhood’s access to materials and construction techniques. These strategies not only support economic autonomy from the formal city but also foster a viable and dynamic urban public space.
Elevation Study
Analysis drawing of typical informal house and its material character
Program Assemblage & Feedback Loops
Program / Material Flow Diagram
Site Actor Diagram
Diagram of various influences, points of access, and infrastructure interacting with the site within the Barrio
Model Photo Outdoor public space in relation to hanging education space. Exploded Axon Arrangement of architectural elements of ramp, roof, and volumes
The overhead material distribution system serves as a visible and functional spine for the project, facilitating the movement of salvaged materials across the site. Materials are collected from demolition sites throughout Buenos Aires and transported to the facility. Once on site, they are sorted, repaired, and redistributed along an elevated assembly line system. This system integrates with the building’s circulation and public spaces, making the flow of materials an engaging and transparent process.
The overhead rail system interacts with key architectural elements such as ramps, roofs, and open circulation areas, visually and spatially emphasizing the interconnectedness of material reuse and community activity. It highlights the transformation of waste into resources while underscoring the project’s goals of sustainability, economic opportunity, and educational engagement.
Explanatory composition of different project elements
Model Photo Model of overhead rail interacting with CLT roof structure
Overhead Material Transportation Rail
Drawing of rail path and ramp overlap
Reflected Ceiling Plan
RCP
showing roof, structure, lights, rail, and ramp
RCP Zoom-In
Interior Rendering View of material transport rail moving over public space
Section Model Photo
Section Model Photo
Section Model Photo
Full Campus Elevation
ARCH 601 | Fall 2023
Location: Manhattan, New York
Critic : Nate Hume
In collaboration with Dillon Day
Nominated for Publication in Pressing Matters
Against the Grain explores a variety of spatial strategies for combating food waste through the programmatic integration of a distillery and a public bakery, upcycling spent mash grain into a variety of baked and cereal goods.
Formally, the project engages with the complexities and opportunities of the contemporary city. By acquiring air rights, it challenges the rigid verticality of urban development, using volumetric expressions that break from convention. The design appropriates recognizable industrial forms while subverting their taxonomy to create a spatial experience that feels both novel and strangely familiar. The site emphasizes the oblique angle, extending beyond the building’s footprint to engage with the surrounding airspace. This an-
&
Comprehensive Studio
Against the Grain Urban Infill
gle not only redefines spatial relationships but also creates instinctive visual connections between interior and exterior spaces. The project further explores the urban permissibility of mass timber and thatch cladding—while drawing from historical material legacies. Both are renewable and have significantly lower embodied carbon, yet their widespread use is limited by education and supply chains. The inherent thickness of thatch allows for the concealment of construction details and the integration of secondary cladding systems, blurring the boundary between public and private space. This layering of materials creates dynamic visual and spatial connections, ensuring that the cladding does more than simply enclose—it actively contributes to accessibility and engagement at the street level.
Building Elevation Render
Full Building Section
Program distribution, relationship between public and private spaces
Organization
The movement of volume out of strict verticality creates new opportunities to engage with and experience urban spaces in unexpected ways. The rotations and orientations of various volumetric elements generate spatial overlaps, fostering interactions between programmatic elements, public and private spaces, and thresholds of interiority and exteriority. This arrangement also allows for a subversion of conventional requirements, creating a more fluid and adaptable spatial logic. Waste materials from the larger, more industrial distillery space can flow downward into the bakery, which naturally benefits from a more public-facing orientation, reinforcing connections between production, consumption, and spatial experience.
This exercise aims to create a formal composition that is read dramatically in different ways based on materiality and color through a combination of rendering techniques as well as line drawings. Through seams of different dimensions, translucent materiality, and overlapping volumes, this composition’s details shift in each view due to the hierarchy of color, tones, and materials.
Tryptic of Material Variations
ARCH 601 | Fall 2023
Location: Long Island City, New York
Unexpected Assemblage Urban Housing & Cohabitation Studio
Critic
:
Gisela Baurmann
The goal of this project is to raise awareness about the anthropocentric relationships that currently define the divide between humans and the non-human world, aiming to challenge traditional living patterns and reimagine our connection to nature. This disruption is realized through the introduction of a non-human cohabitant—the long-eared owl—serving as both a source of disruption and a catalyst for negotiation. The project challenges conventional notions of domesticity, comfort, and architecture, particularly the artificial separation of human spaces from the natural world. The concept introduces three distinct spatial typologies: owl habitats, human living spaces, and the in-between spaces that foster interaction between them, suggesting that true comfort and domesticity are rooted in the
coexistence and negotiation between species. Initial massing studies focused on vertical gestures, resulting in a design composed of interlocking volumes that accommodate both human and owl habitation. These volumes not only house functional spaces for humans, including living and communal areas, but also provide the elevated and protected environments necessary for the owls. The openair spaces between these volumes, facilitate the integration of humans and owls, offering expansive exterior areas for both to coexist. These transitional spaces allow for a dynamic overlap of human and non-human domains, blurring the line between comfort and necessity, while considering the lives and needs of both humans and their owl cohabitants.
Section Model Photo
1/8” = 1’
Physical Model
Intersection of volumes and manipulation of seams
Physical Model
Section interior view of apartment units with owl spaces
Organization
The concept of interlocking vertical volumes serves as a key design strategy, creating dynamic spatial relationships that facilitate the integration of both owl habitats and human living spaces. By stacking and connecting volumes in vertical gestures, the project generates a series of seams—points of intersection where different spaces overlap, merge, or transition. These seams become critical moments of interest, offering opportunities for spatial negotiation and interaction. The volumes themselves are designed to accommodate both human and owl needs, with the interstitial spaces between them acting as transitional zones that allow for fluid movement and integration. Volumetrically, the arrangement of these interlocking forms creates a layered experience of space.
Opening up of reading spaces, apartments, and owl
Hinged Chunk Axon
spaces
Detailed Section Public reading room volumes up to raised plinth park
Detail Section Drawing
Relationship between residences, owl spaces, and
Unit Cluster Diagram
Shaping of unit cluster by massing profile to create unique spaces in multi-family housing
and opportunities for interaction and visual encounter.
Typical Floor Plan
Apartment clusters, public outdoor spaces, owl spaces
Organization
The housing crisis has driven the demand for efficient housing blocks that can be easily subdivided and adapted to various site conditions, often at the expense of individuality. This design seeks to reinstate a sense of personal identity within the context of mass housing by creating dynamic, distinct apartments that aggregate into simpler unit clusters, allowing for both individuality and functional coherence.
Unit Plan 04
Plan of unit 04 and its aggregation with unit 05 to create an efficient rectangle
Unit Plan 05
Plan of unit 05 and its aggregation with unit 04 to create an efficient rectangle
Vibrant Artifact
Ecological Design Seminar
Critic : Barry Wark Fall 2023
In collaboration with Kitachon Pimsri-Bradley
The design of this facade system aims to bring forward concepts of weather and time into forward consciousness to help better understand their significance and hyperobjectivity in relation to ecology and architecture. To achieve this goal we analyzed the way that water is directed through gutters and downpipes. Rather than hide the process of weathering formed from water, we wanted to celebrate and control it. Water is channeled down through open pipes into new copper ‘gargoyles’ which fill with water and spill over the base of the facade. This along with other copper elements and geometric advantages, creates a vibrant display of staining as a result of the oxidation of copper and the path of water over time.
Elevation
Vibrant Artifact Day 0 Case Study Elevation Analysis and diagram of water and copper oxidation on brick
Elevation Detail
Expected results of oxidized copper staining on white marble over the course of 50 years
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Critic : Eduardo Rega
Nominated for Publication in Pressing Matters
Relief & Forum
Urban Infill & Comprehensive Studio
Relief and Forum is envisioned as a vibrant platform to amplify the voices of the Chinatown community, providing a space for both the publication of news and the sharing of perspectives from a grassroots standpoint. By producing a variety of media—print materials, audio, and visual broadcasts—the collective will offer critical reporting, education, and insights not only for the Chinatown community but also for the broader city of Philadelphia. Beyond its role as a media hub, the center will function as a community gathering point, where Chinatown residents can come together to learn, engage, and organize activism, fostering solidarity and empowerment within the neighborhood. The site plan for the media center goes beyond just functional space allocation, seek-
ing to transform the entire site into a unified relief composition. This approach carefully arranges exterior and enclosed spaces, considering how they relate to the surrounding viaduct and the urban landscape. By using the site as a holistic design element, the spaces are thoughtfully arranged to create fluid transitions between indoor and outdoor areas, providing areas for gathering, demonstration, and education. These spaces will be flexible, allowing for a range of activities, from lectures and workshops to social events and community meetings. The design incorporates green spaces to offer a sense of refuge and environmental relief amidst the urban setting, providing residents with a peaceful and engaging public environment.
View showcasing the interior programming of the spaces as well as their relationship to the larger site relief
Section Axon Render
Site Relief Render Building and hardscape are organized together as a composition; buildings interact both hardscape
Plan Drawing
Program organization; building bisected by social stair allowing for access to viaduct by community members
Section Drawing
Drawing to illustrate interior conditions, relationship to hardscape, and access to the viaduct
Physical Media Node
This node of the project is focused on the production and distribution of phyiscal media throughout the neighborhood. Its connection to the viaduct provides an unobstructed route to distribute material on foot.
Overhead Material Transportation Rail
This node productes digital media relating to neighborhood issues, local politics, and organization efforts. The composition of the project allows for additional spaces to be added ad hoc while still maintaining the visual character of the site.
Philadelphian Obfuscation Sculptural Instillation
Critic : Ryan Palider Fall 2022
In collaboration w/ Conrad Tse & Sydney Cleveland
This study explores how a complete composition can can possess multiple readings through the codependence of differing geometric qualities such as the relationships between the solid and grid, the curvilinear and rectilinear, and areas of balance and unbalance throughout the form of the object. The solid and grid interact with each other to create the total form and this relationship is inconsistent as you move around the object, creating multiple figural qualities. The angled geometries and cantilevers aim to distort the sense of balance of the composition and are resolved in other places by the orthogonality of the grid. The study also developed a tertiary system of graphics and relief to add another dimension of new readings.
Contrasting view showing the overall project, the relationship between solid and grid, and underlying geometries
Silhouette Axon
Installation Photograph Exterior Photo
Installation Photograph Assembly demonstration
ARCH 501 | Fall 2022
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Critic : Ryan Palider
Nominated for Publication in Pressing Matters
08
Uncanny Binaries
Philadelphia Art Museum Extension
This project seeks to create an architecture of in-betweenness and codependency, where seemingly opposing forces—massiveness and lightness, solid and void, public and institutional, object and field—are brought into dialogue. By leveraging these contrasts, the design generates a composition that invites multiple interpretations, allowing for layered and dynamic readings.
Central to the project is the role of public space, which emerges as both a mediator and an interstitial zone between distinct programmatic elements. Positioned at their point of collision, this space enables occupants to engage with contrasting programs through visual and spatial exchange. Beyond its role as a connective element, the public space also restores access to the water’s edge, a condition otherwise absent along the riverbank.
Materiality plays a crucial role in dismantling conventional notions of the museum. The use of rough corten steel demystifies the institutional presence, making the space more inviting and accessible to people of all backgrounds. At the same time, the material serves as an homage to Philadelphia’s industrial heritage, referencing its history of steel production and reinforcing the project’s ethos of democratization. As a whole, this project operates as an assemblage of opposites, where traditional institutions and public space merge to form a new hybrid spatial condition. By blurring the boundaries between program, form, and materiality, the design resists singular interpretation, instead existing within a state of tension—between oppositional forces, between institutional and civic realms, and within the fluid spaces of in-betweenness.
View From River Building in context of river, waterworks, PMA
Model Photo on Site Building on site in relation to context buildings
Choisy Drawing Worms eye drawing of interior spaces
Section Drawing
Section drawing showing gallery layout, interior consequences of form
Front View
View from approach; cleft move indicating entrance & movement toward waterfront
Model Photo Split; gallery & public space
Other Work Competition & Internships
Trendscape
HOK Design Futures Competition Entry
Our entry for the HOK Futures Design Competition aimed to create a new iconic public space that represents Philadelphia. Our proposal strengthens the axis between the Philadelphia Museum of Art and City Hall, transforming this important urban route into a vibrant space that channels foot traffic and offers both botanical gardens and semi-enclosed spaces for a variety of public uses. The enclosed spaces house rainwater collection, storage, and processing systems, which are used for irrigation, water features, and public education on sustainability and rainwater collection. The proposal also features iconic, recognizable 2D facades designed to be striking both in person and in digital formats, much like other global landmarks. At the heart of the design are volumes ded-
icated to rainwater collection and distribution. These volumes are responsible for gathering, processing, storing, and distributing rainwater throughout the site, allowing it to function independently from the city’s water supply. The collected water is used in various elements of the space, including the botanical gardens, green walls, water features, and splash fountains. Integrated within a CLT structure, these rainwater infrastructure volumes become visible elements of the design, providing opportunities for public interaction. This approach not only promotes sustainability but also encourages public awareness through engaging, interactive experiences with the infrastructure, making sustainability both visible and accessible to the public.
In collaboration with Dillon Day
Spring 2025
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Full Site Plan
Volumes, outdoor space, botanical gardens
Plan Zoom-In
Semi-enclosed outdoor space providing open access and shelter for various activities
Plan Zoom-In
This area features educational material about the water collection, distrution efforts,
Plan Zoom-In
Botanical gardens utilizing stored rainwater for irrigation
Green Facade
Green Facade Irrigation
Gutter Filter / Pump Distributor
Pump Misters
Digital Icons
This diagram breaks down various visual principles that lead to the proliferation of online trends and icons. These methods were categorized and deployed throughout the design to maximize both the physical and digital impacts of this site.
to frame views of the surrounding mountains, particularly from the living room and rear portico. The lower level is designed with fluid circulation, allowing movement around or
alongside the landscape—copper developing a rich patina, wood silvery with time, and stone weathering naturally, allowing the cabin to age harmoniously within its environment.
Location: Bayonne, NJ
For the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
Bayonne Bridge Park
Artifact Park & Educational Kiosk
This project envisions an informational kiosk and artifact park within the larger Dennis P. Collins Park, designed to celebrate the Bayonne Bridge and the engineering achievement behind its elevation, which allowed larger cargo ships to access Newark Bay.
A central feature of the park is a preserved section of the bridge that was cut away during the raising process. This artifact is mounted on a pedestal, carefully positioned to reflect its original orientation when it was still an active structural component of the bridge. A meandering path branches off from the main park route, guiding visitors along an axis that visually aligns the artifact with the bridge itself, creating a strong spatial and conceptual connection between the two.
Adjacent to this path, an informational kiosk provides historical context and details about the bridge’s construction and elevation. Positioned slightly off the main circulation route, the kiosk allows for extended reading and engagement without disrupting foot traffic. Additionally, a larger circular space offers seating and a vantage point for observing both the bridge and the artifact.
The surrounding landscape design enhances the experience by integrating native flora while strategically screening an existing park restroom. This intervention not only frames the monument but also creates one of the few public spaces in the park that brings visitors closer to the water’s edge, strengthening the relationship between the site and the bay.
Summer 2023
Park Plan Path, Landscaping, Bridge Artifact, Informational Kiosk
Artifact Elevation Pedestal, Scale, Orientation
Informational
Kiosk Diagram
Diagram of Bayonne Bridge
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Rittenhouse Office Tower
Revit Designed Office Tower in PHL
This building was developed as part of an exercise to gain proficiency in Revit, under the instruction of licensed architects at the University of Pennsylvania. The project began with a conceptual massing study in Rhino, which was then imported into Revit for further refinement and detailed development. Throughout the process, a range of Revit tools were utilized, including advanced 3D modeling techniques, the creation and customization of families, and the organization of comprehensive sheet sets to document the building in a professional and realistic manner.
A key aspect of the exercise was the iterative refinement of drawings through instructor feedback. Each week, instructors provided detailed redlines using Bluebeam, which were systematically addressed and incorporated
into the evolving design. This workflow closely mirrored real-world architectural practice, reinforcing critical skills in documentation, coordination, and revision management. The project not only served as a technical learning experience but also emphasized the importance of precision, clarity, and adaptability in architectural drawing and modeling.
