Emily Acosta 2024 Portfolio

EMILY ACOSTA

APPELT VISITOR CENTER

(2023)

with Evelyn Esquivel

APPELT VISITOR CENTER AT TEXAS A&M

Since its transition from a military school to the first public institution of higher education in the state in 1976, Texas A&M University has seen a lot of change. Today, aggies from all over are seen graduating from this tier one institution every year. Similarly, to the history of A&M, this vision for the new TAMU Visitor Center embodies a sense of innovation and continuous evolution. Supported by an exposed steel structure that is guaranteed to last to see more of its growth, this building is amodern house to an old history. Having views of their future home since they approach, the journey of the future aggies begins immediately after they park. Beginning from the garage, future aggies are greeted with a welcoming smile and refreshments as they pass through the Visitor Center Cafe facing directly towards the building. The ground surrounding this structure begins to make its contribution to a seamless flow by providing continuity to the urban texture, working as a link onto the site and guiding the future aggies towards the entrance.

CONCEPT

We began this project by gathering some conclusions about the clients wishes for the project. Some of the most prominent terms used by the client were seamless flow, immerse and dynamic experience, and staff. The client expressed the need for a circulation path that was intuitive and serves the flow of the tour, a space that provides the visitor with different types of experiences and “wow factors,” and to consider the staff, providing them with a space that encourages collaboration as well as comfort. We combined these with our own values, these being public service, aesthetics, and sustainability, and so we began to develop our initial ideas for a scheme.

Firstly, we analyzed the site and its condition and determined that the location was a big opportunity to showcase some of the best views of campus, having some familiar landmarks in front and around the site. We determined that some other aspects we should consider were the sun path, the noise from the surrounding context (these being the train, bus lanes and traffic), and the opportunity to bring in some vegetation to the site.

We came up with a radial scheme with a continuous path of circulation that connected all of the major spaces to one another, separating them into 3 basic programmatic schemes, the offices, the lobby, and the visitor experience. This provided us with the seamless flow that we wanted to implement into the project as well as allowed us to direct our views onto campus and the context, it also allowed us the opportunity to extend our building footprint as required by increasing the radius of each segment as needed.

FLOOR PLAN

FLOOR PLAN

WALL DETAIL

SECTIONS

WALL DETAIL

CURTAIN WALL CONNECTION

MODULAR INFILL (2022)

with Laney Lanter

MODULARITY IN GRACIA

This project investigates the densely packed district of Gracia. We began by conducting a study on the usage of available hardscape rooftops which highlighted a gap in the urban fabric. The city of Gracia is known for being an Urban Heat Island, caused by the man-made surfaces in this dense area. As we see, the amount of rooftop area being used as green areas is close to only about 15%. Our proposal micronizes from building scale into individual units as we are able to group these modules in a way that maximizes and creates terraces by the manipulation of orientation and placement of the unit itself. Essentially creating a green amidst the gray.

The shifting of modules creates a relationship between indoor and outdoor space creating new moments within our structure. By restricting the module unit, we can actually provide more flexibility in the assembly process, allowing us to both fulfill program requirements and create circulation. The community has the freedom to use each module as best fulfills their programming requirements.

SITE ANALYSIS

UNDER-UTILIZED

SCALE 1:2500M

UNDER-UTILIZED

SCALE 1:2500M

KIT OF PARTS

STEEL CONNECTORS

CLT PARTITION WALLS

SLIDING DOOR

FIXED POLYCARBONATE PANELS

FLOOR PLANS

F-1 -3.0M

F1

F3

F2

3

MOVE TOWER (2022)

with Sunjin Lee and Ashley Kun

Mobility Optimization and Vehicle Effiency Tower

At the moment we walk from a street into a building without thinking about the boundary between the two. Sometimes we bring our transportation with us, we wheel or bicycles into our homes, park electric scooters in class, and drive our cars into garages. With the rise of electrification and growing technologies that change the way we commute, live, and work, we must ask ourselves how this will impact the building typology of high-rise towers.

The goal of this project which is located in downtown Los Angeles is to create a new typology based on the rise of technologies such as the GITA, personal robots and delivery drones. They are a growing number of these devices everyday and soon it will be the norm to travel alongside an AI-aided vehicle. The question is, how does this future look like? In our proposal we will be removing the outdated model of having stairs in buildings and replace them with solely ramps, elevators, and chutes. This will allow for the simultaneous circulation of all human and non-human beings. We were inspired by the video of 1950s San Francisco, seeing how free-flowing and seamless transportation used to be. Now the new form of movement within our tower will replace the rigid grid that we will be challenging.

PROCESS

Many assume the development of high technology would only affect the industry in relation to STEM. However, the rise of artificial intelligence transformed the way we as people view and analyze the world, even in the world of arts. Just as a human brain would process information, artificial intelligence can conjure ideas with the right guidance from humans. We used Midjourney in order to help formulate our concepts for the interior and exterior of the building. We were able to ask a series of prompts or statements that would generate images to guide us through our design iterations. There were two distinct stages of this AI-assisted design process during our project.

The first stage consisted of the intentional use of architectural concepts to produce a desired artifact through Midjourney. We started off by inputing architectural keywords in order to create an abstract idea that would define our tower. For example, undulating and delaminating, voids, light and shadow, and tensile were some of the initial keywords we chose to direct the AI bot. These overarching architecture concepts slowly developed into a more detailed images with the focus on spatial language were created which in turn helped with the 3d modeling process of our artifact.

The second stage of AI-assisted design process weighed on the more logistical side of the project; this was the phase of the project where we decided on the focus of mobility. The MOVE Tower was to prototype the use of AI in regulating traffic inside and outside of the building, we wanted to design a tower that had an emphasis on ramps and blurred boundaries between parking spots and inhabitable spaces. We used prompts such as “A tall skyscraper in urban city that focuses on research of mobility of humans and non-humans that has multiple modes of circulation such as ramps, elevators, stairs outside and inside that transport autonomous vehicles, people, and drones connecting the city traffic inside and outside and around the building”

Midjourney inspired a strong architectural façade proposal that seamlessly combined different components together. This workflow opened the door to many potential design iterations and allowed us to explore multiple options. The biggest benefit of using an AI was that we had unlimited possibilities by using different phrases and even blending two images together to generate a whole new image.

BESSIE COLEMAN AVIATION SCHOOL (2020)

with Ximena Calderon and Isabela Ferrero

In honor of Bessie’s impact and dream this aviation school is built in Atlanta, Texas, where she was born. It’s built for women that have similar dreams of becoming a pilot. Our project for the Bessie Coleman Women Aviation and Simulation Center is located in Atlanta, Texas and consists of an education and exhibition facility. It was inspired by the work of various architects whose purpose was to convey a purer composition of structures through mass and abstraction, yet still implementing strong ideas through ground condition and material.

Guided by Lazlo Moholy-Nage’s artwork Large Railway Painting. This painting adopts a schematic composition of interpenetrating planes in which letters and geometric shapes are mixed. After analyzing the artwork, the results were both beautiful and simplistic but in the actual site we challenged it by adding more lines and intersections, contrasting with the clean geometries outside that area. This resulted in us using the pattern into the site and added more intersections with the same intersecting planes through rotation and repetition of the artwork. It was primarily focused on clean geometric forms and balanced visual compositions.

ELEVATIONS

ELEVATIONS

AVIATION SCHOOL

FLOOR PLANS

AUDITORIUM

OTHER WORKS

GROTTO ARTIFACT (2021)

Individual Work

The proposal explores the potential of grottos as a spatial strategy for integrating nature in a more immersive way in the built environment. Instead of creating a boundary, it is an exploration of a transition to a post-anthropocentric environment via the grotto. These spaces sit on the threshold of architecture and landscape, allowing the coexistence of humans and non-humans.

The geometry and ornament of grottos facilitate moss and other plants to grow in its cracks and crevices by exposing them to natural elements. By entering the grotto, you are acknowledging the dichotomy between inside and outside, nature and artificial, and as Leonardo Da Vinci said “...fear and desire – fear of the threatening dark grotto, and a desire to see whether there was any marvelous thing within it”.

To begin the design process, I started an investigation on grottoes as a typology. Looking at various historical references mainly dating back to the 16th and 17th century. I selected a few to conduct a formal analysis and discovered characteristics and thematic elements in common. We are able to see that the architects used a strict formal strategy to articulate space. Such as creating axial symmetry and rhythmic repetition. We can also see a radial arrangement coming from the centers of parts in the plan. By conducting the analysis, I then took the information to create a new object classified as a grotto. Instead of creating a formal object as the previous examples, I took the analysis and cut pieces of the plans then put them together as a collage to create an informal object that uses a radial arrangement centered around the existing cave entrance. Using these red lines from analysis as a language unifying the parts to whole in a new artifact created from collage.

1 - ENTRY

2 - CLASSROOM

3 - LAB

4 - OFFICE

5 - FIELD HOUSE

6 - LIBRARY

7 - STORAGE

OTHER WORKS

BIRCH LAMP (2022)

Individual Work