Fatima Castro 2023 Portfolio

FATIMA CASTRO undergraduate portfolio

fatimaiiicastro@gmail.com

FATIMA CASTRO

Undergraduate Student

EXPERIENCE

SWEET PARIS BARISTA

JUNE 2022 – AUGUST 2022, COLLEGE STATION

- Prepared and served related food and drink items, including coffee and espresso drinks.

- Followed HACCP criteria and specifications for quality food-service operations when handling food.

KYUSHU UNIVERSITY LSPA TA

DECEMBER 2021 – JANUARY 2022, COLLEGE STATION

- Developed lesson plan to help broaden the understanding of american architectural history and modern architecture.

- Helped teach programs such as Rhino and Adobe Suite programs to develop Precedent Analyses.

BABYSITTER

JUNE 2017 - PRESENT, EDINBURG

- Provided children with nurturing, safe environments to promote emotional, social, and intellectual growth.

- Helped children complete homework and special assignments daily to support academic performance.

EDUCATION

TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

GRADUATING MAY 2024, COLLEGE STATION

- GPA 3.7, Bachelor of Environmental Design major, Sustainable Design and Planning minor, and AIAS Treasurer.

College

www.linkedin.com/in/fatineux/

https://www.facebook.com/fatimeuks/

WORLD SCHOLARS

GRADUATED MAY 2020, EDINBURG

- GPA 3.98, Ranked Top 10% of my class, I’ve received an IC3 Digital Literacy Certification, A-Honor Roll throughout high school, NHS member, IB Diploma Candidate, and an AP Scholar.

LEADERSHIP

TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

- AIAS Executive Treasurer

- Kyushu University LSPA Teachers Assistant

WORLD SCHOLARS

- TSA Mentor/ Leader

INTERESTS

Architecture Philosophy

Reading Hiking

Camping

Running Drawing

Jewelry-Making

SKILLS

Communication Skills

Passion for Animals

Great Eye for Detail

Computer Literacy

Works Well Under Pressure

Conflict Management

TABC Certified

Food Handlers Licensed

https://fatineux.myportfolio.com/

Adobe Suites Design

AutoCAD Rhino Revit Sketchup

Keyshot V-ray

Houdini

WITHIN THE SCAPE

The purpose of this project was to produce a figure from the autonomous components of an American Grain Elevator. Establishing a patchwork of heterogeneous parts places an emphasis on materiality, degradation, and ambiguity of figure and ground. In deterritorializing the typical anthropocentric subject, the form produced vital materiality through its complex interrelationships of parts. In reframing the idea of the fold as a continuous material manifestation, the use of texture, degradation, and seed repository throughout emphasizes the ambiguity between form and ground.

The interior of the figure relates to the external context with a continuation of the material hierarchy. The familiar anthropogenic material is disrupted by natural wilds of organic matter, which deterritorialize humans at the center. The loss of human imposed ordering reflects a shift from machinery to biochemical surface. The leftover human influence of the orthogonal organization is deteriorated by organic matter which has developed its own sense, to produce messy-self organization. This growth originates from an anthropocentric perspective of nature. As the form was intended as an exhibition of idealized natural growth. Human imposed control established a display area for the highly romanticized picturesque growth, humans often associate with nature. Removing humans from the center produced natural wilds of growth that transitioned into unfamiliar vegetation. This new growth is not typically recognized by humans as belonging to their idealized vision of nature. While human influence is still somewhat recognizable, the imposition of control on nature produced outcomes not intended to serve them. Spatial zones are no longer designated by a formal organization, but rather, microbiomes operate as an ecology of parts. The decimation of this formal organization produced a cavernous shell containing the leftover remnants of human design at the base of the figure. The build-up of rubble and trash isolates machinery left behind by humans. These pristine, fully anthropocentric elements are impenetrable and their isolation produces a sterile environment.

WITHIN THE SCAPE

Both the unfamiliar vegetation and the lack of organic matter on machine parts, detail different outcomes of attempts to control nature. The first fights back against the imposed control to self-organize, and the second is so overly controlled that nature ceases to exist in that biome. The transitions between each microbiome and the variety of growth that occurs outline the shift from an anthropocentric focus, with heavy inorganic machinery, to a biochemical active surface, with self-organizing organic matter. The object relates to its external context and is surrounded by a desolate environment with some semblance of vegetation. The lack of picturesque growth emphasizes the human desire to display their romanticized view of nature. The relationship between figure and ground is reiterated in the interior by posing the question:

what constitutes a landscape?

Landscapes are normally thought of as being a horizontal plane with a variety of vegetation operating as an ecosystem. Since our object’s form is ambiguous from the ground, the figure itself can be perceived as ground, and the vertical growth and natural wilds that self-organize throughout the interior could be considered a landscape. The multitude of microbiomes each constitute a part of the interior and the ecology of parts, interrelated to one another, produce an ecosystem. In deterritorializing the human influence, orthogonal elements and organization are decontextualized and rearticulated as the basis for the organic matter’s self-organization. The transition from picturesque growth to unfamiliar nature to pristine machinery is generated from over-imposed human control. The variety of vegetation is the subsequent response from nature, with self-organization produced from natural wilds.

WITHIN THE SCAPE

WITHIN THE SCAPE

PERMEABILITY IN EAST AUSTIN

This project is a dense mixed-use building in East Austin centered around the concept of permeability. As Austin has rapidly grown over the past few decades, more and more of the city has been covered up by concrete and other impervious surfaces, which can result in the mismanagement of stormwater drainage, causing flooding and the erosion of the topsoil in the city. The runoff from impervious surfaces also moves too quickly to be absorbed and filtered by the soil, leaving Austin’s aquifers with less available recharge surface, threatening the supply of drinking water and the flow of local springs.

The City of Austin now requires new development to set aside a percentage of land to be left as permeable surfaces, but this has the perverse effect of reducing density throughout the city. Our proposal is centered around a rainwater collection system that gathers and directs the rainwater from the roof sectionally down through the building and into a series of sunken rain gardens below, capturing all of the rainfall runoff and allowing for density and permeability simultaneously.

This is all in an effort to regenerate the relationship a community and the overall fabric of the city has with the environment. To create spaces for plant life that aren’t limited or organized strictly by the incentives of city code and policies, but are based on the natural flux of storm runoff and water circulation. This project aims to shift the perspective on vegetative retention systems and how they interact with our buildings and the autonomy they should have in architectural spaces.

PERMEABILITY IN EAST AUSTIN

PERMEABILITY IN EAST AUSTIN

ASSEMBLAGE

Using a series of algorithmic processes, we can decode the relations of parts and make substitutions to create new assemblies with non-continuous readings of whole, lying between a full autonomy of parts and continuous clarity of the whole. The flattened ontological synthesis provided by many modern machine learning models provides methods for recombination or refiguring wholes, but often struggles with the part-to-part relations. By discretizing the solution space, we can flash between the mesh-whole and its tiled parts, using substitution models of machine learning and perceptual similarity to draw relations between parts and typological, familiar sets.

The works of Bernd and Hilla Becher established a new objectivity from collections of industrial and agricultural objects. These stable objective photographic works stand as a base for disassembly and reconfiguration in the early works of this studio, like their 3D counterparts of scanned abandoned agricultural objects in the field to be used in the later portions of this studio. The process of disassembly defamiliarizes the original object toward a flat reading of parts, without hierarchy. Conditional machine learning models trained on continuity, similarity, and correlation reconfigure parts into new wholes and the resulting reading lies somewhere between parts and their respective wholes, or figures and their respective elements.

This project asks how one can tell a story through space. The beauty of Inujima cannot be understood in the moments in which history occurs, but rather as time passes and allows its story to develop. This project replies to the industrialization of Inujima and the richness it has produced towards the cultivation of the island. The present space draws the individual in by blurring the lines between the outside and the inside. This was done by including elements that establish a dark and heavy atmosphere. These elements are set before the actual entrance in order to emphasize the characteristics of the present: static, unmovable, impermeable. As one progresses from past space to present space, the roof is lifted and the elevation moves downward. Light is introduced and the individual basks in the view of the physical manifestation of Inujima’s history: The quarries. Here, in this space, temporary art installations can be put that shed light on the cultural richness of the quarries.

The transition of a hopeful future portal. Introspection is encouraged as they are greeted by cozy cafes to reflect on their experience. The cafe opens up to a zen garden that represents Inujima as a whole, with each rock being proportional to every quarry on the island. Raking goes through all spaces, through its interiority and exteriority, and meets the raking of the sand that weaves around the boulders in the zen garden. The scarring caused by granite extractions should not be hidden, but rather they should be exposed and active on the form, as they are a sign of growth and change. The physical indentations of raking are symbolic of the imperfections, the acknowledgment of it, and how it plays a large role in Inujima’s story.

This project focuses on what it means to live in the present, reflect on the past, and look to the future.

TRANSIENCE

steel metal plating

smooth concrete

channel glass

american hard maple

smooth plastering

shou sugi ban

1/42”:1’0”

1/24”:1’0”

DESIGN OF RESIDENCE

I chose to design a residential space for a philosopher because of my interest in the subject. One work I’ve been rereading recently is Descartes’s First Meditations, and I took an interest in his first chapter where he defined the metaphysics of dualism. Although in his work, the mind and body are defined as independent of one another it does not answer why the mind is limited by the body nor where the mind lies. From this questioning, I developed my own take on the mind and body and their separation of one another. The separation of the mind should not only lie in the nonphysical, but also in the physical. On a basic level, it can be observed that the mind’s potential is only that which the body can produce and the body is only capable of producing that which the mind can develop. This does not mean the mind is dependent on the body, but rather they both have separate qualities that are essential to the self. This is the non-physical aspect of their distinction. The physical separation between the mind and the body is the brain and everything that grows separate of it. The brain, which houses the mind, serves as the machine that produces matters such as consciousness, beliefs, doubts, and clarity. The body here serves as the function that can enact these thoughts if need be. Now that the mind and body’s separation is defined, I sought to focus on the development of the forms, material and lighting through the nonphysical lens whereas the development of circulation and programmatic structure was through a physical lens due to the nature of their design. Ultimately, I aimed to push my concept past physical separation and create a more deliberate residential design.

DESIGN OF RESIDENCE

DESIGN OF RESIDENCE

This project was done in order to establish a clear comprehension about spatial verbs and how their abstract shapes can be manipulated to design spaces with intent and complexity.

The 1st Space is the first floor, 2nd is the space above it, and the 3rd space is created adjacent to the 2nd and lowered, as to create a pathway that elevates the person and then almost returns them to their original elevation but not quite. Hierarchically, the 3rd space is spatially most important because it requires a person to move through 1st and 2nd in order to reach it. It’s also the final destination of the pathway and sheds light both literally and figuratively on the relationship the 1st floor has with the 2nd and 3rd through the window that’s placed in between them. The spaces I’ve created follow the natural grid pattern of the landscape surrounding them and this is to create a stronger relationship between my design and the natural conditions of the land. Generally, the rules are followed throughout the plans in order to create order throughout the spaces and their relationship to one another.

1st floor

2nd floor

A SPACE IN A TERRAIN

Interrupted slot conditions draw attention to where key moments of transitioning begin. The path begins at the first interruption, where the opening into the 1st space occurs. The 2nd floor is interrupted and a stairway is created from the 1st floor to the 2nd floor. I chose these two slot conditions because it follows the bend of the mass while creating an entrance that allows the person to experience the 1st floor in a more visual sense. I wanted the circulation path to be a smooth and slow transition, so I tried playing light-like and the lack of light to make this apparent. I want a person to naturally follow the window on the 1st floor (first source of light), observe it, and make their way towards their second source of light into the 2nd space. Once a person goes up the stairs, this light and shadow are used to emphasize the transition from the 1st floor to the 2nd floor. The person finally enters the 2nd space, which is flooded with light, and will go along the path of the window, which frames a view with the surrounding environment just touching the bottom edge of their view. After observing this, they will turn and head towards the final room, where they go down the steps and turn into the 3rd space, where the path ends. The light here is only present once, which follows the initial window in the 1st space.

east section cut view

south section cut view