ARCHITECTURE Selected works by: P O R T F O L I O
Gabrielle Knauf
I 4th yr l B.Arch Student @ Syracuse University
_PlatformSurfside
restoring the eco-type
ARC408/608 DESIGN STUDIO led by PABLO SEQUERO RESEARCH SPONSERED by ROY RASKIN IN COLABORATION with SARAH CRAWFORD COSTAL RESILENCY EXHIBITION - SURFSIDE, FLORDIA
In response to rising sea levels of costal regiions in Miami- Dade County, the current zoning framework must be reconsidered. This architectural proposal considers alternative zoning conditions that repsonded to Surfside, Flordia’s climate crisis, proposing adaptation and flood mitigation strategies for the existing residential block typologies. The proposal was developed in communication with current Surfside residents, former mayors, planning and zoning commitee, amoungst other town officals.
With Miami’s increasing threat of sea level rise in combination with more frequent flooding, it becomes imperative to question the current zoning framework. These regulations were created for a climate that no longer exists today, and with so little land remaining undeveloped, it’s clear that zoning needs to change.
PHASE_1
PHASE_2
Drawing attention to the native species and ecotypes that have proven to mitigate flooding around south Florida. By setting up a new zoning framework and proposing significant reduction to lot coverage, we allow for the regrowth of native landscapes.
Incentivizing residents and developers to work within these new regulations, lot coverage is redistributed vertically. Furthermore, introducing new domestic typologies that reflect on the changing climate of Surfside.
These typologies push for the reconnect of the built environment to the natural landscape creating a flood adaptive architecture that is willing to respond to constant change.
PHASE_3
PHASE_4
This kit-of-parts approach explores the full range of proposed zoning conditions along the Y-axis, while applying architectural solutions along the X-axis that support adaptation. The matrix presents a gradation of architectural typologies that could be implemented in Surfside, Florida. It provides a catalog representing the various scales of control and restoration returned to the land, while also experimenting with a variety of material elements. These materials offer a new approach to both foundational and temporary interventions that can be retracted and deployed. Ultimately, these solutions become adaptive, suggesting and supporting transformations that align with Miami’s climate.
Created with Rhino and Adobe Illustrator
Here we investigate architectural solutions to apply water resilience strategies as researched in Jeffery Huber’s book, Salty Urbanism.
Using areas of public property to implement quick infrastructural interventions, we add water retention planters to the sides of new pervious sidewalks on the perimeter of each block. As well as, reducing allotted driveway coverage and implementing a field strip to the center of the road to slow down drainage to existing storm water systems.
COLLAGE 1 - BIRDS EYE @ BLOCK CENTER
COLLAGE 3 - STREET VIEW TYP. BLOCK
COLLAGE 2 - FRONT ELEVATIONS
Created with Adobe Photoshop
RESTORED LAND_ KIT OF PARTS DEPLOYED ON TYPICAL BLOCK
Using a series of bio mounds to add surface area of permeable surface, provide water collection, and to redirect water away from residential areas to retention basin’s located at the rear of each housing plot.
This prepares Surfside for a new framework for years to come. Altering the direction of the front of the house, where the back porch becomes a space of public interaction and collectiveness as they prepare for a climate-responsive city.
DIMENSIONS: 11” X 6’0”
MEDIA: ModgePodge, Construction Paper, Basswood, PolyCarbonate
_BuffaloMulti-FamilyHousing
between two cities
ARC308 DESIGN STUDIO led by TIM STENSON
Situated in Buffalo, New York, I was commissioned to design a multifamily housing complex with a minimum of 40 to 60 units. The site is located at the corner of Delaware and Allen Streets, a significant intersection that marks the transition between the city’s inner core and the vibrant neighborhood of Allentown, just beyond downtown. Delaware Street aligns with the city’s radial layout, while Allen Street serves as a key thoroughfare in Allentown, blending the historic and contemporary elements of Buffalo’s urban fabric.
My design takes into consideration 4 key concepts from the city’s context. First analyzing the typical dimensions of the narrow city townhouse block. Secondly, like most city plans, the exterior buildings are coded for public space, creating a boundary between the city and the residential space behind. Next highlighting the importance and shift between Allen and Delaware. Lastly, considering the close proximity between the site and medical campus.
MAP 1 - ROW HOUSE TYPOLOGY
MAP 2 - ZONING FRAMEWORK
MAP 3 - ALLEN vs DELAWARE GRID
MAP 4 - LOCAL INSTITUTIONS
SITE PLAN
PLAN OBLIQUE: FT. DOUBLE GABLE FORMAL SYSTEM
The design is organized into two formal gestures. The first echoes the site’s typical row house formation, referencing the traditional brick gable homes found throughout the Allentown district. In this way, the project continues the legacy of this urban typology.
The second gesture involves splitting the gables, symbolizing the intersection of the city’s various scales at our site. This formal approach allows the project to seamlessly integrate into its context on the outskirts of the city center
EXTERIOR PERSEPCTIVE @ INTERSECTION OF DELEWARE AND ALLEN ST.
FRONT ELEVATION
On the ground floor, I continue to occupy and redefine this “inbetween space” that was introduced in the inital formal system. At each access point from Allen St. the front facade is offset to allow for a continuation of street life into the commercial space of each gable. This creates a threshold at the street scale. Additionally, structural elements, such as 2-foot columns and the repetition of angled entrances to individual point circulation systems, mediate the interaction between the interior and exterior.
Through out the typical plan, I chose a point circulation system to maximize the amount of usable space on each floor and to allow cross circulation between units. The L-shaped units offer flexibility, allowing for the addition of a single wall to convert a 3-person unit into a 2-person unit. This approach caters to the diverse population attracted by the nearby medical campus, including both students and staff.
TYP.
UNIT PAIR AXON - FIRST FINGER
4TH FLR PERSPECTIVE_LOFTED UNIT CONDITION
Created with Rhino and Adobe PhotoShop
_MonumentstoRubble
grotta sosta
ARC407 DESIGN STUDIO led by DANIELE PROFETA FLORENCE, ITALY - SoA STUDYABROAD IN COLABORATION with HANNAH PUERTA-CARLSON+AUDREY DELIA
Our site located off the western coast of Italy, the Isla de Elba is known for its rich mining history. Settled in Rio Marina, our site is positioned upon an abandoned extraction site. What remains are displaced, man made platforms from discarded material extracted from the earth. We were tasked with creating a public park at the base of these industrial ruins.
Embedded within the rocks and ruins, our park is a place for rest. It reflects on the charged and exhausting history of mining in Rio Marina while providing both the site and its visitors a space to rest. Although resting may have a different meaning to each individual, the project defines rest as a state of protection, recovery and emergence, freeing itself from never ending processes of work, extraction and decay in a serene way. At the park, one is protected to recover and later emerge from the density of life that before affected them. Similarly, through light, un-invasive architectural interventions such as framing, filling and stepping, these three definitions of rest are expressed. By framing the landscape, the individuals are protected, at ease. By filling, elements are added to support. And by stepping, boundaries between spaces of work and rest are defined.
With included programs such as shading, sitting, swimming, fishing, and playing, visitors can explore the site while floating through the different stages of rest. The programs are not intended to occur all at the same time, some only being active at certain times of the year. This temporality allows the site to rest as well.
Walking into the space, the user is immediately brought down through a narrow entrance that frames out to Rio Marina. Throughout the plan, programs are situated nested within the platform to create different experiences of rest. Shading and small gathering spaces located at different depths of the carved platform. The material that is excavated is then repurposed above, creating new mounds that frame views back out to the old ruins.
At the pier, while maintaining a monolithic wall on one side, the opposite is used to create narrowing spaces framing back out to Rio Marina for users to explore and occupy for different fishing activities. Located on this side there are a multitude of level changes, allowing the ocean to over occupy and submerge programs and create small baths in the pier when the water levels are high enough. This allows both program and land to be at rest during moments of high tide.
Additionally, wrapped around the existing tower, framing elements are used both to call attention and allow recovery for the existing ruins
Created with concrete casting, foam core and basswood. Edited with Adobe PhotoShop
Rendered using Vray and Photoshop Materials created in Adobe Substance Painter, Adobe 3d Substance Sampler, and Meta Shape
_LivingBehindtheWalls
dissolving complacency in the alienated home
ARC500 PROFESSIONAL ELECTIVE led by MARCOS PARGA LIVING OTHERWISE: COLLECT of THEMATIC HOUSES IN COLLABORATION with JOOD ALSEAH STUDIO COLLABORTIVE EXHIBITION
Current domestic spaces isolate dwellers from one another. Occupants complacently growing comfortable in an over nurtured environment catering to our natural compulsion to self isolate in hyper - privatized space. Dwellers are no longer just ignorantly complacent in alienated life but have grown dependent on the comfort provided through the closed domestic space that restrict visual and auditory connections. Beyond the domestic sphere, social interaction consists of calculated habitual exchanges, or within privatized walls; exposing our self-composed analytical lives into the digitized society. Our project aims to use transparency to create friction in these spaces. Evaluating transparency on a variety of scales to develop connections and build a stronger community between surroundings. We believe through questioning what we deem as “indispensable privacy” we are able to use transparency to foster connections not only between individual dwellers but on a collective scale in domestic space. Deploying a new kit of parts strategy onto fixed systems allows us to re-negotiate our habitual isolated activities. Composing boundaries that unify dwellers, demand accountability, inspire theatricality, enforce interaction, and trigger adaptation, transparency has the power to foster connection between the life behind the walls.
ACCOUNTABILITY: Transparency exposes our domestic routines, dwellers are now held accountable for their participation in home maintenance, habits of labor, and enforcement of gender norms.
THEATRICALITY: Through the display of life beyond the walls, each scene of habitual activities has the opportunity to be performed. The act of expression is no longer dependent on the dweller’s relationship to the outside world.
INTERACTION: Opacity of elements bread interaction between users, through fluid exposure of sight and sound. Creating a third space, where interaction can occur with minimum effort from the dweller.
ADAPTATION: Transparency’s light materials suggest temporality, recognize impermanence and validate a dweller’s fluctuating form of living. With each cataloged item being a stepping stone to a collective living environment.
Adobe Illustrator
_DigitalMasterplan fith wave support.
Our site located at a park in downtown syracuse, we were tasked to analyizea social media apps and abstractly apply the apps charateristics into our very own public space.
My app was snapchat and I was particularly interested in the Snap Map feature of the program. The map is a heat map, measuring the concentration of snapchats taken across the world. Through this the app generates Spotlight features allowing you to jump from one movement to another.
These intersections allow the user to move from one location or event to the next at the tap of their finger. This is the idea that I brought forth through both my masterplan and final agora.
I looked at women’s rights / feminist organizations as my digital community. Throughout my master plan, I broke down main programs specifying each one to a correlating “wave” of feminism. Each intersecting one another throughout the plan.
MasterPlan Model - Media : Old circuit board, Museum Board
_DigitalAgora fith wave support.
ARC208 LANDSCAPE STUDIO led by MARTIN FRENANDEZ INDIVIDUAL
DIGITAL AGORA - GROUND FLOOR PLAN
As a continuation of the larger Digital MasterPlan project, we were tasked to zoom into one area of our park. Zooming into the top left area of my master plan, I pulled diagramatic shapes from my masterplan and applied them directly to my design. The X defines the central axis, splitting the site among 4 quadrants acting independently in service to the center x building.
DIGITAL AGORA - SECOND FLOOR PLAN
At the center of the X rest is the main program, an Educational Non-Profit women’s center. Like many other resource centers the program is broken down into 2 parts. On the bottom floor rests an educational center, acting as an open forum for debate and discourse. Rather the addendums to the upper levels act as warehouses for women to collect resources.
ROLLOUT SECTION
Throughout the rest of the park the remaining 4 programs break the park down into four different landscape systems. An amphitheater design for larger forums. A community garden shown as a source of empowerment and ownership. A playground enclosed by a barrier wall for children to roam through artificial dunes and play spaces while mothers are involved in debate. Align with a creative space for technology creatives and activist creative spaces to inhabit. Created with Rhino and Adobe Illustrator
DIGITAL AGORA MODEL - CARDBOARD, MUSEUMBOARD
Gabrielle Knauf
I 4th yr l B.Arch Student @ Syracuse University
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