Shopping Malls: Revisited Auxiliary Campus in College Station, Texas
It is not uncommon to see malls repurposed, abandoned, or torn down due to changing times and changing interests. Post Oak Mall in College Station, Texas, is no exception. It has decreased in attendance, and each year the mall finds less foot travel than in years prior. In addition, the mall’s roof and surface parking create one of the largest heat-island effects in the city. This project focuses on the adaptive reuse and rethinking of the mall’s site and buildings, in dialogue with the forces that drive the city of College Station, particularly Texas A&M University.
To support the growing population of students and the University as a whole, my partner and I are proposing to convert Post Oak Mall into an auxiliary campus for students in agriculture, technology, engineering, and arts specific degree programs.
Main Contributions to this project include: Model Making, Texture Mapping, Chunk Study, Line Drawings, Post Production
FLOOR PLAN (LEFT) / EXPLODED DIAGRAM (ABOVE)
CURATION + COMPOSITION
CHUNK STUDY (ABOVE)
USAFA Visitor Center
US Airforce Academy in Colorado Springs
Located just ten minutes north of Colorado Springs, our proposal presents a modern, stripped-down design of three intersecting masses constructed of mass timber. Our design addresses the United States Air Force Academy’s need for a revamped visitor center through a design that celebrates the ideas of axis and intersection.
Three “pillars” of cadet life emerged when doing research on the Academy: military, academics, and athletics. The design reflects the significance of these aspects of cadet life through the use of axis that point in the direction of important campus landmarks. We focused on expressing the idea of “axis” in every aspect of the design from form to structure to systems layout as well as how these formal architecture elements can influence the visitor experience.
Main Contributions to this project include: Model Making, Texture Mapping, Line Drawings, Renderings
CONCEPT SKETCHES (ABOVE) / FINAL FLOORPLAN LEVEL 1 (RIGHT)
CONCEPTUAL INTEGRATION
Recording Studio
Sasha Fierce Music Studio in Houston, TX
When tasked to design a recording studio, my partner and I started by listing the various confounding conditions we wanted to portray in the design. The design adhered to different theoretical principles such as the notion of assembly, parts to parts relationship, ground conditions, the idea of wrappers in relation to the site, as well as different concepts of discreteness.
Using ground conditions, the articulations formed were able to translate into the wrapper and facades of the building, which gave the opportunity to formulate these Boolean and monolithic inspired forms. The parts to parts relationship came into play with our windows nested in-between and throughout these intricate forms. The windows were curated through series of smaller windows pieced together and stacked on top of one another, creating an almost weblike nature. Since the project had to be designed through section, it allowed for greater instances of interconnected floors, as well as numerous instances of poche throughout the facade.
Main Contributions to this project include: Model Making, Texture Mapping, Line Drawings, Renderings, Post Production
BUILDING SECTION
OBJECT ORIENTED ONTOLOGY
EXTERIOR BACK FACADE RENDER (ABOVE) / INTERIOR RENDERS (RIGHT)
VERTICAL CIRCULATION
Menil Housing Housing Community in Houston, Texas
Using a method of font intersection, the goal was to develop a housing community on the Menil Campus in Houston, Texas. In their most primitive state, these floorplans expressed the condition of expansion and compression seen through a low poly exterior contrasted with a curvilinear interior.
Referencing the unique roof from Rural Office’s Caring Wood, the buildings utilize dramatic slopes to create vertical compression in the moments where the plan horizontally contracts, allowing for a central public area and balcony in each building used for circulation. This vertical shift corresponds to horizontal shifts seen through poche and cantilevers. Furthermore, the floor plans reflect this shift as the stairs are pushed into the units, forming the interior stairs in the process. Within the individual units, the organization and gradience between public and private follows the logic of William O’Brien Jr.’s House in the Woodlands.
Main Contributions to this project include: Model Making, Line Drawings, Physical Model
FLOORPLAN 01 (ABOVE) / FLOORPLANS 00 AND 02 (RIGHT)
EXTERIOR / INTERIOR PUSH AND PULL
Villa La Quiete
Historical Museum in Florence, Italy
When tasked to design a subtle and minimal museum entrance to the gardens, the first step was to dig down a level to utilize the abandoned garden basement. By using the preexisting structure of the basement walls, it allowed for minimal intervention with the villa itself. Throughout the villa, there were numerous frescos illustrating the process of bringing the outside in, while supporting the sense of exploration. By inserting a thin wall next to the garden wall, it allowed for a spatial threshold to form, giving onlookers the sense of exploration as they search for what is beyond the garden walls.
In the entrance itself, the theme of lighting was primarily utilized to convey the concept of movement. By using curved walls and diffused lighting, the spaces are always dynamically changing, just like the people passing through the space itself. It allows for an experience that is never the same as the day prior.
Main Contributions to this project include: Model Making, Line Drawings, Physical Model, Texture Mapping, Renders
Personal Work
Selection of Pen and Charcoal Drawings
In this section, you can find a variety of pen sketches, as well as one of my charcoal drawings I did a few years back. The focus of these pen drawings were the doorways and belltowers I came across from my time abroad in Florence, Italy. I tried to take a technical approach to representing the complexities that Italian architecture inherently possesses.
