Kassia Karras Design Portfolio

PORTFOLIO 2018-2023

KASSIA KARRAS

APOLLO NEXUS: HALL OF FAME

SPRING 2022

ADV DESIGN II

PROF. DIANA CRISTOBAL + MICHAEL SCHISSEL + HANNA TULIS

THE CHALLENGE:

Design an Annex of the Apollo Theater on 126th Street between Frederick Douglass Blvd and Adam Clayton Powell Jr

MY APPROACH:

The Apollo “Hall of Fame” is a community center, skatepark for local youth and performance space, living archive with listening rooms (each dedicated to individual artists who rose to fame at the Apollo), a public library with reading rooms, music practice rooms, an auditorium, admin offices, a fashion runway weaved through the admin floor, and pneumatic domes on the roof with a cafe and free public counseling The project explores Harlem’s rich cultural legacy and the Apollo’s place within it as a site unique to Black identity and heritage. The project seeks to create a nexus of spatial infrastructure for art, culture, and civic engagement in order to build on the legacy and opportunities that exist within the neighborhood, with an emphasis on supporting the creative endeavors of young people

Volumetric Programmatic Massing Diagrams: top floors include Hall of Fame archive ‘listening rooms’ for Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Lauryn Hill, etc., and music pratice rooms for ages 5-12, seniors-only, all-ages, drums, strings, guitar, and piano.

Programmatic Massing Diagram: axonometric

Catalog of Rooms Diagram: form and types of rooms found on the first and second floors of Hall of Fame

of Apollo Hall of Fame

Perspective Collage: second floor Hall of Fame Ella Fitzgerald archive music listening room experience

Physical Model (East View): Apollo Nexus Hall of Fame 1/16” scale, plugged-in to site

Physical Model (North View)

Perspective Collage: Ground floor skatepark and performance space off of 126th St.

URBAN PROTOTYPE: YOUTH PODS

SPRING 2022

ADV DESIGN II

PROF. DIANA CRISTOBAL + MICHAEL SCHISSEL + HANNA TULIS

THE CHALLENGE:

Rethink outdoor infrastructures and activities in Harlem to serve diverse publics and institutions.

MY APPROACH:

Pneumatic ‘Youth Pods’ disseminate across six chosen sites of underutilized spaces around Harlem to provide young people within the community spaces to rest, develop skills like art, music, read, skate, play, and public bathrooms because there are not enough in the city.

CLIMATORIUM: CLIMATE DISASTER SIMULATOR

FALL 2021

ADV DESIGN I

PROF. KADAMBARI BAXI + JOEB MOORE + GALEN PARDEE

THE CHALLENGE:

Design a Climate Museum, or ‘Climatorium’ for the Museum of Natural History to show the effects of human activity on earth that is prompting climate change. Include a climate observatory, public forum, educational spaces, and labs.

MY APPROACH:

The viewer goes through each room, seeing in real time how different parts of the world are being affected by various disasters, as the rooms simultaneously simulate these disasters. This is meant to test the viewer’s limits and empathy through intense exposure to climate change, prompting climate action within the viewer. Each exhibition room is designated a specific climate disaster. There are eight rooms in total for drought, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, heatwaves, melting glaciers, and air pollution. All politicians of the U.S. government, financial workers, and hedge fund bankers are required to pay an annual pilgrimage to the site of exposure.

Climate Disaster Simulator Isometric: ramp leads from Climate Disaster Simulator to Planetarium

Climate Disaster Simulator Rendering: live cattle farm on view at ground level

Physical Model: conceptual massing model

Physical 1/32” scale Plug-In Model: Climate Disaster Simulator

Physical Model: 1/16” Section Climate Disaster Simulator: room on left exhibits air pollution, room on right exhibits wildfires, below are classrooms, admin offices, and labs, ground floor is live-stock farm

Physical Model Close-Ups

ARTIFICIAL TREE

SPRING 2021

ENVIORNMENTS AND MEDIATIONS STUDIO

PROF. IGNACIO GALAN

THE CHALLENGE

Create an artificial tree on campus that interacts with its environment and natural elements (air, sunlight, rainwater) to create new phenomena (reflecting light, channeling water, casting shadows, etc.), independent from any human intervention to illustrate the agency of the object. Create study models (5”x5”x2”) that perform these phenomena. Multiply it to create a modular structure, the artificial tree.

MY APPROACH:

My artificial tree has three main branches, and is a series of cubes of various sizes supported with steel tubing and a hexagonal base Each cube has been assigned two colors, and has a certain amount of liquid inside to create condensation (depending on the weather). There are also cones at the hexagonal base to collect rain water for the condensation effect. The branches of the tree are flexible and sway in the wind The mixing of the colors of the cubes will cast colorful and vibrant shadows The tree interacts with wind to create movement, rainwater to create condensation, and color and light to cast colorful shadows

Final Study Models of Artificial Tree Module: color, shadow, wind, rainwater

Study Model 1 Study Model 2: color and shadow

Study Model 3: color, shadow, and wind

Site Map: Barnard College

METAL BEAR CHAIR

FALL 2022

SCULPTURE

PROF. CHRIS DOMENICK

THE CHALLENGE:

Design a metal apparatus that in some way adheres to or interacts with the body

MY APPROACH:

I designed and welded/plasma cut a metal bear-hug-chair. There is a sharp contrast between the cold and harsh metal and imagery of a bears and stars. The chair with the smile is deceivingly inviting, yet up-close the jagged edges are meant to be taken as a warning to all those who sit. Sitting in this chair is an exercise in self-fragilization. One-by-one my friends decided to trust me enough to sit in my structure. To each of their surprise, the chair bears weight.

Chair Sketches

The Seat: plasma cut + welded

The Back: plasma cut + welded

FURNITURE FOR SOCIAL DISTANCING: STACKED PODS FOR KIDS

SPRING 2020

ABSTRACTIONS STUDIO

PROF. RICHARD TODD ROUHE

THE CHALLENGE:

This is the semester when the pandemic hit. We were challenged to think of new ways to interact while staying healthy. Design furniture for social distancing in the home to keep people safe but happy

MY APPROACH:

My design re-imagines the living room, which has the problem of being centered around the TV, and people sitting closely. I designed stacked pods for the children of the house, to read, chill, snack, and create in, in the purview of parents in the kitchen, where they can remain away from screens instead have some family bonding time, and keep a safe distance.

Kitchen (site of furniture design) Airflow Diagram: stacked Pods keeps everyone safely distanced

Social Interaction:

Social Interaction:

watching TV as a family

Watching TV as a family

Problem: Too much open air for possible transmission

Problem: too much open air for possible transmission

+ too centered around media, not family

my living room floor plan

My design seeks to separate, but at the same time unify Concept Collage

my Design seeks to seperate, but unify

My Living Room Floor Plan

Concept Collage: Stacked Pods for kids in home kitchen

Activities Diagram

Use Diagram

Misuse Diagram

Physical Model: Perspective View Front View

Flatpak Construction Components Drawing

Assembly Diagram: Exploded View

Stacked Pods Collages in Home Kitchen Enviornment

Family is separate, but together

RABBIT VESSELS

FALL 2022

MATERIAL LOGICS

PROF. JULIAN HARAKE

THE CHALLENGE:

Explore the generative potentials of material logics, and novel fabrication methods for architecture by embracing rrational geometries engaged in nonlinear material behavior and chance operations. Make full-scale ‘decorative vessels’.

MY APPROACH:

Using Sculptamold (mixture of paper pulp and plaster) made three distinct Rabbit Vessels. Rabbits are common in cartoons (Roger Rabbit, Bugs Bunny, Peter Rabbit, the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, Lola Rabbit, etc.) and are known for their seductive and mischievous nature. Their silhouettes are easily identifiable because of their two tall ears that reach to the sky. Their forms could serve as an extension of themes of the tension between cuteness/creepiness, familiarity/ alienation, control/violence, and innocence/corruption that I explore in my illustrations. In thinking about the idea of the “vessel” and ideas of interiority, the hollowed stomachs and mouths of the rabbits, and the cigarettes in their mouths further illustrate and hint at this idea of an “implied interiority”. I then 3D scanned them to create 3D representations of their hollowness

THE HOUSE AS A CONTAINER

FALL 2022

SCULPTURE

PROF. CHRIS DOMENICK

THE CHALLENGE:

Choose an object(s) to feature. Consider the symbolic resonance of the objects in the world. Create a container for the object. The idea of ‘containment’ should be examined as a sculptural and formal condition of the sculpture. Activate the space around the objects using the container sculpture.

MY APPROACH:

I am a toy/figurine collector, and I pulled some of them from my collection. For the longest time, since moving to the suburbs of the U.S. from China, I have been fascinated with the motif/icon of the single-family house. I built a container for my figurines in the form of the ‘house icon’. The figurines are all displayed facing the audience, to give a theatrical sense, and to highlight the alienating experience of suburban life. The figurines have a simultaneous playful and uncanny feeling to them. used a handle saw, chop saw, jig-saw, table saw, band saw, sander, nail gun, and wood glue to make this.

MYCELIUM BRICK FABRICATION

SPRING 2023

SELF-DIRECTED

THE CHALLENGE:

Fabricate mycelium bricks in various silicon and vacuum form molds.

MY APPROACH:

I inoculated and grew mycelium in a bag with a humid and dark enviornment for a week. I then separately made a vacuum-form mold, a two-part silicon mold, and once the mycelium was done growing I broke it up and put it in the molds to grow for another week, along with some natural pigments and dyes, and magazine collage. Once done growing, took the mycelium out of the molds and baked them to inhibit more growth. The mycelium ended up eating the collage clippings and growing into them.

PRECEDENT FOLIO STUDY: FAU USP SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE IN SAO PAOLO

SPRING 2022

ADV DESIGN II

PROF. DIANA CRISTOBAL + MICHAEL SCHISSEL + HANNA TULIS

THE CHALLENGE:

Study and analyze a building in the world, and focus on diagraming two aspects of the dynamics within it.

MY APPROACH:

Examined and studied FAU USP School of Architecture and Urbanism in Sao Paolo, Brazil to better understand what makes a successful campus environment that allows for an array of student activities, creates serendipitous social interaction, and provides students with the open space to ponder and dream up new futures for the world. These findings were translated into two diagrams, one showing the great success of the large main atrium space of the building, and the second showing the vast levels of circulation present in the building

Activities Diagram: illustrates the many uses of the main atrium space of the campus building such as: napping, protesting, chatting, creating artwork, performing, experiencing large-scale exhibition work, and panel discussions and discourse

Circulation Diagram: highlights the six ramps going up the building, along with circulation of the four floors to highlight the intentional way the building creates serendipitous social interaction amongst

Self-Directed: Hand-Drawn with Pen Ink and Marker

“ Harajuku Kids ” (2022) “ Dentist Day ” (2021)

“ What Goes On ” (2022)

“ Hysterics House ” (2021) “ Sankyo House ” (2023) “ Satiated Suburbia ” (2020)

“ Dog and Frog Have a Nuclear Meltdown ” (2022)

CYANOTYPE PRINTS

Self-Directed: cyanotype on paper and shirts

Print Fair Table (2022) “ Ren and Stimpy ” (2022)

Various cyanotype prints on tracing paper (2022)

Various cyanotype prints (2022) “ Head House ” (2022)

End of the year Visual Art print show (2022) “ Head of the House ” cyanotype (2022)

Cyanotype shirt (2022)