Rubelcy Herrera Portfolio 2023

ARCHITECTURE PORTFOLIO

URBAN ECOLOGIES

Urban Ecologies introduce the city as a designed environment with an emphasis on sustainability, giving the tools to work through impressions, analysis and design operations as ways to understand the relationship between naturally formed and culturally constructed landscapes and strategies for urban ecological development. Confronted with the design of housing as a way to order social relationships and shape the public realm and attack the problems of structure, construction, access and code compliance in the context of a complex large-scale architectural design.

INCLUSION TOOLKIT

These graphic elements are to convey the marginalized communities in Providence, RI. Being raised and a resident from Providence my entire life and studying architecture, I’ve acknowledged a lot of discrepancies. Particularly the red lining in the urban planning of where the East side and the rest of Providence resides. The representation of the city’s bold figure is meant to hold the gaze of the audience, so the other attributes are subliminal. The black and white is to give graffiti stencil rhetoric. The red graphics are

translating the struggle of the marginalized community by subliminal images as overlays. These selected photos portray the impact of the red lining. These subliminal overlays are also a metaphor of the city overlooking the community from the results of a system not catering properly. Lastly the representation of the line weights overlay is an allegory of the red lining.

PEDIATRICIAN PERMEABILITY

This drawing is to unfold the neighborhood’s quality of life in a visual representation of zoning laws and the relationship of the community and environment. What this long section is emphasizing is the disparity between a zoning district of two sides of the street. With initial research of the neighborhood, I discovered that the brick building is owned by the government, yet lacked maintenance. However the other side of the neighborhood was a private institution for affordable housing. After understanding the context of the street, I drew the experience of walking across the street from the other side in a visual section. Along the metric of the relationship of the environment and the community, it renders maintenance, experience and visual representation of the street.

URBAN ANALYSIS

This analytic model threads the needle between novelty and conventions of architectural communication. As architects, we must insert ourselves into the space of the site and its reality, not just technocratic data samples from a critical distance. The model is a remake of the site through techniques of three dimensional analysis. As the exploration of the site occurred, the model critiques public permeability using optical experience and velocity within a given street.

The frames depict the pedestrian's visual experience using photography at a given moment. It’s also a portrayal of the sidewalks' disturbance of vegetation and trash on two sides of the road. The bases boundaries are also outlines of buildings along the site and The inclination of the base is a design approach.

The incline degree is to channel the audience's perspective and interaction with the frame. Furthermore the base’s etching is the comparison of the route on both sidewalks. Within each frame, it conveys the reality at that particular moment and an analytical model of the mobility of the pedestrian.

BOUNDLESS PERMEABILITY

This master plan aims to protest the biases that result in map making, which is the misrepresentation of the significance, authority, political hierarchy and experience. To challenge traditional map making quantifications, the project utilizes time, speed and visual representation.

Using units to explore the experience in the street, it’s a tool to demonstrate a powerful way to define body experience and quantifying experience with the interaction of the street. Each frame is a representation of the pedestrian sidewalk and a vehicle experience at a constant velocity.

Using photography, each frame was photoshopped with duotone to depict facade and space. The red is the portrayal of the facade and blue is space. The frames along the side are the pedestrian walkability experiences along the sidewalk. Furthermore the middle frame is the experience within each car.

The configuration of the base is also a metaphor for certain moments on the street. The street itself is shapeless because the sidewalk and road are intertwined from the disruptions of facades. Meaning pedestrians and vehicles are challenging the hierarchy of movement in certain spaces. Making the walkable spaces boundless.

DWELLING IN THE CITY

By creating soft boundary spaces that foster the relationship between the Grower and the Growing, individuals within this proposed community will gain a sense of permeance and empowerment through a shared responsibility of stewardship of the home and garden.

The relation of the Grower and the Growing manifests across a point of convergence between two zoning ordinances to show the inherent scalability of the greenhouse toolkit.

Home is Garden

Garden is Home

All lift together

There is a site. There are the zones. The site of West End provided a wonderful opportunity of zone intersection between MU-75, and R3, where this proposal wishes to design a space to readapt (MU-75) and redefine (R-3) with the relationship between the growing and the grower. These intersections not only provide opportunity for the wealthy, but provide an opportunity to empower those who resign in the community.

MU-75 explores the relationship between the community of growers and community of visitors. We walk in linearity. We generate stories through a pedestrian experience. The midterm project explores how we can measure an experience as a form of universal unit, currency or a toolkit. This inspired the readapt approach to carve the path out of a building, It is invited to a new zone. that activates a dialogue between the two zones. Circulation within a building of such influence, size, facade and mass to the

West End community, at an urban scale, can redefine the organs of the neighborhood. For the MU-75 community center, growing green is not the means but an end. A final anchor for the community to converge and find its own sanctuary space. The greenhouse above is open to the public for rest and interaction.

R-3 purpose and intention is for the grower and growing. It facilitates this by becoming an extension of the living and the addition of the growing. We are accomplishing this by creating a third party room which can be catered to the needs of the resident. On top of the housing, we are adding a greenhouse to support the growth of natural produce.

This thinking of adapting and redefining the concept of Urban farming persues to change it in a family housing scale. R-3 strives to become a tool kit that can be scattered around Providence and on the site of West end and utilized for any of those who are interested in it.

R3

Domesticated living is defined by soft boundaries, which blur borders of inside and out; garden and home become shelters for both the Grower and the Growing.

MU75

The headquarters of the proposed toolkit with re-imagined interior programming tailored towards larger-scale outreach and community agricultural education. Facades are softened while maintaining respect for existing structural members.

In conclusion, the “Regrow” proposal aims to revitalize the West End with the provided greenhouse toolkits to solidify the community (MU-75) and redefine the idea of living and stewardship (R3).

ARCHITECTURAL PROJECTION

Architectural Projection representation is inherently rhetorical. The systems we employ to represent space reveal much about what we value. Very often we seek verisimilitude in our representations - we want to know what will something “look like” when constructed, or what the “true shape” of the thing is so that we can construct it.

Architectural projection provides means towards both these ends. But the tools of projection, if well-understood, can bend towards other purposes as well: transformation, manipulation, and even deception.

“Upon entry into Riola Parish, a visitor encounters the side entrance of the Parish with graceful stair decline. once through the door, the person will experience the simplicity of the forms, yet it’s so intricate. The audience’s eye will be glued to the unorthodox usage of columns that have an uncanny resemblance of a rib cage. the discrete curves from the wavelike gesture that can be seen from the outside will disappear once inside. The seamless transition with the window panes are another highlight of the building. lastly the stairs for the choir have have another unorthodox approach, with the stairs being different widths and lengths.”

Inspired by the walking section, this model is the potrayal of the walking expericne in the Parish.

The drawing is to express the thresholds of the building's moments of tectonic shifts. To demonstrate this, A preliminary fabrication of a walking section was progressed.

Riola Parish, Alvar Aalto, 1987 long section

1/8’=1’

Architectural Projections || Riola Parish

TECTONIC ANALYSIS

the decollage is to identify and isolate “parts” of the Riola Parish from an experiential perspective. with the choice of two photographs of the building. One portraying the exterior view and the other an interior view is giving insight into the building’s architectonic qualities. Mask everything else out of the image except the isolated feature leaving the background. These qualities are: walkable ground, apertures, structural elements, “decorative” elements and implied volumes

To future this tecontic relationship and the hierarchy of parts in the building, a drawing was produced. This drawing is to produce a view best reveals the driving gesture of the building’s design.

The Riola parish building, designed by Alvar Aalto in 1978 is a building that was influenced by the elemental environment and landscape to develope it’s form. the wave like gesture supported by long beams face towards the river bed to recieve natural light in the Italian riverside.

The landscape along the parish also influenced the slow dwindlving walls towards from the front entrance to the parish ending at the preist seat. the princple behind the wave like structure is also a constant increase of the form, however with the same angle from the beam to the window plans.

This Model, which abstracts the tectonic assembly of the building to its most essential relationships via materiality limits. The Riola parish expresses how these parts come together to form a whole. What are the most essential relationships that are the rib and the roof acting as a shell. characterize its composition, are the relationships between discrete structural elements.A single sentence that characterizes the most essential relationship in your building’s composition of parts.

“The gesture of the wave motion is being supported by the ribs of the building.”

ORDERING SYSTEM

These plans and sections objective is to extract the geometric logic that underpins a complex organization of spaces. Each of the two drawings determines the locations of centerpoints and the critical dimensions and angles that govern the ordering system.

This section and section annotates an overlay with these dimensions/arc angles. Use line weight to convey hierarchy within the system. a single overlay of red is to distinguish this layer of information from the black and white drawing beneath.

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

Architectural Design is ecosystem which is defined as a community of organisms and its environment functioning as an ecological unit. Ian McHarg regarded ecology as a new area of investigation for the natural sciences and as “integrative of the sciences, humanities and the arts.” These themes are a source of inspiration that makes architecture an art form.

How does the synthesis of these inspirations and explorations reflect the diverse culture in which we inhabit? How can a cultural institution embody the evolving discourse of the audiences it serves, and become a steward of both community and nature? Your work will contribute to the public life of our shared community.

DIAGRAMMATIC MODEL

This diagrammatic model was influenced from the defunct tentacle caused by a disease that inflames the tentacles in a starfish and renders it ineffective. This analysis of the specimen was then translated into a diagrammatic model using the process of biomimicry that matured into architecture from the observation of the ineffectiveness of the tentacle.

The interest in the multitude of the tentacles and working at a micro level, curated its way into a sustainable and empirical experience of architecture. Utilizing techniques of cutting, tracing, folding, and bending; it generated into the first iteration of the model.

PROGRESS PHOTOS

Working with at least three different materials, and with different properties and dimensional characteristics, The diagrammatic model was transformed from the formal distinctions in the “performance specific”. Using material such as wood cardboard and string.

This provided structural stability, strength, and balance while minimizing material use and weight. The objective is to demonstrate how the materials are attached and related to each other. Within several iterations the inspiration of the tentacles transpired into a singular modular form.

The tectonics of the glass is to design a synthetic structure and performative skin. With thinking of the relationship between structure and skin as occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold within the concept. The idea is for these skins to interact with, and supplement, the structural system. The skin is a notched glass that is braced between the columns middle rig.

This model is practicing the skin vision that was cultivated with the progressional models. Using the materiality and development of the architecture, it is the material exploration and modeling application with the understanding of the skin of the buildings.

These modular systems express the materiality in real application and a demonstration of the final iteration. This iteration will situate the buildings and pivot towards the typology of the buildings The modular system is a 1/8 scale model of the original 180 inch high column.

Curious in modeling a 1/16 scale column, The modular system was scaled from the original 180 inches. As well as keep the integrity of the materials, properties and functions.

Considering the program, which constitutes the internal parameters that are brought to bear on architecture. The program was governed by the interest on how the miniscule tectonics perform as a modular system to form architecture. To conceptualize the vision it was drawn into a sketch section.

ART ACADEMY

These external parameters are both given to manipulate the site and affect its correspondence with the program and the architectural proposal. With the given site as amorphous, located between a residential neighborhood, a community center, educational buildings, the Providence Medical Complex, and a sea of parking.

With the intentions for designing an art academy and artist retreat in Providence. With the development principles to engage a given site, “The mission of the Providence Art Academy will be to nurture the arts by offering creative individuals. To create an inspiring environment in which they can produce enduring works of art.

The academy will foster the work of their visiting fellows by representing the widest possible range of perspectives and demographics”. Architecture is not only a product of quantity and efficiency, it is an art form. The program of architecture is the requirements of a project that come from the demand of work itself.

The practical nature of the buildings wanted to implement moments for equitable accessibility for the public, notifying the disabilities of everyone. The ramps along the building are to create visual experiences of the campus and engage with it. Using the modular system and concept drawing, the fabrication of a nuanced building was formulated with the employment of the tectonics, skin and program.

As well as fulfilling the needs of the academia that is also catering to the students and staff, the development of the design inherited adaptability and aesthetic for the individuals and beyond.

Finally, consider how the facade strategy and level of transparency relates to the programming, functioning of the project and it relates to orientation and sustainability. Thinking with the enclosure, the facade strategy and level of transparency relates to the programming and functioning of the design. This design relates to the understanding of the tectonics in use for one of the buildings in the art academy. This building, which is for the office space and supplies store for the students.

BIOMIMICRY WORKSHOP

he encounters that produce my experience have transpired into duality of self reflection and awareness. Being a part of a marginalized group in architecture has uncovered the elitism of design. With such a disparity in resources and exposure within my local community, an introduction to architecture was curated. With my comprehension of architecture and collaboration with the boys and girls club, a “ livable spaces” workshop was shaped.

Utilizing my resources and connections with RISD, I brought the students to the nature lab and introduced biomimicry in architecture and sketching. From there the students selected and analyzed a specimen which was influenced into their design. These designs were based on functionality and their interpretations on making a livable space in architecture.

discarding their preconceived notion and discovering their definition of a livable space, The students went through a process of design that involved iterations and critical thinking. With challenges of not using adhesives to make their first iterations of models out of Bristol.

This critical thinking developed techniques to bond the models via notches, materials and exploration that lead to problem solving skills. This iterative process carried on to the final projects where we criticized the world and presented out projects.

Student model

Being a local resident in a marginalized community and currently receiving an institutional education, which is infrequent, I decided to give back to my community. With the knowledge I received and paired with the boys and girls club in Providence, I was given the opportunity to create a program and teach architecture to students ages 14 to 19.

The course persisted in having the students challenge their idea of what architecture is and how they define it. ultimately the focal point was to cultivate what they define as a livable space.

OTHER WORK

Other work is a section of to give the oppounrity to present some projects to demonstrate my skillsets, concepts and graphic elements.

Hajj terminal- A render that was created for the structural analysis of the Hajj terminal in Saudi Arabia

Architectural projection- a orthographic projections of a an object that was drawning into a tumble drawing

album cover for a client using photoshop