KATIE selected
works
2020 - 2025
architecture & art portfolio
FROM GROWTH TO WASTE
enfield food Pantry - community Hub
cornell university
arcH 3101 design studio - suzanne lettieri
enfield, ny fall 2023 faculty- nominated
As a historically agriculturally dominant area, the rural culture of Enfield, NY, has diminished with rural flight and increasing agricultural specialization. Using the greenhouse module, the community hub supports education around local food sourcing and production. Through principles of immersion and exposure, the hub brings local Enfield residents and farmers together in which every stage of the food production process; from growth to waste; is exhibited and deeply expressed in the progression of space.
The PUSH + PULL of these modules create areas for greenhouse integrated into the building that maximize sunlight from the south.
PUSH AND PULL
GREENHOUSE SUN PATH
FIVE STEPS in the food production process; growing, Harvesting, Processing, consumPtion, and waste; are exemplified in the shifting modules that creates interaction for visitors with every stage of the process.
FILM CITY
bingHamton university film & cinema camPus
cornell university
arcH 3102 design studio - tom carrutHers
bingHamton, ny
sPring 2024
Binghamton’s architectural and industrial history is evident and expressed in its urban landscape, however recent economic decline and lack of public space defines the urban experience of the downtown core.
This project aims to revitalize the downtown Binghamton streetscape and arts scene by creating appealing public space for young students to stimulate the economy.
This project proposes an extension of the Binghamton University film department, providing student housing and supporting programs.
The site is divided into two buildings, each with two swells and two towers, one with a focus on media production and the other on consumption.
STUDENT HOUSING
SKATE PARK
WORKSHOPS SOUND STAGE CINEMA CAFE
THEATRE AGORA
SOUL
BODY
MIND
Programs are interwoven sectionally through a series of undulating planes. The thickening or SWELLING of a slab ripples upwards into housing towers. Shared programs are suspended in this elevated plate, informing the skate park below and the housing towers above. The ground pushes up to meet these swells, creating an open ground floor for skateboarders to move through the site.
PERFORMANCE // PROJECTION
Film has the ability to imitate reality through collapsing a threedimensional environment into a two-dimensional projection. This project interprets two different types of projection and viewing – one that is a technological projection applied to a surface, and the other is the act of viewing in perspective.
EARTH LIBRARY
study of rammed eartH construction
cornell university
arcH 2102 integrated design - marta H. wisniewska
itHaca, ny
sPring 2023
In studying RAMMED EARTH construction as a sustainable building material, Alnatura Campus (by Hass Cook Zemmrich) was studied and used as precedent for the design of this library in Ithaca.
Prefabricated rammed earth walls were constructed using a combination of local loam and recycled earth. Prefabricated rammed earth units integrate foam glass gravel insulation and heating pipes for a more energy efficient facade system. Erosion checks minimize the impact of natural forces on the degradation of rammed earth.
A RADIAL PATH is created by two curved rammed earth walls. This corridor connects two entry points into the site, generating a radial grid that defines the rest of the programmatic space. The central path serves as a public path to house open artistic and educational events, with other public programs such as administrative offices, an auditorium, lobby, and children’s education area.
Acting primarily as a facade and using concrete to supplement structure when needed, the prefabricated rammed earth unit consists of erosion checks, earth, foam glass gravel insulation, and integrated heating pipes. Details of connections to wood roof and flooring are shown.
FORUM PAVILION:
STRUCTURAL MODEL 1’ = 1/2”
Architect: GiONA BiereNS De hAAN
cornell university
arcH 2613 structural systems
in collaboration witH: osiel aldaba, angelique meza fall 2022
Created for a film festival in Nyon, Switzerland, the Forum Pavillion emphasizes flexibility and versatility through its design. As a temporary installation, its construction consists of a series of repeated braced frames, and lays on a wooden platform in the plaza, accommodating the slope of the ground.
The pavilion features ten operable doors that open the pavilion to the plaza. These large doors and their locking mechanism are accurately replicated in the model, with pins securing the door in their desired positions.
Essential structural components that were emphasized through the scale model include:
Braced frame system
Pinned connections
Hinged cantilever doors
Corrugated polycarbonate facade
Wood joinery methods were imitated at scale with nails as connections rather than glue.
HOUSE IN BETWEEN
House for cHairs
cornell university
arcH 2101 design studio - catHerine wilmes
itHaca, ny
fall 2022
House In Between reinterprets the typical house or dwelling, exploring modular geometries and indoor and outdoor living. This building utilizes the intersections of a series of pieces, whose geometries transition from a curved to rectangular form from the ground up. This spatial language is developed in designing a paper chair.
An arrangement of similar modules separate program with space IN BETWEEN that become outdoor areas that are an extension of the home.
Five volumes are arranged to create intermediate outdoor gathering spaces. Curved glass openings reflect the implied intersections of these volumes for views that connect the interior and exterior. There is a gradient of private to public space as the building is submerged into the slope, with program and chairs arranged accordingly.
THREE TOWERS
net Huts, uk | cien House, Pezo von ellricHsHausen
cornell university
arcH 1102 design studio - duncan steele
Hastings, uk
sPring 2021
In a precedent study of the Hastings Net Huts and Pezo Von Ellrichshausen’s Cien House, their most significant comparisons lie in their tower-like verticality, materiality, plan grid, and rectangular geometries. A synthesis of these core spatial relationships aims to capture the spatial essence of both precedents into a design for an art gallery. The art gallery, intended to display hanging pieces from the regional area of Hastings, maintains a strong verticality and rigourous adherence to the grid.
Net Huts,
Cien House, Chile
Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen
Three towers containing circulation and gallery space merge with varying opacities. A parasitic material relationship is implied–a wooden framework is revealed as parts of a concrete mass are carved away for walkways and dividing spaces.
3/16" = 1'
As an exploration in material relationships and solid vs. void, movement between massive spaces of concrete to unenclosed outdoor spaces allows for breaks from gallery space with experiential outdoor views. Some double height spaces allow for the hanging of regional artifacts from the Net Huts.
IDENTITY CRISIS
cornell researcH fellowsHiP eXHibition
witH catHerine wilmes
itHaca, ny
aPril 15 - aPril 26, 2024
role: researcH assistant (design, drawing, Production)
Cross-Pollination 1
Cross-Pollination 5
Identity Crisis explores new approaches to architectural elements by surveying Ithaca’s built environment and proposing a series of eight artifacts derived from photographic documentation. Discrete components such as doors, windows, gutters, vents, and chimneys were analyzed, disassembled, and reassembled to produce novel building components. These hybrids begin to speculate on the possibility of new cultural and technical functions.
Anthropologist Victor Turner has shown that various indigenous societies used a method of “componential exaggeration” to estrange everyday objects and employ them as didactic tools for the young to learn from. He argued that the deformed statues and objects that certain indigenous societies used, like the American Omaha, were made to have their youth question fundamental notions of beauty, courage, danger, and leadership.
Similarly, the eight designs shown here, along with the student work of the Mixed Mannerisms seminar of Fall 2023 aspire to be didactic tools for students of architecture to question our aesthetic assumptions when it comes to assembling building elements. The artifacts are understood less as end products than processes of collective questioning using methods of photographic, formal, scalar, programmatic, and semantic manipulation.
TO LINE
witH atelier rzlbd, comPleted witH reza aliabadi, James cHungwon Park, maddie cHeung toronto, canada august 2024
role: concePt develoPment to eXecution
Atelier RZLBD pursues an open series exploring the act of drawing a line. We present 64 lines, each created to push the boundaries of how we understand line. As computer aided drawing takes over the art and architecture disciplines, traditional methods of design, sketching, and drafting have become a lost art. A digital line is defined merely by a start and end coordinate, existing in an infinite realm with no character or imperfection. Lacking any sense of scale, a computer can generate a line of any length instantly. To some, this is an ideal – a sense of perfection, mathematical precision, efficiency, and reliability. However, the relationship between pen and paper, human and material cannot be forgotten.
A drawn line is not merely one-dimensional. By the touch of a human hand, each line is drawn through the intimate interaction of a tool onto a medium; we are bound by the limits of these materials. The medium has a distinct size, coloration, and consistency, while the tool has a specific thickness, function, and agility. Uniting two contrasting materials creates texture, intricacy, detail, and uncertainty. The expression of the line reflects the lived experiences of its creator and the material itself, making every drawn line unique with its own personality.
A line is more than precision and efficiency – it carries time, space, weight, and humanity. A line is a verb: a performance, a process. And finally, a line has a soul, like the one who draws it.
FROM A BOX TO A DWELLING
witH atelier rzlbd
rzlbdPost vol 15 no 01
toronto, canada
august 2023
role: concePt develoPment to eXecution
6” x 9” (15 x 23 cm) :: Folded Pamphlet :: Limited edition zine :: Print on paper / hand numbered :: 2023
Containing diagrams and an essay, this issue reinterprets several of the atelier’s residential projects into a linear formal process, understanding the forces and limitations that shape a house’s exterior. Projects mentioned include:
1. 10 Degrees of Separation
Periscope House
Bundle House
Out(side) In House
Patio House
FROM A BOX TO A DWELLING
It is important to note that these manipulations, operations, or distortions to the box are never additive – in this way, the final design remains cohesive and reminiscent of the whole. This preliminary list of verbs or transformations could become a key for design: a certain number of moves that can generate any number of forms from an initial geometry.
Rarely does built design exist in a void, in which limitations do not exist and one can freely create. While the freedom of designing from scratch may seem attractive; designing with limitations, a set of rules, and a predetermined logic perhaps encourages a more cohesive and modest design. As a formal exercise in reinterpreting several of the atelier’s residential projects, one limitation arises with where the form begins: a single pure geometry. This acts as a continuation of an obsession at the atelier with the part to whole relationship – evident in our logotype in which a 4x5 rectangle is subdivided to generate its letters.
While these diagrams are a condensation of these projects to their fundamental formal properties and are inspired by both internal and external forces, this exercise abstracts the design of these houses into a linear formal process. These selected projects begin as a pure volume (a box, or rectangular prism), and are sculpted to arrive at their final form. A subtlety to their manipulation leaves the final design still humble and true to its original whole.
The initial volume typically starts with a set of initial constraints: lot area, zoning and bylaws, budgeting constraints and a client wishlist. Of course, each building has its own specificities in which one or two of these constraints may become more dominant. The subsequent operations may depend on conceptual or practical goals of the project, respecting these limitations as well as laws of symmetry and proportion.
The bisection and rotating of volumes of 10 Degrees of Separation directs views towards the hill on the site and divides the program into two: served and servant. Due to budgetary constraints, the roof line of Periscope House staggers to reduce the second floor area. The divisions in Bundle House create a rhythm for spatial and programmatic organization and variation in the facade. The careful cuts made in Out(side)In House also create variation in the facade and open up a central void space. And lastly, the removal of a block from its otherwise simple exterior creates a spatial threshold in Patio House, accommodating privacy while diffusing western sunset light.
A certain number of moves can generate any number of forms from an initial geometry. At RZLBD, these manipulations, operations, or transformations to the box are never additive, but are always excavating the possibilities inside. In this way, the final design remains cohesive and reminiscent of the whole. At any level of design, the adherence to a set of rules allows for a formal concept to be more present and integrated throughout. Strong will, self restraint, and respect for the project and context are needed to maintain a level of autonomy and authority to fulfill a project’s intended vision and integrity as much as possible. _ Atelier RZLBD
100 ROOMS: UNTOLD PARABLES OF THE EMPTY ROOM
witH atelier rzlbd
toronto, canada august 2023
role: model construction
As a sequel to “The Empty Room: Fragmented Thoughts on Space (2020), this book elaborates the same theme with one hundred iterations of a square room, each of which tells a different story of the emptiness between the walls.
The Empty Room, in the absence of any visual materials, was composed of poems, aphorisms, and a collection of quotes portraying the room and the emptiness as the essence of architecture. Now, in the following pages, 100 square rooms complement many blurry images of the empty room with a visual guide. Each page consists of a plan and a physical model of a room, which is an excavation of geometry and order inherent within a square. It holds no design intention -- no scale or function -- but simply one of infinte possibilities that emerge from a square. This framework implies that a formal expression of a room should come from within, not from the walls that enclose the space. With these visual references, one can begin to imagine many approximations to the empty room.
A line on a paper is always less, as Kahn says, but through these measurable means, the immeasurable idea of the empty room with take form in one’s mind.
Painting and miXed media work
San Francisco (2020) Oil on canvas 30” x 40”
Taking off (2021)
Acrylic on paper 18” x 32”
PERSONAL WORK
Painting and miXed media work
Wither (2020)
Acrylic on paper 18” x 18”
Tied (2021) Charcoal on paper 12” x 18”
sketcHing tHrougH rome. august - december 2024
Palazzo Farnese - Vignola
Caprarola, Italy
Via dei Fori Imperiali
Campidoglio - Michelangelo
Piazza Navona
Castel Sant’ Angelo
PERSONAL WORK
sketcHing tHrougH rome. august - december 2024
Ponte Sant’ Angelo Rome, Italy
St. Peter’s Basilica - various Vatican City
St. Peter’s Piazza - Bernini Rome, Italy
Bernini’s sculptures Galleria Borghese
