Syracuse University School of Architecture
2024 Portfolio
Residential Athletic Center 4 Mixed-Used Building
Design Sketches 13
Initial Ideas for Residential Athletic Center
Passive Thermal Bath 18 Passive Building Design
Abstract Object 26
ARC 208 - Project 1C
Wooden Catwalk Fashion Studio 27
ARC 208 - Final Project
The Residential Athletic Center connects the commercial and residential regions of Downtown Syracuse. In this project, the site is located under I-690 and I-81. Since both highways sliced through Syracuse between two economic groups, the area is reimagined to have I-690 demolished.
The building features three main stair cores, along with 10-foot-wide hallways that connects to all three regions of the building. The 30-foot-wide entrance provides a seamless connection to the parks underneath the highway. Overall, the design integrates three distinct buildings, unified into a cohesive whole, aswell as providing a welcoming atmosphere for visitors in the amenities behind the building.
The eastern side of the building houses the Nuclear Family units along with Athlete units for the first and second floor. Since the building compacts a bunch of large amenities in one site, the height of the buildings becomes too tall. As a result, the shadows from the building spreads into the highway and the park underneath. A solution to this problem was to create an egress with walls made completely from to allow the Sun, coming from the south, to pass through and touch both the highway and parks under it.
The Athletic building, as the name states, holds the main athletic amenities for residents in the building. The top of the building holds the basketball court with a greenhouse and the highway on either side. Underneath holds a small indoor track with 2 floors of recreational weight rooms overlooking each other. The ground floor holds a small olympic sized swimming pool, with a hot tub on the side. These athletic amenities are able to see the greenhouse in-front of them, which gives athletes a naturesque vibe while training. The greenhouse goes from the ground floor to the top floor with a staircase that goes all the way to the top.
One of the main amenities in the athletic building is the boxing room. It is two floors tall, with a boxing ring in the center that can be viewed from multiple angles. The exterior glazing on the side allows for people outside to see what is going on in the boxing ring aswell. Just outside is the skate park.
When the location was presented to the studio, we were tasked to create a mixed-used building that found solutions to the issues presented in the area: the highway, the tight space, the odd shape of the lot, the lack of greenery, as well as other issues that each student explored on their own. Before designing, we had to choose a third collective that included the Nuclear Family and Micron Workers. I chose Athletes as my third collective.
The sketch above shows my initial ideas for the project. I wanted to take advantage of numerous key elements of the site. The underside of the highway, the sunlight, and a grand entrance. The held a loading and unloading zone circled around a
garden. Afterwards, people would be able to enter the lobby and have access to the gym to the right or a restaurant to the left.
The highest part of the building is housing for the Nuclear Family. The design was inspired from Atelier 5’s Halen Estate. The area next to the highway on the right houses the athletes and micron workers. It is a small tringular shaped unit that looks to create an efficient space to house both collectives.
The issues in this initial sketch were glaring. There were no solutions to combat the highway’s toxic gas which is implemented further in the design process.
Further along in the design process, I created a program map to have a sense of where each room would be placed. This map included the program of the ground floor, circulation, cores, and labels. As things progressed, it was soon found out that the digital site model created by one of our studio mates made wrong measurements. This mistake meant that my plans were too big, and they would not fit into the actual size of the site.
I had to redesign the whole building, but I still wanted to keep the same conceptual idea in the space. One key feature in this new design was a
10-foot-wide hallway that spanned across the entire space of the building. I also introduced the idea of having the entrance cut the space between residential and recreational gym use. This division introduced formality and order into the space.
Circulation was a key design aspect of this new design. There were ideas of having a wide stairway that connected the ground floor to the top floor non-stop, best described as a “Stairway to Heaven”. This idea was later incorporated into the greenhouse space.
Halfway through my design process, I began to refine my ideas in a more clearcut sense. The main materials I had to work with were Steel for structure with masonry as cladding. The studio as a whole briefly studied the different ways to incorporate ecology and landscape. I incorporated greenery along the edges of my building with hints of nature in the edges of the building.
In the sketch above, I started design what should go underneath the highway. As a former boston resident, I incorporated one of the icons of my
created a hirarchy between the street level basketball court and the rooftop basketball court.
In this small axon sketch of the athletic building, it begins to shape the overall idea behind how the building operates: a naturesque sapce along the side of the gym. At the time, I wanted sunlight to pass through to the gym space by including a wide glazing area. However, this was replaced by the space of the greenhouse.
childhood, a skatepark, which is heavily influenced by the Lynch Family Skatepark in Cambridge, MA. I also included two half-court basketball courts to allow people to also play basketball at the street level. However, this idea was scrapped later in the design process as visitng architects believed that it
One of the main issues of the site was that urban
areas usually have a problem of becoming a food desert. Fresh foods were always shipped into the city, and they were never made in the area. This problem resulted in products being almost at the end of their lifespan. The greenhouse solves this issue by allowing residents to grow food.
The glazing wall slightly insulates the room while allowing light to pass through and heat the thermal mass wall behind it. By doing so, it heats up air around it which travels to the top. Since the room is an enclosed space, the same air soon cools and fall to the ground, repeating the process.
Drawn by Kyle Espinosa
The thermal chimney absorbs sunlight with glazing and thermal mass. This design activates a stack ventilation effect within the building, allowing for cooler air to enter through the windows while hotter air exits at the top.
Sunlight
The green roof absorbs/redirects the sunlight, causing the room underneath it to be cooler.
The thermal chimney absorbs sunlight with glazing and thermal mass. This design activates a stack ventilation effect within the building, allowing for cooler air to enter through the windows while hotter air exits at the top.
Created by Kyle Espinosa
Compiled by Cecillia Diaz
Created by Thomas Berzesi
Kyle Espinosa
Professor Joseph Godlewski
Spring 2024
The skeleton of the object is made of “Cherry Wood Sticks,” with the overall shape of the object being constructed of laser cut chipboard. The structure is joined together by wood glue, and hot glue.
The objective of the assignment was to create an object inspired from fabric.
Kyle Espinosa
Project 2
Professor Joseph Godlewski
Spring 2024
