Portfolio / Lorenzo Graham

Content

Resume

Encounters; cities, mountains, and books

Undergrad thesis project

Base Agency Headquarters

Lanza Atelier

Denver Chairs

Lanza Atelier

Ingan Pan-Amazonic Pluriversity

Universidad de los Andes

Costeño Beach Theatre

Nido Arquitectura

Robot Lab: Migratory Ruin

Universidad de los Andes x Sci Arc

Intergenerational Center

Universidad de los Andes

Personal information

Lorenzo Graham

Nationality: Colombian-American

Age: 24

lorenzoggraham@gmail.com

cel: +57 3057093265

Bogota, Colombia

Involvements

2023

Robotic Experimentation Workshop

SciArc, Los Angeles

Casey Rehm, Soomeen Hahm, Daniela Atencio, Claudio Rossi

2022

Undergraduate Teacher Assistant at Advanced Unit, Salón Selva (Jungle Room)

Employment

2021 August-2023 December

Undergradute Architecture

Internship at NIDO Arquitectura

Bogota, D.C.

Architectural design, 3D and 2D drawing, client presentation making

Instagram: _n_i_d_o_ w

Education

2019-2024

Bachelor in Architecture Universidad de los Andes

Bogota D.C., Colombia

Magna Cum Laude

4.64 GPA

Volunteering

2014-2020

FIDES Foundation

2016

TECHO Colombia

Universidad de los Andes, Bogota Pedro Aparicio (APLO), Juliana Ramírez

2020

Undergraduate Teacher Assistant at Media Elective, Observational Drawing Course

Universidad de los Andes, Bogota Jose Ignacio Rengifo

Skills

Sketching

Hand drawing (techinical and freehand)

Analog and digital photography

Software

Autocad 2D

Rhinoceros

Photoshop

Illustrator

InDesign Premiere

Twinmotion

Languagues

Spanish English

2023 March-2023 May

Undergraduate Architecture

Internship at APLO

Bogota, D.C.

Architectural design, 3D and 2D drawing, research

www.aplo.xyz

Instagram: a_p_l_o_

2023 June-2023 August

Undergraduate Architecture

Internship at Lanza Atelier

Mexico City, Mexico

Interior and furniture design, technical hand drawing, 2D drawing, model making

www.lanzaatelier.com

Instagram: lanzaatelier Awards

2020

Imagina a Bogotá Futura (Imagine Future Bogota) Winner Project

2018

Valedictorian

Colegio Campoalegre

Encounters; cities, mountains and books

Bogota, Colombia / Undergraduate thesis project

The city is defined by its constant encounter with the mountains. Over the years, urban development has created a barrier that doesn’t allow the mountain access to the city. This has generated an unbalanced encounter. Therefore, the project is located where the city has climbed the most towards the mountain: the locality of San Cristóbal. Its purpose? To extend the mountain to create a balanced encounter with the city. Territorial plan

Encounters; cities, mountains, and books

The project aims to enclose a key location for mountain access to the city. In 1953, there once stood a lake until drying up by 2002, and is now occupied by two residential buildings. The intervention seeks to respect this 70 year evolution and include the adaptations as part of the dynamic history and symbiotic relationship between the mountains and city. For example, the residential buildings are preserved, and a body of water is created, paying homage to the lake that once existed there.

Encounters; cities, mountains, and books

Exterior view

The building is an extension of the mountain, fading away as it reaches its base. When it encounters the city, the building becomes a permeable barrier that encloses an oasis. A thick wall with windows focuses on certain parts of the city, while the trees inside the courtyard are reflected on a glass facade, creating an illusion of infinity.

and offices (existing buildings)

Classrooms

Body of water

Patio

Library

Mountain

The interior of the building is conceived as the space between facades, the space between the city and the mountain.

The possibility of a third place created by objects. Objects, a library, or a mountain of books generate the internal landscape.

Interior view

BaseAgency Offices

Mexico City, Mexico / Lanza Atelier

BaseAgency is a creative studio looking to maximize and diversify its workspace while preserving its creative essence. The project entailed designing furniture such as storage cabinets, shelves, a small kitchen, and an extendable table that also functions as an exhibition wall for a showroom. This showroom is the epicenter of the office. It is a flexible space where various pieces can

be exhibited and events held. A black box concept was conceived, a versatile space where any event or exhibited piece stands out against the black background. The walls of the showroom are covered with sheets of burnt wood. An integrated system was created where the structure can be folded to become a wall or a table, depending on the needs.

Exterior view/ black box

Shelf detail drawing

Shelf section drawing

A Family of 4 Denver Art Museum,

Have a Seat: Mexican Chair Design Today / Lanza Atelier

The preliminary idea behind A Family of 4 was to create a family of pieces with a logical geometrical progression in which different heights suggest different roles in society and across history. During the process, references such as a hand-ladder and the famous Mexican wooden chair were present. This family of chairs intends to remain very conceptual but are still comfortable.

We wanted to cover all the comfortable heights for sitting, starting from a very low chair like those used in prehispanic times or that exist today in some Asian countries. Then, a low chair in the spirit of a silla de estrado, or a chair used by women during the colonial times. Third, a chair more similar to the popular Mexican chair today. And finally, a high chair with less common proportions.

The resulting pieces vary from 4” to 13”, 21”, and 30” in total height, each able to perform diverse functions. Apart from four surfaces for sitting, this group invites you to imagine a side table, a footstep, a magazine rack, and a high chair. The pieces will be fabricated in two types of wood for color contrast, mahogany and maple. A Family of 4 reinvents a Latin American classic chair trying to blur its programmatic limits. (Lanza Atelier, 2023)

LANZA Atelier (Lorenzo Graham) Inquiries: AGO Projects

Photography: Manolo Márquez Production: Nudo Taller

Ingan Pan-Amazonic Pluriversity

Putumayo, Colombia / Universidad de los Andes

“As Inga people, from preschool to doctoral studies, we learn and reproduce knowledge that is not ours. It is the imposed path of the ‘scientifically proven’ that has obscured all other paths to knowledge, including those of indigenous peoples and other epistemologies from the Global South. Sooner or later, these layers of knowledge will have to be dismantled and transformed, as they have been forcibly imposed. Nowadays, it is important for Western knowledge and our own knowledge to have a space for dialogue. This dialogue I only see possible within the context of what is called a ‘university’, although over time this name will also have to change. We can call it pluriversity, Iachaiwuasi, or whatever. It has to be a meeting point of knowledges to reflect on

how to support and reposition themselves in less violent ways.” (Hernando Chindoy Chindoy, leader of the Inga People of Colombia)

This knowledge was divided into four colleges: word, dream, food, and body care. The Inga community opened the possibility of proposing how these colleges would be organized in the territory and how each of these ‘buildings’ would be. In this section, it will be explained how the proposal for the body care college was developed.

While approaching the concept of body care in the Inga community, it was decided to focus on women. A documentary was developed based on prior research and on-site interviews for this.

“When a woman menstruates, her body becomes more sensitive, allowing the territory to channel energies through her. Thus, Flujos Terrenales (Earthly Flows), through the voice of Irma Mojomboy, narrates the story

of caring for the female body during these periods of channeling, as it is the moment when a woman requires greater protection. This care is provided through bathing, which gathers all the territory’s elements. It describes the moment the woman’s body and Mother Earth relate and interconnect, mutually identifying themselves as creators of life.” (Documentary synopsis)

Documentary Flujos Terrenales (Earthly Flows) https://youtu.be/r2UrvqHKYQo?si=hzh_zRCJ1rlWsqYP

Ultimately, the college can be reduced to a series of showers, bathrooms, and laundry. However, these speak about water and its role in these care rituals. The projectproposes to connect the college to a large creek that crosses the campus. The goal is to collect, use, clean, and return water to its course. In this way, the college becomes part of the creek’s flow, a key teaching of the indigenous Inga tribes.

Women’s bathrooms

Women’s showers

Women’s showers

Men’s showers

Men’s bathrooms

Women’s bathrooms

Laundry

Laundry

Costeño Beach Theatre

Santa Marta, Colombia / Nido Arquitectura

The design of this small beach theater, mainly used for parties and concerts, was based on the structure of a horn. Its structure helps amplify the sound generated within it. Visually, the bamboo helps to create the feeling of waves, almost as if one could see the sound.

a. Layers (Musichi Desert)

b. Translations

c. Fragments (Musichi Desert)

d. Robotic operations

e. Robotic edition

f. Photogrammetry of results

Robot Lab: Migratory Ruin

La Guajira, Colombia / Universidad de los Andes

“At its most ambitious core, this project revolves around the past and future of architecture and its intersection with technology, while urgently investigating the real conditions in which it operates. It constitutes a recent narrative interwoven with layers of landscape and technology, navigating between artifacts and hyperartifacts. [...]” (Course syllabus)

Within the warm, humid, and saline ecosystem of the Musichi Desert, rests a slender metallic piece meticulously

carved with the highest precision, giving life to fungal, aeroponic, and hydroponic microorganisms. The piece, functioning as an artifact, decomposes to compose the landscape, a pretext for contemplating ecosystemic processes. The hyper-artifact captures water from its most ephemeral state: vapor. It condenses into vertical reservoirs that progressively filter water through sinuous cavities and linear pipes, providing a direct potable resource for the Musichi fishermen.

c.

e.

d.

f.

The exposure of the artifact to winds, saline sediments, and rainwater dictates the beginning of a decomposition process. The inner piece starts to reveal itself as the panels begin to fall. The panels transform into ruins, and the ruins metamorphose into mangroves. Composed of “trupillo” wood fibers, mycelium, mangrove trunk, and porous concrete, they harbor life whether standing or fallen. Upon touching the ground, they disintegrate into minerals that catalyze the mangrove that once was, now ready to be reborn.

Pedazo superior e inferior

Diagram:

The process of composing the hyper-artifact is the artifact itself, a piece without a clear beginning or end. Time constructs and deconstructs it, allowing it to simultaneously address the responsibilities it must fulfill as an eventual mangrove. It decomposes to recompose a new piece of the landscape, a hyper-mangrove that will now respond not only to its natural limits but also to an anthropic salt frontier.

Intergenerational Center

Bogota, Colombia / Universidad de los Andes

Intergenerational centers are places shared by children and elders. Places that, once shared among themselves, create incredible benefits. Children show an increase in their cognitive levels, while cases of

Digital drawing over physical model

Children’s patio

Elder’s patio

Mixed patio (passive)

Mixed patio (active)

1. Stainless steel railing

2. Channel beam

3. Aluminum cladding

4. Insulation 200 mm

5. Steel plate

6. IP240

7. Downspout

8. Insulated window

9. Gravel

10. Filter

11. Waterproof membrane

12. Thermal insulation

13. Steel deck

14. Wooden beam

15. Wooden plank 16. Installations

17. Plaster panel

18. Acustic panel 19. Plaster 20. Drainage mat

21. Polished concrete 22. Reinforced concrete 23. Subgrade 24. Soil

The building has a single floor, providing accessibility for both users. The program is divided by user and organized into four patios: one strictly for the elderly, another for young children, and two shared. The space connecting these courtyards is used as a meeting point.

The roof creates the idea of a landscape that, varying in height, configures spaces for children or elders.

Patio