Portfolio - Marcela Alvarez by Marcela Alvarez

MARCELA ALVAREZ

PORTFOLIO ARCHITECTURE

2020 - 2024

An Everyday Test Case

Program: Future Publics - Quotidian Wellness

Location: Port Authority Bus Terminal

Critics: Evan Tribus, Cathryn Dwyre, Pierre de Looz

Degree Project Partner: Esther Sonnenschine

The commercialization of wellness has widened the gap between healthcare and individuals, leading to unequal access. Our goal is to create environments that support and enhance health for everyone, moving beyond traditional hospitals to public spaces that promote holistic well-being. By studying public healthcare, we identiﬁed the critical role of public hospitals in ensuring health equity and community well-being. Our project envisions a future where health is accessible to all through these three key conditions: quotidian integration into everyday surroundings, affordances for individual engagement according to the theory of salutogenesis, and biophilic design principles to incorporate living material into public spaces and harness its associated health beneﬁts. Using the Port Authority Bus Terminal as a test site, we demonstrate how these principles can transform public spaces, promoting health and well-being for all users. Ultimately, our approach seeks to make wellness a fundamental right, accessible within the fabric of our communities.

FALL 2023 - SPRING 2024

COLLECTIVE HEALTH

Our project envisions a future where health accessibility is a result of societal collaboration to create nurturing environments. The conditions of health we have identiﬁed can be placed anywhere public, offering signiﬁcant potential for everyday user engagement. Our approach to Port Authority’s transformation is systematic and episodic. By designing these conditions in public space, can we maintain health as a public good so that everyone has equal access to the conditions necessary to get healthy and stay healthy?

Physical Interior View - Green Hallway

Physical Model

THE GARDENS OF EARTHLY DELIGHT

SPRING 2023

Program: Riverfront Master Plan

Location: Rome, Italy

Critic: Frederick Biehle

Design Partner: Olivia Chow

With the construction of the 40 ft high walls along both sides of the Tiber River, the buildings along the river bank were all demolished, eliminating the Roman urban fabric. This included the destruction of numerous local green spaces located along the river’s edge. The historical centers of the city have also become gentriﬁed through the substitution of traditional economic activities, leading to the commodiﬁcation and standardization of urban space. This proposal addresses these issues by regenerating the urban fabric for the local people and spatial consistency is maintained by extracting and modifying existing and past urban form. Through the creation of a network of paths and spaces on the water's edge and descending down to it, the direct connection between the city and the Tiber River is reestablished. The layering of spaces generates a dialogue between interior and exterior that is characterized by the integration of vegetation, which became an integral part of our strategy to provide a sense of privacy and repose.

LOWLINE GARDEN

COURTYARD GARDEN

ARBOR GARDEN

SCULPTURE GARDEN

COMMUNITY GARDEN

Nolli Plan

SCULPTURE GARDEN

SECRET GARDEN

COURTYARD GARDEN

ARBOR GARDEN

FALL 2022

Program: Community Center

Location: Rosario, Argentina

Critics: Gonzalo Carbajo & Guillermo Banchini

This design specializes in bringing surrounding communities together through cultural activities meant to beneﬁt people in the nearby area and beyond. The building was organized to create physical and visual connection between the building and the existing site, to the point where they begin to merge. The three programmatic volumes were stretched to reach different access points: the street, the university, and the park. They were peeled away from each other to adapt to the site topography and merge into the context. The volumes also overlapped to create tightly organized circulation ramps that would interconnect all the programs. The perforated facade frames the movement of the users inside; the gradient of openings show the vertical movement in each volume, and also allow for a speciﬁc amount of light to enter the different spaces. The exterior cladding material is clay since it’s highly resistant to the exterior environment and the economic nature of the material allows the building to blend in better and can be locally sourced.

SPRING 2022

Program: Youth Community Center

Location: Arverne, Queens, NY

Critic: Thomas Hanrahan

Design Partner: Alyssa Conde

This community center is designed for the youth of the Rockaways, providing maker spaces, classrooms, play areas, and a fun, educating, and engaging environment. The building has a continuous ramp system that ties all ﬂoors and programmatic spaces together in order for kids to feel safe and free to move around as they wish. The main program within the building is play and there are three different experiential spaces: An outdoor playscape with rock climbing and obstacles that lead to the roof, an indoor playscape with a slide, rock climbing, and crawling spaces, and lastly, outdoor fountain sprays where kids can interact and with the water on-site.

Exterior Views

CURVE IN PLAN

PEEL IN SECTION

Massing Approach

SPRING 2022

Program: HelloFresh Ofﬁce Space

Location: Copenhagen, Denmark

Critics: Monica Kumar & Andressa Lopes

Design Partner: Yuyao Fu

After being assigned a ﬂoor plan, we had to design an ofﬁce for a food business in Copenhagen within this space. We chose to make it for HelloFresh, a meal-kit company, and provided the space with a waiting area at the reception, and a variety of collaborative co-working spaces. The space also includes a bathroom, kitchen, and conference room. The design choices branch from Danish culture and the company's typical colors.

1. Sculpted Wood, Entrance Wall

Ceramic Tile, Bathroom Wall

Ceramic Tile, Bathroom Floor

Limestone, Main Walls

Coarse Granite, Reception Desk

Slate, Reception Desk Top

Hardwood Flooring

8. White Plaster, Wall 9. Wood Panel, Wall and Cabinets

Cotton/Polyester, Chair

Jute, Rug

Wallpaper, Wall

Maple, Tables 15. Bumpy Glass, Side Table

Green Carpet, Floor

NORTH - RECEPTION

SOUTH - ELEVATORS

EAST - CO-WORKING SPACE

WEST - SEATING & KITCHEN

HELLO FRESH

RECEPTION LOBBY AREA

Program: Multi-Generational Housing Complex

Location: Gowanus, Brooklyn, NY

Critic: Eva Perez De Vega

Design Partner: Viktor Nakev

This proposal is meant to promote social interaction between the community members of all ages in the building and create a symbiotic relationship with butterflies. The layout poses as an organic growth of units defined by the thickness they are given along the curved façade on each floor. There are three different types of units meant to fit the three different age groups; families with children, elders, and single working class individuals. Multi-generational social interaction is promoted by having the different users clustered into the same shared living spaces. The building has been massed in such a way to feed the most natural light to the users as possible with units facing south. Flowers are present in many places around the building to attract butterflies and there are spots where they can hide from the wind. The ground floor is a public park made with a designed topography to accommodate shallow ponds of water where the butterflies can land in and drink from.

FALL 2021

Apartment Units

1ST FLOOR

Unit Cluster

2ND FLOOR

3RD FLOOR

ROOF

Exterior Views

SPRING 2021

Program: Film Production Company

Location: Hunter College, Manhattan, NY

Critic: Rychiee Espinosa

This building is created as a tower extension to Hunter College’s main building and home to their film school program. It’s composed of four interlocking, C-shape, programmatic volumes, two of which are for public programs and circulation, and the other two which are more private for offices and workspaces. The volumes help create a clear separation between the two different types of spaces, but it also promotes interaction and crossing between the people that circulate either space. Direct visual connections were made, however the addition seems more lightweight because of all the curtain wall glass added to contrast the concrete. The main program is theater screening, but most spaces are also meant to be flexible. The idea “theater of the city” came from the multifunctionality of the screening rooms; when the screens lift up, framed views of the city are revealed.