Margaret Balich: 2023 Undergraduate Architecture Portfolio

Margaret C. Balich

UNDERGRADUATE ARCHITECTURE PORTFOLIO

COVER: Physical collage composed of 2017 Architectural Record magazines. Wall section sketched by Erik Larson at Larson Karle Architects and added digitally.

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Table of

CONTENTS

MUSEUM Studio 2

OF

FOLDED Studio 1

STRIKES

FORMS

5 15

TRANSPARENT

PAVILIONS

23

SUBURBAN

PORCHES

31

Foundations Studio

Internship

COLLAGE Personal Work

35

3

Academic / Fall 2023 / The Strip District Professors Jen Donnelly and Maria Cadena

MUSEUM OF STRIKES

Located at the intersection of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Susquehanna Rivers, Pittsburgh’s prime location encouraged rapid industrialization.

Steel, glass, and aluminum were mass-produced in the city from the late-19th to mid-20th centuries.

Riverlife, a Pittsburgh-based urban design non-profit, is currently working on a plan to completely and continuously develop the riverfronts of the city, including sites along the water where former steel mills once stood. In line with the city’s present economy of innovation, our Studio 2 class partnered with Riverlife to generate development ideas for a site along the Allegheny River between 29th, 31st, and Railroad Streets.

I conceptualized and designed a museum on this Strip District site dedicated to the city’s notable history of labor movements and strikes, one that is deeply entwined in its industrial past.

Using guiding action verbs, I called upon the former use of the site as the Crucible Steel Mill to inspire my building’s form and the significance of labor to the city’s past, present, and future.

SITE PLAN

The goal of my initial site placement was to center the museum at a crossroads between the dock, the 31st Street Bridge, and Railroad Street to unite the site’s destinations while disrupting the pre-planned pathways.

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DESIGN DEVELOPMENT From

massing

model

to

final

form.

1

4 2

1 2

3

CUTS AGAINST THE PERPENDICULAR 1.

40 degree cut for 40 people killed in Great Railroad Strike (1877) 2.

10 degree cut for decrease in workday to 10 hours during textile stri 3.

27 degree cut for 27-day power cuts during energy strikes (1946) 4.

12 degree cut for 12 people killed in Homestead Strike (1892)

SLANTING Top piece: rotated on its side 15 degrees to symbolize the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette staffers currently on strike that haven’t had pay raises in over 15 years

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BASEMENT Addition of low

4

4

1

2 3

ikes (1848)

wer floor for extra space

3

ROTATION All pieces rotated 14.3 degrees for 14.3 million wage and salary workers in unions in 2023

FINAL MODEL

9

RECLAIMED METAL PANELS

GLASS BLOCKS

GLASS PANES

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MATERIALS

Glass blocks, eco-friendly “green” concrete, and reclaimed metal panels mimic the architectural language of the industrial warehouses around the Strip District.

GREEN CONCRETE

11

B

A

N

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BASEMENT FLOOR PLAN

N

A

B

FIRST FLOOR PLAN

N

SECOND FLOOR PLAN

SECTION B-B

13

Academic / Spring 2023 / Hazelwood Professors Jozef Petrak and Maria Cadena

FOLDED FORMS

Hazelwood, a historic Pittsburgh neighborhood that lies along the Monongahela River, is full of character and passionate residents.

However, the neighborhood lacks a proper community center; its branch of the Carnegie Library, which is quite small, currently fills this role. In Studio 1, I was challenged to design a Hazelwood Community Center by creating a contextual map based on site information and using this data to model an experimental, parametric structure.

Professors Jozef Petrak and Maria Cadena gave the class programming that we had to work into our models. We printed out our maps and folded sheets of paper along the computergenerated lines and patterns to create sculptural models.

DESIGN DEVELOPMENT

I used data about Hazelwood’s bus lines, business hours, and building usage to map important neighborhood locations.

I triangulated and tessellated this data, and I overlaid the three maps to complete the final contextual map of my site.

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MAP ON SITE

TRIANGULATION

TRIANGULATION

TESSELLATION

FINAL CONTEXTUAL MAP

17

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PERFORMATIVE SURFACES

I aimed to incorporate as many performative surfaces, or multi-purpose planes, in my model as possible. One such example is the front green space, which is simultaneously a community space and the roof of the shops.

19

UP

UP

UP

UP

UP

UP

DOWN

DOWN

DOWN

DOWN

BATH BATH GYM GYM

PT

PT BATH BATH RECEPTION RECEPTION

UP

PT

UP

SHOPS SHOPS

BASEMENT FLOOR PLAN

HAZELWOOD AVE.

N

PT

UP

UP

MAKERMAKERSPACESPACE LOBBYLOBBY

N

FIRST FLOOR PLAN

Y OSPREY WA

SE

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BATH

UP

UP

WELLNESS ADMIN

WELLNESS ADMIN

CHECKUP

COMPUTER COMPUTER LAB LAB

CHECKUP

CHECKUP UP

UP

UP

BATH LOUNGE

UP

MAKERSPACEMAKERSPACE ADMIN ADMIN BATH

DOWN

DOWN

DIGITAL DIGITAL FABRICATIONFABRICATION LAB LAB

GROUP THERAPY

N

DOWN

N

SECOND FLOOR PLAN

THIRD FLOOR PLAN

DOLPHIN WAY

GROUP THERAPY

LOUNGE

FLOWERS AVE.

CHECKUP

DOWN

BATH

ECOND AVE. SITE OVERVIEW

21

Academic / Spring 2022 / Ohiopyle Professor Jen Donnelly

TRANSPARENT PAVILIONS

In our final project of Foundations Studio, taught by Dr. Jennifer Donnelly, my classmates and I were tasked to create one public and one private vacation pavilion with the quality of phenomenal transparency.

Located along the Youghiogheny River in Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania, these pavilions and the nearby boat dock would provide group and solo relaxation to visitors.

In order to make the pavilions, I made dozens of iterations of each design based on their corresponding “public” and “private” adjectives. These designs started with two cardboard boxes—one 20” W x 20” L x 5” H and one 20” W x 10” L x 10” H—that were progressively changed through five distinct cuts and reattachments.

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PUBLIC PAV|LION Starting box: 20” W x 20” L x 5” H

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PRIVATE PAV|LION Starting box: 20” W x 10” L x 10” H

PRIVATE AND PUBLIC REALMS

As I designed my site, I strategically cut a canal in the existing topography and placed trees along the landscape between the two buildings to limit inter-visibility.

SITE Left: Private; Right: Public 27

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Professional / Summer 2023 / Erie

SUBURBAN PORCHES

Over the summer, when I began interning for Larson Karle Architects, principal architect Gerald Karle had me jump into Revit for my first assignment: porch design. His cousin’s husband, who is a contractor, planned on putting a front and back porch on their home in Erie, and he needed plans.

I created existing condition plans and a model in Revit based on the home’s original floor plans, modeled different porch styles and roofs, and sent developments to Jerry and his family as I made progress. We all talked on a Zoom call at the end of June to finalize a few aspects of the designs.

All by

renderings me under

and drawings the supervision

were completed of Jerry Karle.

INTERIOR BACK PORCH RENDERING

NORTH AND SOUTH ELEVATIONS

FRONT PORCH RENDERING BALICH

FLOOR

INTERIOR FR

R PLAN PORCH CALL-OUTS

RONT PORCH RENDERING

EAST AND WEST ELEVATIONS

BACK PORCH RENDERING 33

Personal / Ongoing / Everywhere

COLLAGE

I collage to figure myself out. I take clippings from vintage magazines, art books, receipts, wrappers, stickers, and whatever else I can get my hands on. I began collaging as a hobby during my senior year of high school, and I haven’t stopped since. Through my work, I’ve explored sexualization, queerness, femininity, Catholicism, architecture, and the internet, among other things. Gluing all of these pieces of myself down is like journaling to me: it is a release. It is freedom.

All of the pieces in this section were made by hand with paper, glitter, stickers, magazine clippings, and glue.

RECREATION OF TESSELLATION FROM THE ALHAMBRA, SPAIN, 2022

PUBLICATION

“Flu Kids” and “Iteration” are both forthcoming in the Fall 2023 issue of Forbes and Fifth, a literary magazine published by students at the University of Pittsburgh.

FLU KIDS, 2019 on over-consumption of the internet and digital media

on the creative p

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SIGMA, 2020 on the relationship between science and art

ITERATION, 2023 process and the journey of design

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THANK YOU!