MHernandez 2013 portfolio

MARIELA HERNANDEZ

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA SOA M.ARCH CANDIDATE 1 FALL 2014

CONTENTS

2

NYC HOTEL

FLORIDA ECOLOGY

LUMINAIRE ZEN

VERTICAL DATUM

4-7

8-9

10

11

GARDEN INSTITUTE

12 - 13

GRAFT

BUSINESS BLOCK

FLORIDA BOATHOUSE

14 - 15

16 - 21

13-14

SENSORY MAPPING

24 - 25

RESUME

26 - 27 3

NYC HOTELSpatial Rift Partner: Irma Hernandez Critic: Alfonso Perez-Mendez Fall 2013 Site: Chelsea NY

This hotel is located in a very culturally expanding section of New York City. It offers spectacular views to the Hudson river and becomes a unifying factor in the sociology of the visitor and the local New Yorkers. Taking cues from the ceremonial breach within the city grid that has been created by the nearby High Line Park, this hotel succeeds in providing an invigorating social joint that splits right down the middle. This morphological feature is designed as a void or rift that is essential to the necessity of natural light and clear views.

Diagramming Section Modular Organization

Evolution of Form

Secondary Translucent Skin

Chelsea Site Diagram

4

Primary Holding Shell

Primary Structure

Lobby Space

5

6

Preliminary Form

Cafe & Atrium

7

FLORIDA ECOLOGY Critic: Martha Kohen Fall 2012 Site: Gainesville, FL

Longitudinal Section

Cross Section through Loading Ramp

8

The panoramic view of the serene lake is definitely a gift of the site that needs to be enhanced. However, one of the weaknesses of the site is that there is not very much thermal comfort since the site lacked inhabitable canopies and wind passages. Not only is the landscape a generator for the idea of vastness, but my intervention could also offer a clear view and self-reliant ventilation. I expanded the idea of an axial floor plan that created a direction for air movement and imagined the ventilated porch to be the main contender. The porosity of the walls is used to catch any opportunity for wind that may come as an effect of the lake and the entire space is raised up on stilts to allow cooling of the floor and prevent flooding.

Model in Context

Site Plan

Cross Section through Gallery

The program is a kayak ramp, which submerges into the lake and is attached to a very minimal pier above it. The itinerary then leads the occupant to an open-air observation deck where spectators can be fully immersed in the quiet, limitless lake. The path also diverges and transforms into a much more enclosed facility that houses an intimate, open-air dining space, equipped with a food preparation and restroom space that are organized along the central axis. Adjacent to this is a photography gallery intended to be used for reflective images of the site and to offer chronicle of Newnans Lake.

9

LUMINAIRE ZEN Critic: Dr. Lucky Tsaih Fall 2013 Environmental Technologies II

This became an exploration in achieving a soft reading light that creates a relaxed ambiance for the bulb is muted through a layering of panels that range from most transparent to semi-translucent. This creates an effect of diffused light with a Zen aesthetic. The space where the night table lamp will be is a bedroom with a very modern design and backed with a wall of windows. The furniture is a dark, stained wood with soft, creme colored accents. So, the color scheme requires a light fixture that speaks in a similar language of neutral palette. The furniture is also very low to the ground, so the lamp will be hanging from the ceiling so that there is a better functional and visual connection with the space.

Preliminary Sketches

10

VERTICALCritic:DATUM Rebecca Walker Spring 2012

Performance

Study

Rehearsal

Stemming from an exploration of the human body, specifically the process of spreading through dispersion, this intervention became a tower for the program of a dance center. The intervention portrays this concept by having a stable, measured body (planar armature) which contrasts with the dispersing entity that multiplies itself at the core of the body and spreads outward (linear system).

The program came about as a result of the experience created by each unique condition that comes from a dispersing sense of articulation within the linear system. The placement is arranged so that the moments are affected by a different quality of what the dispersion is causing. The highest point is the most diluted, the center is the most dense.

The top moment, being more vertical, relates to the lowest and becomes the performance space while the bottom is the rehearsal space.

The middle moment is the study space so it is made up of dense intimate spaces.

11

INSTITUTE FOR GARDENS Critic: Mary Padua Spring 2013 Site: Charleston, SC

The city of Charleston has one unique characteristic that I found especially intriguing. The positive space is scattered with small slivers of negative voids, which are then morphed into beautiful secret gardens for most residential buildings. The intimacy of these pocket gardens is what gives Charleston the charming mystery that it possesses. Gardening is a prevalent culture in the city, which takes notes from the plantation gardens that surround the peninsula and the English traditional gardens. The proposed institution is going to provide further knowledge on the subject for students and the visiting public.

Entrance inspired by Single House

12

Allowing Pass-through traffic

Balcony overlooking Northern Gardens

Exhibition and Observation

In taking cues from the architecture of its immediate context, the Institute for the Historic Gardens of Charleston assimilates through mimicking and redefining the vernacular language of building that is used throughout the city. Its spaces are shifted and carved so that the voids of Charleston remain a distinct feature in the design. This creates a similar intimate quality that speaks to the secret gardens of Charleston. Charleston’s distinctive single-houses make use of a covered piazza that is placed alongside the entrance of the house. In a similar way, the proposed building has a tendency to blur the constructed edge in different dimensions.

13

GRAFT Architectural Stitch Critic: Rebecca Walker Spring 2012 Site: Gainesville, FL

This project began with an analysis of a preexisting condition of the site. The goal is to inject a connection from one existing building (Little Hall) to another (Fine Arts Library). Through careful consideration of the ground traffic and facade studies, this intervention came about as an articulated, elevated bridge that allows for the street life to continue beneath. It is directly connected to a balcony on the third floor of Little Hall and an entrance to the interior of the second floor of library.

Diagramming Site Patterns

View from Library framing Little Hall Model Photos

Little Hall (NORTH)

14

Site Model in Context

Also, there is an entrance from the ground level that is adjacent to the library building. Therefore, there is a gradual progression from lower level to higher that reflects a more public to private relationship within the bridge. This is reflected in the program at each level. At the lowest, ground level, there is a cafe easily accessible by passing public and at the highest is a more private gallery for fine arts.

Library (SOUTH)

15

BUSINESS BLOCK The Future Business Center Partner: Irma Hernandez Critic: Alfonso Perez-Mendez Fall 2013 Site: Chelsea NY

Site Diagram showing nearby amenities: Schools, Dining, Parks, etc.

16

The idea is to reinvent the business center within the urban setting of New York City. With a linkage of residents and business people we are encouraging possibilities of encounter and cooperation between the two groups.

Section From WEST to EAST

New York City is the perfect setting for our aim of intermingling the working people of the business center with the residents of the social housing. We expect that joining the two will allow for many opportunities to blossom within the urban community. The joining of the two is visible in the physicality of the interlacing fabric composed of floating boxes and heaped volumes. In order to achieve interconnectivity within the city, we explore it through the idea of bridging at multiple levels.

Interior Retail & Business Plaza

17

18

In terms of public space, we created an intensely urban plaza at the center of the block. This space is surrounded by the floating blocks of program (hanging pool, basketball court, and tennis court), the retail space, and the lively trade center on the ground floor. It is a space for reflecting on the city and sitting to eat lunch but with a lot of people traffic. It provides breathability and porosity to the block and a place of repose for its inhabitants.

19

Entrance at Western Avenue

20

Plan at Ground Level

We achieve this through the architectural design of a net of grids that visually unites the block with a language of horizontal elements that sympathizes with the human scale. This is allowing the programmatic elements of the business center, sports complex and housing to intertwine and interact promoting a strong community within.

21

FLORIDA BOATHOUSE The Ballet of the Boat Critic: Martha Kohen Fall 2012 Site: Gainesville, FL

This intervention exists through the examination of edges of the site by running away from the water edge, attaching to the preexisting edges of the man-made path that is on the west side of the site, and reacting to the implied edges of the shade and canopy of the trees.

The process of assigning the program in this intervention consists of a method of dividing then synthesizing. I began by separating the programmatic activities that were most likely used by the rowers from the ones that were for visitors. After further analysis of the type of movement that would be required from each of these groups, the segregated interventions began to morph back into one entity that allows for both privatization and congregation between the opposite groups of people.

22

Roof Plan

Plan & Program Assignment

The proposed intervention is made up of four individual spaces that are united by an organizational piazza in the center of the space and an undulating “umbrella� roof that continues over the breaks that occur in between buildings. The bays for the rowing boats is located on the north side of the site in order to maintain a relationship with the Gainesville Area Rowing facility that already exists on the site. As one travels south, the correspondence of the itinerary changes from one that is shared by the community, to one that belongs purely to the UF students, and the most southern point (closest to University Ave.) is open to the public and spectators of the sport.

View of Observation Deck from Lake

23

SENSORY MAPPING: How Perception Makes the Memory of a Place Critic: Charlie Hailey Fall 2013 Architecture Theory II

“We are all artists and landscape architects, creating order and organizing space, time, and causality in accordance with our perceptions and predilections.” -David Lowenthal Geography, Experience, and Imagination 1961

Musical Analysis from Design 4 (Critic: Rebecca Walker)

24

The main question of how human sensation may affect the way that architecture takes form is explored through the writing of David Lowenthal. He takes on the subject of mental maps through the investigation of the “relation between the world outside and the pictures in our heads”. This leads to the potential drawings by architects of things that we cannot see with our eyes and buildings that respond to this sense of human interaction with place. One approach to a method of forming architecture through sensory-based data can be seen in Kenneth Frampton’s idea of Critical Regionalism.

This is specifically examined in his argument for the “visual versus the tactile” . Critically regional architecture succeeds in the way that he speaks of the “tactile sensitivity” and “place-conscious poetics” .

Frampton’s insistence on preventing “placeless” architecture is related to Guy Debord’s explanation of human “awareness of psychogeographical

effects” in his “Theory of Derive”.

The architect must study the psychogeography of a site before intervening with any structure. And, Debord defines this as the “attractions of the terrain” that will sway the inhabitant into moving a certain way through a space. In essence, this type of research of the humanity of the context of a place must be critically considered in an architect’s space making.

A map of the human senses is just as important, if not more important than the actual construction documents of a structure if the architecture is meant to be flourishing with what Debord sees as “playful behavior” or culture.

Any place must be subjected to this type of analysis despite the scale, whether it is urban planning, a public center, or a single-family apartment, because architects hold a level of responsibility for the influence made on their own society.

The way that each individual perceives a place is entirely based on personal mental images that come together to form a spatial reality specific to that person. This idea of personalized geographical maps and individualized reality is the driver for David Lowenthal’s “Geography, Experience, and Imagination: Towards a Geographical Epistemology”. He explains that human “experience is self-centered” and based on a collection of their past, language, age, and other individualistic characteristics. This creates a sense of customization in the way that people will take in a space that is designed with a specific idea in the architect’s mind.

It is what makes architecture such a fluid and exciting field. Keith Eggener writes, “If critical regionalism was found difficult to define much beyond this and to be lacking in stylistic unity, this was because it was a method or process rather than a product, and the process varied widely according to individual situations”. Although

he is a addressing an alleged pitfall of the process of critical regionalism, it is that very factor that makes a space much more attractive due to the personalization of a place. The process of studying the perception of the general public yet trying to create a personalized experience for the inhabitant is a tremendous challenge.

Since “everyone sees the world… reflected in the retarding mirror of his memory” , as said by Lowenthal, the architect must become experienced in following a very specific line of investigation for the target audience.

This explains how Frampton is so adamant about creating architecture that is critically regional so that it caters to the specific geography and culture.

Topography is not the only information that is necessary for generating a space. Measures of light and climate, or anything else that becomes a distinguishing character of a place, are also very important in forming a connection between the

inhabitant and the architecture. It is important to note, that these sensory qualities that should become apparent in a space are what will be most deeply imprinted in the inhabitant’s memory. Therefore, understanding the forces that make a person feel a certain way in a specific place become indispensable. Architects must collect sensory data in their own mental maps so that they can then manipulate the region and incite a stimulating effect on society.

25

CONTACT INFORMATION MARIELA HERNANDEZ 3469 NW 44TH STREET APT 101 LAUDERDALE LAKES, FL 33309 (352) 284 - 6332

EDUCATION

INVOLVEMENT

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE GAINESVILLE, FL GPA: 3.36/4.0 GRADUATION DATE: 05/03/2014

TEACHING ASSISTANT FOR UFSOA WITH DONNA COHEN [08/2013 - 10/2013]

NORTHEAST HIGH SCHOOL OAKLAND PARK, FL NHS SENIOR HALL OF FAME GRADUATION DATE: 06/2010

INDEPENDENT STUDY OF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT EXHIBITION WITH MARTHA KOHEN [10/2012 - 02/2013] (ONGOING)

UF OUTREACH AMBASSADOR [12/2011 - 08/2013]

AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS (AIAS)

26

AWARDS/PUBLICATIONS

SKILLS

ARCHITRAVE 19 PUBLICATION “Spatial Ascent” Page 84 [08/2012]

AUTOCAD

SKETCH. d3 EXHIBITION AT FORDHAM UNIVERSITY

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP, ILLUSTRATOR, INDESIGN GOOGLE SKETCHUP RHINOCEROS 5.0

FLORIDA OPPORTUNITY SCHOLAR [08/2010 - Present]

VRAY & MAXWELL RENDER PLUG-IN HAND DRAFTING & SKETCHING

VICENZA STUDY ABROAD SCHOLARSHIP AWARD SPRING 2014 [10/2013]

27

28