Mel Toscan Portfolio

The time leaves its mark in the walls built by man, marks that give identity, character and personality to the structure, fingerprints are witness to how the architecture lives and form part of the transitions of the physical world. While the real thing guide and give life to the scars, accomplices in the experience.

Mel Toscano

I’m An architect newly graduated from the ITESM (Tec de Monterrey), in process of obtaining license by the NCARB. With skills that are optimal for the development of an architectural project and design. “Legend has it that the architects not sleeping in order to make your dreams a reality. Heard saying that nobody sees them working day, only at night making ideas of paper, so that in the morning are completed and last a lifetime. It is said that can breathe ideas and discard realities by mouth. Manufacturing giants to scale. Have the power to convert the role in particular, glass, metal and others. But this is only a legend.�

Efrain Cordero. e-mial: melissaptoscano@gmail.com

Costa Rica Hotel 8

Minimal Housing 12

Capi Towe

italia er 16

INDEX

Cultural Corridor 24

Nautilus Tower 30

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Costa Rica Hotel The project focuses on the designing of a Hotel with eco-tourist principles in the Costa Rican province of Limon. As a first exercise, we had to develop a small “manifesto” about our position towards architecture, and later, relate it with the hotel design. The hotel itself became an exercise about the experiences and phenomena that define it and define the world. Taking the concept of “phenomena” as the engine of human existence and the different actors that surround it, the hotel was finally defined as a “slow hotel for slow living”.

Phenomena define us as beings in the world; at certain times and spaces. At the same time, we feel phenomena through our senses. In order to understand a site and ourselves within it, we need time. That is why we must live slowly, with vivid and exposed senses. Only in this state of body and mind can we understand the world again as an experience where preconceptions are forgotten and experiences come full of

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The hotel was conceived as a journey to find a correct understanding of the human place in the world: understanding nature and its phenomena; understanding ourselves on the site; understanding us as part of the phenomena; getting involved with the phenomena, and giving a part of us to the site and the users that share the experiences

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The images try to transmit this phenomenon, those experiences, those transitions. These are almost photographic frames, with a small screen format that try to concentrate on a specific moment or experience while gathering some actors that influence that specific time.

The light becomes a piece of the whole design. It’s fascinating how light can light up a room from the very first second of sunrise and change minute by minute its color, the density of the ambiance, the shadows.

Slow could mean give value to things or moments.

Stop for a minute and listen, touch, smell, laugh, lay down, even run really fast. The images reflect some Costa Rican elements, they show nature, actions, ambiance or a certain moment of the day. These elements are on the image so we could appreciate them, stop and understand.

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Minimal Housing The proposal aims to promote the culture of the street markets (tianguis) in México, through the rehabilitation of an old building called “Guadalupe Victoria” in the centre of the city of Guadalajara. Where the demand for social housing is high. The project focus on the spaces for permanent and temporary residents whose spaces are flexible and vast to the personal development of the inhabitants.

The concept of the project is to support the culture, gastronomy and green spaces of the área, by integrating the biulding with the context.

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Common Terrace

Kitchen and L

Ground Floor

45 square met 14

Livving Room

Bedroom

Second Floor

ters Apartment 15

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Capitalia The demographic expansion of metropolitan areas have created centers with public facilities in the different colonies of the cities. However, in Mexico that has nor worked properly, leaving without access to basic services in new areas. So that transfers by car creates traffic and chaos in the city, at the time of move toward work, school, gym, and housing.

Capitalia integrates spaces to create a district that count with the necessary infrastructure for the integral development of the inhabitants. Increasing the quality of life of its ressidents and promoting the sports culture, health and the social gathering. In addition to reducing the transfers, giving free time for personal interests.

Architectural animation: https://youtu.be/1vIzx20SbPw

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Entrance

Entrance Tower

Basement Parking Floor

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Sun Study 7am

Master L

Sun Study 9am

Sun

Apartment Terrace

Basement Parking Entrance

Ground Floor

Location

n Study 11 am

Sun Study 1 pm

Sun Study 3 pm

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South View

Structure Terraces

Structure Terraces

North West View

Structure

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Apartment A: 134 m2 Kitchen Living room Dining room 3 Bedrooms 3 1/2 Bathrooms 2 Terraces

First Floor

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Apartment B: 100 m2 Kitchen Living room Dining room 3 Bedrooms 2 Terraces

Apartment C: 90 m2 Kitchen Living room 2 Bedrooms 1 1/2 Bathrooms 2 Terraces

Apartment D: 224 m2 2floors Kitchen Living room Dining room 3 Bedrooms TV room 2 1/2 Batrhrooms

Second Floor

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Cultural Corridor The city’s expansion causes that the centers are abandoned.

However, these lots have a great potential, to give life to the city. So the project proposes involvement in abandoned lots to connect the points of interest of the society. Creating a cultural corridor, which connects public spaces, and promotes the culture, the exhibition of music, painting and theatre, as well as cultural workshops.

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Bridge Cafe

Open- Air Auditorium

Master Plan 26

Public Space

North Facade

West Facade

Cultural Expositions

North Facade

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Perspective Section

Perspective Section Rendering Program

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Master Plan

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Nautilus Tower The nautilius Tower overlooks all directions of the city, the dynamism and movement achieved a way not usual, where all spaces take advantage. he vertical real estate developments are increased from a couple of years in the most populous cities in the Nations, since the increase in population should not allow demographic expansion and the segregation of the existing city. Rehabilitate the spaces and re-plump the city is essential for stable development. Proposal of the apartments is to have modular spaces you have a view of 360 ° towards the city, where the terraces serve as eaves for Sun protection, resulting in a formal concept of dynamism and movivmiento on the facades.

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Ground Floor

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First Floor

Second Floor

Third Floor

West Facade

North Facade

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Infonavit The project is a work commissioned by RD to a builder of residential reserves level economic medium and medium low, in the municipality of Tesistan, Jalisco. Within the metropolitan area of Gdl. House minimal room for regulation in the Guadalajara metropolitan area has increased production by the great demand that exists of vivivneda of lower middle class. The representation of such housing takes pride in the spaces to be accomplished to build them. And gives insight to the buyer about the good property that want to purchase with real proportions.

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ECHOES The time leaves its mark in the walls built by man, marks that give identity, character and personality to the structure, fingerprints are witness to how the architecture lives and form part of the transitions of the physical world. While the real thing guide and give life to the scars, accomplices in the experience.

Mel Toscano

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The be consent has the ability to know oneself and to your environment. However, thoughts can be betrayed by the movements of the body. The awareness awakens feel, speaks and expresses itself, as well as also interprets according to their world perspective that forjo with its historical experience. Therefore, the accomplice of all historical experience becomes the place where the event actually took presence. When an event is important for our person occurs in a specific place this is transformed into a zone symbolic that has as purpose to release the meaning of the immediate situation. So it becomes a cultural object staff. To see with the eyes of a consciousness awake helps us to witness the existence of ourselves and of space, dimensioning the structure of the place described by the landscape and settlement, analyzed by the space and character, and experienced by the senses and the conscience. In a subjective world where personal values help us achieve individual goals with approaches selfish toward the common ‘Am I” and the “being” becomes the starting point for any new experience of life, and therefore of the new global history, secreting to “all” and it becomes irrelevant in the affairs of everyday life. The routine creates a daily experience that makes us lose interest in the things that our eyes already know, the transition spaces lost relevance in the minds occupied of the modern world. The blindness which clouds to society guided by the capitalist economy of the new world causes that the arts are not perceived with the senses that the works are not read with awareness, and that life was not experiment with transcendence. The differences among the subjects within cities become blurred when sharing public spaces transients that unite them in an indirect way and makes them part of a whole. The test invites us to reflect on the experience that arises from the life by linking the individual with the place, does it is possible to walk without knowing where it is depressing? Does the personal will is sufficient as a guide existential to reach the essence of things, knowledge and places?

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It is the duty of the architecture create panoramas to contribute to the development of the user, because that within a life fragmented where everything is true, because they could say that is invented, arguing that everything depends on the perspective of where you see it, the lack of limits causes the line between the beautiful and the ugly becomes confusing.

Although what we conquest or makes us rebels is the beauty or the ugliness of the work, the revelation own of the building is the one that with attracting and awakens our senses to arouse emotions in our interior that are saved by way of photo album in the mind, causing the consciousness to acquire knowledge of the experience lived around the place. The places delimited by subject, experienced by the man saved echoes in its interior rosando sound waves to create spaces sensory where the story takes presence and the nostalgia is present in the corners and textures of the subjects with scars of the physical world that surrounds it. The language with which we whisper, echoes represented in the materials, are the traces that events left in its walls, walls accomplices in the course of time and transitions of the physical environment that cannot deceive the human eye, as the real thing are the only ones that are not related to the eyes.

The echoes, as well as the dreams are a recreation for the brain, which can satisfy the demands of the thinking or produce resonance of all light effects and hearing that during the day acted on something. In a system of cause and effect the character and personality that form a criterion are necessary to awaken the conscience behind the intangible. The echoes are causes that are not true, since that are subjective depending on the historical experience, however, places will be resident in the set of individual experiences that make it become what a space is at present. The experiences of the past are part of this and as beings aware we are usual associations of feelings and thoughts, which when in everyday life experience quickly, are not perceived as complex, but as units without details covering situations beyond, but with become coordinators of give life to the city.

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At present every human being can find in its interior hundreds of reasons to find admiration, visual pollution makes us call the attention a vain thing and the lack of attention makes us blind to the things of value that our environment protects the form of secret exposed to appreciation without borders. The Conscience seek excitement and looking for causes that pique your interest to absorb the world. The motivation of knowing and experiencing the city. However, cities become gray science and technology obstructs our way toward the light of estimate every corner of the city, depriving the existence of places.

And when I refer to places, I define as the place that is a space that has a character that distinguishes it and that will help man to deal with conditions in their daily lives, spaces, significant. When you relate the man with the medium creates a link emotive that creates a conscience globalised for the new world, that in spite of the fact that is connected by the informational development of the new era, the true values do not cease to be significant.

In the world where the barriers between countries are full of connections partner-policies governing the individual development of an arbitrary manner, allowing the individual freedom and regulating the expression communal. However, the only way to verify the evolution and the social movements of the past is by means of the study of the architecture and the city and articles that formed part of the events. The existential dimension that is the witness of all those events of history that make us what we are today are manifested in the real thing, but its meaning has a historical situation. As things real I refer to as says the architect Peter Zumthor, to the light, that will simply be light. “Architecture seeks to set up a whole from details. The materials should express the basic idea of the project�. In the life postmodern, apart from staff, it seems unreal because no one gets to see beyond. That is why the real thing as the water, light, vegetation express presence and tranquillity so that the echoes architectural can be perceived by paying attention to the details in the materials and to the change in the natural environment.

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The buildings must possess the ability to arouse our feel and understand the past and reason. Thus the process of birth an inner vision, understanding and the truth. To achieve a building clear and logical.; with subjective ideas and thoughtful, but with personal meaning toward the project. The space must possess the combination of sense and reason, in addition to include the history and the past to leave to the echoes of the existence to relive the past in the walls of the present. Let the past activities and the natural features of the medium and of the building and the site proposed that the work be harmonious because it is part of the real setting that is accepted because it is simply there, a work that increase the chances of making an own contribution that capture the essence exact for the specific place. Understand and reflect on the architectural design whether public and private can be the tightrope of define a project as good or bad. Either a building public or private, the architecture must be configured using the closed body, isolated from its interior space; and the open body, which surrounds a space sector together with the continuing unlimited.

However, each work is built depending on the specific place, in a place in the world and to represent it we must highlight the essence of space and not the object, in this way the imagination promotes the curiosity of the reality. On the other hand, the place cannot be separated from its past, that is why the echoes must be reflected on the work to be able to reaffirm the essence and arouse emotions desired in the work, a space that might be able to absorb the traces of human life, and with it I acquire wealth special. In this way the new events within the work will form part to enrich the essence and feel the echoes of the past.

The place represents the real part of the architecture, which manifests the habitation of man and reveals the sense of belonging to the human. And so every event. Our own conscience must be the disease that must heal in order to be free. Understanding the echoes of life, and to understand the essence of the facts that make develop as people, are the personal objectives we must pursue, because although mankind has played to fight for freedom, the limits of morality and ethics that leave no exploit our passions makes us prisoners of society.

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In this whole environment where relates the society with the architectural space “what is lost, is the daily life in the world, which has to be the real concern of man. That is why the objective existence of the architecture makes the site will become place, this is, to expose the meanings present in the Habitat given. The new science that studies the phenomena where relates these events in the contemporary world, is the phenomenology, studying everything related to the events surrounding an object. Different approaches may be taken in connection with the public space that serves as a transition from the spaces where inhabits the human being. We must awaken and do see the priorities in this world where only the affairs socio-political control the development of cities and their growth focused on private interests, since the individual interests are more important than the interests in common. Interpersonal relationships are the goal of every architect, since if they relate among themselves the inhabitants of a metropolitan area created a trust and aware that helps to create an optimal area for the development of events that help evolve to society as a place and point of focus for social activities with different objectives in a flexible space that can absorb the presence of each of the users and that do not pass unnoticed space. But to take presence, and which is known as a place that is simply there acquiring new echoes for future generations and their development. This is the history of the future, while it is we who are responsible for maintaining the echoes of the past present today for future generations. An architecture that can create images alternatives, which propose a better life, to guide our actions, if is that we do not want to perpetuate the current conditions, but to improve. The architecture should be the one that is constantly re-inventing, repensĂĄndose and surpassing constantly.

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