Select Work | Petra Matar

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PETRA MATAR

RESUME A Licensed Architect and practicing artist with 10+ years of experience including conceptual and practical work. Intuitive design approach, collaborative design process, bold and experimental form finding, high technical experitse, strong graphic skills, and effective project management.

* bonbonpetra@gmail.com

@bonpetra

DESIGNATIONS Licenced Architect Ontario Association of Architects Passive House Certified Designer Passive House Institue

EDUCATION B.Arch American University of Sharjah / 2011

SKILLS DOCUMENTATION Autocad Revit

MODELLING Rhinoceros 3D Sketchup

FABRICATION Lasercutter 3D Printing

RENDERING Enscape V-Ray

GRAPHIC Adobe Photoshop Adobe Indesign Adobe Illustrator

A CREATURE

a creatue evolves in the United Arab Emirates and lives symbiotically with its residents. It relies on their contact current as an energy source and it provides them with shelter.

It began as a single celled organism on the beaches of the UAE feeding off the electric current in the sea. As it washed ashore it made contact with the residents, and their electric currents proved to be a beneficial energy source. Over several generations through growth, mutation, recombination and adaptation, creatures that evolved to attract the residents of the hot beaches also maximized contact with the residents leading to higher chances of survival and passing on their genes. The creatures that provided shelter were the most successful.

The creatures evolved as structures for human networks of varying use.

Their pods being able to hold a wide variety of functions for the residents such as lodging, working, and any other use the residents needed. The residents sustain the creature and in turn it sustains them.

FIBROBLAST

The Fibroblast Tower is a prosthetic intervention that is designed to begin the healing process of a natural ecosystem, the Niagara Escarpment. Seen as a barrier, the residents of the City of Hamilton have attempted to conquer this World Biosphere Refuge by scarring its surface with roads, paths, and funicular railways to overcome travel challenges. The result is a dysfunctional relationship where the escarpment has become a symbol of the City’s political and environmental shortcomings.

A fibroblast is a type of cell that manufactures and maintains connective tissue; the structural framework in animal tissues. Besides their commonly known role as structural components, fibroblasts play a critical role in an immune response to a tissue injury, and the healing of wounds.

Fibroblasts produce collagen, a primary component of scar tissue.

The Niagara Escarpment is both a connector and a divider. It connects land and water, nations, urban and rural environments along its length. It provides a conduit for wildlife. The Bruce Trail runs the length of the escarpment from Queenston on the Niagara River to Tobermory on the Bruce Peninsula, providing a venue for uninterrupted nature walks of 890 kilometers in length.

The breadth of the escarpment divides the environments above and below, creating a barrier for travel and movement of goods.

The Niagara Escarpment is a UNESCO designated World Biosphere Reserve and is heavily protected from further damage caused by roads, ski areas, resorts, railways, buildings, and wind farms.

The continuity of the Escarpment in Hamilton has been breached by several vehicular access points that connect the upper and lower city. The most drastic of these rifts is where the six lane high speed highway known as the Claremont Access intersects with the older “Jolley Cut”. This has become a hostile environment where pedestrians, hikers, cyclists and wildlife are threatened by forced interaction with vehicular traffic. These man made arteries deny the natural movement and erosion of the escarpment rock, wreaking environmental havoc on fragile ecosystems.

The city of Hamilton intersects with the Niagara Escarpment in such a way that the suburban south end of the city is at the top and the urban north end below.

The escarpment has thus become a living metaphor for the deep political and cultural schism between the urban and suburban residents of the city.

Fibroblast is located at the intersection of the Claremont Access and the Jolly Cut, symbolically and functionally healing the wound in the Niagara Escarpment.

The tower perches lightly on the natural ecology of the escarpment, and extends this ecosystem vertically in the form of a wild bird sanctuary.

At the base of the tower, the scar tissue of the fibroblast forms a series of walkable and bikable paths that connect the Upper Sam Lawrence Park to the Corktown Park in the lower city, forming a continuously ascending and descending park. These new connections begin to heal the wounded ecology through the provision of safe opportunities to transverse the height of the escarpment.

The wildlife corridor reconnects the interrupted ecosystem for the outstanding local flora and fauna, including 36 species of reptiles and amphibians, 53 species of mammals, 90 species of fish, and more than 350 species of birds.

More than 109 of these species are endangered. The Bruce Trail shares this new connective tissue produced by the fibroblast.

OVERVENTION Augmented reality surrealist and abstract interventions around my neighbourhood.

HAMBLY HOUSE Award-winning and published addition and renovation to an Art Moderne House.

RIPPLE

A mixed use residential tower proposed to redefine the existing contextual fabric of the site and work integrally with the future park planned for the block immediately to the south of the property.

ART GALLERY ADDITIO

ON AND RENOVATION

PETRA SUCKS Spicy lollipops in the shape of my head for my temper, impatience and drive.

PETRA MATAR

* bonbonpetra@gmail.com

@bonpetra