Quinn McCormack 2025 Portfolio

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QUINN MCCORMACK 2021-2025 Work Sample

Somehow, in the search for beauty, I found ugliness, and in the search for ugliness, I found beauty.

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[website]

TABLE OF CONTENTS 01 MULTI-DEVIATED MARCH. II VERTICAL STUDIO

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02 ROBOFITTIESQUE MARCH. II STUDIO

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03 ALPIN CENTER HOTEL UNDERGRAD YEAR 4

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04 CHIMERA: A Love Letter to LA MARCH. II STUDIO

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05 CHIMERA: Design Devolpment MARCH. II STUDIO

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STATEMENT Quinn McCormack is a Graduate student at SCI-Arc focusing on computational design, digital fabrication, and Speculative design. He further explores these topics through a contemporary lens of aesthetics in the age of digitization. Using this expertise, he has lectured at the University of Innsbruck for Ingrid Mayrhofer-Hufnagl, assisted in both ACADIA 2022 and Digital Futures 2022 workshops under Benjamin Enommoser, the cover designer, graphic designer, and editor of Design Technology and Digital Production by Gabriel Esquivel, and is currently the Teaching Assistant for William Virgil.

Outside of Academia, he has worked for firms such as BA Collective and Tom Wiscombe Architecture.

Currently, he is looking for opportunities to advance his career in Architecture in order to one day become a licensed Architect. His ambition, moreover, is to work in a fast-paced environment where the team’s goal is to create great architectural works.

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[TWO SPHERES]

MULTI-DEVIATED

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SCI-ARC M.ARCH II SPRING 2025 PROFFESOR: JENNY WU TEAM: RAY VISTA

Located within the urban context of downtown Los Angeles, specifically sharing the same site as Hollyhock by Frank Lloyd Wright, our project is designed to be a multi-generational home. The project massing and language are derived from a series of primitive focused exercises to create a functional puzzle. Through intense form-making, the puzzle is meant to inform and create the massing of the home. The home itself is a combination of two twinned spheres. However, the spheres combine into a succinct and multi-deviated whole through the design process. The sequencing of spaces is meant to be a means of organization for each generation and is used following this sequencing. However, the organization is dictated by the unpredictable outcome of the massing arrangement.

The resulting arrangement of the building’s form and function starts out with trust in the puzzle and logic assembly processes. Through disassembly, the project begins to reveal opportunities such as spaces and circulation. Furthermore, the project transforms a logical process of puzzle making into the logic of building use. Compromises are made, and yet the sequence becomes unique and inhabited in a way that allows for all three generations to thrive; thus, through these sequences the language of the building equally thrives.

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[Multi-Deviated]

Description: Puzzle Details Medium: 3D Printed - Finished to Nickel and Copper

In the details, a project reveals its intentions and flaws. For our assembly, the accumulation of the details tells the story of many languages cohesively tied to one another to make up the part logic of the assembled puzzle. Equally, these parts mimic each other and disrupt each other. This stems from a belief that Architecture represents life, and life is neither black nor white, but rather completely grey; therefore, a language represents this concept.

The puzzle also shows a flash of color, red specifically, which dramatizes the moves through flashes of color that disrupt the exterior color palette. As inlays, they naturally should take the secondary position to the exterior of the parts.

However, the strength of color defines it as equally important to the logic; moreover, the hint of color creates focal points.

[Multi-Deviated]

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[Multi-Deviated]

[Multi-Deviated]

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[puzzle assembly]

Description: Puzzle Assembly Diagram Medium: Digital Drawing - Rhino and Illustrator

Multi-Deviation in the puzzle is defined by many formed and crafted languages that cohesively come together to form one whole. These parts are not only formed through aesthetic interest, but also through the need to create a sequential assembly that accounts for interior and exterior relationships.

On the exterior side, the puzzle creates conditions that wrap around each elevation and are systematically terminated into the interior. For the interior, the parts create windows, light wells, and inlay conditions to view the interior as a hint or motif of what can be further achieved in the building part of the project. Lastly, the base is created to set the stage for different postures of the puzzle. Each posture representing both formal langauge.

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[Multi-Deviated]

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[Multi-Deviated]

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[Multi-Deviated]

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Description: Puzzle Assembly Diagram Medium: Digital Drawing - Rhino and Illustrator

The massing of the multi-generational home is created through the puzzle’s disassembly and the twins’creation. The twin is also partially disassembled and edited to create a marriage between the two forms. Each form intends to create a sequence of space that is both continuous in movement and different in its formal agenda.

Equally, the landscape design and entry points are informed by the placement of the massing on the site and its formal language. Therefore, the massing components are designed with the landscape and the interior programmatic needs in mind. For example, certain parts are pushed out to provide space for circulation and breathing room for each space adding to needs within the home.

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Description: Site Plan Medium: Rhino and Illustrator

The site plan indicates a curated landscape dependent on the massing form and addresses the needs for three forms of circulation for the three different generations present in the home.

Each path of egress addresses each generation.

The main entrance (01) serves the general egress of the home, while secondary egresses are for the different generations.

Therefore, the program created on the site is reactive to these different types of movement, whether for privacy or public use, such as the pool area and deck.

[Multi-Deviated]

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[Multi-Deviated]

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[Multi-Deviated]

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[Multi-Deviated]

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01

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Description: Section Medium: Rhino and Keyshot

In this section, the house shows the multiple uses of the home through the generations.

The grandparents reside on the ground floor, closest to the entry. This programmatic need is due to the nature of an older generation in a home and easier access to an exterior program in case of emergency. Above the grandparents is the parental wing, which overlooks most of the home. Equally, all generations have a secondary space within the

[Multi-Deviated]

home. For the parents, the office space at the top of the home looks down upon the entire home, watching over the other generations. The children’s wing is designed to be playful as the spaces are playrooms and reading nooks, and they are in proximity to the egress of the pool. Moreover, as a final feature, the kids’ wing is near the dining spaces, hovering diagonally, so the kids are always aware of when dinner is ready.

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Description: Section Model Medium: 3D Printed - Finished to Nickel and Copper

The physical model of the home is executed to show both the qualities of the digital project actualized and the exchange of materiality from digital to physical. Being on the site of Hollyhock, the section utilizes certain motifs of Frank Lloyd Wright. The olive ton on the copper gives a sense of a pallet that belongs within the Wright family while at the same time being a contemporary home due to the digital era.

[Multi-Deviated]

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[ROBOTIC - GRAFFITI - GROTESQUE]

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ROBOFITTIESQUE SCI-ARC M.ARCH II FALL 2023 PROFFESOR: WILLIAM VIRGIL TEAM: PHUCHONG YAMCHOMSUAN AND YI CHEUNG

Within the Los Angeles Urban Context, it is not uncommon to find desolate, barred-up, and abandoned buildings. Moreover, these abandoned buildings are often overlayed with layers of graffiti, the contrast between the stoic, unmoving jail in its time and the inevitable humiliation of its post-abandonment.

Therefore, we chose to celebrate this act of graffiti on top of the surface of the building through formal, ideological, and theoretical means of rehabilitating the building. The act of adaptive reuse is rehabilitation. As the exterior showcases the contrast of the stoic and the lively, the interior fully celebrates this as a transfigured ecosystem.

Inspired by human anatomy, the spaces act as discrete but non-hierarchical organs that work together to create a cohesive and singular system. The auditorium, for instance, is the heart of the project, symbolizing the importance of learning in rehabilitation. Our project is a continuously looped ecosystem firmly rooted in the belief in community interdependence. We envision a community within the building that is independent and functioning adjacent to the architectural system. Therefore, the ecosystem is self sustaining through the intervention of both ecologies and it’s Architectural conterparts.

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Description: Elevation Medium: Rhino, Redshift, and Zbrush

Our project is a continuously looped ecosystem firmly rooted in the belief in community interdependence. We envision a community within the building that is independent and functioning adjacent to the architectural system. Moreover, the building should inspire humans to attend to non-humans in a coexisting way instead of purely maintaining.

The project questions our ideas of rehabilitation and what that means on an architectural, societal, and human level. All this is explicitly done to create an alive Architecture within a dead and degraded system. To pair ideas like graffiti and rehabilitation to create a cohesive story within the existing system. This new system is created to not privilege the human or non-huma, but rather invites the architecture and the participants of this Architecture to build on the dead existing building to create a new typology.

[Robofittiesque]

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Description: Second Floor Plan Medium: Rhino and Illustrator

The Plan shows the program as a diversity of spaces made to serve the rehabilitation center. Some spaces, such as the tattoo removal area, Architecturally act as a sanctuary for those who choose to do so. Equally, exposure therapy spaces such as Art Therapy invite the viewer to heal from past scars in order to create a strong future.

[Robofittiesque]

Description: Legend 01. Attrium 02. Reception 03. Art Academy 04. Study Space 05. Art Therapy 06. Mini Gallery

07. Mural Wall 08. Locker Room 09. Classroom 10. Lecture Hall 11. Conference Room 12. Tattoo Removal

13. Teaching Kitchen 14 & 15. Restaurant 16 & 17. Homegirl Cafe 18. Indoor Climate Space 19. Cafe Kitchen 20. Staff Resting Area

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Description: Section Drawing Medium: Rhino and Illustrator

In Section, expermintation between ideas of what poche is and what it represents as far as occupied human space and non-human space.

The spaces themselves are distinct in how they are formally shaped to accommodate the program, and spaces meant to create and foster plant life are consumed by the participants in the cycled ecosystem.

[Robofittiesque]

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[Robofittiesque]

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Description: Chunk Medium: Rhino and Keyshot

The project’s focal point is seen through the lens of the chunk diagram above. All arguments of ecocentrism and tectonics merge in this moment. Above, these orbs represent a closed-loop system that feeds filtered wastewater back into the building’s ecosystem. The orbs themselves are an injection of a formal agenda, which, to the viewer, confuses the eye and provokes questions about their function. This visual device creates a shock value response from the viewer to the purpose of certain tectonics in the project.

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[Robofittiesque]

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[College Station Hotel]

ALPIN HOTEL

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TEXAS A&M YEAR 4 FALL 2021 PROFFESOR: MATTHEW FAULKNER TEAM: ELIJAH HUGGINS

As a result of the efficiency-driven market, high-residential buildings often suffer from restricted designs, which promote relentless repetition. These buildings often fall back into the obscurity of the accepted, monotonous urban typology.

When the Alpine Center of Hospitality approached us, they wanted to create a mass timber-focused project, which has never been attempted on the Texas A & M campus.

With their bold appeal, we were inspired to reference the monotony of surrounding campus buildings and establish a procedural disruption system. The system engages the use of geometries pertaining to positive and negative massing. The dialogue between said geometries would then be explored through a language of interlocking and “loose fit” elements similar to an assemblage of parts.

To create a project that considers economic requirements while sustaining individuality, we propose an arrangement separating the interior floors from the exterior elements. The exterior elements undergo variations in its façade. Furthermore, the project emphasizes the facade while using it as a motif to design the amalgamation of parts within an Architectural project. These motifs go on later to wrap around and into the building effecting the programs.

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46 [Alpin Center Hotel]

[Alpin Center Hotel]

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Description: Site Plan Medium: Rhino and Illustrator

It is essential to examine each hotel unit to determine what is important to be designed custom and what is a typical detail. For the building, the skin is the hero of the project; however, to maximize the hotel’s experience, the team designed and placed utilities in locations that minimize extra materials in order to fabricate and complete the project.

[Alpin Center Hotel]

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Description: Chunk Medium: Rhino and Keyshot

The Chunk of the building not only addresses the need for Mass Timber as a means of construction due to the client’s requirements but equally shows the importance of life in the hotel rooms. As Texas A&M is a college town, it is important to make spaces for the clients that allow them to express their own unique experiences within the hotel.

[Alpin Center Hotel]

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Description: Site Plan Medium: Rhino and Illustrator

The hotel units lean into the aesthetic of wood timber as a means of construction and an indicator of the aesthetic found in each room.

Equally, the space frames the key element of the project, which is the skin. The room’s entrance creates a space that invites the client to look out to the surrounding landscape.

[Alpin Center Hotel]

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[exterior / interior video]

[A Love Letter To LA]

CHIMERA

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SCI-ARC M.ARCH II SPRING 2024 PROFFESOR: HERWIG BAUMGARTNER TEAM: JACK WASIELEWSKI

Our project chooses to veer away from the economized Architecture that stands before us today. Instead, our precedent study is about the human condition and experience through the lens of Los Angeles residents. More often than not, the streets of Los Angeles are always in perpetual misuse. Whether the misuse is random objects on the sidewalk or graffiti painted repeatedly by the city. The city represents two agendas, one of control and one of chaos. This constant battle leads to the waste of resources and waste of understanding the human condition. Our project aims to create an architecture that celebrates misuse and dirtied realities. It is to allow the city to function differently than people think it should and how it truly is. In contemporary cities, Los Angeles especially, therre is a desire to make the inner city clean; however, Chimera poses the question of whether or not this is the reality of Los Angeles. Which historically has been a grunge fueled city that relies heavily on a population of people that understand this as a condition of the city. Moreover, instead of trying to make Los Angeles clean, the project aims to add to its dirty features through the use of recycled material, grunge aesthetics in program, and the stimulation of large programatic functions which invite the user to misuse the Architecture.

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Description: Diagrams Medium: Rhino, Keyshot, and Illustrator

Our initial precedent study focused on three significant programs: the Latin Market, the Vampire Blood Rave pit, and a Drag Hotel. These programs, as cultural objects, vividly depict the diverse subcultures of Los Angeles. The Latin Markets, with their heavy Latino cultural influence, the Vampire Blood pits, representing the prevalent underground scene in LA, and the Drag Shows, a motif of the ongoing discussion and interaction of sexuality in this city. Each of these programs houses nested programs that utilize and misuse the general program, sometimes in harmony and sometimes in complete isolation.

[Chimera]

[Part Matrix]

[Massing Iterations]

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[Figure Ground]

[Final Massing Diagram]

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Description: Diagrams Medium: Rhino, Keyshot, and Illustrator

The section of this skyscraper is meant to challenge the idea of traditional skyscraper typology and propose a different way of viewing the use of a tower. In recent years, due to a global pandemic, the idea of a tower that is strictly office space has become less popular.

Therefore, the team proposes a skyscraper that holds events, and within those events are themed hotel spaces. Optimistically, these spaces are transferable through different seasons and aesthetics of time, and the aesthetic of misuse will carry onto different means of adaptability within the tower and Los Angeles.

[Chimera]

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Description: Flattened Elevation Medium: Rhino and Keyshot The flat building drawing is intended to reflect and summarize upon a project and is done at the end of its creation. This drawing exposes the typology of the project, its aesthetic qualaties removed from textures, and the emotion evoked thereafter. The drawing equally removes common relationships found in the project and can be a guideline to create new more provacative and unconventional ways to think about space and form.

[Chimera]

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Description: Chunk Medium: Rhino and Keyshot

In the chunk, the language of the spaces shows constant attention to each individual program. For example, the rave space shows water flowing through the center of the pit, given that it is meant to be engaged. The hotel rooms in proximity to this space also show that nobody is meant to sleep until the event is over.

[Alpin Center [Chimera] Hotel]

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Description: Interior Renders Medium: Rhino and Unreal Engine

The most engaging part of Chimera is its interior experiences through each space. The orange grand space is a market that allows for open expression and sale in a first-come, first-served approach. Secondly, the performance space uniquely represents a drag queen’s dress. It displays the energy of queer culture within the event space in order to create a place that celebrates such cultures. Lastly, and the highest vertically in the tower, is the rave space, which is meant to be experienced last in the building as a means of final release and unfiltered expression.

[Chimera]

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[Design Devolpment]

CHIMERA

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SCI-ARC M.ARCH II SPRING 2024 PROFFESOR: HERWIG BAUMGARTNER AND SOPHIE PENNITIER TEAM: JACK WASIELWESKI, NOAH KNUCKLES, WERAKUL SRIHAHSAN, OSCAR MALY, JASON LEUNG, HAVEN HESSINGTON, SAGAR RATANI, AND ESTABAN CHAVEZ

Design Development specifically showed our design team how to attack complexity by dumbing down its geometry. As complex as our design was, from an engineering standpoint, it could be simplified into larger “dumber” structures that held the complexity of a framing structure.

However, the project challenges grew from not only the cladding issue of the complex shapes but also the way that glass is broken up into smaller parts and how that unit is tied back to the primary structure. Therefore, with the help of our professors, we learned how to make customized parts and fabrication methods to meet the industry standards of construction design. Moreover, in our project, we tried to create custom architecture, engineering, and fabrication methods. The custom parts themselves became a part of the building aesthetic and design.

Through this exploration of customization, we found out that there are consequences to not using parameterized design methods. When everything is done custom, a level of customization is required in every step of the design process.

Equally, we focused on rationalizing large parts of our design pedagogy. Through this rationalization, we could think critically about radical hospitality from a sustainability.

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1’ THICK CAST IN PLACE CONCRETE CORES

CAST IN PLACE CONCRETE SLAB

2’ CONCRETE CAISSON, 30’ X 30’ GRID, 24’ DEPTH

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CONCRETE FOUNDATION AND CAISSONS CAST IN PLACE

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CONCRETE CORES CAST IN PLACE

1’ THICK CAST IN PLACE CONCRETE SLAB

2’ CAST IN PLACE CONCRETE COLUMNS AND BEAMS

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CONCRETE COLUMNS, BEAMS, AND SLABS CAST IN PLACE BELOW GRADE

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CONCRETE COLUMNS, BEAMS, AND SLABS CAST IN PLACE AT GRADE

[Chimera: DD]

STEEL WIDE FLANGE BEAM AND COLUMNS, W12X19 PRIMARY MEMBER

SECONDARY SUPER FRAME SUPPORTING BUILDING SKIN

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VERTICAL STEEL FRAMING ABOVE GRADE STRUCTURAL STEEL

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SECONDARY FRAMING AND SKIN STRUCTURAL STEEL SUPER FRAME

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Description: Market Chunk Medium: Rhino and Keyshot

The chunk shows often a blend between aesthetics and the means of fabricating and constructing those qualities. For this project, specifically, we chose to dumb down the interior logic of the exterior assembly.

Therefore, any geometry found within the interior cavity was boxed out and then used as an attacthment base for the framing structure.

[Chimera: DD]

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Description: Drag Chunk Medium: Rhino and Keyshot

For the chunk above, specific attention was paid to the FRP components and how they will relate to the tower’s primary structure. By identifying a superstructure within the poche of the FRP exterior, the team created a solution that equally sliced up these large encrusted structures into smaller, workable panels, as seen in the detail.

[Chimera: DD]

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Description: Rave Chunk Medium: Rhino and Keyshot

The final chunk of design devolpment dealt with the issue of how to hygenically and properly filter out the water used during the rave events, equally, how to safely provide a space with an interior pool through means of slip-resistant flooring and handrails, as needed to enter the water pit, which allows for the weight of many people through structure.

[Chimera: DD]

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