My name is Ray Wincko, and I am a designer based in Durham, NC. I view design as the medium in which we create thoughtful, iterative, and refined contributions to the built environment. In design I strive to create spaces and develop projects that enhance the occupant’s appreciation for the subliminal environment.
“The concept of everydayness does not therefore designate a system, but rather a denominator common to existing systems including judicial, contractual, pedagogical, fiscal, and police systems... Are not the surreal, the extraordinary, the surprising, even the magical, also part of the real? Why wouldn’t the concept of everydayness reveal the extraordinary in the ordinary?”
-Henry Lefebvre
yamacraw school of building arts
Program - Educational | Urban | Workshop
Scale - 22000 sq ft
Context - 2023 | Savannah, GA
wayside ablution 01 turnpike beef
Program - Infrastructure | Research
Scale - NA
Context - 2024 | Florida
institute of regeNERATIve building operations
Program - Educational | Research | Community Center | Gallery | Industrial
Scale - 26000 sq ft
Context - 2024 | New Bedford, MA
virgil d. hawkins community center
Program - Cultural | Community Center | Educational
Scale - 3000 sq ft
Context - 2022 | Okahumpka, FL
garden stimulus Rawlings elementary
Program - Educational | Classroom | Landscape | Design Build
Scale - NA
Context - 2022 | Gainesville, FL
At a speed with no intent turnpike beef
Program - Research
Scale - NA
Context - 2024 | Florida
portrayal of the hand
Program - Sketchbook | Murmurings
Scale - NA
Context - Ongoing
Ray wincko
Durham, NC 27701
Phone: 954.225.4103
Email: rwincko43@gmail.com
EDUCATION EXPERIENCE
M.Arch | University of Florida
School of Architecture College of Design, Construction, and Planning 2024
B.Design | University of Florida
School of Architecture College of Design, Construction, and Planning 2022
AWARDS
Alpha Rho Chi Leadership Merit Award 2024
Graduate Award for Excellence in Teaching | UF SoA 2024
Arthur Bleen Anderson Scholarship | UF SoA 2024
CBA Studio Award | 2nd Place 2023
Ingle Family Scholarship | UF SoA 2023
James Gamble Rogers Memorial Fellowship | UF SoA 2023
Visiting Professor | University of Florida School of Architecture College of Design, Construction, and Planning 2024 Summer
Research Editor | VORKURS Publication Gainesville, FL VORKURS Void 2023-2024
Studio Counselor | Design Exploration Program 2022-2024
Studio Teaching Assistant | University of Florida School of Architecture College of Design, Construction, and Planning 2021-2024
Design Intern | Gallo Herbert Architects Deerfield Beach, FL 2020
SKILLS
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe InDesign
Archicad 27
Autodesk AutoCAD
Lumion
Physical Model Making Rhinocerous 3D
Sketching + Observational Drawing
V-Ray
Yamacraw Institute of Building Arts
Program - Educational | Urban Invigoration | Workshop
Scale - 22000 sq ft
Context - 2023 | Savannah, GA
In a context of anticipated vertical expansion, the Yamacraw Institute of Building Arts stands as a screened, stilted volume that hovers above the dilapidated brick shell of a former paper mill warehouse on Savannah’s riverfront. This is an organizational gesture that acknowledges the ensuing demands of the future vertical development and the molting identity of Savannah’s industrial district while politely reinforcing the historical built environment of this urban threshold. Programmatically, the institute emphasizes experiential learning as the primary mode of education which places the more traditional modes of learning, lecture halls and classrooms, as loose fit objects that sit within and protrude the elongated, experiential learning hall. This system of loose fit objects is constituted in the beacon of the project, a slate-clad tower that contains the lecture hall and vertical circulation, which pulls above the cranked rooflline to insert itself within Savannah’s underlying system of smoke stacks that stitch the city’s paramount destinations.
OBJECT - The concept of a deconstructed program pushed to emphasize the multi-disciplinary encounters of the construction and trade fields. This approach established a more singular mixed, workshop space that embraces the entropic, happenstance engagement amongst students and faculty. While many programs like studios, workshops, and lounges allow for dissolved boundaries, some programs demands enclosure for the sake ventilation and privacy. This resulted in a series of vertical objects that occupy and pierce the bounding volume. These objects withhold the lecture hall, bathrooms, CNC facilities, meeting rooms, etc. The relationship between object and void materializes in a singular, energetic space of productive exchange intertwined with a system of intermittent volumes that harbor privacy and focus.
The screened work space volume aligns to the elevational context of recent developments across the street. It sits askew to the face of the northern masses, opening the view to the Savannah River while contributing to a controlled, urban fabric. The hope and intent of the response is to resuscitate, and more importantly, ameliorate the state of the site.
Building sites always have the scent of sacrifice, barely masked by the hopeful and exciting smell of a new construction. It is our job to assuage the sacrifice and make building an act of understanding and adoration of the place. - W.G. Clark
WAYSIDE ABLUTION 01 TURNPIKE BEEF
Program - Infrastructure | Research Scale - NA
Context - 2024 | Florida
Along rural roads, miles lie between bathrooms. Travellers strain their bladders and mental fortitude in attempts to convince themselves they can “hold it”. The bathrooms that do provide relief along these roads make little attempt to stimulate space or respond to its direct pastoral environment. There is opportunity, especially in the context of a bucolic Florida landscape, to insert another variable to the bathroom’s realm of exchange. These ablutions, specifically the toilet, may engage and unveil this context to establish a sincere relationship between the intimacy of stigmatized space and the enriched infrastructural threads that occupy the land.
Wayside Ablution 1 is a single structure from larger set of infrastructural interventions including am outhouse, shower, fruit stand, and billboard . They may exist in many contexts, and with each context, a different organization follows. The primary principles of these crude and imaginary structures are to catch, maneuver, and frame the context in efforts of reconnecting the occupant to their senses in their moments of vulnerability and loneliness.
There is no magic in the sky
There is no reason to fret
For we still have the stars and all the space in between.
When those heavenly bodies collide with the earth and shake you to your knees,
Come pick your teeth off the floorboard.
May you witness the splendor from a different angle in all the ways you haven’t seen before. Nor is it over yet
The human experience that generally requires a partial disrobing, one that ends around the ankles, is the exchange that occurs with the toilet. The diagram of this program intends to establish a connection between the human and context. As the user occupies the space one is exposed, in a mutual relationship, to its direct pastoral context. The earnest engagement between the vulnerable body in pensive introspection and the outreaching expanse of an infrastructural horizon intertwines two seemingly disconnected conditions of ordinarily cyclical rhythms. Once the user relieves themselves, they bask in the extracted afternoon sun during the vigorous washing of their hands.
institute of regerneative building operations
Program - Educational | Research | Community Center | Gallery | Industrial
Scale - 19000 sq ft
Context - 2023 | New Bedford, MA
Studio - Grad 3: Professor Jeff Carney
The approach to this project questions how the civilians of New Bedford can benefit from a possibly fleeting and/or oppressive presence of large, international off-shore wind corporations. Also, how can the individual respond to these extensive developments by subverting the corporation? The institute asks what other materials can we interact with to reduce the impending reliance of the offshore wind systems? What knowledge gained from maintenance, recycling, and operation can inform and empower the laborers of the mainland?
The New Bedford Institute of Regenerative Building Operation is the final stage in a larger sequence of processing decommissioned turbine elements, maintenance engineers, and analysis.
The institute stratifies the core components of experiential learning into a layered mass in which the occupant navigates perpendicular amongst their personalized educational itinerary. The institute educates laborers and the public regarding what alternate energy systems, crafting skills, material systems, etc. they can implement in their dwellings to reduce the reliance on regionally supplied energy from international corporations. This institute produces two regenerative results, the physical building assembly and knowledge.
A series of double height concrete edges mediate the relationship amongst programs in the east-west axis. A system of porous frames engage and determine the extents of interior and exterior space within the institute. The stratified, dissolving concrete walls shift in scale and enclosure, creating a diversified collection of courtyard pockets, framed horizons, and waterfront port access for the intake of decommissioned material.
Materially, the systems at play are a field of insitu concrete walls that serve as the primary structural bays for each layered program. Douglas Fir lined skylights and ceilings engage the thresholds in which all vertical light transfers into space. Basalt and stone are allocated to horizontal surfaces. Red, steel apertures are the tertiary system that appear only between programs and exterior edges.
virgil d. Hawkins community center
Program - Cultural | Community Center | Educational
Scale - 3000 sq ft
Context - 2022 | Okahumpka, FL
Studio - Grad 1: Professor Bradley Walters
The Virgil D. Hawkins Community Center serves as a subtle, spatial proclamation from the citizens of Okahumpka in response to the encroaching edges of corporate development in the region. The community center holds reverence and forms deliberate dialogue with the more sensitive and encompassing context of the adjacent Rosenwald school. The process of development for this project looked to craft a set of spaces that are slightly muted and quiet whilst also facilitating an actively entangled community. The approach of the project is to establish a controlled opaque face of entry followed by a direct, framed reveal of the neighboring Rosenwald context that sits beneath a singular, elongated gable roof. The spatial organization allows for a flexible assembly hall with a set of supplemental spaces that are pulled off the west face of the structure.
FRAME - A critical development in the design process of the Virgil Hawkins Community Center is the system of apertures that allow the external public to engage with the community center and its internal occupants. This study materialized in an exploration of machined and manipulated aluminum that expresses scale, proportion, profile, and connection of assembly in the system. As this system of apertures interjects material modernity in the historical context of the site, the distillation of the system’s presence and programmatic interaction serves as the architectural stitch between the traditional language of the project and a subdued, earnest architectural response.
garden stimulus Rawlings elementary
Program - Landscape | Educational | Classroom Collaborators - Design 8: Professor Charlie Hailey | Elizabeth Cronin | Jeremiah Costen Context - 2022 | Gainesville, FL
The Garden Stimulus project is one of three design-build installations at Rawlings Elementary School in Gainesville, FL. The prompt was simple, an outdoor classroom. Rawlings Elementary is an alternative education facility that restructures the traditional approach to public school. The latter department holds a module involving horticulture which allowed them to produce a herb and vegetable garden which serves as the site for the project. The Garden Stimulus installation provided the culinary department with a coupling of seating and performance structures that are intended to facilitate the relationship between the body and the ground. The diagram of the response was a floating tiered cedar deck that occupies the fence edge. This concept developed into two congruous yet different structures. The first installed structure parallel to the fence boundary is a tiered seating structure with a lower deck extruded for performance and more casual occupation. The secondary structure offers less seating but incorporates a protruding trellis along the back of the seat for vertical garden growth. The final space creates a pocket of educational occupation that begins to articulate porous edges of an implied garden classroom.
INTERSTICE - The body’s interaction with the proposed Rawlings Elementary seat surface demonstrates a family of relationships, studied above, between material and nature. The manner in which one sits engages the traces of posture and position while advancing upon the tension between anatomy and program.
GROWTH - The development of the tiered seat involved a process of persistent community and client engagement. A series of informal interrogations were held throughout the development of the project. This involved an enlightening set of interactions with the students at the school in which they conveyed what they felt was missing from the school along with some more direct engagements with 1:1 mock-ups. As most of our in-situ work was conducted after school hours, we built a strong relationship with a group of after-care students who served as the voice of critique for the larger student body. This relationship between the design process and community engagement was critical to form a successful, earnest response that provides for the students and staff.
Regarding materials, the surface edges and anything touched is composed of cedar that will silver as it witnesses the harsh Floridian sun. The majority of the structure and bends are pressure-treated pine that should withstand moisture. The footings that lift the cedar decks off the ground are cast concrete with steel U-post fasteners. These three materials synthesize into a singular identity that will harbor the program of the project.
At a speed with no intent
Program - Research
Collaborators - Chairs: Charlie Hailey, Bradley Walters
Context - 2024 | Florida Turnpike
Architecture, emerging between physics and phenomena, mediates the occupation of time and space. Our hyper-mechanized world demands humanity to experience the built environment at speeds that peel the eyebrows off one’s face. Vision is pliant at profound velocities. Assuming the vehicle that is hurling the body is a constant of foreground, this leaves the depth and breadth of sight is susceptible to distortion.
In an agrarian Florida context, wayside trees fade to tonal flush, fences dissolve to absence, and buildings elongate to horizon. The middle-ground often becomes the field of compromise where these architectural perversions occur. This study looks to better understand the relationship between this middle-ground of architectural condition and perceived speed. In order to control and manipulate the variables, time and space needed to be scaled down to a manageable and consumable degree. The development of device that holds a fragment of contained movement, essentially a drop tower, allows for the analysis of tectonics over time.
While wheels beg to spin,
Family ties turn to blurs,
Peelin’ paint cracks off sequenced slurs,
Corporate boards selling hell for Jack n’ Jill cholesterol pills.
Don’t cry because it ends too soon.
Ask of all the times
“Will it trickle out my eyes, at a speed like mine?”
The device’s logic is to question the role of space and eye. Naturally, our memories of the wayside insinuate that the viewer is the variable traveling at a high speed in some aluminum chassis on wheels, piecing together fragments of a blurred stationary object. The track reverses the role, cementing a solidified viewpoint. This forces the architectural condition to become the vehicle in the relationship. As the drop tower rotates from its vertical position, the vehicle falls slower due to increased frictional resistance which recreates the range of speeds one interacts with these conditions. The free fall of a vertical 90° orientation mimics the speed of the turnpike. A shallow 34° portrays the initial distorting of the speeds encountered along county roads. Lastly, a subtle 6° tilt pulls just enough to simulate the slow gait of an early evening ramble on a dirt lined back road.
“the illusion of speed is that is saves time... every minute is torn apart by being segmented”
- Frédéric Gros
At a Speed Study 3, 2024. Provided by author.
At a Speed Study 2, 2024. Provided by author.
portrayal of the hand
As a core principle of process, I find physical drawing to be the most fundamentally earnest tool for communicating and discovering ideas in architecture. Drawing is the mode with most direct relationship between a designer’s mind and physical articulation, an idea in its most earnest expression. Sometimes we draw to ask questions. Sometimes we draw to provide answers. Ultimately, we draw.
“I
prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster and leaves less room for lies”
