Stanislas Walden Portfolio 2022
Experience Bloomberg LP, New York, NY Human Resources Generalist Dec. 2020 – Aug. 2021 - Investigated and resolved employee queries regarding benefits and policies - Liaised with specialists to enhance communications to 20,000 employees - Educated employees on available benefits and assisted with benefit elections Customer Support Representative Oct. 2018 – Dec. 2020 - Led training team in onboarding of over 30 new hires in 2020 - Developed and edited onboarding materials used throughout global offices Stanislas Walden - Provided excellent technical support and service in English and French
203 214 2623 saewalden@gmail.com Bloomberg Presidential Campaign, New York, NY stanwalden.studio Tech Support Representative
Education
Dec. 2019 – Jan. 2020 - Guided staff remotely and in person to set up of campaign phones and laptops - Communicated security policies to staff to ensure protection of sensitive data - Collaborated with internal leaders and vendors to install workstations at HQ
Parsons School of Design MentorMate, Minneapolis, MN New York, NY Content Associate Apr. 2017 – Jun. 2018 M.Arch, Class of 2024 - Led content generation initiatives for all marketing channels to grow leads - Interviewed subject matter experts to inform the creation of marketing materials University of Vermont - Analyzed data and planned messaging optimizations to improve targeting Burlington, VT B.A. Global Studies, French Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN & Art History Visitor Experience Representative Oct. 2016 – Apr. 2017 Class of 2016 - Assisted patrons in person and over phone, providing solutions to diverse needs - Managed team logistics at main exhibit during museum’s second busiest show Skills - Provided excellent customer service to support strategy of membership growth Curatorial Intern Jun. – Sep. 2016 - Researched historical materials to support the creation of exhibit didactics Rhino - Collaborated with curatorial staff to develop new online exhibition VRay - Conducted guest polling to inform current and future exhibit strategies Climate Studio Illustator InDesign Photoshop French
Contents
ARCHITECTURE Terrarium Houses (Non)Human Architecture in the Ramble ART Quarantine Friends Trianon Triptych
Terrarium Houses Red Hook contends with a future of inundations from rising sea levels and wetter weather. Few mature trees and extensive paved surfaces make it several degrees hotter than leafier neighborhoods. The preexisting health conditions that affect many residents compound the stresses caused by the site’s changing climate. Terrarium Houses is a residential complex that seeks to reintegrate greenery into Red Hook’s landscape, fill gaps in community services, and provide quality housing for tenants. Terrarium spaces host diverse growing programs that help the community begin to answer questions like “what food grows here now versus in the future?” and “how can building and landscape blend to perform better during extreme weather
Early model making revealed a form that optimizes winter sun exposure while providing shade during peak sun hours in the summer.
The design prioritizes year round access to greenery. A public park is made accessible to residents and community members alike thanks to the permeability of the ground floor. Green spaces are articulated vertically into the residential floors via terrarums whose controlled environments maintain comfortable conditions for plants and humans alike during the cold winter months. A dedicated community space provides a permanent facility that serves as a warming center in the winter and a cooling center in the summer.
Vertical circulation is concentrated in the terrariums so residents may find not only respite in theses spaces, but also their community.
Plant life is introduced along the building’s overhangs where it not only adds to residents’ interaction with greenery; it also serves to shield glazing from hot the hot summer sun.
Extracting (Non)Human Architecture from The Ramble Mindscape: Despite its highly designed and urbanized context, the Central Park Ramble plays host to a surprising amount of nonhuman life: vines overtake a tree; a log decays and recedes into the earth; turtles nestle into the mud to hibernate. Parsing these natural processes with respect to their specific timeframes recontectualizes the site and emphasizes its connection to nature’s rhythms at multiple scales while rigorous research reveals the enmeshment of the nonhuman communities within and beyond The Ramble. Understanding and illustrating their interactions and tensions within and beyond themselves informed an intervention at the site that participates in, as opposed to disrupts, these delicate networks.
Investigating the site from the microscopic to the planetary scales revealed the importance of a new paradigm in which to approach architecture: we must wield knowledge of and sensitivity to the planet’s systems as we design structures that coalesce deeply with a site and all of its complexities.
Landscape: While keeping in mind the scales of existence of nonhuman organisms in the Ramble, attention was turned toward the architectures that occur naturally at the site: the trickling stream, the interlocking layers of the canopy, and the lush vegetation comprising the understory together form a grand yet intimate outdoor room.
Examining just one segment of the Ramble reveals an immense diversity of nonhuman life, a remarkable feat in the country’s most populous city.
Meanwhile, examining nonhuman inhabitants like the musk turtle offered a unique opportunity to understand and extract patterns of occupation that could inform a low-impact, harmonious human experience at the site.
Graphite on paper, 2021
The musk turtle’s dwelling patterns informed these drawings, which translate its dark, murky habitat into a series of tangible forms that could shape a space for both human and nonhuman communities in The Ramble.
Graphite on paper, 2021
The previous drawings inspired early model-making. Themes of open-versusclosed, shelter-versus-exposure were explored to understand where non-human patterns of habitation could converge with human history at The Ramble within a form that would activate the site.
Archiscape: With a sensitivity toward the site and its nonhuman inhabitants established during the Mindscape and Landscape phases of this project, it was time to asses the human experience. This required an examination of the past. The Ramble’s history is marked by displacement: the Lenape, Seneca Village residents, gay cruisers, and modern victims of racism. These groups have left traces of their fraught histories in a place designed to instill peace withinin a chaotic city. Since these histories tend to remain hidden, what if an architectural intervention made them tangible and legible to today’s visitors? The proposed structure seeks to accomplish this through its enmeshment with the site’s natural rhythms. It descends along its length from the path to the stream: in anticipation of hotter, wetter summers, it is meant to tolerate flooding. Higher water levels block access and interrupt the desired movement of visitors, drawing attention not only to the human history of displacement, but also to the natural systems that govern humans and nonhumans alike.
Meanwhile, the structure captures dead leaf matter in the stream, facilitating the growth of aquatic fungi. These fungi are critical to sending energy to the upper echelons of the immediate food chain and beyond. The leaves they inhabit and process provide vital protection to many species, such as the musk turtle. While the intervention allows people to explore and experience the Ramble from various stunning vantage points, it does not necessarily privilege the human experience. Its permeable nature allows the systems contained in the stream to shift along with the fluctuating water level and periodically occupy the structure itself. As nature overflows its human-set boundaries, visitors may begin to experience displacement as they try to navigate the structure. For once, displacement in the Ramble is not inflicted by another human. By engaging with natural processes in a way that speaks to the complicated human dynamics that unfurl in the Ramble, the proposed intervention begins to chip away at society’s nature-culture bifurcation as it unearths the processes that bind the human and nonhuman.
Quarantine Friends Navigating the earily parts of the pandemic solo required creativity and resilience. The lively characters depicted on The Sartorialist blog inspired these ink on newsprint drawings.
Ink on newsprint, 2020
Trianon Triptych The watercolor monotype process allowed for a unique means of revisiting a favorite travel moment again and again, each time inflected with a different atmosphere and emotion.
Watercolor monotypes, 2017