ALEKSANDRA [Sasha] AZBEL

Design Portfolio 2014

I believe in artisans and makers, I believe in craft and story telling, that beautiful architecture comes from a sustainable process.

www.aleksandra-azbel.com

aazbel@risd.edu | 281-701-7679 | 90 sheldon st. Providence, ri 02906

Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Ri (‘11-’14)Master of Architecture

Texas A&M University, College Station, Tx (‘06–‘10)Bachelor of Environmental Design Study Abroad, Barcelona, Spain (Spring 09)Graduated Cum Laude with 3.52 GPA

EDUCATION

Design Innovation & Entrepreneurship Lab: RISD (‘12- present)

Lead Research Assistant Produce and disseminate research on culture and international developmentCoordinate research assistants, media content, and coursework in travel studio in Sri Lanka

Solar Decathlon: Providence, Ri (summer ‘13)

Architecture InternDeveloped a set of design drawings including structure, equipment, materials, and construction detailsServed on Communications Committee and created graphical and written content to promote the project and the teamTeam leader: maintained international team communication

Sweitzer & Associates: Houston, Tx (Jan–Aug ‘11)

Landscape Architecture designerDrafted site details, construction documents planting layouts, and site work plansGenerated plant counts, material schedules, cost estimates, bid forms and bid resultsCreated renderings of site plans and elevations using Photoshop

Westfourth Architecture: Bucharest, Romania ( summer ‘10)

Architecture InternDesigned and drafted three apartment units for a 6th floor addition using AutoCadComposed urban photo montages to exhibit to theHistorical Society of Bucharest

EXPERIENCE

Providence LINK 195 Commission Installation (fall ‘14)RISD Graduate Studies Research Grant (summer ‘14)Combined Graduate Fellowship & Assistantship at RISDSolar Decathlon Travel award (spring ‘13)Widder Foundation award to study in Mexico (Jan ‘13)Summer Travel Research Grant from RISD (summer ‘12)Texas A&M Undergraduate Merit scholarship (spring ‘09)

AWARDS

Computer: AutoCad, PhotoShop, Illustrator, Indesign, Rhino, Revit, Sketchup, GIS, Microsoft Office, Ecotech Other: fluent in English and Russian, sketching, painting, writing, modeling, sewing, silk screen printing, wood-shop

SKILLS

Woomen’s Cooperative Textiles Workshop, Sri Lanka (Aug ‘14) | Solar Decathlon Workshop, Germany (Mar ‘13) | Workshop and charette with Columbia University’s college of Sustainable Development (Feb ‘13) | Adobe Construction for Women, Mexico (Feb ‘13) | Jewelry design workshop with women in need, Calcutta India (Jul ‘12) | Harvard Rammed Earth Construction with Anna Heringer (Feb ‘12)

WORKSHOPS

Aleksandra (Sasha) Azbel

I have been incredibly fortunate in life to see many places, to visit, live, and work in different countries and interact with a variety of cultures. This is what makes my work as diverse, experimental, and energetic as it is, always traversing a variety of scales and never exclusive. Adaptability follows, and with it comes a heightened sensitivity toward cultural values and modes of communication. I am concerned with identity and how we safeguard the quintessence of our lives in a world rapidly globalizing and leaving the slow things in the dust. I believe in artisans and makers, I believe in craft and story telling, that beautiful architecture comes from a sustainable process. I believe that beauty is felt and lived, not only seen and touched, and that the narrative of place and its creation is just as important as the spaces and objects we conjure in our minds.

Tooling and Infrastructure Studio | prototyping of architectural element and machinery | metal + wood + plastic packaging strips Fall 2013 Marcus Schaffer & Jonathan King individual project

EVERYTHING WOVENThesis development: research, material exploration, full scale modeling

Patterns and colors dance and move in the breeze with us, we wear them, we wrap ourselves within them, make tents, and cover our windows and furniture with them--textiles dominate our lives and culture. Integrated fibers, pro¬grammed by the artist and designer with a pattern communicate an idea or a narrative. Textiles are accessible to people of many abilities -- men, women, and children make them by hand. Some of the original forms of human-made shelter were textile dwellings, walls made like baskets, roofs like the canopies of trees.

Shortly after I started my graduate studies I heard someone say to another student, a textiles student, “weaving and architecture are a lot alike, they both have inherent structural principles”. I was very intrigued by this statement, I could have never imagined, at the time, that something like a textile, a soft, two-dimensional object made at the scale of the hand by one person, could be intrinsically related to the

structures we build with large machines, displacing earth, requiring large teams and managers and technical expertise.

Months later I was travelling to India and Sri Lanka. I saw people working with textiles as a way of supporting themselves and keeping their traditions alive. I watched them embroider, weave, and print their stories their wishes and their observations onto cloth that would be moved around and exchanged, the coded narratives shared.

Over under, twist turn and bundle, pleat fold and curve, seemingly powerless individual elements integrate to create pattern, strength, surface, and space. Can weaving as a way of making architecture, as a process of using cellulosic and fibrous materials, better known as natural materials, inspire construction methods accessible to people of various abilities and limited resources?

Fabric Sculpture Studio | prototyping degree project proposal | bamboo + hemp fiber + sail clothSpring 2014 Lee Boroson individual project

Degree Project; material exploration | weaving palm frond and filling it with concrete | coconut frond + concrete Spring 2014 advisor Julie Moskovitz individual project

While many communities around the world engage in construction with natural materials, from the swamp-reed Qasab dwellings of the Marsh Arabs to the woven palm cladding of the subtropical regions of the world, construction with natural materials today, in most places, carries an association with poverty and lack of progress. The ability for a an individual and his or her loved ones to harvest, process, and assemble locally grown materials to make a home is dying and quickly leading to a world homogenous in materiality and visual and sensorial identity.

I study traditional technologies and try to innovate with them, synthesizing existing knowledge with modern day techniques and materials. The innovation is a free form of play following the principles of woven strength and accessibility of development and innovation. While I planned to work entirely with natural materials I have also worked with used plastic packaging strips and cold-rolled steel rods –things easily sourced in cities and industrial settings– into my experimentation to develop full-scale prototypes.

photograph courtesy of Lucas Vasilko

Traditional technologies in Sri Lanka | learning how to weave a Cadjan panel | coconut frond Winter session 2014 Elizabeth Dean Hermann individual research

filtration marsh for dyed water

pavilion for deying and printing

stepped courtyard for drying and displaying textiles

weaving shop and museum

bundles of bamboo as barrel vaults

clad woven palm frond panels in multiple layers

Degree Project; Everything Woven | Textiles Center in Sri Lanka | bamboo + coconut frond + earth Spring 2014 advisor: Julie Maskovitz individual project

Sited in a war-effected part of Sri Lanka my thesis explores how a woven system comprised of bamboo and coconut frond panels can clad an existing abandoned construction site and create an independently standing pavilion. The designed units modulate throughout the site and form multi-layered cross barrel vaults as a roof and smaller barrel vaults as a pavilion.

The space between the clad existing structure and the new pavilion becomes a stepped courtyard that gathers people and water and slopes into a step-well. The site becomes a dialogue of canopies, columnar halls, plinths, and steps-all elements found in traditional Sri Lankan architecture but reinvented in the context of a woven architecture.

LONGITUDINAL SECTION | cuting through open air pavilion

LATERAL SECTION | cuting through open air paviilion and existing structure

DESIGN BUILD A month long design & construction experience

Architecture Design Studio | Blossom Community Park | metal + stone + concrete + woodSpring 2012 Sylvia Acosta team of 70 + students; oversaw design & construction for river access

This studio run design build project is situated on the banks of the Blackstone River, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, a marginalized post-industrial community.

The goal of our team of 70+ students was to design and construct structures and landscapes that would invite and contain people, provide important views of the site, remain tuned with the existing architectural language of the site, and mitigate storm water runoff from a roof and parking lots. The design developed from a series of exercises that began as groups of two, then groups of 4, then groups of 10-14, and eventually all the groups filtered into one.

While the project occupies several portions of the site, my interests and contribution were focused on the access to the river, a lush and shaded region that is challenged by a steep incline and the necessity to retain earth while negotiatiating between land water, and air.

PROCESS

SCALE = 1 : 200

PROCESS

SCALE = 1 : 200

Digital Representation Studio | Traversing the Biomes | Rhino + Vray+ PhotoshopSpring 2012 individual project

Digital Representation Studio | Traversing the Biomes | Rhino + Vray+ PhotoshopSpring 2012 individual project

DIGITAL MEDIAExploring digital tools and representation

Through this Digital Representation project a world was created using a combination of Photoshop collage, Rhino 3D modeling and Vray rendering. By collaging a transverse section through a series of ecological niches one is able to explore the function of a modular, deployable unit in a series of wet and dry, dark and light, still and moving conditions.

Linking the West End emerged from the desire to impregnate the impermeable and the sanitized streets and roof tops of an urban renewal district-the West End of Boston-with the permeable, the gregarious, and the healing. The system in the proposal spawns from existing park infrastructure and rolls through the cascading terraces of a proposed residential and commercial development. The park morphs into a bridge, linking the mixed use development with a terrace of a cancer treatment center, enabling patients and visitors to connect with the community and productive green space. The link finally spans over a highway and drops off at another existing park.

The diverse types of residential units in the housing project and the existing hospital district are treated as entities that must engage in active exchange through the acts of walking, relaxing, and gardening, thereby taking special care to make all connections ADA accessible and all landings and terraces places of recreation and generation.

URBAN DESIGN AND PLANNINGSynthesizing a residential district with a hospital district

Urban Design Studio | Linking the West End | residence + supermarket + green space + gymnasium + parkingFall 2012 Josh Safdie individual project

Productive Edge addresses the potential role of water and infrastructure in assigning identity and increasing economic value in a district that has come to be known as one of vacancy and desolateness-the Jewelry District in central Providence, Rhode Island. Other recognized actors in the project are the universities within close proximity to the Jewlery District: Rhode Island School of Design, Brown University, and Johnston & Wales, as well as the surrounding health institutions and a large refugee population. Productive edge positions itself to be accessible and used by all the above-mentioned entities through the reintroduction of water into a landscape that is historically submerged but has been scarred by infill and highway development.

The establishment of water front property increases the value of land within the Jewelry District and affords a new means of transportation and coexistence with the abundant element in Rhode Island, the ocean state. Filtration marshes are strategically introduced into the project to mitigate pollution and flooding and offer habitat for the species of the area and recreational space for inhabitants and visitors.

URBAN SYSTEMScreating more edge

Urban Systems Studio | Productive Edge | Instituationally specific Centers for MakingSpring 2013 Elizabeth Hermann individual project

Urban Systems Studio | Productive Edge | Instituationally specific Centers for MakingSpring 2013 Elizabeth Hermann individual project

institutions sharing the waterfront topogrophy, water, filtration, and development

TEXTILE ARTSRepeat & Translate through Fabric Silk Screen

Fabric Silk Screen Studio | Urban Patterns | cotton + fabric dyes + urban plan Spring 2013 MaryAnne Friel individual project

Through fabric silk screening, an application of pigments or dyes to fabric through a screen, I explore 2-dimensional pattern making. The process of printing on fabric serves as a means of playing with displacement and replacement of color and shapes. A diagrammatic playing, both free and calculated, ensues. I search for ways these processes can inform my decision making in architectural design and urban planning.

In these pieces, the celebration of my architecture work also became an important means of creating my own “cultural” artifact, a dress that explores my studio project in relation to my body. The weaving and tying of concepts and physical processes created a rich translation between mark making, modulation of marks, diagraming, and forming.

SKETCH BOOKa record of travel with mixed media

Church of San Pedro Mitla, Mexic | January 2013

Strada Georphe Manu Bucharest, Romania, ink on paper | August 2010

Basilica de Cuilapan, Cuilapan de Guerrero, Mexico | February 2013

Driving through Bukovina, Romania, watercolor on paper | September 2010

GRAPHIC DESIGNcommunicating meaning and beauty

I sketch, photograph, and paint to understand my environment, especially in my travels. I do it to meditate, and absorb the world I’m in. I believe through sketching we subconsciously engage in problem solving; it is an act that is both logical and creative. The mark making is generative as well as archival, and almost always attracts onlookers of all ages; it starts conversations and reminds people of the beauty they forget to see in their own cities and villages.

Graphic design has been a useful tool for me to visually entice and communicate ideas and projects administered by active bodies at my school. Pamphlets, posters, magazines, and even course catalogues have been an important means of attracting sponsorship for projects with a social mission and approval from administrative bodies.