Applicant for M.ArchUCLA

SELECTED WORKS

ENVELOPE WEAVE LAYER FILTER DISSOLVE BLEND

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Organizing the Building Envelope through Social Stratification and Monetary Typologies The hotel, more than many other building programs has an inherent connection to spend-ing. The building’s use is simply to store people, with a clear organization related to mon-ey, or the willingness to spend money. The “star” rating system was created for hotels as an organizer that stratifies this willingness to spend, by rating a it from one to five stars. The system is flawed because it is impossible to classify into 5 categories a hotel based on the many hundred factors that could contribute to its rating. There also exists some self proclaimed six and seven star rating hotels containing the most lavish of amenities. This hotel blurs the lines created by the star system, and instead focuses on the role of luxury, extravagant living, and lavishness in organizing how it operates. Instead of an un-convincing star system that stratifies occupants, the building is organized through degrees of lavishness, which is directly related to apertures in the building envelope. Once the con-sumer’s willingness to spend reaches a threshold, the only purpose to continue spending is because of a desire to be viewed.

ENVELOPEhotel on 57th ave. and 6thnew york city, nycritic: alfonso perezteam: jason henderson

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A fragmented section was necessary in order to create dynamic shifts between public and private spaces. Many section studies were made investigating the possible spacial layouts of the hotel with this in mind. A series of continuous public rings were developed from these studies, creating fissures between private hotel rooms.

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For skin design, a gradient was used in order to form an interrelated group of unique ap-ertures. With this, each room has an individually unique lens through which to see (or be seen by) the city. Private bedrooms have more but smaller apertures, while “public” bed-rooms have one large aperture often spanning the entire exterior facing wall. The gradient formed blends these two extremes, providing enough variation to meet the needs of all patrons. The frenetic grid created is reminiscent of the hustle and bustle of New York City, each aperture fighting for its own space.

A retail band hovers above the street creating a covered canopy that frames the entry to the hotel. Apertures on both the roof and the facade put the shoppers on display to not only commuters, but hotel occupants as well.

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public rings

hotel suites

retail band

The apertures created by the building skin extend into the public spaces and the hotel suites, creating multi-use pods programmed based on the space they are in. For private suites the pods extended from the smaller apertures provide personal reading nooks with a view of the city, where in public spaces the pods are used for intimate lounges, dancing platforms, or dining spaces.

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WEAVEpride-in-place banner competitionuniversity of florida school of architecturecritic: ruth ronteam: jason henderson, wylie gunn

The pride-in-place competition was a one day charrette held for students to design a desk, banner, or chair as an improvement to the architecture school, it was completed in teams of three. Our proposal was a temporary banner installation that showcases the work of the school of architecture to the greater student body, encouraging students not a part of the program to experience its work.

The installation is a single surface that weaves between the columns in the architecture building, using the building itself as structural support. From the lawn, work is displayed on the surface using video projectors. The surface is stretched inward creating an intimate canopy showcasing students’ built work. A fissure is created within the banner to utilize the existing paths of the building to capture the commuter.

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LAYERtectonic pavilionarchitectural making exercisecritic: william tilson, alfonso perez-mendez

The tectonic pavilion was an exercise completed prior to traveling to Guadalajara, Mexico as part of the studio. The purpose of this project was to create an architecture simply through making. The pavilion has no context or program, and was designed simply to ex-periment with form, tectonic calligraphy and construction. A layered construction method comprised of a tiled square calligraphy with varying opacities and an undulating form was utilized to create an intense lighting quality on the interior, that change at different times of the day.

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The site for the public health clinic in San Martin is located on a lake created by a dammed mountain stream. It shares a northern sloping edge with a small residential sector of the town, and receives a large amount of rain runoff during the region’s rainy season. It is inherently dynamic due to it being a receptacle of water from the lake and from the runoff. The street edge shared with the residences is a major means of commuting in the city, most traffic is pedestrian and peaks before and after the work day, but it also sees some automobile traffic. After work hours, children relax in the shade from the building over-hangs and on building foundations.

The town is currently visited periodically by a traveling doctor and dentist who work out of the back of their vehicles. The proposal for a public health clinic provides private examin-ing rooms for doctors and patients as well as storage for equipment needed for examina-tions, erasing the need for traveling doctors to provide their own. The proposal also incor-porates public activities centered on wellness. The center places emphasis on visits not only when patients are sick, but also when they are well. It provides multi-purpose public spaces centered around water and the surrounding landscape that are provide relaxation from the activities of daily living.

FILTERpublic health clinicsan martin de las canascritic: william tilson

The movement of water through the center creates spacial connections, and promotes a dynamic quality to the structure. There are three types of water that enter the clinic, rain-water from the roof, water from the lake, and rain runoff from the street. The clinic aims at filtering the runoff water by using a collection system that directs it through a rainwater garden on the lake. The purified water terminates in a pool and garden in the center of the project illuminated by a light well. The path of the water is integrated into the spaces creat-ing a private atmosphere wrapped in water. The sound created by it enhances the spacial quality but also aids in pathfinding through the clinic. The spacial layout is governed by the pathways of water, creating porous envelopes.

A connection to the landscape is formed through the spacial characteristics of the site. The sectional shift between the street and waterfront affords the ability for the clinic to have public spaces at the street level while nesting the private functions below, enveloped by the landscape. This connection to the landscape and town above provides a clear organization and connection between public and private spaces. The joint between these becomes the crux of the project, providing a large light well, and gives one the ability to see the structure’s parts from its whole as a way of architectural pathfinding.

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DISSOLVEluminare competition 2009simon’s rock student dorm roomcritic: thomas smith

The lighting goal of this project was to softly illuminate a college dorm room, situated above a working desk. The inspiration for the design came from the lighting solutions found in many college dorm rooms, christmas lights, and to contain this condition in a pendant light. The solution came about by considering the quality of light necessary to illuminate a desk for work and through a soft gradient extending the length of the object provide a diffused glow for the entire room.

In order to create a soft glow for the desk, a glass diffuser was used gradually transforming in degree of translucency. To take advantage of this phenomena, an opaque diffuser that gradually dissolves was used to emit the controlled glow, while projecting small beams of direct light from the source.

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BLENDmixed-use development in hell’s kitchennew york city, nycritic: alfonso perezteam: jason henderson

In the city, through interconnectivity, new media, and generally the widespread use of the internet, building programs can be blended, not serving specific purposes, but can be considered as program-less spaces that serve a multitude of purposes. The driving ques-tion for designing an urban block in Manhattan was “how do you want to live in the city?”. The response the proposal demonstrates is a set of distinct architectural objects that are divided by their transparency and connection to the rest of the block. This rationalizes the construction of a particular space and its placement in a city block to allow blending to occur in controlled zones. The formal strategy for the project was to extrude the entire block, creating internal court-yards within. The courtyards are pushed to the extreme edge of the block, creating slender inhabitable buildings, and bringing the public courtyards as close to the street as possible. Large cantilevered towers are strategically placed on the northern edge of the project so as to allow the most sunlight into the courtyards as possible.

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The project was conceived of as a mixed-use complex containing a design school, resi-dences, and rentable spaces for offices or commercial purposes. The school is the pri-mary program at the street level, surrounding the courtyards. Extreme transparency was utilized in order to bring the presence of the school to the street as an urban proposal.

residences

indoor recreaction/libraries

commercial and office blocks

school

columnar structure

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All of the spaces at street level take advantage of extreme transparency in order for the commuter to not only read the depth of the complex but also become a part of the schools’ activities. Alternatively, to connect the two main courtyards an opaque open interior exhi-bition promenade rests in the heart of the block, this object can be seen from the street through the hustle and bustle of the school.

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The courtyards are the central intense hub of all of the activities happening on the block. They are the device that blends all of the different programs together. They are stepped in order to take advantage of the most sunlight possible, and to allow inhabitants to relate visually to many levels of the project. Each is surrounded by an incredibly transparent slender building that contains offices for the design school and the bottom half of the tow-ers house libraries, mediatheques, and indoor recreation centers that angle downward to enable visual connections.

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thank youI want to thank my mother and father, my sister Becca, my brother-in-law Matias, and my aunt Donna and uncle Gene for their support over the past four years, without my incredible fam-ily I would have never made it this far.

Thank you, my professors for sharing your passion for architec-ture. Without your guidance I would not be who I am today.

Thank you, my closest colleagues Wylie Gunn, Carolyn Kimbro, Ashley Jodat, Drew Carr, and Paul Geise for their company and encouragement all of the late nights in studio.

Thank you, my best friends, John Faichney, Jason Hall, Laura and Daniela Ettedgui, Julius Finney, Hanna Bridges-Curry, Tay-lor Blackburn, and Jordan Robson for their continuing love and support no matter how near or far.

Finally, I want to thank my closest friend Jason Henderson, who has been with me almost every hour of every day for the past four years. I hope we can continue to collaborate in the field of architecture for years to come.