Salome Nikuradze2012

Urban Gymnasium 01ruin at the grid knot

Spadina Corridor Regenerationcampus within a city

Design School Proposalschool within a campus

Source CodeDUMBO, NY

Toronto Sculpture Garden

Niagara Falls & Table Rockhyperscape

Pattern Recognition

Donut Shopdonut/shop?

Line, Plane, Form

Toronto Electriccity lights

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An Te Liu Studio

Atelier 3AM

Khoury Levit Fong

Bruce Mau Design

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Selected Work

Employment

CV

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Salome NikuradzeBA, M.Arch candidate

60 Mountview Avenue, 1709Toronto ON M6P 2L4T 416 939 9808s.nikuradze@gmail.com

Education

2012 Master of Architecture (candidate) Faculty of Architecture, University of Toronto, Toronto

2008 Honours B.A., Visual Studies, Architectural Studies, Cinema Studies Faculty of Arts and Science, University of Toronto, Toronto

Academic Practice

2011 Architecture Summer Workshop Instructor

2011 ARC213: Architectural Design I Teaching Assistant

2010 ARC 1011Y:Architectural Design Studio 1: Introductory Design Teaching Assistant

Awards

2011 Frederick Coates Scholarship

2011 Canadian Institute of Steel Construction Ontario Region Fellowship

2010 Uno Prii Memorial Award for Excellence in Visual Communication

2010 Hattie Aileen Sommerville Scholarship

2009 Eleanor Cate Allen Fellowship

Skills

digital Proficient in Rhino, AutoCad, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign Experience with 3ds Max, Final Cut Pro, After Effects

analogue Skilled in installation, model-making

languages English, Russian, Georgian

Professional Practice

2009 - present An Te Liu Studio, Toronto Studio Assistant, Designer, Photographer

2011 ParaDesign SFMOMA, San Fracisco, CA installation assistant for Cloud, An Te Liu 2010 Philippe Rahm: Domestic Astronomy Eric Arthur Gallery, Toronto Curated by An Te Liu Assistant to the curator

2012 Meanings in Architecture: The Early Works of George Baird 1957-1993 Eric Arthur Gallery, Toronto Curated by Michael Prokopow, Designed by Christine Elson Assistant Designer

2012 Atelier 3AM, Toronto Project Team, Zagreb Badel Site Redevelopment Competition

2011 Khoury Levit Fong Architects, Toronto Project Team, The Busan Opera House Ideas Competition Project Team, Changzhi Planning Exhibition Hall Competition

2010 Bruce Mau Design, Toronto Project Team, Visions for the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy

2007 - 10 ToRo Arts Group, Toronto Co-founder and Creative Director

2007 - 08 University of Toronto Film Festival, Toronto Festival Director

2006 - 08 Artex Fashions, Toronto Assistant Fashion Designer, Graphic Designer

Exhibitions

2011 Here Be Monsters Eric Arthur Gallery, Toronto2010 Source Code, DUMBO Arts Festival 2010, Brooklyn, NY 2008 Head.Sync Liberty Village, Toronto 2008 Anomaly 299 Augusta Avenue, Toronto 2007 103 EEL Gallery, Toronto

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Urban GymnasiumJunction, Toronto, ON

2011(second year, second semester)

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Ruin at the grid knot

Although not originally present on the site, the project evolved as an “industrial ruin,” derelict and abandoned on the former industrial ground, shaped and dented by the collisions of urban and infrastructural networks - a debris of failed structural systems and cladding panels, it is revived through a radical programmatic takeover that builds upon it.

Formally the building is a continuous and relatively uniform mass, wedged into the site towards the west and jutting out of the ground and hovering above the infrastructural intersection towards the east. A continuous surface is achieved through a triangulated tube steel network, which is supplemented by the secondary quadrilateral network, matched - in its turn - with a shell of structurally insulated panels on the exterior, legible both at a human scale and as a governing facade pattern from the distance.

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elevation plans

sections (cross and longitudinal)

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physical model (1 : 200)

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The interior conditions unfold a certain architectural narrative that culminates at the Therapy and Wellness Centre. Well hidden within the structural mass of the building, these spaces aspire to the state of controlled purity in contrast to the public spaces on lower levels, explicit in the physicality of their ‘architecture.’ The occupiable enclosures are clad in interactive surfaces providing a visitor with adaptive virtual experiences whilst the required infrastructure is carefully tucked away within the thickened walls. Glass panel in the corridors provides an occasional ghostly reminder of the technological complexity in service of the minimal ephemeral environments of the therapy centre. conceptual perspectives

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sectional models (1 : 20)

The sectional detail models further emphasize the polarized condition of the building.

The ‘naked’ brutality of concrete and steel celebrate and fetishize the physicality of architecture, counterparted by cerebral environments floated above, where structure, secondary to the surface of the screen, hides itself within the mass of the wall.

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Spadina Corridor and the School of ArchitectureToronto, ON

2011(second year, first semester)

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Spadina Corridor Regenerationcampus within a city

The ubiquity of Cerdà’s grid in Barcelona is further emphasized when violently sliced by a prominent diagonal vector, such as Avinguda avenue. The resulting irregularities create peculiar redundancies in the system, open to incidental occupation and effectively become zones of public space.

An attempt to regenerate this condition in Toronto resulted in a hybrid map of two cities, grids shifted diagonally to one another. However speculative, the simulation promised increases in both occupational density and amount of potential public space.

hybrid figure ground of Toronto and Barcelona, Collage

Toronto Barcelona

hybrid aerial map of Toronto and Barcelona_

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existing and proposed pedestrian distribution on the site

existing and proposed land use distribution on the site

Additional analysis of the Toronto neighbourhoods along Spadina suggested further benefits to diagonal slicing through the established grid. Currently disparate residential, commercial and institutional zones could be linked together via direct shortcuts, reinvigorating the neighbourhood both as a transitional platform and a place of destination, while the residential development could help support the inflow of new metropolitan population. The same infrastructural matrix would deliver nearby student population to the university campus as well as connect local small scale retail and restaurants at the street level.

The vehicular circulation would stay largely unaltered along Toronto’s orthographic grid, while pedestrians and cyclists would gain separate direct access through diagonal boulevards cutting through the city. Thus, without significantly compromising the existing infrastructure, the proposal implements a parallel circulation system benefiting both the pedestrian circulation and green public space.

residential

commercial

institutional

solar study for winter months_

‘stitching’ of local neighbourhoods via proposed development solar study

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typical section (diagram)

plans for proposed use

axonometric for proposed use

Vertically, program distribution would be characterized by mixed commercial/institutional on the bottom layers, followed by residential at the top, ensuring a vibrant 24 hour occupation.

residential

commercial

institutional

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Design School Proposalschool within a campus

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section

When asked to design a school of architecture and visual studies at the southern edge of the proposed development the same organizational principle was used to drive the design forward.

The objective was to take advantage of the peculiarities of the given condition: circular in shape and located in the middle of the Spadina Avenue, the site is occupied by a historical Neo-Gothic building facing south - an iconic Toronto view gracefully framed along Spadina.

Since the urban proposal dealt heavily with the intensification of the urban surface, the building was conceived as an extension of its surroundings, growing directly out of its site, wrapping the existing building and dropping down into the ground to create a semi-protected public space in front.

The site was scored with respect to its context, anticipating views and shortcuts within the new development. The faceted volume was generated using the score lines, promoting occupation of its surface on a multitude of levels and allowing pedestrian flow through the site, either over or under it.

As the surface of the building winds up delivering students to various levels, a new type of public space originates as a by-product of the circulation system.

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massing step-by-step diagram

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plans

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perspective renderings

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Source Code site specific installation, DUMBO Arts Festival, Brooklyn, NY

2010

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Designed objects originate from a state of pure data communicated via a conventionalized form of notation - an empirical code that allows the process of assembly to take place in accordance with the designer’s intent. However, upon realization, the built environment, although a physical manifestation of organized information, undergoes a process of depreciation, mutating the code embedded within.

The installation extracts the measured dimensions from the site and subsequently applies them physically upon its surfaces. Formally alluding to both graffiti and utilitarian infrastructural markings, the exposed state of ‘information’ is inevitably also an act of defacing, further altering the intended original.

installation views

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Toronto Sculpture Garden (proposal)

2010

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This proposed intervention for the north west corner of the Toronto Sculpture Garden attempts to fold the given site condition into itself, rather than conventionally superimpose an independent object onto a site. The ‘big’ gesture is made with a subtle corner peel of the preexisting grass lawn, only to reveal a supposed thick layer of chrome under the surface of the city.

Major themes at play are the expectations for the anticipated and the resulting unexpected. This concept adapts the digital sensibility, where the infinity of the homogeneous data is individualized visually via texture mapping. The layer of chrome alludes to the ubiquitous ‘liquidity’ of the urban infrastructural matrix, foundational to the patchwork of the program existing in a constant flux on the surface.

schematic assembly

rendered views

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Niagara Falls & Table Rock(proposal)

2010(first year, second semester)

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Conventionally perceived as nature’s mighty wonder, Niagara Falls has long ceased to be one. Physically reshaped to have a more ‘picturesque’ appearance and its water yield regulated hourly, the Falls is a designed and precisely controlled simulatory device. It is a testament to human hegemony, where a curated virtual experience, projected upon a tourist is aimed to match their culturally preconceived expectations.

The proposed visitors centre inverts the spectator’s relationship to the Falls through celebrating the hyperreal ‘theme park’ condition of this ‘man-made’ cultural wonder, rather then subsuming to the existing pseudo-bucolic illusion. The occupiable landscape negotiates the level change and delivers visitors to three different viewing plateaus, each framing the Falls in the most iconographic postcard-like perspectives, likely to be familiar to the spectator already.

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planometric sections through the landscape

Niagara Falls seen from the various points of the site, digital drawing

proposed landscape geometry negoatiating the elevation change

schematic site plan illustrating the remedial work carried out in 1950s

fillexcavation

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proposed site plan season study

On the formal level, the landscape adopts the least submissive appearance. Adapting its aesthetic from lo-fi computer generated visions of ‘nature,’ the designed environment confronts its visitors, flaunting its hyper-artificiality as they navigate through. Rather then masking the simulatory quality of the Niagara Falls experience, the proposal authenticates it by admitting to it and capitalizing on the phenomenon.formation sequence of the proposed landscape geometry

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Pattern Recognition2010(first year, second semester)

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Navigational systems, flows of data and visual imagery shape our experiences often by the incidental nature of their juxtapositions. The ‘thresholds’ between these take on new meanings just by the virtue of circumstance as new patterns emerge.

Designed as a traditional puzzle, the piece alludes to this condition where, despite expectation, re-combination of disparate pieces cannot result in a finalized coherent image. The solutions are numerous, each contradictory to each other. Driven by the desire to locate familiar patterns, the process of assembly allows random ones to appear in the process.

installation view selected compositions, lasercut MDF, magnetic sheets, steel plate

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Donut Shopdonut/shop?

2009(first year, first semester)

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model, millboard1:100 model, millboard

A contemporary ‘digital’ twist on Venturi’s Duck, the proposed building dominates the landscape as a giant medium for a visual message it projects outwards with respect to its program. The conventionally perceived ‘flatness’ of the image is challenged by the breaking apart of its surface and distorting it from any given point of view except for the one that is being anamorphically catered to - that of an approaching vehicle.

Hence, the resulting physical volume is extracted out of the process of distortion and perception manipulation in service of the primary pictoral experience.

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section perspective renderings planometric renderings

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Line, Plane, Form2009(first year, first semester)

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The volume of the cube is pierced by an abstract volume, as two primitive forms, drawn on its surface, loft into one another. The work is a study of the spatial qualities of an abstract form and a speculation upon its scale, occupation, relationship to the body, point of perception, and materiality.

First generated ‘on paper,’ subsequently materialized and once again re-documented and developed further digitally, the object and space always exist and are experienced in a semi-virtual mode, folding and re-folding upon themselves.

model, copper plate scale study, collage

section diagrams

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conceptual formal study

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Toronto Electric2007

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Through a meticulous hand drawn study of urban infrastructure the city takes shape. The ghostly yet unmistakable traces of Toronto appear out of the ‘point cloud’ of its innumerable street lights.

The ‘map’ operates at a variety of scales, focus shifting continuously between the overall network and an individual dot. The general make-up of the city on the lake and the density and qualities of its grid give way to peculiarities of lit park trails, highway corridors and empty voids of cemeteries, all encrypted within the logic of its illumination.

hand drawn ink on mylar, 95 x 45”

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An Te Liu StudioSeptember 2009 - present

designer, project development, fabricationphotography (+ post production)installation coordination, assemblyproject coordination

selected projects

BLAST 2011various materialsinstallation view, MKG127

Cloud 2008air purifiers, ionizers, sterilizers, washers, humidifiers, ozone air cleaners; 136 units run-ning continuouslyInstallation view, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, MOCCA

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Title Deed 2009latex block filler, paint, houseSite specific installation, The Leona Drive Project, Willowdale

ID/EGO/SUPER 2011lightbox

Ennui Blanc 2010neon signInstallation view, Out of Site / Nuit Blanche, Toronto

Fantasia in 24 Gauge 2011sheet metal, brass, mirrored acrylic, glassInstallation view, Hyper Spaces / Oakville Galleries, Oakville

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Atelier 3AMSpring 2012

Zagreb Badel Site Redevelopment Competition

competition team

Exploded axonometric

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Khoury Levit Fong ArchitectsSummer 2011

The Busan Opera House Ideas Competition

competition team

Lateral section perspectives

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Changzhi Planning Exhibition Hall

competition team

Interior rendering

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Bruce Mau DesignSummer 2010

model makingphotographygraphic design

exhibit design for a new post-petroleum cityscale study

exterior views, model

interior views, model, collage

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