Located about a mile West of Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo’s campus, this 90,000 sq ft wellness center provides both the community of San Luis Obispo and the student body with a health, recreation, and culinary center. The exterior features a faceted perforated solar shading system that also serves as a water capturing device to be used for irrigation. The building’s central circulation space and occupiable roof will serve as a mixing space for the two main populations, while the programs that wrap around the common space promote whole wellness thorough physical, emotional, and social well-being.
ENERGY USE: For an 80% reduction in energy using the 2030 guidelines, the EUI target for this building type is 19kBTU/sf/yr. This project produces an EUI of 16 kBTU/sf/yr. Taking into account energy produced by cardio machines, the EUI is reduced to 12kBTU/sf/yr.
Waste Land is a project about demolition and construction waste and their impact on the climate crisis. It asks what the scale and scope of the waste produced by the built environment industry is, who is responsible for this, and how we can make these processes visible and tangible?
The film provides a survey of construction sites across London, depicting their materiality and processes of demolition. It is narrated by recombined excerpts of T.S. Eliott’s epic poem of the same name a century from its publication as a means to portray contemporary loss and trauma of the climate emergency.
The interactive interventions One Second Wasted and Spaces of Waste take the form of participatory workshops in which audiences of fifty students of the built environment were invited to build representations of UK construction waste quantities to appreciate and critically reflect on the scale of the issue at hand. The project is sited within a body of existing theoreticians and practitioners who conceptualise the nature of the climate crisis and its relation to architecture alongside those who repurpose materials to allow us to reimagine. Waste Land is a rallying cry for urgent systemic and cultural change for an industry threatening our existence.
This project focuses on an architectural, landscaping, and agricultural intervention in an extra-urban area in the Western part of the city of Florence, Italy. Located in the San Donnino neighborhood, this site includes and existing incinerator that is no longer in use. Its remaining infrastructure still poses a burden on the surrounding environment. Moving forward, emptiness and waste can be given meaning and purpose; trash becomes treasure. This project has three main objectives:
RE-PURPOSING TRASH THAT IS COLLECTED ON- AND OFF- SITE
... creates new structures made of existing infrastructures
... reuses the seemingly endless supply of waste for purposes of the community and citizens
BIORETENTION AREAS TO MITIGATE EFFECTS OF SOIL SEALING
... address concreted surfaces where soil has been sealed and altered
... offset negative impacts of disrupted soil to surrounding environment and ecosystems
ALTERNATIVE FOOD PRODUCTION IN SPACES THAT REMAIN EMPTY
... reuses an abandoned site for current and future urban needs
... results in less pollution and a more efficient use of energy and resources
This design will offer an opportunity for the people of San Donnino to learn and participate in a more sustainable production and use of food, materials and the found conditions.
*project done in collaboration with Tejal Patel and Olivia Young
The inherent personality and flexibility in fashion can influence architectural design to create a more adaptable and flexible urban realm. Through exploration at various scales ranging from the human body to the urban scope, this thesis seeks to uncover areas within the urban fabric that exist outside of the norm and become unused remainders. By privileging the movement and scale of the body, these small-scale architectural interventions will prompt user participation and activation within the site. The merging of fashion and architecture will stimulate the built environment to adapt and change with the people that occupy the space.
Urban pockets, the small, in-between, forgotten and undesigned spaces throughout a city, present opportunities to stimulate previously marginalized spaces. By creating a network of inflatable responsive interventions in these urban pockets in and surrounding Cal Anderson Park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, this thesis will seek to provide adaptable architecture that promotes the gathering and mixing of different groups such as students, young professionals, and unhoused persons. These leftover pockets provide different conditions appropriate for creating a space that reacts to the people occupying the intervention by changing and adjusting, inflating and deflating as the users move around. Like fashion and garments, this project will not be complete until people activate and animate the design. Taking inspiration from the movement and squishiness of fashion, these once forgotten pockets will become lively areas that invite a variety of users to interact with the site and each other.
I have always loved fashion and found it a great way to express myself. After some time in architecture school, I have come to realize the similarities between architecture and fashion; at both of their bases, they explore how the human figure occupies a space. Recently, I have been creating my own clothes and have enjoyed learning about the process of pattern making and production. My work is created from thrifted and recycled materials to create low waste clothing.
Set at the South entrance into San Luis Obispo, the Madonna Overpass Hotel will serve as a sight to welcome those driving into the city. This Project consists of two main parts; the tower which houses the hotel, and the structure hovering over the overpass which serves as commercial space. This project’s form came through a process of piecing a model together using found objects which serves as inspiration for the drawings and final concept.
Interfaith Chapel is a non-denominational chapel located in Morro Bay, California. Using the tectonic logic of planes and frames, this project seeks to make the user feel small in the presence of a larger spiritual being. Using a series of ramps that continue the planar logic, this project attempts to connect uses to Morro Rock as well as the water that enters and exits the outfall trench at the base of the rock.
Designed for a 12’ x 100’ lot in downtown San Luis Obispo, Synthetic Futures Lab is a community center that focuses on the education and advancement of science, believing that innovations in biology should be accessible, affordable, and open to everyone. It is a community biology lab for amateurs, inventors, and entrepreneurs alike. Its mission is to promote the usage of biological materials in the same fashion that plastics, metals, and glass are used today. It is invested in innovation and community engagement
This project is the design of a house for my future self at the age of 30. It is located in Los Osos, California in the Baywood neighborhood and is around 2000 square feet. The design process started with a series of sketches derived from a list of needs for my future self and family resulting in the end design. The juxtaposition between brick and metal materials shows the difference between public and private spaces clearly from the exterior.
Mass/Plane/Frame seeks to exploit the unique spatial and formal qualities of each tectonic system. The systems are used to create a spatial progression with one major space and various minor spaces. Each individual space is both clearly defined, and connected into one continuous space.
Mycelium is the root-like fibers of fungi which grow beneath the surface of the ground. Dried mycelium can be water, mold, and fire resistant as well as completely organic and compostable. When formed into building blocks, it can be stronger than concrete if compared pound for pound. The form of these bricks was inspired by the word epitaxy, or the growth of crystals on a crystalline substrate.
paraSITE prompted the development of skills in observation and analysis of existing conditions, design by iteration influenced by analysis, and skills in fabrication and installation of the design. This project relies on the wind on site to turn the upper section of the piece. Inside of the base of the installation, an arm spins around and strums guitar strings to create a sonic landscape as the wind spins the brancehs above.
Pier project modeled and re-imagined the Avila Beach Pier through the exploration of density, repetition, and rhythm. Analysis of the pier as built showed the pattern of an existing structure. The design was conceived of by exaggerating the rhythm and structure seen in the original pier. Teams were given a portion of the pier to redesign and worked with neighboring teams to connect the pier into one continuous model.
Solid/Void promoted development in analytical, interpretive, and representational skills. This project analyzed abstract art containing architectural vocabulary, interpreted three-dimensional spaces from two-dimensional composition, and represented the design using diagrams, drawings, and models. This project was based off of the art of Russian Constructivist artist El Lissitzky.
