Alvaro Alvarez
Cornell University Bachelor of Architecture
Flaminia Bus Station 4th Year - Fall 2014 Rome, Italy An opportunity to challenge the norm of parking garages by exploring the intersection of vertical and horizontal planes, creating interstitial spaces between them. This transit station services the chaotic crowds arriving and exiting the nearby Olympic Stadium.
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Merging Landscapes 2nd Year - Spring 2012 Owego, New York The town of Owego has the unfortunate tendency to flood. This project, a town hall on the riverfront, embraces the water instead of blocking it. By lifting the building, the ground level becomes a public space with landscaped ramps and walls.
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Structural Systems 3rd Year - Spring 2013 Ithaca, New York 1/16th : 1’ Scale Brass, wood, rockite The uncertainty of this project made it a fun process. Extreme coordination and communication was required to recreate the structure of the 2012 London Aquatic Centre. This physical model demonstrates the incredibly strong properties of steel in construction. Collaboration
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Holocaust High School - 2008 Hemet, California Hand drawing Charcoal 24” x36”
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The Shining High School - 2009 Hemet, California Hand drawing Graphite 25” x20”
Venice High School - 2010 Hemet, California Hand drawing Graphite 20” x 27”
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(Ap)perception 3rd Year - Spring 2013 New Zealand Competition entry to the Radical Innovation in Hospitality contest. Designed guestroom suite capable of transporting travelers to remote destinations using railroad tracks. The luxury guestroom wagon mitigates the need for intermediary lodging for eco-tourists, bridging guests directly with nature. Collaboration
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Design Thesis Prelude Spring 2015
Hotel of Memory Statler Hotel in Roosevelt Island Cornell NYC Tech Campus
A hotel’ s guest experience will only be memorable if the design accounts for the brain’ s ability to interpret its surroundings Alvaro Alvarez Bachelors of Architecture Cornell University Claass of 2015 Design Thesis
This thesis pursues a better understanding of the hotel guest experience by analyzing how the brain creates memories of the surrounding built spaces and translating these into architectural forms. Our hippocampus is extremely important in spatial memory - any time we enter a new place, our brain interprets our environment and takes physical cues to assemble a mental field map. This map remains archived in the deep recesses of our mind and is retrieved when, if ever, we enter the same space again. Yet, experiencing architecture is not only about mapping our environment; for our brain, it is more about the relationships amongst the physical objects surrounding us. We remember based on those relationships. It makes perfect sense to test this notion in a hospitality setting, where guests are encouraged to remember their lodging experience for years, often with only a single-night stay. As the Cornell community expands its network of campuses onto Roosevelt Island, it is only logical that the School of Hotel Administration follows the university. The Statler Hotel in Roosevelt Island will be an extension of the Ithaca campus in New York City, providing students with the opportunity to exercise their learned practical knowledge in a challenging urban context. By locating this hotel intervention under the Queensboro Bridge, it will mitigate the clear architectural disconnection between the Cornell Tech Campus and the rest of Roosevelt Island.
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Architecture school teaches us how to interpret landscapes, urban contexts, history, and art. Interpreting the brain mechanisms of those who occupy our spaces is just as important in responsible design.
Thank You