Academic Portfolio 2024

PROJECTS

Where the Wild Things Are: Rakuchu Walls for Vacancy Pavilion, Squared

First Cubes

Functional intersections

Less Functional Intersections

Medellin Hill

Wild Aggregate

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE: 42.2173°

N, 73.8646° W

How can we map wilderness? The Catskill region resides in the American imagination as a place of mystical wilderness. 200 years ago, it was the subject of the Hudson River School’s picturesque fantasy. A wild place with a man a tiny subject. To this day, people seek Catskill and its mountains to hike, to leave the known, to feel a sense of awe in nature.

Maps create the perception of understanding space at great scale. The wilderness becomes legible through topographic lines and trail marks. Sometimes we lose our reverence as result. With the immediate availability of maps, we become uncomfortable with not understanding, empirically, the world around us. And this understanding can take precedence over phenomenological understanding. Today, the most famous of the Hudson River School paintings have been mapped onto an Art Trail, the place and mode of observing marked with an x.

A map for getting lost describes a Catskill where one can once again be bewildered by nature. The mountains are craggy, and the Hudson a billowing force. Superimposed, is the map of Catskill, representing the abstraction through which we understand and flatten new places.

concrete invades the landscape

The site, the very tip of Catskill sits in the Hudson river. It is currently an industrial wasteland capped with concrete. It is the mark left by an old gas storage plant.

So, the expanse of concrete is jackhammered, creating an infrastructure for erosion. Slowly with the sedimentation of the troughs wilderness can return.

4A: Topographic Fields Adrienn Virag | Section 4

the concrete cap is plowed

and sedimentation can begin

arc 208 2022. wLaura Salazar

The relationship between wilderness and awe is fundamental to the program, an elementary school. Following Waldorfian education principles, childhood is prolonged through wildness and wonder in nature. Amidst the rows of aquatic vegetation, children have a place to play and to venture into the unknown.

piled concrete from ploughing forms the base of school buildings

RUNNING

Where am I running to today? Away from this place. You will not find me here. Certainly not where I am.

See how fast the ground is moving? I’m doing that. With my legs. They are pushing this place away. Goodbye!

CONSOLIDATED

When the thought is consolidated And the drama eliminated Then we can begin To draw lines into the earth And place between them The letters of truth For all people to read Even on aeroplanes

Then we can prepare the cage For when the meaning is caught By children of age And invite her to sing In front of the faculties Of philosophy and grace

Then when the song is complete We dance the habitual (More like a ritual) Parade of right feet in front And we gaze together Considering whether Outside, we are all number one

Sliver’s Competition Winner 2022

This three day competition at Syracuse School of Architecture, challenged 150 students to “design a space within which to experience and/or view” a landscape of their choice. This project engages a Japanese Shoji landscape, traditionally a six-fold room divider. The painting is of ‘Scenes In and Around the Capital’, a common depiction during the Edo period, with clouds serving as boundary between high-resolution vernacular streets and the landscape and tops of wealthy houses above.

The screen puts one’s head in the clouds, emphasizing the way we see landscape today, as a condition we can enter and leave as we please. A near virtual-reality. The screen becomes the way to view the landscape, and light streams through the painting mimicking the gaps between the clouds in the scene.

THE THING I FORGOT

Sometimes it’s there and sometimes it’s not

Sometimes it’s just the thing I forgot

Sometimes I see it when I look up at you

But then you stepped into me And I bumped into you And so little is left

It looks just like That thing I forgot

wLaura Salazar

WALLS FOR VACANCY

designing in a quiet city

This project explores vacancy in downtown Syracuse through atmosphere, aiming for a space that responds well to both use and disuse. Concrete is given strong emotive form, showing the range of the material so often abused in city infrastructure. This range mediates the site as both an important intersection and a resting place for residents.

OVERPASS

Listen, it is strong and heavy cold and rumbling

Prof. Taiwei Wang

Furnished memorials

Streets lined with trees for old birds

To look around

Booming silence

In the old roundabout The city regroups

They have agreed to rest

CLINTON SQUARE

PAVILION, SQUARED

appropriate intersections

Pavilion squared, a clear response to first year design studio, is executed at the extremes of rational design-decision making. With the goal of creating a public voting pavilion for the 2020 elections, this project plays with the beige concrete site, manipulating the ground plane into seating and play space. An orthogonal plan is used in combination with brick to reconcile the austerity of the site with the surrounding historic neighborhood.

Formally, this project explores boundaries through material, thickness, and hierarchy within a rigid logical system.

arc 107. 2020. wDebbie Chen

The formal logic attempts to accommodate the circulation of a voting center and serve as a break space for the Federal building workers.

“The pavilion is set up on a 5x5 grid defined by the paving at the square. The hierarchy of the planes is determined by their proximity to the towers. The planes weaken as they get closer to the street, opening up and drawing people inwards, while at the back, height creates a buffer between the towering buildings and the square. Moments of intersection reveal the relative strength of each element.”

FIRST CUBES

accidental Escher

FUNCTIONAL INTERSECTIONS

Exploration of tectonic and stereotomic elements in relationship to solid and void to test the notion of inside and outside in response to program.

LESS FUNCTIONAL INTERSECTIONS

representational exercise

claiming the facade

Wild Aggregate is an abandoned warehouse in Syracuse, re purposed as an urban getaway

locating tagged walls

street-facing balconies and bay windows

for eating with friends, making things, playing, flaunting, hiding, and storage

Drawing from the essence of graffiti, tagging and getting heard by claiming surfaces, in Wild Aggregate, balconies encourage selfexpression on the facade. All the exterior graffiti-covered walls are left intact. Flats are designed to house people for short periods, with workshops, community gathering spaces, and a public gallery making up the first floor to encourage production and display for all.

the complete aggregate

partners: Alan Wang, Silvia Diaz, Anlan Sun

and lived-in facade

summer design-build WE BUILT A DECK!

I designed and built a deck on the roof of my childhood home in Toronto last summer. I had enthusiastic helpers, my siblings, neighbors, friends stopping by.

enthusiastic laborers available for:

waterproofing

hoisting

railing assembly decking mitering

joist angling

joist leveling (pt 2) post anchoring

wiring

A 1/4 inch baluster at a 45 degree angle provides privacy from the neighboring houses, but allows for a generous view of the trees and garden.

CHOCOLATE

The more chocolate I eat

The more metaphors grow Into life

Until my belly is the earth And I am full Of chocolate

AN IMPATIENT IN THE BATHHOUSE

It’s time to go

The towels have flown The drops have fallen From heads Onto toes

Our balance compromised Our posture remains Impossibly of dough

When can we return to where people make light? Instead of this hole

Where even my hair doesn’t grow Like a monk Without serenity

Nude

But not free