UNIVERSITY ISLAND ‘IN CONTRAST’

YAC Intenational Competition - Academic project - Master plan

“Despite its area extent and beauty that marks the difference between Poveglia and the other lagoon islands, over the last years, this gemstone underwent a disastrous decline. Abandoned for almost 50 years, thick vegetation has grown affecting cultivation and architecture. Venice has never forgotten Poveglia, but it turned it into a natural setting for the grimmest tales and fantastic rumors.

University Island is a project to transform Poveglia into a dream university campus; a place of training, leisure and relax for the many students gathering in Venice. How to transform a desert island into a spearheading study and research center?” (1)

Poveglia will receive a new program where the existing architecture, nature, and new architectonic elements will convey. Guided by a conceptual approach around the morphology of Venice Lagoon’s islands, the proposal will explore the contrast between the old and the new, the historical architecture and new organic shapes derived from the interpretation of the island geographic formation.

1. Extract from the contest brief brochure (www.youngarchitectscompetitions.com)

PROFESSIONAL WORK (SAMPLES)

Reset.01: Cognitive Pavilion

The ephemeral context of AfrikaBurn and Tankwa’s environment set constraints and resources for a morphological re-interpretation of the desert. Reset.01 is an experimental pavilion that challenges the connection with our surroundings from the lenses of embodied cognition and through the disruption of automated corporal tasks. The artwork would be a physical channel to rethink our basic corporal movements in an unusual environment.

The pavilion is the result of multiple operations over a plane, providing different slopes averaged in one surface, turning it in both a transitable playground and covered shelter. Interpretations of the form were many: climbing, modeling, kissing, playing, sitting, resting, hanging, stretching were some of the activities observed.

Digital fabrication with prefabricated parts, CNC cut, and standarization of joints helped to reduce construction times in the desert and simplify the operation. A system of variable horizontal layers and vertical studs would conform the topographic form. The pavilion could be built most of the time by two people.

The burn took place on the 6th day of the festival. Previous calculations on the pavilion orientation, shred placement, paraffin quantities had to

Cuartel San Martin | Hybrid complex

Composed by housing, hotels, retail and offices, Cuartel San Martin was a large scale project with implications in the urban configuration of surrounding district. Facades and resulting volume had a role in connecting the proposal with recognizable visual patterns and permeability towards desired views. Form follows an indexical extension of the neighborhood, while inserting nature in terraces, paths and large surfaces.

Professional work at AJN. Drafting and 3d modeling for post-edition. Team work. 2012-2013

The new building works as an assemblage of correlated volumes hosting interiority experiences and visual connections to the landscape and the ocean. Being an extension project, this volumetric approach aimed to organize flows in the lower level, and integrate views in the upper one: volumes order programs along the assigned plot and act as a continuation of the existing buildings.

Three cubes conform the building lower level and serve as base for a large longitudinal volume on top. Each cube contains changing rooms, sauna and restaurant kitchen, acknowledging the circulation paths around and between the pool and tennis courts. The larger volume on top contains the gym and restaurant, prioritizing an interstitial corridor towards the pool and using the block’s ending as a food and gathering place.

Country house in Lima, Peru. A second home for a family.

The project aims the minimum occupation of the field to allow a larger vegetation covered space. The terraces work as a intermediate space to blur divisions between indoors and outdoors. Material differentiation is used to stress on possibilities to read the house volumentric compounds and mimetize with the pastoral context.

Professional independent practice. 2016

Fedex Crossborders Offices (RENOVATION)

This request was a 24/7 house for innovation, where the team and entrepreneurs could work in the basis of flexibility of space and personal schedules. A ‘future primitive’ geometry was deployed as an continuation of the triangular index given by the existing steel trestle structures, helping to define fixed and mobile parts. The working, rest and mixed spaces, allowed moments of individuality, small groups and collective work.

Independent Practice. Built project. 2015-2016