[ AGL ] Architecture Portfolio

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Ana Gabriela Loayza

Harvard GSD M.Arch II

ARCHITECT | TECHNOLOGIST | EDUCATOR ANA GABRIELA LOAYZA

aga.loayza@gmail.com +1 (617) 642 6899

Ana is an architect exploring combinations of design, science, and technology for the built environment. Her perspective of architecture as inhabitable systems invites research in human-machine interactions, computation, and engineering in cross-scalar projects.

She is part-time faculty at the Architecture Department of Rhode Island School of Design. She is also a thesis research faculty at Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas.

Driven professional with international experience in research and project development (6+ years), having practised at renowned architecture firms, such as Ateliers Jean Nouvel. Engaged in independent practice, she has worked in the design of residential, corporate, social, and installation projects.

She is recipient of different academic and professional awards.

She loves the ocean and surfing.

[AI] : CENTER - PERIPHERY ENCODING NEW PROCESSES IN SHENZHEN’S BOUNDARIES

SHENZHEN, CHINA

Harvard GSD - Spring 2020 Option Studio ‘ Neuralisms Shenzhen: Fictions of Type and Territory’ Instructors: Andrew Witt, Robert Pietrusko. Individual Project. Harvard GSD ‘Digital Design Prize’ 2021 Award.

The studio explored imaginative and cross-scalar lifestyle futurisms for Shenzhen, China using tools as remote sensing, deep learning, neural networks, image processing and other leveraging technologies.

Shenzhen’s Urban Growth Boundaries, administrative limits to protect natural areas and touristic circuits have been vulnerable to arbitrary urban expansion in the last decades. Center-Periphery, reimagines these boundaries as sustainable manufacturing poles, responding to both, the need of responsible production chains for the textile industry, and the consolidation of the inner borders to protect natural areas.

Thorugh the use of Artificial Intelligence, a landscape generator assists the urban proposal acroSs selected territories in the city, encoding a new textile industry into the inner borders.

ANALYSIS: SCANING

The study of the Urban Growth Boundaries reveals its irregular nature, zoning, and levels of built mass occupation along the Urban Growth Boundaries.

A scanning process supported by satellite imagery and AI image recognition helped to identify potential sites to allocate the facilities of the ‘new’ textile industry and where to bring back nature to the city.

CLUSTERS: CENTER PERIPHERY

The project relies in clusters to host the new production mode while emulating agricultural landscapes. The cluster’s centers were defined by structuring chains such as fiber processing or yarn portfolios, and the periphery was defined by complementary activities.

TOOL: PIX2PIX TRAINING

Two neural networks training processes would assist the design process. The first part would use the center-periphery hierarchy to obtain new cluster combinations and later generate representational approximations to the new landscapes. The second part, consisted in training set to simulate a response of the stormwater collection system to rainwater levels along the year.

[LEFT] The textile production area is selected to further development as the congregation of different production lines: fiber processing, knitting areas, and yarn collection towers were articulated by roads and techno-agricultural fields.

[UP] In the architecture scale, the plan reflects the center – periphery layering of the production processes. The fiber containers perform as cores for the facility, while processing, design and administrative areas are layered around the cores.

The project merges plan and facades to create a productive landscape where crops are cultivated as raw material for organic clothing production, rainwater is collected and reused, and visitors can transit around these new cycles.

From a pedestrian perspective it is possible to perceive the inside to outside transition, opening the industry to ecotourism, and sealing the border with a symbiotic artificial-natural quality.

19-01

DWELLING COLLAGE ON-THE-GRID DIVERSITIES FOR SOCIAL

PARIS, FRANCE

HOUSING

Harvard GSD - Fall 2019 Option Studio

‘Type vs. Difference: A 21st century Residential Block’

Instructor: Farshid Moussavi Individual Project

The acknowledgement of co-isolations as a mode of inhabiting apartment blocks questions the standarized configurations of contemporary dwellings.

The analysis of brutalist and post-war precedents is the start for are referents for obtaining and articulated variety, more resonant to the customization needs of individuals and collectives.

The project relies in the use of modular grid. Different units -following the traces of the grid- are allocated on the site. Criteria as spatial needs, enclosure level, materials, and terraces respondo to the grid and the intimacy enclosure levels.

19-01

COUNTRY CLUB VILLA MIXED FUNCTION BUILDING

LIMA, PERU

Contest 2022

Mixed used: saunas, restroom, gym, restaurant.

Team: Diego Zambrano, Axel Algarate, Bryan Gonzales

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.

RESET 1.0 #NerdsInTheDesert

TANKWA, NORTHERN CAPE, SOUTH AFRICA

Team: Ana Loayza, Diego Zambrano, Natalija Boljsakov Professional-social project. Built project.

PechaKucha CPT, AfrikaBurn 2018 grant awardees, UN STI Forum panelist.

Tasks: Project Lead, planning and coordination with AB, theory and conceptual design, drafting. Social media and crowdfunding campaign, on-site construction.

The 2018 theme ‘Working title: _____’ placed attention in the materialization of an artwork and its possibilities of personal interpretation and uses once built. The ephemeral context of AfrikaBurn and Tankwa’s environment set both constraints and resources for a morphological re-interpretation of the desert.

Reset.01 is the first experiment of RESET, an open source laboratory that shares learning experiences from the combination of global technologies and local knowledge. ‘Nerds’ are given the challenge. ‘Immediacy’ as a value inspired us to rethink the connection with our surroundings from its most basic idea: cognition. The artwork would be a physical channel to rethink our basic corporal movements in an unusual environment.

A team that planned and design from Peru, members of a rural community in Northern Cape, and an artist, shared -respectively- know how in design tools, knowledge on local resources and materials, and anticipation skills to build in ‘nowhere land’.

13-02

GAMARRA 3.0 AN ALTERNATIVE FUTURE

LIMA, PERU

Version 3.0 Team: Ana Loayza, Diego Zambrano. | Year: 2018 Version 1.0 team : AL, DZ, Natalija Boljsakov, Pietro Chiri, Humberto Lozano, Diana Paredes, Indira Almonacid, Elsa Bustamante Project for developed at the Architectural Association Visiting School Lima 2017 Tasks: coordinator, conceptual design, technology integration plan, diagrams, Kuka robot rod bending.

Gamarra is known as the spontaneous and chaotic commercial pole and textile production center of Peru. Since the first textile factory funded in the last decade of XIX century, stores, workshops and related services to the industry have raised exponentially and nonparametrically, turning this area in a popular production center circumscribed by informality, but with high rates economic flow.

The Architectural Association Visiting School Lima, was an open space for speculation about the future of Lima and the possibilities of adaptable mobility. The team selected Gamarra area to invent new ways in which logistics and work could coexist as an integrated system in a long-term future.

Gamarra’s infrastructure will soon stop responding to the fashion industry, dynamics and need for workspaces and workshops. Hand-made models, parametric design and robotic arms were used to build prototypes of adaptable transportation machines to assist new increasing production.

16-01

UNIVERSITY ISLAND ‘IN CONTRAST’

POVEGLIA, VENICE, ITALY

Individual work

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)

GREEN ACADEMY GREEN BUSINESS HUB

BOLOGNA ITALY

Team: Ana Loayza, Rolf Soldtwedel Contest: YAC Green Academy - 2016 Role: conceptual design, plans drafting, 3d modeling.

“Recently, from the Tate Modern to Prada Foundation, industrial architectures have become valuable opportunities for the urban regeneration of urban areas. They are transforming into modern centers able to meet the needs of a rapidly changing society. Industrial plants no longer in use are an extraordinary opportunity to relaunch culture, development, and innovation.

The project aims at reinforcing the ethical model of entrepreneurship, which is already strong in the area, in order to encourage the renewal of the city and the social fabrics.”1

The project should take an old paper factory located inside the industrial complex of Marzaboto, and transform it into a startup and green business incubator, where ideas, negotiations, and innovation take place.

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

21-03

MATHEMATICAL ORGANIZATIONS WRITING FORM

Harvard GSD | Digital Media: Writing Form Instructor: George Legendre Individual Work

Final Project Team: Ana Loayza, George Guida

The course explores mathematical and algebraic thinking to achieve computational compositions. The early explorations addressed composition with parametric curves, manipulation of horizontal surfaces, and vertical arrangements thought the experimentation with Mathcad 15 ‘seeds’s provided by the course.

The final project, Layering Limits, is an exploration of techniques of folding and layering to construct a pavilion that disrupt the idea of a limit. It combines both logics previously studies in Horizontal and Vertical Organizations.

LIGHT ENCLOSURES

INTERFACE DESIGN FALL 2020 INSTRUCTOR: SAWAKO KAIJIMA

Team: Taeyong Kim, Ana Loayza

The project explores bridge deisng through an integrated perception of structural components as form, material, aesthetics and limits and the same time.

Relaying on industrial nostalgia, this project acknowledges the value of industrial bridges departing from the structural and visual assessment.

The project suggests a method of analysis in a structural and visual level that will be useful to both understand historical precedents and assess new designs. Digital tools as rhino, grasshopper, c# component and millipede plugin will be used to assemble this procedure and drive decision making during the final proposal, a case study for an observatory bridge

The vertical pole is used as a base unit that in different configuratiosn can define different circulation paths, sense of enclosure, and visuals. For our study, it will be applied to the design of a bridge and assesed throught an structural and visual method of analysis previously tested in the industrial bridge, an aesthetic similar.

INDUSTRIAL BRIDGE TAXONOMY & PRECEDENT-INSPIRED DESIGN

The new design is thought as a synthesis of the arch type of industrial structure and testing configurations vertical poles. The final design should achieve a path curated by the allocation of vertical studs, with the thinnest section possible, which should condition the connections with the arch at the same time

The lessons learnt in the analysis on the Iron Bridge (UK) are taken into the design of the new bridge.

While thin structures can perform with low defelction levels, reinforcement through addition of material might help to estabilize the weak points of the arc.

A structure structure with a siimilar density of the Iron Bridge might be suitable for the new design given it is possible to see through from different angles.

INITIAL DEFINITION - NUMBER AND POSITION OF POLES

BEAM OPTIMIZATION

BEAM ANALYSIS

VISIBILITY ANALYSIS

CONCLUSIONS

• The ideal bridge, considering visibility and structure, is option B, with poles of 13mm diameter, allowing a visibility level above the expected range in the pixel study.

• Thinner structures will not necessarily derive in higher values of deflection. Changes poles position and number might alter the result.

A RAINFOREST REINTEGRATION SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES IN THE AMAZON RAINFOREST

LORETO, PERU

Team: Ana Loayza, Nathalie Zimmermann, Jessica Hernandez, Alfredo Castro, Mauricio Gilbonio Project presented at the London Festival of Architecture 2010 Finalist of IsArch Awards 2012 Role: project cordinator, conceptual design, plans drafting, 3d modeling, etnographic research.

The project responds to a call for solutions for Peru’s three main grographical realities as part of the International Showcase of the London Festival of Architecture 2010.

The team explored architectural possibilities for the Yagua rainforest native community, compounded by approx. 50 clans along Amazonas river. Yagua cosmology, originally based in an harmonic relationship with nature, radically changed during Peru’s colonization (XV and XVI c.) in terms of lifestyle, organization, settlement patterns, and relationship with nature. Centuries later, many clans find vulnerable their infrastructure adaptations to natural environment. They rely on deforestation in order to place shelters and community buildings, while they face many other threats as drug trafficking and river pollution.

This alternative model should function hollistically: become a planning and infrastructure for the Yagua community that remains loyal to the mores and traditions, connects their activities to modern towns, and responds to environmental and geographical challenges under the scheme of a replicable model.

STONE BARN MEDITATION CAMP

VIZDEME, LATVIA

Team: Ana Loayza, Rolf Soldwedel Contest

Bee Breeders Architecture competition 2017 - Honorable mention

‘Working title: _____’ suggested more than an artistic statement. The 2018 theme instigated attention in the materialization of an artwork and its possibilities of personal interpretation and use once built. The ephemeral context of AfrikaBurn and Tankwa’s environment set both constraints and resources for a morphological re-interpretation of the desert.

Reset.01 is the first experiment of RESET, an open source laboratory that shares learning experiences from the combination of global technologies and local knowledge. ‘Nerds’ are given the challenge. ‘Immediacy’ as a value inspired us to rethink the connection with our surroundings from its most basic idea: cognition. The artwork would be a physical channel to rethink our basic corporal movements in an unusual environment.

A team that planned and design from Peru, members of a rural community in Northern Cape, and an artist, shared -respectively- know how in design tools, knowledge on local resources and materials, and anticipation skills to build in ‘nowhere land’.

15-01

FEDEX OFFICES

LIMA, PERU

Professional project under my own practice Design, construction details, supervision. 2016

Fedex Crossborders is shaped by team of programmers, innovators and intrapreneurs.

The request was a 24/7 house for innovation where the team members or new entrepreneurs could work in the basis of flexibility of space and personal schedules. Hackathons, start-up conferences, trainings and informal meetings should be able to take place after working hours or during the weekend as well.

To host this idea, an existing building in a corner of a top commercial avenue in Lima was rented. In addition to technical repairs, a renovation of the entire interior space was done. Some constrains as the prohibition to intervene the facade, structures or security technical issues were considered

15-01

SOL HOUSE

LIMA, PERU

Professional project under my own practice- built. 2015

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.

21-01

URBAN MICRCOCOSM THE MUSEUM OF THE IMAGE

EAST MID VILLAGE, NEW YORK

Harvard GSD - Spring 2021 Option Studio ‘Intuition and the Machine’ Instructor: George Legendre Team: A.G.Loayza, G. Guida.

From research on Manhattan’s urban configuration together with computational design processes, this project explores a Manhattan micro-geography, a reinterpretation of the city, to accommodate the Museum of the Image.

Our project pursues a microcosm of NY by reenacting the formal and experiential characteristics of Manhattan: creating a city within the city conformed by controlled art spaces and open urban ones.

Using the ‘Slat’, computational tool provided by the studio, combinations of linear spatial configurations in which the program can be inserted were tested. Bays and Interstitial spaces, major elements of the ‘slat’, are placed on site aligned to a set of parameters and including the project program.

From machinic to intuition, this project establishes a Manhattan micro-geography where each layer, bay and interstitial space frames a new dialogue with present day art, here framing a parting view of the East River.

Entrance by 1st Ave. Extension of NY grid toward East River

This Euclidean reading of Manhattan recognizes the HORIZONTAL calling for homogeneity, and THE VERTICAL calling for the heterogeneous experience.

The design process relies on 4-steps that combines ‘intuition’ and ‘the machine’ to integrate these conceptual and programmatic intentions. The result is 5 profiles containing the program and behaving as an extension of NY.

ISOMETRIC VIEW

OUTCOME DIAGRAM: ASSEMBLAGE OF BAYS AND INTERSTITIAL SPACES

The massing consists of 16 meters wide bays packed with the program in rooms and shaping a profile. In between, 4.5 meters wide interstitial spaces connect the bays. North-south walls are proposed to enclose this spatial logic and differentiate bays from interstitial spaces.

These spaces are functional connectors between each bay

AND PROGRAM EXHIBITION EXPANSION INTERSTITIAL SPACES USE 1 INTERSTITIAL SPACES USE 2 INTERSTITIAL SPACES USE 3 VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL CIRCULATION SUPPPORT PROGRAM (STORAGES, RR,)

BAYS: offerings N-S visuals or large exhibition rooms. From the bays it is possible to perceive other events behind the adjacent lateral spaces. Natural light and large size rooms are prioritized

INTERSTITIAL SPACE: Interstitial spaces are pauses between the solid nature of bays. They are of lighter and translucent materiality. The thinner proportion is suitable for light intrusion and linear circulation towards the upper or lower level.

L01 - GROUND PLAN In plan, the ground level reveals the linear organization of rooms, broken by the two public axis coming as an extension of the city grid. Visitors can access the multiplicity of rooms from the street level as the temporal exhibitions, media hall exhibits or the library.

The lower plan functions as a connection between the three plots of the museum. It contains immersive exhibitions in two bays in the blue here (point). It gathers public program as cafeteria, galleries, and workshops open to courtyard at the east. A connection to the park across FDR drive is also possible from here.

When stepping back, the entire massing reveals a landscape, offering new visual connections to NY, which vary in altitude and width.

Each bay creates angled views towards the river, and each interstitial space permits a direct line of site.

The height of every major room varies, and in some cases extends directly to the highest point generating a visual interplay between exhibition spaces and workshops on upper floors

2nd BAY PERSPECTIVAL SECTION 3rd BAY SECTION

BLOCK 1 - TRANSVERSAL SECTION LOWER FLOOR EXHIBITION ROOM- INMERSIVE