Austin Richards Portfolio 2023

Austin Henry Richards

ahrichards.arch@gmail.com

+1 (760) 271-0269 austinhenryrichards.com

Designer working within the domains of architecture and urbanism. Currently open to opportunities in learning with and working for an architectural practice. He is seeking full-time roles in Los Angeles.

EDUCATION

Bachelor of Architecture (BArch), Magna Cum Laude

2016 - 2021 California Polytechnic University Pomona

International Studies

2019 - 2020 California State University Firenze - Florence, IT

WORK

Designer/Job Captain

2021 - 2022 Chet Architecture - Los Feliz, California

Architectural Intern

2019 Chet Architecture - Los Feliz, California

HONORS + AWARDS

l’Académie d’Architecture Architect-in-Residence, Living Together: Housing the Collective

2022 - 2023 Cité Internationale des Arts - Paris, FR

Cavin Family Traveling Fellowship, 2nd Prize

2022 Cavin Family Travel Fellowship

Precast Concrete Institute Studio, 3rd Prize

2020 California Polytechnic University Pomona Dept. Architecture / PCI West

6 Projects Selected as Exemplary and Exhibited at Interim Exhibitons

2016 - 2021 California Polytechnic University Pomona Dept. Architecture SKILLS

A PUBLIC LIVING ROOM

Public Library, Housing, and SRO Renovation

Public/Residential

MUCHAS CASITAS

Mixed-use Housing

Residential

TOWER OBLIQUE

Tsunami Evacuation Tower

Public/Cultural

COMMUNAL ARCHIPELAGO

Community Center

Public/Cultural

PACIFIC FAMILY RESORT

Residential Renovation

Residential | chet architecture

A COURTYARD HOUSE ON THE ROCKS

Single-Family Residence

Residential | chet architecture

A PUBLIC LIVING ROOM

Public Library, Housing, and SRO Renovation in Skid Row, CA, USA

Cal Poly Pomona Senior Thesis Project

Studio Instructor: Sarah Lorenzen

Everyone deserves access to public collective space as well as personal space to call home. Skid Row is a hostile and striated urban condition, defined by walls, blank facades, and fences. The little public space available, the streets and the sidewalks are utilized by the individuals who compose Skid Row’s close-knit community. The project is a mixed-use public library and affordable housing complex, integrated onto a site with an existing single-room-occupancy housing building. The project serves as a public living room for the community, extending the street and sidewalk into the building and connecting to the adjacent park.

Conceptually, the project is a shelf on the scale of the city. Its architectural form the max envelope of the site with a carved-out central atrium and a series of loggias that pierce the exterior envelope with vegetated spaces. Loggias occur on various floors, bringing the park into the interior and blurring the boundaries between interior and exterior, natural and built. A diverse set of programs and constituencies are accommodated and intermixed on each ‘shelf,’ namely a public library, an existing single-room-occupancy hotel, and public housing. Assembled in one building, the architecture dissolves distinct separations between public and private and proposes the role of architecture as infrastructure. Each housing unit is a microcosm of the larger architectural whole, porous and flexible, and is designed to maximize the freedom of use for residents. The shelf and the voids generate spatial porosity and flexibility, where inside is outside, private is public, and collective spaces arise. Heterogeneous activities and constituencies are intermixed in loose, open, and flexible spaces where individuals come together in a specific locale to define a public. A Public Living Room is an architectural project that defines a new type of public building, infrastructure that serves the diverse demands of the community as both individuals and a collective while serving as a model for the future development of Los Angeles.

view from 6th street, collage

library, housing, and sro renovation

detailed section / detailed facade

library, housing, and sro renovation

MUCHAS CASITAS

Mixed-Use Residential in West Hollywood, CA, USA

Studio Instructor: Nadim Itani

Muchas Casitas is located on a site in West Hollywood off of Santa Monica Boulevard, at an intersection between the high-traffic transit area and the sea of suburban development. Proposed is a mixed-use project with commercial space, a collective plinth, and an array of housing unit types. As the project sits at the intersection of two different scales of density, the project addresses these site conditions in its form, a plinth to activate the street and ‘casitas’ to recall the domesticity of the adjacent suburbs. Thus, the project’s concept is a field of casitas scattered atop a plinth. Its form is conceived as one volumetric whole where spaces, apertures, courtyards, and other openings are carved. Sculpted from the plinth mass are commercial spaces, collective spaces, private units, and both outdoor ‘front’ and ‘back’ yards. Atop the plinth, the field of casitas continues the volumetric formal conceptions of space with carved apertures, and courtyards to provide light deep into each unit. The space in between the field of casitas is a collective outdoor space for both the residents and the public. This field also organizes a balanced composition of outdoor elements: the planters, outdoor patios, courtyards, and circulation. Relationships between stereotomic and tectonic are reflected in the project’s conceptualization and subsequent materiality, with the plinth as a concrete podium and the casitas wood-framed with white fiber cement cladding. Typologically, this wood framing atop a concrete podium is a construction vernacular of the mixed-use buildings in Los Angeles. Yet, the buildings that use this construction technique rarely retain the domesticity of their single-family dwelling predecessors. Muchas Casitas retains the best of both worlds, providing both density and a sense of domesticity. The result is high density which appears as low density.

physical model

north elevation

ground plan

west elevation

section b / unit diagram

section a / indoor-outdoor diagram

Nichiha Miraia Fiber-Cement Panel

Nichiha Paneling Clipping System

Dens Glass

Waterproofing

3/4” Plywood

Insulation

Gypsum Board

2x6 Wood

Blocking

Glass Railing

Stainless Steel Railing Boot

Stainless Steel

Flashing

Stainless Steel Bolt

2x12 Wood Beam

Joist Hanger

Rip Stick

Wood Decking

Bison Leveling Pedestal

Drainage Sytem

Concrete

Primary Drain Gate

Overflow Drain

Glass

C.R. Lawrence Aluminum Mullion

Nichiha Spacer

Nichiha Fastener

Control Joint

Planter

Succulents

Air Duct

Cabinetry

CMU

Steel Channel

Concrete Column

Column Cap

MUCHAS CASITAS

plans, stair volumes, and their origins, composite drawing

TOWER OBLIQUE

Tsunami Evacution Tower in San Diego, California

In collaboration with Noah Mora and Jessica O’Brien Studio Instructor: Axel Schmitzberger

Tower Oblique is a flexible structural framework generated through experimentations with orthographic architectural projections to explore the potential of precast concrete. The tower is located a block from the waterfront in San Diego, deep within an inundation zone where a tsunami can potentially do severe damage. The tower is positioned directly along the main evacuation route, and social hub of the peninsula, Mission Boulevard. Lifted above the site, the tower allows water and debris to flow through the lower levels of the project while sheltering inhabitants above. The intention is a tower that would be as effective as possible in aiding people in the event of a tsunami while generating an iconography based on circulation and flexibility.

Oblique geometric and field condition studies guide an aesthetic and logic for the project that is repeatable and efficient for the utilization of precast concrete. The tower’s systems are exemplified in the four main stair volumes which repeat throughout the building. Each floor has two stair volumes and is composed of multiple elements: an interior precast concrete volume, a precast concrete staircase, and an outer and inner façade which is visible from outside and within the tower. The organization of systematic volumes throughout the tower ensures that every repeatable component is utilized either as an object that is tactile or as a façade component that defines its iconography. All components are modularized precast elements to ensure convenience in manufacturing, transportation, and construction. The tower’s perceived complex configuration is constructed with ease by its systematic design which acknowledges and utilizes the intricacies of precast concrete construction.

landscape plan

interior axonometric vignettes

site plan

kit-of-parts, assembly diagram

tsunami evacuation tower

view from azaela park, collage

COMMUNAL ARCHIPELAGO

Community Center in Brookings, OR, USA

Cavin Family Travel Fellowship, 4-Day Competition, 2nd Place

The site is a bluff just above the Chetco River overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Brookings, Oregon. Just adjacent to Azalea Park and botanical garden, it features a rocky, rural landscape covered with douglas firs. The primary intention is to make a communal archipelago, both within and a part of the landscape. The buildings function as a collection of community services. Responding to local design, the buildings follow architect Bernard Maybeck’s tenants of design in which the natural landscape is preserved with minimal building footprint, layered greenspaces, distance between buildings, and separation of vehicular and pedestrian paths. Tectonically the buildings respond to the architectural vernacular of the indigenous Chetco sweat lodges, with heavy timberframed walls and roofs which embed themselves within foundations of local stone set in the earth. These foundations sustain the buildings, storing energy and water collected from the solar panels and runoff on the roofs. They also lift the buildings from the site, allowing the soil to continue to absorb rainwater, insects or small animals to pass, and the ecosystem to thrive. The post and beam timber construction allows for a free facade, in which sliding glass panels open the interior spaces up to the expansive site. Akin to the local community, the communal archipelago is a loose collective, where each island is recognized as an integral individual part within the whole of the local community.

site plan

supporting foundations axonometric / village axonometric

interior collage

PACIFIC FAMILY RESORT

Residential Renovation in Ventura, CA, USA

Chet Architecture

Located on a shared sea wall on the Southern California coast, just north of Ventura, is the Pacific Family Resort. The lot is long and linear, a conical shape expanding towards the ocean. Onsite exists two structures, of different periods and styles, unified through the materiality and color of their siding as well as a series of curved walls. The primary objectives of the project are to increase the connection of the building to its site, towards each structure, and to create a comfortable living environment for all family members to come and go as they please - akin to the experience of a resort. These objectives are achieved through the renovation of the deck, living spaces, their thresholds, the addition of bedrooms and millwork, and the connectivity of the side-yard promenade.

Pacific Family Resort was designed during my time as a Designer at Chet Architecture. I acted as the Job Captain on this project, working directly with clients and consultants, and producing aspects from design to documentation. The project concluded with a permit set, in which I produced the required documentation for the local jurisdictions.

A COURTYARD HOUSE ON THE ROCKS

Single-Family Residence in Ventura, CA, USA

Chet Architecture

The site is a rocky beach on the Southern California coast, just north of Ventura. The House is a weekend home for a family to get away from the big city and be immersed in the natural beauty of the coast, the surf, the landscape, and the California sun. The clients desire to be open to the site environmentally, socially, and spatially. Conceptually, the project is an archetypical courtyard house yet open towards the ocean. Sited on the rocks, the project is conceived as a shell, porous and solid in particular areas, as if it were sculpted by the ocean itself. Its materiality goes against this, with a vernacular cedar cladding akin to that of Sea Ranch. The form of the courtyard house creates a feeling of interconnectedness for the family, as all spaces connect to the central garden, and its porosity a connection with the natural landscape. The ocean-front portion of the living level is one contiguous kitchen, living, and dining space with sliding glass panels on either side to open up completely or as desired to the courtyard and Pacific. Bedrooms are designed with flexibility in mind, for the family to utilize spaces as needs change through time.

site plan

in the kitchen / on the second floor, collages | chet architecture