3 Hello! My name is Alejandro Toro-Acosta, an architectural designer and proud graduate student of the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. Please feel free to contact me if I can be of further assistance. Thank you, atoroa2@illinois.edu ale.jav.toro@gmail.com www.linkedin.com/in/atoroa2 contact Scan to see all platforms.
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Hangar 4 Around the Block Silos Stitching Santiago Pg. 6 - 19 Pg. 20 - 29 Pg. 30 - 37 Pg. 38 - 47 adaptive reuse supertall building additive manufacturing transit-oriented
architectural projects
hangar 4 adaptive reuse trade school
Former Chanute Air Base, Rantoul, IL Spring 2022
Collaborators: Stuti Bhardwaj and Sirisha Reddy
Prof. Scott Murray Graduate Design Award Nominee
Continuing the history of Chanute Air Base as a place of training, Hangar 4, also known as “Grissom Hall” is envisioned as a postsecondary Construction Trade School where craftsmen, construction managers, and designers hone their skills by participating in handson, interdisciplinary projects. This proposal would revitalize the small town of Rantoul by providing new opportunities for jobs in the skilled trades to young people.
Link to Video Walkthrough
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Continuing the legacy...
The last vacant hangar from the former Chanute Air Base is over 220,000 square feet in size. The existing structure is defined by two typologies: the “lowbay” characterized by the sawtooth roof that brings even distribution of natural light into space, and the“highbay” where cadets were trained to work on military aircraft.
Masterplanning
The building is zoned into Administrative, Student Life, and Learning areas. We remove structural bays to create courtyards near the administration and learning zones. The existing enclosure is separated from the new building envelope to create a large garden entry.
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Ground Floor Plan
Classrooms
A variety of environments designed for multiple learning styles.
Workshops
Eight workshops each customized to the need of the respective occupying trade. The sawtooth roof floods the space with light.
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Student Life Gardens
Students are given amenities such as a cafeteria, auditoriums, and study spaces.
Places to sit outside and enjoy natural daylighting enhance the study environment.
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Structural Enhancement Enclosure Performance
Existing 40’ x 40’ structural steel bays are cleaned and coated with fire retardant paint.
Deteriorated roofing removed to expose plywood sheathing. 6 inch insulation, metal roofing, and solar panels are applied.
HVAC Systems Integration
Supply and return ducts retrofitted into the existing trusses above.
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The Highbay
Where aircraft and missile training once occurred, full-scale mock construction projects can be realized. The upgraded facade of the highbay opens itself up to activate the runway with these integrated mockups.
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Carpentry students at work in the highbay as management students overlook in their classroom above.
Crates: Modular Workstations
To assist students in their training activities, these “Crates” house folding benches, tool and material storage closets, and built-in power supply They are designed to adapt to the users needs and store easily within the highbay. Each trade may customize the toolset depending on their uses.
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closed open
Detailed Section Model
One of three detailed section models each designed and built by one team member. This model details the intersection between the
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highbay and the carpentry workshop.
Studio-style classroom (bottom left) Carpentry workshop (bottom right)
around the block supertall residential tower
Streeterville, Chicago, IL
Fall 2021
Collaborators: Jesse Torres-Bello and Mansi Sanghvi
Prof. Paul Armstrong
Along the north side of the Chicago riverwalk, the city’s newest residential super-tall building presents a new node of activity within Chicago’s riverside urban network. The form was generated by translating the figure ground onto the elevation of the tower. Units push and pull within the structural frame to create identifiable “skyblocks,” or vertical neighborhoods. Open-to-air sky atriums between units facilitate social activity while providing users with naturally ventilated gardens, pavilions, and amenities.
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Streeterville, Downtown Chicago
Locate Podium and Core
Aggregate Units
Structural Frame
Sketches
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Sky Gardens Diagram
Integrated Systems
The structure, HVAC, and elevatoring are all considered in the detailing of the project. Outriggers brace the megacolumns to the central core at every mechanical floor.
TRANSLUSCENT SOLAR PANEL BRACKETS
24 43F - TRANSFER AT AMENITY 41F - END OF HOTEL ELEVATOR 113F - END OF RESIDENTIAL RESIDENTAL ELEVATORS HOTEL ELEVATORS ELEVATOR DIAGRAM CORE WALL R.C BEAM MULLION DOUBLE-PANE GLASS R.C FLOOR SLAB FLOOR
CEILING
HVAC FRAME TENSION SUPPORT INSULATION
FINISH
FINISH
C-STUD U-CHANNEL
Core and Outrigger Structural System
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SUPPLY DUCT RETURN DUCT
The Tower engages the street with commercial areas and a restaurant that overlooks the Chicago River
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Podium
Second Floor Plan
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A central atrium unites the lobby, restaurant, ballroom, and leased commercial spaces.
silos an exploration in verticality
Champaign, IL, USA
Fall 2020
Independent Project
Prof. Aaron Brakke
This project imagines a new climbing center in Champaign that utilizes futurist 3D-Printed concrete technology to generate the structure. The focus was to create formal experimentations with Boolean operations and reinterpreting the typology of the grain silo as nodes of verticality within the flat Illinois landscape.
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Climbing in Central Illinois
Rock climbing is an activity seeing increased popularity in recent years. Because the flat natural topography of the Midwest limits outdoor excursions to a few select regions, climbing gyms are essential in breeding vertically-inclined hobbyists.
Conceptual Collage
Map of Champaign County
Site Location
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Urbana Boulders
The ARC climbing wall
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Form
South Elevation
Program Extrusion
Process
Despite this project’s was conception in the spatial confines of quarantine, I figured it was essential to experiment with modeling techniques to begin to generate the cast cylindrical forms with real cement. Sketching was also heavily utilized to be able to visualize new spaces to climb.
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Cylindrical forms and openings create new climbing experiences.
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Traversal climbing walls ungulate along the exterior wall.
stitching santiago
transit-oriented mixed-use development
Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic
Fall 2022
Independent Project Graduate Design Award Nominee
Through the lens of a Mixed-Use Residential and Commercial center, a human-centric urbanism in Santiago de los Caballeros, the second largest city in the Dominican Republic. Located at the gateway of Santiago de los Caballeros, the urban proposal seeks to address the urban condition of the adjacent highway that bisects the neighborhood of Rincon Largo from the adjacent commercial zones as well as the Universidad PUCMM.
First, the transformation of Avenida Estrella Salvador into a boulevard that places public transit over car-centric urbanism is proposed. A mixed use residential center stitches the community together by opening itself up to neighboring users for exchange. The ground level houses retail, a theater, and a library that all community members can engage. The facade tectonics celebrates both local typologies as well as the tropical climate.
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City Development
In an ordinance to break up the severe congestion of car-based traffic throughout the city’s main arteries, the Municipality of Santiago de los Caballeros plans to implement a series of bike-paths, green belts, and a metro line to implement healthier and greener forms of transportation.
We envision that the highway that used to bisect the site’s urban fabric is to be transformed into a boulevard with a monorail connecting major hubs within Santiago.
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Urban Infrastructure Proposal
Street Condition
The metro station is introduced on the main boulevard. A ribbon of commercial areas activate the ground plane.
Structure
Pre-stressed concrete flat plate system creates enough stiffness to resist heavy lateral loads from hurricanes.
Towers
Four residential towers step up to the office tower, which is oriented to maximize views to the mountains and monument.
43 URBAN TRANSIT + CITY DEVELOPMENT MAP 10m MONORAIL STOP PROPOSED TRANSIT DEVELOPMENT BUS STOP ELECTRIC BIKE STATION
Urban Context
Entrances to the courtyard follow urban axes, stitching together what was once two bisected neighborhoods.
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Learning to Design
Design is an endless, yet everrewarding process.
Learning to design is learning to think.
Its a long path of unlearning, learning to learn, and learning what works for you.
It is not a linear path, but one that goes forward, backwards, sideways, and upside down.
I have learned to keep following that path. You have to trust it will take you somewhere great.
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did you find them all?
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