SELECTED PROJECTS ; ARCHITECTURE
2019/2023
Candidate for the Master of Architecture at the Bartlett UCL for the fall 2023
My portfolio presents my undergraduate journey to discover my architectural style and incorporate my ambition to conceive architecture through storytelling. Stories permeate all of my other work, whether it be film, objects, creative direction. Each project is defined by a research of the intersections of architecture. By exploring formal strategies, historical contexts, poetical endeavors, or geometrical configurations, the craft of narratives supports my design decisions. My visual representation looks to accentuate my conceptual approaches, as a translator of my ideas. This interwoven landscape of stories and intersections influences my creative style.
FALL 2021 / Design and Construction
1 / EMERGING
As part of our comprehensive design studio, we were interested with the everchanging quality of the Griffintown neighborhood and its constant state of transition, each step of history leaving a mark on the surroundings. Inspired by the archeological site across from the assigned site, and of the numerous historical buildings of the neighborhooud grew the concept of strong, massive foundations, emerging from the ground as rectilinear walls. Our floor plates are grounded and the project is slowly pulled out of the ground. This explains the choice of rammed earth as our main “foundation material”, pigmented with pink to incite playfulness and vibrance. Lighter shifted volumes are placed to contrast with these strong foundations. The tilting of the biggest volume on the second floor reacts to the slow drops of the site’s surrounding roads, deviating from the general “grid” plan of Griffintown streets.
INSTRUCTOR / Rebecca Taylor WITH / Robin Gaudreault
9/ Longitudinal Section
10/ North Elevation
The project is constructed in volumes, which translates into our organizational strategy. The building is experienced through five main blocks of program; the kindergarten, gathering and collective areas, the gym, the classrooms and the community center. These different parts are connected through a “tilting in section”-- ramps flowing through the school. These ramps sublty separate different spaces and experiences while weaving the building together. From a bigger scale, the building is composed of big moves, whereas from a smaller scale the kids will experience the building in smaller more intimate moments.
green roof
gravel
water infiltration membrane
150 mm gutex rigid insulation
vapor barrior
steel beam
gypsum board
3 mm aluminum panel
water infiltration membrane
50 mm gutex rigid insulation
vapor barrier
150 mm loose cellulose insulation
gypsum board
gravel
water infiltration membrane
150 mm gutex rigid insulation
vapor barrier
steel beam gypsum board
6 mm float glass
16 mm cavity
6 mm laminated safety glass
200 mm aluminium frame
200 mm concrete slab
600 mm concrete beam
water infiltration barrier
150 mm rammed earth founda-
tion wall
200 mm gutex rigid insulation
vapor barrier
150 mm rammed earth founda-
tion wall
200 mm concrete slab
150 mm gutex rigid insulation
gravel
WINTER 2021 / Design and Construction
INSTRUCTOR / Maya Shopova
WITH / Mariam Ag Bazet, Emil Cayouette & Jia Yun Zhao
2/ ARCHIPELAGO FILM
As part of our Bathhouse studio, we conducted a research on Montreal’s waters, at the city scale, translated into a fifteen minute movie. The movie, Archipelago, is centered around the personnification of water, who, through different chapters : La Puissance de l’Eau (The Power of Water), le Contrôle de l’Eau (The Control of Water), L’Hygiène de l’Eau (Water’s hygiene), Le Rire de l’Eau (Water’s laugh), les Liens de l’Eau (Water’s relations) recounts her story surrounding the Island of Montreal. The short film argues citizens have lost their connection to their city’s bodies of water through time, and seeks to raise awareness on our rapport with it. Through compelling imagery, the film unravels a strong narrative and is visually developed with multiple cinematographic mediums. I actively participated in the construction of the narrative and script. I found all the archival pictures, produced animations based on my research, and took some video and photo shots.
Water has shaped Montreal since its very beginnings. Montreal’s powerful waters have served us as a means of circulation, hygiene, fun, social interactions. However, Montrealers have forgotten Montreal’s island quality. My project seeks to recover a balance in the exchange between citizens and their waters. Water is an organism. It has shaped us, and we now shape it in return. This dialogue is exemplified with how our organisms react to different temperatures, layers of submersion, contrasted to water being pushed in different forms and different environments. My Bathhouse (Bain Archipel) studies this exchange. Part bathhouse, part water treatment plant, my bathhouse is organized through a ritualisitc sequence of bathing experiences, each one paralleled with one of the filtration processes. The project is articulated through an exchange between two organisms : us as human beings and the bathhouse as an organism operating like a body.
3/ BAIN ARCHIPEL
WINTER 2021 / Design and Construction
INSTRUCTOR / Maya Shopova
5/ Water Filtration Diagram
Each part of the filtration is associated with a bathing experience. The boilers are used to disinfect the water and the sedimentation process occurs next to a mud bath. While the users procede through different water experiences and temperatures, the water gradually gets purified. The bathhouse with its small print on the landscape, its blend with the cultural heritage opens the idea of life cycles, the bathhouse is reusing our industrial heritage, just like it is reusing the water from the canal.
7/ Vignettes
WINTER 2021 / Architecture Graphics and Elements of Design
INSTRUCTORS / Angela Silver & Andrew King
WITH / Mariam Ag Bazet for Part 1
4/ THE VIOLIN
From the study of an artifact, to its deconstruction, reconstruction, folly all the way to developing a small architecture, this project is an ode to the violin and a journey inside it. Each part of this full-term project led to the discovery of the violin, accompanied by sound and architecture. Stepping inside this object a little bit more everytime, slowly uncovering the secret of the resonance box. The artifact (violin), after being physically disassembled is reconstructed into a new object : a resonance box. The distinct shape of the violin enables to create a connection between the user, space and music. The door and the chair, as they are invited to move by people in space cause the strings attached to the violin to rub against each other. That friction produces sound amplified by the resonance box. The following parts of the project include the design of a folly and a small architecture proposal.
1/Deconstruction hand drawing 2/Reconstruction
This folly structure is part giant violin strings, part resonance box. Inspired by the elegant curves of the violin, the small building invites the user to interact with it, when one is passing through the path between the strings and the curved resonance box. Architecture and sounds become activated by the user.
4/ Small Architecture Axonometrics
5/ Plans
3/ INHABITING THE FAÇADE
From a generative drawing to a spatializing, this studio invited us to create an architecture from formal explorations. First producing a module multiplied to create a façade, my project introduces atypical circular forms forming both façade and spaces. The modules allow to explore to Kahnesque idea of “living between the walls”. They are not treated just as poche, but rather as a combination of outside space, inside space and the space “in between”. On the West part of the site, the walls are aligned, they are occupiable but they also serve as façades that create internal courtyards within the project. While you can experience the inside of walls, you can also be in between those two walls, as well as be completely outside of them. The East Side of the site presents more of a rectagular open space with a huge façade facing the street. The main formal system of the project is an occupiable façade,deployed through an exploration of negative space.
FALL 2020/ Design & Construction INSTRUCTOR / François Sabourin
step 1/ Generative drawings step 2/ Lifting model
10/ Vignettes
FALL 2019 / Design and Construction
INSTRUCTOR / David Covo
WITH / Emil Cayouette & Giorgia Wolman
7/THE ENVELOPE
As part of our first architecture studio, we developed a chair made out of cardboard. We created a cozy piece of furniture within the toughness of the cardboard, a cocoon in which the user is “enveloped”. The chair mimics the comfort of fabric or leather as you are invited to lounge in it. The design is, just like an envelope, made from only one piece of cardboard, outlined almost entirely with identical equilateral triangles and folded multiple times. The structure becomes very stable vertically as the base is folded three times. Both sides of the chair include a lateral locking mechanism to prevent the user from tipping on one side or the other, while allowing a lateral swinging motion.
INSTRUCTOR / Salmaan
WITH
6/ FOREST ROOSCAPE
As part of our Energy and Environnement course, we speculated on formal strategies to maximize the surface area of CLT construction, in order to each the same thermal massing properties as concrete, a material with higher embodied carbon risks. The building follows a 3m x 3m grid with atriums poke all around. There are two atrium typologies : a central courtyard that guides the air in the space and smaller dispersed atriums to help the evacuation of air when the space is in natural displacement mode. To benefit from thermal massing, the timber surface area is increased on the roofscape of the building. Half-cubic formations crown the different atriums and create a sawtooth motif. The benefit of a sawtooth shape is that it contains, at the vertical side, windows that let light and solar heat in. In addition, the atriums’ walls are all insulated which aids the thermal mass in its process. I designed the roof and resolved the ventilation in the proposal.
FALL 2021/ Energy, Environment & Buildings
Craig
EXPECTED
EXPECTED
The building relies on active thermal mass to regulate the interior temperatures. The goal is to keep the building cool throughout the day when the heat generated by people and devices adds up to the exterior heat. Through its thermal mass, timber will passively store heat during the day only to release it at night when the temperature cools down. To make sure the heat is released at night, we propose the use of natural ventilation during the hottest months of the year. Hot air coming from outside, due to its lower density, will rise up in the atrium and exit through the roof vents. In turn, cooler air would stay at the bottom where occupants are. While the external hot air is evacuated by natural displacement, the internal heat loads generated by the occupants and their devices during the day is absorbed by the timber mass. When it becomes cooler at night, the timber mass will release that heat it stored and will heat up the space. Our ventilation strategy aids the thermal mass in the event of heat waves or when temperatures become much hotter in the future, but itwill need to be aided with mechanical cooling.
The mixing mode allows the atrium to have during the cooler months. Fresh cold air the top of the atrium and mixes with the reaches the atrium space and delivers lower level of the atrium, heat released and internal heat loads generated by the create, with the mixed air, a uniform volume
have a more uniform indoor temperature air comes in from the chimney vents at the outflowing hot air. The mixed air then fresh air to the spaces around it. At the by the thermal mass, mechanical heating the occupants warm up the space and volume in the thermal mass.
5/ Cold Winter : Mechanically Assisted – Below 10°C
For the coldest months of the year, mechanical heating supplements and adapts to the effect of thermal mass. Cold air enters through an outdoor duct and is heated by a mechanical ERV system. During the day, the radiant heating panels are operated at a higher capacity to warm up the space. Part of that heat is absorbed during the day by the thermal mass of timber. At night, radiant heating panels operate at a lower capacity to allow for the thermal mass to release the heat it had absorbed during the day and achieve a comfortable interior temperature.
7/ Concrete wall envelope and its embodied carbon
FALL 2022/ Concept & Drawings
TYPE / Professional
8/ LA RUELLE VERTE VERTICALE
“La ruelle verte verticale” (The vertical green street), is a project I am heavily taking part in during my current internship at Future Simple Studio. The multi-unit urban housing project in Montreal deals with questions of slow densification, heritage conservation, and integration of green space. A vertical green space, inspired by Montreal’s “ruelles vertes” (small green streets) is the creative thread for the project. It separates the existing building and new addition, at a human scale, enables vertical circulation, the creation of communal gardens and revitalizes the built environment. Juliette Balconies and private gardens allow for breathing room and the core “green” exit staircase answers circulation needs. My role was to design the façade, put together the offical presentation by clearly constructing the narrative of the project, and work in collaboration of our design manager to produce the renderings.
SUPERVISOR / Christine Djerrahian
The challenge with this project was to fit 18 units in a limited space, while acommodating the need for larger family units. I was designed and drew the elevations of the façades, inspired by regularity, symmetry and detailing seen in the neighborhood. The existing building façades also had to be untouched. The elevations communicate alignmements with the neighboring buildings, to argue the seamless integration of the proposal.
Concrete Slab 2” Polyethurane insulation board Gravel 3-1/2” Brick cladding 1” Air Gap
Polyethurane Foam Insulation 5/8” Densglass Fireguard Exterior
Metal Studs @ 16” OC comfortbatt (R14)
metal furrings @ 16” OC
Sheetrock EcoSmart, Firecode
Hardwood Flooring
Plywood
float glass
cavity
“ laminated safety glass
aluminium frame
Secondary Beam, filled with insulation 7/8” Steel Resilient Bar 2 X 5/8 “ SheetRock Ecosmart, Sheet Membrane Water Infiltration Membrane
Rigid Insulation Air and Vapour Barrier
Concrete Slab on
Steel Beam
board
Insulation Board
Exterior Clad OC filled with OC Firecode X with cellulose
Ecosmart, Firecode X
8/ MIXED MEDIA : PHOTOGRAPHY
Photography has been an integral part of my life and my travels. Through the lens of my film camera, I wish to capture a moment in time, and the very second that moment lives, and dies. My photographs have influenced my work and helped me create a visual identity for my architecture projects. They are also simply a reflection of me, my passion for traveling, my curiosity for seeing new things and making new connections. Photographs tell stories through emotion and memory.
2022 / Personal photography
MEDIUM / 35 mm analog film
Thank you for your time and consideration,
- Axelle Karam
