portfolio architecture
MISTIC VITAL SPACE
Location: Nowhere but imagination. Date: 2003. Course: Design Workshop I
ACID WORM
Location: UCR Campus / San José / CRC. Date: 2004. Course: Design Workshop III
The mistic space is not visible or accesible to anyone, only for those who believe in it or who ever creates him (understood as a being inside you). The mistic space is covered by energy that guides you towards it, it calls us, but it remains our decision to find him. If we decide not to seek him, we’ll remain the same... lost inside...but if we do accept him THEN we wil realize that such a place is created by ourselves, a place filled with magic, hidden emotions, the mistic space”. chalk drawing
Upper view
Worm section
Isometric sketch
02
CEREMONIAL RITUAL SPACE
Location: UCR Campus / San José / CRC Date: 2003. Course: Design Workshop VI
This was a group project with the goal to explore, design and build a urban intervention with light as the main experience. The materials used to build the “Acid Worm” were: 1inch PVC pipes, metal surface for press printing, red stretch fabric, screws, and thin metal wire. It was positioned on a green area for color and material contrast, and located in one of the highest hill of the university campus. The reactions from the people were highly positive, in one hour, 50 students, professors, visitants were engaged by the experience. It was important to offer it as an alternative route rather than invading the main sidewalk.
An excerpt from my first logbook and first academic project:
pen drawing
{1/4}
01
building process
assembly detail
moving to campus
inner experience
03
This spiritual project was intented to provide a space for the employees and students to practice meditation, prayer or reflection. The challenge was to translate mental and mistical sensations into spatial symbolic sensations. The conceptualization of the proposal was a reinterpretation of the ancient mayan temples, the mandala symbol and the void of Tao. The void was used as the central articulator of three main introspectic spaces sorrounding the void and representing the main types of spiritual mentioned above, so that the volumetric proposal resembles purity out of the earth (gabions) and a spiral layout of the cubes. inspiration
light exploration
model
front view
MARCELA VARGAS ROJAS University of Costa Rica Degree in Architecture San José, CRC, 2010
The most beautiful aspect of being an architect is the infinite possibilities of inspiration for designing a particular space.
Beach store project model
Dynamism
Neoplastic Cube
Each project with its own process is a lifelong learning, it´s an evolution, and for that reason the design process becomes more important than the design product itself, because the product will always be in a continuous process of change, either by the designer, by the inhabitant or by the context.
Inside experience Acid Worm
first Cube extraction
Library main idea sketch
buildings :: edges
city :: surface
analysis
Light-space exploration model
Main entrance for housing project
04
links proposal
Graphic concept
PLAYFUL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
Location: UCR Campus San José / CRC. Date: 2007. Course: Design Workshop VII
This was a project based on collaboration, planning and delegation of tasks among its twelve members. The project was conducted in three stages. In the first stage we studied the patterns of development (residential, educational, economic) of the university and analized the social, physical and functional links. In the second we formulated and selected the desired scenarios. In the third stage the strategic vision was developed conceiving the city as a surface rather than and made proposed nine projects, some of them were the “Green Heart”, “Transportal”, “Flex”, etc.
current scenarios
third Outside experience Acid Worm
Space exploration from cube
Location: UCR Campus. San José / CRC. Date: 2007. Course: Design Workshop VII *Project leader
05
relationship sketch
site plan
Main view of Migration Control project
UNIVERSITY’S ADMNISTRATIVE SITE
Location: UCR Campus San José / CRC. Date: 2007.Course: Design Workshop VIII
This project was based on the previous research (top of page) and it was designed as a pedagogical experimental, dynamic and mutable space in response to the lack of study and group work space at the university campus, and also multipurpose spaces for community outreach activities within the university´s campus Rodrigo Facio. The project consists of modular flexible spaces in a peripheral configuration, where the center is opened as a stage for outdoor active interaction.
flex detail sketch
Site analysis: passive-active areas
Facade exploration
second
LINKS AND UNLINKS: UNIVERSITY AND CONTEXT
portfolio architecture
Site analysis: illumination
Triangle housing project model
The goal was to design an administrative site that articulates and brings caracter to the field composed by three existing administrative buildings. The project will include the design of the a new building that includes two new administrative departments and a new auditorium. The architectural intentions were to be an iconic and visualy dinamic building (facedes, access, visuals, space relations vertically and horizontally). “Generation, not repetition” was the main conceptual guideline, in the search for multiplicity of relations. site analysis
volumetric exploration
underground site plan
MARCELA VARGAS ROJAS University of Costa Rica Degree in Architecture San José, CRC, 2010
strategic vision
Contact mavaro.arq@gmail.com Phone number (+506) 8844-2053
transportal
floor plan
section
06
site plan
second level plan
trasversal section