When designing the Dallas Center for Urban Farming, I placed large focus on trying to relate the construct to its environment while creating something different and intriguing. The rendering style was chosen to depict the project in a specific light, which I felt embraced the culture of Deep Ellum: rich in color and life, an art form. All renderings for this project were hand fabricated and then edited on photoshop.
A preliminary project for the Spring 2019 semester was to do a site mapping exercise of Deep Ellum. The goal of this research was to better understand the environment that I was to design within. I decided to dedicate my site studies to the people that frequent the area. Demonstrated are locations of social attractions, public artworks, and forms of transportation.
This project was a short charrette tailored to introduce the idea of verticality in design. The site was a small alleyway located between two multistory buildings on campus at the University of Oklahoma. Successful projects utilized the area well while also including a strong structural experience. My angle was to make the space feel like it was somewhere else other than an alleyway. Ever shifting movements and a sense of scale to human proportions were key design considerations. With this project, I wanted those engaged within to experience something tailored to them, to actually utilize the space and create a place where people actually wanted to be and felt comfortable.
Designing an artificial habitat for a cricket is a challenging task. Crickets are nothing like human beings and require a completely different set of living circumstances. This project happens to be my favorite that I have created. I was immensely inspired by the way that this unusual criteria forced me to think outside of the box. Not only was I forced to think of the design process differently, but it also taught me the importance of smart design and designing for functionality. For design inspiration I looked to the natural movements of the cricket and a series of hybrid drawings. In my final design, I chose to include components from springs, zippers, and the spintop toy. The springs represent the verticality in the motion of the cricket and can also be viewed as an artificial form of grass. The zipper and spin-top relate to a series of above ground and below ground spaces. The below ground spaces provide a place for crickets to lay their eggs. The above ground protrusions allow the cricket to access the given platform from the confined hiding space.
The first project of my Fall 2018 education started with the concept of abstract thinking. The aim was to take an image and transform it to a completely different one in five steps by a series of compositional guidelines, such as: reflection, balance, axiality. I have taken a section cut of a tomato and transformed it into an abstract painting that can be found at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art.
The conclusive project of my first year of architecture was inspired by a wire mesh form. This “cloud� was to help find design inspiration in some way. I set up a rule system for myself that allowed the wire mesh to represent the confining walls while the voids were turned into windows. This building was later oriented so that the windows dictated key views outward to the site.
The Gemini Obelisk was an effort to design something intriguing while using our newfound knowledge of different materials for craft. These puzzle pieces were constructed from cedar wood and hydro-stone.
Pictured are a series of introductory projects to architecture. Each teaching a different lesson: design, craft, rendering, color. The project started off with a precisely made chipboard model that I later had to render with charcoal and then with my choice of two colored pencils.