Barbara G. Laurie Competition

National Organization of Minority Architects Barbara G. Laurie Student Competition Divine Lorraine Hotel, Philadelphia, PA

For the National Organization of Minority Architect Students organization, I had the opportunity to lead a group of 15 peers and underclassmen to enter in the NOMAS National Competition which focused to promote historic preservation and sustainability. While most of these images were not crafted by my hands, they were created under my direction and supervision. We were tasked with renovating the historic dilapidated Divine Lorraine Hotel & to create a addition to the hotel focusing on community and sustainability. The hotel and the new addition would serve as a dormitory for disadvantaged children; the new annex addition would serve as an arts center for the children in the hotel. It was important to create a modern addition ; it took cues from the rhythms of hotel to create its forms.

Sections & Diagrams finalized by underclassmen

MS Urban Design Broadwalk Shared Street South Downtown, Atlanta, GA

New York University’s campus holds a series of modernist towers that dominate the landscape and its neighborhood, Greenwich Village. In this partner project, we were tasked attempting to integrate the NYU campus better to its surrounding urban context. Interplay between the ground and below ground space became a crucial element of spatial organization within the project.

The two blocks were all residential dorms but our program called for the two blocks to serve different roles for the university. The program of the North Block called for an academic space to accommodate NYU’s ever growing student body. Properties of light, air, and atmosphere were toggled between each level in the North block to maximize the feeling of academic openness and inclusion. It features two large oculi that allowed the lower underground floors to receive light and air. They played with the landscape creating occupiable shifts in ground.

Spaces in the South Block were split between a school for performing arts, faculty and undergraduate housing, and public space. Open inviting lawns engaged directly with the site’s edge to draw visitors in, pushing and pulling the landscape up and down in response to the existing towers. These two blocks were encouraged to interact with each other by way of a pedestrian bridge connecting them together and integrating with the rest of the neighborhood by thematically moving the ground with the occupant.