Christina Schaller RISD Spring 2018 Portfolio
Education Rhode Island School of Design 3.35
Master of Architecture: Advanced Standing Providence, RI. 2016 - 2018 International Study One month in Rome studying the urban fabric of the city and how natural and artificial light effect indoor and outdoor spaces.
Morgan State University 3.33
Bachelor of Science in Architecture and Environmental Design Baltimore, MD. 2012 - 2016 Independent Study In depth exploration of furniture design as it relates to architecture and to the personal aesthetic of the designer.
Related Work Experience Graduate Instructor | Architecture Dept. | RISD
Winter 2018 Designed and taught a critical studio which questions the relationship between architecture and place in terms of facade treatment. The course analyzed opposing architectural styles as it relates to local history in an effort to imagine a new style that reflects the place through a particular lens.
Instructor | Architecture Dept. | Lincoln + RISD
Fall 2017 Designed and taught an introductory architecture studio for high school girls. The course was focused on building the confidence and critically thinking skills necessary to succeed in the architectural profession through a mix of creative and technical exercises.
Architectural Intern | Gensler | Baltimore, MD
Summer 2017 & 2016 Participated in a ten week internship program which included preparing construction documents, presentation drawings and client vision summaries. During this time I was able work on a variety of projects at different stages.
Grad Show Co-Chair | Graduate Architecture Dept. | RISD
Spring 2017 Organized team responsibilities, curated work, and helped to fabricate model stands for the annual Graduate Exhibition in the Rhode Island Convention Center.
Mentor | ACE Mentor Program | RISD
Fall 2016 - Spring 2017 Lead small workshops designed to engage and excite these high school students who are underrepresented in the fields of architecture, construction and engineering.
Skills Software
Rhino RhinoCAM AutoDesk Revit AutoCad 3ds Max SketchUp Adobe Suite PhotoShop InDesign Illustrator
Fabrication
Laser Cutting CNC Routing 3D Printing Carpentry
Awards Alpha Rho Chi Medal MSU 2016 Graduate Division Fellowship RISD 2016 - 2018 Honors College Scholarship MSU 2012 -2016 Dean’s List Recipient MSU 2013, 2015, 2016
Exhibitions Romosaquo | Installation MAAM, Roma, IT 2017 Black | Video RISD Gallery 2017 My Smallest Parts | Furniture Show MSU Gallery 2016 DLB | Public Installation Inner Harbor, Baltimore 2016 Park(ing) Day | Public Installation AIA Baltimore 2014 & 2015
Providence Center for Social Justice Romasacio A Third Thing It Takes a Village Making of Design Principles My Smallest Parts Ambient Interfaces House of Laughter Diamonds Light Baltimore
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Providence Center for Social Justice As we are in a unique time in our political and social history I feel that it is extremely important that we have a safe space to discus and share ideas and opinions regarding our current issues. A space that can be used for conversations, art, social and community projects and political organization. A space that is open and free to the public as to share ideas with UN-like-minded people, a sort of studio culture for the community. Presently, when people want to participate in the activities described their options for places to gather are churches, libraries, universities, galleries and for-profit meeting rooms. There is no space that melts all of these places together, and I believe that by doing so we will be able to have a more fruitful conversation within our communities, we will be more effectively mobilized and this will build a greater sense of respect and empathy for those who share differing opinions.
Spring 2017 Rhode Island School of Design Prof. Yehuda Safran
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Christina B. Schaller
The Providence Center for Social Justice is designed as a prototype that could be developed in any city in America. It serves a broad function but also a very site specific purpose. Along with merging people of differing political beliefs, this site has been strategically placed to be inviting to students and Providence locals so that the disconnect between “town and gown” can be resolved, and the prejudices that some students hold about communities that they don’t know very well can be addressed.
Downtown
RISD
Industrial Area
Brown
site
The poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter” by Lewis Carrol included in the novel “Alice Through the Looking Glass” served as the projects McGuffen (a randomly selected idea or theme used to get a project started). Although the McGuffen was chosen randomly I realized that it resonated very deeply with the idea of shelter and protection, and provided helpful guides in terms of form, rhythm and mirroring.
Providence Center for Social Justice
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Site Plan
Ground Floor Plan
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Christina B. Schaller
Second Floor Plan
Third Floor Plan
Providence Center for Social Justice
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Romosaico Over the course of a month, I analyzed and compared public spaces in Rome’s city center and outskirts in order to understand how buildings are situated in particular ways to frame space and how light dramatically changes the program of these spaces throughout the day. The comparison revealed how light is used as a socio/economic political tool. The analysis concluded with a team exhibition of an interactive installation that draws parallels between these two realities.
Winter 2017 Rhode Island School of Design Prof. Elettra Bordonaro
There is a large disconnect between the city center and the outskirts, especially when considering the MAAM. The MAAM is an abandoned sausage factory, modern street art museum and squat. Our final exhibition was in this museum, and because of this my team wanted to design something that could be a sort of gift to the children living there. We created a puzzle game that the kids could match colors and 5
Christina B.Schaller
pictures and just play, but it was also a bridge that would link the residents to the visitors. The images on each of the cubes are taken from both the city center and the outskirts, so as the participants play they can also connect to places that they’ve been. The fact that both kinds of people can connect with this piece creates a sense of commonality that didn’t exist before.
Romosacio
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A Third Thing There is an inherent ambiguity of cultural identity in America. Everyone is mixed (if not racially) culturally. Our foods and traditions have been hybridized within the meltingpot of this land. How can architecture reflect this social blending? By looking at traditions, art and architecture in the African American community, my goal is to make a case for an African American aesthetic that embraces ambiguity and empowers the community. This thesis will manifest in a series of surgical urban intervention including a public space for activism, healing and uplift. (Process thesis work)
Fall 2017 Rhode Island School of Design Prof. Hansy Better
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Christina B.Schaller
From studying existing
To designing from cultural identity
A Third Thing
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It Takes a Village Northwood Elementary is currently one of the last schools on the list to get rebuilt as apart of Baltimore City’s 21st Century Schools Initiative. This studio focused on ways of bringing attention to this school so that it could move up the list, as well as help the community get an idea of what their new school could be. It Takes a Village is a proposal for a New Northwood Elementary that will bring the community, school and nature together.
Diagrammatic Site Plan
Fall 2015 Morgan State University Prof. Isaac Williams
Community and School
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PK - K
5th - 8th
1st - 4th
Community Spaces
Connector
The Henderson Hopkins School (Rogers Partners) was developed in East Baltimore to serve as an Urban Regenerator. The school serves the needs of the students and community with a gym, library, health center and auditorium available after school hours. The school is a cluster of houses. Each house contains classrooms, an open learning area, commons and access to a yard.
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Indoor and Outdoor Connections
It Takes a Village extracts the key ideas that make the Henderson Hopkins School great and integrates them into the site of Northwood Elementary School. The site considerations required the building footprint to shift in order to respond to the traffic, the community and the Chinquapin Park.
Christina B.Schaller
The proposal connects indoor and outdoor learning spaces, designates spaces for the community and connects students to each other. In order to relate better to the needs of Northwood, the open learning spaces have been broken up in order to provide a large collaborative space and a smaller focus area, giving students space for independent learning and collaborative group work.
Site Plan Analysis of Existing Conditions
Does not relate to urban morphology.
Concentrated near busy street.
Minimal resources for community members.
No relationship to Chinquapin Park.
Distributed throughout the site.
Added community resources.
Connects school and park through vegetation.
Proposal of Solutions
Follows the flow of the urban context.
It Takes a Village
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Arts
Media
Community Space
Gym
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1 Cafe
Rec. Center 1
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1
K K
K
K PK
PK
PK
PK
Upper Level Plan
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SpEd
Science
Student Services
Administration 2
4
Cafe
2
2
Cafe
3
4 4
4 3
Ground Floor Plan
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Storage
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Relationships between the Cafe, Collab. Space and the Outdoors.
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3
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Teacher Meeting Room
Christina B.Schaller
Main axis which connects the students.
Focus Area
Collaborative Area
Cafe’
Outdoors
Connections between learning spaces.
Relationships between focus areas, collaborative areas and the outdoors at the 1st grade level.
School
Community
Section showing connections between the community, the school and nature. It Takes a Village
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Making of Design Principles In the Making of Design Principles studio, I went through a series of exercises that helped me to analyze the relationship between ink & water. After this relationship was fully understood and visualized I incorporated it into a Yoruba wedding ritual. This process was all about identifying design principles and developing a diligence that would help me follow through with those principles. The process began by dropping one single drop of ink into a mason jar of water and repeated this process until I could identify three specific modes of interaction. The ink form a cluster in the center of the jar, a blanket along the top of the water and slowly dissipate.
Fall 2016 Rhode Island School of Design Prof. Carl Lostritto
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Christina B.Schaller
By creating a digital drawing, charcoal drawing and several models I began to visualize this relationship in new ways. These methods helped me to understand the ink’s intensity, density, volume and structure. The models represent dispersion, overlap, twist, cluster and blanket.
Making of Design Principles
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Process Sketches
Groom’s Side
Western Space
Yoruba Space
Bride’s Side
The second part in this process was to translate the synthesizes from the ink analysis into architecture. I chose to do a project for a Yoruba wedding ceremony. The ceremonies are extremely large, they are pretty much just giant parties that focus more on joining two families rather than just two people. What is interesting is that it is now typical for the Yoruba people to have two wedding ceremonies, one which is a traditional ceremony and one which is a “white” western wedding. Even in the traditional wedding the two ceremonies blend into each other and it is difficult to tell what was western influenced and what was truly traditional. Because of this, I wanted to create an architecture that not only connected two different families, but also two different cultures. The challenge for this project was accommodating for both kinds of ceremonies (western and Yoruba) within the same building. The theme of overlaping space and material carried the project through.
Program Diagram
Threshold Axon
Detail Test
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Detail Model
Christina B.Schaller
Process Sketch
Lower Level Plan
Upper Level Plan
Making of Design Principles
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Smallest Parts “Because I wanted to talk about architecture, I dismantled it into its smallest parts.� (Rem Koolhaas). This has served as the basis of my independent study. I researched how historically architects have used furniture design as a way to strengthen their architectural work and portray their personal aesthetic. In the dresser, I abstracted parts of my culture to represent who I am.
Spring 2016 Morgan State University Prof. Brian Stansbury
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Smallest Parts
Ambient Interfaces In this course I explored ways in which the built environment could respond to people based on the idea that space alters people but can people alter space? A key driver of my research was studying the psychological affects of people within different spaces. People that occupy very large spaces can feel “freer�, more confident more likely to collaborate, but happen to be less focused. People that occupy smaller spaces tend to pay very close attention to detail and tend to be more critical. Essentially, different spaces should be used at different times for different situations. But currently there is a really big push for flexible, multiuse space in educational facilities and workspaces. My project aims to address this delima, that we need different spaces for different ways of working, even if that means that we stay in the same room. The project is a prototype for a ceiling system which will either create a larger or more intimate space depending on how many people it senses in the room. If their are a large number of people in the room, the ceiling rises, encouraging people to collaborate, and if their are few the ceiling drops, encouraging independent thinking and learning.
Spring 2017 Rhode Island School of Design Prof. Alejandro Borsani
Ambient Interfaces
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House of Laughter The House of Laughter was designed to serve as a retreat from the day to day stresses of architecture school. Along with four other students, I researched the causes of laughter. This project took 6 weeks to design and construct in front of the CBEIS Building on campus. We had a $2,000 budget and constructed the structure of wood. My role was project manager, builder and I provided construction documents for the building.
Summer 2014 Morgan State University Prof. David Lopez + Brian Stansbury
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House of Laughter
Diamonds Lite Bmore Diamonds Light Baltimore was a public art instillation of 15 giant diamonds exhibited in the Inner Harbor at Light City Baltimore. The intention of the piece was to connect the “jewel” (the Harbor) with the “blue light” districts that exist in the city’s suburbs. This is a critique of many cities around the globe (including Baltimore) that focus on the tourist attractions instead of the residents.
Spring 2016 Morgan State University Prof. Gabriel Kroiz
Diamonds Light Baltimore
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Thank you ! I truly appreciate the time that you’ve taken to review my portfolio of work. If you believe that my interests in practical, human centered design, would make me a good fit to work with, please do not hesitate to contact me. All the best,
cschalle@risd.edu 360.349.9775
cschalle@risd.edu 360.349.9775