Portfolio Dan Dorocic
Vitruvian Dan
Creativity
“architecture’s beauty is directly proportional to its horror”
Education
2010-
M.Arch at Melbourne School Of Design
2009-2010 Ontario College of Art & Design, Toronto, Ont 2002-2006
B.Sc Geography - McGill Universty, Montreal, Qc
1998-2002
High School Diploma - De La Salle College Toronto, Ont
Experience
Work Cicada Design, Toronto Architecture Intern Studio 505, Melbourne Student Architect/ Model Maker
August-October 2009 January-March 2011
Languages English German SerboCroatian French Spanish
fluent fluent fluent basic basic
To whom it may concern, Architecture has long been a presence in my life. My mother, an architect, often took me along to her office, where I spent endless hours exploring the world under her drafting tables. Hole punches were dismantled to release the ‘confetti’ inside, small drawings were photocopied and blown up to many times their size, and paper airplanes and buildings were modeled, constructed, and built– all leaving a very nostalgic impression upon me. I have moved homes frequently, residing in Croatia Germany, and Canada all before the age of twelve. This urban nomadic lifestyle affected my personality, as I easily integrate into new environments, communities, and social circles. Real estate figured prominently in my parents’ lives. They took it upon themselves to personally redesign and renovate each home in succession. Needless to say, I took great interests in the transformations, noting how fluid the layout of a house can be and the possibilities of designing space. Past experience is a key factor that determines present understanding, how one perceives the world and one’s success as a designer. I believe the experience of continuous movement weighs heavily upon my worldview. I see man’s life as very ephemeral and transient on the surface of the earth. Thus I believe that man’s architecture should reflect man’s dynamic lifestyle. Architecture should act as a formula of the landscape. The urban environment should not stray away from the natural environment. Architecture itself should be a system of sustaining man and nature in a harmonious way. It shouldn’t only shelter, buffer, and remove us from the harshness of the environment but it should keep us tied to it even in an urban setting. Only in this way does it function. Architecture is not only shelter, but it is a monument left behind by generations past, exalting their cultural ideals. Ambi¬tion and drive lets one materialize and utilize ideas. I am very grateful to have such driven parents, providing me the opportunity to experience so much in my youth and to prove to me that with a creative perspective and ambition, anything is possible. I graduated from McGill University in 2007 with a B.Sc. of Geography, but have always been interested in architecture and design. During my undergraduate studies, I took courses in urban planning and architectural history. I wanted to be more involved in the arts, so I organized ‘art nights’, where I initiated projects making and modifying sculpture, cloth, stencils, canvases and murals with others. I was also very interested in my classes on geology, hydrology, and the environment. I scored a GPA of 3.3 (B+). These courses sparked my interest in ideas of social responsibility and environmental consciousness. I then went on to Uni Melbourne where I achiever an H1 in my first year (85% average). Many problems arise when thinking about constructions sustainably. In our modern age of many comforts and excess, it is hard to look into a simpler way of being and creating. I have always been very interested in both science and art, and felt that a choice had to be made between the two. Yet this does not have to be the case, as architecture offers a space in which balance is sought between the two. I have always had a passion for creating. At first I wanted complete freedom to created art, it’s lack of utility in the end made me feel empty. Although there are many sciences, which I am interested in, none have been as persistent in my life as my reverence for design. I am ultimately inspired by the improvement of everyday objects, appliances, and our urban environment in terms of utility, beauty and sustainability. Since graduating in 2006, I have traveled to Germany, Scandinavia, Croatia, much of the Balkans, Israel and the West Bank, Costa Rica and Panama, and attended some design and furniture fairs in Singapore, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Along the way I was inspired to sometimes quickly take pictures, sketch my surroundings, sometimes make artwork, and definitely write and collected many ideas for future works and projects. These places inspired me in many different ways and made me more world-conscious. In the future I hope to obtain an M. Arch and further my proficiency in the language of design. I believe that there is a lot of room to improve upon design today to make the world a more sustainable place. Ultimately, architecture as a system of ideals encompassing nature and the urban environment equals more sustainable design and more sustainable architecture.
Environment Chernobyl Crisis (on my birthday)
Australia gets medicare
1984 1984
Cold War Ends
1990 1990
Bill Clinton
Helmut Kohl
1995 1995
Boris Yeltsin
1996
1996
Education
8 different high schools
Learned German Learned to Talk (croatian)
Learned to Ski
Experience Gave grandma a fright
English
OCAD
Ilke ♥
Snowboard Instructor
Learned to sail
travelled around balkans
Moved To Canada
Moved to Germany
Melbourne
McGill
Briony ♥
Moved To Australia
Siobhan
Molly ♥
♥
Creativity First ‘Gallery’ Exhibition
Taught art class in Palestine First ‘Architecture’ Project
First Design Collective
First out of body experience
9/11 attacks BUSH The European Court of Human Rights is instituted. 2001
2001
Swine Flu
SARS
Iceland Erupts
TSUNAMI Large Hadron 2007 Collider
2007
2011
2011
Experience
! ME
Ad
Ad
Ad
Habitat ‘67 Ad Worked as a Journalist for various independent magazines and also for Vice.
Photographer
Desert Trek 2010
The management of invasive weeds costs A$3.5 billion yearly
Uluru
Route travelled with friends in a 2-wheel drive stationwagon
Alice Springs
Almost half of Australia’s 220 declared noxious weeds (under legislation) were introduced deliberately, one third of these as garden ornamentals
Cape Tribulation
Townsville Tennant Creek
Coober Pedy
Adelaide
Australia is host to 56 introduced invasive vertebrate animal species Melbourne
Logging and tar sands operations have made the boreal forests the location of the second fastest rate of deforestation on the planet behind the Amazon Rainforest Basin. -- Andrew Nikiforuk
Fort St.James Prince George Jasper Whistler Red Deer Campell River Vancouver Fernie
Currently 40% of all Rocky oil produced in Canada is derived from Treeplant the oil sands
Rocky Mountain tour 2009
Route travelled in this Home Camperized Voyager
“We are creating an environmental catastrophe that will take centuries to recover from…if we recover at all” -- David Suzuki
Budaepest
Balkan Balkan Hitch Hitchhike 2008
Zagreb Zagreb
Sarajevo Sarajevo Mostar Mostar
Split Split Ancona Ancona
Route travelled on foot
What does as architectutre of displacement look like?
Beograd Nis Nis
By 2030, over 2 billion people in the world will be living in slums.
Sofia Sofia I visited numerous Roma Camps on my trip, many of which have since been demolished.
Istanbul Istanbul
Thessaloniki
Athens Athens Patras Patras
The WOrld has been experiencing an era of massive displacement
Work Experience
Photographer Student architect
partner
Student architect
Student architect
Art Teacher/ Volunteer
Studio 505 Student architect
http://www.pixelbuilding.com.au/
Designed by Studio 505 Architects in association with environmental sustainability design consultants Umow Lai, Pixel ticks just about every “green� box imaginable. You could say the book of sustainability has been thrown at it just to prove how easy - or hard - it is to be green. Some of the features packed into its four storeys include a roof planted with native grasses for water collection and filtering, fixed and sun-tracking photovoltaic panels on the roof, a bank of three vertical wind turbines (interestingly, locked down on the day I visited the building, despite a gentle breeze), reed-bed ledges around each of its four storeys to filter grey water and shade windows , night purging of warm air for cooling of interiors, ammonia refrigeration, vacuum toilets, radiant cooling and development of a structural concrete, with a high proportion of recycled and reclaimed aggregates in its mix, that uses about half the embodied carbon in its manufacture.
Melbourne Tower Proposal Sketch Model 1:200
2md floor
Ground Floor
1:100 Model
Basemement
The $100 million building will be made from soft-wood panels imported from Europe and fitted together in weeks to make 50 apartments over 10 storeys. The Grocon building, including its lift shafts, will be all timber, and will use similar technology to the nine-storey residential Stadthaus at Hackney, East London. The building, to be known as Delta, will be carbon neutral and have its own gas-fired electrical generator powered by waste woodchips, and a rainwater and a grey-water recycling system.
Endless Forest Fence
Lotus Hall
Wujin, China
Brisbane, Ausralia
A lotus flower serves as a meeting hall floating in a pond
inspiration
a residential screen
1:50 Model
1st iteration
section
Iteration 1
Inspired by an endless forest
iteration 2
laser cut double sided mirrors
in plan
1:750 site Model
Design Sketches
Creating a seemingly endless illusion
Education
Melbourne University
Brunswick
Northcote
Studio 505
Temporary
Studio
Plan
concept
axo
axo site
section Melbourne University
types of encounters with the ‘decking’
physical models
perspective
Exterior Perspective of temporary workshop project
2009-2010
Ocad University
Cicada
Namur Annex
7th floor
Building plan:
2nd floor
1st floor
basement
Second year project for the redevelopment of an existing university building for 3 000 students.
concept model for massing of spaces - where do you insert the fun? circulation!
Exterior Perspective
interior Perspective
Site Plan Exploded University building
3D model
McGill
Plateau
Namur
What if these tents could be adapted to Mars?
earth Architecture (Greek Columns) Martian Architecture (what columns would look like on Mars)
Since atmospheric pressure on Mars is less than one hundreth of Earths, if the tents held an earth like atmosphere, the spatial problems would be much different than what we face on Earth.
Gravity on Mars is 1/3 that on Earth. Therefore architecture could look much different on it.
The interior of the model. Physical exploratory models during first year studio including studio and construction
a park with the hall sitting on it. The elevated middle roof lets nature into the building, ventilating the courtyard below and lighting up the spaces with natural light.
Construction drawings
Creativity
Over time he conquers the land, the seas and even the boundaries all around him. Where can he go from Here? D e s i g n
c o n c e p t
skies. Slowly Human starts to realize the enroaching How is he to Get out of his dilemma ....
context
Trends
The unbearable weight of life and Concept research death weighed upon the human.
exploratory skectches
The earth is just a framework.
Culture is in an era of chaotic method
Section
precedent study
How the story pans out is still up to US.
Society is a Paranoid disorder a Compulsive explosion
exploratory skectches NYC 2020
Complete environment = site
Circulation ideas
Greening of Street zones naivitee?
wHAT IS A UTOPIAN VISION?
The urban Environment is our canvas
Connect spaces ? Improve quality of life ? Promote alternative modes of transportation ?
CITY AS fARM!
Reconfigured spaces between tram tracks
mankind
≥ Increasign Density
≈ low carbon living ad
∞
the dominant force in mankinds’s life.... Movement?
Speed?
Nomadism?