EMILY RUSSELL
DESIGN PORTFOLIO
TABLE OF CONTENTS University of Oregon, Portland GRADUATE THESIS el Centro de Education Agua :: 2012-2013 University of Oregon, Portland GRADUATE WORK Multnomah Technology Commons :: Fall 2012 World Craft Council Headquarters :: Spring 2012 VisualArts Northwest :: Winter 2012 University of California, Berkeley UNDERGRADUATE WORK Espacio Social de Santa Rosa :: 2010-2011 Pacific Rim Food Center :: Fall 2010 SMALL SCALE WORK Laminated Frames :: Spring 2012 ana[morphosis] :: Spring 2012
EL CENTRO DE EDUCACION AGUA Tegucigalpa, Honduras In the architectural field, regenerative design can be understood as an approach that restores and revitalizes places, buildings and cities by responding to a society’s needs and values through the development of sustainable systems. As a thesis studio theme, regenerative design provides urban architectural solutions for cities and towns that have been destroyed by catastrophic human failures or natural disasters. Many of these human failures can be seen in developing countries around the world and are exponentially heightened in urban situations. Deeply entwined in the urban fabric of these cities is water. Water is the source of life and arguably the most important resource on the planet. Despite its importance, in many developing cities around the world there has been a constant and unrelenting struggle for a consistent water supply. My proposal addresses water as a human failure in the capital city of Honduras, a developing Latin American country. Water shortage and lack of sanitation is a disastrous example of human failure in Tegucigalpa, home to one million people, where it has been considered a national emergency since 2002. By “integrating the basic needs of the society and the integrity of nature” my thesis proposal provides a sustainable design solution rooted in a regenerative approach. El Centro de Educación Agua will begin to decentralize the municipal water system and directly impact the water shortage problem by providing the community with the resources and learning space to take control of their water consumption and quality and well as revive this impoverished city through a central community gathering space.
36%
PRIVATE / PUBLIC
WATER TRUCK
YES
PRIVATE TAP
NO PUBLIC TAP
ACCESS TO SANITATION
PIPED WATER
NO PIPED WATER COPING SOURCES
PUBLIC / TRUCK PRIVATE / TRUCK
USING TWO COPING SOURCES
REGIONAL ACTION: PROPOSED MAJOR BUS DEPOTS
MY SITE (CENTER DOT ON ABOVE AERIAL): PROPOSED WATER EDUCATION CENTER
SECOND FLOOR PLAN
FIRST FLOOR PLAN [RHINO, ILLUSTRATOR]
EXHIBIT SPACE
COURTYARD
HIGH WATER
SECTION LOOKING SOUTH
The first bar, closest to the river, is the main space in my building. It is a semi-enclosed, interactive exhibit defined by a floating dock that will rise and fall as the water level changes throughout the year. The second bar, supporting the exhibit, houses a community room and kitchen on the first floor and classrooms above. The third, most connected to the urban fabric at the eastern edge of my site, addresses the street edge through a shaded path made up of a perforated CMU wall system. This double facade encourages people to walk along and into my building and creates places for resting and hanging temporary signage or shading devices from the underside of the roof. The program includes a public tool lending library on the ground floor, and NGO office space above.
PHYSICAL MODEL
WALL SECTION [WESTERN MOST FACADE]
PHYSICAL MODEL
MULTNOMAH TECHNOLOGY COMMONS Multnomah Village, Portland, Oregon The site is in Multnomah Village, a small community in the southwest hills of Portland with a bustling main street at it’s core, with an 11’ height difference from the lowest to highest point. We were asked to develop our own building program, based on a library format, that we thought would benefit the community. My program, the Multnomah Technology Commons, provides the community with access to digital devices and media, tools that are often out of reach from the general public. The design consists of two structures surrounding an open air courtyard. The glass pavilion to the west is the Learning Commons and small cafe, a place for ideas to be exchanged and the display of media developed with the library’s tools. The supporting building to the east of the courtyard houses production and digital exploration spaces. The facade is made up of a gradient of tinted glass that becomes lighter and more transparent as it approaches the courtyard. The southern facade also employs a series of angled louvers to shade the facade and protect the media inside from direct sunlight.
TECHNOLOGY
COMMUNITY
PRODUCTION
EXCHANGE
DIGITAL MEDIA
KNOWLEDGE
FIRST FLOOR [REVIT, ILLUSTRATOR]
LONGITUDINAL SECTION [REVIT, AUTOCAD]
[REVIT, PHOTOSHOP]
SOUTH ELEVATION [REVIT, PHOTOSHOP]
[REVIT, PHOTOSHOP]
WORLD CRAFT COUNCIL Colombo, Sri Lanka The design project was to develop a new headquarters location for an NGO of our choosing on a site in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. I chose the World Crafts Council. The World Crafts Council Asia Pacific Region forms the largest and most active part of the World Crafts Council. It is a non-governmental organization with a NGO status at UNESCO. The Asia Pacific Region consists of countries from Central Asia to the Pacific Islands. The main objective of the organization is to ensure the status of craft in each country of the Asia Pacific region as a vital part of the cultural scenario by developing and strengthening it. Because of the location and scarce availability of public utilities the premise of the project was to design an office building that was extremely environmentally conscious. My design centers on an unconditioned atrium and central stair located at the center of the western edge of the building, shaded by a series of louvers that enclose the space. By pinching the plan at the western edge, I was able to create a community gathering and market space on the ground floor of the building that has both interior and exterior spaces. Vertical solar panels envelop the northern faces of the building, in order to provide additional shading for the area that receives the most sunlight, and to generate electricity for the building. The landscaping for the project includes a series of permeable paved areas, filtration ponds, and a water tank. The water collected can be used for grey water purposes and irrigation when needed.
Parking
Building
Parking
Community Space
Building
Parking
Community Workshop
Community Space
Building
Building
Parking Retail Community FIRST FLOOR PLAN Workshop
FINAL MODEL: 1/16” = 1’
WEST ELEVATION
SECTIONAL PERSPECTIVE [RHINO, VRAY, PHOTOSHOP]
VISUAL/ARTS NORTHWEST Portland, Oregon Visual Arts Northwest is a 65,000 sqft higher education institution that mimics the shifting of the Portland grids through two colliding bars. Rooted in a series of urban design interventions on the site, the buildings facade, organization, and orientation responds to the urban pattern. The main spaces of the institute, such as the gallery, student union, library, and studio space, are aligned with a large urban park and stair that leads to the riverfront and establishes a new public plaza and gathering place. The facade is a double-skin system of channel glass and curtainwall with diagonal mullions to provide visual aesthetic. The channel glass accentuates the major programmatic spaces in the building and provides a visual queue for passersby. The double-height art gallery on the main floor serves as both an entrance to the school and public exhibition space.
URBAN DESIGN PLAN
WEST ELEVATION [RHINO, ILLUSTRATOR]
GALLERY
GALLERY
CLASSROOM
AUDITORIUM
SCHOOL CAFE
CLASSROOMS [RHINO, VRAY, PHOTOSHOP]
ESCUELA DE SANTA ROSA Santa Rosa, Honduras I was a part of the inaugural UC Berkeley Global Architecture Brigade. In Fall 2010, myself and seven other peers entered a design-build competition for a secondary school/ community center to be built in Honduras. We then traveled in early January to start the actual construction with the community. The focus of our design was to engage, enrich, and expand. To engage the surrounding qualities of the Honduran countryside and climate through the use of perforated walls for ventilation, paneled windows for light control, and create a central courtyard space for many types of gatherings. To enrich the lives of the community and children attending the school through the connecting of classrooms with movable walls, and the covered outdoor areas for teaching and gathering outside when it is raining. To expand as the surrounding communities grow, our design allows for easy development using a modular building organization that can be easily repeated as needed.
SECTION [RHINO, ILLUSTRATOR, PHOTOSHOP]
CONCEPTUAL MODULAR SITE PLAN
We began the initial construction of the foundation in January 2011 and a second brigade finished the project in April 2012.
PACIFIC RIM FOOD CENTER The Highline, New York, New York Located in New York City, adjacent to the Highline, this cultural center is meant to celebrate the culinary works and invite people to learn and explore the many differences and similarities between the Pacific Rim countries. My set of primary interests were the integration and dependency of building systems, program, garden spaces and occupants. The organizational strategy was the pushing and pulling of floors based on lighting needs and the necessity to create double-height spaces for hydroponic gardens. My material selection included a perforated metal sheeting, whose formal expression was derived from an abstracted pattern of a root system.
PLAN DRAWING OF SQUASH ROOT SYSTEM
ABSTRACTED LINE WORK
PERFORATED METAL FACADE
LAMINATED FRAMES Concept / Material Exploration Part of the World Craft Council Headquarters studio project
The initial concept of this model is rooted in the process of lamination. By laminating layers of wooden frames, different conditions begin to reveal themselves. Using a simple rectangular module, that was multiplied to several lengths, the layering process creates solid and void within the model. By shifting and sliding these pieces past one another, a varying gradient of depth, density, and transparency is created. This model is a study of these varying conditions that are created when laminating cellular frames of several lengths that are shifted along a singular axis.
ANA[MORPHOSIS] Cooper Union, Hakimi Gallery Storefront Installation Competition [New York, New York] with James Austin and Adam Wilson The challenge of this competition was to design a temporary structure/installation outside of an art gallery that would challenge the common purpose and use of a facade. A traditional facade is usually experienced as a flat, 2D element, and the quality it generates is mostly about visibility/transparency and aesthetics. The challenge was to transform the facade into a 3-dimensional element and to enhance the experience of entering a space beyond just opening a door. Our design, ANA[MORPHOSIS] gives dynamism to the act of looking through the interstitial space by masking the facade at a specific vantage point and then exposing the view of the gallery as the spectator walks past it. By using anamorphosis in a 3D space, the panels engage the passerby by altering their perspective. The folded sheet steel panels are informed by the architectural language of the Cooper Union Building, relating to the faceted building skin and the angular columns.