Design Portfolio

Design Portfolio Felipe A. Piris

Paper-cut Lamp

Kaohsiung Terminal

Notch-Lounge

Structured Movement

Imaginative Space

Discovery Pavilion

Discovery Pavilion

This project was inspired by the writings of Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of the double helix structure of DNA. He stressed the effectiveness of skewed perspectives in thought and research as a method of inducing insight.

This pavilion seeks to produce a perspective shift in subjects through a disorienting spatial experience with the goal of facilitating insight and inspiration. The passage through the space is meant to resonate with the progress of a thought.

The ground level is purely circulation and structure: a man-made forest floor with heavily filtered light hinting at the world above.

The central spaces are a labyrinth. The path is broken, skewed and obscured. The final destination is a meditation space of pure sky.

Where you are prevents you from seeing where you need to be.

Its only when you get there, do you see how you got there.

This is an escape from reality. More than that, it is a reset button. It is a way to get out of your element and allow your mind to take on a new perspective. This is about taking a breather and walking around, stopping to think.

Discovery Pavilion continued

Notch-Lounge

The notch lounge consists of two vertical pieces. The shape of the vertical planes are contoured to the body. The horizontal is one form that is repeated.

The variation comes from the angle of the notch connections. The angled notch allows the horizontal pieces to rest perpendicular to the body.

Show below are some preliminary lasercut forms.

Paper-cut Lamp

The idea for this project was to create an illuminated housing for paper-cut art.

The lamp comes apart easily and art can be sandwiched between the plexiglass pieces.

Kaohsiung Terminal

This project was a competition for a passenger ship terminal and cultural hub in the Kaohsiung Port District, a burgeoning, energetic redeveloped area of Taiwan’s secondlargest city.

This was a team project with 8 students and support from RNT Architects of San Diego and an engineer from Buro Happold.

The port terminal was conceived of as a threshold between the chaotic, vibrant city and the self-contained systems of the passenger ships that it would be servicing.

Therefore the terminal building’s form had to mediate between these opposing formal languages: the dense urban fabric and the discrete “machine for living” at sea.

Structured Movement

To create an iconic theater that fosters the growth of pedestrian culture, and optimizes the fluidity and structure of movement present in performance art.

Performance art is structured movement. The movements of the actors on stage are not haphazard and random, but are structured and thought out beforehand. Similarly this theater mimics the idea of structured movement. This sculptural form, although static, creates movement during both night and day.

By day one can happen upon this landmark nestled between these sweeping dynamic forms and discover a pedestrian gathering space that is secluded, yet proudly announced.

The common area emcompassed by the sweeping forms transforms an ordinary parking lot into a relaxing stop on one’s journey through Santa Monica. A sense of movement is created by the dynamic undulating exterior panels.

As night decends on the city, the theater becomes a beacon. The interior illumination signals a transformation from pedestrian refuge to one cartering to patrons of the arts. A renewed sense of movement comes from within.

As the performers prepare and patrons converse in the lobby, passers-by witness the elogated movement on the exterior.

The activity within projects shadows on the exterior walls. As the shadows fall on the asymmetrical walls, they are forshortened and elongated, making the human form indistinguishible. All that is seen is the abstract form of movement.

Imaginative Space

circulation

My interest lies in exploring perception. Why is perception important? We are bound, constrained to our sense data. We are constantly filtering the world through our individual sensory experience. Consider a tree.

We never come into contact with what a tree actually is. We never truly perceive outside ourselves.

An object is a collection of representations of different instances of that object. We only have an idea of what a tree is.

This may vary drastically.