2
nd
ANNUAL ANNUAL
AIA|DC THESIS SHOWCASE 2015
CHRISTINA SHIVERS
RANIM OROUK
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE, 2015
AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF SHARAJ BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE, 2015
HECTOR BERMUDEZ-RIOS
JORGE FUENTES
COUNTER-SPACES AND NATION MACHINES
RECONSTRUCTING THE MIDDLE EAST
POST-DISASTER ARCHITECTURE: A HABITAT WITHOUT TERRITORY
URBAN LAB
POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE, 2014
ENGINEERED PARADISES: A NATION OF CHATHARSIS IN HEBRON, THE WEST BANK TULANE UNIVERSITY MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE, 2015
WHEN: AUGUST 27, 2015 TIME: 6PM TO 8PM WHERE: DISTRICT ARCHITECTURE CENTER 421 7TH STREET NW
FREE REGISTRATION
http://aiadc.com/calendar/event/emerging-architects-committee-thesis-showcase AIA DC
ZARITH PINEDA
POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE, 2015
E AC E M E R GI N G A R C H I T E CTS C O M M I T T E E
CHRISTINA SHIVERS GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE, 2015
Instagram user name: @christina_shivers Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christina.shivers.1
Bio:
Growing up in a military family, Christina Shivers moved to a new location every two or three years; because of this, she considers many places and no place home. She is a recent graduate of architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia and previously studied music at the Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.
COUNTER-SPACES AND NATION MACHINES The modern American city is organized into a multitude of spaces based upon function and use. These organized spaces dictate a prescribed behavior and social awareness resulting in a landscape of ill-fitting and awkward territories existing in opposition to one another. An unintended byproduct of these collisions is the counter-space. Akin to slag, sludge and waste resulting from modern industrial processes, the counter-space is the left-over and neglected space of the city resulting from the ever increasing hegemony of society. Hidden within plain site, abandoned and unused, these spaces exist everywhere. This thesis seeks to understand and reveal these counter-spaces and their subsequent populations within the city of Atlanta in order to bring an awareness to the design of the city for all populations. The spatialtemporalities of counter-spaces will be understood through a de-territorialization of representation through notation and mapping. Through this act, a “cartography of events� will be created for each counter space using series of notation machines in which temporal stimuli from each counter-space site will be used as inputs for the machines.
HECTOR BERMUDEZ-RIOS POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE, 2014 Linkedin: pr.linkedin.com/in/bermudezrios ISSUU: http://issuu.com/hectorbermudezrios Website: www.bermudezrios.com
Bio:
Héctor Bermúdez-Ríos is an Architect in Training (Assoc. AIA) and seasoned Graphic Designer born in Comerío, Puerto Rico. His architecture thesis “Urban Lab” has won him many recognitions including an Honor Award at the 2014 AIA Puerto Rico Honor Awards, in the student category and Best Thesis and Best Urbanism Project at the 2014 Thesis Contest held by the Institute of Architects and Landscape Architects of Puerto Rico (CAAPPR). He also received The AIA School Medal for Excellence in the Study of Architecture at the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico (PUPR). Before graduating from a professional Bachelor in Architecture from the PUPR he made a Bachelor in Graphic Design and for the past 11 years has worked as a Graphic Designer and Art Director for advertising agencies such as Young & Rubicam PR. It is his belief that in architecture, as in advertising, understanding the target audience and knowing their particular needs and wants is essential to developing sensible architecture that takes into account the context in which it sits and the public that it aims to serve.
URBAN LAB Urban Lab comes forth as a natural response to the urban processes developed in Santurce, Puerto Rico, by street art (graffiti, murals, art installations), as creator of urban activity. Events like Los Muros Hablan and Santurce Es Ley have been successful in generating a particular interest for the urban fabric and the ability of art to re-energize areas that were forgotten by the economic sector. Nonetheless, the activity generated by such events vanishes when the murals are finished. Urban Lab aims at turning the event of creation of art into a motor of continuous urban development while attending two actual problems in the Santurce area: 1. The lack of pedestrian interconnections between the two main avenues of Santurce, Ponce de León Ave. and Fernández Juncos Ave. 2. The lack of public parking accommodations The design project proposes the creation of a big public space that promotes and encourages street art, and at the same time it defines new interconnections between the main avenues and secondary streets of the selected site. This urban lab is delineated by programs that give support to the uses found in the area and that makes new urban activity possible. The project is unified by a scaffolding-like structure that connects each of the proposed programs and that allows the public to look at the public space from above. At the same time, this structure serves as a semi-transparent skin that lets us to have a look at the “event” of creation of art and its processes.
ZARITH PINEDA TULANE UNIVERSITY MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE, 2015 Website: http://www.zarithpineda.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/zarith-
Bio:
Zarith Pineda is recent graduate of Tulane University where she completed the rigorous 5 year M.Arch program and a B.A. in French and French Literature. Her M.Arch thesis project, Engineered Paradises, has been exhibited at the Ogden Museum of Art and featured on ArchDaily. Zarith is currently taking the summer to travel throughout Asia and South America before beginning her professional career in the fall.
ENGINEERED PARADISES: A NATION OF CATHARSIS IN HEBRON, THE WEST BANK Cohabitation in contested territories is extremely difficult especially when there is an occupying power and an occupied people sharing the same area and have limited access to each other’s exclusive domains. Throughout history, these conditions have been temporal usually, one of the two powers gains control of the area and the other is exiled or forced to assimilate. In the case of the city of Hebron in the Occupied West Bank/Israel this will never be a reality. Due to its religious importance to Jews, Muslims, and Arabs, Hebron will always be seen by the state of Israel and the nation of Palestine as ‘theirs’, a condition formalized as part of The Protocol Concerning the Redeployment in Hebron of 1997. As a result of the protocol the city was meticulously segregated down to the block and building scale. Currently, 80% of Hebron is Palestinian (H1) while 20% is Israeli (H2). Even though Palestinian Hebron is larger, it is under complete Israeli military control while H2’s only constraint is limited entry to H1. These divisions are extremely complex as there is no wall around the city to differentiate both ‘neighborhood nations.’ Hebron is a complex metropolis of layers assigned by altitude, religious affiliation and military strategy. Hebronites experience various privileges and restrictions depending on their nation-al affiliation, a reality that incubates resentments between both communities. The thesis aims to create nationless spaces, unaffiliated ‘engineered paradises’ deployed at the urban scale, to pr ovide a respite from the toxicity of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
RANIM OROUK AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF SHARAJ BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE, 2015
Instagram: @o.ranim
Bio:
Ranim received her Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the American University of Sharjah in 2015. Born in Syria and raised in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Ranim has had the privilege of experiencing differed cultures. Her main interest is exploring the impacts of politics and social change on settlements in areas of conflict and war.
RECONSTRUCTING
THE MIDDLE EAST
The project explores the relationship between Syria and Iraq’s past and future based on cataclysmic events such as war and destruction. It offers an imaginative approach to how cities form and function regardless of the urban theories. Efforts to unite both countries into one country have existed since the modern states, however hostility between them started at the same time. The city proposes the re-creation of the war-torn countries into a one unified state, drawing on the old unification dreams. As a result of the destruction and the shortage of land, artificial platforms would offer a solution to this problem. The city is divided into 2 sectors: The Past and The Future. It is composed of vertical elements of infrastructure that are replicated all around the state. They also hold horizontal platforms –placeholders for buildings-. Moreover, they provide built-in elevators that act as the main circulation method in the city. The Past sector acts as the recreation zone. Plants grow on the rivers sides providing people with food. Moreover, Instead of maintaining the Future sector’s buildings, they get disposed to the Past Sector where recycling facilities are built. The structure emerges from the past sector towering above its crowded streets allowing people to travel back and forth; to get food, materials and also as a memorial. The Infrastructure is an evolving condition. By the time it reaches a certain high and weight, it stars sinking; controlling the city’s height, and assuring that new structural elements replace the old ones simultaneously.
JORGE FUENTES POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE, 2015 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jorge.fuentes.31?ref=br_rs_Wy JrZXl3b3Jkc191c2VycyJd
Bio:
Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Jorge Ricardo Fuentes always had a soft spot for technical arts and philosophical questions. Not knowing what the future would bring he passed through high school without a clear path on what to do when he grew up. Started undergraduate studies in mechanical engineering department at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayaguez always with a latent architectural mind peeking through his daily routines, which later resulted in a transfer to the New Architecture School at the Polytechnic University in Puerto Rico. Deeply motivated by social science and philosophy classes, Jorge used his knowledge to explore architecture and its social impact on people. With that in mind, along with a good friend, he embarked on a fourth year project which focused on public housing in one of Puerto Rico's most notorious public housing community, "Llorens Torres". His interest in social architecture led him to develop his thesis project on the impact of natural disaster within a community, going from the independent individual all the way to community reconstruction within itself, focusing on long term expectations and parting from immediate provision. The rest on his architectural involvement as a future practitioner is yet to come...
POST-DISASTER ARCHITECTURE: A HABITAT WITHOUT TERRITORY A disaster can strike anywhere and anytime, leaving victims to pick up the pieces of what was once a community. You can say it strikes every aspect of people's lives bringing destruction and suffering throughout the world. Housing is maybe one of the more affected things after a disaster strikes, that's why I decided to design a fast response emergency relief module capable of providing an immediate response to housing needs, and evolve if a long term solution is needed. The emergency relief module adapts to its surroundings and user's needs as a single unit response or as an inter modular group capable of creating different programmatic spaces as part of a community reconstruction plan. It's not in singularity that the affected zones rebuild what has been destroyed, but in joint efforts between emergency response agencies and communities. The EMS strives to become a multiple time frame solution to rebuilding what has been destroyed. Its ability to function as a single unit or as a multiple units program creates an adaptive solution to different scale scenarios. The idea is to provide the immediate with a long term vision, allowing people a resilient option to an ever growing and unpredictable problem. We definitely can't prevent disaster, but we can be prepared and react accordingly to provide living alternative when a place as we know it has been turned upside down. Architecture serves as a mean to not only create a city but also to rebuild a community that has been destroyed.