>>ishita*
sharma CONTACT
225.288.3379 www.studioish.net ishi.me@gmail.com EDUCATION
Louisiana State University/ 2008 Salutatorian, Summa Cum Magna Bachelors of Architecture (Professional) Minors in English & Architectural History Currently pursuing architectural licensure SOFTWARE
Advanced: Adobe Creative Suite, Revit, AutoCAD, MS Office, Bluebeam, Sketchup (w/ Indigo & Kerkythea plugins) Basic: Rhino, Maya, Wordpress SKILLSET
People Centric Research, Strategy, Ideation Information Visualization Hand Drafting, Sketching Professional Photography Professional Writing & Storytelling Laser Cutters, Basic Wood Working, Welding Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics HONORS
Business Innovation Factory Scholarship Providence- 2013 BIF Conference scholar
HOGI Traveling Fellow to Japan/ 2010
Dallas- studied cultural hybridization in Tokyo
AIA Traveling Research Fellow/ 2007 Louisiana- studied seven sinking cities
AIA Henry Adams Certficate of Merit/ 2008 LSU- for excellence in architecture
Designer of the Year/ 2007
LSU SoArch. award for design excellence
Percy E. Roberts Jr. Scholarship 2007
LSU SoArch. award for superior design skills
Tau Sigma Delta Arch. Honor Society LSU International Student Award/ 2004-08 COMMUNITY
AIA, Hearts & Hammers, Canstruction, Adopt-a-School, ACE Mentoring, SPCA LANGUAGES
Native fluency in English & Hindi * Passionate about community, meditation, color & the outdoors
[USER CENTRIC] DESIGN TO INSPIRE:
curiosity >> happiness >> wholeness >>
EXPERIENCE
>>Prellwitz Chilinski Associates/ Cambridge, MA/ Designer/ 2011- Present
Manages & supervises small projects as Project Architect. Recognized for design excellence & leadership. Guides design dialogue & culture in the office. >Market Street, Lynnfield, MA: Used placemaking principles to create play areas, market square, town green & green roofed grocery store within a 475,000 SF lifestyle center. Created renderings, construction documents & supervised design of three buildings. Executed construction administration including coordinating/redlining technical drawings, detailing, submittal reviews, RFIs, issuing addenda, door & finish schedules, checking specifications & attending construction meetings for eleven building complex. >Massachusetts Maritime Academy: Renovated & designed additions to cadet mess deck & offices with new entry plaza. Concept sketches, renderings, construction documents, marketing materials, meetings with clients, consultants, product vendors, code & materials research.
>>Corgan Associates/ Dallas, TX/ Intern Architect/ 2008-11
Recognized for superior communication & design skills. Assisted in all phases of design, business development, client presentations, consultant & client coordination: >The Sixth Floor Museum Store + Cafe at Dealey Plaza (Winner, Architect Magazine ‘2010 Design for the Decade,’ 2011 NYC Retailer Excellence Award): Adaptive reuse, interior finish-out & graphic re-branding of historic facility at JFK’s assassination site. Worked on all architectural phases of design (with Dallas Landmark Commission), signage & graphic identity. >Dallas Fort-Worth Airport Terminals A & C: $2 Billion interior renovation, overhaul, spatial & circulatory reconfiguration in the airport. Created visualizations, conceptualizations & construction documents for Terminals A & C. >> Re:Vision Dallas: Spearheaded competition team to imagine ‘most sustainable urban block’
>>LSU CommunityWorks (LA Dept. of Social Services)/ New Orleans, LA/ 2006-08
Worked on constructing the first two houses in the lower 9th ward built after Katrina with ACORN housing. Conducted facility asessments, created signage & elevation study packages for renovation of multiple childcare facilities in New Orleans as part of grant work.
>>The Dallas Morning News/ Columnist/ 2010-12
Authored Op-Ed columns on themes including science, community & socio-cultural issues.
>>Columns (Art + Architecture Magazine)/ Photo-journalist/ Dallas, TX/ 2009-11 Interviewed notable professionals, authored & photographed two articles per issue. PUBLICATIONS
Nerdnite Boston, Featured Speaker: The Evolution of Cities/ 2012/ Research presentation Architect Magazine, Winner ‘Design for Decades: Civic Buildings’/ 2010/ Sixth Floor Museum Architizer, ‘Tokyo, Cyclical City’/ 2011/ Published research fellowship as photo essay on Tokyo Architizer, ‘Morphosis Rises Over Dallas Mega-Highway’/ 2011/ Article on the Perot Museum Delta Literary Journal/ Baton Rouge, LA/ Vol. 49, 2006/ Vol. 50, 2008/ Photography, paintings Ctrl + Alt + Del: Detroit in the Age of Obsolescence/ 2008/ Collaborative thesis publication Legacy Magazine, Baton Rouge, LA/ Issues 3, 4/ 2007/ Staff photographer EXHIBITIONS
Bring Us Your Women/ Oberon/ Cambridge, MA/ 2013/ Collaborative interdisciplinary art show Open Studios/ Somerville, MA/ 2013/ Mixed media show Thoughts in Time/ PopUp Gallery/ New Orleans, LA/ 2012/ Photography exhibit of landscapes Landscapes/ 500X Gallery/ Dallas, TX - 2009/ Exhibited charcoal sketches On My Own Time/ NorthPark Mall, Dallas, TX - 2009 & 2010, 1st place- B/W & digital photography Say Cheese! This is Architecture!/ LSU Design Building/ Baton Rouge, LA/ 2007/ Photo essay
225.288.3379 www.studioish.net ishi.me@gmail.com
>>ishita sharma play>>
>> introduction Believing that good design can and must create engaging, inspiring and responsive communities, I aspire to bring my diverse technical, social and critical skills and experience to holistic, empowering design. I am especially interested in using design to build strong communities that nourish happiness and wholeness and address the physical and mental crises of our times; namely, resourceinequality, over-consumption, waste, depression, disconnection and isolation.
urban ecology >>> Re:Vision Dallas Competition >> Dallas, Texas
CHOOSE YOUR OWN LOOK
SELECT YOUR POD TYPE + CONFIGURATION
3D massing study of high rise
The Re:Vision Dallas Competition was an invitation to rethink sustainable urban living. Dissecting sustainability, this entry interpreted it as a cry for longevity- investment in structures built to stand the test of time. Using modularity to pre-empt obsolescence, the negotiable parts of a structure were deconstructed: what must stay, what can go, and what can come in between? The process yielded an unmoving frame into which assembled pods could be inserted as needed. Intelligent, systematic, customizable units that encourage individual expression. While the aesthetic of the structural whole is fixed, the parametric aesthetics of each part are determined by its occupant, opting to personalize any pod permutation of their choice in their own unique way.
interior perspective at base level
plan iterations Program Breakdown/ Elevations 1 pod unit - 450 SF A - Studio - 55 units (11%) B - 1 BR - 90 Units (18%) C - Live/Work (disconnected) - 25 units (5%) Total Provided = 170 units (34%)
3 pod unit - 1,350 SF A - 3 BR - 80 units (16%) B - Live/Work (connected) - 50 units (10%) Total Provided = 130 units (26%)
2 pod unit - 450 SF 2 BR - 900 SF Total Provided = 20 units (4%)
Efficiency - 450 SF 1 pod unit Total Provided = 180 units (36%)
pod permutations
ctrl + alt + del >>>
CeSRON - Center for Self reflection, Otherness and Narcissism
ctrl+alt+del : Detroit in the Age of Obsolescence >> Detroit, Michigan
Now seared by Rosa Parks Boulevard, a forgotten intersection is a silent marker of violent race riots of 1967. This is the proposed site for CeSRON, addressing the racial undertones Detroit struggles with in defining its own Other.
Thesis cover, ctrl+alt+del: Detroit in the age of obsolescence the abandoned GM factory CeSRON
“The reform of consciousness lies solely in the awakening of the world from its dream about itself.” -Karl Marx
This project addresses cultural obsolescence in the ghost town of Detroit. In our age the illusion of pure erasure seems cleanly possible. Yet, what is deemed obsolete often remains tangible, surfacing inconveniently in our physicalities and psyches. CeSRON, the proposed Center for Self Reflection, Otherness and Narcissism attempts to create a venue for the discourse of the Other of the self. It is a think-tank, an educational, interactive socio-cultural facility. Simultaneously in its form and location, the structure is a machine for glimpses of our fragmented beings. In an era of “me-generations,” self reflection is obsolete. The focus on the self has a blind spot; the spot from which the self can critically consider itself. We are reduced to mere images and lost in the reflections of our images; images which are fabricated and constructed for and by us. “Facing oneself” or acknowledging shortcomings and failures is so uncomfortable that denial, the alternative has become the standard. CesRON challenges introspection where no room for self-doubt or evaluation for the consequences of our collective actions remains.
“The I is always in the field of the other.” -Jacques Lacan
figure-ground of Detroit, 2008
URBAN
DECLINE Counterpoint to the urban explosion lies the collapse of cities. Detroit today in rapid postindustrial decline, provides a radically different dystopic landscape from its yesteryear. Its hinterland provided an eerie trail for the exploration of various facets of obsolescence, mine concerned here with the obsolescence of self reflection. Detroit battles poverty, crime and abandonment, all of which may be traced back to the racial divide prevalent in the city from its glory days. Never comfortable with the black outsider, the city saw a mass exodus or white flight after the riots of 1967. Although the city had been predominantly white before, by 1970 Detroit had become a black city. The site of the riots at the crossing of 12th and Clairmount, is residential today. Located here, CeSRON alludes to another level of cultural reflection, raising latent concerns in Detroit’s interior walk through gallery spaces detriorating community.
floor plans
building elevations
wireframe studies
self-I-other-Other collision fragmentation image distortion along the labyrinthine search for the self riots of 1967- fighting the Other skin deep, superficial understanding of the self- confined to the surface
CeSRON at night
memory >>> The John F. Kennedy Sixth Floor Museum Store + Cafe Dealey Plaza >> Dallas, Texas JFK motorcaid coming around the Grassy Knoll
installed sign in the Historic West End Preliminary sketch studies
President John F. Kennedy
* Winner, Architect Magazine’s Civic Buildings Design for the Decade, 2010 * Winner, Retailer Excellence Award, New York, 2011
The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza marks the site of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a controversial, and sensitive topic to the City of Dallas. The addition of a Museum Store and Cafe explored the rich complexity of the site’s cultural and geographic history. The client called for rebranding to establish a fresh, modern identity for the Museum in the open plaza of Dallas’ historic West End. Considering the Museum in its larger context urban relationships, adjacencies and the epxerience of the assassination were analysed. A ‘ship in a bottle’ approach encased the distinctly modern intervention in the historic shell, left untouched. The sign sets itself architecturally apart from the historic building it attaches to, and captures the building corner via rotation, tying its geometric origins to different sight and desire lines. rendered cafe
site study mapping the Museum campus
finished cafe
finished store
finished store
PLAN KEY 1- Entry 2- Cash Wrap 3- Museum Store 4- Museum Cafe 5- Cafe Service 6- Cafe Support 7- Workroom 8- Lobby
lifestyling >>> Market Street
>> Lynnfield, MA
outdoor cafes and trellised patios around Market Square the complex uses public spaces to engage and encourage play in the community
the first of its kind- Whole Foods Market’s green roof supplies produce to the cafe
Unique in its ambition amongst its project type since the economic downturn, Market Street is a mixed use development with 300,000 sf of retail space and 15,000 sf of office space. The project added approx. $1.75 million in tax revenue for Lynnfield, around 1,000 temporary jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs. The complex creates a town center atmosphere with wide pedestrian friendly streets, generous flexible public spaces and streets and landscaping to encourage people to gather, linger and engage. The Market Square and Town Green are central public spaces dotted with sculptures, playground toys and shade, flexible in their accomodation of patrons’ needs. Where people eat lunch on blankets in the summer or play chess with life sized figurines, ice skating rinks and kiosks are set up in the winter. The emphasis on outdoor cafes and scattered seating with a balanced ratio of restaurants to retail to recreation helps create a thriving center for an eager community.
rendering of Market Street complex around the Town Green showing the information kiosk and J.P. Licks building at its center
the town green fills the need of the hour, changing from a human scale chess board to a concert ground, to ice skating rink in winter months
Construction photo of the building complex
using landscaping, lights, wide streets and sculptural elements to create people friendly places
cadet space >>> Massachusetts Maritime Academy >> Buzzards Bay, MA
visualization of new entry and plaza connecting existing dorms, dining and library axes
excerpt of phased renovation plan to expand dining, rework circulation and add plaza space
aerial view of the Mass Maritime Academy campus (via Perry Dean Rogers & Assoc.)
While renovating and adding office and dining space on the Masschussetts Maritime Academy’s campus, a study of circulatory arteries of the campus led to the creation of a landmarked plaza with an iconic identity that fits in the campus’ narrative. The defined public space punctuates Cadets’ schedules as a new meeting place for pause. Inspired by the skeletal structure of a fishbone, the sculptural canopy reinforces MMA’s identity at the entry, while the new glass box addition clad in neutral zinc coated copper paneling recedes, attempting to reconcile an eclectic campus with understated neutrality. A slate wall pierces the established volume, a grounding element that forms the Academy’s Wall of Fame.
interior elevation of entry lobby and slate clad Wall of Fame
entry at new addition
color galvanized steel trellis detail
treading lightly >>> Louisiana State Visitor Center LA State Capitol to the North
Mississippi River Bridge to the West
concept collage: memory of the LA wetlands
interior perspectives
The Louisiana State Visitor Center is designed to inform and encourage explorations of the site, the city and the state. Because one must experience a place to understand it, the building recreates a journey of discovery through a landscape one must traverse to extract knowledge. Louisiana is embedded in an aqueous landscape with disappearing wetlands. Sunk into the ground, surrounded by water, the Center alludes to the fragile deltal landscape forged by the Mississippi, and attempts to make visitors aware of the precarious coastal ecosystem. The subterranean structure exploits gazebo framed views to local attractions. A grid of trees acts as a reference, broken from within by event spaces occurring along gridlines generated by the site.
site plan
view of Louisiana wetland exhibit - an interactive space for experiential displays
>> Baton Rouge, Louisiana
PLAN KEY 1- breezeway south 2- lobby/reception 2a- shower/change room 2b- restrooms 3- internet cafe 4- wetland exhibit 5- exterior/interactive exhibit 6- interior/permanent exhibit 7- storage
8- souvenir shop 9- breezeway west 10- breezeway east 11- frame: river 12- frame: pentagon 13- frame: capitol 14- frame: library 15- frame: bridge
view of exterior subterranean exhibit space
WALL SECTION KEY A- wall opening to allow run off B- copper shingle roof to shed & collect rainwater C- energy saving polysteel insulated roof plastered ceiling D- 15” exposed site cast concrete wall w/ 4” rigid insulation E- polished concrete slab on grade floor F-rainwater catchment pool used for irrigation, plumbing G- concrete pile foundation H- overflow drain pipe I- 16” site cast concrete retaining wall J- visitor park on upper level
south elevation longitudinal section
aviation >>> The Dallas Fort-Worth Airport : Terminal Renewal Program >> Dallas, Texas
C
E
A
Birds eye view of DFW Terminal A from an animation developed for the airport
excerpt of space planning diagram for Terminal C
B
D
Site plan/aerial of Dallas Fort Worth Airport showing terminal and circulatory layout finished baggage claim carrousel area
rendering of baggage claim carrousel area
still from baggage claim carrousel area animation
With the recent completion of a US $2.1B capital development program that included the highly-acclaimed International Terminal D and Skylink components, DFW Airport set out to identify the infrastructure renewal requirements for their other four terminals, (Terminals A, B, C, and E) which were part of the original construction of the airport in the mid-1970s. Corgan proposed a tiered development approach to identifying the various facility requirements for each of the terminals. In 2011, ongoing work began on the seven-year Terminal Renewal and Improvement Program to remodel the four terminals, increasing operational efficiency and enhancing the travel experience for passengers. As part of the design team, my role involved reconfiguring way-finding, circulation between land-side and air-side, baggage claim and flows, along with designs for a new parking garage, pedestrian bridges and updated concession spaces.
built walkway/curbside renovations
rendering of walkway/curbside renovations
finished concessions area at Terminal A Animation: Corgan Media Lab
still from walkway/curbside area animation
visualization of check-in and ticketing area
rendering of pedestrian circulation and proposed parking garage
inhabiting the global anonymous >>> HOGI Traveling Fellowship 2010, Dallas Center for Architecture Globalization has transformed Edo, a small fishing village into the world’s largest megalopolis
Compared to 1920 Asakusa in 2010 still preserves old functions & proportions despite updating materials & methods
Asia leads the urban shift from W to E. Tokyo was the first city to cross 10 million. At 36.6 million w/ the highest GDP of all, it is the world’s largest city
An old Shinto Shrine in Roppongi stands abutted by a shopping complex on its right and an office high rise on its left
My research fellowship to Tokyo sought to examine urban and architectural nuances established in five growing Tokyo neighborhoods resulting from ongoing globalization of popular Japanese culture. The investigation examined the megalopolis not just as built form, but as an evolving culture that inhabits built form embedded in urban context, which is the base of all architectural exploration.
Once the origin of all Japanese roads, the Nihonbashi bridge stands uncelebrated with no trace of its history
Metropolitan anonymity- What in a city’s DNA establishes its identity? Without the kimono-clad woman and the Kanji signs, would you recognize this as Tokyo? What gives a city its sense of place, and how much of that identity is mediated by its architecture? The old clarity of expression is displaced by haphazard newness in layered, kitchy, urban evolution in Tskuiji
Advances in communication and transportation have created a rich, unprecedented mixing of cultures. Globalization is about integration. The architecture of cultural absorption is not clean- old is punctuated by new, and vice-versa, in a haphazard blend of urban nostalgia. Global metropoli find common ground in this state of flux, and one immediate role of architecture is to mediate negotiations within similar cultural juxtapositions.
Expensive real estate in Ginza keeps old glamor in spirit but loses all traces of its olden fabric, rebuilt in 1823 & after WWII
Although old structures and proportions remain, the re-ordered space of the street accommodates a hybrid culture, juxtaposing salarymen, youth, and the aged alike.
Reflections of foreign-ness in youth culture. Forced to inhabit small domestic spaces, privacy is found in busy public spaces.The constructed, proper image Japan sells itself breaks down, if only momentarily.
Grounded in cyclical rebirth, Tokyo’s acceptance of impermanence solidifies its ability to start from scratch; the transformation is complete in Shinjuku (right)
Residual ‘Pet’ architecture, improvisational reworking local scales scattered in the happenstance city
Our civilization stands today at a global inflection point when for the first time in our planet’s history, the majority of the world’s population is urban. More interestingly, this metropolitan explosion is shifting eastwards, and half of the world’s largest cities are Asian. Urbanization translates into globalization, and cities across disjunct geographies resemble eachother more than their national rural counterparts.
Sprawl meanders in slivered splices. The interstitial boundaries between the two conditions are often reduced to nothing, made through abrupt joints rather than mediating connections.
The symbiotic appropriation of public spaces unexpectedly knits together the happenstance city’s infrastructure, making it come alive.
The study elicited multiple possibilities that emerge from manipulation of Tokyo’s idiosyncratically dense structure as it begins to accommodate foreign culture. Tokyo’s urban fabric was considered as an evolving organism into which culturally foreign forms and functions have been assimilated, defying its original nature. Examining the evolution of materials, methods, forms, proportions and functions, my research traced dissipating nostalgia beginning in well preserved neighborhoods like Asakusa and ending in the streets of Shinjuku, where parts of Bladerunner were filmed- so complete is its transformation from its seeding roots into a futuristic, anonymous landscape. The investigation yielded glimpses into the impacts of global assimilation on the ordinary, mundane spaces of in-habitation first hand. I am interested in the anthropological intersections of architecture, media and design which are impregnated by the stories of habitation. This then, was an opportunity for me to examine not the ‘google-able’ monuments, but the un-documented, happenstance living city that is often lost to its flashier metropolitan counterparts.
curiosities >>>
Living with Water-sinking European Cities Student Traveling Fellowship, AIA Louisiana
In trying to understand New Orleans and the repercussions of its location, I visited different European cities that negotiate within similar aqueous landscapes. While some cities resort to structural measures to modify their landscape, others adapted to it more naturally, molding their lifestyles instead. Thames flood plain Travel included the following: 1. London’s Thames Barrier built to counteract London’s glacial subsidence, surge and spring tides on the Thames, and rising sea levels. 2. Venice’s controversial MOSE Project, life in its endangered salt lagoon with depleting Venetian lagoon aquifers industrial dumping and land loss. 3. Hafencity and the warehouse district in Hamburg. 4. Pieces of the enormous Deltawerken in the Netherlands and adapting to flood prone landscape at Neeltje Jans, Amsterdam, Rotterdam 5. The canals in the city of Brugges, Belgium. Deltawerken
Amsterdam
Venice
Neeltjev Jans
[un] Veiling the Statler Hilton Professional Design Competition, AIA Dallas
This public competition sponsored by the AIA called for a neglected local landmark, the once majestic Statler Hilton to be veiled using temporary artwork. The motive was aesthetic in light of the upcoming opening of an urban park across from its premises. However, upon careful deliberation this entry opted to approach the issue from its roots, questioning the very premise of the competition. Seeing potential in un-veiling rather than veiling the Hilton’s facade, my proposal employed temporary exhibitions to revitalize public space and the structure. The themes chosen would metaphorically illustrate the best of the hotel’s 56 years shared with the Dallas community, and its own potential that lies dormant within. Concept collage: a nostalgic cinematic retrospective that brings the abandoned building to life and unifies community
The Statler facade here becomes a screen onto which films are back projected at night. Projecters connected inside transpose movies and images onto film, creating a constructed life - animating the facade as seen from the street and park and thereby transforming the adjacent urban garden into a silent outdoor theater. Films and images compiled from Dallas’ collective memory (public and private archives) showcase the style and glamour of its growing years, while integrating the experiences of its citizens. Crowds experience their city’s past and present by transformation of the sidewalk into a gallery walk, and engaging with one of America’s most endangered local landmarks.
Retrospective community exhibits during the day become movie screens at night
Back-projecting movies onto the film coated glass facade
Say Cheese,This is Architecture! Photo-exhibition
Architecture is an art of making - a process of translating intangibles into tactile form and space. Here, more than the end result, it is the progression towards it that defines the subject. The effort, the thinking, rethinking, the resulting mental (and often physical) mayhem and unending struggle to refine the concept, are what architecture really means to those who practice it. A way of life, the story of experimentation, rather than one singular final product that stands alone. Therefore, though these images may lack the sheen of a perfect, polished object, born of a single genius mind, “This is architecture indeed,” or “C’est architecture en effect.” This photo exhibition celebrates the agonizing, collaborative process, attempting to take the lens behind the gloss, both professional and academic. And, no, these pictures were not photoshopped.
graphic design A commissioned set of posters celebrates the legacy of scientist Nikola Tesla. The minimalist design sought to illuminate Tesla’s contributions to the invention of the light-bulb, often attributed entirely to Thomas Edison. The Tesla quote “We begin to think cosmically� is placed underneath his working diagram to emphasize his engagement with the bigger picture, and reiterate his contributions as a humanist thinker, far ahead of his time.
urban photography
Harajuku Girls, Tokyo
Vermeer Would See, New Orleans
NYNY, New York (Photo collage)
Plaid, Dallas
Andolan (revolution), New Delhi
Before Sunrise, Tskuiji (Tokyo)
architectural photography
Prada Store, Herzog de Meuron
Fatehpur Sikri, India
Cathedral of Hope, Philip Johnson
Trinity River Audubon Center, Antoine Predock
Tokyo Forum, Rafael Vinoly
Tama Art University Library, Tokyo
ceramics