Joseph M. Mwaisaka - Part II Architectural Assistant Portfolio

R E S U M E :

A creative, proactive and passionate individual with 4 years in experience. I possess a keen eye on detail, an awareness on RIBA Stages 0 - 4 and exceptional design & presentation skills. A decent knowledge on both UK and Kenya building codes alongside professional communication skills to interact with most levels of management and with clients.

Part 2 Architectural Assistant

June 2021 - Present

London, UK

Currently working on high profile residential, commercial and luxury projects whilst pursuing my Part3 studies.

July 2017 - July 2019

Kenya

Graduate Architect

Promoted to an architect (Part II equivalent) after a year. I worked on residential projects, office buildings and industrial projects and collaborated with colleagues in the office as a team. As an architect I worked on projects from Stage 0 alongside the principal architect and headed the project team onwards to Stage 4.

Feb 2017 - May 2017

Graduate Architect

Pakistan

As a 10-team studio, I worked regularly alongside the principal architect. Projects ranged from residential ones to community centres. My expertise mostly covered conceptual designs and technical drawings.

2019 - 2021

Masters in Architecture

The Architectural Imagination course

Bachelors in Architecture

Certificate for Secondary Education

Sheffield, UK

2017 - 2018

Online, EDX

2012 - 2016

Karachi, Pakistan

2007 - 2010

Kenya

Honourable Mention

Winner #2

Finalist

A project surrounding the hydrocrisis and hydropolitics of Sarajevo and how a river can heal these shared wounds

Sarajevo is facing a severe water crisis. The underground water infrastructure in the city was heavily bombed during the siege of Sarajevo and only 1/3 of the water supplied makes it to the community as the rest is wasted away along the damaged pipelines. Cutoffs in the water supply are regular and are mainly prioritised for industrial and construction projects in the city as the crisis ravages the mahalas (residential zones). Miljacka, the city’s glorified natural water resource, cuts through the city but it is polluted and flooding as months go by. The only Waste Water Treatment Plant running in the city was damaged and looted during the siege but is inadequate to address growing demands of clean drinkable water. EU grants offered to the Bosnian government to address the crisis are to date unaccounted for further fueling both political and social unrest in the capital. Social exercises such as competitive diving, swimming and sun bathing that once flourished along the Miljacka are slowly dying out. Hydrosocial Futures is a manifesto triggered by this crisis and tries to assess how architecture can play an integral role in feasible solutions in the future of this post-conflict city whilst at the same time re-establish the social chemistry the people have with its river.

The project is divided into two phases: Mapping the Miljacka and The Hydrosocial Masterplan. Mapping the river was a studio task on approaching the hydrocrisis on a small scale 1:1 object exercise. Within the same timeframe, a hydrosocial masterplan focused on the building scale of the hydrocrisis. A derelict power station repurposed into a filtration hub formed a major part of the hydrosocial plan proposed to provide free filtered water from the Miljacka river and reinstate the community’s diving competitions and introduce swimming in the river’s waters. An extensive riverfront and a hydropower bridge form the next integral parts of this hydrosocial scheme while other important parts of it will be strategically placed and linked along the Miljacka.

Bosnia & Herzegovina

Sarajevo

1: MAPPING THE MILJACKA

Staged for a resilient 2031 the Miljacka Cleanup Protocol is the first phase of my response to the hydrocrisis. It’s an AI based program cataloguing the ever changing river tracking both the pollutants and biodiversity present. Predicted rise in water levels, the extent of pollution, the range of underwater species present are all recorded by the MCP program. It makes use of a sophisticated Track And Trace device to scan the river and feed live data straight to the MCP database, facilitated by an MCP software accessible on all windows, android and ioS devices.

PHASE

A sustainable alternative water source for the people and a call for a city more engaged with its river frames the brief for a centre that supplies free filtered water from the Miljacka and reinvigorates social activities along its banks. It starts with restoring and reintroducing the bentbasa diving competition. The city’s first hydrosocial activity. The first stage of filtering Miljacka’s waters will then start as a pre-treatment process underneath the Vijecnica public square. From this new water square, the water makes its way along the distribution channel where also TAT devices will be positioned for scanning the Miljacka. The old and derelict Walter’s Power Station at the heart of the city welcomes the later stages of filtration and will serve as the public’s first ever filtration square.

In this age of climate change adaptation, welcoming the flood is one of the specific sustainable principles embraced as a bold and ambitious design strategy for the site. The new build retrofit spaces are proposed at 900mm above the flood risk zone on the site thus creating a cavity through which the river waters pass through, to flood the civic forum. Any excess flood water is then channelled away from the city and site for storm water collection.

Once outside, the riverfront that was once a parking zone is lively again bringing the public a little closer to the Miljacka waters. Walter’s Bridge, the filtration hub and an extensive riverfront paint the picture of one of the few initiatives dotted along the river.

The filtration square, now actively hosting diving competitions prior to Sarajevo’s winter olympics, engages the river once more with the locals.

Filtration chambers

The flooded civic forum

Filtration chambers

Miljacka view

A community culinary centre based on the Wicker that responds to its unique demographic and discusses healthy futures

Sheffield boasts the largest population of African Caribbean communities in the UK. One out of every 33 individuals is African Caribbean. The Sheffield District and African Caribbean Community Association, SADACCA, is a community centre that caters for events and services for the African Caribbean community in the Wicker and all around Sheffield. A huge number of restaurants and food joints coupled with the cultures present on the Wicker brings about a diverse array of food. Culinary Futures aims to explore this variation of its people by means of a culinary centre that shares an academic symbiosis with its unique demographic whilst challenging the discourse of sustainable healthy diets both now and in the inevitable future. This involved an assessment of the productionconsumption-waste chain to determine what sustainable measures could be put into place. Zero Hunger, one of the 17 UN Sustainable Development goals is to form a vital part of the scheme as it helps influence a sustainable use of food resources.

As part of Studio Collaborative Production this year, we will be investigating the Wicker, its reconnection to the city and its potential of hosting a new form of higher education campus. Physical connections between studio projects all happening in the Wicker will take the form of green thoroughfares and pedestrian routes such as a proposed maker’s route, learning, wellbeing and civic routes. Culinary Futures, in this collaborative studio response will aim to establish a centre that responds to the diversity as mentioned, and the need for an civic institution for the people.

United Kingdom

Wicker

Once the schemes and drafts are consolidated the Culinary centre rises overlooking the neighbourhood.

As much as it’s a culinary centre, the WCC still remains an active sociocultural venue for all residents of the Wicker. The center will host social events in association with SADACCA to celebrate the diversity present and the memorable community events that defined the social status of the Wicker during the windrush period.

An observatory deck above the Nemrut Volcano overseeing lake Van in Nemrut, Turkey

The thought one has of Nemrut is that of being a mound, pre-Pleistocene. Reshapened from its implosion, this almost pyramidal mound morphed into the concave vacuum that exists now. What this implosion or destruction creates from the imposing mound, is an emptiness. A hollowness of the earth. A chaotic marvel.

To be part of this marvel is not to become merely an edifice, but to exist as an agent of it.

To orchestrate a journey. To intricately nurture and revere the experiential qualities of the itinerary. Ironically, from a time when flame and basalt sprung violently from its core, water now rests on this caldera. An accelerated influx of people is now to be welcomed upon the very site on an observation deck to view the caldera and lake . . .

To harness a thought-mechanism for a project such as this, we begin by envisioning an experience preserved. A sensuous journey for you. The user. The Subject

You are to be embroiled in the frenzy, atmosphere and environs that surround you. A path towards the deck and the deck itself are the primary architectural pieces to be conjured here. In this case, the itinerary (path) is to conclude itself at a terminus (deck). The subject, itinerary and terminus are all part of one panoptic experience, which to be conceived has to reflect the narrative of the nature that surrounds the site. Through it all, throughout the itinerary, anything that borrows from the architecture or the architecture influences is but a mechanism to this sensuous experience.

The footbridge is the prologue to the ultimate piece. Like every other part of this itinerary, it venerates the site and context. Built close enough to the caldera’s peak, the path places the subject close enough to the experience of viewing Nemrut. It starts at the ski-lift station where it is built above soil, and it slowly recedes into the earth once you’re close to approaching the deck. The act of having it sunken or ‘chiselled’ into the earth manifests the notion that the path here is subordinate to the very site itself. It is to stand back, become one with the site and become an agent to the overall experience. Being beneath the earth both physically and metaphorically sort of coheres the poetry of the narrative with the reverence that ensues. That way, it conforms to the place and its sensuous experience thus becoming a subservient but inseparable entity of the whole.

The caverns of Cappadocia exist as a valuable narrative on the collaboration between man and the volcanic landscape in Turkey. Like the caldera, the caverns in Cappadocia exemplify the notion of how volcanic activity can sometimes be a constructive force of nature. Sourcing from the narrative, the entrance voids of the observation deck seek to mimic, if not entirely resemble, the entrances to the Cappadocian caverns thus intertwining the architecture with the iconicity of its cultural context. An accelerated influx of people move past this ‘fumaroleshaped’ entry-way and are welcomed onto the platform.

As a whole, the observation deck becomes a reflection of the caldera. Its size borrows from the geographical scale to become almost synonymous to the experiential qualities that are to be preserved here. It demands to become as vast as it is but constrained within our anthropometric scale so as to engage the subject in a conversation. Ambiguity is embodied in the ‘emptiness’ of the platform. It is within this ‘hollow’ space that the caldera itself is echoed. The one sole utilitarian aspect of it all is to be a platform upon which the subject is to view the entirety of Nemrut. The ‘walls’ thus become encroaching elements that dictate the spatial limits of the platform, receding in height as one approaches the tip so as to offer 360 views of both Nemrut and the lake. Here, not only are the formal and spatial attributes of a caldera mimicked, but the experiential qualities preserved. This new understanding of the site is then fueled by this rediscovery of the landscape.

...The observation point becomes Nemrut, in ergonomic microcosm.

The future-tall of planetary repatriation in Linfen, Shanxi CHINA.

In the 1990’s the wave of industrialization and urbanisation engulfed China thus leading to increased energy demand that fell suspect to the heightened price of coal. Later this conceived a rapid expansion of loosely regulated private mines…a human error that birthed severe environmental damage. At the southern end of Shanxi province lies Linfen, one of China’s prefectural cities formerly known as the ‘Modern Fruit and Flower Town’ owing to its intrinsic agricultural biotopes before the industrial revolution swept in, in 1979. Despite several mitigation policies, Linfen as of now is among the world’s most polluted cities. Every year, 750,000 people in China are killed by air pollution. The State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) initiated the closure of 197 large coal-fired boilers and more than 600 miniature ones in the city. After a 2.1% fall in coal production in 2014, The China National Coal Association (CNCA) predicted that full year production will depreciate by 2.5% every year, but as of last year, more than 28% of the world’s carbon emissions (10.3 billion tons) was traced back to China. The citizens of Linfen have now been reduced to air masks or risk contracting cancer, pulmonary diseases and other respiratory illnesses.

Linfen’s disaster is universal…mirrored in its metaphysical level by cities worldwide. CO2 emissions are now rising at 2% per year. Twice as rapidly as they did in the last 3 decades of the 20th Century and further analysis affirms that the cost of limiting climate change could double without carbon capture technology. With our stratosphere poisoned, temperatures will rise by 2 degrees, threatening 15 – 40 species with extinction. Our biotopes are dying, our flora and fauna declining yet we still favour building for man rather than the environment. Maybe it’s high time we designed skyscrapers for nature…

China Shanxi Linfen

Inspired by the processes that constitute respiration, Alveolus, (肺肺 Fèipào in Mandarin) is a skyscraper that works as a colossal urban air purifier. It captures pollutants such as smog from the atmosphere, through large vents that suck in great amounts of air which is later on channelled into aluminized air bags or ‘air sacs’ for compression into smaller volumes. The 3 ‘air sacs’ take turns in this methodical process channelling the compressed smog into containment chambers where researchers analyse the captured air. After analysis, it is later on released into the Activated Carbon Chambers. Here, scientists and researchers make use of filter panels containing coconut-shell activated carbon to capture smog and CO2 particles due to the vast surface area and extremely porous nature of the adsorbent (activated carbon). A regeneration centre with the electrochemical cell is situated nearby the chambers in order to restore and reuse the carbon adsorbent. After channelling the mixture through the Activated Carbon Chambers, the air passes through the vertical farm where it is naturally purified and released into the city. Alveolus exhibits a housing scheme developed primarily to house its working staff and tourists who wish to travel and explore this floatscraper. The housing scheme boasts 3D printed residential units, walkways and 3 elevators that transform the space into a microcosmic urban village. A vertical farm working on hydroponic systems is located below to feed the residents. Energy for the building is sourced from an ion based power facility that generates high voltage electricity from naturally occurring ions in the air. This electricity is also used in the electrolysis chamber that takes in water from the tank and produces oxygen for the village and hydrogen gas for inflating the doughnut blimp.

Vertical farm

Vipingo Ridge is a calm and serene location with amazing views towards the coastal beach. This four bedroom villa was proposed within a 1-acre plot within the Vipingo Ridge scheme. The wish here was to let the residence embody the atmosphere and natural landscape of the site. The coastal architectural language of the region proved vital in understanding how this relationship could materialise into form, space and order. I personally led the project with the guidance of the principal architect as we negotiated with the client on a design-build contract from RIBA stages 0 - 5. The building handover was executed in early 2019.

V I P I N G O R I D G E R I D G E V I L L A M o m b a s a , K e n y a 2017

A collaborative project with the principal architect, we developed a series of schemes for the Mombasa Affordable housing project. Understanding the core issues of what’s affecting affordable housing in the coastal region we conceived a transformable module dictated by the freedom of a 4m X 4m grid system. This allowed the first prototype (a studio) to be transformed further into a 3-bedroom unit. Use of locally available materials was paramount for the humid conditions they addressed in Mombasa and the grid system would then allow the units to be part of a greater residential flats proposal.