Kate O’Connor koco1234@vt.edu
studio work
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Monastary in Riva San Vitale
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Lincoln Center Boutique (New York, NY)
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Fire Station (VSAIA Competition)
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Urban Lab Observatory in Cincinnati, Ohio
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Paris National Opera Addition: Opera Atelier
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Watershed Observatory
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“Exquisite Corpse� Park: Sewage Treatment Plant Renewal
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Southwest Virginia Train Station (VSAIA Competition)
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Museum of Wildfire (Third Year Competition)
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Architectural Folly
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School for the High Wire (Second Year Competition)
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Daylight Lamp
graphic design
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Marketecture : Design for an Architectural Practice
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Event Posters: Screenprinted Work
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Undergraduate Research Journal : Layout Design
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Album art: Colliage and Screenprinted Work
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Undergraduate Research Institute : Marketing Design
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Europe Portfolio : Sketches + Photography
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Egypt Portfolio : Sketches + Photography
study abroad
studio work
monastery Virginia Tech Travel Studio Project The monastery is sited behind a 16th century chapel in southern Switzerland. The bare, wooden shell of the building receives the shadow of the church in the morning and is ďŹ lled with warm light from the setting sun in the evening.
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The monastery’s circulation is inspired by the rhythm and space of the bells in the adjacent church. As they move, the bells have a consistent, vertical center while the spaces of the periphery oscillate between being enclosed and open. The outdoor stair behaves similarly, snaking through the building’s skin to give the public access to the monk’s rooftop zen garden.
lincoln center boutique GSAPP NY/P Studio
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The project is sited in the Lincoln Center opera house. The time lapse drawing (left) of tights being put on began a study of regidity in warped textiles. The ďŹ nal design consists of a studio space, a retil space, a secondary staircase and moments for display.
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A system of slits in the Neoprene material, informed by the opera’s window pattern, warp into apertures, stairs, storage, and spaces where the material deforms. To understand the intervention’s interaction with the existing building, the working drawing for the project was laced with strips of paper, turning it into a concept model.
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fire station VSAIA Competition
Mapped into the inner walls of the firehouse is the landscape of Beauregard. The firefighters work and train in a cavernous space sunk into the ground and open to the elements. During the day, strips and pockets of sunlight move across the walls. Their patterns, made by the topographic grid, recall the chaos of natural order. Background Image: Shadows produced by the building’s skin.
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urban lab observatory Third Year Studio Project
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The ULO is wrapped in a translucent ribbon of pre-oxidized perforated steel. The steel shapes the landscape of the site and the shell of the building by hugging the forms of programmed public spaces. The plaza, exhibition hall, café, galleries, and circulation define the movement of the ribbon. The ribbon in turn gives a form to the site and a canvas for the private spaces to begin to fill in around the structure.
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opera house addition GSAPP NY/P Studio Project
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A series of sections through the Garnier Opera House, taken every sixteen feet along a path through the lobby and into the foyer, became the pattern for a modular, woven intervention (see previous page for diagram). The designer’s studio, with cafÊ, observation decks and support spaces, is woven onto the facade of the opera.
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watershed observatory Third Year Studio Project
The dimensions of the Water Plaza are based on the human body when submerged. The spaces are folded and pinched from a single plane to create a multi-faceted surface. The site for the Watershed Observatory oods every summer. Half the year, the pools become galleries. The concrete walls retain the memory of every new ood.
SCALES AND EXPERIENCES
RESEARCH FACILITY
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WEST ELEVATION
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the exquisite path Gensler Houston Intern Project When bored or creatively blocked, the surrealists liked to play a game called The Exquisite Corpse to spark their imaginations. One artist would draw a head, one a torso, and the last artist drew the legs and feet of a creature. This project designed a game that would invite local artists to play a design-build version of the surrealist game and slowly make an old industrial site a public art park. The installations reframe the existing conditions of the site through a set of rules that guide a path through the infrastructure. The rendering and plan (right) are an example of how the game could manifest into a park.
Path diverges and bends
Path rises and oats
Path lifts and twists
Path folds vertically and widens
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train station VSAIA Three-Day Competition
The sun enters through clerestory windows, illuminating a at, white wall on the north side of the station. Ambient light bounces onto solid marble surfaces. In the winter, the sun passes through the train, creating a shadow on the wall. People in the lobby can watch the shadows of travelers coming and going on the platform.
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museum of wildfire Competition
During a ďŹ re, the architecture of the forest inverts. The creation of smoke is a transition of mass. Matter burns away into void and void becomes dense with darkness. Visitors inhabit the conventionally solid or structural parts of the building. The retaining wall is an entrance and slabs are hollowed into galleries. Spaces that would typically be occupied are dedicated instead to structural elements. Slumped glass and clear columns construct the void between oors.
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architectural folly Second Year Studio Project
Inspired by fashion designer Issey Miyake’s APOC line, the pieces of the folly all come puzzle-like from a single plane. The folly is situated in a clearing with a spiralling platform on one side and a curved wall on the other. Sound projects upward from the platform, ampliďŹ ed by the structure, and reverberates through the clearing, using the wall and surrounding trees to contain the noise.
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school for the high wire Second Year Competition
The walker climbs the red, weathering steel tower, over the spiny practice structures and the placid reflecting pool. Below, in the underground library, students of the wire study what the walker is about to undertake. Spectators from the nearby college campus wade through the long stalks of grass; this unkempt and wild place does not usually draw a crowd. The walker’s legs are a drum roll; rhythmically moving from rung to rung. One hand reaches the platform, then another. The walker climbs up and stands surrounded by the emptiness of the sky. The first step is to the platform’s edge. The next one is into the air.
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daylight chandelier Industrial Design Project
Parametric lamp scripted in Grasshopper for Rhino.
graphic design
design for a professional practice
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EAGE IM IMAG r ur and ouand o
TEAM TEAM
Ryan Gosling Ryan Gosling Design + BusinessDesign + Business BachelorsCPI, of Architecture: CPI, 2008 Bachelors of Architecture: 2008 MBA: Harvard MBA: Harvard University, 2012 University, 2012
Kathleen O’Connor Kathleen O’Connor Design + Marketing Design + Marketing Bachelor’s Architecture: VT, 2013 Bachelor’s of Architecture: VT,of2013 Leed Certified Leed Certified 12
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FLEX SCHE
DIC NOMA CE TI PR AC
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CASUAL DRESS
MARKET POP-UP
MARKET POP-UP
WORK SPACE MEETING SPACE
STORAGE
REAM AIRST FIT O RETR
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+ table saw + band saw + welder + air hammer
WORK SPACE MEETING SPACE
STORAGE
REAM ROFIT
18’
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FLEXIBLE SCHEDULE
CASUAL DRESS
+ table saw + band saw + welder + air hammer
During the spring and summer the practice locates for six to eight weeks at a time, finding work at farmers markets and outdoor festivals. During the winter, the firm locates in a small house and workshop garage in Austin, Texas. For those colder months, the partners produce models, furniture, and other handmade goods to sell regionally and in markets around the country in the spring. Because projects revolve around markets, so does Mrketecture’s workweek schedule. In places where the markets are on weekends, the partners can take a different day off work, keeping the 5-day workweek. Both partners pay for private insurance and bennefits revolve around successfully completed jobs.
CHANGE IS THE ONLY ROUTINE
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Published book outlining the design of a firm for a Professional Practice course.
screenprinted event posters
NIKKI GIOVANNI and VIRGINIA TECH HONORS PRESENT
PULITZER PRIZE WINNING JOURNALIST &
AUTHOR OF THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS
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journal design
Pursuing research in the liberal arts and human sciences?
Submit your work for consideration in the next issue of Philologia If you are an undergraduate student at Virginia Tech working on a research project in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, here is your chance to get published. Please submit your manuscripts for peer review by 5:00 PM, September 17, 2010 to: Philologia Undergraduate Research Journal 232 Wallace Hall Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA 24061 For submission guidelines go to: www.philologia.clahs.vt.edu
VIRGINIA TECH College of
Do you dream of writing a best-seller? Or being a legislator? Maybe you’d like to anchor the evening news, work in the fashion industry, or serve as a school administrator. Whether your dream is to be a diplomat or a pilot, Virginia Tech’s College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences can prepare you to realize it. Hot specialties may come and go, but a broad education lasts a lifetime. It is important to master not only job skills, but also the intellectual skills a liberal arts education develops. The College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences encourages students to apply knowledge from one field to another and to think creatively. Our alumni are making their marks in the worlds of business, industry, entertainment, education, government, and research. You can join them. Explore your options in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences.
For more information: http://www.clahs.vt.edu/
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Seams by Chelsea Gillenwater
Marlie Steiner was sixteen when she found the edge of the world in her backyard. She lived in a tiny house on the east side of the Clinch River, folded between a grassy hill and a sharp outcropping of rock. The house itself was little more than a wooden shack, with creaking floors and a sloping roof. All were held together only by hope and a few ten-penny nails. There was a tree growing right at the edge of the house with branches that looked like they were about to break through the second-story windows. Wild weed-flowers grew in patches along the front porch. Beyond the backyard fence was a forest so deep she couldn’t tell where it ended. Marlie lived with her insane Aunt Ketchie and two younger twin sisters, Toddie and Jenalee. A year before, her parents had died in a car accident on the interstate. Afterwards, social services had taken a flurry of “investigative measures.” Men and women who were suddenly worried about their living conditions had come pouring into their house. It wasn’t until Aunt Ketchie stepped in as their guardian that everything settled down. Only, it
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The Vultures by Christian Harder
Outside of Tuzantla, the Tierra Caliente Desert gets comfortable and stretches out. Mountains break the horizon, but they are desert too. Chayo drives with his eyes closed. As the teacher, he has done this many times. I’m sweating through my open-neck shirt. The truck is not sure about all this and goes slowly. The vultures follow us. Mother told me their eyes are del Diablo. They’re upset at our intrusion, the early hours being theirs. It’s like the movies; the demons want a sacrifice. The two men in the truck bed, los cautivos, are silent. I pity them because you’ve at least got to make noise. In movies, the captives always make noise. Before sunrise, we broke their doors and shoved past their wives and took them by the wrists. We tied them in the truck bed, and the wives cried but did not touch us. There was a lot of excitement. It was new and fun, like visiting a strange place. We drove through town with them, past the zócalo and its markets; the early hagglers pinched pesos and maize. Chayo wanted to go through town so the people would see. See and understand, he said. Some people waved at us. I felt the
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Graphics, page design and cover art for the 2010 and 2011 issues of Philologia, the Undergraduate Research Journal of Liberal Arts at Virginia Tech.
screenprinted collage
Screen Printed /Collaged Album Cover Art
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marketing design
Undergraduate Research Institute
Logo design and marketing for the Undergraduate Research Institute.
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study abroad
europe travel portfolio
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egypt travel portfolio
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