LAUREN FISCHER PORTFOLIO 2024
CV
Lauren Fischer lfischer101@gmail.com lauren.fischer@tufts.edu
education
Tufts University (2020-2024)
BA in Architectual Studies
Minor in Urban Studies
Minor in Museums, Memory and Heritage
Senior Honors Thesis: the TechnoArchitectural Object in Grand Central Terminal (2024)
Speaker at the Boston Visual Culture Consortium Undergraduate Art History Symposium: Crossing the Collection: the Art Museum in Animal Crossing (upcoming April 2024)
work
Boston Landmarks Commission (2022) Landmark and district cataloging, research (MACRIS), and photography Recipient of Tufts Career Center Summer Grant
Tisch Library (2021-2024)
Student Lead at front desk assisting patrons and managing material loans
extracurricular
Future Histories Literary Magazine (2021-2024)
Co-chair/Head of Art and Design managing production of semesterly literary and arts magazine (view)
Tufts Architecture Society (2023-2024) member, event coordinator
Hobbies: origami, sudoku, skteching, attending art history/academic lectures (Tufts, GSD, MIT, NESAH)
programs
Autodesk (AutoCAD, Inventor, 3dsmax)
Rhino
Revit
Adobe (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator)
ArcGIS
Microsoft suite
1. the cute big box
Theories and practices on cuteness in architecture is a topic rarely explored, and cute buildings far and few between. Furniture, clothes, objects, interiors; but also music, color, place. If all of these can be cute, then where are the cute buildings?
There are many potential reasons as to why cute buildings are not a common typology, but one is likely due to the fact that buildings are just big, and cuteness associated more with smallness. The big box is the pinnacle of an anti-cute structure; it’s sheer size overwhelms the human scale, it’s depths discomforting, it’s shell hollow.
But what if a building could embrace both cuteness and a big boxiness? I wanted to design a building that did not use cuteness to combat the big box (or vice versa), but one that embraced both qualities.
I started with those characteristics that cuteness and the big box share: namely, their flatness and scaled proportions. The big box struggles to be cute because the proportion between the building and the human is too large to harmonizeinstead, I designed a warehouse whose “occupants” are semi-trucks, and their doors and walkways scaled appropriately. Circulation and navigation, generally tricky for the drivers of semis, is easier and pleasant — things not necessarily cute, but whose lack is not cute.
Thus, cuteness is not a matter of form alone (proportion, curve, color), but the framework through which this building’s program is realized.
site movement intervention | plan
photo
2. building analysis
FAH 0097: Adv. Architectural Design | The Big Dumb Box (2023) Rhino
A design/material analysis of the front facade of 2443 Massachussetts Avenue, Cambridge. Pattern and color disguise the asymmetries of building and site.
3. bigness
An imagined building/city that is infinitely expandable, defined by “rooms” and “halls”. There are a set number of room types, to which all programs must conform. Both rooms and halls facilitate and restrict access; large, cross-shaped walls intersect the grid at its topography, mirroring the way that real city grids must either concede to preexisting landscape or change it, while passage throughout individual rooms provides shortcuts and byways.
4. fine arts I
AP Studio Art: Drawing (2020)
24” x 30”
5. accesory dwelling unit
FAH 0096: Architectural Design (2023) AutoCAD, Photoshop
ADU for a house in Medford, MA that provides yard space and privacy for all occupants by bisecting the yard and placing ADU windows outwards instead of towards the main house. The design of the ADU is meant to invoke the sensation of sinking underwater and looking towards the surface.
6. dream house
FAH 0092: From Drawing to Building (2022) AutoCAD
A house reflexive of its surrounding landspace in material and arrangement. A series of skylights and large windows opens the home up to its surroundings, and the rooms cascade downwards from the main entrance, following the slope of the hill it sits on.
elevation section
sketch
7. chair
FAH 0096: Architectural Design (2023) AutoCAD
A chair/stool designed for multiple modes of sitting: sitting in the chair backwards accomodates and provides support for slouching forwards whilst working.
model
8. fine arts II
AP Studio Art: Drawing (2020)
DRWM: Drawing: Mixed Media (2022)
FAH 0092: From Drawing to Building (2022)
12” x 24”
9. the magic lamp
EC 0018: Computer Aided Design (2022)
AutoCAD, 3dsmax
axonometric
A miniature wizard’s tower contained within a lamp.
interior render
interior render
side panel detail
panel dimension
10. corner/center
FAH 0097: Adv. Architectural Design | The Big Dumb Box (2023) Rhino
An invesitgation into and extrapolation from the decorative corner piece of door trims. the mass-manufactured, idyosyncratically- employed block, in the monumental scale, transforms from surface covering into the form of the building itself.
collage
thanks for reading!
Lauren Fischerlfischer101@gmail.com