I look forward to pursuing an interdisciplinary career in which I will be able to explore, mix, and cross the bounds of architecture, design, and representation.
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ilicity: The Vertical Fantastical Degree Project Spring 2022
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Strange Realms: The Secular Sacred Degree Project Research Fall 2021
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Intimate Delay: RLD RE-Imagined ARCH 401 Fall 2020
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Potato Hangover ARCH 402 Spring 2021
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56 Gold St: Millenial Dwelling ARCH 301 Fall 2019
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Teton Residence Immersive Architecture Spring 2022
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iliCity:
The Vertical Fantastical by Mariana Orellana + Anna Kondrashova Critiqued by: Adam Elstein + Frank Gesualdi + Saul Anton Degree Project / Spring 2022
The tower of ilicity is an exquisite-corpse that explores the duality of life in the urban city. Similarly to the SoHo block, the tower stitches together familiar, essential and mundane elements into a randomized agglomeration of components. This stitching together of random parts is both a social and a spatial condition, that challenges the occupant as they experience the assemblage through the lens of dirty realism. Our project seeks to understand the conditions of the SoHo block, extracting the dynamics of overlayed and adjacent programs, functional elements and the remainder spaces. By acknowledging grey zones as essential elements in urban planning, the tower of iliCity integrated the remainder spaces as a symbiotic and un-detatchable element of its composition. The project makes a statement by blurring the line between built, social, and even political grey zones that exist as a reality within contemporary life, and will keep existing and grwoing as one as humanity evolves.
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Unit geometries created from a study on the degrees of privacy pertaining to the most common program types found: residential, commercial, and venue.
A Truchet aperiodic tiling system was designed, in which the remainder space was always considered as the essential Grey-zone. 7
Inspired by the work of Rachel Whiteread, the grey-zones of the aggregation were manifested as positive space, revealing their spatial affordances for user and mis-user interpretations. 8
Tower section showing the contrasting conditions between the licit and ilicit activity interacting with each other within the bounds of the aggregation.
The tower of iliCity existsas a speculation of a vertical city in which spaces for misuse and ilicit acts are acknowledged as a growing reality, and considered yet left undesigned during the process of urban planning.
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Strange Realms: The Secular Sacred
by Mariana Orellana + Anna Kondrashova Critiqued by: Adam Elstein + Frank Gesualdi + Saul Anton Degree Project Research / Fall 2021
Sacred spaces are concealed wthin plain sight. That which is sacred for some might be overseen as a simple landmark by others. The manifestation of the secular sacred becomes a ritualistic process in which the individual is allowed to experience a shift of behavioral and social dynamics within intangible bounds. Sacred spaces are and have always been heterotopic in nature, as described by Michel Foucault. Through a critical engagement of the individidual with themselves and their sorroundings, a realm strange to the mundane is accessed and temporarily experienced for activity that is not considered ordinary within the stereotypical daily routine. This research project explroes the meaning of sacred space within modern urbanism. By considering the qualities and affordances of strange yet familiar spaces that surround us, the project invites individualistic activity that falls out of social norm but becomes essential in the funcioning of the city as a whole. Said spaces become parasitic to the ordinary city and begins to grow symbiotically with it.
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The city is replete with spaces for ‘nobody’ --zones we are familiar with yet overlook and dont consider their occupancy. Such spaces present heterotopic qualities that potentially could be used to manifest sacred space.
Participants of the Wiccan religion participate in Magic Circle rituals that consist on the tracing of a circle on unused ground in order to manifest the sacred connection to otherworldy realms in ground which was once mundane. The sacred space becomes temporary, as it vanishes once the ritual ends. 15
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By taking the city’s negative space and those activities that have been neglected by social and legal norm, the project’s site and program is found.
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The negative space of the city becomes the hub for the parasitic project that will begin to grow, offering users strange realms within the urban fabric that allow for a shift of dyamics and behavior --sacred space-- that can be found at any corner of the city.
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Intimate Delay:
Red Light District RE-Imagined by Mariana Orellana Critiqued by: Jason Lee ARCH 401 / Fall 2020
De Wallen Red Light District in Amsterdam has become one of the city’s main historical and tourist centres. However, current conditions have not presented all it’s user types with the possibility of civic engagement. The sex worker has become objectified and their rights have not been considered as important, leading to a chain of consequences affecting their quality of life socially, politically and economically. This projects seeks to spatially reclaim RLD spaces and gshifting its power dynamics to allow for the striving of the sex worker as the oweners of the space. Through secret passages that delay the transaction, the sex worker is able to showcase themselves and consider the client through a series of micro-exposed spaces that then open up to a bigger stage-like atmosphere. This way the sex worker becomes protected and has the authority to allow or deny a transaction. Additionally, the re-imagined RLD offers more public market areas that are unexposed to the sex work, in which sex workers have the possibility to participate as sellers for additional icnome, as well as tourists to experience more than the sexual program.
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These typologies of public space become essential in the understanding of civic infrastructure that hybridizes intimate and social space. Leaving space for two different user types to experience the same space differently simultaneously.
A prototype introducing the sex worker cabins was made in order to study the passageways and allley condition that could lead to the hidden yet micro-exposed cabiins. Here, the public market and the sex work program exist simultaneously but visually separate from eachother.
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The alley-like condition found on site was replicated and intensified in order to design a space that played with micro and macro exposure. The model below, shows how the project sits on site. The project engages the program within while not leaving out the historical experience surrounding it.
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By overlaying the floor plans of the project, one can begin to see the multi-engaged space for all user types, prioritizing the sex worker’s safety and the tourist’s engagement with the district.
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Potato Hangover:
Agroponic Megastructures by Mariana Orellana Critiqued by: Jonathan Scelsa ARCH 402 / Spring 2021
Potato Hangover considers a new way of introducing the growth of one of America’s most consumed crops — the potato — onto the Harlem River. Spanning over the east side of the existing Third Avenue Bridge, the suspended megastructure serves the community with an urban potato farm, while also creating a sublime experience in which the nature of farming and the high-tech infrastructure becomes a new engaging reality for the community passing by. An inflated weaved-cylinder geometry informs an occupiable roof in which the aeroponic practices occur. Potato Hangover considers the intersectionality between potato growing and the sports culture found around the Bronx and Harlem neighborhood through a rainwater collection system shared by the aeroponics and the sports running tracks, locker rooms, rock climbing walls and docks proposed below the shed. Vehicle and truck traffic is re-imagined while also serving as a network that distributes and connects smaller versions of the shed throughout the neighborhood, expanding the system throughout an urban scale. Potato Hangover responds to the climate crisis through the facilitation of new green jobs, cutting down rural-urban truck transportation and bringing attention to the existence of agroponic solutions into the day-to-day of an urban community.
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A roof pattern was designed with geometric interpretation of what the potato crop would require to grow: dips and pitches.
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This geometry would then be suspended through tension cables and inflated in the middle to create and occupiable production area.
Studying aeroponic systems allowed for a realization for the need of a double layer space for growing that involved dark zones for the downward root growth and open zones for the crop flower.
The site’s stakeholders considered sports as an essential additional program for the area.
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The facility was designed as a megastrutural system that bridges over the Harlem River, providing green production as well as sports programs for the community.
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Additionally, smaller structures are spread throughout the site generating water and recreational stations that feed from the same aeroponic system
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56 Gold St
Millenial Dwelling by Mariana Orellana + Anna Kondrashova Critiqued by: Leonard Leung ARCH 301 / Fall 2019
56 Gold Street is a proposal for a microhousing residential tower programmed for young professionals wanting to live in Brooklyn, NY. The project’s concept is driven by the story behind its users: Brooklyn-based Millenials. It was important for us to create an Instagrammable and stress free atmosphere for the young residents that would also open up for the rest of the community. We accomplished these types of spaces by incoorporating dynamic, visually sequential and eye-captivating spaces that allow for rock climbing, skateboarding, and street art display. As for the stress relieving aspect, Hydroponic farming is accesible throughout most of the building, creating constant green spaces for mind cleansing as well as for sustainable living.
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The bedroom units are stacked along three towers, all arond a central rock climbing core. The distribution was designed under the constraints of micro-living.
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The facade system consists on perforations that add to the instagrammable aspect of the projects, yet also giving the building porousness and cohesion with the green corners composed by the hydroponic walls.
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The first two levels are left open to the public, allowing the community to enjoy of the programmatic narrative of the building.
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Teton Residence:
Nothing is as Good as it Seems by Mariana Orellana Critiqued by: Sebastian Misiurek Immersive Architecture SP 22’
This rendering project consisted on taking an existing single-family home designed by Ro-Rocket Design, and reproducing it as a 3D model in Rhino 3D to then generate renderings with engines such as Enscape and Twinmotion. Through techniques of immersive renderings, a first series of idealistic and photorealistic renderingswere produced through Enscape. Later on, a video animation was made in which the house was transformed and rendered in order to create a horror narrative through film. In this narrative the once perfect house becomes haunted during the night. Through weather effects, materiality and cinematographical techniques, a horro short film was produced with Twinmotion.
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Scan to watch final animated short film. 44