Matthew Rolston Architecture
Portfolio
Matthew Rolston MatthewARolston@Gmail.com 484 554 2587
Experience
Education
DOWA-IBI Group
University of Oregon
Portland, OR Architectural Designer Jun 2018 - Present
Portland, OR Masters of Architecture Sep 2017 / June 2019
Worked on new K-12 school projects in the Portland area, from design development through finalized construction documents. Made site visits to survey existing structures and supervise ongoing projects under construction.
Specialization in Historic Preservation Courses: National Historic Register, Media in Design Development, Masonry, Building Enclosures
Northeastern University BAR Architects San Francisco, CA Junior Designer Jan - July 2016 Assisted on wide array of projects at various stages of completion from early design development to post-construction marketing material. Completed complete set of Construction Drawings for historic theatre renovations.
David Yum Architects New York, NY Intern Jan - June 2015 Produced multiple sets of construction documents for mostly residential projects. Made weekly visits to job site to take notes between architect and contractor. Produced detailed survey drawings of existing historic, pre-war apartments.
Boston, MA BS Degree in Architecture Sep 2012 / May 2017 Courses: Integrated Building Systems, Structures and Tectonics, Environmental Control Systems, Theatrical Design
Skills Revit, Rhino, Maxwell Render, AutoCAD, SketchUp, Grasshopper, Adobe Creative Suite: Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, and Premiere
Interests Music (Playing/Writing Guitar, Piano and Drums), Photography, Theater, Film, Audio, Radio
Contents 1
Portland Opera
2 3
Aging Up Old Town Bathhouse
4
Adaptable Lab
5
DOWA-IBI Group
6
BAR Architects
7
David Yum Architects
8
Art Pieces / Installations
9
Photography
1
Portland Opera
This studio was based around the redevelopment of the Rose Quarter in Portland, Oregon and the design of an opera house as its centerpiece. The neighborhood was formerly an active and vibrant area with ties to WWII shipbuilding before being paved razed for the creation of Memorial Coliseum. The goal of this studio was to create an accessible public space that is available to all people. My concept of an unobtrusive, civic architecture begins with creating a real connection to the community, in both its current and historical form. From the southwest axis, the opera is seen as only light vertical lines, giving the architecture a transparency and openness, making the boundary as permeable as possible and recognizing the site’s troubling history with dominating, solid, object buildings. The cultural history of the site manifested itself in the structural system of the canopy. The large frame is derived from the local connection to shipbuilding. These spans, resembling the frame of a ship in progress, together imply a form and extend outward into the site.
Winter 2018 Rose Quarter, Portland, OR
Concept Sketches
Site Analysis: Character
Industrial
Historical
Naval
Structural Axon
Site Plan
Floor 3
Floor 2 Memorial
Bandshell
Floor 1
Section 2
Section 1
Elevation
2
Aging Up
With the number of over 65 year olds increasing by nearly 150% in the next decade, Portland is dramatically under-prepared to serve this aged population who display an increasingly hostile attitude toward the traditional country club/golf course model of retirement living. Instead, research indicates a strong desire for longer term, more diverse living situation with an ability to personalize and adapt their living space. This approach had notable health benefits as well. While the effects of relocation to institutional facilities are likely to be negligible, relocation from one institution to another (or from ward to ward) has undoubtedly negative health implications. This project aims to replicate the freedoms and liveliness of independent living while providing the necessary resources of senior living. To create an intergenerational mixing, public amenities (highlighted from the street) are embedded amongst the residents’ units. Running around the envelope of the building is a ramp that functions as a public street up the building; connecting neighbors and providing access to public space. Elevated above the living units is a hospice for terminal patients.
Fall 2018 North Portland, OR
Concept: Vertical Street
Concept: Civic Lung
ROOF BAR SPORT GARDEN ASSEMBLY DAYCARE LOUNGE HALL
STOREFRONT
Hospice level plan
Even level plan
Odd level plan
assisted living / hospice
elevated courts
intergenerational housing
Renders
Front Porch Rendering
3
Old Town Bath House
The function of a bath house and spa is to foster connections, both inward and outward. A visitor retreats from the chaos of the city to reflect and gain understanding on themselves. This isolation, however, is not solitary. There are others around them on the same mission. My design allows for both the individual and societal connections by dividing and dispersing private space and using it to shape the public. The architecture began as a singular, open space. The insertion of enclosed programmatic solids then begin to shape and define that void. In the box is a private experience cut off from the larger space and featuring a designated program and unique atmosphere of the ‘sento’ typology. The boxes, cantilevered from the walls, create public space atop them that is shaped by the program boxes around. These public spaces are shaped by visual and aural connections. To connect the solids, a bridge network is added to link the open and enclosed spaces.
Fall 2017 Old Town, Portland, OR
Concept Model
Floor 1 Floor 2 Sauna Pool
Circulation
1/8” : 1’
thresholds and boundaries creates an openness that is both expansive and contained.
Diagrams
Communal Roof
Floor 3
Roof
Communal
Mech / Storage
Pool
Floor 4
Steam
Baths
Private Baths Pool
Circulation
Washing / Showers Public Washing
Changing
Changing
Kitchen
Restrooms
Restrooms
Floor 5
Storage/ Mech
Circulation Cafe Lobby
Laundry
Mech
Floor 6 Communal
Basement Basement Basement Basement Basement Basement Lv 1 Lv 1 Lv 1 Lv 1 Lv 1 Lv 1 Lv 2 Lv 2 Lv 2 Lv 2 Lv 2 Lv 2 Lv 3 Lv 3 Lv 3 Lv 3 Lv 3 Lv 3 Lv 4 Lv 4 Lv 4 Lv 4 Lv 4 Lv 4 Roof Roof Roof Roof Roof Roof
Communal Roof
Outdoor Wash
Changing
Steam
Concept Diagram
Plans
Baths
Private Baths
Washing
Pool
Mech
Unwrapped Section
Sections
Modeled Rendering
4
East Boston Lab
This semester-long, comprehensive studio project was organized around an adaptable, future-proof architecture. With my studio partner, Shawn McCloy, we developed an adaptable lab space capable of serving a multitude of functions based on the economic and environmental future of East Boston. The history of East Boston is one of a lost shoreline. Access to the Chelsea River and Boston Harbor, which surround the peninsula, has been almost exclusively permitted to industrial and infrastructural use. The community’s only direct engagement with the water occurs at Constitution Beach. Our project creates an additional moment of convergence. At that moment, we implement an architecture that explores the possibilities of multi-functional, recurring pieces arranged with consideration for an unknown future. Individual members are repeated and permeated across the architecture to create a specific ecological, pragmatic, and/or formal response unique to its respective moment.
Completed with Shawn McCloy Spring 2017 East Boston, MA
Context: Scale
Landscape Taxonomy
Detail Sections
Site Model
Seasonal Perspectives
Wall Section Model
Building Model
5 While working on an independent research project regarding educational architecture, I consulted John Weekes, a founder of Dulles Olson Weekes Architects and leader in educational architecture, and offered a position at DOWA-IBI Architects. The small office size allowed me to work on a number of projects at all scales. Most predominantly, I worked on an elementary school project in the Portland area from the schematic design through the assembly of a final construction set. The experience of working on educational architecture has presented me the unique challenge of communication of complex architectural ideas to non-architects or designers in the form of open community meetings. In addition to the more technical work, I also had a large role in designing the presentations to convey clearly the objectives and value of the work of te Additionally, as a part-time employee during the school year, I had the challenge of needing to quickly come to an understanding on a project and complete work in a limited amount of time.
Summer 2018-Present Portland, OR
Trillium Creek Primary School
Franklin High School
Sandy High School
6 299 Haight 188 Buchanan
200 Buchanan
100 Waller
101 Waller
155 Laguna
0’ 20’ 40’
80’
1
ALCHEMY BY ALTA | SAN FRANCISCO, CA
2
The spring before my final year at Northeastern, I was hired as an intern at the medium-sized BAR Architects in San Francisco for 6 months as part of Northeastern University’s co-op program. Due to the firm’s size and San Francisco’s booming development, I was able to work as part of a team on larger projects, as well as more independently on smaller jobs. The more relaxed office atmosphere and amount of people at BAR more than willing to teach, each with individual specialties, allowed me learn so much valuable information I couldn’t have acquired at school. The work I did for BAR, too, provided a wealth of knowledge on an array of projects differing in program, budget, and scale. Over the course of my 6 months there, I worked on multi-family housing, a theater renovation, a winery, a survey package, and countless others. Occasionally, I would join a project days before its deadline requiring me to gain an understanding of both the project and my task quickly.
2
1
SURVEY GRADE LINE
+750m +748m +746m +744m +742m +740m +738m +736m
SECTION 1
SURVEY GRADE LINE
+754m +752m +750m +748m +746m +744m +742m
Winter / Spring 2016 San Francisco, CA
+740m +738m +736m +734m +732m
SECTION 2
CHILDREN'S ACADEMY
+730m
BAOCIA, HAITI SCALE: 1 = 200
10072
0
5m
10 m
20 m
7 Thanks to Northeastern’s Co-operative Learning program, I was able to earn an internship at David Yum Architects in downtown New York City. The firm was small, with just two other people working there fulltime. Due to its size, I was able to observe and participate directly in different projects at all stages of completion, from initial bidding to completion. This work greatly strengthened my understanding of the design and construction process. While there, I participated in all aspects of an architecture office, making boards to enter projects into competitions, designing literature to be sent out to clients, model-making, site analysis, and construction documents. Working there also allowed me to visit a construction site once a week to take notes between the principal architect and the lead contractor.
Winter / Spring 2015 New York, NY
NO.
ISSUANCE
DATE
KEYPLAN
N PROJECT
39 W 67th Street New York, NY 10123
STAIR & GUARD RAIL SEAL & SIGNATURE:
DATE: PROJECT NO.: SCALE: DWG No.:
26 JUNE 2015
DRAWN BY: 15104 CHK BY: 1/2"=1'-0" 21 OF 27
A505.00
MR/JW DY
Reactive / Renewal
8
Design Pieces Repetition / Variation
This series of art pieces was based on the chapter of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities about the region of Eutropia. At several points throughout their lives, the people of Eutropia would collectively abandon their city and build a wholly new one where they would essentially restart their lives; new jobs, new family, new names. These pieces are abstracted versions of that process and explorations into the phenomenon of repetition and variance. How can the manipulation of a singular element in a context change its role. These pieces culminated in the temporary installation in the elevator, which serves this odd role as this repetitive, drab, dead space in our architecture. The piece activates the elevator by giving users an activity and allowing them to make visible their presence throughout the day.
Shifting Chessboard
Subject to Change
9
Photography
These photographs, taken almost entirely on 35mm Kodak Portra and Ilford HP5 Black and White film, are either a framings of a singular object on a backdrop or physical manifestation of repetition and variance, with some encapsulating both. The images vary in their level of abstraction and immediate clarity. The images furthest to the right, for instance, all sense of scale and direction is lost, focusing on only the repeating texture of the architecture.
Sanibel Island, FL
Matthew Rolston MatthewARolston@Gmail.com 484 554 2587