Douglas Architects Earthship Biotecture Frontier Architects
University of Texas at Austin Negrete & Kolar Architects
Ruth’s Chris Streakhouse Grand Hyatt, San Antonio Petaca Earthship Taos, Nex Mexico Austin’s Habibi Austin, TX Eat Mexico Cafe San Antonio Social Coffee Richmond Hill, Toronto LRGVDC Transit Center Weslaco, TX Superior Oil Express Sharyland, Texas Experimental Cinema Austin, Texas Romeo T. Flores County Park and Pool Zapata, Texas AISD Crockett High School Renovations Austin, Texas Edinburg CISD Brewster Edinburg, Texas Czech Heritage Center La Grange, Texas
Bar Panoramic
The San Antonio Riverwalk is well known as a tourist destination and historical infrastructure for cultural exchange in the southwest United States. Our site is within this context at the base of the Grand Hyatt Hotel, adjacent to the Lila Cockrell theater and at the mouth of the Rivercenter Mall / Gonzalez Convention Center. Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse is an upmarket steakhouse chain that sells classic and innovative dishes in a calm, classy environment.
Our project is a remodel of the existing tenant restaurant space into a dynamic environment including a new kitchen, dining room, private dining, bar and patio. My contribution is schematic design and rendering of all areas of the project scope, shared BIM management of the nal construction documents, coordination of suppliers and onsite coordination of the design scope.
Interior design axonometric
Patio renderings (both)
Austin’s Habibi on Harmon is a tenant nish-out of a shell commercial space in a mixed use apartment building near the university campus. The project is a brick-and-mortar expansion of a popular food trailer in downtown Austin. The design goal is to create a modern habitat for authentic middle eastern cuisine with a bold interior, utilizing raw materials, a custom furniture package, branded signage, butcher-block style wood counters and sales wraps, coated metal surfaces and translucent wall paneling. The clean,
View to sales counter / dining area
functional design of pedestrian spaces and utilities includes restrooms, a kitchen, a food preparation room and a dining area. My contribution includes architectural design, contract management, code compliance, conceptual design, construction document production, design of interior features, engineering & contractor coordination, building permitting coordinations and construction phase administration.
Living Room Interior ↑ Front Entry View ↓
This project is an example of a globally-adaptable residence concept built in the mountains northwest of Taos, New Mexico amidst pines and crystal runs. This house features off-grid technologies which include independent energy (solar power) generation, water harvesting and reuse, food production, on-site waste management and signi cant locally sourced or recycled construction materials. My contribution includes on-site construction management of this residence and renovation of two others. The work includes precision tiling, glass bottle hybrid wall construction, foundation leveling, eldstone patio ooring, septic tank installation, adobe wall nishes, cabinetry nishes, cement stuccoing, stone masonry for earth berms and team coordination.
This project is the adaptive reuse of an abandoned historic building in San Antonio’s Dignowity Hill neighborhood into an authentic Mexican diner-cafe as a striking addition to the city’s culinary scene. Our planning approach is to create a visible and vibrant expression that markets the location as a social condenser and trendy environment. This is accomplished in the use of a patio canopy / screening element that transforms visually for pedestrians and vehicular traf c based on viewing distance. Through design of painted slatted wood to achieve a billboard effect, we generate an active and desirable place. The color scheme of the landscaping, structure, signage and interior are based on a play of simple modern elements and bold colors. The interior of the restaurant is to create a hybrid
space for a functional bar, dining area, breakfast taco diner and kitchen. This is accomplished by removing partitions and ceiling nishes to bring light and structure into play. The remaining area at the rear of the building is designed to serve as a separate tenant space for professional services. My contribution to this project is design of the alteration, which includes historic and design review commission review submittals, building code and site planning review, accessibility planning, signage design, landscaping, speci cations of decorative nishes and inspection of the existing conditions for structural engineering purposes.
Restaurant entry view
Entryway detail
Restaurant storefront
Commercial entry
↑ West elevation ↓ North elevation
Site plan (both)
View to tasting room / lounge
View to sales room (opposite)
The concept for Social Coffee Headquarters, in Richmond Hill, near Toronto, Ontario, was inspired by the company that takes coffee very seriously. Being an innovative and award-winning coffee roaster, Social Coffee takes pride in its amazing product. Our design exposes the detailoriented processes that they use to achieve such high standards. At Frontier Architects, my company delivered architectural services for the program, which required a product
showroom, a fresh coffee tasting room, a designer lounge, corporate management of ces, a factory production line in the warehouse and a sales of ce. Additional services include coffee-themed art + custom furniture. The headquarters are designed as a modern gallery that celebrates the art of coffee roasting. The design layers various functions through the space to educate customers about types of coffee, meaning that education is actually achieved through shopping.
Working with Fare Made in Toronto, a digital design and fabrication rm, our company created a full service interior and workplace design solution that including lighting xtures, ceiling design, product shelving and signage displays, designer furniture layouts, custom digitally fabricated artwork, ooring and nishes. Many of the design concept applications were laser cut, engraved and manufactured in partnership with Fare Made and additional builders, makers and consultants.
New canopy, sitework and renovations
This project is a 6,470 square foot addition to the existing central operations and maintenance of ces of the LRGVDC (Lower Rio Grande Valley Development Council) Regional Metro Bus Service. This facility is comprised of open plan of ce space, a workshop and learning center, LRGVDC board meeting room, computer data rooms, and a new staff break room. Additional staff parking, bus parking and landscape have also been included in this project. The project was delivered with CAD and Revit software.
This vehicle maintenance center focuses on an engaging customer environment through the use of tropical landscaping, an interior showroom, and dramatic wooden structural trusses at the main lobby. The masterplan includes a separate facility for service, parts and repairs. This project was designed, detailed and documented in Autodesk Revit software for Building Information Modeling (BIM).
The avant garde cinema is extrapolated from historical tangents and an appreciation for the social foundations of the artistic experience, formulated from theoretical discourse. This project is presented as a new typology which challenges the sterility of the commercial program and its anonymous, passive experience with an experimental and transformative environment for different lm formats and mediums.
This new cinema architecture expresses a relationship between multiple occupiable levels, screens, and auditoriums in a kinetic structure that presents an unpredictable cinematic experience through dynamic social interaction. 1. The new cinema is EXPERIMENTAL and INSTRUMENTAL, involving nonstandard components and media.
Cinematic Field: Approach
2. It is HEURISTIC, inducing a challenging social game, which encourages reaction and unexpected ‘disorder’ through the instability of the narrative and authorship. 3. It is FRAMELESS and MULTIFACETED, differentiating its message through a non-uni ed eld of visual, temporal and auditory space.
4. It is PARTICIPATORY, strategically involving visitors in this game, such that the lm is presented ever-uniquely by the audience, who determine the outcome through their adaptation to the interactive machines.
Photographs by Johnny Quiroz
Park overview
This public park project rehabilitates neglected land on the outskirts of the City of Zapata into a viable community asset with broad recreational options. Facilities include a swimming pool with adjacent wading pools, a renovated softball eld, a new little league eld, picnic areas and facilities, site walkways and a nature trail. The site master planning includes additional recreation facilities for future phases. My contribution includes developing a digital masterplan, animation and aerial yby renderings for the general park area and pool complex. In later design stages, I produced details and construction documents for custom components and building assemblies.
This 1624 square foot campus science wing addition for the Austin Independent School District is designed as a classroom-laboratory combination arranged, organized and equipped so that laboratory activities can be undertaken by students working in groups (2 to 4 students) as a routine daily practice. The space was designed to accommodate work in all science disciplines, with exibility in furniture arrangement, abundant storage, suf cient working space for the safe conduct of activities, and holding space for ongoing projects. My contribution includes reviewing submittals and managing site visit reports.
Examples of gymnasium (above) and science labs (bottom right)
New classroom facility
The new school additions for the ECISD Brewster Campus in Edinburg features a high school cafeteria, gymnasium & classroom complex of nearly 15,000 square feet, integrated with existing facilities. The masterplan also includes a new athletics eld and competition track around the relocated football eld as well as a new concession building with plumbing, electrical service and xtures. Photographs by Johnny Quiroz
Full Architectural & Engineering services were provided, including district-wide school programming, site selection & evaluation, a comprehensive site masterplan, building design and civil planning for bus and general parking. The gymnasium building connects to the campus with shade canopies and other shading devices. My contribution includes design of the classroom building and associated coordinations with the gymnasium building design and detailing.
Classroom interior (right)
Gymnasium
Cafeteria
Gymnasium
Cafeteria
Photographs by Tomas Pantin
Lobby view to gift shop and landscape
The Texas Czech Heritage and Cultural Center is a non-pro t organization founded by descendents of Czech immigrants who settled in Texas during the second half of the 19th century. The organization’s primary goal is to celebrate and preserve the culture, history, and language that these settlers established in their new home. The TCHCC Library and Museum is the rst major construction on a site in La Grange, a town geographically central to Czech settlements in rural eastcentral Texas. Earlier, the organization
had erected an amphitheatre and moved several houses and small buildings onto the site to form a Skansen representing Czech pioneer life. The new 10,000 ft² building provides a spacious and permanent venue from which the organization will pursue its goals. The building consists of three gabled pavilions, interconnected by corridors and support facilities with low-slope roofs. The pavilions contain the building’s three major functions, the exhibit hall, the library, and a multipurpose hall. Also housed are a board room, a gift shop,
of ces, and a catering kitchen. Most prominent in the design is a doubleheight lobby, glazed on three sides, that glows like a lantern when lighted. Outside the main entrance, a 1,600 ft² deck expands activity space to the outdoors. The simple gabled roof forms pay homage to early examples of rural Czech settlements in Texas, recalling farmhouses, schoolhouses, and dance halls. While the building stands well on its own, it is envisioned as the rst of a group of buildings surrounding a courtyard that will be built as the organization’s mission expands.