MICHAEL DEPREZ SELECTED WORKS 2017-2020. MICHA AEL DEPREZ SELE CTED WORKS 2017 7-2020. MICHAEL DEPREZ SELECTED D WORKS 2017-20 20. MICHAEL DEPR REZ SELECTED WO ORKS 2017-2020. MICHAEL DEPREZ
MICHAEL DEPREZ mrdeprez1@gmail.com (260) 416-6080
EDUCATION
2017-2020
University of California, Los Angeles Architecture & Urban Design M. Arch 1
Ball State University College of Architecture & Planning 2013-2017 2013-2017
B.S. Architecture (magna cum laude) Honors College
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE 2020
2019
2018
2016
Kevin Daly Architects
Model Shop Assistant/Architectural Intern
Assisted with the production and assembly of large scale model: Vertical Tech Campus
Bureau Spectacular Architectural Intern
Design, graphics, drawings and models for various projects: “Future Archaeologist”, “Guest House”, “Set Theory House”, “Film Strip”, “Rooftops & Backyards: Expanding LA & Taipei”
Now Here Architecture (Katy Barkan) Architectural Intern
Design, graphics, drawings and models for various projects: “2 Walls”, “1/2 House”, “2 House”, “3 Stairs”
Hoch Associates Architectural Intern
Design, graphics, drawings and models: North Anthony neighborhood revitilization (speculative proposal)
TEACHING EXPERIENCE 2019-2020
2019
UCLA AUD Teaching Assistant
TA for undergraduate Studio II & M. Arch 1 Core Studio
AUD 122 with instructor: Katy Barkan, AUD 412 with instructors: Jake Matatyaou, Julia Koerner, Katy Barkan & Jason Payne
UCLA Teen Arch Summer Institute Design Instructor
conducted two week introductory Studio course for high school students
INVOLVEMENT 2018-2020
2016-2017
2015-2017
POOL Magazine
UCLA Architecture & Urban Design student magazine
Issue #5 “Simulation”: Graphic Editor, Issue #4 “Nostalgia”: Digital Content Editor
Glue Publication
Ball State College of Architecture & Planning student publication Issue #13: Section Editor
American Institute of Architecture Students Ball State Chapter
President (2016-2017), Secretary (2015-2016)
AWARDS & RECOGNITION 2020 2019 2018 2016
Walt Disney Imagineering 2020 Imaginations Competition Semifinalist - “Museum of Roadside Architecture” with Georgia Pogas
Jeffrey “Skip” Hintz Memorial Scholarship
UCLA AUD - graduate portfolio submission and academic performance
Harvey S. Perloff Scholarship
UCLA AUD - graduate portfolio submission and academic performance (highest annual award)
Indiana Architectural Foundation Scholarship
IAF - undergraduate portfolio submission and academic performance
EXHIBITIONS 2018 2017-2020
Rooftops & Backyards: Expanding LA & Taipei (Taiwan Academy, Los Angeles) Design work and drawings produced with Bureau Spectacular
UCLA Architecture & Urban Design “Currents”
The following projects selected for display: “An Addition to a House in Sherman Oaks”, “A Sports Club on Bunker Hill”, “Pizza Hut Patents”, “A House for Three Generations”
ACADEMIC: LIVING ON THE BACKLOT........................................................................ 01
spring 2020 / graduate
A FIRE STATION IN LOS ANGELES...........................................................15
spring 2019 / graduate
A HOUSE FOR THREE GENERATIONS.................................................... 25
winter 2020 / graduate
HOUSING IN FROGTOWN......................................................................... 33
fall 2018 / graduate
A WELCOME CENTER IN WESTLAKE..................................................... 41
winter 2019 / graduate
AN ADDITION TO A HOUSE IN SHERMAN OAKS................................... 47
fall 2017 / graduate
A SPORTS CLUB ON BUNKER HILL........................................................ 55
winter 2018 / graduate
PROFESSIONAL: GUEST HOUSE........................................................................................... 65
summer 2019 / Bureau Spectacular
THREE STAIRS........................................................................................... 71
summer 2018 / Now Here Architecture
A VERTICAL TECH CAMPUS.................................................................... 77
fall 2020 / Kevin Daly Architects
01_LIVING ON THE BACKLOT
spring 2020 / graduate instructor: Neil Denari in collaboration with Georgia Pogas _The Research Studio brief called for a design intervention within 400m of an LA Metro station in accordance with proposed SB50 requirements. Program must include 75% housing and use mass timber in its construction. Our project explored a semi-urban scale, choosing to develop a 150 m x 150 m site near the Universal City/Studio City metro station on the Universal Studios backlot. A backlot is a simulation of reality. This project imagines a scenario in which the spectacle of simulated environments on studio backlots could merge with the day-to-day reality of the city. With the introduction of housing on the backlot, the boundary between the real and the simulated is confounded. Considering the density and rigidity of the site, an infill strategy was deployed, removing only the minimal necessary building footprint. The working method became a recipe or kit of parts to develop a catalog of episodic massing. We looked closely at the backlot and methods of film-making as architectural precedent and reference to make formal and aesthetic decisions, relying not on site plan alone, but also on cinegraphic planning in order to set up scenes of activity as well as layers of textural variety. Several building types provide spatial diversity and respond to or reinterpret the specificities of the backlot context and soundstage typologies. These episodes merge together to form a network of housing and shared programs that loosely fit within the existing grid. The design strategy of featureless-ness, a kind of radical gesture of neutralizing, creates a simulation of urbanity. Thus, the plaza has been designed with intentional blankness to offer flexibility in anticipation of potential filming opportunities. A network of connective catwalks is accessible when the ground plane is being used for filming. The use of color is both graphic and pragmatic, serving as wayfinder and as interactive backdrops with the ability to adapt or disappear on camera. In conclusion, the project analyzes and evokes entertainment without explicitly claiming it as the sole ambition. Through the use of the super-generic, the city fragment, and the graphics of media, the project suggests a new and radical condition of living. 01
Plaza and Linear Housing
02
Michael DePrez
Site Axon - The infill strategy heightens the heterogeneity of the backlot ands introduces the manufactured urban complexity of the film sets among the gridded mundanity of the soundstage buildings.
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Living on the Backlot
Ground Plan - Two destination plazas at ground level serve the dual purpose of public space and active film set.
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Michael DePrez
a
b
c a: Craggy filming plazasstudio culture meets public culture b: Billboard housing c: Linear housing- lifted above the street and informed by both the Falls Lake blue screen and the Spectre tracking shot to create unique filming infrastructure
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Living on the Backlot
d
e
f d: Chartreuse and Klein blue are pragmatic as interactive backdrops and reference media aesthetic e: Sawtooth housinglifted above the rigid soundstage datum f: Facade attachmentsborrow a formal strategy from an existing studio backlot typology
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Michael DePrez
top: The filming plazas are designed with intentional featurelessness, a radical gesture of neutralizing that creates a simulation of urbanity. middle: The featureless facades offer flexibility in anticipation of filming opportunities. bottom: Spaces were observed through the aspect ratio of camera lenses.
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Living on the Backlot
top: Architectural view of filming plaza middle: Plaza occupied for filming activity bottom: Plaza seen through the lens of the camera
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Michael DePrez
Lifted Housing Section
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Living on the Backlot
Lifted Housing and Filming Plaza Section
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Michael DePrez
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Living on the Backlot
Linear Housing, Theater and Filming Plaza Section
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Michael DePrez
above: Blue screen tracking shot apparatus on the roof of linear housing building below: Housing lifted above soundstage datum
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Living on the Backlot
The exterior circulation system is activated when filming takes place
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02_A FIRE STATION IN LOS ANGELES
spring 2019 / graduate instructor: Andrew Kovacs _By working simultaneously at the scale of the building and the scale of the masterplan, this studio involved the examination of the civic role of the fire station. Through a reimagining of LAFD Fire Station 104 in Winnetka Park, this project considers the potential for increased community interaction between firefighters and the public. The existing Fire Station 104 is located adjacent to the Winnetka Recreation Park in a suburban community in the San Fernando Valley. This context indicates the programmatic pairing of the fire station with sports, games and physical activity. This pairing makes sense as firefighters are active individuals, and many fire stations in Los Angeles have handball courts on the property which are used by the official LAFD handball league. Tight constraints and requirements for efficiency necessitate a clear plan and section organization that is 50% house and 50% station, but there are latent design opportunities in the exterior expression. The humility of the efficient box is confused and obscured by three “wall attachments� with scalar and programmatic implications. On the street-facing facade is the 20’ tall wall that is required for the regulation 15
handball court that has moved to the roof in this design. On one side is the hose tower, and on the other side is a civic grand staircase granting public access to the handball court. The roof of the station becomes an occupiable terrace that integrates training and spectatorship. At the scale of the masterplan, more is more, as a much greater diversity of sports and games are added to the recreation park, including soccer, tennis, basketball, volleyball, shuffleboard, badminton, oversized chess, and 4-square. An incremental unit was devised for the new organization that could accommodate large and small programs. Because sports fields are pre-loaded with an inherent structure of required dimensions and regulation lines, they become a perfect readymade and were used to determine the size of the organizational grid.The sports, games and active functions are placed alongside, around and among landscapes and ornamental gardens rather than relegating them to separate sections of the park. A walk across the park would allow pedestrians to encounter a wide variety of both movement and leisure on communal backyards that create a vibrant and healthy nexus of activity in the suburban environment.
Elevation Model
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Michael DePrez
Fire Station Axon
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A Fire Station in Los Angeles
above: Handball Court below: Roof Terrace
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Michael DePrez
above: Plan 01 below: Plan 03
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A Fire Station in Los Angeles
Plan 02
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Michael DePrez
Winnteka Recreation Park Masterplan
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A Fire Station in Los Angeles
Masterplan Relief Model
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Michael DePrez
Masterplan Aerial Vignette 01
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A Fire Station in Los Angeles
Masterplan Aerial Vignette 02
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03_A HOUSE FOR THREE GENERATIONS
winter 2020 / graduate instructor: Ben Freyinger _This studio, titled “Boxes and How to Live in them with Other People� deployed the formal device of the unfolding box and the objects the box contains to generate a new kind of shared house on a hillside single family parcel in Los Angeles. Three generations share the space, but the program and the massing are twinned rather than tripled. The youngest generation (who moved back home to save money) shares one side with the oldest generation. The middle generation (a couple with four children) occupy the other side. The most private spaces (the bedrooms) are at either end and as you move toward the center (the kitchen) the families overlap, and there is an increase of shared programmatic opportunities between all three families. Through a mixed media process that involved the dissection and abstraction of an RM Schindler precedent plan, foam-block modeling, photography, and projection, 2D figures were translated into 3D volumes. Misreading cast shadow as volumetric figure was a generative design strategy. Shadows cast by objects were interpreted as attachments, or barnacles that support and wrap around volumes. These shadow-volumes create a kind of connective tissue. Suspended within the volumes are interiorized solids. Alignments and overlaps of these types, represented as hatch, informed the distribution of the program in plan and section. These volume types are wrapped by two boxes. Despite housing three families, the elevation maintains the reading of a pair. The barnacle-like attachments, represented as poured concrete, sometimes act like foundation or footing, but also accommodate vertical circulation. In some moments they grow large enough to envelop program as well: a useful excess for the inhabitants. The interior solids, tend to interrupt and separate, like moments of thickened poche with the potential to be activated in various ways - storage, bathrooms, closets and furniture. The distribution and intersection of these three typologies (1. the volume, 2. the interior solid and 3. the exterior attached solid) create nooks and pockets of space that would offer refuge and privacy among the shared space and overlapping activity. 25
Stitched Section
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Michael DePrez
2D hatches transformed into 3D massing types: 1. volumes, 2. shadow attachments, 3. interiorized solid
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A House for Three Generations
Boxes wrapping massing
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Michael DePrez
Plan 01, Plan 02, Plan 04, & Roof Plan
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A House for Three Generations
Plan 03
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Michael DePrez
SECTION 01
above: Section 01 below: Section 03
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A House for Three Generations
Section 02
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04_HOUSING IN FROGTOWN
fall 2018 / graduate instructor: Neil Denari _For the Building Design with Landscape Studio, students examined and redeployed a particular “housing typology” (in this case the type was linear housing) with an emphasis on the site strategy. The linear housing typology is a familiar architectural concept. The line building typology, iterated on through modernist housing blocks and beyond, is driven mostly by efficiency. This project does not intend to abandon the linear typology but work within it to imagine a contemporary distillation of its generative design qualities. The familiar language of linework in Illustrator - stroke weight, linetype, caps and miters - as well as the supergraphic “new alphabet” of graphic designers like Wim Crouwel infuse the linear building with new energy. With these strategies at play, this proposal is made up of lines oriented around figures, or figures caught between lines. The space 33
between two lines, or between line and street, becomes public space. The lines are free to thicken, wiggle, split and merge creating a collection of typographic objects that, along with figures inscribed on the ground plane, attempt to homogenize the split site through a field condition. The lines are mostly single-loaded with a circulatory corridor that regularly switches sides. In this way the single-loaded line type can become double sided. While one side may always register the scale of the unit, the other side is free to have a more scaleless expression. The corridor works to flip directionality of the units, creating spatial variety and difference. As a chain of normative building components that are irregular in arrangement, it produces both inward and outward facing public space.
Site Plan
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Michael DePrez
Stroke weight and linetype organizing unit size and orientation
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Housing in Frogtown
Plan 04
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Michael DePrez
Oblique Vignette 01
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Housing in Frogtown
Oblique Vignette 02
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Michael DePrez
Chunk Model 01
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Housing in Frogtown
Chunk Model 02
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05_A WELCOME CENTER IN WESTLAKE
winter 2019 / graduate instructor: Mohamed Sharif _The Comprehensive Studio calls on students to use steel frame construction and to give closer attention to structure and material assembly than in other design studios. A Welcome Center for immigrants and vulnerable communities in a historic Los Angeles neighborhood calls for a certain architectural humility and sensitivity. The project consists of two introverted atria that set up a relationship of close - not quite perfect - symmetry. The program is organized around the two atria in a slightly different way on each floor with the more social spaces always given the closest adjacency to the negative space. The plan figure changes as you travel upward creating a tripartite stack of things in section, and a bipartite pair in plan. At the ground level, a system of interior avenues and courts creates clusters of four operable pavilions that are organized centrally around the void spaces above, with the main entrance at the open corner. On the second level, quiet interview rooms are pushed away from the atria out to the perimeter, creating a jog in section at the middle layer of the building. Sectional movement might start to blur the edges and boundary of the building. It’s minimal footprint leaves space for the vibrant market activity that takes place on the site already. It seeks to present a calm order and balance while also allowing for subtle shifts and spatial variety among a quite regular diagram. 41
Transverse Section
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Michael DePrez
Dual Atria: Void as Volume
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A Welcome Center in Westlake
above: Plan 02 below: Grounf Plan
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Michael DePrez
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A Welcome Center in Westlake
Longitudinal Section
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06_AN ADDITION TO A HOUSE IN SHERMAN OAKS
fall 2017 / graduate instructor: Andrew Kovacs _The Introductory quarter began with a close examination of French hôtels and culminated with an addition to a single family home in Sherman Oaks. My precedent, the Hôtel de Beauvais, features a misbehaving facade that communicates a symmetry that does not exist in the plan beyond. This observation led to an interest in the literal expression of a misbehaving facade. Porches are often additions that communicate a desire for a defined interior that exists on the exterior of the house. They attach something generic to the already generic face of the house, obscure the elevation, wraparound, and lean. This addition performs in a similar manner. Therefore, this addition might be a porch. This proposal for an addition to a house in Sherman Oaks decontextualizes the suburban façade and rearranges it around the existing house. Rather than introducing an entirely foreign architectural language, the narrative of suburban domestic architecture is subtly subverted here through the repositioning and slightly haphazard placement of suburban typologies. The project can be read as a domestic counterpart to the architectural sight gags of James Wines’ SITE Best Products Showrooms. It does not touch the existing house but inflects toward it, appearing to lean on it in elevation. It is both dependent on and independent from the existing house. It is a folly of sorts that may be understood as a redundant suburban façade or perhaps as something else all together. Some of the domestic elements that make up the suburban façade perform in new ways. The chimney and fireplace create an outdoor hearth to be gathered around. Windows become passages to climb through and benches to sit on. The façade becomes a playhouse in the back. In the front, an upper-level mezzanine activates the pseudo-second story windows and provides a space for surveying the surrounding neighborhood. Other elements may become useless except to reinforce a suburban typological reading of this addition. The addition loosely wraps the perimeter of the home, establishing a new permeable barrier and a social space on display for the neighborhood while still providing a semblance of privacy. This new perimeter begins to fulfill the desire to bring the domestic interior outside. 47
Model Elevation 01
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Michael DePrez
Plan 01
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An Addition to a House in Sherman Oaks
Plan 02
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Michael DePrez
Axon
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An Addition to a House in Sherman Oaks
above: View 01 below : View 02
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Michael DePrez
Model Elevation 02
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An Addition to a House in Sherman Oaks
Model Elevation 03
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07_A SPORTS CLUB ON BUNKER HILL
winter 2018 / graduate instructor: Katy Barkan _This studio emphasized the plan drawing and asked how structure itself might organize program. Each program in a sports club contains structural, material, and dimensional inscriptions that may be visible or embedded. Regulation lines, surface material grains, along with required lengths, widths and heights indicate programmatic use and imply structural necessities. Certain programs that may be more strictly regulated have inherent structural necessities that can be interpreted like hatches in a pattern. These inscriptions and hatches of structure and material are made more apparent through the arrangement and overlapping of floor plans and ceiling plans, creating moments of alignment and misalignment between the two. The mega-anchor soccer field on the ground level creates a large-scale shift as the sports club is raised and rotated to accommodate its presence. On the main floor, programs that share floor surface finish hatches are grouped together. The lap pool and basketball court 55
misalign from the floor plane, but govern the structure of the roof plane. The running track exists somewhere between the two, creating both a floor and a ceiling that does not quite align with either datum. This focus on visible misalignments of surfaces and structure requires the project to begin to think about porosity and levels of transparency in order to create a reading of the patterned overlaps. Shadows may begin to act as inscriptions that translate hatches from one surface to another. Local programmatic moments among the larger system begin to indicate the relation between surface, structure and activity. The lap pool and the basketball court imply motion and directionality that the structure above reflects. In other moments, a still body might exist under a noisy system of overlaps. The sports club programs are performed above and below visible surface and structural inscriptions creating a compositional pattern of hatches.
View 01
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Michael DePrez
above: Structural Axon below: Structural Hatch Diagrams
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A Sports Club on Bunker Hill
Reflected ceiling plans paired with sports club programs below
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Michael DePrez
Plan 03
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A Sports Club on Bunker Hill
Plan 05
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Michael DePrez
above: Model Aerial below: Model Plan
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A Sports Club on Bunker Hill
Model on site
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Michael DePrez
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A Sports Club on Bunker Hill
View 02
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08_GUEST HOUSE
summer 2019 / Bureau Spectacular team: Georgia Pogas & Jimenez Lai _My roles in this project included design, presentation drawings, and conceptual renderings. This guest house for a private client references an architectural interpretation of the mathematical principle of set theory. Set theory deals with units, elements or members that make up collections (called “sets�) and is often represented diagrammatically with overlapping figures or Venn diagrams. Architecture based on set theory requires addition and superimposition. Five figures are overlaid on one another to generate the plan of this small backyard accessory dwelling unit. This plan condition allows for flexibility as well as distinct programmatic delineation. 65
Backyard Plan Perspective
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Michael DePrez
Exterior View
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Guest House
Interior View
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Michael DePrez
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Guest House
Plan
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09_THREE STAIRS
summer 2018 / Now Here Architecture team: Eric Wall & Katy Barkan _My roles in this project included design development, graphic representation, and the construction of the physical model displayed in the following images. Three Stairs proposes a fit-out for a new media office that loosely reorganizes space. Somewhere between architecture and furniture, the stairs are composed in such a way that allows for a compact variety of programs including a conference room, phone booth, kitchenette, and presentation space. The parts have the capacity to be rearranged to create new compositional organizations in relation to an open office plan. The expression of plywood is confused and abstracted by the materialization of graphic cast shadow as paint and carpet. The superimposition of graphic information flattens the relationship between drawing, model and architecture, but also claims space and further imprints programmatic possibility on the object. 71
Model Perspective
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Michael DePrez
Model Aerial
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Three Stairs
above: Plywood material expression below: Shade and shadow as painted surface abstract the material expression
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Michael DePrez
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Three Stairs
Modular Stair Iterations in Plan
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10_A VERTICAL TECH CAMPUS
fall 2020 / Kevin Daly Architects project lead: Ciro Dimson _My role in this project was assistance with the construction of the model in the following images. This included a variety of tasks including assembling stairs, furniture and other details; spray painting; and cutting walls and floor slabs both by hand as well as with fabrication shop tools. Kevin Daly Architects is working with a well-known tech company to design the interior of a new vertical tech campus in New York City. The design spanned about 20 floors of a mid-rise building, and the scale model visualizes the lower half. The project is broken down into an arrival floor and two amenity floors with open collaborative workspaces, libraries and kitchenettes dispersed throughout. Inventive furnishings and soffit conditions help to organize programs and distribute spatial variety. Circulation also takes on an active role as oversized, grand staircases become nexuses of activity and information exchange. The model itself was constructed at 1:50 scale with the goal of photographing interior scenes that capture the quality of perspectival renderings. The model stands upwards of 6 feet tall and is constructed out of MDF, gator board, foamcore and a variety of other materials. 77
Field of Model Objects
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Michael DePrez
Model under construction with facade removed; arrival floor, vertical circulation and ammenity floors visible
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A Vertical Tech Campus
Completed model with facade framing interiors
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Michael DePrez
Arrival Floor Interior View
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A Vertical Tech Campus
above: Standing tables designed by KDA for amenity floors below: Seating and soffit conditions for open collaborative workspaces
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