OMER GORASHI PORTFOLIO Masters of Architecture Candidate
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CONTENTS I. THE GREAT NORTHERN MIGRATION
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THE BLOCK (2020)
II. GUILD HALL FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
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ALTERNATIVE INSTITUTIONS
III. ELEMENTS OF HOUSING: INSIDE/OUT
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METABOLIC SQUARE
IV. CONTEMPORARY UNIVERSITY COMMONS
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M(X)LTIPLY
V. MAPPING AS A CRITICAL PRACTICE
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RIDGES AND VALLEYS / THE COST OF ARMS
VI. 6D:EMPATHIC DESIGN/ TOMTOM FESTIVAL GALLERY
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PAPER MONUMENTS
VII. PERSONAL PHOTOGRAPHY
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OMER GORASHI
AWARDS
www. omergorashi.com @: omg7sa@virginia.edu TEL: 571-353-5946
Raven Society Scholar HKS Mid-Atlantic Fellow 2019 Deans List (UVA 3x) (NVCC 3X) Reston Scholarship Award AIA/AF Diversity Scholar Selected Works (UVA 3x)
EDUCATION
COMPETITIONS
UVA SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE 2018 - 2021 | B.S. ARCH Arch. History minor | GPA 3.71
Retrofit Magazine, Metamorphosis Awards 2020 Winner (LWA Team)
NOMAS Treasurer 19 - 20 | NOMAS Historian 20 - 21 Muslim Student Association “Big Sib `” Mentor
Urban Confluence (LOT-EK team) 2020 (participated)
An outgrowth of the Sudanese Diaspora from the DC Metro Area who explores how interventions within the built environment improve the human condition, socially, culturally, as well as physiologically, mentally and emotionally.
NORTHERN VIRGINIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE 2016 - 2018 | Pre-requisites for Bachelors | GPA 3.45
NOMAS Competition 2018 & 2019 (participated) UVA SODA Contest 2018 & 2019 (participated
EXPERIENCE
SKILLS
LEERS WEINZAPFEL | JAN, JUN - AUG 2020 | Boston, MA | Architectural Intern
Rhino
Renovation of a Florida home designed in the office’s early career. Worked with several other teams primarily in visualization for marketing, publication, award/competition purposes.
LOT-EK | MAY - SEPT 2020 | New York, NY | Architectural Intern
Early designs of the first line of mass producible and prefabricated c-Home typologies , from basic modeling to prepping pricing and construction documents (https://www.c-homeusa.com/). Worked with Urban Confluence competition team
UVA FM DESIGN SERVICES | MAY 19 - MAR 20 | Charlottesville, VA | Design Intern Assistance with various projects at the UVA campus at different scales and phases in development. Main focus was the renovation of UVA’s School of Architecture, Campbell Hall.
HKS | JAN 19 | Washington, DC | Design Extern
In-depth research on the current situation with affordable housing within The District of Columbia. Work done under the supervision of architect Kaitlyn Badlato
Grasshopper, Elk, Meerkat, VRay, TT Toolbox
Autodesk Revit, AutoCAD
Adobe Suite
Photshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom, AfterEffects
Data Visualization & Analysis ArcGIS Pro, qGIS, SPSS, Pointclouds
Fabrication
Concrete casting, laser cutting, CNC routing, 3D printing
RESEARCH & TEACHING
REFERENCES
OPERATIONAL-MICRO-ENVIRONMENTS | FALL 20 | Matthew Jull
Peter Waldman | Thesis Advisor | pdw7e@virginia.edu
Environmental Sensor-based research on understanding how the built environment and natural condition interact with one another, creating clear thresholds and delineations yet still blur. Early tests in Central Virginian site, but larger project will take place in Utqiagvik, Alaska.
LESSONS OF THE LAWN | FALL 20 | Peter Waldman Teaching assistant and discussion leader for foundational curriculum course, covering theory, history and actual design.
TENURE PACKAGE & PAPER MONUMENTS | SPRING 20 - CURRENT | Elgin Cleckley Curation and formatting of Prof. Elgin Cleckley’s Tenure Package Book. Public art and history project originally carried out by Colloquate in New Orleans, aiming to elevate voices, narratives and histories unheard before. TomTom Festival speaker, currently working on larger citywide exhibition in Charlottesville.
SMART CITIES ATLAS | FALL 18 | Ali Fard An archive of the pros and cons of urban spaces that have modern technologies implemented within them. Using software such as GIS, Google Earth, to turn maps and data into more visually legible and appealing information to the public.
Theodore Diamond | FM Senior Architect | thd7t@virginia.edu Seth McDowell | Professor ARCH 3010 | smcdowell@virginia.edu Jaime Sanz-Haro | Professor ARCH 2020 | js8yt@virginia.edu
LANGUAGES: Arabic, French
THE BLOCK (2020) ARCH 4010 | FALL 2020 PROF ELGIN CLECKLEY
The Block (2020) is an active retelling of African American history, in which the spatialized and immersive reconstruction of Romare Bearden’s “The Block” (1971) assembles experiences from various American cities transcending time within a single Harlem Block composition. Visitors play the roles of spectators, subjects within collaged spaces of Isabelle Wilkerson’s “The Wamth of Other Suns”, and even the artist themselves, empathizing with the daily life experiences and emotions of individual times places and people of the Great Migration while unveiling and celebrating the shared realities throughout.
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Einfuhlung/Empathy in Space The understanding of people possibly through extending one’s self through an object or a larger image of a group of people
Einfuhlung/Empathy Distorted/Blocked By Amerikkka?The West/ Colonialism/etc. Specifically, centuries of imbalances in access to resources and other effects of racially and socio-economically stratified caste systems
Einfuhlung/Empathy through Collage Restored via collaging to create a narrative to de-stigmatize the image of a group of people. This then creates a space and process that amplifies unheard voices and narratives
Collaging Narratives Although sensory-evoking artifacts and images are of different narratives, they inevitably create something larger than its individual components, still celebrating their singularities.
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FOURTH FLOOR
Transverse Section through “Home” Exhibitory Space
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Barbershop, Record Store
Library “Alley”, Jazz-club
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Longitudinal Sectio
on facing 42nd St.
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ALTERNATIVE INSTITUTIONS ARCH 3010 | FALL 2019 PROF SETH MCDOWELL
The following project is an alternative institute, in the form of an infrastructural intervention wherein people are not shunned away for trying to stay out of the rain or rest on a park bench. This institution was created as a photography guild where street photographers throughout the city can assemble and have a physical space to engage one another. The institution offers spaces for photographers to shoot, teach and learn, publish, and curate work for public viewing. Members of this guild also have spaces to teach displaced populations this medium of such clear-cut representation and art, so that they too may use photography as their voice in a conversation that they for so long have been prevented from joining in on. The guild is meant to welcome all members of the city, providing hygenic, nutritional and medical amenities to all. Through dynamic openings that create a series of double, triple, and even quadruple-heighted spaces, this alternative institution creates informal spaces for various programs without the need for walls to delineate rooms. This also creates an indoor/outdoor environment for urban photographers who already carry out their craft throughout the city as well as members of society not yet ready to transition from their displacement. The site being right between the Eleanor Roosevelt Park and the busy Bowery of Chinatown, the project becomes a funnel for those coming in and out of the metro below.
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Tranverse Section “B”
FIFTH FLOOR
30ft
FOURTH FLOOR 30ft
B
A
C’
B’
A’
30ft
GROUND LEVEL
30ft
SUBLEVEL 2 Floorplans
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Model 1 solid/void 50% Longitudinal section cores, corridors, transitions
30ft
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Early Rockite and paper sectional studies
“Delirious New York” Collage
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Transverse Section “A”
Bowery St. Elevation
Shot from Eleanor Roosevelt Park
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Longitudina
l Section “C”
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METABOLIC SQAURE ARCH 2020 | SPRING 2019 PROF JAIME SANZ-HARO
With rising socio-economic divide between demographics within Charlottesville, aka “The Rich Get Richer, The Poor Get Poorer,” there is a scarcity of affordable housing evident segregation with incliningf real estate and rent values. This housing project looks to Kisho Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower as a key precedent. Kurokawa was the lead pioneer in the metabolic movement in Japan, who believed that the necessities and desires of domestic living could be fulfilled by the fabrics of dense urban regions. This justifies the Nakagin “capsules” only baring the amenities for one. Just as we look to the feats of our precedents, we also study their flaws and drawbacks; among Kurokawa’s was the narrowness of his target patrons for the Nakagin capsules. The commonality between the units are their semipermeable walls that act as thethresholds to enter as well as their connections to the core/courtyard space as well as the community. The units are then aggregated along bridge systems and cores, knitting a sense of kinship and community within the dense urban fabrics of Metabolic Square as Downtown Charlottesville expands.
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LAYING OUT GRID ON PARKING LOT
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LANDSCAPING OF SITE
AGGREGATION OF CORES
SEWING OF PATHWAYS
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Metabolic Square consists of three unit typologies; capsules for the city dweller who has minimal domestic needs, “flat” units for the average Charlottesville resident, and larger duplex units available for families and local students. The commonality between the units are their semipermeable walls doubling as entry and exit thresholds and connections to not only cores and courtyards but the larger community.
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“CAPSULE” UNIT
“DUPLEX” UNIT 1ST FLOOR
“FLAT” UNIT
“DUPLEX” UNIT 2ND FLOOR
Longitudinal Sect
“FLAT” PLAN
“CAPSULE” PLAN
tion facing North
“DUPLEX” LEVEL 2 PLAN
“DUPLEX” LEVEL 1 PLAN
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Floorplan Level 2
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MXLTIPLY
ARCH 3020 | SPRING 2020
PROF DEVIN DEBROWOLSKI
The following site, the area within the vicinity of UVA’s Lambeth Housing consists of three open spaces; Lambeth Field, the open space between the Lambeth housing units, and finally the lot. All three are sparse and barren due to the spacing and scale of the actual housing. The exercise intends to create a matrix of spatial conditions in both the proposed landscape and building, aggregating and overlapping to further multiply the number of conditions that students may experience. The end goal is to reimagine a system or process that can be applied universally to any site but more specifically the asphalt fields that settle by the stripmalls and condos that urban sprawl comprises of. “Be fruitful, and multiply.” —Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
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TILE CONDITIONS
BRICK
GRAVEL
NATURAL NON-GROUND
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SOIL
GRASS
TALL GRASS
ARITIFICIAL GROUND
VEGETATION
WATER
WOOD
NATURALGROUND
LEVEL 1
LEVEL 2
LEVEL 1
LEVEL 2
LEVEL 3
LEVEL4
LEVEL 3
LEVEL4
BRICK
WOOD
GRAVEL
VEGETATION
TREE
GRASS
WOOD 2
BENCH
GRAVEL
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MAPPING AS CRITICAL PRACTICE ARCH 5717 | FALL 2020 PROF DEVIN DOBROWOLKSI Two exercises beginning with the city of Boston, looks at issues of race and water. The next series moves to a grander scale, tracing economic flows of military weapons and their effects in the Middle East, specifically looking at correalations between the levels of famine in Yemen and points of conflict with Saudi Arabia and the disputed territories of Palestine and Israel’s makeup .
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PAPER MONUMENTS CHARLOTTESVILLE
ARCH 3500: 6D EMPATHIC DESIGN | FALL 2019. LECTURE AND GALLERY | FALL 2020 PROF ELGIN CLECKLEY Inspired by Colloqate Design’s own Paper Monuments Public Art and History Project, Paper Monuments Charlottesville aims to honor and uplift erased histories and narratives that built this nation and Charlottesville. Through a critical yet empathic process of artistically memorializing forgotten people, places, movements and events, Paper Monument instills symbols of a more collective and inclusive vision within public space. My own Paper Monument looks to strengthen awareness in the UVA and Charlottesville community of the International Rescue Committee’s New Roots gardening coalition, aiming to bridge long-term connections with recently settled refugees. This project is in collaboration with Professors Elgin Cleckley and Barbara Brown Wilson, and fellow students, Lauren Brown and Tryston Raecke. Due to COVID-19, the citywide installation has been postponed. Below are links to the online gallery and lecture: Gallery: https://www.flickr.com/photos/164501443@N04/50422978796/in/album-72157716182726386
Lecture: https://youtu.be/YQ4xp1Frf7E
TOM TOM CITIES RISING
10.05 PMEVT @PAPER.MONUMENTS
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Started by Colloqate Design in New Orleans, Paper Monuments was a public art and public history project designed to elevate the voices of the peoples of New Orleans as a critical process towards creating new narratives and symbols of our cities that represent a more inclusive and collective vision. The project aimed to honor the erased histories of the people, places, movements, and events that have made this nation. The project served as a framework and foundation for a new iteration in and about Charlottesville, led by UVA School of Architecture Assistant Professor of Architecture, Elgin Cleckley and supported by Associate Professor of Urban + Environmental Planning, Barbara Brown Wilson. Cleckley, along with Paper Monuments co-director Sue Mobley, and UVA students Lauren Brown, Omer Gorashi, and Tryston Raecke will share and discuss the goals, products and impacts of this project as a form of public engagement, storytelling, and collective activism.
INFO@PAPERMONUMENTS.ORG
PAPERMONUMENTS.ORG
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PHOTOGRAPHY PERSONAL WORK SHOT ON CANON 5D MII & MINOLTA MAXXUM 7000
Photography began as a method of collecting visual references for predecents and research. However, with every shutter click , it grew into my medium for spatial discovery and perspective. Every frame became a new reality of its own. Through light, presence and absence, I muse on relationships between architecture, people. From the scale of an individual to the scale of the city, I bear witness to and capture what is momentous within the mundane, the extraordinary within the banalities of daily life. An archive of my work can be found online via Instagram (@soozysufi)
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