Portfolio by Rafael Toledano Illán

RAFAEL

TOLEDANO

ILLÁN

PORTFOLIO

Dear reader:

On the next few pages, I’ll show you a few things I’ve done in the past, My name is Rafael. I come originally from a Kindergarten to a cemetery, from Spain, where I got my 6-year these projects have helped me degree in the University of Granada, understand better life, what makes with international programs at the us humans, and what we can do to Polytechnic University of Krakow, make the best out of the time we’ve the University of California at been given. Berkeley. My aim has been and always will I understand architecture as the be to create inspiring spaces and conjunction between art, structure experiences, learn by doing and and construction to improve our life manage by caring. Therefore, on this planet. For me, architecture I’m always interested in new must not only enable us to inhabit opportunities anywhere around the a place but also bring the best out world. of it, and of ourselves. Some things I particularly value are honesty, Please, feel free to reach out, and realism and non-complacency. let me know what you think! I love exploring new ideas and creative methods to work, which is why the past years I’ve to get to know and master some of the essential tools to develop a whole project from scratch, from basic hand drawing or AutoCAD to more sophisticated tools such as Revit or structure calculation software. My interests lay lately in the intersection between the physical and the digital environment, between architecture and the Internet, which is why I have also spent a few years of my life working on the Tech scene in Silicon Valley and Berlin, Germany, where I currently live. 3

(back then I had long hair! Ooh, those were the good days)

Rafael Toledano Illán rafaeltoledano@berkeley.edu +49 15206218062

EXPERIENCE

EDUCATION

1. Senior Front End Software Developer Happy Valley Ventures (Berlin, Germany) Jun 2017 - Dec 2019

1. University of Granada Architecture (BSc + Msc) 2008-2014 2. University of California, Berkeley Education Abroad Program. 2014-2015 3. Politechnika Krakowska im. Tadeusza Kosciuszki Erasmus Program. 2011-2012

2. Front End Software Developer Pivii Technologies (Berlin, Germany) Mar 2016 - May 2016 3. Architect Toledano Edificaciones y Obras Públicas S.L. (Jaén, Spain) Jul 2015 - Dec 2016

WORKSHOPS

4. Graduate Student Instructor University of Granada. Granada, Spain. Feb 2014 - Jul 2014

1. Udacity Machine Learning Engineering Nanodegree , Online. 2018 2. Udacity Android Basics Nanodegree, Online. Full Tuition Google Scholarship 2016 3. SPICED Academy Full Stack Software Development Course. Half tuition support. Presencial. 2016 4. Universidad de los Andes XXIX Taller internacional de Arquitectura de Cartagena de Indias. Full tuition fellowship recipient. 06-07/2015

5. Project Intern Toledano Edificaciones y Obras Públicas S.L. (Jaén, Spain) Jul 2013 - Sep 2013 6. Summer Intern Associated Architects LLP. (Birmingham, United Kingdom) Jul 2012 - Sep 2012

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7. Summer Intern Webb Gray Architects. (Birmingham, United Kingdom) Jul 2011 - Sep 2011

SKILLS

PUBLICATIONS, EXHIBITIONS AND PRIZES

LANGUAGES

SOFTWARE

CODING

Spanish English German French Polish

AutoCAD REVIT 3D Max Sketchup Illustrator Photoshop Rhino

ES6 Typescript Java Angular Python C# Go

CERTIFICATIONS

2 a 0 94 ag lon W ai g il l n s s w di t d im e w o c in h to t h i l e r’s e ta or Me k in de di g r s te r ra n

• TOEFL iBT Educational Service Testing 2014-2016, 2017-2019, 2019-2021 • Cambridge English, Proficiency (CPE) Cambridge English Language Assessment 06/2016 • Cambridge English, Advanced (CAE) Cambridge English Language Assessment 06/2008 • TestDaF (Deutsch als Fremdsprache) Der Test Deutsch als Fremdsprache Institut 06/2016 • Calculo de estructuras con CYPECAD y Nuevo Metal 3D CYPE Ingenieros, S.A. 04/2014

• Universidad de los Andes Full Tuition Fellowship. 2014. Full tuition to participate in the XXIX Taller internacional de Arquitectura de Cartagena de Indias. • University of California EAP Full Tuition Scholarship. 2014. Full tuition of a year of studies in the University of California at Berkeley as part of the second cycle of my Architecture degree. • Berkeley Circus 2014 2014. Selected candidate for a presentation at the 2014 Berkeley Circus, a celebration ofthe accomplishments of the College of Environmental Design community, when thedoors of Wurster Hall are open to distinguished visitors, critics, and alumni toprovide opportunities for students to share their work with important figures in theenvironmental design world and highlight recent research by the CED faculty. • “Microarquitecturas. Volúmenes en composición.” 2012. Architecture models exhibition at Colegio de Arquitectos de Granada, Granada, Spain. • Erasmus Full Tuition Scholarship 2011. Funds from the European Union, the Kingdom of Spain, and the Autonomous Community of Andalusia. • “Imaginaciudades” 2010. Universidad de Granada, 2009. ISBN : 978-84-9275-92-3 Book showing the best works developed during the first Urban Design course in the University of Granada. • “GR-FLICKR-09” 2008. Photographic exhibition at Sala Rey Chico de Granada, Granada, Spain. • “FOTOGRAFIARQ” 2008. First prize in the Architecture Photography Contest of the University of Granada.

PROJECTS IN GRANADA, KRAKOW, BERKELEY

SACRED ENTROPY: A NECROPOLIS IN GRANADA There are several cemeteries in the flatlands of Granada, Spain. Most of them are almost full. So a new one it’s proposed in the middle of the flatlands. Connected to Churriana de la Vega, and its old crowded cemetery. The project starts analyzing the funerary tradition in Spain. And its implications with the physical concept of entropy: the level of disorder of a system, that this experiences losing energy... which in our normal vocabulary means dying. The beauty of Hispanic funerary architecture is that it is made not just of construction materials such as brick, or wood... but also of humans. The disorder of death becomes order again when we create architecture with our bodies. We keep living through the cemetery.

How can we adapt the beautiful anthropomorphic architecture to the new tendencies? The solution is to create a wall, in which a series of voids will host the funerary urns. These urns will contain the ashes of the bodies and even some personal objects. The wall would be filled up slowly, but its capacity will be almost infinite. At this point, the question is how to create an architecture based on the idea of the wall as its generator element. A wall that encloses and separates the sacred space, from the profane space.

Understanding death as entropy doesn’t mean we have to stop understanding it as emptiness. Death of our loved ones leaves a hole in our hearts, but we have to understand this voids as an intrinsic part of life. In the Granada flatlands, we can see an example of an architecture in which the voids count as much as the solid: the tobacco drying buildings, similar to a kiln, but working just with the natural warm air of the area. The architecture is anthropometric -its measures are based on the human body- but also anthropomorphic because the human body is part of it. But traditions change, and even though that traditional burial meant more than 90% of the market a few decades ago, now incineration means more than 50% and it’s still growing. Entrance to the cementery

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY, UNIVERSITY OF GRANADA (2014-2015)

Underground floor

Ground floor and front view

Building F. One of the wake rooms.

Several sections through the complex

Building D. The temple crematorium

Detailed cross section

Building A. Offices and exhibition spaces

AGAINST WIND AND SAND: INTERPRETATION CENTER IN THE GREAT DUNES NATIONAL PARK In Colorado, the heart of the United States, you can find the highest dunes in north America. Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re the neuralgic center of a national park surrounded by meadows, swamps, pines, poplars, and tundra, on the western side of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, one of the subranges of the Rocky Mountains. The main space of the dunes is created by a natural recycle process. The streams that flow around the perimeter of the dunes erode these slowly, dragging the sand down the river until the water is filtered by the earth, it disappears, and deposits the sand on the surface. These deposits of sand are transported by the west wind until this one looses its strength by the west border of the valley.

Most of the building will end up buried under the sand, decreasing the temperature inside it. Moreover, this sand will be the base to fabricate the concrete used in the construction Inclined walls will have a system to collect rain water, filtering it and driving it between the walls to a deposit where it will be distributed throughout the building.

This process is repeated every day since more than 440,000 years ago. This creates dunes relatively stable and in continuous growth, and since the wind changes direction at different times of the year, it creates several kinds of dunes. Sand, water, and the wind are the three pillars that support this natural mega construction. Once the new dune system is formed around the initial volumes, and when the years pass by, sand will cover them partially and will integrate them in a natural way in the context of the dunes, reducing their visual impact and creating a whole. Sand inside the building is not seen as a problem, but as an opportunity, as another tool in the architecture.

Progress of the sand over the years

IN NATUR 5 CONTEST (2015)

Formal evolution of the building in its context

Exploted perspective of the building

Exit to the sand dunes

PREFABULOUS SIX: A PREFABRICATED KINDERGARDEN The project consists of a nursery school in the growth zone of the city of Granada. The aim is to achieve a building that achieves the highest possible degree of prefabrication: hexagon modules are therefore used, built in the factory and later placed on site as a puzzle. Prefabricated architecture is, almost by definition, modular architecture to a greater or lesser extent. This type of architecture, prefabricated and modular, presents a series of advantages in comparison with traditional architecture: speed of construction, saving of material, saving of manpower, possibility of organic growth of the building, great quality in materials and finishes, etc. The building is developed mainly on the ground floor, although there are rooms below ground level (warehouse) and others on the first floor (offices, part of the assembly hall). The large-scale design of the building is based, in part, on traditional Spanish architecture specifically Andalusian - through the use of a semi-covered courtyard around which the different pieces are placed. The courtyard serves as a space distributor, meeting zone, air conditioner, etc. The design of the modules has been based on three aspects: that it is easy to build them, that there are few types of modules and that they are repeated as many times as possible. For this reason, it has been decided not to include the exterior enclosure in these modules -thus there are fewer types, they are repeated more and it is easier to build them-.

Patio

UNIVERSITY OF GRANADA (2014)

Exploted view of the module

Different modules

One of the classrooms

QUIET AND LOUD: A RESIDENTIAL BUILDING IN PLAC NOWY, KRAKOW Plac Nowy is the center of the old Jewish Quarter in Krakow, Poland. The project is a proposal to fill an existing gap in the city, and in the faรงade of this neoclassical square.

Talking about the exterior, the main concept is a study about when a building should speak and when it should be silent. In the faรงade looking to the square we can see how the building adapts itself to the characteristics of the place with its own contemporary language, letting the market being the protagonist of the square. On the other facade, looking to the street, the building starts to forget its shyness and to be more present in the place, specially in the crossroad. The facade is composed, first, by a regular rythm of windows, that becomes more free while we move forward from the square to the backyard, adding some red pieces that create an apparently chaotic composition. The facade diverges in two separate spaces: the walls of the backyard, and the elements that create the garden. Looking to the backyard, the building can adapt a simple and useful language that lets the sunlight get into the flats. The garden is composed by these red elements, creating seats, fonts, flowerpots, etc.

POLITECHNIKA KRAKOWSKA IM. TADEUSZA KOล CIUSZKI (2012)

Ground floor in the context of the square

The volume of the building is clearly defined by the own square, and this volume itself helps to define the space of the square.

25 Upper and bottom floors of the duplex flats

Cross section

East elevation

Views of the building from the square and backyard

MAKE THE WAY BY WALKING: CULTURAL ROUTE IN TANGIER

The road and its different interest points

We are in North Africa, in Tangier, Morocco. A zone characterized by its clear parallelism with the south of Europe. and a city that is mythified as international, multicultural and multilingual. A city that is simultaneously African, European and American.

The first part of the work is developed by carrying out a historical, cultural, urban and natural study on a territorial scale of Tangier and its region, divided into five large blocks: topography, flora and fauna, water, roads, and anthropization. From these blocks we intend to extract information on existing resources in the region

that are wasted, and on which we can work to make a realistic architectural proposal on a territorial scale that recycles urban waste, reactivates the economy protect the natural environment and promote the cultural development of the region.

UNIVERSITY OF GRANADA (2012)

Based on these premises, a proposal is arrived at to new environmental networks formalized on a path that runs through the region from the medina of Tangier to the caves of Hercules, passing through the entire geography of the Tingitan peninsula. But a path is not a line projected on a plane, or on the ground, a path is created on the basis of events, and this is where the most human scale of architecture comes in. After analyzing all the the opportunities that the territory offers us, extracted from the blocks mentioned above, a series of architectural projects are proposed that, together, draw what is intended to be an alternative route of the city of Tangier and its region, not only for the many tourists who visit the city, but also for the tangerines themselves. These projects are characterised by their formal and functional diversity, but its unity of purpose - economic revival, environmental protection, cultural development, etc. -

31 Diagram of characterizing elements of the landscape: topography, vegetation, water, roads, anthropization.

ON THE ROAD: A URBANISM AND TERRITORY LABORATORY IN TANGIER

View of the cantilope over the original terraces

UNIVERSITY OF GRANADA (2013)

In a point of that route, in the Medina, there’s an old Spanish military fortress. It’s in the Spanish Tabor Square. The building is composed of a main volume, followed by a series of terraces. It’s located strategically to overview the whole coast. The new building is thus projected as a gesture that seeks to solve the degradation of the square, the disconnection between spaces, the disconnection between buildings. It can be understood as a line. A line that departs from the courtyard of the Tabor building and flies over the terraces, looking at the landscape. A line that folds over itself and looks at the barracks, explores it and runs through it. A line that flanks the wall, looking at the city, to the door of Ben Amar. A line that submerges into the square to create an auditorium, and then escapes through the wall. This red line on the plane is formalised as a prism, also red, to clearly differentiate itself from the barracks building and create a visual identity in the square. A prism that is broken, folded, emphasized and dematerialized along the way. A prism that generates a didactic of looking - looking at the territory, looking at the buildings, looking at the details, looking at the city, looking at nature. A prism that, depending on these breaks, folds, etc., works in one way or another: as a ramp-viewpoint in its first section, as a passive exhibition hall in the courtyard, as an active exhibition hall -live and live- in the galleries of the barracks, as a multimedia room, as a gallery with the background wall cloth, as an urban stage of the square, as an access to Ben Amar’s door, as an access to the assembly hall under the square...

The original military structure

Working model

Upper floor

Exhibition room

GRAFFITI CITY: URBAN UTOPIA IN L.A. This is a project developed at the University of Berkeley, and around several themes: the human body, contemporary art, current ways of living. The site in question is Venice Beach, in Los Angeles, California. It is a unique and fascinating environment, in which we can see several of the glories and misfortunes of the city of cars par excellence, the autopia, Los Angeles.

The design plays with the original elements of Venice Beach - that is, of course, water - but on a scale more adapted to the 21st century: from single-family houses to skyscrapers. Water, bridges, and buildings make up the basis of the project on the north-south axes. The transverse communication is solved with another element typical - and almost utopian - of the city of Los Angeles: a highway, recovered for pedestrians.

A medium-high density urban development is proposed, with mixed uses. The design is characterized by three elements: the origins of Venice Beach, graffiti and urban art as a representative of contemporary American culture, and finally, the classic American highways.

Elevation

Conceptual plan of the urban development

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY (2014)

Graffiti side

White side

PEARLS: A YOUTH HOSTEL IN SAN MATIAS

UNIVERSITY OF GRANADA (2014)

Bedroom

San Matias is one of the busiest streets and neighbourhoods of Granada, Spain. It has several damaged buildings, old Castillian palaces waiting to be restored and reused. This project is part of a restoration program to give new uses to these abandoned buildings. We propose a Youth Hostel in San Matias 11. We start by analyzing the damages and solutions. And proposing a series of volumes inside. The idea is using the original building as a â&#x20AC;&#x153;shellâ&#x20AC;? that will host a series of furniture pieces or artifact. These artifacts - made of wood, steel or glass - will not only not interfere with the original castillian architecture, therefore allowing the visitor to clearly recognize the qualities of the palace, but also provide all the necessary equipment and installations for the modern use of the building.

FaĂ§ade towards San Matias street

de rie de ra las actual e, y la nte

Second floor plan

1. Sloping Arabian tile roof 2. Metal gutter 3. Wooden carpentry 4. Wrought iron balustrade 5. Balcony overhang 6. Facade cloth 7. Decorative frame of the balcony 8. Forge ironwork 9. Lower window frames 10. Waterproofing film 11. Anti-puncture layer 12. Filler concrete 13. Wooden beam 14. Perimeter courtyard strapping 15. Skylight perimeter strap 16. Metal profiles of the skylight 17. Skylight glass 18. Polished cement floor 19. Compression layer 20. Concrete vaults 21. Wooden perimeter strap 22. Vertical waterproofing sheet 23. Single hollow brick 24. Zinc plate for finishing off 25. Grip Mortar 26. Single hollow brick for levelling 27. Polished cement floor 28. Sandbed 29. Isolation band 30. Assembly support: substructure of lightweight beam (tubular profiles) 31. Rock wool insulation 32. Plywood 33. Wood finishing 34. Flying part/step; substructure 35. Wooden staircase 36. Steel finish 37. Tubular profile; metal substructure 38. Installation opening 39. Uprights; metal substructure 40. Metal furniture

PCR4

DESARROLLO CONSTRUCTIVO Sección constructiva

Constructive section and details

escala 1:50

Alumnos: Carlos Roda García_Rafael Toledano Illán Profesor: Javier Gallego Roca

Grupo 10A2 Cruso 2012-2013

ORGANIC GROWTH: AN EXTENSION OF THE UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL OF SAN CECILIO In Granada, Spain, there is a Hospital complex in the city centre, called the San Cecilio Hospital. It was built in the mid-century, following a very traditional and rationalist model of health architecture. But nowadays it has many space problems, due to the excess of patients and the uncontrolled growth of the infrastructures over the years. The initial answer to this problem would be to create a parasite architecture that attaches to the original building to solve its space problems... But... why donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t we make it also organic architecture, so weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll always have the future growth under control? We could, by creating a pattern, a hexagonal pattern so it could grow in six different directions. By overlapping this pattern to the original complex, we can control its growth in a much more efficient and creative way. So it becomes an intersection between parasite architecture and organic architecture.

Night view of the hospital

UNIVERSITY OF GRANADA (2014)

First floor plan

1/200 and 1/75 models

Right wing corridor

For more projects, images and content, visit https://www.rtyx.es For the full original panels, visit https://issuu.com/rafaeltoledanoillan

THANK YOU GRACIAS DANKE ‫הדות‬