Architecture Portfolio | Ramzi Alrefaee by Ramzi Alrefaee

PORTFOLIO 2016-2022

Ramzi Alrefaee

www.facebook.com/RamziDesignServices

Craft ideas to generate branding experience.

Index 06

Fashion Hub

The Library of JEA

Arabic Music Town

EDGE Fashion Hub

Nile Living Pedestrian Bridge

The Bind Hotel

Al-Sarhan Commercial

Visualization

Graphics Presentation

Bio. Junior architect with almost comprehensive experience preparing architectural designs for the full completion of residential, commercial, interior and public buildings, in addition to a mid-level experience in urban and landscape design. Skilled in applying creativity to design highly appealing and interesting yet functional designs that engage emotion. Posses a proven ability to lead project teams to successfully deliver agreed upon superior quality solutions using my skills on a various design, modeling, visualizing and presentation programs.

Information Ramzi Qaseem Mohd. Al-Refaee 23th. April 1998 Al-Aqsa st. Amman, Jordan + (962) 7 9795 6678 alrefaee_ramzi@hotmail.com

Social Media Ramzi Design Services Ramzi_Design linkedin.com/in/ramzi-alrefaee

Education

Achievements

Bachelor of Architecture The University of Jordan, 2021 Amman, Jordan

First Prize - Library of JEA Redesign Jordan Engineering Association, 2021 Partnership: Abdallah Foudeh Amman, Jordan

Work Experience Junior Architect Wael Al-Masri Planners & Architects - Amman, Jordan 2021 - Present

Initially hires as an intern architect, but quickly was promoted. Effectively developed architectural and urban design concepts, visualizing and presenting deliverables upon superior quality through conceptual and schematic phases. Created several presentation styles of the office’s projects using visualization and graphic design programs.

Shortlisted - Rif’at Chadirji Prize Tamayouz Award, 2020 Group Work: Wael Al-Masri & Abdallah Foudeh Amman, Jordan Longlisted - Student’s Graduation Award Jordan Engineering Assocation, 2021 Amman, Jordan

Software Skills

Element80 Academy Lumion Visualization Trainer 2022 - Present

Due to my previous experience in education, training students in centers Adobe Photoshop and watercolor rendering. Started training students on Lumion program online with Element80 Academy.

AutoDesk AutoCAD

AutoDesk Revit

AutoDesk 3DS MAX

Google Sketchup

Rhinoceros

Lumion

V-Ray

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe illustrator

Adobe inDesign

Ramzi Design Services Freelance Designer 2018 - Present

Started freelance design services for clients since studying architecture in the university including architecture, interior and graphic design.

The Library of JEA

FIRST-PRIZE

In 2021, The Jordanian Engineers Association launched a competition for one month to re-design the interior space of the Association’s library and its external side entrance from the health insurance building of the Association. Me and my partner Arch. Abdallah Foudeh joined the competition as a fresh graduated architects. The description of the competition mentioned the main goals and objectives that the renovation aims to, with the existing situation and the required functions, containing the number of books and offices. Our design took advantage of the existing determinants, turning them into opportunities that we exploited to redefine the spatial experience of the users, splitting the visitors’ circulation away from the employees by dividing the interior space into blocks by partitions that are perpendicular to the natural lighting sources, using the neutral colors of wood and white gypsum boards, in addition to the hidden light strips that enrich wayfinding through space. In December, the JEA held a ceremony for the participants to present their works in the presence of the jury where it was announced that our design achieved the first prize.

Client Jordan Engineering Association

The JEA Library

Year & Location 2021 - Amman, Jordan

Type Competition - First Prize

The JEA Library

The library of the JEA is located in the third floor of the association’s health insurance building, while its entry from the side stairs isn’t ligible for the users. The competition has two main objectives; redesigning the interior space of the library and its entry zone in order to make it noticeable and clear.

Existing Architectural Plan of 3rd Floor (Library of JEA)

The design responds to the ideal optimizing of the space by simulating the proposed spatial experience for the user in all its spatial dimensions, starting from the side entrance area, passing through the staircase, the library entrance, and then to the library’s multiple spaces, which enhances the guidance of the user to use spaces and tools in a flexible way that meets his needs, using contemporary materials and finishes that emulate the spirit of modernity.

The existing interior space of JEA Library

The JEA Library

Office

Archive Reading Area

PCs Area

Reception

Proposed Furnished Architectural Plan of the JEA Library 10

The JEA Library

Reception

Archive

Office PCs Area

Office Reading Area

Book Shelves

The proposed design responds to the circulation issue as a main controling force. The reception desk is relocated to be adjacent to the door with an enough space for the people to discuss the employee without preventing the other users to enter the library. Beside the reception, a narrow corridor is created by book shelves for the other three employees to get into their offices and archive, while this corridor is lighted by the indirect skylight comes from windows and glass walls. The main axis that cross the entry, goes through the central reading area and PCs area where users can surf and find books they’re looking for, while book shelves are designed to be perpendicular to the skylights sources (windows), to get maximum benefit from the skylight as shown in the isometric section.

Isometric Section of the JEA Library

The JEA Library

Arabic Music Town

LONGLISTED

As the region of Jordan/Palestine has a rich heritage of cultural arts, varies from music, songs, textile crafting, sculpting and others, the idea of the project arose as an attempt to establish an inclusive national mini town of Arabic music, as a complementary piece of the cultural strip in the heart of Amman, in Ras Al-Ain, creating a familiar Jordanian cultural place, that attracts the most of ages, categories and types of community individuals. The project’s concept Recreating the language of interrelationship between society and its art of music, by recasting Amman architectural image, affected by a contemporary local prospects, to give users the desire to explore the source of his nostalgia for Arabic music, within an integrated familiar urban spaces with the context and the project’s interior facilities, in order to re-establish the roots of cultural and social identity within individuals.

Arabic Music Town

Serving the cultural-social impression of the project, the architectural approach is a contemporary derivation of the local architectural image of Amman, which is a state of a randomized order of clustered blocks, finished either with concrete or stone, distributed due to the forces of mountains’ slope, which creates a composition of datum lines, integrated with steps and stairs of pedestrian that creates a sense of ambiguity and curiosity to explore the hidden sides behind walls and trees. The project was submitted for Tamayouz International Award 2021 and qualified to the longlist in JEA Students Award 2021.

Supervisor Dr. Nabeel Al-Kurdi

Year & Location 2021 - Amman, Jordan

Work Type Graduation Project Arabic Music Town

1930s

Refugees came from Damascus during ottoman empire and built their urban life around Al-Seil.

1998

A strategic decision was taken by roofing Al-Seil, creating the famous zone known “Saqf Al-Seil”.

2005

GAM proposed a cultural strip as an urban development for the public spaces surrounding the building.

2018

King Abdullah II ordered to start building The Jordan Museum as a narration for the jordanian history.

Present

As a final destination for the BRT, Ras Al-Ein station was built beside fountatin plaza.

1968

Arabic Music Town

The region is familiar to most of the jordanian with its cultural personality as the “cultural island/strip”.

Historical Background Identity in philosophy is the absolute truth of a thing, which includes its intrinsic characteristics that distinguish it from others. Social identity reflects the degree of perceived overlap between groups of which one individual is simultaneously a member, while affiliation with many different groups may exacerbate the social identity complex. In the case of Arab societies, the ambiguity of social identity has increased with the deepening of the methods of cultural westernization, and the fading out of cultural assets that arose from the state of society and their daily life, to become today a nonrenewable heritage, linked to the past and did not grow with the speed of development, with some exceptions for some Arab societies. According to historical events, the rapid evolution of Jordan, the Arab neighbors’ refugees, the economic crisis, in addition to the technological development and the global openness using social media, Amman today is a city of incoherent diversity, with big cultural gaps between its regions, which is the natural result of the weakness to establish a local national cultural reference that attracts members of this community within events that confirm its connection to the place.

Site Potentials The selected site in Ras Al-Ain is called today “Souq Al-Jum’ah”, which is a temporary location where sellers display their clothes, within a simi-ceremony market held every Friday instead of the old location in Al-Abdali. It’s called a temporary place, as it was planned as a proposed site of King Abdullah II House of Arts and culture by Zaha Hadid Architects, continuing the vision of creating the Amman cultural strip, within the lowest zone between the surrounding mountains of Amman and Al-Akhdar mountain, which creates exposed iconic local buildings to the contextual urban fabric of houses.

Location of Site According to the Surrounding Districts

In addition to its location on the intersection of “AlMuhajereen”, which enrich the image of the project to attract people and giving them the chance to have a wider look into the urban public spaces within the project’s envelope. The site’s topographic and contextual characteristics added a harsher challenge to the design process, which made it more complicated to create such an iconic building within the irregular boundaries, the hard slope, the residential context, the busy traffic, and the ease of visual and physical access to the site. Accessibility and Traffic Routes Around the Site

Arabic Music Town

Contextual Inspiration The site faces two major poles in the surrounding context, the first is the residential buildings that articulate their hard living conditions due to its crowded clustered panoramic composition of cubic forms with a randomized squared openings on the old cement screed finishing elevations, connected with a long strenuous stairs, and the second is the iconic official and cultural buildings within the strip. When trying to read the architectural dialogue between these two polars, the most significant issue that interrupt this process is the gap of scale and proportion, which creates a sense of awe that prevent some people to visit these building, making these building as an exclusive for the high level of community despite it was built for all citizens. Due to the analysis, the cultural strip’s buildings articulate a combination of several architectural styles that are affected by the local fabric of buildings, displaying a set of local and contemporary materials on its elevations, showing the stone as a primary local luxury material.

Arabic Music Town

The repetitive language of pointed and circular arches in Amman was an inspiration to use a more dynamic contemporary form of arhces; the parabolic arches.

An Additive Layer of GRC Screens Were Added to The Facades, Which Is Composited of a Parametric Squared Openings, Derived From an Abstracted Inspiration of a Panoramic View of Amman Concrete Housing Blocks, Distributed Over the Mountains, Which Increase The Architectural Dialogue Between The Project’s Image and The Contextual Background.

The Usage of Taffouh Stone as a Finish for the Exterior Elevation, Following the Stone Image of The Buildings in The Cutlural Strip.

Simulating Amman Stairs and Steps Between Stone and Concrete Walls, as An Interactive Circulation Elements Between The Exterior Urban Space

Arabic Music Town

Three Main Masses Describes The Main Three Types of Users

Extracting Two Main Orientations due to the Site Shape and the surrounding paths

Extruding Two Modular Masses to Add Balance and Defining Entry

Rotating A Part of The Composition Parallel to the Second Street

Modifying The Orientation of The Front Mass To Face Both of Streets Ordering Masses and Urban Spaces Around The Datum of Circulation Between Two Main Entries

Pulling and Pushing Down The Masses to Simulate the Slope

Creating An Integrated Composition of Massing and Exterior Spaces that Fits into The Site’s Boundaries

Arabic Music Town

Adding The Abstracted Screens Layer of Ras Al-Ain Panoramic View

Arabic Music Town

Library with a mezzanine floor

Gallery of Arabic Music heritage

Gathering Main Lobby

Trainers and professionals lounge

Conference hall for professional guests

Computer labs for trainees

Services floor for the whole building facilities

Underground Parking for 225 vehicles

1 2

3 7

Arabic Music Town

Enhancing social and cultural identity is the main expected vision of the project through achieving a set of goals and objectives that serves different types of users, public people, amateur musicians, professionals, artists and event planners, by creating a national platform for each type; educational and training for amateurs, recording for artists, research for professionals. The Image of the project was a serious attempt to avoid the exclusivity of the project, giving users and observers an impression of familiarity by simulating the sloped site by a grading scale, with respect to the human scale far away from self-exposition, which may lose the building a type of community who think that they aren’t able to visit this luxury iconic project.

Arabic Music Town

The project contains such an overlapped volumes of spaces to serve the functional requirements of each zone, which creates an interactive interior experience as shown in the drawings. The project is consisted of three main buildings, the first one is the Main House of Music, the main building where public users and professionals attend to satisfy their major needs from the project, it contains public functions; Main lobby, Gallery of Arabic Music, Theatre, Coffee House and Gift shop. The second building is the Educational Department for trainees and professionals, containing training rooms, classrooms, Computer lab and support facilities, while the third building is the Recording Studios, which is the commercial department of the project that supply the project with the required funding revenue, supporting musicians with a high-quality recording rooms.

Front Elevation

Arabic Music Town

Master Plan - Arabic Music Town

2 1

18 4

17 20 19

6 5

8 7 12

11 14

Educational Department

Main House

Recording Studios

1 Classroom

7 Lobby Reception

13 Theatre

17 Reception

2 Conference Hall

8 Waiting Area

14 Emergency Sides

18 Manager Office

3 Court

9 Gallery of Arabic Music

15 Stage

19 Services

4 Training Room

10 Gift Shop

16 Backstage

20 Studios

5 Rhythm (Style) Room

11 Services

6 Services

12 Theatre Lobby

Project’s Name

Longitudinal Section A-A

6 Stage

11 Main Lobby

2 Underground parking Entry

7 Emergency Exit

12 WC

3 Parking Services

8 Theatre

13 Coffee House

4 Parking Stops

9 Theatre Lobby

14 Library

5 Backstage

10 Underground Services

15 Gallery of Arabic Music

Amphitheatre

12 5

1 7

2 3

13 11

14 15

Arabic Music Town

EDGE Fashion Hub is a national center that was designed beside the international Airport road to be an attractive node for local people and tourists for fashion world in Amman. The hub afford visitors the opportunity to explore the full cycle of clothing production, as it attract the amateurs to get trained in the center, so they can produce clothes that will be exhibited in shops for visitors.

Fashion Hub Supervisor Dr. Ali Abu-Ghanimeh & Lamis Shaban

EDGE Fashion Hub

Year & Location 2017 - Amman, Jordan

Course Architectural Design III

The project aims to advance fashion domain in Jordan with its unique and iconic designthat satisfies the contemporary fashion trends, to be a national attractive hub in such a noticable site in Amman,

Edge Fashion Hub

The creation concept described by two main masses separated by the time force showing the past and the present of fashion world then deforming the future mass creating a deconstructive mass beside a linear one. At the last stage creating an appropriate overlapping relationship between the two masses

EDGE Fashion Hub

In the pre-historic periods, First human invented a tool (clothes) to achieve two main goals, which were; to get safe of the exterior conditions and privacy, By the pass of the time, this tool transfered into a symbol of a culture, so we could find the ancient civilzations were using a specific style or type of material to make their clothes. After that, many of factors and constraints started to affect the world of clothing such as; sex, age, religion and then regions, countries, traditions, events, weather and many other! As a result of that, we could find one piece of clothes turned into many pieces, such as the top, bottom, underwear, accessories and more. Nowadays, clothing world was named “fashion”, and it turned into an important domain which is getting teached in colleges. In addition, now we have brands, and the names of designers recieve a huge popularity in the field. In this project, Starting with two main linear rectangular masses inspired by the context, the idea of the transformation and the variety in the fasion world was applied clearly, by deforming one of the masses into several deconstructivism masses by using the site forces, program of the building, several categories of clients and other constraints. The balanced combining between these two architectural style, created a scene to describe the complexity and variety we have today in the fasion world! EDGE Fashion Hub

Catwalk Restaurant Offices Parking

Gallery Shops Workshops Parking

EDGE Fashio Hub

Functions were distributed vertically through the building’s volumes due to nature of use, in the ground floor where the linear composition appears clearly, there are the common spaces such as offices, classrooms and workshops, where in the first floor there are the shops of clothes that was produced in the hub, beside the restaurant with its terrace. In the second floor, the angled structure of walls that creates the informal deconstructive volume of spaces contains the most interesting function in the building, the catwalk and its backstage space, where people can see the quality and the newest trends of fashion design world.

EDGE Fashion Hub

3 3

4 A

6 1

3 C

Project’s Name

1 Main Lobby 2 Main Stairs Atrium 3 Reception 4 Classrooms 5 Semina Room 6 Workshops 7 Offices A Main Entry B Trainers Entry C Employees Entry D Parking Entry

Project’s Name

The Intention for this bridge was to offer a remarkable cultural journey accross the Nile, through an iconic form reflecting its unique context, and by celebrating its past, present and future. The previous equation shows the inspirational symbols layers that created the design guidelines of the bridge which was derived from the history of cultures that lived on Egypt’s land, starting from Pharaonic symbolised elements reflected by “Eye of Horus”.

SHORTLISTED

Nile Living Pedestrian Bridge

Organizer (Competition) Tamayouz International Award

Nile Living Pedestrian Bridge

Year & Location 2020 - Cairo, Egypt

Work Type WMPA & Abdallah Foudeh (Group Work)

That creates an elliptical interesting geometry to be achieved by the voids in the bridge, and the main landmark of Egypt “the Pyramids of Giza”, and their balanced power giving the sense of awe, which was reflected by the structural three main columns that’s holding the bridge. In addition to the main abstracted calligraphy of “ ” word, that created a familiar relationship between its smooth shape and the people of Egypt who has a high sense of connectedness with this land.

Nile Living Pedestrian Bridge

Three overlapping curved spans symbolize the tripartite elements of the context; Nile, Cairo and Egypt. They express the multilayered history of this place. The three masts and cables carrying the central spans evoke the pyramids, while the lines of the wavy walkways reflect the outlines of the three Arabic letters the word Egypt. Adjacent to the Egyptian Museum and Tahrir Square, a spiral open museum, reflecting the letter (‫)م‬, celebrates the evolution of Egyptian civilization. The journey starts from underground in reference to the deep-rooted civilization, up to the level of the riversource of this civilization. Climbing to the upper bridge allows for overlooking the layers below, while moving to the middle of the river, where the bridge takes the shape of the letter (‫)ص‬, provides great exposure, arriving in Zamalek, with open ends reflecting the letter (‫)ر‬, and extending arms to the city beyond.

Nile Living Pedestrian Bridge

As an urban icon tying the two banks of the Nile together, this pedestrian bridge is intended as a regenerating cultural event for Cairo. In its multiple circular spans it maximizes panoramic exposure to the river and the city, while the overlapping walkways create shading for protected strolling, sitting, and gathering. In the following figure, the east bank central plaza is shown clearly within an active urban space surrounded by the bridge paths.

Nile Living Pedestrian Bridge

The Bind Hotel The Bind Hotel is a five-stars hotel that is located within the boundaries of Abdali District in Amman, it continues the series of the high-rise buildings around the site. The site was a big challenge that we tried to deal with its circumstances, a sharped angle triangle boundaries with a small area that doesn’t exceed 1000 sqm, taking into consideration the traffic solutions with the surrounding streets to get into 7 undergrond levels of parking. The building has 29 levels above the street level, containing such a formal spaces in the lower podium, while the tower part containes 218 deluxe, royal and grand rooms with its services and VIP lounges and reastaurant in the roof level.

Supervisors Fadia Nassar & Ahmad Al-Husseini

The Bind Hotel

Year & Location 2019 - Amman, Jordan

Work Type Partnership (Abdallah Foudeh)

The Bond Hotel

Abdali is a mega urban project that was intended to be the new city center for amman next to cultural and old Amman districts, which was a critical action and site to chose for such a project. A lot of urban researches and architects criticised the presence and influence of new Abdali in that zone, in addition to the lack in its own vision of attracting Amman population to the zone as a city center. This project was an attempet to redefine the edge of new Abdali as an average solution between the contemporary image of Abdali and traditional clustered view of Amman, by satisfying the hotel’s requirements in addition to its height, then covering it by a modular squared skeleton that serve the function of shading by its louvers and blending the tower elevations with Amman mountains background.

The Bind Hotel

The starting was with the triangular boundaries of the site plus the additional underground space for the site to be used as an underground parking. A geometrical relationship were found by offsetting site boundaries 8m (room required length) toward the center, creating the core space of the tower, to use this drawing as a reference designing the whole building

In a synchronized process with the lines phase, the conceptual image of the project where developed according to various types of factors and inspirations. It started by extruding the final shapes that resulted in the previous phase, connecting them with a podium that covers the foorprint, repeating a ring of services floors across the tower, then comes the modular subtraction from the edges to add the diagonal patterned steel structure that symbolizes the contradicted appearance between Abdali and Amman. The Bind Hotel

The Bind Hotel

Front Elevation

Side Elevation The Bind Hotel

Ground Floor Reception

The Bind Hotel

7th Floor GYM & SPA

12th Floor Rooms

SEC A-A

SEC B-B The Bind Hotel

The exploded diagram shows the layers of screening glazed elevations, as mentioned previously to serve the identitical issue of hotel’s image to be blended with Amman background, in addition to shading function for rooms. The glazed wall is covered by GRC skeleton that is designed through a clustered modular system following the structure of subtraction in mass, adding a layer of louvers to protect rooms from direct sunlight.

The Bind Hotel

Al-Sarhan Commercial

Al-Sarhan Commercial Ghaith Al-Sarhan is a jordanian dentist works in his clinic in Al-Mafraq, Jordan. Dr. AlSarhan decided to bulldoze his clinic to build a big commercial complex that contains his clinic, shops and offices. The client asked to deliver conceptual drawings and shots within one week, which was the main challenge I faced in this project. The land’s area is less than 1500 sqm, and refering to local legislations, the maximum footprint area of the building was less than 700 sqm, while it should contain a number of shops, offices, clinic zone and services. The land is located beside an intersection of roads, which was the design’s main attraction force. The clinic zone is located near the intersection side, while its entry is on the intersection corner in order to be clear and ligible to the maximum number of drivers. On the main elevation, there are three commercial stores entries in addition to the coffee house at the corner, where there are a side entry where women can go to the gym.

Client Dr. Ghaith Al-Sarhan

Year & Location 2022 - Amman, Jordan

Type Commercial Complex (Freelance)

Al-Sarhan Commercial

Second Floor

Offices Lobby Stairs/Lifts

First Floor

Lobby Stairs/Lifts Gym Coffee House Clinic

Ground Floor

Lobby Stairs/Lifts Gym Coffee House Stores Clinic

The building has a set of overlapped volumes due to its various uses, on the ground floor, the dentist clinic volume is located at the intersection corner and has its interior vertical circulation to the first floor, while it is accessible directly from its main entry from the street in addition to the side entry from stairs. Stores on the ground floor are accessible from the front elevation to customers, beside the coffee house at the opposite corner, while the gym is located at the back side of the complex as it requires an additional degree of privacy for women, while first floor contains the upper part of clinic, gym and the coffee house. Starting from the second floor (typical) to the fourth floor, a central lobby is lighted directly by a skylight opening on the roof , while its surrounded by offices with a removable partition that can be edited to readjust the area of each office.

Al-Sarhan Commercial

Ground Floor - Al-Sarhan Commercial 60

Al-Sarhan Commercial

Urban Project - Freelance

Visulaization

Residential Interior Design - Amman

Visualization

Visulaization

Al-Suhool & Rasheed Mosque Designed by WMPA

Visualization

Graphic Presenation