Rene Duplantier architectural portfolio 2023

It’s over there. It’s over there. My building has every convenience. It’s gonna make life easy for me. It’s gonna be easy to get things done. I will relax along with my loved ones.

Loved ones, loved ones visit the building, take the highway, park, and come up and see me. I’ll be working, working, but if you come visit, I’ll put down what I’m doing. My friends are important.

3401 St. Charles Hotel Saint Vincent Affordable Smiles 100 Oriole Alexander’s Market

Kim and Don’s House Hostel Apartment mixed media map projection

URBANbuild14

Talking Heads “Don’t Worry About the Government” 1977

block elevations

W.1 3401 St. Charles - New Orleans, LA

Since 2005, New Orleans as a whole has made great steps to replace parking lots and former industrial areas with housing. I’ve been extremely fortunate to contribute to that effort on the design team for 3401 St. Charles, a mixed-use development on the corner of St. Charles Avenue and Louisiana Avenue. This site was once home to a seven story apartment building with the ground floor housing a Katz and Besthoff drugstore. The Besthoff family retains ownership of the property and hired MetroStudio to restore this historic use. The project occupies almost an entire city block. It consists of 20,000 sf of retail space; 114 one, two, and three bedroom market rate rental units (in two buildings); 140 parking spaces; and major improvements to the surrounding right-of-ways. During the design process, our team has collaborated with local design regulatory agencies, the department of parks and parkways, the department of housing and urban development, neighborhood groups, and the board of zoning adjustments in addition to regular collaboration with consultants. Construction is set to begin in 2023.

Carondelet facade

St. Charles facade

Louisiana Ave facade

primary building plan detail (rotated) secondary building wall section

pool and hotel balconies

W.2 Hotel Saint Vincent east elevation

W.2 Hotel Saint Vincent - New Orleans, LA

Completed in 2021, Hotel Saint Vincent is an adaptive re-use hotel project located on Magazine Street in New Orleans’s Lower Garden District. MetroStudio provided architectural services to reshape the 1861 asylum campus into a 75 room hotel with three bars, two restaurants, and an event space. I was first introduced to the project during a summer internship at MS in 2018 as the team worked on a 75% CD set for pricing. During this time, I worked on noting plans and elevations, creating wall sections for the new construction buildings, and laying out drawings on the sheets. After my final year of graduate school, I resumed work on the project during its construction, assisting in CA duties. Due to the historic and therefore complex nature of the buildings, the project required the design team to adapt to new conditions discovered during demolition and to get new drawings to the contractor as quickly as possible. During the construction period, I was responsible for writing field reports and drawing details for exterior tile, ceiling assemblies, mechanical screens, and courtyard masonry elements.

event building

bedroom

bathroom unit plan

equipment screen details

W.3 Affordable Smiles

from top: completed west facade, floor plan, waiting room

post-demolition

W.3 Affordable Smiles - Gulfport, MS

One of the strangest projects I’ve had the opportunity to work on, Affordable Smiles is a dentist office which occupies the shell of a former Chinese drive-thru. The regional dentistry chain Affordable Smiles approached MetroStudio to refurbish the 1990’s building to serve as their first out of state location. While the client had hoped the scope of the project would be limited to replanning the interior and repainting the exterior, selective demolition revealed leaking/moisture in the walls due to improper stucco detailing when the building was constructed. In the end, the exterior walls were stripped down to the sheathing, new waterproofing was applied, and the building was finished with entirely new stucco and Hardie siding. Peculiar elements of the contemporary fast food building typology such as the looping driveway and the drive-thru windows were retained to lower the overall project cost. Curiously, these formal elements help the building remain a part of the Hwy 49 commercial corridor; while the chosen colors, dark grey and the brand’s royal purple, make it stand out from the neighboring Arby’s and Krispy Kreme.

existing south facade

completed south facade

demo south elevation

issued for permitting south elevation

4 WEST ELEVATION

final model final south elevation

check out counter detail

SECTION @ CHECK-IN COUNTER office

3

corridor office treatment room

W.4 100 Oriole

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floor plan south elevation

wall section at fireplace

living room

04 04

W.4 100 Oriole St. - New Orleans, LA 100 Oriole St is a single-family home located in the historic modernist neighborhood of Lake Vista. Our clients had occupied a 1980’s ranch house on the site for years and hired MetroStudio to design a similar but contemporary house to replace it. Our team retained the existing (to-be-demolished) house’s excellent siting and privacy strategies but overhauled the interior layout to remove inefficiencies and out-of-fashion space planning. This project stands out from others in my career as the project that yielded the most collaboration with the clients: retirees who were able to select all finishes, fixtures, etc down to the cabinet pulls prior to the contractor bidding the job. Their investment in the outcome of the project helped us to create one of the most detailed drawing sets to come out of our office. By the same token, their understanding of the historicity of the neighborhood allowed us to design a contemporary structure in the lineage of and in homage to the area’s mid-century homes. Unfortunately, changes in the market due to the coronavirus put the project out of budget and it remains unbuilt.

04

dimensioned floor plan

W.5 Alexander’s Market - Gonzales, LA

interior branding w/ monitor beyond

Louisiana-based grocery chain Alexander’s Market approached MetroStudio to design a new store as part of a planned mixeduse development in Gonzales, LA. Once a rural area, Gonzales is rapidly expanding and transforming into a bridging suburb between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The design team emphasized the need for a stand-out building to distinguish Alexander’s from other stores in the area. Likewise, the development group expressed their desire for this location to compete with specialty grocers such as Whole Foods, HEB, and Trader Joe’s. With this in mind, our team developed a series of schemes which married the formal language and material palette of rural vernacular architecture with the programming elements of contemporary nationwide grocery chains. The final scheme, an adaptation of the monitor barn typology, makes use of large-scale exterior decals and murals to tie the market to the town of Gonzales. Clerestory windows in the monitor allow natural light to spread over interior elements including a wine bar, a sushi bar, and a cafe. Construction began in 2022.

interior elevations

freezer / cooler section building section

TYP. COOLER / FREEZER SECTION

25

west elevation

floor plan

south elevation

building section

P.1 Kim and Don’s House - Waveland, MS

My parents have owned a large lot near the beach in Waveland, Mississippi since 2006. Over the course of 2021 and early 2022, I designed a four bedroom, two and a half bath house for them and provided them with an SD drawing set. The house has a ‘camp’ style floor plan, seeking to sleep as many people as possible, with a stark divide between the open living-eating space and the private sleeping quarters. The design is stylistically coastal and formally traditional with some contemporary detailing.

The house was not built as drawn. My parents are not wellversed in architecture, and we don’t quite have a relationship where I would be willing to fight them for design control. Their friend is a contractor; he took the SD drawings to a draftsman, got a permit, and built the house for them for cheap and fast, in the ways he knew how to build a house cheap and fast. While the house that was built is not quite the house I designed, I feel some ownership over it and some pride for having drawn it for my parents. It felt wrong to leave it out of this portfolio.

Don hanging his sign

front porch

west face in progress

painter at work

living room framing

S.1 Hostel

facade elevation

final model

plans (descending)

S.1 Hostel - Lake Tahoe, NV

An ambitious program was the primary driver behind the form of the hostel: an energy efficient building housing a grand dining hall, sports equipment storage, and 100 rooms for up to 400 occupants. During the design process, the works of Luigi Snozzi and Aldo Rossi, particularly the Gallatarese Housing, became key conceptual influences. The project became about recognizing the beauty in repetition while acknowledging the human need for exceptions to the rules. The potential monotony of long hallways is alleviated by personalized storage areas which put each occupant’s preference of bike color, snowboard brand, helmet design, etc. on display. This circulatory showroom serves not only as a wayfinder but also as a variable in the building’s facade and a probable social spark between guests. Additionally, twenty-five near identical structural bays (of cross-laminated timber slabs and glu-lam columns) allow for a sawtooth roof ideal for harvesting solar energy. This project was completed in 2018 in Bruce Goodwin’s graduate comprehensive design studio at Tulane University.

southwest elevation

photovoltaic panels

sawtooth roof

clerestory window

metal sheathing over CLT slab roof plane glulam bypass beams and columns

aluminium curtain wall attached with clips

concrete radiant floor heat recovery unit

electrical conduit tension rod supporting ramp

cold-rolled steel ramp water supply line waste pipe

radiant floor tubing

metal panels along back facade

crawlspace containing electrical and plumbing systems leads to mechanical room, height determined by 1% slope of waste pipe

steel plate connection terrain

concrete footing

isometric section 1/8”=1’

S.2 Apartment

east corner

courtyard section

S.2 Apartment - New Orleans, LA

In New Orleans, the neighborhood is defined (both formally and socially) by exterior living spaces, the street, and the spatial proportions between these elements. Day-to-day connections between across the street neighbors and more eventful happenings such as street festivals and parades both become essential to the identity of the neighborhood. Sited in one of the most vibrant areas of New Orleans, the apartment adopts the structure-to-space proportions of the surrounding housing fabric. Long alleyways reveal glimpses of surrounding structures, and a large central courtyard plays the role of ‘street as gathering space.’ Each housing unit looks out over this space, giving a sense of community and ownership to each resident. Progression to each unit runs through this space, increasing the likelihood of chance interactions between neighbors. In addition to the residential units, the ground floor features a gym and five small commercial lease spaces. This project was completed in 2017 in Irene Keil’s graduate housing studio at Tulane University.

southeast elevation

third floor

second floor

ground floor unit isometrics

final model

ground floor

installation on opening day

installation on opening day

S.3 mixed media map projection

S.3 Mixed Media Map - New Orleans, LA

In 2019, the Newcomb Art Museum at Tulane University initiated a ten year plan to host three exhibitions highlighting the horrors of Louisiana’s unjust incarceration industry. The first, Persister, examines the plight of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women. Museum administration gathered a team of architecture students to design parts of Persister including a map showing the dispersement of prisons and jails across the state. The team designed and executed an elevated map showing the state’s major bodies of water as negatives (CNC routed on campus). The map was then underlit, letting light shine through the lakes and rivers. A video projection suspended above placed markers at the location of each of the state’s incarceration centers and text about the state’s history of punishment on the map. A team of three (Casey Last, Hannah Bannister, and myself) initiated the project in an elective taught by Monica Ramirez Montegut and Laura Blereau at the Tulane School of Architecture in 2018. Persister opened in January of 2019.

S.4.a URBANbuild14 prototype

perspective | facing north

backyard/garden perspective | facing north

entry

plan

backyard/garden perspective | facing north

S.4 URBANbuild14 - New Orleans, LA

The program of the fourteenth entry in Tulane’s annual URBANbuild design studio asked participants to design a house with a growing family in mind. This idea of expansion and a garden strategy determined the form of this prototypical two bedroom home. A J-shaped primary roof covers every room of the house except the living room. This roof drains onto a secondary roof covering the living room and outdoor deck. The secondary roof drains into a lush garden in the back of the site, slowing down the flow of rainwater as it travels to the front of the site and enters the city’s drainage system. The backyard deck serves as an extension of the living room, but if needed, could be built out into a third bedroom for a larger family. This project was completed in 2018 with a partner, Katelin Morgan, in Byron Mouton’s URBANbuild studio at Tulane University. It was a runner-up in the selection of a scheme which would be built in the spring of 2019.

kitchen section

backyard garden

S.4.b URBANbuild14 Construction Documents

front facade

section through guest bed, courtyard, kitchen, back porch

S.4 URBANbuild14 - New Orleans, LA

Once an URBANbuild scheme was selected for construction, four participating students were chosen to work on the permit documents for that scheme. I worked in Revit and AutoCAD on critical building sections and wall details while my three teammates, Ashley Libys, Bruna Aoki, and Katelin Morgan, completed the remainder of the drawings. During this six week period, the team not only drew the house but also made final design decisions based on budget, ease of construction, and spatial quality. As the four of us and eight other students began construction on the house in January of 2019, an extensive understanding of the house’s framing and organization helped us not only to execute the design as drawn but also to adapt and improvise when problems or opportunities arose. The project was completed in May of 2019 under the direction of Byron Mouton, Michael Mechtenberg, and Sara Allen Harper.

section through kitchen wall detail

section through master bed, courtyard, living room, entry

floor framing

URBANbuild14 team

pier placement

S.4.c URBANbuild14 construction

courtyard shade screen

northwest elevation

a break

S.4.d URBANbuild14 completion

living/dining

front facade

back porch

CMU drawings by author

W.1

W.2

W.3

W.4

W.5

3401 St. Charles | drawings and images appear courtesy of MetroStudio and Redfish Rendering

Hotel Saint Vincent | drawings appear courtesy of MetroStudio; images appear courtesy of MetroStudio, Lambert McGuire Design, and Hotel Saint Vincent

Affordable Smiles | drawings appear courtesy of MetroStudio, images appear courtesy of MetroStudio and Voekel McWilliams Construction

100 Oriole | drawings and images appear courtesy of MetroStudio

Alexander’s Market | drawings and images appear courtesy of MetroStudio

P.1

Kim and Don’s House | drawings by author; images by author, Kim Duplantier, and Gene Molinary

S.1

S.2

S.3

S.4

Hostel | drawings and images by owner, drawings and images appear courtesy of the Tulane School of Architecture

Apartment | drawings and images by owner, drawings and images appear courtesy of the Tulane School of Architecture

mixed media map projection | images by owner

URBANbuild14 | drawings and images by owner and URBANbuild14 studio, drawings and images appear courtesy of the Tulane School of Architecture