OFF THE BEATEN TRACK
Rebecca Francetta Gawron Undergraduate Portfolio University of Florida School of Architecture 2010-2014
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MIRROR
METAMORPHOSIS
ENLIGHTENMENT
SUBLIME
VOLUME
PIGMENT
DIAGRAM
C O N T E N T S 4
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MORPHOSIS
ESOTERIC
HARMONY
SYMBIOSIS
THEORY
MIRAGE
BALANCE
Admin
Studio
House
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CHICAGO
MIRROR, SOUND, LIGHT Cirque Du Soleil Acrobatics Headquarters Design 4 Using Chicago grids as a generator, I constructed a vertical plexiglass model with the intention to house a Cirque du Soleil acrobatics team. The headquarters would contain a main performance space, practice areas, and finally private management at the tower’s peak. While focusing on the strength of verticality needed for nailing amazing acrobatic techniques, I recognized the need for mirrors in the practicing spaces as well as the idea of sound traveling within the multiple public spaces. In theory, a “sound wall” would accomplish a camaraderie between the acrobats during practice and performance even while they occupy different parts of the tower. Music and voice could resonate, creating efficiency with respect to this precise, collective sport. Mirroring created a meshed space development while the sound wall connected top to base.
sound wall
Metamorphosis
Atrium Sleep Pod Intervention Advanced Digital Virtuosity Conceptual Sketches
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Plan cut
Aerial Elevation
One of the most significant amenities that are missing in the architecture building are sleeping pods. Coffee and snack venders are also much needed for the students on campus at late hours. In light of this, the atrium intervention project was a perfect opportunity to imply a system of pods that could house provisions sales and a few napping pods. The project is about rest and rejuvination, based on a caterpillar’s coccoon. A glass set of tubes juts from the third story over the atrium. It acts as a sheltered viewing area for critiques held in the atrium. The steel skin supporting the glass is a Voronoi pattern removed from a butterfly’s wings. It delecately controls the volume and maximizes the beautiful view to the lawn.
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Four glass sleeping pods nest toward the heart of the architecture building. They are paneled with wood armor, inspired by the protective layers of a chrysalis. The armor seconds as a drawing board or a mount for bulletins. Their tectonics create a controlled lighting condition to allow for short naps. This maximizes use among many students and also creates privacy.
CHARLESTON Religious Studies Center Design 6
Upon researching different sects of faith in Charleston, and interviewing multiple people of different religions, it was apparent that religion in itself has an underlying and universal essence. It involved being curious and full of faith. To believe in something separates those of us who can rationalize the paradoxes and conundrums of living. It is an understanding that pacifies and glorifies our feet on solid ground. The beauty and inconceivability of life is cradled by belief. No matter what the underlying faith, it seems to begin with a curiosity in beautiful phenomena that causes one to strive to find meaning. To see someone or something act in the light of God is an extremely powerful force. It is a catalyst to begin a path to understanding, and once one reaches enlightenment of himself and his existence, it hits hard. A person can change his own life by observing and beginning to follow a mysterious way of life in religion. Faith through
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enlightenment can justify every action and reaction. It then becomes obvious why religion is so prominent in of itself and not based on specific ideologies but the result in following a set of positive ethics. It becomes obvious in those who do not do so. In this way, through fundamental concepts of lightness, contemplative journeys, and spaces for thought and isolation, I hope that this religious studies center can literally receive any curious occupant, rather than intimidating him with up-front ornateness or monumentality. Charleston, being graced the Holy City, is home to almost 270 separate congregations, nearly 20% of the entire state’s. While over 75 percent of the religions practiced here are of Christian affiliation due to the overwhelming European Christian embark here, almost one forth are not Christian congregations.
experiential renders
site diagram- places of worship
site plan
3rd floor mezzanine plan
ground floor plan
Charleston’s skyline is dotted with handsome steeples—its landscape is carved with some of the country’s oldest and most prominent religious centers. Church street lies within the bounds of the French Quarter, the original integration of Charleston’s settlement. That being the case, and in pursuit of glorifying Charleston’s very loyally religious culture, my motive for this project was to gather all congregations to a place that synthesizes their basis of faith while meshing well with the cathedral-prone context. My driving concept was inspired by the contrasting adjacencies of St. Philips’ Episcopal Church and its Circular church. St. Philip’s is the oldest and most significant religious congregation in South Carolina. From this landmark came the idea to study the traditional Gothic nave style of religious architecture.
concept sketches and trials 12
site studies
The nave was broken into three quadrants. Modularity and strength in statics are apparent in the linear axes of a traditional basilica. The circular space is conceptually the most spiritually significant and is proposed to be a place of destination, light and holiness. I conceptualized the process of studying religion into a progression from lightness to enlightenment and finally contemplation. In regards to public versus private spaces, the knowledge held within a large scale circular library is the destination point for students of faith. To arrive here and achieve an enlightened state, a journey through a contemplative egress will give occupants an experience through light qualities and strong places of pause. The lecture hall and prayer room act controlled, heavy and quiet. I infiltrated the concept of looking skyward at many points throughout the circulation and the universal act of prayer within the physical constituents of the prayer room.
wall composition- book protection (insulation and light control) angled revealed structure illusion
section cut
essence diagrams egress study formal sketches prayer fold render
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Sublime Darkness Door, Window, Stair Design 3
The model expresses my interpretation of emotion felt in situations of fluctuating intensity and thresholds of events between these intensities within my murder story, The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. It is vital in architecture to understand the psychologies of general emotions within spaces and how emotion and moments affect each other in the human psyche. Light and dark are associated with universal ideologies of purity and evil, as well as clarity or comfort versus confusion and fear. In the story, these emotions are associated with each other in the traditional way, in descriptions of open, massive space (well lit) and dark dank dungeons. However, the fast-paced structure and transition of setting in the story developed moments where these ideas split, flip, transform and blend into each other. In my model, I strived to show those specific, few and subtle connections as they fluctuate, as well as the extremes of light and dark (despite their blend and integration within one another in small scale and moments of surprise) in general view. The large scale area has an upward undulating overhead condition and a downward massive stair to describe the feeling of expansive clarity and openness when the narrator discovers the murderer. The scattered stairs in the small scale moment define labyrinthine confusion and multiple directions of the dark tunnels within the library. In the novel, the library was massive in comparison to the church.
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DESIGN 1
ROOM AND GARDEN ICARUS & DAEDALUS Basswood and Plexiglas Watercolr, lead, and Micron
MATRIX
PC MOTHERBOARD
Mylar, lead and Stickyback Bristol and Piano Wire
CUBE CONSTRUCT WRESTLING MATCH Poplar
The matrix magnified the juxtaposition between spaces defined and the voids created to show that interesting negative spaces are just as important, and could be made by shifting, folding, or even by accident. The dimensions of the project and the materials restricted the possibility of full extension to every corner, so it developed a fragmented contour and helped further emphasize the concept of figure ground. It helped the model retain its purpose as a matrix and suggested the extension and movement of its elements outward.
Vessel
Light study Design 2
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above: analytic light box - pigment blending, diffusion left: layered courtyard perspective below: final light study perspecrive, axonometric
Design 2 Di路a路gram/; n.
a sketch, outline, or plan demonstrating the form or workings of something. a pictorial representation of a quantity or of a relationship:
Fisheye Camera Redux
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Gator’s basketball movements and possession analysis
Building Analysis Louis Kahn, Exeter Library
METHOD OF CONSTRUCTION Bent Poplar Wall System Design 8
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This exercise was about establishing equilibrium between a modular piece and its action as a whole element. How do geometries and details come together to create something else? How are they constructed and what is the end result? I constructed a wood system of bending planes converging in four dimensions. The idea was to create a morphing form as one moves past the wall structure.
front and side elevations, plan
joint details
Process Render- VRay Charlestion Civic Center Design 6 26
Concept Render- Brasil Door Window Stair Design 3
Taoist Meditation Chapel University of Florida Campus, Lake Alice Gainesville, FL Design 8
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This two week project was focused on the idea of a centralized, spiritual experience. Taoism is an ancient Chinese philosophical belief system that emphasizes the sanction of natural ordinances. The Tao or “the Way” is to “flow like water” and not to force any element against its natural order.
sky chandelier
The idea for the design of a Taoist chapel is to highlight the transition from busy daily life to a level of self-awareness and a congruity with nature. An entrance of overstated height and narrowness is to stress the pressure of societal preoccupations. The walls then taper down and expand out to reveal a decintegrating enclosure. The space becomes open and relatable in scale. All the linear elements relate to each other directly forward to create a view out to Lake Alice, and to break the structure down from flush and obstructing to increasingly delicate. Inspired by the Montreal Biosphere, the chandelier brings light into the central place of pause, and relates the human body to the open sky at a molecular level. Its simple and light construction supports the rest of the installation as a catalyst towards levels of relaxation and meditation.
House of Memory Faro, Capri, Naples, Italy Design 7
site implementation 30
I designed a house for my parents to retire to; it is located in Capri, Naples, Italy, on the southeastern tip in the Fado region of the island. They met by chance in Bermuda, which was an option for the house’s site, but Capri appeared a better option because it is equal in lifestyle, significantly more beautiful, full of rich Italian culture, and without the strict Bermudian citizenship and building requirements.
wandering line drawings of childhood memories
The house consists as three basic spaces: An underground living room and bedroom, an L-shaped studio, and the kitchen core. I began the project by convoking various memories of my childhood, and from the events I drew wandering line sketches of the spaces I recalled. My father’s upstairs bedroom in the house he grew up in had an angled ceiling. My first house in Florida had an extensive L-shaped wall of glass to celebrate the back patio and lake in our backyard. A strong memory I have when I was very small distorted the height of the kitchen cabinets in the Albany house I grew up in. The core is a volume roughly 20’ by 20’ in area that imprints the steep and secluded cliffside. Underground is the bedroom and bathroom. Their surrounding hall is naturally lit with light wells projected from North above ground. The hall escalates up with a wrapping stair to the main space, the kitchen. With its mezzanine, it is almost a triple height space, and is largely constructed with glass windows for view and light. The kitchen is a well lit space with large ceiling volume because my parents spend most of their time there. My mother is a nurse with strong talents in creativity and innovation. Her painting and sewing studio sits atop the kitchen space and the adjoining lap pool that carves the mountainside. Her studio is constructed of structural glass with virtually no breaks to achieve a panoramic view. It is perfect for her to paint the Faro Lighthouse directly southwest and the supplemetary sunsets. It also serves as the entrance from the driveway as a sort of display of her works. The stair and the railing in the studio fold down into the kitchen and create a self-supporting bookcase for their large book and art collection.
Another stair penetrates the ground to expose a home theater style living room. My father is a mathematics and computer teacher that enjoys his extensive film and music collection. In the hall surrounding the bedroom and bath are walls that swing up to reveal a long expanse of strorage for his collections. The theater itself is angled down and in towards the TV screen and slopes down to just about 6 feet. This form is to enhance a very engaging and acoustically intense experience while enjoying entertainment. He also has a small bar and seating area. A slit on the partially exposed roof reveals light coming from the television in order for my mother to physically see from her studio or in the kitchen, in case she wanted to join my father for a movie. Their separate and individual spaces knot at the kitchen core and the bedroom. The surrounding landscape is terraced from the thin layer over part of the underground theater to a few steps below the kitchen; it serves as garden spaces for them to tend to plants and produce together. Along with a lap pool, my swimmer/golfer father also has a small tee just outside the southwest door of the kitchen so he can drive golf balls into the sunset. The house is roughly 3,000 ft2 and Wwould be constructed mainly of Capri white sandstone, stone masonry, glazing, structural glass, black steel, carpet, and polished Venitian plaster.
volume sketch
plan sketch exterior, L studio rendering
digging analysis sketch
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1/16� model
1/32� site model
kitchen core/mezzanine studio rendering
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TV room
model photo 1/32� scale
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Photoshop renders from model photos
Bedroom Hallway
model photos 1/16� scale
Photo of Bedroom/Bathroom
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Ruin and Revival:
Detroit’s Unforseen Fragmentation Design 3
My ruinscape is about fluidity in fragmentation, which was overlooked in Detroit’s original structure, and how it can be carried out to assist in optimum use of the built environment. In diagramming Detroit, I found that parts of it (such as the Michigan Central Station and scales including entire streets and vector zones of the city) were planned with an unrealistic promise for growth and development. The swift transit evolution in Detroit resulted in booming auto development without proper accommodations and the death of public transportation systems, causing cultural isolation. This, in turn, caused spatial disconnection in the buildings themselves as well as from space to space. I studied relationships between the exorbitance of a public transit system whose demise was unforeseen, and how its disregard for industrial growth projections left behind a skeleton of spaces never utilized. I found that the faith in public transit as Detroit’s crutch created unmaintainable extravagance, causing a flop in spatial density. Map of Park Avenue, Detroit Plan of Michigan Central Station Micron, Vellum, Trace Photoshop
The linear bones of my ruinscape were constructed from the omission and restitching of these “negative ruins” to create new relationships and guides for construction. This was a further study resolving how the density of Detroit’s proud extravagance should have interacted with the spaces. It suggests that heavy integration and fluidity of these connective areas can create the essence of spatial connectivity that Detroit lacks. I further pressed this speculation to create an advancement on Detroit’s ruined Park Avenue-- the fragmentation and void between these deserted zones can be exploited as a language within a fluid connectivity of the positive zones. This fragmentation via offset created by the bones creates a visual connectivity to all other spaces within the model. Therefore, no space will go unnoticed or utilized and will circulate seamlessly with one another.
ALEXANDRIA Hidden Library Sahara Desert
Lat: 21° 59’ 55.9782” Long: 25° 0’ 7.6896” Design 4
concept section studies: “opening a book”
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A construct in the desert was particularly challenging because of the absolute lack of information gathered from site. My desert construct is a hidden library built monumentally, but for small occupancy. It acts as a mirage; the 100-foot structure is significantly buried and inconspicuous, and is positioned in the gut of the Sahara desert with a subtle entrance meant to accept friendly visitors traveling Southwest from Alexandria, Egypt. The library consists of two spaces. Dark, modular and enclosed areas for book stacks and storage settles behind a monolithic reading room with a mezzanine and massive light well.The main entrance is an occupiable wall that divides these two spaces to provide light control and opacity. The concept of “opening a book” and “turning the page” is seen where the entrance stair peels off and breaks the wall between the books and the reading space. Not unlike beginning a novel, the journey down any path will begin with curiosity and finally reveals spaces and detail to ultimately explore and understand.
plan; 1/32” scale
model aerial
reading space light well
roof morphology
model photos: 1/32� scale
peeling stair
book stacks
peeling stair mezzanine reading room
classrooms
dorms
library
accessible student roof student cafe performance space restaurants (3) bar terrace egress from garden retail lobby shards metro /footprint
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Berlin Civic School
In collaboration with Asha Llewellyn and Richard Walker Design 7 Abroad site analysis
form diagrams
bug model
An open program and choice of site left us collaboratively thrilled-- we agreed on an institute for younger people to thrive in the colorful city of Berlin, Germany. Our concept was to marry work with play. The smaller twisted high-rise serves as dormitories for the boarding full-time students, and classrooms occupy the larger. Suspended between these vertical shoots is a large library space. It is angled and sloped to celebrate a lovely view to the Tiergarten green space to the Northwest and the Holocaust memorial directly North. At the base of the towers is a knot of public spaces. The culinary students, business and retail students, entertainment and marketing students can descend to actually service the public center and learn how true commerce operates within their city. They also have opportunities to wander and enjoy themselves within the public. The form itself is meant to accept and stir community coming from the dense commercial and downtown areas nearby, such as the Potsdamer Platz. The division between students and public is the large bowed cafe space that is student access only. Public spaces include a performance space above its accompanying bar, multivalant restaurant spaces that can be shifted in scale for repurposing kitchens for education or business, as well as underground retail and a metro entrance.
terrace/restaurants render
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Plan- Retail Level Skin Studies Lobby Library Render
Public Space Egress Study
DESIGN PHILOSOPHY WE have all set foot in a grubby bathroom stall, a rancid kitchen, a decrepit hotel building and a
stale living room. I want to be an architect because I feel compelled to master the ability to create space with a positive aura. Architecture is a selfless art; I want to consume all the knowledge offered to me in school, then graduate school, and in my travels abroad to earn skills that can help people, with or without their awareness. Even in this economic disease, the federal wallet covers tabs on necessary projects. With the help of my passion and perseverance, my career field will survive no matter where I end up, and I plan to help design these projects-- federal, public, and philanthropic projects-- may they be hospitals, courthouses, DMVs, schools or post offices. These intimidating spaces generally daunt those who inhabit them. This is the conundrum I wish to conquer. It is an architect’s goal to be able to create space and the psychology of that space—but that which does not exist yet—and successfully transform idea to reality. I have tactics to fulfill requirements the building needs to contain while sustaining beauty and positive energies that should be physically apparent to those inhabitants. A keenly aware one will thank the architect; the rest will innocently smile. The skills I acquire under a ruthless and pricy degree I will strive to give back into the walls of a school or a hospital so, while children learn and elders heal, people in and around my buildings might not dread to be where they are. I believe it will even assist in their health, well-being and emotional core.
Site Analysis concerning nearby power plant Design 5
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model photo: 1/32� scale Hidden Library Design 4