PORT
FOLIO Rhaísa Capella
RhaĂsa Capella de Almeida Rio de Janeiro - Brazil San Luis Obispo - CA Architecture Portfolio Undergraduate 2009 | 2016
Index Lapa | Art Gallery + 4 Studios design studio 2011 Gรกvea | Modular School design studio 2012 Sรฃo Bernardino | Restoration design studio 2013 Gamboa | Hybrid Multifamily Housing design studio 2014 Fresno | Theory and Exploration Landscape Urbanism design studio 2016 Drawings 2009-2015 Conceptual Explorations 2015-2016
Lapa
Art Gallery + 4 Studios | 2011
Set in a historical context dominated by colonial century houses of the XIX century and modernist buildings, the volumetric language of the gallery stands out among the surrounding buildings, while also taking in characteristics of its surroundings.
By creating irregular polyhedra representing the pre-existing buildings at different scales and grouping them by means of force of attraction, it reintroduces the way we perceive the joints and voids generated by the surrounding grouping. The result is the union of blocks that generates vertical voids between each other, like the formation created by the old colonial houses.
Its constructive logic also translates vertically, where both facades are unfolded in different volumes, in order to challenge the homogeneity of neighboring facades through recesses, alluding to the different spacings of the street that each building has set. The passerby notices the building advancing on the sidewalk and entering the public sphere, and as he approaches, he is invited to enter through the driveway that invades the land and floods into the atrium, where the side walls, in a retraction movement, guide him for a walk in the exhibition space. It is created in this way a dialogue, where public and private spaces are mixed, reflecting the ownership of the sidewalk by the surrounding bars and shops.
Gรกvea
Modular School | 2012
The project approaches a typological
logic, a method of organization, not only of the program but also physical, in a flexible and adaptable way. This becomes the school's identity: different shapes in each implementation, but at the same time, assuming the same proposition in all cases. The school is designed to intervene in the space, creating the unexpected and the possibility of exploitation. Through the distribution of solid-looking blocks, illusory perspectives are created just as much as real perspectives.
Module | Layers and Structure
Along the ground, axes that serve as guides are drawn by connecting access, spaces, or by pointing to an imaginary vanishing point generated by the disposition of the volumes. Some of these axes are realized in lines on the floor, which pass through classrooms and generate, for the observer, the uncertainty of where they go and what they actually connect, allowing a free walk to discover the relationship of the buildings to each other.
S達o Bernardino Restoration | 2013
Recognizing the magnificence of the
farm located to the top of the hill and its pictorial importance caused by the architecture dialogue around its surroundings, we propose a design of reversible character, where the contemporary alights on the master house, so that it can be removed, returning the ruins to their original state. The revitalization takes place through the movement and integration of the object in the city space, as a cultural and tourist complex. The program shows itself in volatile form, housing indetermined functions and conformations; classrooms that host dance, music, theater, events, presentations and exhibitions.
Walkways surrounding the first floor of the main hall resume the antique spatiality and value the vistas hitherto forgotten, accessed via a metal stairway which lies over its antique bay. Thus, visitation is maintained and enhanced. A grid runs 33cm over the original floor and spans for 10 meters on a plateau, giving the new architecture permission for its existence and preserving the archaeological integrity of the exhibition area. Its floor is removable and can be opaque or transparent, allowing the archaeological exploration without damaging the space.
With the intention to resume spatiality, the space where once accommodated the patio, hallways and alcoves (bedrooms), was divided into four rectangular pieces that become boundaries of the initial insertion form. Based on this imaginary boundary arise mobile volumes in rotation, which are cut as they touch each other. Its programmatic mobility is reflected in the way that, supported on casters, runs throughout the grid, changing the spatial perception and multiplying its function. Regardless of the flexibility of the blocks, there is always the intention to rebuild the old courtyard and its public and external experiences. The contemporary moves through the neocolonial area without interrupting it. The blocks move, touch, merge, leave. Thus, they make up new and multiple possibilities of use, experience and enjoyment.
Gamboa
Hybrid Multifamily Housing | 2014
Located in the city of Rio de Janeiro and inserted in a culturally rich area, the Gamboa Multifamily Housing aims to bring the street environment into the project, integrating public and private spaces. The concept is of the street environment as a tsunami that rushes into the site and floods the ground, infiltrating in the vertical circulation and overspreading through the open hallways, that connect the buildings through bridges in different ways every floor. This creates a set of dinamic interactions and possibilities between all buildings and floors.
The building floors are intercalated in order to create open hallways that act as streets, leaving space for social interaction between the residents. The floor plan is a mixed use one, with stores in two of the buildings, residences in the others, and a public park in the middle of the site. The site is considered to be also as public, where the spaces between buildings act as streets and the park adds life to it.
Fresno
Landscape Urbanism Theory and Exploration | 2016
Site analysis collages
Considering Fresno’s history and the generation of the
city, a certain stigma has been created around the railroad and Downtown area. With the deflation of Downtown, businesses and investments became focused on the north, gradually decreasing people’s interest and flow in the area. Fresno’s downtown has been reduced to parking lots, alleyways, greyfield lands, all of these negative spaces, anti-landmarks that create abruptions on the continuity of the urban fabric. This lack of life and human scale engenders what can be described as a cityscape floating on a sea of nothingness.
Human activity can only be observed at the Civic Centre, where all the government buildings are positioned in a straight line of super blocks, like an island on the nothing sea; where this activity is only present due to a pendular movement, namely that of commuters who drive there, without stopping, walking or exploring downtown. Railroads and highways cutting the city in pieces and leaving behind the stigma of those who live on the “wrong side of the tracks” are another harsh reality to face.
the process
Considering all of the factors cited, the approach towards downtown is of activation. By inserting a form of new intervention that would slowly bring people back to downtown the same way as they slowly left, breaking the stigma that floats around it. The aim is to create a “mark zero� for activation and then spread all across the city like a virus.
The virus is a first intervention focused on urban collaborative agriculture and public space, and the social and cultural aspects of it, encouraging people to interact and create a new bond through cultural uses. After the first intervention being a movement of systole, attracting people to the site, the virus is stablished in the city and it begins to spread and occupy empty lots and alleys, on a second movement of diastole, contaminating the city on an attempt to activate those spaces. Once activated, the spaces are decontaminated and so can give place to new street commerce. These processes are ephemeral and work based on trends initially formed by the local community. As a virus, the decontamination process leaves traces of the previous occupation, marks the ground and leaves behind what can be called a legacy.
Section
Masterplan
Drawings 2009 | 2015
Graphite | Marker
Conceptual Explorations 2015 | 2016
Public and Private | The Collective - 2015
Disturbance - 2016
Fabric | Digital collage
Edges | Physical collage
Thank you!
RhaĂsa Capella