Landscape Architecture + Architecture + Research + Art Portfolio Selected works by
Romina Delgado rad0055@auburn.edu rominadeltob@gmail.com
Romina Delgado Architect designer+ Landscape architecture designer + Artist
Table of contents DESIGN PROJECTS 02
Connecting cultures: Horticultural memory shapes an alternative arboretum. Auburn, Alabama
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Cypress Park at Montgomery. Montgomery, Alabama
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Landscape as a Architectural Generator Galapagos Islands, Ecuador
RESEARCH 36
Living Breakwaters DRC+EWN
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Inland Waterways EWN+SISI
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Contamination Legacies. Alabama and Coal Industries ART
1 Connecting cultures: Horticultural memory shapes alternative futures Donald E. Davis Arboretum Auburn, Alabama Native plants promote biodiversity and stewardship of natural heritage. The Davis Arboretum provides a site with mosaics of various and diverse natural habitats of Alabama. However, in providing a space for education, research, outreach, and conservation of native species collections, there is no current attention to other educational and cultural, and scientific opportunities suggested by regional botanical legacies. What are the gaps that exist in education to engage natural heritage? The proposal introduces and acknowledges native plant species with medicinal benefits known to the Creek Indian Tribes. Leveraging regional botanical legacies and indigenous practices can be a powerful method to expand future education in the Arboretum. In the face of low recognition of history and indigenous claims, the project opens doors to amplify spatial, environmental, and cultural opportunities. It allows users to appreciate, learn, practice, acknowledge, and interact with Creek Indian history and their stewardship with native plants.
Semester: lll - Design Studio lll Auburn MLA Program Studio directed by Charlene LeBleu and Tom Hogge
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Concerning the context around, E. Davis Arboretum is shaped with strong and limiting borders due to the vehicular dependence for mobility and extensive parking areas. High vehicular flow in College Street, deficiency of traffic lights, sidewalks, and crosswalks in the East border reduces pedestrian activity chances. These conditions raise the opportunity to reshape the edge’s attitude toward public activity by adding sidewalks, crosswalks, vegetated medians, and bike paths, all linked to entry plazas that will welcome and help visitors orientate the site.
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The native plant species are used in four methods as mass, line, and clearing. Topography and hardscape delineate the space, and the shrub layer emphasizes the rooms, for example, the Rest and Care Plaza. Mass describes the space occupied by various grass species. Lawns emphasize exploration through transitional experiences. Tulip Poplar and Big Magnolia trees in allees carry the eye skyward, expanding small spaces. The open spaces and plazas serve to balance and unite the design’s components and compensate for the site’s existing conditions.
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The proposal let users discover spatial moment lessons that address medicinal benefits of plant communities that the Creek Indians used. Ritual ceremonies as the Busk, Green Corn Ceremony, Annual First Fruits, New Fine-Nite, and Midsummer Festival. Medicinal sources as Red Buckeye, Angelica, American Beautyberry, Rattlesnake master, Yellow Indian Grass, Big Bluestem, Little Bluestem, Wax Myrtle, Yellowroot, and others. Agricultural products as corn, beans, squash, melons, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, nuts. Mound-building for shelter and sitting, plazas to rest and relax.
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The planting of native species has been a cultural and heritage practice that reveals the different uses and roles of nature and its relationship with human beings. From the late 1700s until the early 1900s, the Creek Indian Tribes occupied Georgia, Florida, and Alabama territories. The vast biodiversity of the land allowed these indigenous groups to use and take advantage of native plant species’ medicinal benefits. These plant species use was tied to a therapeutic approach and cultural practices as rituals and ceremonies.
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The Corn Ceremony is a cultural tradition practiced by the Creek and the Seminoles. It is a ritual of purification. It is a ritual that occurs in the fall for 4 to 8 days, where people gather together to celebrate and be thankful for the food that the earth has provided and to ask for profitable plantations next year. During this ceremony, people gather herbs, flowers, and leaves to prepare teas with medicinal benefits.
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Reinforcing the existing site materials as weathering steel; this material is used on the principal path with plates of different sizes to gain hierarchy concerning other corridors. The color and texture are evocative, and it has excellent oxidation with the pass of time.
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Context conditions as heat and humidity also defined plant dependence for medicinal purposes to treat different illnesses, dehydration, and other symptoms. E. Davis Arboretum is a host of several plants collection that were used by these indigenous tribes. The proposal has a comprehensive understanding of the value of plants and the educational gaps within them. To address this educational value gap, the project centers on a cultural plant walk, which leverages existing collections, adds new valuable specimens, and brings these together for new experiences.
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2 CYPRESS NATURE PARK Montgomery, Alabama
Montgomery’s Cypress Nature Park is located at the edge of downtown. It can be described as an immersive site full of wetlands, ravines, and bluffs, with a fantastic wildlife presence. The Cypress Nature Park’s proposed design is a Decathlon Installation. The faculty professor chose this spatial program that directed the Studio project, given as the studio program that intends to activate the site for residents’ recreation. The proposal is intended to generate awareness of the present plant species and animal species by generating various pathways and areas to stay for people to enjoy these different conditions.
Semester: Il - Design Studio Il Auburn MLA Program Studio directed by David Hill
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Cypress Park is a wildland where the texture grounds are unique and defined by water level and soil type. While walking, a vast Cypress pond catches the attention, the monumental presence of the trunk trees, the roots going out of the orange, reddish water, the sound of birds, all of it is worth it to experience..
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The Cypress Park has 260 acres that flow through Cypress Creek into the Alabama River to an area known as Cypress Inlet. The park site is unusual because it is an undeveloped land area close to the downtown business district. Nevertheless, it is a location rich in landscape diversity, scenic views as the Cypress Pond or the ancient ravines carved by natural forces, and more.
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Diversity exists all over the site. Predominant plant species as Black Tupelo, Water Tupelo, Bald Cypress, Japanese Holly fern, Dogwood, Southern Blue Flag Iris, and other 60 species of trees and 30 flowering plants, vines, and mushrooms can be found in Cypress Park. Aditionally animal species as Salamanders and more than 100 bird species find shelter in this area.
Cypress Tupelo Root Systems - Commonly known as Cypress Knees
Phasing Process - Vegetation Densification
Bringing the opportunity for residents and visitors to experience the Cypress Swamp has been disposed of in fragments of rock and concrete plateaus found on site.
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3 LANDSCAPE AS AN ARCHITECTURAL GENERATOR Elementary School in Puerto Ayora - Galapagos Puerto Ayora is a living example of the erroneous results of the intervention in protected areas, massive layers of concrete, and derivatives, which prevent generating an adequate reading of the place and its landscape, looking for shouts to recover protagonism. Therefore, the project is determined to be an element of reconciliation between two fronts: the current situation of the area to be intervened, that is, the configuration of the built element, and the understanding of the place, Galapagos, as the primary determinant of the design of a program architectural. So the landscape fulfills the role of generating guidelines for architecture.
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Endemic species of Puerto Ayora Island - Galapagos
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The Ecuadorian government promotes the colonization of the island of Santa Cruz. The first settlers of the urban area in Puerto Ayora Island appeared in 1928, on which the first physical settlements were built with local materials, mainly of volcanic rock. There were still no signs of city-presence at that time, as there were few inhabitants, few and small buildings, sand and dirt roads.
Adaptation Process of Permeable Layers
North Facade
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The design strategy generates series of layers that respond and link both the landscape of Galapagos and the architectural program, the Elementary School. Allowing these layers to adapt to each other in the process of determining a system with the following parts: topography - natural terrain, water, green network, earth mounds, and educational infrastructure, and recreational areas.
West Section A-A’
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Construction Details of Building Segment
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Isometric View of Puerto Ayora Elementaty School at Puerto Ayora - Galapagos
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BACK CREEK AND FISHING CREEK JETTIES Engineering with Nature + Landscape Architecture Jacksonville District (SAJ) Work that identifies design concepts for incorporating EWN + LA approaches into US Army Corps of Engineers project infrastructure. Research directed by Rob Holmes, Assistant Professor at Auburn University and Dredge Research Collaborative (Justine Holzman, Sean Burkholder, Gena Wirth) and research assistants from Auburn University (Romina Delgado, Riffat Farjana, Jessica Nielsen, Alejandro Ramos, and Kenna Miles), Penn University, and Toronto University. The design concepts approach promises directions for the renovation, replacement, and augmentation of the case studies’ infrastructures.
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This section perspective shows the primary goals with the habitat jetty, which seek to redesign coastal infrastructures composed of concrete unites to improve habitat function without compromising engineering function
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EWN + SISI / INLAND WATERWAYS RESEARCH PROJECT Engineering with Nature + Landscape Architecture Summer Infrastructure Studies Initiative Summer Infrastructure Studies Initiative (SISI) focuses on infrastructure projects for USACE Engineering with Nature (EWN) concerning three focus areas: Inland Waterways, Cold Regions, and California. The Inland Waterways team was directed by Rob Holmes, Assistant professor at Auburn University, research assistants Romina Delgado, Pilar Zuluaga, and Keena Miles. All this work has been supported by Penn University and Toronto University teams. The primary investigatory tool was map-making, locating data sets, and organizing information to reveal possibilities for deploying NNBF. The topic areas analyzed were 1) Levees and Floodways, 2) Dredging and River Training systems, and 3) Locks and Dams.
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CONTAMINATION LEGACIES - ALABAMA AND COAL INDUSTRIES Reseach for Design Studio IV Alabama has nine coal-fired power plants with at least 44 coal ash ponds resting on rivers and creeks. These plants produce 3.2 million tons of coal ash every year, and because of the high quantity of toxic heavy metals, Alabama houses the most toxic coal ash of any other state in the US. Over 1.5 million children live near coal ash storage sites, and 70 percent of all coal ash lagoons disproportionately impact low-income communities. Coal ash also referred to as coal combustion residuals or CCRs is produced primarily from coal-burning in coal-fired power plants. Coal ash includes several by-products produced from burning coal, including fly ash, bottom ash, boiler slag, and flue gas. Coal ash is full of toxic heavy metals that cause health issues in humans and are bad for the environment. The maps show the location of industrial coal plants and what waterbodies are compromised.
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ART PROJECTS Collection of Paintings and Drawings
Drawing and painting have always been an essential part of my life, as these are the tools that allow me to express who I am. I always try various techniques to discover new artistic opportunities. I believe that creativity is a process of practice and perseverance, not only for art but also for design. Being able to convey an idea is not an easy process, but it is possible. I consider that my source of communication with others is produced through drawing.
“Visible things can be invisible. However, our powers of thought grasp both the visible and the invisible – and I make use of painting to render thoughts visible.” ― René Magritte
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Seattle Field Work Trip 1) Gas Works Park 2) Olympic Sculpture Park
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Andes Mountains in Quito (2019)
Public Market Ce
Regent’s Canal at London (2019)
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Plaza Grande of Qu
Metodo al Pecho (2020)
enter at Seattle (2019)
uito Historic Center (2015)
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Landscape Architecture + Architecture + Research + Art Portfolio
Romina Delgado rad0055@auburn.edu rominadeltob@gmail.com
