Roxana Breceda Architecture Portfolio by roxana.breceda

Roxana Breceda Architecture Portfolio

About Roxana Breceda is a recent graduate of California College of the Arts where she obtained her master’s degree in architecture. She was born in Chihuahua, Chihuahua Mexico, and at the age of six she migrated to the United States. Roxana than was raised in the border town of El Paso, Texas. She was highly motivated to pursue a career in architecture as her interest in architecture grew at a very young age. Roxana obtained her bachelor’s degree in architecture from Texas Tech College of Architecture in El Paso, after receiving her associates in architecture from El Paso Community College. Mrs. Breceda obtained work experience in architectural design and landscape design. She than moved to San Francisco, California in 2019 to acquire her master’s degree. Roxana was recognized by the Architecture Division of California College of the Arts with two Studio Awards and a Thesis Award. Her design and representation skills have developed through the years. Today she is highly interest in activism, sustainability, and expressive forms of architecture.

Content Living Thru *

CCA

Fall 2019

1-8

Private Life of Brio

CCA

Spring 2020

9-14

Pollinator Power Hub + *

CCA

Fall 2021

15-22

Living Capriccio Thesis *

CCA

Spring 2021

23-34

* Award Winning Project + Team Project

Living Thru The housing crisis and the high rent rates in San Francisco is driving residents to take drastic actions. Some tech workers from Google have opted a new way of living. They have decided to live in their vehicles. Google employees have access to the facilities and amenities 24/7, as well as free meals before and after work hours. Entry level tech workers are choosing to buy a large economic vehicle were a small mattress fits and use it as their private bedroom at Google’s parking lot. This constituency is prioritizing their economy over the quality of life. Sleeping in a car gives this constituency the liberty to save enough money to pay of student debt or to purchase a home yet Living in their vehicle is a temporary living condition of about 1 to 3 years.

SPACE + INTERACTIONS ACROSS TIME 2

VEHICLE PLUG-IN UNTS

PRIVATE TRANSITIONAL BEDROOMS 5

COLLECTIVE PRIVATE SPACE

PRIVATE LIFE/GROUND LEVEL

Concept Living Thru is a communal housing project for entry level tech workers who have decided to live in a vehicle. Living Thru is immersed in respecting the financial plan and decisions of its residents. Residents will persist on sleeping in their vehicles, and as residents save money and liquidate debt, they have the economic freedom to move into a master bedroom. Not only does Living thru offers a transition of quality of life as its residents start to move out of their vehicle, but it allures the residents to a more environmentally friendly way of living as they will discard the car and use bikes or use public transportation. Living Thru offers safe bike storage in every unit as well as direct bike circulation. An array of gardens and sitting areas surround the building, communicating the green lifestyle it wants to achieve.

COLLECTIVE LIFE/SECOND LEVEL 6

PRIVATE LIFE

COLLECTIVE LIFE

Private Life of Brio A wooden labyrinth toy has been the protagonist of this project, were its physical qualities and functionality brought this unique item to life. Brio is an interactive game that requires technique, concentration, and balance. The private life of Brio is a progressive design project. Starting by designing a container for Brio. Scaling up the design is developed into an architectural space. When designing Brio’s container, it was important to integrate interactivity, and skill, as well as adding a sentimental value. The sentimental element was process through the missing marbles that are requires to play with Brio, therefore the container takes a semi spherical shape. After deciding on the shape of the container, the process in which the container is put together and put away was the opportunity to integrate interactivity and skill. The container became a color coded puzzle, which makes people think in order to contain, and play with Brio.

PHYSICAL MDF CONTAINER 9

PLAYFUL PUZZLE WALL 11

PLAYFUL BEDROOOM 12

Interior The interior space room was design with the principles of balance, playfulness, and interactivity. The child’s bedroom is organized by one large complete colorful puzzle wall with adjacent partial puzzle walls and a window with fixed shelving units in front. A swing like pulley system is also part of this playful interior where shapes can be attached and act as platforms to swing. When the puzzle wall and shapes on the other two walls are taken apart every shape becomes furniture for the room, as the book “Put Together” illustrates. With balance the colorful shapes can be put together into any type of structure. The colors and geometry start to express different spatial formations, and experiences. The child’s imagination will open a world of endless ways to put the shapes together, while learning about balance. The physical interactivity of the room, the container, and Brio is the way the object communicates with the space that surrounds it.

Pollinator Power Hub Worldwide there is an alarming decline in the pollinator’s population, due to the excessive use of pesticides, urban development, and climate change. 75% of our food production and 90% of our flowering plants depend heavily on pollinators. Pollinators are not just vital for human survival, but also for habitats and ecosystems around the world. The Pollinator Power Hub is a series of water and ground floating structures that work together for the salvation and repopulation of pollinators, where the community will work together to take action on this global problem. The Pollinator Power Hub explores methods of architectural design for pollinators, plants, and community.

ISLAIS CREEK

AMADOR RD

2ND LEVEL FLOOR PLAN

3RD LEVEL FLOOR PLAN

4TH LEVEL FLOOR PLAN

WEST VIEW ELEVATION

POLLINATOR OPENING TITANIUM DIOXIDE COATING 4 LAYER CLT PANEL

POLLINATOR SANCTUARY 19

4 Layers 6” CLT Panel Coated with Titatium Dioxide

Bouyant Structures

Fiber-Reinforced-Plastic Deck

Fiber-Reinforced-Plastic Structural Ribs

3/8” Fiber-ReinforcedPlastic Double Sided Hull with Balsa Core

Located on Islais creek the Pollinator Power Hub intends to create a new edge condition, where native plants and animals can thrive. A new urban ecotone was created by welcoming water into the site and around the architecture. The site of the project is exposed to sea level rise, and to liquefaction since the ground is mainly earthquake debris. The project is designed to respond to sea level rise and seismic activity in the area. An FRP buoyant foundation is adapted to all the building’s CLT structure. Meanwhile all the buildings adapt the same structural system, the building envelope changes depending on the program of the structure. The Pollinator Power Hub is programmed through a gradient that is defined by water. Floating clusters in the creek are Pollinator Sanctuaries, Solar Gardens, and Greenhouses. Larger and more complex clusters are found on the edge and on ground which are conditioned spaces for the community.

Modular Cell

ETFE PILLOW

4 LAYER CLT SOLAR HEAT ACCUMULATION

GREENHOUSE 21

1/2” DUAL BACKER ROD

BIPV DBL INSULATED GLASS SILICONE SEALANT ALUMINUM MULLION TITANIUM DIOXIDE COATING 4 LAYER CLT WOOD BLOCKING

ISLAIS CREEK COMMUNITY LIBRARY 22

Living Capriccio We live in a fast-changing world, where the “new” outperforms the “old”. The paradigm of obsolescence is inevitable and persistent; governing the way we live. Obsolescence devalues and discards. With obsolescence comes deconstruction and waste. By accepting the inevitable, enhancing its tempo, and withdrawing its waste this thesis project suggests an architectural capriccio. A capriccio is a fantastical composition of existing and inventive creations that suggest a formidable potential of life and livability. Forming a complex and memorable environment, a world that exists in the realm of desire, pleasure, and life. Living Capriccio is an immersive, transformative, experiential world that desires to “co-live” in a capitalist driven world with its non-disposable fast changing architecture. The versatile, flexible, and “fashion” like atmospheric structures fluctuate with infinite possibilities. Living Capriccio opposes the syndrome of expiration and celebrates life and the life it expresses to have.

Living Capriccio infiltrates the commercial sector of the street. The long corridor (Market Street) becomes a runway, starting at Westfield Shopping Mall and extending itself towards the Ferry Building 23

NEBULOUS DOMES

STRUCTURAL ACTIVATION

BINDED STRANDS

EMBEDED CONTOUR STRUCTURE

VOLUMETRIC SPACE CONFIGURATIONS

RAISING PLATFORMS

FLAT INACTIVE 25

RAISED PLATFORMS

RAISED PLATFORMS + NEBULOUS DOMES 26

Immersive Lanscape When the project is flat inactive, only public transportation can transit. Once platforms are raised. People start to become real owners of the public realm, reclaiming the space. When platforms and nebulous domes are both active and raised people become part of the project itself making this spaces their own. Spaces where they can express themselves freely. Living Capriccio embraces a free ideology, free in form, free in program, free of most of constraints. The project brings flexibility imagination, it arouses your emotions, its an element of surprise an event an oxymoron in the architectural world. Living Capriccio is fast changing architecture without being wasteful, architecture that can transform itself without disposability, architecture that is engaging without obsolescence.

Prototype In the process of reimaging architecture as an extension of the human body, a human scale prototype of a nebulous dome was manufactured to further understand the atmospheric environment created within it. Once inside the nebulous dome a submersible, flexible, and transformative layer embraces the body and mind. The prototype’s structure was 3D printed in a gradient filment, designed with holes for thread to pass by and conect thems. The colors on the thread also created a gradient. Color became an important aspect of the project as it started to become an experince and a “feeling”.