2011 - 15 s a r a h uy n h A r c h i t e c t u r a l p o rt f o l i o
s e l e c t e d w o r k s Un i v e r s i t y o f B r i t i s h C o l u m i a
Graphic Design: Skilled in both analog and digital modes of architectural drawing, layout, and diagrammatic representation.
S a ra H u y n h phone email address
604 721 0345 saravhuynh@gmail.com 119 Oswego St. Victoria BC V8V 2A9
[Illustrator, Indesign, Photoshop, hand drawing]
3 D Modeling: Capable of developing comprehensive 3D models and generating renders which highlight experiential qualities. [Photoshop, Revit, Rhinoceros, Sketchup]
C o n st r u c t i o n D o c u m e ntat i o n : Familiar with construction documentation, such as detailing, specs, schedules, etc. [Autocad, Revit, Rhinoceros, Vectorworks]
Research C o m m u n i c at i o n : Confident in the synthesis and communication of advanced research and analysis.
“The point of the probe is always in the heart of the explorer.� - Gregory Bateson
ex p e ri e nc e
awa r d s
e d ucat io n
2011-2015 Masters of Architecture SALA UBC
2015
2014 SUMMER 2014 Architecture study abroad Portugal SALA UBC 2013 SUMMER 2013 Submitted a comprehensive permit package to the City of Vancouver for the renovation of a single family house
FALL 2013 Arthur Hullah & Dorothy Cleveland Memorial Scholarship SALA UBC SPRING 2013 Best Studio Design Prize SALA UBC 2012
FALL 2012 Submitted plans, sections, and elevations to the City of Victoria for the interior renovation of a leased commercial space
FALL 2012 Arthur Hullah & Dorothy Cleveland Memorial Scholarship SALA UBC
2011
2010 SUMMER 2010 [In]Arch program UC Berkeley
2009
2008 SPRING 2008 Rising Star Award Geography Department University of Victoria
2006 -08 B.A. Human Geography University of Victoria
SPRING 2005 Achievement in Anthropology Award Capilano University
FALL 2005 History of European Art Study Abroad Langara College
2 0 07 2006 2005
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c o nt e st e d t e r r i to ry
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drifting edge
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endemic e c o lo g i e s
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s k e l e ta l hybridity
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c o m m u n i c at i n g C o n st r u c t i o n
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r e g e n e r at i n g f ut u r e s
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i n f i lt r a t i n g peripheries
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c l i m at i c r e act io n s
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Urban Archipelagos
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t h e s i s p r oj e c t p a rt 1 : r e m e d i at i o n i n i n d u st r i a l l a n d s c a p e s
Contested Territory
In collaboration with Cristina Craiu
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The future of Fort McMurray, Canada’s most contentious boomtown, hangs in a delicate balance. Like all boomtowns, its viability remaines inextricably tied to global market fluctuations and other variables squarely out of the control of the city itself. However, the planning policies and city making tactics it is adopting remain rigid, acknowledging a singular outcome based on infinite prosperity and growth. This thesis offers seven architectural interventions which speculatively engage with the uncertainty and complexity of Fort McMurray’s vulnerable urban
form. Co-opting the building types, cultural institutions, and architectural typologies often eagerly adopted by boomtowns to establish instant culture, its aim is to dissassemble and reimagine the role of architecture within these extraordinarily fragile contexts. Reoriented in response to seven unique landscapes, these projects are intended to describe the city and its possible futures through a deliberately idiosyncratic and locally specific lens, while simultaneously addressing the complex and globally oriented framework in which it is situated.
Fig. 1[above] Conflicting land use in remote hinterlands
Situated on a small island at the confluence of the two rivers which circumnavigate the city, a definitive cut in the landscape serves multiple functions. As the rivers’ shifting water levels bleed through the newly delineated landscape, the architecture begins to function as a register, revealing the cyclical nature of hydric seasonal flux and the inherent risks a warming climate poses to the region. Simultaneously, it creates lookout points projecting into the adjacent river, and a natural gathering place for a widely multicultural population.
In the contentious landscapes found in and around Fort McMurray, economic agendas and profit margins collide with issues of land ownership, treaty rights, and activism. Fueled by the watchful eye of a global audience, communication between governments, multinational oil corporations, environmental groups, and First Nations and Metis populations has become polarized. In this environment, it becomes appropriate to extract and reinterpret the task of mediation, removing it from the city centre, and creating a more adaptable architectural response to conflict. Sited in the very landscapes in which this tension arises, these structures seek to connect users to the environments shaped by their decision making while simultaneously creating beacons, symbolizing the transparent and conciliatory intent of the dialogue occurring within their walls.
Fig. 2[above] A register of flux in the heart of the community
Fig. 3 A gathering place in dispersed geographies of conflict
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In collaboration with Cristina Craiu
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A sanctuary nestled in the heart of the city, this project remains a decidedly environmentally focused and solitary place, sited on a small island adjacent to the downtown core. Responding to the rising and falling water levels in the region, a dynamic park - like setting becomes a universal space for all members of the community to gather in the unique landscape conditions found in the region.
Fig. 4 A delineated landscape
Fig. 5[above] Fluctuating water levels
Responding to future flare ups between the various parties with vested interests in the region, pop-up structures become a strategic counterpoint to conflict. In these stressed and sought after geographies, a distributed network of structures provide a politically neutral and open environment in which primary stakeholders, policy makers, and representatives can engage in productive dialogue. Mistrust, delay, confrontation, and resistance have come to characterize a counterproductive and gridlocked
dialogue between major stakeholders involved in and around Fort McMurray. The introduction of these architectural interventions acknowledges the systemic miscommunications that have become entrenched over time in the region. They offer an intentional space dedicated to the facilitation of communication, bringing together users with widely different worldviews and disparate opinions on the fate of the land upon which Fort McMurray sits.
Fig. 6 Architecture as intersection between infrastructure and communication
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t h e s i s p r oj e c t p a rt 2 : a d a pt i n g t y p o lo g i e s
Drifting Edge
In collaboration with Cristina Craiu
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During the rapid process of development found in modern boomtowns, inevitably, cracks in social infrastructure and public space develop, leaving the underserviced populations who occupy the fragmented and underdeveloped edges of suburban expansion without local public amenities. This architectural intervention reinterprets the role of public space sited on Fort McMurray’s
Fig. 7[above] Social amenities in underserviced sites
ephemeral suburban edges. As the shifting circumference of the city expands and contracts in direct correlation with commodity prices and global oil production, these public spaces are dissassembled and transported to the sites where they are needed, providing agile and flexible social amenities to a fluctuating population base.
Fig. 8 Flexible program facilitated by mobility
The expanding suburban development ringing Fort McMurray sits on plateaus 110 metres above the downtown core and the valleybottom below, and are separated by an interstitial landscape of stepped slopes categorically described as ‘no build zones.’ Siting work camps within these landscapes, thick retaining walls and egress cores connect to bedrock, reinforcing the slope itself. Sitting within geographic proximity to primary transportation routes, the work camps maintain their pragmatic functions without disrupting the layout of the expanding city. Imagining their program transformed in a future without oil production, the site becomes optimal for sightseeing, industrial tourism, and eco hotels. Remaining untouched by development, these strangely wild environments nested within the city itself function as a reminder of the resources which fuel Fort McMurray’s growth, and the marks that industry leave behind.
Fig. 9 Eco-tourists observing industrial relics
Fig. 10[above] Plan
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t h e s i s p r oj e c t p a rt 3 : c h a l l e n g i n g b o o mto w n a s s u m pt i o n s
Endemic Ecologies
In collaboration with Cristina Craiu
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In Fort McMurray, like many other modern boomtowns, the exponential population, built on a small and stable core of permanent residents, is in constant flux. The history of the city is being rapidly overwritten as suburban development pushes further into the surrounding landscape and industrial extraction and processing irreversibly alters its local ecologies. In these contexts, it becomes crucial to maintain an autonomous and unique sense of identity and culture within the region while simuntaneously absorbing and reflecting the social shifts of an increasingly heterogeneous and multicultural population. This project engages with a site which, though currently far beyond the fringes of the city, is slated for suburban development in the future. In its current form, it functions programatically as an outdoor learning centre, engaged with the open water wetlands endemic to the region. Students can come to cook, eat, and sleep here, while foraying out on foot and by boat into the surrounding landscape, creating a memorable, tactile, and direct learning experience. In a future in which suburban development in the region is completed, the project holds the capacity to transform into a suburban school. Through its unique engagement with the passing of time, this project reimagines the identity and durational scope of the school as an institution and a building type. Transformed, it begins to actively shape the local population’s perceptions of natural systems in the region and the role the community plays in relation to it and each other.
Fig. 11 Understanding the Boreal forest
Fig. 12[above] Exploring wetland ecologies
Local ecological systems have played a fundamental role in the lives of indigenous populations and traditional trappers long before the discovery of oil and technologically advanced extraction methods brought hundreds of thousands of people to the region. As industrial production has intensified, these cultural practices have been threatened, along with the ecologies around which they are organized. This project intends to facilitate and amplify the connection between residents of Fort McMurray, and the rich biodiversity found in the unique ecological conditions which characterize the region. Users can pick berries, smoke meat, and dry herbs amongst a series of indoor and outdoor ‘rooms’ which serve to showcase and intensify the natural processes being rapidly dismantled by the expanding suburban edges of the city. Fig. 13[above] Plan
Fig. 14 Micro-climates and working areas
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In collaboration with Cristina Craiu
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Fig. 15 Plan
Fig. 16[above] Environment
Fig. 17 A celebration of the Boreal forest, openwater wetlands, and muskeg conditions
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f a l l Fin a l Stu dio Project:
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T O WA R D S R E S I L I E N T B U I L D I N G ST R AT E G I E S
Skeletal Hybridity
Located along a primary arteriole in a rapidly shifting East Vancouver neighbourhood, a library and multi- family housing project form the programmatic underpinnings of this speculative proposal, fostering an imaginative exploration of the seam between public amenity and private space. Anticipating an unpredictable future, the intent of this project is to create more resilient and adaptable strategies for building in the city. Premised on a monolithic structural frame and cladding system, the spatial relationships between the housing units and the library itself hold the capacity to change and adapt over time.
Fig. 18 Elevations
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Fig. 19 Floor plans of housing & library
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f a l l An
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Communicating Construction
This exercise explores the generative qualities of limitation, efficiency, and restraint in the process of architectural design, emphasizing its articulate communication through construction documentation. Adhering to the confines of a prescribed envelope and building footprint, this interior space is shaped by simple materials and finishes and a subdued, uncomplicated layout. Complete drawing package includes plans, sections, RCP, specs, manufacture information, door, window, and finishing schedules, millwork, interior and building envelope details [available upon request].
Fig. 20[above] Floor plan
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Fig. 21 Interior elevations
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s p r i n g pa i r e d
c o m p r e h e ns i v e
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st u dio :
F R O M
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A M E N I T Y
Regenerating Futures Imagining a very real future in which Vancouver’s primary landfill is eventually decommissioned and capped, this proposal provides a radically divergent programmatic response to the needs of the city, converting its former waste into a fundamental public amenity. A crematorium and correlating ceremony space become a powerful means of connecting citizens to the cycical nature of the city in which they live, and the ecological systems upon which they depend. Paired with the combustion of methane produced as waste decomposes on the site, the energy intensive process of cremation becomes environmentally sensitive, co-opting an industrial process and inserting itself opportunistically into the durational cycle of the landfill itself. A new ecological system develops as commemorative seedlings are planted in honour of the passing of loved ones, simultaneously remediating the contaminated site. As methane levels begin to wane, a new landscape emerges over time, providing a sanctuary in honour of life, death, and regeneration.
In collaboration with Cristina Craiu
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Fig. 22[above] Conceptual diagram
Fig. 23 Spirituality in an abused landscape
Fig. 24 [left] Landfill sequencing diagram
Fig. 25[right] Detail of Ceremony Space
Fig. 26[above] Temporal shifts
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In collaboration with Cristina Craiu
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Fig. 27[above] Cross section through ceremony space
Fig. 28 Conceptual collage
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Fig. 29 Ground floor plan
Fig. 30 Sequencing diagram
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In collaboration with Cristina Craiu
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Fig. 31[below] Longitudinal section
Fig. 32[above] Reflected ceiling plan
Fig. 33[right] Programmatically separated circulation systems
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S t u d i o p r o j e c t : a lt e r n at i v e m o d e l s o f a f f o r d a b l e h o u s i n g
Infiltrating Built Peripheries Aging low density suburban neighbourhoods and outmoded public infrastructures ring many North American metropolitan centres. As these cities become increasingly expensive places to live, the need to create more affordable and variegated living environments has become an extremely pressing and largely unresolved issue, making these peripheral geographies fruitful sites of architectural investigation. This project responds to some of the inefficiencies and redundancies embedded in these neighbourhoods, seeking to create methods for current residents to reduce their cost of living, while simultaneously providing new residents with a diversity of small scale homes. Manipulating the setbacks, easements, and roadways in front of the existing suburban fabric, incremental change can begin to create new forms of affordability in the neighbourhoods surrounding the city.
Fig. 34[above] Site plan
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Fig. 35 Elevation
Operating primarily as a typological inversion of a laneway house, these efficient, single story units provide a more heterogeneous and accessible approach to housing in Vancouver’s suburban fabric.
Fig. 36[left] Floorplans
Fig. 37[above] Newly defined public space
Fig. 38[right] Sections
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s p r i n g T h e
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Climatic Reactions
In collaboration with Aaron Petruic & Narelle Sookorukoff
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Sited on the wet, cool coast of northern British Columbia in Prince Rupert, this proposed single family house and studio space responds in materiality and form to the specificity of its environmental contexts, treating challenging climatic conditions and advanced technical analysis as a celebratory element of design rather than a hinderance to it. Complete drawing package includes structural plans, foundation plans, floor plans, roof & site plans, wall sections, connection details, envelope details, exterior elevations, climatic analysis, environmental performance building analysis [available upon request]
Fig. 39[above] Wet, foggy climatic conditions
a n a ly s i s
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Fig. 40[above] Structural floor plan
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Conditioned crawl space (1200 mm height) with thin concrete slab below grade
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Concrete stem wall and footings
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5 ply CLT floor (169mm) standardized to 3m widths
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Glulam beam (150x150) supported on concrete stem walls
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3 ply CLT load bearing walls 999mm)
d st
udy
Fig. 41[below] Environmental & contextual analysis
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Z-strip to support cladding 3-ply CLT
RUUKI corten steel cladding first water retarder
Wall tie attaching Z-strip to CLT
BLUESKIN water barrier to protect fasteners Bolt attaching corten to Z-strip
Bolt attaching Z-strip to CLT Z-strip to support cladding
12.5mm plywood TYVEC lapped and taped water and air barrier 13mm air cavity BLUESKIN lapped over flashing preventing water entry
Extruded polystyrene thermal insulation (100mm)
Metal flashing
In collaboration with Aaron Petruic & Narelle Sookorukoff
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9.5mm plywood to create reveal 2x12 to trim window
Metal flashing pan with drip edge
LOEWEN push-out awning window frame
Sealant to prevent water entry
Triple glazed HEAT-SMART system
Fig. 42 Window head section
R O O F SYST E M INTERLOCK standing seam aluminum roofing primary water barrier (400mm widths, 48mm gauge) INTERLOCK roofing underlay lapped and taped secondary water barrier INTERLOCK backer board (13mm) Exterior grade plywood 610mm on centre (12.5mm) STYROFOAM extruded polystyrene thermal insulation between 2x8 on edge, every 610mm R-value of 5.18 7-ply cross laminated timber (240mm) structural component R-value of 11.34
t y pi c a l e x t e r io r wa l l a s s e m b ly RUUKI corten steel cladding (1.5mm thickness in standardized panels of 600mm x 2400mm) primary water barrier Z-strips attach the corten steel to the CLT provides the 13 mm air cavity TYVEK lapped and taped water and air barrier STYROFOAM extruded polystyrene thermal insulation (100mm) R-value of 3.44 3-ply cross laminated timber (99mm) structural wall component and interior wall finish no vapour retarding finishes to be used, maintaining a vapour permeable wall assembly R-value of 4.68
f o u n d at i o n wa l l a s s e m b ly STYROFOAM PERIMATE extruded polystyrene thermal insulation Grooves channel water down to the footing drain (100mm) R-value of 3.44 BLUESKIN water, vapour, and air barrier protects the assembly from water damage Poured concrete stem wall (200mm)
s l a b o n g r a d e a s s e m b ly STYROFOAM extruded polystyrene thermal insulation (100mm) R-value of 3.44 BLUESKIN water, vapour, and air barrier protects the assembly from water damage
Fig. 43 Building Assembly
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s p r i n g
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st u d i o p r oj e c t : p o l l i n ato r s a n ct u a ry & p e d e st r i a n r e f u g e
Urban Archipelagos Can gas stations, a ubiquitous symbol of the dominance of the car in our peri-urban landscapes, become surprising conduits of change, mitigating some of the environmental devastation in and around our cities? This proposal reimagines the gas station canopy as a microhabiat for native pollinators to the region, creating a distributed network of safe havens in which human industry and ecological diversity can coexist in an environmentally inhospitable ocean of urban sprawl.
Fig. 44[above] Distribution of fueling stations in relationship to the foraging distance of native bees
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Fig. 45 Cross section
P E D E ST R I A N ORIENTED I N F R A ST R U CT U R E
GLASS RAILING/GUARD encouraging visual link between animal life and pedestrian users
PEDESTRIAN PATHWAY creating connectivity through park like environment
S E L F S U S TA I N I N G M I C R O H A B I TAT
TOPSOIL/ORGANIC PLANT MATTER primary habitat for pollinators
NUTRIENT RICH SOIL supporting plant life
FOAM BLOCKING SYSTEM facilitating weight reduction
ROOT RESISTANT WATERPROOF MEMBRANE REINFORCED POURED CONCRETE CAR CENTRIC GROUND PLANE
STEEL DECK STEEL JOISTS
CAST CONCRETE LIGHTING SYSTEM
downward casting in response to bird habitat above
CONCRETE CAST STEEL I BEAMS
STEEL BOX GIRDER ENCASED IN CONCRETE CHARGING NODE for the electric vehicle
Fig. 46 Exploded axonometric
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S a r a H uy n h phone
604 721 0345
saravhuynh@gmail.com 119 Oswego St. Victoria BC V8V 2A9
address