advanced design portfolio
| sasha dalla costa
CONTENTS: ADVANCED DESIGN A MAYAN MUSEUM | LIBRARY_ 6 - 17 SARASOTA ART CENTER _ 18 - 29
DESIGN DEVELOPMENT SARASOTA ART CENTER _ 28- 29
ADVANCED DESIGN B ONE CHELSEA PLACE _30 - 49
ADVANCED DESIGN C THE NEW QUITO | ECUADOR _ 50-71
DESIGN BUILD DESIGN BUILD | SOLAR DECATHLON_ 72 - 79
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advanced design portfolio
| sasha dalla costa
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A
spring 2011 | michael halflants
mayan museaum merida | yucatan | mexico 4 weeks Nestled in the Yucatan, the Plaza Mayor is a well-known square in the heart of the city of Merida, and is one of the cities main areas for gatherings. While on our trip to Merida, the class named it “the lover’s square,” because of the number of couples that could be seen embracing throughout the day. Occupying an area equal to the size of a quadrant of a full city block, Plaza Mayor is enclosed on two sides by roads and 2 sides by existing architecture. In the farthest corner of the plaza was situated an old cinema which was our site. Merida, though rich with Spanish influence has also one of the largest populations of the Yucatec Maya people. Our project is to design a Museum to hold artifacts suck as pendants and carved columns of the Mayan people. The library portion is the only area of the project that needs to be conditioned; it will be host to a series of Maya Scriptures. The Mayan Museum is intended to be an inspire, teach and serve as a place to remember the Mayan people, to remember how powerful they once were and to give respect to the academic excellence of their scriptures.
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merida | mexico The seemingly floating mass is what holds the books of scripture. The mass seems to peak into the square, though it is drastically different in style to the surrounding architecture, it pulls back into its infill site. The book “masses� held inside the three - story volume are meant to be a surprise, giving respects the awe-inspiring temples in the middle of the rain forest. You ascend to the books, like the Maya ascended to better communicate with their gods.
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merida | mexico On visiting the sacred sites of the Mayan people, one of the effects that stood out to me was the facades of the temples. Repetitions of stones, cravings and hieroglyphs casting dramatic shadows, under the tropical sun. This presence of shadow inspired lighting effects in the museum. The shadows casts throughout the museum are unique to each area. The wall that runs along the entire western side of the museum is in reference to the temples we visited on our journey through the Mayan world.
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ground floor
second floor
1. cafe kitchen 2. water closets 3. mechanical/custodial 4. conference room 5. museaum office
1. library 2. lobby/reception 3. museaum gallery 1 4. museaum gallery 2 5. museaum gallery 3
YUCATAN mexico spring | 2011
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sarasota art center sarasota | florida
9 weeks The Sarasota Art Center for many years has been a place for the art community of Sarasota to gather. Its main functions range from social gatherings, galleries, exhibitions to education. When we were given the project, we were asked to design a place for multiple types of galleries; ranging from permanent exhibitions to places for work to be displayed to be sold. Class rooms for teaching different artistic skill, and for the building to have the ability to host large functions. Our clients main request was light, to replace the existing dark interior of the center. On visiting the site, there were only three things that really stood out to me; the desperate need of light, the lack of any real views surrounding the center and the courtyard style building that existed there. Because of the lack of context of the art center I wanted the building to be focused inward. the amount of art and artistic energy that would be contained in the building would make up for the lack of context. The other problem I had was: how to bring in the light?
Through the process of designing the art center, I became fascinated with the idea of surrounding yourself with art and light. From a central point of the site, the space will start moving and shifting around you, light comes in through a series of large glazed spaces. The lines of view the stem from the point started to form the spaces. I was excited with the idea of designing different types of lit area that changed throughout the day. The largest space in the design was affectionately called the monster throughout the time of the class, other wise thought up as the light catcher.
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My first thoughts for the use of the art center were that I wanted it to be a place that consumes you in artistic energy, with every few you saw, inspired. Having so many ages present in the everyday use, there was a need to easy visibility, but places of privacy, for inspiration and solitude. My design is meant to be explored, as it spirals outward from you, you are suppose to try and find what it is hiding.
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a metal coping b continuous cleat c counter flashing d single ply roofing membrane e rigid slopped insulation f wood blocking g vapor barrier h roofing deck i steel angle j 3� pre-cast concrete panel k fascia cover l w-shape steel column m steel tube frame
a b c d e f g h i j k l m
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a water supply b sewer c gray water d stack vents e cold water supply f tankless water heater g hot water h lavatory i urinal j water closet k ada lavatory l grey water system m meter
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A WOOD BLOCKING B FLASHING C GLASS PANEL D METAL SUB-FRAMING CONNECTING TO THE CONCRETE FRAME E CONCRETE FRAME
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window detail
wall studies
design development summer 2011 |
john mckenna
The intent of this course is to teach the skills necessary to proceed from a Schematic Design Phase, consisting of those drawings illustrating a project’s scale and relationship of components, to the Design Development Phase, consisting of those drawings and other documents necessary to fix and describe the size and character of the project as to architectural, structural, mechanical and electrical systems and materials. Primary emphasis will be placed on the selection and dimensional interrelationship between building systems and their appropriateness, cost and code requirements. Further emphasis will be placed on the use of modules and their variables to resolve design problems, including horizontal and vertical coordination of all dimensions.
PROJECT INFORMATION Sarasota visual art Museum Property ID: 2009-01-0003 Owner: Sarasota City of Lessor Lessee: Sarasota Art Assn Inc 707 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota fl, 34236 Property description: DESC AS COM AT INTRS OF C/L OF 12TH ST & W CURB LINE OF BROADWAY TH N 393.33 FT TH W 136 FT FOR POB TH N 80 FT TH W 214.16 FT TH S 80 FT TH E 214.16 FT TO POB Zoning: G governmental use Land Area: 17,132 sf
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B fall 2011
| trent green
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one chelsea place
chelsea | manhattan | nyc. 16 weeks.
The basic program requirements for this 750,000 square foot include; speculative office space over street level business, retail and entertainment functions and residential. Each student was allowed to manipulate the building height in order to achieve optimal design goal. Program goals include included; to design an active, lively and safe public street space at grade, a striking form and sustainability; eliminating or minimizing direct solar heat gain while optimizing all occupant views, maximizing day light and minimum heat sink effect. Though we did not travel to New York, where our site for this project was located in this semester. My trip to New York with my Design 3 class the year before had really stayed with me. There was energy in Manhattan that a girl from an island had never experienced before; sites, smells, cars, taxis, people, cobble stone streets and brown stone buildings. I fell in love with the energy of the city. The scenario of the project was that all the buildings that existed on our site were to be demolished. This sparked something in me that have inspired much more than this project. I disagree with the high-rise lifestyle; I do not think it is a good thing to walk into a building, into an elevator and into an apartment. One of the beauties of New York living is the interaction with the street life. The design focuses on bringing the energy of the city into the building. With a series of walk up stairways for residential mixing with commercial I hope to tip my hat to the traditional walk up apartments of the city.
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Chelsea is an up and coming artist neighborhood, so I targeted my building to accommodate working artists and people involved in the arts. Designing the spaces to be used as open communities that included spaces such as the Chelsea District Art Museum; which previously existed in the furthest northwest building of the site. In wanting to bring together a place for creativity, that brought the energy of the artist and the streets, programmatic elements such as work/ live lofts, artist studios, art school and a gallery were included.
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ground floor
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second floor
third floor
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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
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main lobby reception emergency exits security office communications room staff facilities commercial art gallery commercial/ tower loading staff parking storage staff locker room fire safety room garbage storage mechanical line hvac_ ground floor access resident (secondary loading) resident and guest parking. resturant loading/ garbage resturant
tower floor
parking plan
comercial art affiliated vertical circulation mechanical/ service service/ loading water/electric/mechanical parking
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final
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| model
One of the things I disliked on the streets of Manhattan was when new buildings were placed, the way the old architecture of the city too aggressively merged into the likes of more up to date buildings in the Chelsea District, for example Frank Gehry’s IAC building only one block south. My solution to this was to preserve three of the buildings existing on our site, integrating my modern design into the existing conditions and bringing the energy of the city and the famous New York skyline up from the street to form my tower. This idea of ‘preserving the past,’ was to inspired the idea behind my thesis, a respect to the culture and heritage of a place, remembering times in history, but forever moving forward.
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New York’s essence, literary or otherwise, grows out of the street experience, the basis for an aesthetic of ragged, miraculous simultaneity. New York has from the start been an extroverted, not a convert, place; its man made geography and network of mass transports provide the basic cue, the beat from which all-else flows. Writers have again and again described the pedestrian stream, the crowd (whether perceived as threatening or benign), the street as emblem of material reality. -phillip lopate
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C s pring 2012
| jan wampler
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the new quito team
| grayscale
16 weeks
nathan boyd sasha dalla costa jeffery mcdowell william vereb Ecuador, named after the equatorial demarcation that runs through the country, is at the forefront of a discussion to reconsider the idea of hemispheres. Instead of a line dividing northern and southern sections, Quitsato, a group within Ecuador wants to see the equator as a line that connects. The site of this project presents a similar opportunity. This diagram shows how the proposed scheme intends to connect the polar extents longitudinally, by joining them at the central node along the equatorial division line of the site. This node becomes the Plaza Mayor, the heart of the new Quito proposal.
why? Emerging from the indigenous culture of the Quitu tribe, the city of Quito was officially established upon subjugation by the Incas around 1500 AD. The city quickly grew in significance when named the northern capital of the Incan Empire by the emperor Huayna Capac. A road was subsequently built between the two capitals of Quito and Cuzco, integrating Quito within the Incan commercial trade route as an anchor destination through the rugged Andes mountain range. The Quito of current-day recalls issues related to it’s early prominence. Fueled by the oil boom of the 70’s and 80’s, the city has grown to sprawl the length of the entire Guapulo valley, a plateau next to the simmering volcano, Pichincha. This expansion has created an explicit problem of connection. In sprawling to the north, the city has split itself in to two distinct areas: the historic Old City to the south and the modern new city to the north. This fracture is exacerbated by poor transportation infrastructure, limited public space, and segregated cultural sectors. Commercially, the city also struggles to capitalize on significant resources related to astronomy, ecology, agriculture, and other industries beyond petroleum. These issues also come to bear at the smaller scale of the project site as well. A former airfield, the 3.5 km long area of intervention divides east and west sectors with no cross-site axis. The entire site has been swallowed by the northern development of Quito creating an insular condition. Thus, the design scheme must connect the surrounding context of culture, industry, and ecology while promoting the emergence of new intellectual, cultural, and commercial capital both at the scale of the site and the larger scale of the city.
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Q UITO EQUATORIAL CONNECTIONS: A NEXUS FOR THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY
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Our proposal intends to engage these challenges directly through the use of public circulation. The core of the scheme is a large undulating path of constructed ground is set firmly as an armature throughout the length of the site. Connective members extend perpendicular to this axis, repairing the division latitudinally while also providing multiple layers of vehicular and pedestrian circulatory infastructure.
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armeture
Central to the scheme is the elevated pedestrian thoroughfare that stretches the length of the site. This concept was generated early in the design process as a strong armature to anchor the directionality and organization of the intervention. Drawing on precedents such as the Highline Park in New York City and Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle, the scope of the initial idea was expanded to include additional elements of program and circulation within the structure. The original elevation changes that served to span vehicular traffic, define public space and facilitate multiple layers of circulation, are coupled with modulation in both width and scale. These horizontally directed changes capitalize on opportunities to support a variety of activity programs, expand the types of parkspace, and extend connective members farther to additional civic nodes. The circulation armature breaks at only one location throughout it’s longitudinal axis: the Plaza Mayor. Envisioned as the central core to both the network of public spaces within the site and the cultural community of the area, the plaza is positioned as the fulcrum between the northern and southern portions of the thoroughfare. The unique figural tension suggested by the dissolution of the paths into the plaza creates a strong connection to the circulation network while simultaneously reinforcing the hierarchal importance of the space.
main plaza | plaza mayor Situated at the heart of public circulation structure is the Plaza Mayor. This large plaza serves as the main gathering space for civic and political events while also fostering the experience of “public room� within the dense urban fabric of Quito. The location of the plaza emerged from studies of the surrounding site geometry, analysis of the circulation systems, and precedents of the unique public spaces found in Siena and Luca, Italy. A maze of overlapping grids, the context of the area was highly varied, typically generated in response to the site boundary of the former airport and the topography of the landscape. The generous space of the plaza perfectly reconciled and softened these competing geometries. In a similar manner the plaza itself offered the ability to collect and gather all the various circulation systems of the scheme into a central node. In order to define the space and assist with navigation throughout the site, the scheme recalled the Compo of Siena, defining the periphery with buildings from 3-6 stories and inserting a midrise tower to provide an axis mundi, a hierarchal point of reference.
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unique program Home to the Galapagos Islands and numerous astronomy sites, our proposed scheme seeks to connect Quito to the larger context and culture of Ecuador. To this end, additional programmatic elements are proposed withiwn the fabric of the project. First, to the northern end of the site, a zoo and ecological preserve both study and discuss the rich diversity of the ecosystems found not only on the Ecuadorian mainland but also the completely unique environment of the Galapagos Islands. Just south of the zoo is the Museum of Culture and Art. This structure emerges from the landscape, much like a rock or landform, presenting itself to be truly of this place. The museum houses indigenous artifacts and promotes new, current-day artists from Quito. Anchoring the southern end of the scheme is the planetarium science center. These facilities reference the proximity of Quito to the equator and the city’s unique environment for astronomical study.
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typology | architecture Dependent on the Spanish Colonial style found in the historic Old City, Quito has struggled to establish a contemporary architectural identity. Such an identity is not repeating a style, nor merely cloning buildings, but rather an attitude towards the making of space and the structures surrounding it. Form and space in this scheme are direct responses to light conditions, level changes, and inside/outside relationships.
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From it’s position along the Equator, Quito enjoys extremely limited changes in the azimuth of the sun. This condition minimizes questions of direct lighting on north and south faces of building structures, instead shifting the issue to roofing elements and east/west control. In residential buildings, the use of courtyards and other types of recessed spaces afford residents adequate day-lighting and negative-pressure ventilation. These semi-private spaces also provide means for the residents to enjoy the outdoors while still being at home. Other structures, requiring more controlled lighting through indirect means, were designed to manipulate the roof planes in order to carefully expose the internal spaces to daylight. By pulling the roof away from the main structure vertically, clerestory windows create diffused light from above. Extending the roof plane horizontally provides shading for larger apertures on the surface of the structure. Bending roof and wall planes provide slivers for lights to wash down into more intimate and internal spaces. Transitions between level changes provide a challenge in any building environment, but the drastic landscape of Quito this heightened to an even greater degree. To mediate this varied topography, the first levels of most buildings were used as a space for these transitions to occur. Typically a double height space, the main public spaces within this first floor offered interaction both physically and spatially. Both within the public plaza spaces and the building periphery, the use of trees and arcades extend habitable space and question the distinction between inside and outside. The network of constructed parks within the urban core presents shaded rooms for pedestrians as well as defines circulation space between the park and the surrounding buildings. Main circulation areas are further bolstered through the use of arcades, not only for shade but also organization and directionality. In some cases, these arcades also serve as transitory spaces between changes in levels, differences in privacy and competition in program.
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SD
2010-2011
| stanley russell
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design | build flexhouse team | florida 5 semester
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team florida | design charette
design | development
construction | framing
construction | interiors
design | development
surveying the site
placing paralams
construction | interiors
construction | flooring | sidings
construction | finishings
The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon is an award-winning program that challenges collegiate teams to design, build, and operate solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient, and attractive. The winner of the competition is the team that best blends affordability, consumer appeal, and design excellence with optimal energy production and maximum efficiency. The FLeX House is a flexible, modular building system that can adapt easily to differ¬ent site situations and plan configurations. The FLeX House is designed for a young couple living in Central Florida on a moderate income. The key factor shaping the design approach is central Florida’s hot humid climate and intense solar radiation. Our proposal will combine the wisdom of vernacular Florida houses and our team’s years of experience in ZEH technologies to make a state of the art zero energy home. The flexibility inherent to the architectural design of the house, which allows it to take on differ¬ent configurations by operating movable elements that expand or contract the living spaces, is supported by the continuity of interior materials applied to flooring, ceilings, and interior walls. Material changes in the foyer, bathroom and kitchen area will respond to the nature of these moisture-prone or transitional areas, whereas consistent materials echoing outdoor components in the built-in casework throughout the house will visually integrate all indoor and outdoor spaces. Being a part of Team Florida, I was involved from summer 2010 to the final competition. I was able to learn to act like a project manager, be involved in design decisions and was able to communicate and interact with almost all members of the over 40 person team. One of the hardest and most fulfilling experiences of my life; the Solar Decathlon has taught me many skills. Skills ranging construction documents, product finding, design development, communication and architecture.
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“Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light.� - Le Corbusier
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