+ MAYAN MUSEUM merida | yucatan | mexico
The Mayan Museum is intended to 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. 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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+ ONE CHELSEA PLACE chelsea | manhattan | nyc
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.
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I did not completely agree with the high-rise lifestyle in this area of NYC; I did 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. 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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+tampa THE FLeX HOUSE | washington dc | colaboration
university of south florida | university of florida | florida state university | univerisity of central florida
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 different 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. Being a part of Team Florida, I was involved from May 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. sasha
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+ THE NEW QUITO quito | ecuador | group project
sasha dalla costa | nathan boyd | jeffery mcdowell | william verb
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 Gua- pulo valley, a plateau next to the simmering volcano, Pi- chincha. 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, lim- ited public space, and segregated cultural sectors. Com- mercially, 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, cul- tural, and commercial capital both at the scale of the site and the larger scale of the city.
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