Sketch Portfolio by Vivian Gruendel

Vivian Gruendel

Skills

Digital Literacy

AutoCAD

Rhino 6 & Grasshopper

ClimateStudio

Ladybug & Honeybee

Revit

Bluebeam Revu

Representation

Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom & Premiere

Enscape

Digital Fabrication (LaserCAMM, 3D

Printing & CNC)

Manual Model-Making

Ceramics

Photography

Sketching

Other

Post-Occupancy Evaluations

Written & Verbal Communication

Python & Java (Introductory)

Microsoft 365

Languages

English (Fluent, native bilingual)

Spanish (Fluent, native bilingual)

French (Proficient)

Clubs + Activities

Honors College Student Council

Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society

VT AIAS

VT Empty Bowls

Ceramics Independent Studies

LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/vivian-gruendel/ Portfolios https://issuu.com/vgruendel

Email vivian.gruendel@gmail.com

Summer Intern - Perkins&Will, Washington, D.C.

Jun 2023 - Aug 2023

• Developed materials for SD & DD packages for a multi-story, two-tenant lab/office space. Assisted development & delivery of presentation materials for weekly client & consultant meetings. (10 weeks) Collected & organized site & usage data across 6 NIH campuses for NIH Sustainability & Resilience Assessment publication. Designed graphic content & coordinated feedback & contributions between Perkins&Will, CFR Engineering & Client. Facilitated on-site POE & resilience workshops at Bethesda main campus with NIH employees including administrators, engineers & researchers. (4 weeks)

• Volunteered assistance with punch visits, model-making, marketing, design studies & communityengagement documentation across various other projects in addition to primary responsibilities.

Service Desk Associate - The Home Depot

Tiny House Build - Self-Directed Gap Year Experience

May 2021 - Aug 2021

• Quickly & accurately answered customer questions, suggested effective solutions & resolved conflicts to increase customer satisfaction

• Enhanced team’s productivity by anticipating coworkers’ needs & delivering support

• Organized & developed retrieval processes for large-format online-order inventory & reduced order retrieval time by 50%

Aug 2018 - Jul 2019

• Designed, built & donated a grid-compatible mobile tiny house Managed a $20,000 crowdsourced budget, developed materials lists & coordinated special orders Collaborated with industry professionals including contractors, plumbers & electricians

• Self-taught relevant building codes, design & construction skills by leveraging local & online resources (libraries, Youtube, Google & Reddit)

Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University

Aug 2019 - May 2024

Bachelor of Architecture; Minors in Sociology & Landscape Architecture; GPA: 3.87

Education Accreditation Leed Green Associate (August 2024)

• Awards Harold Hill Memorial Award (1st Year Competition), Deans List (2019 - 2024)

• Published Works ‘Breaks: A Post-Colonial Mural’ (in collaboration with Room One Thousand, Cruz Garcia, Nathalie Frankowski & 10 students at Virginia Tech); ‘How Will We Live Together,’ 17th Venice Architecture Biennale Italian Virtual Pavilion Sezione del Padiglione Italia (15 teams including Workshops for Other Worlds at VT)

• Research & Thesis Architecture of a Stitch: Sewing & embroidery as lens & rehabilitative design tool for failing Virginia rail towns

Europe Travel Program

Aug 2022 - Oct 2022

Architecture; Fall Semester, Western Europe

• Collected photographs, sketches & notes to include in research papers & graphic materials

• Assisted the organization of lobby exhibitions & student publications

• Research ‘Empathetic Functionalism: A Study of Alvar Aalto’s House & Studio’ analyzed how light, material simplicity & spatial organization reinforce relationships with nature & improve quality of life

Design Studies of the Built Environment

May 2022 - Jul 2022

Landscape Architecture + Industrial Design; Summer Semester, Western Europe

Research ‘Fragmentation, Layering & Weaving: A Study of Organizational Design Methods at Three Scales (Urban Fabric, Building & Material)’

Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology

Prototyping Research Laboratory Graduate; GPA: 4.2

2014 - 2018

Research ‘Hybrid Production & Construction of an Electric Ukulele’ year-long thesis employing manual woodworking & digital fabrication techniques

1 Forgotten Virginia

Thesis Research & Site Studies

2 Column Studies & Curiosities

Adaptive Reuse Precedent Study: Ulmer Brewery

3 Study Abroad Personal Collections

1 Forgotten Virginia

Thesis Research & Site Studies

Project Type

Studio Date

Location Skills Sketching, Research McGrath Fall 2023

Southwestern Virginia Sketching in place, Graphic Design

This section contains sketches and excerpts from Volume 1 (research) of my thesis documentation book. It is a collection of lost or forgotten structures and landscapes from two sites in Virginia: Brown Farm, in Blacksburg, and Pamplin City, near Appomattox. These are snapshots of old and worn placess explored, analyzed, and memorialized by my hand.

The beginnings of the thesis research explored joinery, forgotten and decaying objects and architecture, and how those forgotten elements were joined, unjoined, and modified over time. Brown Farm, a local precedent, has been progressively absorbed by the surrounding vegetation and has developed a complicated, almost interwoven, series of natural joints and supports. The following sketches represent snapshots of the site on its journey into decay.

This evolution raises questions like ‘How do the vegetation and surrounding landscapes become the scaffolding or supporting structures for otherwise decaying architecture?’ And although the focus of the thesis evolved, many key elements from this intitial study remained: regional Virginia histories, lost or decaying communities, and the act of somehow rejoining them all into the modern day fabric.

Hidden grain silos stand like monuments blanketed by dense brush. Others, like the shack depicted on the front cover, resemble a worn headstone, marking the site’s decay. Preservation efforts, and certainly the removal of the all-absorbing vegetation, would forever disrupt the ecosystem this site has become. Like a parasite to a host, the vegetation gradually seeps into each building, forcing cracks in mortar joints and caving in entire sections of roof. In this new equilibrium, the vegetation buttresses near-crumbling walls and anchors entire networks of beams. It becomes the structure.

Pamplin, born out of the rail lines extending to resource-rich West Virginia, was once a succesful boom town along Norfolk Southern’s Pamplin-Burkeville Beltline. In the late 19th Century, Pamplin was the largest producer of tobacco pipes in the world. By the early-20th Century, resources had either run dry or had become too expensive elsewhere along the railroad.

Entire lines were decomissioned and tracks, much like the seams of a patchwork piece, were torn out, amputating towns like Pamplin from the rail networks and from each other. Decades passed before those towns were patched back together by the highways. These days, Pamplin’s worn-down clay pipe factory and one-sided main street symbolize the slow death of the Virginia railroad town. The numbers are even clearer: once a town of a few thousand, Pamplin’s official population now totals 146.

This is a partial collection of the last remaining structures in Pamplin City. It includes a bank building, a convenience store, a restaurant, a costume shop, three residential buildings, and a market space. These buildings face the train station (6), a traditional brick construction with a timber hip-roof. It has served as a station, a library, an office for local government, and as a meeting space for Pamplin’s residents.

In 2006, Norfolk Southern donated the abandoned PamplinBurkeville Beltline to Virginia’s Department of Conservation and Recreation. By 2012, High Bridge Trail State Park had opened in full. This rails-to-trails network now weaves 31 miles of trail for hikers, bikers, and horsebackriders, across various towns including Pamplin, Farmville, and Burkeville. The trail traverses the Appommattox River Valley via the Appommattox High Bridge, a little-known yet historically-significant landmark in Central Virginia.

The original bridge, dating back to the mid-19th century, was half a mile long and built with four million tons of bricks. This Civil War Era artery was the site of the Battle of High Bridge, where Union soldiers chased Confederates through Farmville -- burning the bridge behind them in an effort to starve the Confederate army of food and munitions.

bituminous coal from mines in Virginia and West Virginia to Norfolk. The bridge is now frequented by locals and visitors alike.

2 Column Studies & Curiosities

Adaptive Reuse Precedent Study: Ulmer Brewery

Project Type

Studio Date

Location

New Skills

Sketching, Photography

McGrath Thesis + 3rd Years

Fall 2023

Brooklyn, New York

Sketching in place

The Ulmer Brewery, with its labrynthine, multi-story, underground structure, encourages an analytical exploration into atypical joinery. A network of strikingly different columns and beams forms an irregular and enduring fabric of joints. Large machinery and assembly lines run from floor to floor, threading through various openings and along factory floors, arteries tying the volume together.