Portfolio_Victoria Lee

VICTORIA LEE

Bachelor of Architecture ‘26 VICTORIA

Bachelor of Architecture ‘26

selected works

01

SHOTGUN HOUSE

a house for chairs

02

BOOKMARK FOR FREEDOM PAGES

a mobile library for banned books

03

biblio-ITHACA

public bibliotheca (or library) for the city of Ithaca

04

LOOP HARVEST

self-sufficient food pantry for the town of Enfield

05

THE GROWING HOME

research and mutation on the I-house and Saltbox house types to reimagine the coliving home

06

SINKING BUILDING

an environmental research outpost for the study of flooding (withresearchonloamasasubstainablebuildingmaterial)

07

MODEL STUDY

a study on the structural systems of the Moses Mabhida Stadium

SHOTGUN HOUSE SHOTGUN HOUSE

a house for chairs

Location: Fall Creek, Ithaca, NY

Studio Coordinator: Martin Miller

Section Professor: Nathan Williams

[A bullet can be shot from the front entrance of the house, travel through the entire house without hitting anything, and exit through the back door.]

The Shotgun House is a linearly arranged pavilion-house that mimics the process of explosion, from being a block of mass to opening up as planes—the same way an object reacts when it is hit by a bullet.

It is inspired by the traditional American house type in New Orleans—a hallway-less house with rooms arranged one behind the other.

Visitors can see the end of the house from the beginning of the house, catching a glimpse of the stunning Ithaca view beyond the house. But they must walk through the suspenseful experience of opening up before reaching the full, unobstructed view.

The house is situated on the edge of a cliff, with Ithaca Falls below. The long elevation faces north, with the gorge in front and below it. The short elevation faces west, where the view of the end of the house is the rest of the beautiful Ithaca landscape.

The Shotgun House ultimately serves as a public space for leisure. People are free to walk in anytime and sit down, chat, admire the horizon, etc, on the uniquely designed chairs placed in the house.

All chairs are designed by students of the same studio.

The shape begins to deform as its original volume expands and the planes that contained it open up.

The shape continues to deform due to expansion and becomes no longer enclosed.

The last phase becomes less of a shape and more of a series of unattached planes.

The sequence begins with a rigid angular shape.

21'

15' 16'

BOOKMARK FOR FREEDOM PAGES

a mobile library for banned books

Independent design project

Grant-funded and supported by the Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA)

Part of the CCA Freedom of Expression Exhibition (March 4-22, 2024) at Cornell AAP

Featured on Cornell ASSOCIATION (student-run publication) Volume 13 Issue II

In reponse to the harsh book banning climate in recent years, Bookmark for Freedom Pages proposes a collapsible and transferrable mobile library structure that serves to travel across states to bring awareness to banned and challenged titles in the United States, and to advocate against censorship and for freedom for speech.

According to PEN America, 3,362 titles were banned from public school classrooms and libraries across the U.S. in the 2022-2023 school year alone. Book banning is becoming an increasingly widespread method of censorship in the U.S., with children’s books and young adult books being the primary targets. These book bans are continuing to spread quickly through coordinated campaigns by vocal groups and increasing pressure from state legislation.

The mobile library boldly showcases titles that are commonly banned and challenged, such as Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer. Books in the library are free resources that visitors may choose to keep. Once all books are chipped away from the structure, the library can be folded together. Its compact size allows it to be able to travel to different locations in a U-Haul truck. The mobility of the library is an attempt to reach a large audience, especially to states are affected by the book banning legislation and may not have access to these book titles. Pages of the showcased banned books are “bookmarked”, to offer a glimpse of what banned content may look like—at first glance, a lot of books are ordinary text and images like any other non-banned book.

Official exhibition page: https://cca.cornell.edu/foe-exhibition/ Individual exhibit page: https://cca.cornell.edu/portfolio/vl-expression/ I am currently working on a book with the same title, addressing the expanding climate of banned and challenged books in the U.S., alongside social and cultural initiatives combating censorship.

Promotional flyer.

Table of highlights selected books with unique cases of book banning

Greatest Classics banned/challenged books that are commonly read in schools

Foundation of Free Speech books about free speech and the history of censorship to help contextualize the current book banning climate

1”=1’ scale study model.

1”=1’ scale study model.

3”=1’ scale study model.

3”=1’ scale study model.

biblio-ITHACA

public library for the city of Ithaca

Location: Downtown Ithaca, NY

Studio Coordinator: Michael Jefferson

Section Professor: David Costanza

Situated on a site with unique landscape leveling, between a partial segment of the Six Mile Creek and E State Street, the library is a middle host that connects the nature and urbanscape of Ithaca.

The library features layers of stone “screens” that invite its visitors from the busy urbanscape to a staged gradual reveal of the beautiful natural landscape of Six Mile Creek. The gradient of these layers of “screens” begin with stone blocks of strong presence, to stone stacking with gaps of filtered light, and finally opens to pockets of windows between a stone column grid that frames an unobstructed view of Six Mile Creek.

Built flat ground up from a sunk-in site level, the library elevates itself to the E State Street level in a “staircase” formation. The “treads” of the “staircase” contains the programs of the library, and its hollowed space underneath serves as a parking structure for its visitors. The “treads” translate into a set of programmatic organizational bars that has a privateto-public program gradient from north to south of the library—the most private bar houses the visitorrestricted administration program and the roombounded auditorium, and the most public bar houses the seating area with an open floor plan and large glazing that creates a sense of transparency for the space.

With its unique gradient-layered arrangment and materiality, the library is intended to be a unique visual experience that highlights the contrast between the present-day artificiality in building quality—as shown beyond the stone material in the library and its surrounding context—and the authentic natural peace in monolithic architecture.

LOOP HARVEST

self-sufficient food pantry for the town of Enfield

Location: Enfield, NY

Studio Coordinator: Hanna Tulis

Section Professor: Suzanne Lettieri

LOOP HARVEST is a food pantry designed to have the capability for self-sufficiency and promoting healthy lifestyles. It features a vertical farm that grows produce chosen by the community. It provides fresh produce year round—with an interior vertical farm section that provides during the winter time.

The project aims to be a community gathering hub that not only provides food for the community but also educates its citizens to live healthy lifestyles through gardening workshops, cooking lessons, etc. It also aims to be a positive greenery scene. The orchard becomes the first glance of the site when sighted from the main roads, and is populated in between the building structures. Plants and produce are grown on the walls of the buildings, showcasing the abundance and beauty of nature.

Plants on the site are sustained by a rainwater harvesting network. Rainwater is captured on every roof, stored in underground water reservoirs, and later pumped into the water tanks of the vertical farms or released by sprinklers into the orchard.

The project is a response to the lack of government and non-profit programs being within reach in the area, which could have helped deal with the food insecurity problem. This is because Enfield is located too far away from major cities—where most of those programs concentrate. The project is also a response to the lack of freshness in produce generally donated to food pantries, as they are often food that are close to expiration or have expired—the least desirable. These responses are based on the feedback from visitors of a current operating food pantry in the town of Enfield. The project is a proposal for a new food pantry for the town, commissioned by Jean Owens, the director of Enfield Food Distribution.

CENTER

PARKING

LANDING FOR MOST PEOPLE

DRIVING IS THE MAIN MODE TO TRAVEL

THE FOOD PANTRY

PUBLIC TRANSPORTION NEARBY)

ORCHARD BECOMES THE FIRST GLANCE OF THE SITE WHEN PASSING BY FROM MAIN ROAD

1" STANDING SEAM METAL ROOF

AEROPHONIC VERTICAL FARMING

3" WIDE CORRUGATED PVC ROOF PANEL IN CLEAR

2"X2" WOOD FRAME SUPPORT (FOR VERTICAL FARMING)

4"X4" WOOD FRAME

2"X2" WOOD FRAME SUPPORT (FOR VERTICAL FARMING)

AEROPHONIC VERTICAL FARMING

WOOD FLOOR PANELING (PLATFORMS CONNECTING VERTICAL FARMING MODULES)

2" PLYWOOD EXTERIOR WALL PANELS

GROCERY SHELVES FOR FOOD PANTRY

AEROPHONIC VERTICAL FARMING

1/2" PLYWOOD FLOOR PANELING

WOODEN SHED FLOOR PAD

WATER WELL (PROVIDING WATER SUPPLY TO VERTICAL FARMING)

NUTRIENT-FILLED

THE GROWING HOME

Research and mutation on the I-house and Saltbox house types to reimagine the coliving home

Instructor: Jordan Young

The Growing Home is a research project that investigates the future of coliving situations through the examination and reimagination of old American housing typologies, seeking their realized features and unrealized potentials.

The project began with research in the coliving home and its evolution from the beginning to the present. This phase is to help speculate its potential to translate into a popular future housing option.

The most common coliving spaces are student flats and university dorms, but over the past couple decades, coliving has expanded into a larger cultural and economic context. The concept became popular in the 1970s, with the completion of the Sættedammen initiative in Denmark, where 35 households shared a common area for socializing and activities such as dining, social gatherings and festivals, etc.

The coliving space creates a sense of social belonging for its residents, as it encourages openness and collaboration. Its sharing economy also makes it an affordable housing option. The idea of coliving is appealing to a range of people—from frequent travelers such as “digital nomads” (people who work virtually

After the first two phases of research, a series of drawings are created to represent possible mutations of the I-house and Saltbox house types.

The operation of mutation focuses on scaling, segment extension, and layering of the roof, as the size and orientation of the spaces in the house largely depend on those factors.

The mutations are then put into the context of a cityscape, and the earlier research and speculation regarding the future of coliving are reimagined in the interior spaces of these mutations.

SINKING BUILDING SINKING BUILDING

an environmental research outpost for the study of flooding (withresearchonloamasasubstainablebuildingmaterial)

Studio Coordinators: Felix Heisel, Dillon Pranger

Teaching Associate: Duncan Steele

PURPOSE

Sinking Building is an environmental research outpost designed for a scientist conducting research on the flooding phenonmenon in Bangladesh for a temporary period of time. It is a building intervention that interacts with floods, by recording the intensity of flood with its disintegrative material—loam.

“H”-shaped loam modules are stacked together with rods in between to separate them. The flood begins to touch and enter the building from the lowest layer. After the lowest layer disintegrates, the layer above moves down to replace it, and then a new layer can be created above.

The time it takes for each layer (or module) to disintegrate can be recorded and used to measure the intensity of the flood.

With the method of layering, the building can regenerate itself infinitely.

The new layers can be produced from the mud the old layers left behind when they disintegrated. The building does not require any new building material every time it regenerates.

Neither the building or regeneration process is toxic to the environment.

No artificial material is inserted into the landscape. If the researcher chooses to not return to the building after conducting their research—the abandoned building can then return to nature after it disintegrates because it is made entirely out of natural materials.

BUILDING PLAN STRATEGY

The building is separated into three layers:

1) The outer “L” is primarily used for data Because it is the outermost layer of the will be the first to be in contact with the disintegrate.

2) The inner “L” acts as the observation researcher may stand on the roof of the observe the decaying of loam modules of

3) The core is the residential/office space.

layers: data recording. building, it the flood and observation area. The the inner “L” to of the outer “L”. space.

MODEL STUDY MODEL STUDY

a study on the structural systems of the Moses Mabhida Stadium

In collaboration with Lily Mager and Danielle Mitchell

The Moses Mabhida stadium was constructed for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. The stadium features a broad compression ring that forms the stadium bowl, with a long, elegant double pronged arch holding up an almond tension ring-shaped roof membrane with radial tension cables. The bowl has diagonal columns supporting it, creating a airy space as it appears transparent.

The structural model studies the balance between tension and compression of the overall stadium structure, as well as capturing the different hierocratic layers of this project.

STRUCTURAL DATA

Covered area: 42,000 sqm

Perimeter of the Compression Ring: 830m

Span of the Arch: 350m

The Arch: 2,700 tons of steel

The Compression Ring: 2,800 tons of steel

Cable Structure: 18,000 m cables, 150 tons of castings