Living For The City, September 2017 - June 2018
Undergraduate Thesis
Advisor: Dale Clifford
In the rush to match the growing demand for areas to live post industrialization, many designers and builders have overlooked the impact our living environments have on psychological and physiological health. While evident in all of society’s different living environments, the lack of mentally and physically healthy living conditions is especially evident in the city. The city’s focus on efficiency and frugality has generated a stressful environment that has largely ignored design and experience at the human scale. Using the suggested methodology of speculative late-Modernist architects and artists, transforming and improving existing conditions through designed responses to these stressors can influence a more stable level of health in urban environments. Through consideration of the human scale, design can generate feelings of empathy, relieve stressful conditions, and increase the quality of life amongst the city’s large population.
“Living For The City” is a study in generating a higher quality of living in urban environments through understanding the city from a new perspective. Initially, the goal of each design study was to mitigate stressors caused by the urban environment; however, as larger modules began to develop from these studies, the approach to stress mitigation also shifted. Through reconnecting people with their social and natural environments, they can begin to understand the city. Several designs encourage person-to-person interaction through indirect means and promote understanding amongst strangers. These modules are meant to give the subject a moment of respite and deeper understanding of the environment to combat the stressful unknowns of urbanism.
Living For The City, September 2017 - June 2018
“Talk To The Wind”
Advisor: Dale Clifford
"Talk to the Wind,” serves as a visual connection between the remaining natural forces in the city – wind and light. This module is designed as a visual experience on both sides, but also serves as a way for the built environment to interact with nature. At its idle position, the module consists of fully extended colored panels on one side, and white fabric with small perforations on the other. Upon receiving a gust of wind, the white fabric panels on the inside are pulled in, revealing a piece of iridescent film that creates different colored effects as the sun reflects off of it, while also revealing the telescoping module that creates this effect
Living For The City, September 2017 - June 2018
“Reaching Out”
Advisor: Dale Clifford
This module alleviates the stress of the city by providing new perceptions of the surrounding environment. Designed to create a two-way interaction between people on each side of the module, lenticular film distorts the user’s vision to serve as a filter for interactions between strangers. As the panel moves closer to anything, the image becomes clearer.
Lincoln Residence, January 2021 - August 2024
Professional collaboration with David Chun (Chun Studio) and Superbloom Landscape Architecture
Site: Santa Monica, CA
Owning a family house is a common goal for many people, but designing one from the ground up is a dream not often accomplished. This project is a fulfillment of that dream for one family of four. From the beginning of the design phase, the owners of the property – the two parents of the family unit – had a specific list of required parameters. Their future house would require two stories and a basement, and a program including: three bedrooms for the immediate family, two spaces for working from home, one bedroom on the first floor to eventually accommodate a set of grandparents, and an extensive list of amenities to be used for everyday life, and future social events to be held at the house. To strike a balance between private and guest-ready spaces, the design necessitated a courtyard for more functional use of the basement. The courtyard became one of the most important features of the house by providing exterior access to the basement, and visual connection between floors. Throughout the development of the design, the owners would give regular input and help develop ideas, including pushing for the California Modernist idea of blurring the lines between the interior and exterior of the rear portion of the house. By the end of the process, the owners’ consistent input was able to create a home that suited their needs and most of their requests.
For this project, lead architect David Chun worked closely with the clients to tour homes in the area and develop a comprehensive program outline. Simultaneously, my duties were to research the Santa Monica development code and find the feasible limits for each part of the project. During schematic design, I was in charge of creating and revising plans and digital models used in semi-weekly meetings with the owners for feedback. After months of refining, the design was solidified, and I helped develop a thorough plan set to be used for plan submittal, loan documentation, and construction bids.
West Residence, January 2021 - April 2024
Collaboration with David Chun (Chun Studio) and Cohaus, LLC.
Site: West Adams, Los Angeles, CA
With the extremely high barrier to entry of Los Angeles housing, renting has become the norm. With the cost of living continuing to rise, many people starting their careers and/or moving to Los Angeles are left with the option of finding roommates, or rent payments possibly above their means. Enter coliving, the rapidly spreading housing type that provides residents with their own private sleeping areas, and shared amenities amongst other residents. This project prioritizes providing each potential resident with a private bedroom, connected bathroom, and closet, as well as sufficient space in large shared kitchens and living rooms. Through striking a balance between privacy and shared spaces, this project aims to provide the framework for the formation of a family-like unit between the residents.
This duplex is located in the Los Angeles neighborhood West Adams and is designed with the pedestrian in mind. Encouraging exploration of the historic neighborhood with expansive views of Jefferson Blvd, the entry stair for the building is also used to break the massing of the typical Los Angeles duplex. The stairs and its landings are the focal point of the massing, and are sized to serve as shared open space and mini-balconies for residents and visitors to interact on. The circulation up these stairs takes people to several entryways into the units, while also leading all the way up to a shared roof deck.
For this project, I aided the project from pre-development to final bidding drawing sets. I collaborated with lead architect David Chun to develop schematic plans and design development details. From there, I was tasked with the duties of developing construction documents, submitting plans to the City of Los Angeles, completing project clearances from various city departments, and revising plans based on corrections provided by the city.
Diffuse, January 2016 - June 2016
Collaboration with Amy Lim
Advisor: Jeff Ponitz
Location: Dogpatch, San Francisco, CA
(Credit to Amy for the base render on slide 1, the section drawing on slide 4, and the model on slide 6)
A response to the growth of the Maker Movement in San Francisco, this project serves as a place for the movement to grow in an urban context. Because the Maker Movement is simultaneously associated with working out of the home and start-up companies, this project seeks to support Makers through providing housing, shared tools and working areas, and office support. This project establishes an artist-in-residency program that promotes Maker-to-Maker connections, and a Maker-to-Public connection. The former of these connections is done through an apprenticeship program, where an experienced Maker is given extended residency and an apprentice – in this context, a Maker given more temporary accommodations to learn skills in a hands-on way. Additionally, the project provides a publicly accessible museum and retail space as a way to display the creative output of the artist-in-residency program. Bringing all parts of the program together, five separate gallery spaces are used as the primary mode of public circulation through the project. These spaces serve as containers for rotating art installations that alter the perception of one of the five senses, thus providing a more interactive experience for the public. Continually forming new connections is important to the life of every community, and the exhibition spaces provide opportunities to do so; moreover, this project also strengthens current connections with the Maker community by creating an intimate, collaborative hub in the form of living accommodations. With this project serving as a destination for Makers while providing the existing neighborhood with a view into the community, this project produces an understanding between two potentially insular groups.
Diffuse, January 2017 - June 2017
Advisor: Stephen Philips
Location: South Gate, Los Angeles, CA
As a part of the Los Angeles United High School District, South Gate High School has seemingly been forgotten in any talks of schools to be renovated in the area. This redesign of the South Gate High School campus is meant to relieve the congestion of students attending the school currently, while also providing a safe space for students to grow and learn to express themselves. Using sculptural formal studies to develop an organization strategy for the rigid classroom requirements of the LAUHSD, the buildings use public spaces as “points of fracture” to provide students with smaller, enclosed, yet still visible and safe spaces to spend their break periods. Also using a similar methodology in site organization, the campus uses similar fracture points to create public spaces and alter the site topography, thus creating a sense of separation from the city and the school. Through using a texture based on an abstracted site plan, the fractured site and buildings reconnect to each other and serve as a point of connection to the regular grid of South Gate. Large high school populations create a shortage in usable human-scaled spaces. This project seeks to alleviate that and create spaces that can be made significant to students in their time in school.
Starting with scaleless form studies in the program Maya, this project‘s framework was based around dynamic spaces and transformation over time. Applying scale and orderliness to these forms tested the capabilities of Maya; however, with a workflow between several programs, a compromise was found between both design philosophies. The 3D printer served as the primary meter of feasibility for all form studies, and each study served as a way to find the limits of the medium. Additionally, the texture mapping tools in Maya served as inspiration for creating a unified facade and site plan. Maya’s design workflow would serve as a big influence on this project as a whole.
