25 Franklin Street, Brooklyn, N.Y., 11222

Critics: Clementina Ruggieri, Jason Stone, Junko Nakagawa

Columbia University GSAPP | Architectural Technology Sequence III & IV | FALL 2017

Scaena Design Group | Partners: Kyungmin Cho, Caitlin Sills, Travis Tabak

Designed to span a majority of the breadth of the site, the wood canopy is composed of glue-laminated timber beams attached to concrete columns set along a 20’ x 20’ grid. The columns and beams provide shelter and shade in the outdoor patio and garden space adjacent to Bushwick Inlet. The glulam beam material strength provides the spanning capability to allow for a column-free interior auditorium space enclosed in large glass panels fixed to structural glass fins. The auditorium features five sets of oversized glass doors on each of the east and west elevations, providing ease of egress after performances and cross ventilation during seasonable weather. All functional programmatic elements of the theatre are deftly placed within the back-of-the-house stone box. This includes a loading dock with direct north-south access to the auditorium, a lobby entrance vestibule, an auditorium entrance vestibule, lavatories and two staircases to the second floor.

Critic: Richard Plunz with Jonathan Kirschenfeld

Columbia University GSAPP | ADV. V | FALL 2018

Housing, Healthcare & Hospice at the Centro de Diagnostico y Tratamiento | Vieques, Puerto Rico

Viviendo Vieques (Living Vieques) is a proposal to provide integrated, community-based solutions to a converging set of contemporary problems facing residents of the island: an extreme lack of locally appropriate medical facilities, a scarcity of medical providers and services and a growing population of elderly requiring of healthcare and housing attuned their particular needs (including hospice).

The project aims to strengthen the Vieques community by weaving together facilities that address contemporary healthcare needs of the Viequenses population and services that are headquartered at the Centro de Diagnostico y Tratamiento (CDT), including dialysis and hospice care, to be combined with community housing stitched into the hills surrounding the site. This combination of medical facility with housing seeks not only to provide new living options for the aging and the elderly, but also to improve proximity to medical treatment. It also envisions provision of housing support for staffing the island’s healthcare needs through provision for both temporary and long-term healthcare providers, including visiting and volunteer medical practitioners.

Housing, Healthcare and Hospice additionally seeks to repurpose the Centro de Diagnostico y Tratamiento, currently a 40,000 square foot, one-story concrete facility located on Route 997, just more than one-half mile from the Vieques Ferry Terminal in Isabel Segunda and about five miles from Esperanza on the southern coast of the island.

This proposal suggests a rehabilitation and repurposing of the Vieques hospital (destroyed by Hurricane Maris in 2017) appropriate for the community’s medical needs. Recommendations for a redesigned medical facility include: bisecting the structure with a central circulation axis that introduces natural light into the building and connects the hospital to the proposed neighboring housing and community; reconfiguring a portion of the hospital’s interior to provide hospice care; and addition of a 10,000 square foot multi-purpose structure to be utilized as shared space for a café, restaurant and community market that bridges the connection between the healthcare and housing. Additionally, the program envisions engaging the multi-use spaces for crisis-management, community shelter and emergency response related to future hurricane events, appropriately located next to the existing helipad.

The objective of the spatial strategy of housing is governed by an emphasis on integrating the hospital with the neighboring community to the east of the CDT. Employing a versatile, Spanish-patio style typology, the bungalow houses are positioned rows intentionally following the undulations of the rolling hills of the site to the east and providing a curated view for each home as well as best situations possible for sunlight and shelter from wind. Vehicular access to each dwelling is provided via access roads to the east of the CDT and walking paths connect the homes to the hospital and multi-use community spaces at the CDT site for pedestrian traffic.

The overall design also envisions multiple courtyard spaces and community gardens with community-building in mind.

Columbia University Earth Institute

13 Proposals to Boost Resilience in Vieques, Puerto Rico

Publication: New Paradigms for a Resilient Vieques

Critic: Robert Marino

Columbia University GSAPP | ADV. IV | Spring 2018

Building on the Land-Sea Boundary

Investigating building at the boundary between land and sea at the vulnerable environmental juncture of the ocean beach at the corner of South Emerson and Emery Streets in Montauk, N.Y., the Kirk Park Pavilion is a multi-functional open space featuring expansive views south over the Atlantic Ocean as well as east and west along Montauk Beach.

Conceived in response to a contested Army Corps of Engineers reformulation project in which natural dunes were destroyed by human intervention, fortified with sandbags and reconstructed, the building’s foundation, which utilizes a secant pile construction system, plants a symbolic stake in the ground at the edge of the natural and artificial dune landscape at Kirk Park.

The building’s shape, two intersecting quarter circles, connects beach-goers to the natural dunes to the west and bridges down to provide access to the ocean to the south. Its foundation protects the natural dune. Its sloping roof blends into the natural context. The entrance to the viewing platform is at the public beach access point on the south edge of Emery Street.

The structure is comprised of a series of 16 bays that are supported by large glue-laminated timber parallelograms that interlock to form a truss system. The massive engineered timber provides for an open plan and the necessary flexibility to adjust to different programmatic requirements such as a teen center, an artist exhibition, municipal activities and private functions.

Critic: Galia Solomonoff

Columbia University GSAPP | CORE III | FALL 2017 | Design Partner: Luiza Sobral Canuto

Affordable Housing Proposal | South Bronx, N.Y.

The affordable housing project aims to address health and quality of life issues in the low-income urban community of the South Bronx resulting from, among other things, disproportionately high carbon emissions and pollution levels and lack of nutrition.

The key design concept integrates three urban architectural elements — the courtyard, the balcony and the roof — with nature, with each other and with the residents through vegetation and plant cultivation.

A series of courtyards - each with different exposure properties (i.e. fully enclosed, semi-enclosed, exposed) to both the street and community — were integral elements in the massing strategy. The courtyard spaces were programmed with carbon-absorbing apple tree orchards that bear fruit for residents to enjoy.

In response to the local site, the project reaches down to the adjacent Public School 42 across Washington Avenue and is carefully crafted to accommodate topography and scale of the existing neighborhood, and adjacent housing while maximizing potential land use. A learning garden attached to the daycare center on the southwest corner of the site further connects the children of the residential community to nature and interacts with Jardin De La Familia across Washington Avenue. The building’s ground floor is home to a community health center as well as a Center for the Local Arts to support the rich, unique and growing artistic tradition in the South Bronx.

A series of programmed roof gardens, coupled with shared spaces for communal food propagation and cultivation, create opportunity for active gardening and fruit and vegetable cultivation. The roof rainwater harvesting system features an underground cistern and is re-purposed through an automated drip irrigation, minimizing water consumption. These shared spaces are adjustable according to season and weather patterns to allow for maximum usage in summer and contained usage during the winter months.

The shared gardening spaces foster a sense of community for all mixed-income residents, while providing a source of fresh, organic, locally produced healthy foods.

Also minimizing the environmental impact of the project is the utilization of a single-loaded corridor system, which promotes cross ventilation between two exposures thus increasing the amount of fresh air in home and decreasing the reliance on high-energy-consuming air conditioning.

The project creates a socially and environmentally responsible housing development for healthy, affordable urban living in the South Bronx.

Techniques of the Ultra Real

Critics: Joseph Brennan and Philip Crupi | | Design Partner: Luiza Sobral Canuto

Columbia University GSAPP | Spring 2019

The Rivulet Lodge project is a lakeside retreat on a wooded site rendered during the colorful autumn season. The images represent an exploration of rendering techniques using 3DSMax with plug-in Forest Pack (for modeling) and VRay (rendering engine), creating photo realistic representations of the landscape and simple building materials such as water, wood, glass, board-formed concrete, polished concrete and steel, and set in a wooded landscape on a lake. The interior rendering, featuring rendered artwork of Jeffrey Koons and Larry Poons, is a playful interpretation of a modern city dweller’s perceived desire to observe nature.

Shelter at Model Scale

Tensile/Compression Surfaces in Architecture: Tactile Methods for Architects | Columbia GSAPP | Spring 2019

Critic: Robert Marino | Design Partner: Luiza Sobral Canuto

“Nature’s smallest unit is the cell, and the cell is wholly dependent on its wall as its basic method of containment. The elasticity of the cell’s wall in combination with its internal pressure determines its form. It simultaneously provides enclosure and structure, providing protection, rigidity, and permanence. It is at once the smallest and the most efficient form in Nature. As a form the cell’s walls exhibit continuous minimal tension in all directions, thereby enclosing a maximum volume through the use of minimum surface area.”

Utilizing D’Arcy Thompson’s above-mentioned requirement for efficiency as design and fabrication ethos for the Shelter at Model Scale project, this design optimized the passage of air through a porous concrete shell surface as the project’s jumping-off point. The tactile knowledge gained through testing, modeling and casting with repetition was used to produce one-quarter-inch thick concrete shell that created four-square feet of shelter at model scale.

Bank Street | Harwich Center, Mass.

A reference to the light-filled passageways or galeries of Paris, Project Galerie repurposes a connecting structure between a residential dwelling (in the historic district in Harwich Center) and an existing barn structure on the property. The small structure had primarily been used as a secondary entrance point, as a laundry room and as a mudroom prior to the intervention. The project aims to repurpose the space, converting it into a light-filled gallery or passageway that connects the existing kitchen to a new bathroom and laundry station adjacent to the barn, while also creating a direct connection between the new, sliding-door front entrance area to the back deck and backyard.