Architecture | Design
Model Making | Projects
This project tasked me with designing a proposal for a cafe/restaurant to be placed in a certain area within the School of Architecture at the University of Miami. I was enthralled by the majestic Banyan tree present in the middle of the site that I chose, and made it the focal point of my design. This cafe boasts well over 1500 square feet of seating space in an open concept, variable space, with large glass curtain doors that can be open or closed based on weather conditions. With a high roof that opens up to a stunning view across Lake Osceola, Sunnyside Cafe provides a one of a kind dining experience.
By utilizing an open concept plan with minimal artificial light, this design proposal seeks to bolster the well-being of the neighborhood far beyond it’s simple function as a library. This design truly seeks to become a hub for the community. A children’s wing provides a place for children and their parents to come find a new story, and maybe even meet a new friend or neighbor. A mural wall allows for the showcasing of art from the community and for the community. Ideally, a contest could be held every year or so as a community outreach program to create a new mural, helping to engage and continue to engage the neighborhood for years to come. A public computer lab along with a job search program seeks to help unemployment in the area as well as provide a location for research, academic or otherwise. The community garden not only supports the physical but the mental wellness of the neighborhood as it provides a way to unify the community through volunteering for the greater good.
“Gathering at the Grove” is a love letter to traditional Bahamian housing, modernized and translated into a dense apartment setting. This project takes the traditional Conch House architectural style and turns it on its head. Long, narrow housing units stack on top of each other and come together to form a cohesive housing compund, the Conch House reborn and refreshed. Every unit is designed with comfort and affordability in mind, all of them opening up to a communal porch overlooking a scenic central courtyard. At the end of the day, the heart of this project is the community. Whether through the courtyard, porches, or the Coconut Grove Heritage Garden at its entrance, this project goes beyond merely being affordable housing, it’s affordable “home”-ing.
The goal of this project was to explore urban design principles witihin a finite, isolated area. In this case, that was Brickell Key in Downtown Miami. Our proposal for the redevelopment of the neighborhood involved creating a greater sense of "place" within the developement, which was accomlished by creating unique locations and attractions such as a nature preserve and a riverwalk inspired by the Fondamenta in Venice. Space was reused efficiently to multiply the density of the development by more than 3 times, more accurately mirroring the dense downtown environment that Brickell Key exists in. Along with the addition of a second bridge to the mainland to allow better circulation through the island, these choices came to gether to create a new vision for Brickell Key.
This project provides a revitalized look at the traditional Brasilia superquadra. Old and new, refreshing yet familiar. Water lies both literally and figuratively at the core of this project, whether through the water features acting as the “core” of communal spaces throughout the block, or the extension of the larger-than-life Lake Paranoá brought to the literal core of the superquadra. This intervention seeks to revive traditional Brazilian street life in this modern metropolis, the street corner reborn in Brasília. With respect to the site’s original function as a park, ample green space is conserved, a balance struck between man and nature. With a light touch, buildings make way to beautiful inner courtyards, ground floor voids easing pedestrian travel among the blocks through a winding path: um caminho sinuoso.
The focus of this project is the design of a public facility dedicated to the young population of the North Miami Beach area. The city offers a robust network of enrichment and after school activities, including outdoor sports and indoor activities such as dance, music, bowling and gymnastics. Currently, on the northern part of the island, the North Shore Park offers outdoor activities with emphasis placed on tennis. On the southern side, the Scott Rakow Center located on 27th Avenue, 30 minutes away by bicycle or public transportation from North Miami Beach, concentrates the majority of indoor activities housed in a gymnastics hall. In recent years, there has been a population shift to the northern part of the island. As a result, there is an increase in demand for public space and civic activities outside the existing commercial corridors. The North Beach Youth Center will provide a needed facility with emphasis on gymnastics and related indoor sports, and will integrate, expand, and improve the existing skate park on the southern edge of the site.
Kirkwood Heights seeks to provide a new developmentat a pedestrian scale for the residents of Westlake, TX. Covering over 70 acres consisting of the Solana Town Center and an undeveloped site accross the Kirkwood Branch river, this project seeks to revitilize, expand and transition between the town center and the surrounding residential development. Kirkwood Heights revives the iconic “Legorreta“ style of the Solana Town Center and extends it into the new development, with vibrant hues and simple geometric forms defining it‘s buildings. Tree-lined streets and open plazas stretch throughout Kirkwood Heights, elevating the experience of the pedestrian, while a smooth transition to low density housing ensures a lighter impact to its exisitng neighbors.
Bibliascolto seeks to re-imagine the modern library in the ancient city of Rome. As Rome is a city with much history passed on through myths and stories, this project seeks to revive and modernize the oral tradition of knowledge acquisition. Bibliascolto extends itself beyond the limits of its walls to the surrounding Flaminio neighborhood through a series of "Listening Benches." These benches allow passersby to experience the contents of the library wherever they may be, encouraging learning outside of a single location and enticing users to continue in their journey of self-reflection at the physical library, always no more than a 10-minute walk away. The physical space of the library encourages a multitude of learning methods, ranging from the most public, group-oriented lower floors to the more private, introspective floors.
