An intervention of shelters placed along the eastern side on Coachella Valley in California. This intervention was spurred by the current issues embedded in the food supply chain of the United States, namely the first step of production and harvesting. Who grows and gathers the abundance of food that fills the produce section of grocery stores across America? That labor falls on the shoulders of many migrant workers, poor individuals that come to California to do the incredibly labor intensive job in much less than ideal conditions.
This area of work is riddled with issues, one them being housing. Migrant workers lack adequate housing, and when they cannot find it, they will often set up camp in parking lots or ditches to spend the night, then wake up at the crack of dawn to gather the food that supplies the nation. So part of this project at its core is to provide housing for these homeless workers, but it’s also about materializing and humanizing the condition of the migrant worker.
This project is an intervention of objects onto a landscape. Their forms are inspired by the seemingly endless grid of fields around them. The shelters are designed objects that act as markers throughout the land, signaling out to the people who need them.
2020
Designed in collaboration with Silvia Galdamez and Roberto Villasante.
Situated along a fault line dividing the North American and Eurasian continents, Loop seeks to bridge the two tectonic plates and create a continuous path that blurs this geological divide. The entire project is designed with accessibility in mind, utilizing ramps throughout the entire structure to allow for all visitors to have a nearly similar experience. Located directly between the Kvennagjá and Karlagjá caves of the larger Grjótagjá cave system, the elevated building platform divides these two points of interest and allows for an easy regulation of people for the purpose of maintaining the caves below capacity at a given time. This platform also serves as the center from which visitors can access the three primary attractions of the site: the two cave entrances and the long path which crosses the fault and culminates in a tall, spiral structure.
Visitors first enter from the road, and once they approach the building, they have the option to go directly to either of the caves or continue on the pathway up towards the fault. As they cross the fault and walk along it, they have the option to go up the spiral for a view across the vast landscape or keep on the path. As they continue north, visitors eventually arrive at the ground path which loops back around and returns them back to where they began.
2020
An exercise in imagining a future where Universal Basic Income is commonplace in the United States and work as Americans know is overhauled. Attention is turned towards the landscape of rural America as a place that has previously been neglected but will be renewed as a result of the shrinking role that urban centers will play in people’s lives and livelihoods.
Additionally, discussions begin of what people’s lives don’t need to centered around, and lands on aspects that they do need to be. People might not need a 40 hour work week, but they do need a sense of community. This project is one that explores how the presence of UBI shifts what people might spend their time doing and how they’re living.
Working on the assumption that with UBI in place people wouldn’t need to view money as the sole measure of value, and their time spent in this world will no longer be driven by making a profit, they can dedicate their time to nature, and to rebuilding the environment that modern commercial agriculture has deteriorated. Biodiversity is key to a healthy ecosystem, and that foundation is built on the backs of bugs. And when it comes to the pollination of plants, the bee is essential. In the last several decades, the bee population has been on the decline. The reasons include pesticide poisoning, stress, insufficient food sources, and changes to their habitat. Perhaps more concerning, though, is the rapid decline in bumble and solitary bees, undomesticated native species that are more effective and essential to non-commercial pollination. As a response to the need to rehabilitate these bee populations, this project provides a place to ensure the health and proliferation of bees and their roles in rebuilding local plant and biodiversity.
2019
As an exercise in common goods, a group of us decided to partake in communal creation and living. We designed a series of objects catered towards communal gathering. These objects include an oven, a table, a tent, a sauna, and a shower. After they were built, we put them to use over the course of a day in a field in Ithaca, New York.
2019
The Smithfield Market has been located in central London since the 10th century CE, and is the only one to have been in continuous operation since then. In 2019 it was announced its wholesale operations would be moved to the outskirts of the city.
The project is sited on the Smithfield Rotunda Garden, across the street from the old market. Its goal is to create and perpetuate the informality of a market space while generating a more complex urban space that actively involves the rotunda, changing its relationship to the city. Currently, it is set back from the city by a ramp which spirals into the ground and under the city. The ramp will be transformed from an impediment to movement into an instrument which encourages not only more, but also different ways to move around the city. This change will highlight the layers of history on which the modern city sits and invite residents and visitors alike to activate the space left behind in the void.
This project re-examines what it means to move through a city and question the value of going quickly versus slowly. It will accept the inevitability of the transformations that are already taking place, and in response, repurpose and transform what is still there to foster movement, interaction, and contemplation.
2019
An exhibition space for the artifacts excavated during the construction of a new metro line in Rome, Italy. Situated in the bustling Piazza del Colosseo, the museum is placed against the podium of the Temple of Venus and Rome that defines the western edge of the piazza. Taking into account the foot traffic of the area, the space consists of four layers through which people can move, and along which artifacts are displayed as the walls shift to allow for niches and benches. The walls are informed by the stone construction methods of ancient Rome. From there, the shapes of stone blocks transform to explore the possible variations that changes the stones from individual units simply stacked on top of one another, to ones that respond to each other.
2018
An expansion of the already existing Westside Bazaar located in the Grant Ferry neighborhood in Buffalo, NY, this building is a resource for the influx of refugees coming to the city by combining co-housing with a community marketplace. The design centers around voids which bring in light and air. The atrium marks a center of activity on the ground floor where the market sits, and the courtyards offer a private outdoor space for residents.
2017
A museum in Ithaca, NY that exhibits the life and work of Glenn H. Curtiss, an Aviation pioneer. The building exists as a showcase of the relationship between material and light. There are three ways in which lights is brought in, through the translucent walls, the windows that result from peeling the wall back, and the skylights in the floating boxes of the second floor. Situated on a spot along the Cayuga Lake Inlet surrounded by water, the long shape of the museum brings its visitors in and through, directly to the waterfront.
2017
An in depth examination and recreation of the structural concepts explored and implemented in the roof and support columns of the Savill Building located in Windsor, England. Completed as a group effort with one other person.
2016
A design for a private cemetery on an imaginary site of a cliff, with at the base a grid of trees and a gentle slope that extends until it reaches water. Aspects of the final design come from two precedents, the Japanese Machiya and the Casa de Vidro. From the Machiya, the use of a consistent ratio throughout the building, and from Casa de Vidro, a duality between opacity and transparency.
2016
An investigation of the design process. First through the examination of the Tailorbird as an instrument and tool of creation, in this case its beak, which makes a nest through sewing two edges of a leaf together. Next, the creation of a site to house the instrument. Finally, the design of a gallery space informed by the combination of instrument and site.
2015
