Works
Life, Death and Miracles of a River
The design process centers around the carving process, defining the boundaries, form, and limits of the project. Carving is a process of expression and craftsmanship, creating a dialogue between the materials of the building. Just as the materials interact with one another, the architecture must create a dialogue with nature. Through the act of tracing, measuring, and expressing time within the structure, the design creates an almost ritualistic space and circulation. At the center of the project lies the auditorium, located beneath a dished roof structure that holds water. The auditorium is primarily intended for music concerts, and its design serves as both a performance space and a symbol of harmony between human creation and the natural world.
State Line Lookout
Alpine, NJ
Bathhouse
Bathhouse extension, located at the Betsy Head Public Pool, serves as a sanctuary space. While the entrance extends the street condition, the surrounding walls isolate the occupants from the immediate neighborhood, providing privacy for those using both the open and enclosed pools. The required program is organized around community areas, with a courtyard positioned next to the entrance for direct access to the changing rooms.
Tilted walls offer privacy while facilitating a smooth flow throughout the building. In-situ concrete columns, in varying shapes, along with the proportions of the base and the ceiling height are classically monumental to give the impression of a public and festive character. The roof structure cantilevers over the sidewalk, allowing people to experience the building from the exterior. It consist of four circular skylights, proportioned the same as columns, which create a rhythm through light and structure.
694 Thomas S Boyland St
Brooklyn, NY 11212
Columns
The starting point follows a few simple rules of fractal curves. The initial challenge was to move beyond the abstraction of code, transforming it into tangible objects. Shifting from executing functions to giving the code a physical presence and architectural significance. Rather than pursuing the conventional path of combining multiple primitives, this project aimed to create a unique approach by exploring the potential within a single primitive. The process involved a repetitive operation, similar to dividing a form’s faces into smaller faces until an entirely new form emerged.
The resulting forms, whether portraying a spine, feet, capital, all originated from the same foundational process. The project uncovered an interplay between the solids and a process mirroring the inherent structures, ranging from the ornamentation of the whole to the small.
Study
Multigenerational Housing
The concept of “home” goes beyond being an only physical space. It is a dynamic relationship of family bonds and societal changes. Rather than a static entity as a “home”, it serves as a space for the continual process of reproduction, evolving with shifting economic, social, and political situations. This project addresses the evolving nature of modern living conditions and the fading ideal of the nuclear family. This project challenges the traditional living arrangements in New York City, using the brownstone as a key reference. The way these buildings are organized, one after another in tightly knit blocks across the city, offers a question about urban typology. How can the architecture of a building shift and adapt to change while maintaining its identity within the urban fabric? By reimagining the relationship between townhouses and duplex apartments, this project sought to explore how building typologies can be transformed to promote greater social interaction.
301 Franklin Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11205
Monumentality
Architecture had been reduced to a technique in service to capitalist development. Often serve as illusions that permit the survival of anachronistic hopes in design. Where it exploited aesthetic ambiguity to distort and evade reality in the realm of artificial utopia. In this realm of hopelessness, we need to separate design from building, and aim for what is purely architecture. As Mies quotes “Make building again what alone it should be, namely Building”. It is mainly our concern to liberate all building activity from aesthetic specialists. Reduction of understanding architecture as only as a tool expands within a boundary where its role is to fulfill our needs. There, we have lost our meaningful and spiritual connection with architecture and space.
Echo Mountain
Los Angeles, CA 91001
The Fine Arts Zanabazar Museum
Study
Anamnesis
Derived from the Greek anaminmneskin, anamnesis means to remind; men-, to think, and mneme, or memory. Or more simply, an- (un-) and amnesis (forgetting) come together as unforgetting, which is delightfully not at all the same as remembering.
(Log 55, Machines A Rechercher, Karel Klein, Summer 2022)
Study