I worked on this project in my spare time for a competition outside of work. The competition brief requested ideas for the future of efficient “micro-housing,” and the topic caught my interest because I think the idea of micro-housing is exciting, but I don’t think it’s being executed well at this time. The text below is the design narrative that accompanied the final competition board.
Inhabiting a micro-house requires a unique lifestyle. Many micro-houses are mobile, and they’re often billed as an escape from the fast pace of modern life or an alternative to traditional residential living. For some people, this is exciting – it’s a chance to declutter their lives and start fresh. For some, though, it’s a barrier. People like the privacy afforded by larger homes and the permanence of a house with foundations instead of wheels. Micro-houses make financial sense for a lot of people, but if they are the future of housing, they need to be designed to appeal to a broader demographic.
Balance House solves many of the problems with micro-houses currently on the market. As a response to limited square footage, the building’s design strikes a balance – a balance between public and private, between density and sparsity, between openness and enclosure.
With two bedrooms and clear spatial definition between living room and kitchen, the house is designed to be equally comfortable for a young family or for one person. Balance House, unlike many micro-houses, can be bought, sold, and rented out just like a traditional home.
The house’s roof forms, inspired by balancing rocks, define public and private spaces and two exterior patios that expand the home’s functional square footage. The building was designed for a narrow site near downtown Denver, Colorado, and it responds to the environment with a north-facing clerestory and a large sloped roof to shield the exterior patios from sun and other harsh weather.
While the chosen site did influence design, the building works as a general prototype as well. The street-facing side of the house is protected by a large roof form as it returns to the ground. People on the patio or in the house can see out, but it’s difficult to see in.
The side of the house away from the street is more private by nature, so the design is more open and there is a strong visual connection from the kitchen to the back patio.
The floor plan presented here has two bedrooms, but one of those spaces could easily serve as an office or a secondary living space instead.
Balance House has a distinct character, but it’s flexible enough to accommodate all kinds of lifestyles. That is the future for micro-houses.
The building’s form was inspired by erosion: a jagged volume sits lightly above a plaza level carved from earth, and a trickling stream still runs through the chasm.
On the inside of the museum, visitors journey along winding paths that narrow and widen to accommodate exhibits and create varied spatial experiences. Rocky forms shape these interior spaces for guests to explore, alternately defining areas of compression and release. Visitors move from cave to canopy and back again as they venture through the museum.
The entire museum floats over a sunken plaza level that is landscaped to mimic several climate regions. Water flows from street level down into the plaza, and as visitors progress towards the topographically lower west side of the side, the environment gets more lush and green.
The floor plans and building sections were developed with the ideas of journey and discovery in mind. Distinctive orange paths guide visitors into, through, and out of the museum. These paths link the museum’s interior and exterior, and clearly establish celebrated entries and exits.
The building’s translucent skin allows plenty of light into the plaza level. The signature orange paths continue down here, leading visitors to another museum entrance.
This competition entry, completed in two weeks with a group of four other students, was one of ten honorable mentions out of 131 submissions.
PIXELS animates a blank screen in the heart of Midtown.
The development amplifies the character of its surroundings to create distinct nodes of activity, or pixels, that anchor the pedestrian and bicycle circuits of the neighborhood. These pixels and their surrounding paths physically and socially connect Georgia Tech, Tech Square, Midtown, and Downtown Atlanta.
Surrounded by existing hubs of activity, PIXELS is a collision of technology, art, and movement. To integrate with Tech Square to the north, the development includes office space for startup technology companies, and its public spaces incorporate digital and high-tech art to reinforce its connection to Midtown’s northern arts district.
This project was done with a group of three other students. I produced all of the graphics shown here. Site design began with analysis of existing conditions and diagrams of how those conditions could be adapted to create a more dynamic, pedestrian-friendly environment.
Early in the project, the group decided to close an underused street and replace it with a public park and retention pond to help with the area’s frequent flooding.
The site’s two city grids served as an organizing concept for the master plan. The building at the intersection of the two grids was later developed as the Oklahoma Museum of Environment.
A roundabout, parallel street parking, and narrow single lanes each way serve to slow traffic and encourage drivers to look at the streetscape around them. Slower traffic also makes Main a more inviting pedestrian experience; now, fast multilane traffic discourages pedestrians.
Study of existing traffic patterns revealed that many drivers come to Main Street from the East and leave to the East, or come from the West and leave to the West. Structured parking at each end of the site serves this pattern.
Hardscaped public plazas are integrated into the site between buildings. These spaces, designed for sitting and for lingering at the edges, provide a counterpoint to the large greenscaped park.
This project, completed in fourth year, aims to unify both sides of New Orleans’ Claiborne Avenue by replacing highway I-10 with a landscaped canal and continuous cross streets. The reestablished city grid, added streetcar stops, and pedestrian-friendly environment will support a new linear park that will manage stormwater and conjure memories of Claiborne before I-10.
The restaurant’s second-floor patio is accessible by two exterior stairs and an exterior elevator. The space is intended to function as a more intimate extension of the park below.
The restaurant’s deep balconies, typical of surrounding commercial architecture, allow the building to remain lively even during rainy season.
The restaurant’s first floor is mostly transparent to draw in pedestrians and to echo the ‘shotgun architecture’ of the homes on either side of Claiborne. From the park on one side, visitors can see all the way through the building to the park on the other side.
This was a group project, designed in collaboration with two other architecture students and two interior design students, but I produced all the images shown here and I was the primary designer for the restaurant.
This mixed-use project, located near Kansas City’s river market, seeks to extend the area’s pedestrian core by creating an active street environment and interconnected public and private spaces. Lit up at night, the building becomes a landmark and makes pedestrians feel safe and welcome in the heart of the river market district.
The building’s adjustable fabric canopies help it respond to Kansas City’s hot summers and harsh winters.
The building replaces a surface parking lot, but retains enough parking for all residents and some retail customers. Retail customers can also utilize shared parking adjacent to the site or walk from the nearby market.
The monastery’s clean, modern design provides a backdrop for contemplation. Located in a park in suburban Oklahoma City, the complex sends visitors back to everyday life with renewed energy.
The monastery’s southern half is a modern interpretation of a cloister, and the monks’ private space mirrors the visitors’ path to the north.
Visitors progress down a gently terraced path towards a chapel at the wooded eastern end of the site. The complex was designed to be a sanctuary, and this journey towards the chapel is both literally and metaphorically a journey away from the mundane and towards the sacred.
This coffeeshop and bookstore on OU’s campus corner invites pedestrians in from all sides. Its interior courtyard is protected from Oklahoma’s hot sun and driving wind, providing a calm environment for reading and enjoying a cup of coffee.
This project was designed in second year, but I wasn’t happy with the final visualizations. The renderings here were produced in my spare time during fourth year, using the model developed during second year.
I didn’t have time to make all the design changes I’d originally planned on, but it was interesting to revisit an old project in some detail and think about what needed to change and how the project could be better represented visually.
This second year project involved designing a museum inspired by the art it displays. The building’s folding, wrapping spaces were influenced by the tectonic nature of collage.
The output from this project that I’m most proud of in retrospect is the riff on Picasso’s collage of a still life with a violin. We were assigned a collage and were required to reinterpret it to help learn about the art form, and I think my version came out pretty well.
Research for this project introduced me to Robert Rauschenberg, who has since become one of my favorite artists. His work is fantastic to see in person.
The projects shown here are, in order:
Transformation Project (Studio III):
This project involved creating hybrid images of a building and a painting, and then taking one of those images into 3D form. The images directly above and below show the finished physical model, and the images below the model show the reproduced painting and one of the transformation snapshots.
Point, Line, Plane (Studio I):
These studies from first year explore point, line, and plane as elements of spatial definition. The model above uses the elements to imagine a new enclosure for the existing spaces in OU’s architecture building.
Villa Savoye Study (Studio IV):
I built models and painstakingly recreated drawings of Le Corbusier’s classic for what felt like months - but it was illuminating to really dig into a building that practiced what it preached, so to speak. There’s debate about Corbu’s philosophies and whether or not his high modernist buildings “work,” but I think Villa Savoye is a great example of clear, precise thought and execution, if nothing else.
These are certainly not the most impressive sketches you’ll ever see, but I enjoy taking a break from bubble diagraming and taking notes to try my hand at manual rendering every once in a while.
Like many (most?) architects, I’m an amateur woodworker. I’ve always liked figuring out how things go together, and woodworking feels like one of the purest expressions of that impulse. I like designing something and then seeing it come alive in the same afternoon.
Thinking about building things out of wood also helps me focus on constructibility in details. More than once I’ve drawn a detail on a Friday, built some small piece over the weekend, and then thought of a better way to detail the condition on Monday. It’s all one brain, and woodworking seems to help me make connections that I wouldn’t otherwise.
I did graphic design work for the OU division of architecture during my last two years of college, and the layout work shown here is from that position. I learned a lot about working for a client and working with deadlines in that job, and that experience was helpful to have before I graduated. I also learned that I’m very good at self-motivating; I did all the work for that job at odd times between classes and on weekends, and I never had much trouble managing my time. I enjoyed the freedom that schedule allowed, and it helped me do good work.
Since graduation, I’ve maintained an interest in graphic design, and the abstract images towards the bottom of the page are quick digital sketches I’ve done in the past year.
