yerika

Yerika Santos: Architectural Design II

Project 01 : Border Work/Study Zone

My first project assigned to me was designing an activity center that was going to be placed between the U.S. and Mexico borderline. First, my class and I researched over the U.S. and Mexico. The image you see to the right is images I have acquired over my research from both sides. The concept of this project was for both sides to interact with one another without physically doing it, or one side being able to cross to the other side. This

Project 01 Concept Design :

These sketches are some ideas I had come up while brainstorming designs. The top image, were my top three best ideas but at the end I ended up making more changes to my activity center design. As you go scroll down you can see my progress throughout my brainstorming. During brainstorming everyone had to think about some verbs to apply to your walls. For example, rotate, shift, carve, curve, branch, inflate, and many more. As for the concept I thought that carving two, one foot wide windows out of the border wall would be a great way for both sides to interact with each other, and also having speakers so not only will the sides be able to see what each other are doing but to also be able to hear each other. (See image #2 for reference).

Project 01 Drawings and Final Model :

My final model has a combination of a curved, rotated, and branched walls. Both sides are identical, having the same curvy wall starting from one side and ending to the other side of the building. Same placements of rooms, windows, and walls. The end result was not something I had completely came up with on my own. The overall of my building was a combination of all my three top best designs. And looking into different architects and their interesting, unique designs specifically Ricardo Legorreta. As you click through the slideshow you can see the building from different angles and how walls can be seen differently from different perspectives.

Project 02 : Borderlands Community

Project two is a continuation to my project one because we are still in the setting of the U.S. and Mexico border wall but instead we, referring to my class, are designing a community in the "No Man's Land". After my class worked together to design an efficient yet comfortable fun community each of my peers were given a client with different nationality, occupation, and family unit which we needed to create a social media along with it. My client was a Mexican, empty nested semi-retired , cultural anthropologist University Professor with two assistants. We were also asked to design a work space and a home space for our clients.

Project 02 Concept Design :

Since my client study's in humans and culture it was important for me to design both my client's work space and home space to symbolize or resemble culture. For this I applied the verb embed (which was something i learned from my previous project) especially because that could resemble how the border wall caused for both the American and Mexican cultures to mix. Embed means placing an object through another object. The slideshow below demonstrates my progress throughout me brainstorming over designs. If you look at my drawings below the slideshow that I made through, Sketchup, an app were my top three ideas. The buildings at the back of the site are for the home space and the buildings at the front of the site are for the work space.

On this slideshow you are able to see (which are going to be my final buildings ) the rooms for my home and work space.

Project 02 Final Drawings and Final Model :

As for my final and best ideas I decided that the triangle building with tiny blocks embedded would work efficiently as my client's home space and for the work space the rectangle block with tubes also embedded on it was the best fit. Both buildings symbolize culture diffusing together and that's what I wanted since not only is my client's occupation about culture but also the project is about how the border wall affects both sides and how culture was affected from it. Both buildings have bathrooms, a kitchen, an office, a storage, and a library. But what makes my office building unique is that the tubes coming down will come down to the thinking spot which would be an open space area where my client and her assistants could go and talk about business or anything at all. This building also has a fun room because since my client interacts with humans that means there is going to be children involve, so this room will be somewhere where the children will hang out while the adults do business. The home space is also unique in its own way because there is a room called extra where is only going to be accessible to my client, and this room is a place where my client can put anything she brought from another place she traveled to from her studies. The living room is bigger compared to a regular living room because like I mentioned before my client is going to be involved with tons of people so I wanted the living room to be enormous so when people come over it will be comfortable and spacey.