Research Project at the Center for Sustainable Research

The Center for Sustainable Building Research is a research center at the University of Minnesota. The project I worked on was for the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center (HERC) in Downtown Minneapolis. The neighborhood around HERC is rapidly changing as the new Twins Ballpark, Central Corridor Light Rail and numerous housing projects are being built. We were charged with researching how HERC can have a sustainable future. I looked at the architectural skin and found that the siding that HERC currently has does not make sense to replace. It is durable, maintenance free and has a long life. The most sustainable thing was to leave it in place even though it may not be aesthetically pleasing. Instead, I proposed a messaging system that would educate the public about HERC. I felt that the best thing the skin could do was confront some of the social concerns of HERC which would promote their sustainable mission. The design seen here utilizes architectural screen, lettering and lighting. Combined with kiosks at the pedestrian level, it is meant to educate about the processes of HERC. The transparency of process would help to relieve some of the social concerns about the building and communicate all of the good things HERC does for Minneapolis.

*Worked with Matt Sand, Ashley Sommer and Cassandra Meyer under the guidance of Virajita Singh at CSBR.

Graduate Project 7

Our class was examining the design of cities. In particular, we looked towards the future and conceived of a design of a city in 2035. We worked in groups all semester and my group focused on the design of a solar city. We researched energy and projected a future of how energy may inform city design. Our design promoted responsible energy use and clean energy technology while maintaining a high quality of life for the citizens. Some of the key features of the design were that the all buildings were planned to be passive solar design, the city would be walkable, it depended on rail transit for movement and created diverse public spaces such as parks, bikeways, plaza's a civic spaces. All of these design ideas were to target energy reduction in cities and promote clean and renewable energy.

*Worked with Melissa Hoeft and Adam Kuehnel

Graduate Project 5

Articulture is a arts education group in Minneapolis with plans to expand. The program calls for two components: education and gallery. With that in mind, I developed a design that maintained this separation: as Articulture recognizes that the process of art and display do not necessarily benefit arts education. The driving design idea was that of the skin. Daylight, enclosure, privacy, scale are all components to consider when designing classrooms. The building is set into an urban area and I felt that there was a an inherent responsibility to the street as well as the privacy needed for focused classrooms. The skin, a perforated brick screen, mediates this experience. During the day, the screen reflects light into the space and provides views and at night, the lit spaces within project an ever changing light experience for the street.

Graduate Project 4

The College of Design at the University of Minnesota is split between two campuses in neighboring cities. In an effort to bring the two campuses together, a design center was proposed to link the campuses together. Physically, the campuses are linked through car, bus and bike. The center was proposed to be adjacent to the bike path which is currently interrupted by the terrain. My design was to connect the design center through the bike path so that the community and colleges would become linked together. I believe this would be a positive was for the College of Design to make a presence in the community. The building is integrated with the bike path so that both students and community can engage the College of Design.

Graduate Project 3

Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Mn is a unique college that no longer has an oppurtunity to expand. It is bounded on all sides and is seeking to create an identity for their rapidly expanding college. I designed an area of the campus to focus collegiate life. My theory is that collegiate life depends on activity being seen and not hidden. It recalls streets of Europe to focus activity and presence on the street. By providing a gateway to the campus, creating a active street scape and providing essentials such as classrooms and student housing, I hoped to provide a center of the campus that will carry this college into the future.

Graduate Project 2

Mayo Woodlands is an award winning master plan by Shane Coen and David Salmela. Our task was to design a home within this master plan. My house was designed around a central core that separated communal and private space. The family I was designing for was a family of five. One parent was an artist, who works from home. The result was a home that looked to take advantage of some of the master plan's award winning design features such as pedestrian pathways and fields of beautiful prairie grass and rows of deciduous and coniferous trees. Our class of 50 had to coordinate a large model of the entire site (30' by 30') and then produce drawings of our house. I choose to render my drawings in ink with a marker wash.

Graduate Project 1

Slow Food is a concept for a restaurant that embodies local ingredients and connecting the process of obtaining food, cooking and dining into one. This is considered to be sustainable and creates an experience for the diner that is different from the traditional restaurant. For me, this project was about a common architectural element - the wall. I studied this element from the experience of enclosure to materiality in order to enhance the slow food restaurant experience. The result was to use to the wall to guide the experience of the diner from entry, through food growth and cooking to finally dining. The material of the wall was also considered. I chose a stacked structure of earth materials, stone and paper to make up the wall. The stacking effect could be altered to create openings and perforations. Using these elements to embody the earth's structure was a chance to create an experience about something we do not like to consider the process of; food.

Undergraduate Project 3

This project was a rehabilitation of a building in the Bowery in New York City. The program was student housing/hostel. The design idea was to retrofit the building for a variety of different spaces so that the building became not only about a place to rest but a place for social interaction and refuge from a busy city. The floor plans and sections begin to show some of the dynamic functions of the building. A variety of spaces, from a lounge to a roof terrace, are connected through a day lit lighting strategy in order to create this hostel.

Undergraduate Project 2

This is a project for a Somali Youth Center in Minneapolis' Cedar Riverside Neighborhood. The neighborhood has a large population of Somali immigrants and every building they occupy is retrofitted or rehabbed. The design concept is to embrace the predominant religious beliefs of Islam in the design of the building. Prayer became the center of the building; a worship space is placed in the tower in the center of the building. The tower would be visible to the surrounding community giving a presence of the Somali faith. The design of the worship space, as seen in the last image, was designed to call the direction to Mecca and create a space that was intriguing and thought provoking through light and material. Other programmatic spaces included a gym, cafeteria, gathering room and a library.

Undergraduate Project 1

This was one my first projects at the University of Minnesota in the Architecture Program. We were asked to design a day camp for visitors to an island on Lake Vermillion in Northern Minnesota. The site was large and my concept behind the design was to use architecture to orient the visitors to the site. The main feature was a large boardwalk that aligned with the cardinal directions (the point facing North). The boardwalk incorporated the main gathering rooms but also connected paths to other areas of the site where activities such as a sauna, bonfire pit and boating occurred. Although this is one of my first projects, it is still one of my favorites.