Carla | Cortes

METRO AT WESTERN

Location: Los Angeles, California

Professional: The Architects Collective

At Metro Western, we began with three stories of densely packed apartment stock placed over a ground level parking podium. The typical residential levels feature open-ended corridors to provide cross ventilation down the length of the building. External forces push and pull on the massing, refining its form, with a roof deck on the south end of the structure and an overhanging front façade, allowing for a green landscaped corridor at the pedestrian level.

A narrow, protected courtyard adjoins the backside of the building on the second level, providing a landscaped safe area that is lifted above the podium level and sheltered from public view. Circulation towers anchor the project, framing the main entrance at the south end and creating relief to the façade at the north end.

The main façade can be read as a blank white canvas or billboard punctuated with randomized openings. The façade angles away from your eye with shading fins projecting from the sides of the windows, interacting with the environment and creating a pixelating effect that pops with color.

METRO AT BUCKINGHAM

Location: Los Angeles, California

Professional: The Architects Collective

With only one short façade addressing Buckingham Road, the challenge was to link the residents to the greater community. The community and common rooms are given preference on the main façade to create the most visual interactions with the neighbors. The façade lends itself, with its rhythmic openings, to create different kinds of visual communication and in-between inside-outside spaces. Lastly, the building wraps around the site to complete an interior public garden that generates connections with the pre-existing building.

SUNY EXTENSION

Location: Phoenix, New York

Collaboration: Katalyna Lee

Advisor: Arthur McDonald

The concept is to create visual layering that leads and guides students towards the waterfront. The strategy is to shift planes of 2 materials: one transparent that faces the water and one solid that faces the local environment. Originally the circulation and program were directly connected but we internalized an external space, the courtyards, which allow for more visual links to occur. The continuous ramp, responds to the landscapes slope, creates a new main street that connects the town and the lake. The same circulation is reflected on the library, creating overlapping spaces and different views towards the water. The project makes an urban environment – we define public spaces– opposite of what occurs around the site. The city may seem quiet, but the essence is about visual communication of the people- students, faculty and residents. 

BLACK BOX HOUSE

Location: Brooklyn, New York

Advisor: Jing-Liu, SO-IL

The home is an individual’s place of belonging. It is used as a tool to develop an individual’s identity. In order to further develop an identity a person needs a place of reflection and a place for display- without both the identity if being dictated by just the individual or by just the viewer. When a person is on constant display they act differently then when they are in a space of reflection. Most apartments in New York City only allow for a place of seclusion and lack for a place of communal display within the confinements of their own home. Identity if closely related to memory and an individual memory is formed through socialization. When a group is placed in a certain space, it creates its own image but also adjusts itself to the material things that resist it. The interior courtyard functions as the moment of communal display framing glances into the spaces of reflection.

THICK WALL THEATRE

Location: Auburn, New York

Collaboration: Conrad Hu

Advisor: Terrence Goode

 Using a thickness to create distance between the heart of the building and its environment, not just a wall to pass through, but also a veritable space to move across. The envelope of the theatre suggest, in the end that the central space is neither obvious nor obligatory but a space that you choose to go to. While arguable that the theatre is the main space, the red carpet staircase does not lead you to the theatrical space, but rather a small hidden café at the top. The elevation during the day is a modest wall that serves as a background for surrounding architecture and at night it becomes transparent and invites theatergoers to experience the building. The panels are consistent with the context where the ground floor is differentiated from the rest. A large focus is put on the sequence of different events, whether for special events or daily use. The circulation is made into the corner edge condition that causes a floor split and becomes the hinge between the two main program bars. Thicken theater walls act as the core and how the HVAC systems distributed through them. 

NYU EXPANSION

Collaboration: Carolina Jimenez + Katalyna Lee 

 Advisor: Damon Rich

Part of a class, Contested Sights, I was part of a group that organized a tour based around the NYU Expansion. The guiding question of the tour: What is a public space and who owns it? The history of NYU’s campus within the fabric of the city illustrates how its relationship to Greenwich Village as well as Washington Square Park has changed over the years. NYU believes its role as a prestigious institution for higher learning necessitates the facilities that characterize it as such. The neighborhood has grown wary of the influx of students and the commercialization brought about by the institution and passionately defends the preservation of a neighborhood perceived to be fragile. NYU’s plan for expansion dubbed “NYU 2031”, proposes the construction of 2 million square feet with 1 million being dedicated to the core area of NYU, the area surrounding Washington Square Park. The purpose of the tour is to highlight different points of view on the tension between the institution and the neighborhood.

VILLA ROSA ANNEX

Location: Florence, Italy

Advisor: Richard Rosa

Reinventing the Piazza as a stage, instead of being nestled and cleverly hidden, it emerges from the ground. Creating three governing programmed spaces that define this new piazza that links with piazza Savonarola. Taking advantage of the cities culture further integrating the school as well as the students into the Italian life. There are three walls that govern the space- the archive, the space of gathering, and the space of study creating an external publicly accessible realm. 

WHITNEY ANALYSIS

Project: Whitney Museum of American Art

Architects: Marcel Breuer and Hamilton P. Smith

Program: Cultural Institution

Constructed: 1966

Analysis Collaboration: Carolina Jimenez + Katalyna Lee

Lower than many of its near neighbors, the Whitney is a bold building with three progressively extended overhangs. It is able to reach its height by the creation of a double-story sculpture court. The scale of the buildings was how Breuer respected the site and its context. From its up-side-down stepped facade, one would think that the programs are exactly expressed from its form. In fact, programs are not usually centered in the volume because the floor structure is what cantilevers the gallery floors. In addition, the use of bushed-hammered concrete gives a rough and weathered expression of the idea of Brutalism that flourished in the 1960s and 1970s. Breuer wanted the volume to seem weightless. The mechanical systems clearly identify where the galleries are versus the offices spaces at the top. The façade conceals much of the daylight from entering the gallery spaces. 

DETROIT BUS HUB

Location: Detroit, Michigan

Advisor: Lori Brown

The city of Detroit was once a thriving metropolis, built around the car industry. Once the industry left, the population followed leaving the city empty. This project is meant to act as a people incubator, where the courtyards created by the rotated programs allow for visual display of Detroit artwork dispersed throughout the building. The building is meant to create a node of density that would spread throughout the neighborhood and all of the vacant lots that remain.