Watercolors from my trip to Copenhagen, Denmark.

Part of an Instagram challenge, these portraits were created to improve my portrait skills in a short amount of time. I have a deep love of challenges so I attempted it. Currently i am up to portrait #47. The subjects range from TV, to Broadway, to Drag Queens.

These works highlight other skills I am handy in. Including paper art, Modeling and more.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard is known for its innovation in arts and new infrastructure. Currently It is under massive renovations. The Brooklyn incubator is a tower for artists. The tower is unified by a large art gallery that acts as the vertical circulation for the tower.

The intended residents aren't all just artists. They range from professional artists, to amateur. To office workers to families to students. The tower is an experience for everyone.

The goal that both UNESCO and George Nakashima strive towards is peace, but often the journey towards it is forgotten. The Pace of Peace is a balance of people and nature. The shape of the building provides a continuous path for people to walk around and observe both the nature around them, and also a reflection space. I chose to put the alter amongst the space where it originated as a tree to highlight the cycle of life and the resilience of the human spirit. Trees in Iceland are uncommon, and strong. What better way to show the beauty of this resilient site by inserting trees and maintaining the peace garden with native flowers. The structure is made of light wood and glass. To be as minimalistic as I could with materials,keeps the building light and mobile. I also wanted to raise the building up onto stilts. This would not only keep the connection to the ground minimal it will give visitors a grand view of the park. Peace is only an end goal. The path that it follows is full of pitfalls and challenges, but with a strong righteous path, it can lead humans to the eventual idealistic end. The twisting path within the building acts as the meditation space. The space is large enough for people to walk at their own pace. Just like the human experience it's important to find our own pace to success and peace within ourselves.

The client is the Malamulo Hospital. 

I am building a new Gaurdian Housing for its gaurdians. Gaurdians are similar to nurses, except they come with the patient and take care of them while they are being treated. This housing is where they eat, sleep, clean, wash and anything else when they aren't taking care of their patient. 

My design focuses around a large courtyard space. Malawians spend much more time outside their sleeping quarters doing daily activities and chores, so to me it was just as important to design the place they inhabit as the space they sleep in. 

This is a work in progress

Høj Park or "High Park" is a Kunst museum. A Kunst museum is a museum with no permanent collection. This space acts as a community center. Rather then a display for the Mona Lisa or a Picasso , this space is reserved for the residents.

The space is home to art from residents, from their children and from guest artists from around the country. Art is a shared experience and should not be an exclusive art form.

Art should be accessible to everyone. 

The tale of Sunniside and the old landfill in Houston, Texas ends in resilience. A historically black neighborhood and this piece of land right outside the city of Houston has endured negligence, oppression, and adversity by the city of Houston. The chosen site is built on top of trash accumulating almost 300 acres with 45 feet of dirt to “cap off” the trash. To propel high school students and the residents of Sunnyside, The goal of this project is to design a Master Plan to alter the perspective of the landfill site and change the stigma. The neighborhood and land battled the oppression of this landfill site and is continually becoming a success. THis community is an ispiring force of social justice as well as a rich culture, and we choose not to ignore it and the contributions its made to the state of Texas.

Problems

The Landfill that is essentially a large brown field. Designing for both the school and the community The sheer lack of attention given to Sunnyside Trust between community and designers The large scale of the site and the scarce amount of program. 

Solution

To fix these problems we are trying to develop an area for Sunnyside that isn’t connected to the school. But also isn’t isolated within the site. We decided to propose a joint school site, where the spaces are joined by a large public library. The site itself demands not only a large scale urban project but also a plan to rehabilitate the soil and filter or break down the trash. We have a plan to break the site and try to clean it in sections. We also want to get the community of Sunnyside to get more involved within the community. Along with a secondary school we also proposed an agricultural area, Barn and a Museum. The agriculture area and Barn would connect with the community gardens and the museum would help to tell the story of Sunnyside's history and resistance against a oppressive forces that neglect Sunnyside. Signifying its resilience against the people who used them as a dumping ground for decades.

Conclusion

We want to finish this project with a larger plan. We don't intend to impact this site with only a new campus. We want to be able to take out the trash and turn Sunnyside Park back into an inhabitable park. It should be a space enjoyed by all residents of Sunnyside and it's new lively campus. We intend to remove the trash on a grid system, where we break the pieces into zones like in the future zoning diagram. Once we break these zones up we can start  to remove the garbage zone by zone, and in 30 years we can have a new trash free campus. It would also work as a park enjoyed by students and residents alike in Sunnyside and even attract people outside of Sunnyside. 

A design project in Copenhagen, Denmark

This is an installation piece located in the meat packing district of Copenhagen. The space is meant to be a reflection space. What I made resembles a Lotus flower. Each petal is human scale and can be moved back and forth for different degrees of solitude. There are also shields attached to each petal for maximum privacy. 

This won honerable mentiaon in ACSA's National Timber in the City Competition.

The goal of this project was to design a new urban space that could run along Essex Street in New York. The building contains an art museum, a market, and residential.

Our group really wanted to give its residents a place that was private and away from the street. What we did was raise the "ground" level and put market on street level. The entrances to this risen courtyard would be through the market spaces but also through the carefully designed side staircases. 

Twiceforth is a new choose your own adventure webcomic, under construction. I am in charge of its environmental art, often creating new worlds and new environments. This is an exciting project that combines my love of architecture, landscape and animation.

In the Summer of 2016 I worked for North 5th Street Revitalization project which is based in Olney. Their mission was to work with local business owners to make small incremental changes that would both improve the overall community as well as its public appearance. 

I had many jobs. I got to talk to kids at the local art school. I was able to talk to local activists and understand the weight behind this project. 

I role I played was to render the street with new trees as well as to fix up minor problems with facades, and roads, while also adding in bike paths. These would help the business owners envision their businesses with trees in front.