The scope of the project includes two semesters: the first focusing on research that developed into a masterplan response; the second semester bringing the masterplan values down to building scale, requiring site analysis, programmatic research and development, and a thesis proposal. The thesis site was Alameda Point, a former naval air station consisting of 1,560 acres of land on the western end of Alameda. 

Thesis statement: 

The suburban, automobile-dependent lifestyle of a rapidly growing Bay Area population compounds the problem of carbon emissions already contributing to global warming. The threat of sea level rise to Alameda Point presents a unique opportunity to shift workplace and environmental values because of its central location in a famously innovative region. The thesis proposes an energy-producing skin that indexes sea level rise, wrapped around a hyper-dense program atop a stepped podium. Interior volumes are stitched together by circulation paths that bridge the fabrication technologies within to the neighboring context, marking a point on the city’s edge where architecture plays a central role in a self-sustaining system over time.

The semester long fourth year collaborative, and comprehensive design studio involved a masterplan and high-density building design response to a post-industrial waterfront site with mixed-use Veteran’s housing. Once the location of heavy industry and military-related activities, Pier 70 is filled with textural inspiration: rusting metals, paint peeling off wood, and signs of use that communicate a ruggedness, durability, and approachability about the site. Brief research led to an understanding that the majority of San Francisco’s veteran population required social and psychological services due to their suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). To create a place where Veterans could become reintegrated into society, the masterplan response was to create a walkable neighborhood that would connect Third St., a major transportation artery to downtown San Francisco, to the water’s edge at Pier 70 by bridging a pedestrian path. Revealing intersections with plaza space and circulation, Long Bridge Veteran’s Housing’s 62 units of single-room occupancy, studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom, and three-bedroom unit types aggregates around open spaces to create a therapeutic environment for veterans, and other residents, alike.

The semester long fourth year design studio required a response to an already vibrant South of Market urban site adjacent to Moscone Center, with the additional complexity of responding to an existing 10-story historic building adjacent to Jessie Plaza, an architecturally significant Jewish Contemporary Museum, and the privately-owned Yerba Buena Gardens Park across an active Mission Street. Envisioned as a corporate headquarters for Salesforce in a location characterized by its highly active, open-space-rich context, and in a regularly sunny climate, Vibrant Tower is a mixed-use tower with Salesforce’s corporate offices expanding into the cloud up to 536’, segmented in form by the building limits of the historic Aronson building, and faceted by the angle of the sun at 1pm on the summer solstice. From artisanal retail on the ground floor, to museum space, start-up office space, conference support space, and to corporate offices above, the building is a hub for cultural and entrepreneurial activity from the scale of the pop-up entrepreneur to the scale of the global technology presence that is Salesforce.

The semester long second year design studio required the design for the assigned hybrid program of a Parkour and Culinary Academy. The activity of parkourists redefine the urban environment as a narrative of formal obstacles for the parkourists as they take direct paths through the city. The addition of a culinary academy promotes health in the community through the cultivation of an intimate relationship between the people and their food. As the Lake Merritt Park site is adjacent to a weekly farmer's market, and exercise paths that travel around Lake Merritt, the folding parkour and culinary academy is a place that promotes the health and fitness of the Oakland community with spaces to cook, sell, dine, climb, drop, sprint, and flip.