Project Information:
Designers: Hector Aramburo, Luis Madrigal,
Miguel Reyes & Abel Zatarain (aux-lab)
Type: Competition | Conceptual
Location: Rome [Italy]
Year: 2017
Eleven Magazine's 21st Century River Renaissance Competition.
Objective: to imagine a 21st century River Renaissance for Rome, and turn the Tiber river into a new focus for the city by adding a contemporary layer to its eternal beauty.
Water undisturbed finds the path of least resistance. Located at the intersection of the Ponte Garibaldi and the Tiber River, this project momentarily disturbs the path of the Tiber River as it snakes through the city of Rome. Damming the river does not immediately solve the problems presented to the citizens of the city. What it does do, is it brings to the surface (pun intended) the state of the river. The dam itself serves as a passive solution to cleaning the water, using a system of reed ponds located along the underbelly of this structure the water is cleansed as it heads to the lower amphitheater location.
The use of the dam creates a void at the heart of this intersection between the bridge and the river. This introduces the following elements: the opportunity for citizens to occupy and inhabit a space of the city which was previously unreachable, and it introduces the currently defunct element of water as an active force in the shaping of public space and its uses.
The use of the amphitheater stairs as a public square does the following: It allows for water to infiltrate the space at an incremental rate, the water is further filtered via a system of reed ponds located along the steps, and the amphitheater also creates a stage to display the project itself, visitors can witness the seasonal transgressions of the river as it passes through this project. The dam creates another separately important architectural element: the dam itself becomes a habitable space, the wall has a thickness that can be excavated to create space, a space along the same river that it is retaining.
This project adjusts the way in which water can positively affect the introduction of water in public spaces. The damming of the the river provokes the citizen into investigating the cause of the rise in water levels. This prompts the user to visit the site and be confronted with new ideas of how water interacts with this newfound public space.
Superbowl I
Rome, Italy
Fairy Tales
Conceptual
CLT Box Chest
Crevalcore, Italy
Project Description:
Designer: ohms
Type: Conceptual [Competition]
Location: Crevalcore [Italy]
Year: 2013 - Finalists
On the night of the 20th of May 2012 an earthquake shook the middle-northern part of Italy, razing hundreds ancient buildings and transforming many inner cities in abandoned ruins. The competition “Post Quake Visions” aims to rethink and redesign the quake-inflicted gaps left inside ancient urban tissues.
Our proposal, CLT Box Chest, attempts to create a sensible dialogue with the remaining architecture of Crevalcore. It is a reaction to the city’s self reflection of character. The design relies on contrast as an opportunity. Natural wood planks wrap around the existing damaged buildings to create tribute spaces, galleries of remains. Ruins as art, abandonment as the main attraction, a celebration of a tragic past. The footprints of masonry reveal monolithic memories of its former glory.
Each enclosure reveals a different experience but they remain externally homogenous and mysterious, paying respect to the delicate remains they enclose.The intervention rises from the landscape with the evocative pieces gently dissolving, opening an opportunity for a new narrative between the dense memories of Crevalcore’s history and the faith for a stronger and brighter future.
Pinkberry Connect
Hollywood, California
Project Description:
Type: Conceptual [Competition]
Location: Hollywood [California]
Year: 2011
Competition for re-design and branding of Pinkberry.
1st Place winning team: Miguel A. Reyes, Hector Aramburo, Kosta Marko Djordjevic & Peter Wales
Salacious Kiss
Tijuana, Mexico
Project Information:
Designer: Miguel A. Reyes
Type: Conceptual [Adaptive Re-use]
Location: Hotel Nelson [Tijuana, MX]
Year: 2013
This project is about an experience. It attempts to capture the essence and characteristics of a place. It is not intended to solve any problems, pass judgment or impose an ideology; rather it seeks to celebrate its reality through a spectacle. Long or short, timid or passionate, a kiss is spectacular, the coalition of two similar but not identical bodies, bodies that in moment of collision transform flex, violate, an operation of temporary eccentricity. It is a captivating union during which detachment is implausible yet inescapable.
The testing ground is an existing building in Tijuana’s Zona Norte, it is a place in constant struggle, shameful yet shameless, cynical yet hopeful, a social duality. The intervention is a passionate kiss to a stubborn Mexican morality. Kissing is also a kind way to say good bye to an old architectural scene in which architecture is unavoidably cast as an appalling character, sometimes victim sometimes villain but always closer to failure than success.
Matte Paintings
Concept art by Hector Aramburo.
Pythia
San Diego, California
Project Description:
Designer: Omar Kakar
Type: Theory
Project: Digital Library
Location: Downtown San Diego [Embarcadero Marina Park North]
Year: 2013
Science fiction or science speculation? The public forum that will house all of humanity’s data. The Compendium, where the metaverse meets the built environment, a civic monolith serving as an infrastructure space of information and knowledge for society in the digital age. The current state and advancement of technology and communication has changed societies way of gathering information. Architecture has become complicit with the development of programmatic space without taking into consideration our technologically driven lifestyles.
By integrating the advancing information technology with the connectivity of the metaverse can we experimentally create a new public space. With today’s accessibility to instant data, the library is transforming into a new urban laboratory of gathering and sharing information for the future. This new “digital library” emerges, generating a different idea of an information center, a physical space for the virtual world of the computer over the physical scriptures of books and periodicals. A new performing function of life for a traditional public building, the birth of this digital library will generate a new form of social interaction and accessibility of sharing information. Becoming a compendia, collection of information, binding society with knowledge through multimedia.
Housed in a straightforward elemental form of the monolith, functioning as a cinematectonic slab of panorama information technology, a theateresque platform of viewing society’s growing visual information gallery of the human experience. The monolith, a pure and timeless form of all cultures, becomes the typology for this new space. A subtle yet iconic solution without the over-the-top arbitrary extravagance of ego driven parametric architecture. An easily recognizable building that will become a catalyst for future replication around the world as the new public space for information and communication. Transitioning society from the library, the compendium welcomes the public into our modern high-tech world that is the digital age.
Mass Dwelling
Tijuana, Mexico
Project Description:
Designer: Miguel A. Reyes, Cesar Cardenas
Type: Conceptual [Housing]
Location: Valle Las Palmas, Mexico [East of Tijuana]
Year: 2011
The interaction of simple elements of a category creates a new category with superior capabilities. Through interaction and connection there is an instigation of spacial continuity. This strategy promotes expanding horizontally and vertically to compress and contract spaces in order to create pockets that implement activity. Manipulation of flow of people, private and social spaces come through a density gradient which moves throughout the site. Abstract spaces are created through the manipulation of mass; these can be fully taken advantage by flexibility. These spaces need to be adjustable in order to meet the ever changing needs of the people of Valle Las Palmas. Multi use program is a necessity for housing in Tijuana.
Beauty In Decay
Wancun, China
Project Description:
Designer: Miguel A. Reyes
Type: Conceptual [Housing]
Location: Wancun Village [China]
Year: 2011
Sited at Wancun Village in South East China, this project is about revealing. The state of decay of the houses is crucial to the essence of the place. The textures they reveal in the state of decomposition, the erosion not only caused by time but also by experiences and events; the beautiful scars of performance, the accidental revealing of apertures that could have been a logical composition at the time of conception. This intervention does not seek to imitate or enhance an architectural vocabulary; rather it seeks to celebrate the stitching of new performances that caters to a fast evolving contemporary community.
Symbiosis
San Diego, California
Project Info:
Lead Designer: Omar Kakar
Type: Conceptual [School Extension Competition]
Location: 2212 Main Street [San Diego, CA]
Year: 2011
Collaborators: Andrei Galvez & Jessica Torres
Project Description:
The tower is a traditional steel form that we are all accustomed to. The second form is the unaccustomed organic envelope that attaches to the bridge and tower of this design school. This bold organic growth leeches like kudzu vines onto the host structure as an urban creature in the city environment. Spanning great distance with slenderness and grace, the symbiote envelope exhibits how well steel can be shaped to achieve curved forms. These two dissimilar steel forms daringly fuse together creating a symbiotic attachment. Although an uncomfortable architectural relationship, the two function together. The envelope serves as an exterior finish defining indoor and outdoor spaces for the theater and bridge, as well as a canopy for the viewing deck. The bold design is an appropriate aim to house a place of creativity such as this design center and gallery.
Tilt Rec
San Diego, California
Project Info:
Designer: Omar Kakar
Type: Conceptual [Community Recreation Center Proposal]
Location: 1709 Main Street [San Diego, CA]
Year: 2011
Project Description:
The Barrio Logan context is an urban and industrial environment. The general make-up of the area consists of factories and warehouses. The site, an abandoned restaurant depot, located across the street from the local middle school and adjacent to the barrio Logan college institute. The proposal for the old warehouse is to convert it to a rec center as well as a park in order to build a stronger community of children participating in after school activities. The park provides landscape due to the lack of greenery in Barrio Logan, bringing the community together, by providing an escape from the industrial environment as well as an opportunity to play soccer and or football the design approach to achieve these two programs of park and recreation within the dimensions of the site was to “tilt” the building. This idea allows for both programs.
Cantenary
San Diego, California
Project Info:
Designer: Omar Kakar
Type: Art [Installation]
Location: Woodbury University [San Diego]
Year: 2009
Project Description:
Built for a gallery space, this was an art installation of hanging modulations within a structure.