Public Works

Places meant to serve and connect the community's needs

Italian Arts Center

in order to boost tourism for Castiglion Fiorentino, Joel Thomas Sterling and I looked into the best resource of the town, it's people. Sprawled across the town, seven local artists teach the community and create personally. This center unites the skills of these artisans into a cohesive unit at the intersect of the city's educational facilities and the terminus of the axis of relatively unvisited Etruscan ruins.

This hillside drops thirty meters, mitigated here by the two linear structures which open up to a piazza defined by sculptures and tree groves. These provide access back to the school and towards the train station. Exposed to the upper sunlight, mitigated by the deep beams and micro louver system across the roof, the east bar of the project is utilized as a gallery space for the display of the artists' works.

This project creates a place where any tourist can experience the art of life in Tuscany.

Amazon Green Yard Vertical Farm

Vertical farming in cities is the farming of the future, using at most 5% the amount of water of traditional farming, occupying infinitely less land, and diminishing the environmental cost of transporting fresh produce. With multiple crop cycles each year and 24hr growth utilizing optimized frequency LED lights, the farm produces the full produce needs for 22,000 people each year.

The Green Yard’s orientation cultivates the plants at optimum solar alignment. The raised greenhouses overhang a pedestal of activity and stand as dynamic symbol of environmental production. These overhangs create gathering spaces for the community to connect patrons to the natural process of plant growth, shade the bustling market and recreation spaces and display sustainable cultivation.

This structure acts analogous to a plant. The growing system strives for efficiency as well as redundancy to ensure the proper growth of our products. The Green Yard’s double glazed wall system holds a ventilated air gap; the operable system controls the intense Texas climate, and contains multiple layers of shading to keep the sunlight at desired growth intensity. Pipes are exposed run visible through the building, bringing air and water up from the basement, through the service core and beneath the user’s feet to the plants’ growing beds.

The Green Yard serves the Austin, Texas community as a prototype of local production, social activity and education demonstrating Austin’s more sustainable future.

Branch Library

In an effort to create healthier lifestyles for young adults, this library investigates the way people learn about books as well as themselves. Through a series of therapeutic rooms interwoven into the sections of library, this public work explores connection to others through offsetting levels.

Flow of spaces from western street face into and through public courtyard to eastern building with seminar spaces and grand stair schemes to connect throughout structures. Constant visual connection to means of vertical transportation allows people to feel able to relax, knowing they'll be safe.

The West Building's quiet reading room with central nook, which reclaims the concept of a hearth as a place of dwelling. While the East Building's child reading area as well as overlook into the teen reading area below for social behavior monitoring.

Shade Structure

Using solar angles to create optimum cooling and heating throughout the year, this project takes life in a faceted concrete skeleton with infill faces of an aerogel paneling. This allows for occupancy while creating ever important safety by utilizing three straight view corridors between each exit. 

Photovoltaic panels placed on the concrete beams along the roof collect energy throughout the daylight. During the night, motion activated sensors light up the structure's panels to create safety and an interactive environment.