2021 AIASF MERIT AWARD UNBUILT ARCHITECTURE, AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS SAN FRANCISCO

2021 GADA FIRST PLACE AWARD LARGE PRIVATE RESIDENCE, RE-THINKING THE FUTURE GLOBAL ARCHITECTURE DESIGN AWARDS

Home is more than shelter. It is a space to sleep, work, play, entertain, teach, learn, grow, and connect.

The Courtyard House is designed as a mixed-use building with an emphasis on the connection to nature and spatial quality. The project is composed of efficiently aggregated spaces. Four courtyards puncture the floorplan. The circulation is through rooms, eliminating the need for corridors.

Designed for a tech client and an art collector, the primary program of the house includes bedrooms, an office studio, and an art gallery. The secondary spaces consist of a living area, kitchen, library, and bathroom. Supportive functions, in the form of appliances, millwork, and closets, line up the walls of the house. The four courtyards surround a multi-functional flexible room that can be used as formal dining, entertaining amenity, or conference space. The design of doors and thresholds are unique features of the project. Smart glazing allows for transparent surfaces to turn into opaque glazed walls instantly if more privacy is desired. These transparent thresholds enable see-through views to the courtyards, to the outside, and to other spaces of the house.

Interior Home Renovation Project in Danville, California.

Orinda, California

This modern home in Orinda, California, is a renovation and addition project designed for a couple that loves cooking, plants, and pottery making. The design intends to create a sanctuary through simplicity, sophistication, charm, and connection to the outdoors.

The home's outer shell has dark metal roofing and siding, while the interior is fresh and serene through clean lines, simple shapes, a bright, warm, neutral palette, and the use of natural materials. Large-format sliding doors and windows flood the interior with light and views. Generous front and back outdoor patios surrounded by beautiful lush landscapes inspired by Mediterranean and arid gardens extend the visual thresholds well beyond the physical boundaries of the interior spaces. Symmetry is used to bring structure and harmony to the main public areas of the house. The 8’ high existing ceilings are replaced by vaulted ceilings, turning the roof geometry into a volumetric experience on the interior. The pitched roof geometry inspires the butterfly roof over the addition, a simple move that adds height to the master bedroom. The heart of the house is the kitchen, designed to cater to the couple's love for cooking. Small sitting niches and a flexible space add charm and character to the design. A dedicated pottery studio will be located at the back of the lot, offering a space for making, creativity, and escape. The garden reinforces the sense of serenity through repetition, yet differentiation in plant palette within the repetition creates exciting pockets of plant tapestry.

San Francisco, California

End of Year Commencement Exhibition Design and Curation of Architecture Division Student Work, California College of the Arts, 2018

The End of Year Commencement Exhibition highlights California College of the Arts creative student culture. The exhibition showcases work from the four CCA divisions: Architecture, Design, Fine Arts, Humanities and Sciences. The Nave is transformed into a large gallery displaying the best student work through drawings, paintings, models, and art.

Pedestals groupings have a strong presence transforming the space of the event. Three types of pedestal dimensions are carefully calibrated for seating and standing viewing heights. The groupings are located strategically at oblique angles to engage people, direct pedestrian flow, and create special gathering moments throughout the length of the Nave. After the exhibition, the pedestals are upcycled and used by the students during project reviews.

The pedestal groupings are a simple and cost-effective spatial intervention that greatly engages individuals with the projects displayed and are repurposed after the life of the event.

In the age of political instability, alternative facts, and environmental disasters, a safe room at home is a must to provide physical and psychological safety.

Bunker cabin is designed for a young couple with a passion for music and gardening. The cabin is conceived in layers. The outer shell is light and ephemeral. It filters light and directs views. It opens up the sleeping and living areas to the outside, creating a direct and strong connection with nature.

The inner shell hosts the functional aspects of the house, with the safety room at the very center. The spiral staircase takes the owners to the basement where the very thick concrete shell protects them from the possibility of a nuclear or natural disaster. This room also doubles up as a music recording studio and a virtual reality space.  

At the upper level, the spiral staircase leads to a hidden greenhouse; where flowers, herbs, and vegetables are grown year-round for consumption in a controlled environment. Photovoltaic panels and water storage equipment ensure self-sufficiency and independence from the grid. 

The garden house is designed for a botanist and a librarian with two children who work from home. The oldest daughter is a plant enthusiast and YouTube blogger. The youngest daughter is a musician and enjoys playing the drums.

Four exterior garden spaces surround the house. These garden spaces are the lawn, the forest, the formal sculpture garden, and the informal pond garden (the pool). The house is composed of linear aggregated spaces and enfilade circulation.

The northwest wing is the private quarters with sleeping and family living spaces. The central zone hosts working and public spaces: the great hall for large events, plant and video recording studio, large kitchen, and formal entertaining spaces. The southeast wing hosts a library, a video editing studio, and a guest room.

Doors and circulation are conceptualized as layered thresholds. Doors are uniquely designed at the corners of rooms. They slide into the wall cavities completely opening the spaces to each other and the outdoors.

This summer villa conceptually occupies a small lot on the hills of a small town in the Mediterranean, overlooking breathtaking views of the Sea. The inside and the outside extend into one-another, well beyond the boundaries of inhabitation, redefining spatial conditions and limitations of building footprint and site. 

Mill Valley, California

The Mill Valley addition adds value to the home by increasing the footprint of the living area and adding a generous balcony for outdoor entertainment adjacent to the dining room. A new exterior feature stair connects the three levels of the house and eases the circulation to the gardens at the ground level. The simple move of mirroring the existing ceiling geometry at the new addition creates a powerful spatial impact, adds height, and opens up the views of the beautiful Mill Valley hills.

Burlingame, California

The project preserves the rough and authentic character of the existing space while designing through the showroom displays, which are flexible, demountable, multipurpose, and easily rearranged. The intent for the displays is to repurpose CLT panels and design through simplicity.

One of the design options proposes a metal mesh curtain between the display and research/fabrication area, while another proposes a meeting office in between.

Toronto, Canada

Design, coordination, documentation while at NADAAA.

Boston, Massachusetts

Design, coordination, documentation while at Kennedy & Violich Architecture    

SoHo, NYC

Design, coordination, and documentation while at NADAAA  

New Hampshire

Design at NADAAA    

Santa Clara, California

2021 PCBC GOLD NUGGET AWARD OF MERIT, BEST REHABILITATION PROJECT

2021 SILICON VALLEY BUSINESS JOURNAL STRUCTURES AWARD, BEST REUSE/REHAB PROJECT

As Project Architect for this 426,000 sq ft (over four buildings) renovation project, Alda was responsible for project leadership on the technical drawings, coordination, Planning and Permitting process, and Construction Administration. The project is Fitwel Certified.

Oakland, California

Design while at Lowney Architecture    

San Francisco, California

This set of residential units (one-bedroom and studio apartments) was one of the first to enter the permitting process under San Francisco’s new Additional Dwelling Unit ordinances. The design pairs with mandatory seismic and life safety upgrades, meeting stringent requirements of the city’s planning department to create beautiful new living spaces in the lower level of a four-story apartment building. The project area is 12,000 SF. Construction was completed in 2020. This project is a collaboration with Anna Currant.

The FIGURE-FIGURE Paradigm

Informed by the program for an aquarium, space is conceived as an experience in reciprocity with the environment of water and marine life. The transparency of the demarcation between forms enables an immersive experience of water and marine life; multiple materialities, suspended gravity, layered transparencies, flows, views and temporalities. This Figure-Figure reciprocity between water and human space reconsiders the relationship between the human body, water, and architecture.

Bucharest, Bulgaria

As is the case for most airports, the site for this project is flat and devoid of any topographical variation. Airports fall under the shed typology, where the roof is the most important part of the envelope. It is the portal to the city, the first impression that visitors and locals experience as they arrive from above.

The spatial concept for this airport is rhythms and thresholds. This is achieved through the reticulation of spatial and structural bays, which are conceptualized as cells. The cell is asymmetrical in the xy, yz, and the xz directions, providing differentiated results depending on the placement and direction of instantiation. There are eight parameters, such as beam dimensions, slab thicknesses, and column dimensions that are designed and adjusted to respond to different conditions and program. The cell has the ability to oscillate between two extreme conditions, struts and surface. It can be a thin structural framework, or it can be surfaces providing enclosure, shelter, and floors to walk on. One leg of the cell is angulated to respond to desired light in the space. The outward angulations allow more sunlight into spaces. The outdoor garden takes advantage of this formal opportunity. The inward angulations block light, appropriate for resting lounges. One side of the cell is open-ended and the other is a ‘portal’, conceived as a threshold that can change in aperture dimensions.

The design of the armature is informed by the size of the airport bays. Wider bays accommodate international travel. Narrow bays serve regional and domestic travel. Longitudinally, cells instantiate side to side providing rhythmic directional flow. On the short axis the cells instantiate front to front providing larger spaces; back to back or back to front providing smaller spaces. The reticulation is both, bottom-up and top-down aggregations. Both parts and whole (cell and armature) are responsible for scalar variations of form and space.

The Chapel is a landmark on a beachscape. A place for partial shade, shelter, gathering, and contemplation. A space conducive to meditation. The project is comprised of four thin precast concrete shells joined at six points of connection. The geometry of the shells are minimal surfaces, optimal in the use of materials and structure.