Interior Home Renovation Project in Danville, California.

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.

Home Addition and Remodel Project in San Carlos, 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.

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.

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.

SoHo, NYC

Design, coordination, and documentation while at NADAAA  

New Hampshire

Design at NADAAA    

Toronto, Canada

Design, coordination, documentation while at NADAAA.

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. 

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.

Oakland, California

Design while at Lowney Architecture    

Preschool Project in Antioch, California.

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.

Santa Clara, California

2021 PCBC GOLD NUGGET AWARD OF MERIT, BEST REHABILITATION PROJECT

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

While at Studios Architecutre, 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.

Boston, Massachusetts

Design, coordination, documentation while at Kennedy & Violich Architecture    

16th Venice Architecture Biennale Albanian Pavilion Competition Design Proposal

The Albanian Pavilion creates a sense of place, a journey through space, that provokes the senses and imagination. At the end of the pathways, like a bundle of fiber optics, leads to information.

The intervention aims to dissolve and unconstrain the spatial limitations of the existing room, by introducing a series of bent vaults that pull people into and through space, creating new spatial and circulatory conditions [Freespace].

The vaults are an interpretation of the Albanian arched portals. Citadels used portals to control access into the fortress. The main entry points were organized with arched portals and vaulted geometries as layered boundaries enclosing a sequence of spaces. Portals were also built within the citadel’s walls offering opportunities to connect with the outside, framing views, and providing enclosure. The portal typology is present as entry thresholds into private houses in cities like Berat and Gjirokaster. These thresholds demarcate the lines between private and public, inside and outside, sheltered and exposed.

In the Albanian Pavilion, these thresholds are extended and extruded within an elliptical form. Users entering the assigned pavilion’s room are faced with two options: walking tangentially around the elliptical structure or going through the portals into the vaulted space. When the vaulted passageways cross with one another, new void conditions and geometrical intersections are generated. The resultant is an architectural maze where the edges of crossing vaults are redefined. The vaulted trajectories bend and produce spatial awareness, capable of transforming the perception of place and time. The crossing vaults offer a multiplicity of paths and views, freedom of movement, and a democratic array of choices within a curated space and experience. The vault end conditions are always associated with entry points or with contemplative places where art is being displayed.

The Albanian Pavilion is not only a freespace but a safespace. The kind of abstract space that inspires, nurtures the spirit, bends time, and transcends mental boundaries. A space that expands possibilities of movement, a space that stimulates senses and triggers the imagination. A transcendental space that is uninhibited by construction methods and tectonics. A space that evokes our architectural history and curates the colorful, reflective, and sublime work of our most beloved contemporary Albanian artists.