Project Description: META Media is a new digital media lab and maker space for middle-school-aged youth in the McGaw YMCA. The project is a renovation of a 3,400 square foot, underutilized space within the existing 90-year-old historic building. In addition to music, workshop and office spaces, the main space is designed around three custom millwork pieces that define zones of activity and encourage a connected and collaborative learning environment.
Location: Evanston, Illinois
Client: McGaw YMCA
Contractor: Ross Burton
Completion Date: 2015
My role: Project Architect while at Latent Design
The Grove Apartments project, in Oak Park, Illinois, is a restoration, renovation and addition to what was originally an automobile showroom. Built in 1928 by Albert Kahn, this two story building was designed to eventually accommodate two additional stories. In the 1970s, the building was haphazardly converted into offices by a local cable company. The original detailing on the facade was hacked away and covered in dryvit. This project strips away the dryvit, restores the detailing and adds the two additional stories. The interior of the building is fully renovated, resulting in 51 units of affordable housing, first floor commercial space and a new green roof. The building is heated with goethermal wells and will achieve LEED-Silver certification.
Client: Interfaith Housing Development Corporation
Cost: $10,000,000.00
Completion Date: October, 2013
My role: Project Architect while at
Press and Awards
Former auto showroom gets a winning renovation by Blair Kamin for the Chicago Tribune
Driehaus Foundation Award for Architectural Excellence in Community Design
Project Description: (3) Two Flats, New Construction, Affordable Family Housing
Location: Humboldt Park, Chicago, Illinois
Client: Hispanic Housing Development Corporation
Cost: $3,000,000.00
Completion Date: 2013
My role: Project Architect while at Weese Langley Weese
Project Description: 45 units, 54,000 square feet, new construction, multi-family affordable housing. Includes brownfield site remediation and redevelopment, green roof, ILDCEO energy grant, 2-star rating in Chicago Green Homes program, approved through City of Chicago Green Permit process.
Location: Pilsen, Chicago, Illinois
Client: The Resurrection Project
Cost: $9,000,000.00
Completion Date: 2008
My role: Project Architect while at Weese Langley Weese
Project Description: 72 units, 70,000 square feet, new construction, elderly affordable housing. Includes brownfield site remediation and redevelopment, geothermal mechanical system, green roof, ILDCEO energy grant, 3-star rating in Chicago Green Homes program, City of Chicago Senior Center (first one serving Latino community), approved through City of Chicago Green Permit process.
Location: Pilsen, Chicago, Illinois
Client: The Resurrection Project
Cost: $15,000,000.00
Completion Date: 2010
My role: Project Architect while at Weese Langley Weese
Project Description: 100 units, supportive affordable housing, new construction. Includes geothermal mechanical system, 2-star rating in Chicago Green Homes program, approved through City of Chicago Green Permit process.
Location: Englewood, Chicago, Illinois
Client: Interfaith Housing Development Corporation
Cost: $15,500,000.00
Completion Date: 2010
My role: Team Member while at Weese Langley Weese
Project Description: Renovation of an existing 1927 dormitory, including upgrade to all systems, addition of fully accessible dorm rooms, addition of exterior accessibility ramp while working within requirements of Historic Preservation District. Project achieved LEED Gold certification.
Location: Evanston, Illinois
Client: Northwestern University
Cost: $2,500,000.00
Completion Date: 2010
My role: Project Architect while at Weese Langley Weese
Project Description: 52 units of permanent supportive housing for the formerly homeless, especially those with mental illness, drug addiction and HIV/AIDS.
Location: Cleveland, Ohio
Client: EDEN
Cost: $5,500,000.00
Completion Date: 2006
My role: Project Manager while at Weese Langley Weese
Proposal for an invitation-only RFP for new construction affordable housing in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago.
CONSTRUCTING RESISTANCE: a site-based school for Watts Branch
The territory of a housing project can be reclaimed and rebuilt, rather than abandoned and demolished, through a strategy of reuse activated by a curriculum of protest. East Capitol Dwellings, an abandoned housing project along the polluted Watts Branch stream in Washington, D.C., is currently being erased to make room for a four hundred car parking lot and a big box grocery store.
In this thesis, as a protest against the clearing of the site, a school for education in the building trades is proposed at which students participate in a process of hands-on investigation. Each step in the student’s education is a crucial act in the physical transformation of the site. Lessons in grading and excavation lead to the revealing of a highly constructed, politically charged landscape and the shaping of a new ground; the creation of an urban junkyard through demolition and collection of site materials leads to a public place of exchange; exercises in masonry and carpentry facilitate a sense of ownership and encourage gathering through the creation of a shared porch.
Each of these actions is meant to subvert the existing physical conditions of the housing project, the very conditions that contribute to its abandonment and demolition. One such condition is the front door of each unit that would be indistinguishable from the back door was it not for the application of an iconic, yet false, pediment. This situation negates any connection to one’s home and allows for no threshold between the public space of the street and the private space of the dwelling. The rebuilding of these conditions is meant to take place incrementally, over a long period of time, allowing shifting needs to be realized without a single, prescribed end in mind.
This process is the means for redefining a marginalized community as the center of influence, transforming isolation into connection, and revealing resistance as a method of empowerment. In this place, protest is understood as both an affirmation of an alternative construction and a public assertion of dissent. Through the process, this thesis proposes the building of a collective identity that gives space to multiple voices, and seeks value in not only the present and future, but the past as well.
an art museum bridging the gap between two communities: the university of virginia and the city of charlottesville, virginia.
Exhibition of student work for the 2004 Woltz Symposium at the University of Virginia School of Architecture.
My role: Exhibition Designer and Curator
