All posts by cdealmei

Architecture, Design, Personal Portfolio

[in]Habitable Wall- Remake Thesis

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Re-making is a process of redefinition: an opportunity to explore possibilities that were previously untapped.
In my redefinition of my previous housing project, I reiterated the concept of wall habitation and thread on three scales: the inhabitant, the apartment, and the building as a whole.
Living minimally in New York City is a challenge for housing design. The problem inspired me to reimagine the wall not only as something which defines the space we inhabit, but also as something with the potential to contain, extend, and express living space.
The program is defined around habitation requirements of light/air, storage, and resting. The wall becomes the canvas in which these three living necessities are programmatically delineated. The thinning and thickening of the wall creates pocket-spaces within which the kitchen and bathroom are contained.
As inhabitants move through the space and use interior walls to access different programmatic functions, the exterior wall shifts to accommodate these uses. The exterior wall is thus a dynamic body which transfers, projects, and imprints all living activities from inside to outside, resulting in a symbiotic relationship between wall and program.

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Architecture, Design, Personal Portfolio

Tiber Institute and Museum

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The site, Piazza Bocca della Verita (Forum Boarium) is Rome’s oldest and first public space, predating even the Forum Romanum. Adjacent to the Palentine Hill and alongside the Tiber River, it was a fundamental place of exchange, serving as a market. It contains the city’s oldest preserved temple, dedicated to Hercules Victor and a second republican era temple dedicated to the god Portunus, protector of the nearby port. The first fortification wall of the city, the Servian Wall, included the site within its boundary.
The sectional lessons ofan initial, spatial exercise provided a set of possibilities for challenging the problematic circumstances of the particular site. Invented transformations of the analyzed urban space, Trastevere/St. Peter’s spatial sequence, became tools, like swiss army knives that can be unfolded and configured to resolve a particular circumstance while extending the palimpsest of the city. Three primary programmatic elements were given- a Think Tank (the Tiber Institute), a Museum of the Cloaca Maxima, and a Chamber Music Performance Hall. They were to be conjoined and address individually as well as collectively the ongoing issues of contextual integration through exhibition, performance, assembly, and housing. Collectively, the project is intended to act as a mirror to the cumulative essence of the city’s larger context.

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Architecture, Design, Personal Portfolio

Customizable Skatepark

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This project began with an analysis of a material, concrete. I focused on its properties of evolution from beginning to end; a fluid material that can be molded to a desired form, and then cured into a solid state—liquid stone. This led me to a study of concrete skateparks as a program because of the diversity of form.
Through a movement analysis of skaters during the performance of different tricks, I generated various modules that can be combined in multiple ways, essentially creating a dialogue of construction between the components and the skaters that will build their ideal skatepark. This allows for a flexible assemblage to take place.

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Architecture, Design, Personal Portfolio

[in]Habitable Wall

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The basis of the project is adaptation and an imprinting of information onto surfaces. After the analysis of moveable, adaptable surfaces and surface complexities which create depth on a semi-flat surface, my ephemeral surface was created.
Its language is a translation of the occupants’ dialogue with the interior, which is projected outward. The street-front facade is alive to the rhythm and needs of the inhabitants. Its language is a result of light allowance, storage, resting, and space separation. The program’s organization provides the foundations for how the dialogue is translated. The translated usage is enigmatic to those outside. However, it is grasped only from within, by its users that create the esoteric text of the transitory narrative of habitation.

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Design, Furniture, Personal Portfolio

Adaptable Coffee Table

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The scenario of a bachelor living in a small studio apartment in the East Village of New York City was the premise and inspiration for this table. The design is a reaction to the limited space in the apartment. Its features include two pocket sleeve drawers on opposite sides, spaces within the table tops for storage, and rotating table tops that allow for an extension of the surface to adapt to the user’s needs.