A R C H I T E C T U R A LP O R T F O L I O

alziramaldonado@gmail.com

M.ARCH CANDIDATEILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY CLASS OF 2014

B.ARCHUNIVERSITY OF LOS ANDES CLASS OF 2009

TABLE OF CONTENTS

01 MERIT SCHOOL OF MUSIC

02 THE ACOUSTIC CHAIR

03 CONDO RENOVATION

04 ARCHITECTURAL ELEMENTS

05 MINISTRY OF TREASURE ARCHIVE

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Merit School of Music in the west loop of Chicago strives to provide high-quality music education to all. A proposed extension of the school would include a one hundred additional practice rooms, classrooms, cafe, administrative offices and auditorium.

The concept of the project is to have an sculptur-al auditorium hidden in the center of the building. Looking from the street through the windows of the 20’ first floor the auditorium can be seeing and invites to enter the building to discover the architecture that this offer.

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First Floor Plan Second Floor Plan Third and Fourth Floor Plan

The music school is in the above floors having all the practice rooms with natural light and view. The second floor of the building connects to the old Merit school for an easy circulation for the students and staff.

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The concept behind the acoustic chair began with the idea of sound and space. Acoustic panels were then inspiration for the design since acous-tic panels are often used in spaces that involves sound and music. Most acoustic panels are triangular or irregular in shape for acoustic purposes and are occasionally finished with holes/perforations for reverberation. This is where the idea of the shape of the acoustic chair was formed.

Its significant purpose is to function as a comfortable seating furniture as well as an acoustic component for the user and its surroundings.

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Before

After

The project is the renovation design of a condo of 4.600 sf in Bogotá, Co-lombia. The idea behind the project was to modernize some spaces from this condo from 1980’s. The client was looking bring more light into the spaces, change the chimney, have a formal media room, and an office space.

The idea to modernize the chimney was to make it pop-up from the rest of the white walls adding color and unique details to it. The face was change for a black tile with spacings in stainless steal strips and wood logs as decorations details.

Before After

The living room and the dining room were integrated by demolishing the wall between them and placing a loose wall to allow the entry of light into the space.

The built in furnisher was updated by reducing the amount of shelves, placing new ones with different forms and making them smaller to have more white surface on the walls to have reflection of sun light.

Before After

The media room was a dark space were the tv and the office space happened in the same area. In order to increase the space, it was demolished a hot sauna that it was being used as a stor-age space.

The tv and the office space were separated, new furnisher was placed and new lighting was added to illuminate the space.

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After

A new entrance door to the media room was created in order to have a design piece in the space.

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For this new residential building it was designed some architectural elements as the handrail for the balconies, a metallic balcony and a spiral staircase.

The handrail for the balconies were design in glass and stainless steal. This elements are attach to the facade of the building being transparent to do not interrupt the view to the outside.

A metallic balcony was designed for the penthouse. The client wanted to have an outside space between his and his wife’s office. The balcony’s floor was designed in a metallic mesh to do not obstruct the sunlight in the condo below.

The spiral staircase was designed for the pent-house to go out to the private roof deck. The concept behind the design was to made a modular stair in the shop that could be placed easily and fast, and to be a design element by it self in the condo.

The spiral stair is made in wood and stainless steal details. Each step has embedded a circu-lar stainless steal piece with a hole on it to be placed in the center post, and they are sepa-rated from each other by a circular tube. These pieces are the ones who are receiving the com-pression forces from the stair.

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The project aims to integrate the center of the block with the ex-isting system of public space in the sector. We propose a building, which releases first floor area to put it at service of the pedestri-ans. The project proposes an architectural walkway through the patios in the center of the block.The site is the last block of the sector that offers the opportunity to recover the scale, character and the original morphology of theneighborhood. For this reason we propose the replacement oftypological elements of the block through the delicate insertion ofsmall-scale buildings. The proposed architecture reinterprets thetraditional volumes of colonial architecture in order to give con-tinuity to the domestic level prevailing in the block and in the historic neighborhood.Similarly, in order to recover the original character and the mor-phology of the block, the buildings fold to offer a variety of lev-els in its volume, this is in order to reproduce the structure that existed prior the demolition. The project aims to prevent the use of monumental buildings dramatically affecting the scale of the block and its relationship to the surrounding environment.

Bird’s eye view

First Floor Plan

Second Floor Plan

Transversal Section

Entrance Facade

The project proposes the areas of bibliographic storage, institutional records storage, artwork, and security integrated in a building technically de-signed for safekeeping and conservation. The proj-ect aims to integrate all deposits in a single build-ing, which is located in the center of the project. This allows all departments to be connected with the storage area with equal distance.

Entrance Facade

Preservation andTypological Replacement

The conceptual focus of the preservation efforts are aimed to preserv-ing the traditional hierarchy of spaces and the sequence between them. The main action on the colonial houses has been to consolidate the two patios in order to accommodate the new use and fit into a larger-scale project: The Ministry of Treasure Archive. This decision allowed the houses operate as a unit within the overall composition.The proposal intervene existing walls consolidating and confining them to improve the earthquake resistance, and it incorporates connector elements to ensure the distribution of horizontal forces to the assembly.

Structure and Materials

The buildings that conform the block are proposed as monoliths ofstone, which are inspired by the solidness of religious colonialarchitecture in the sector.The propose is to copy the pattern of the walls of the Church of SanAgustín. The project applies this stone pattern to the new buildingswith a contemporary technique. To do this, it was took the colonialinterlocking and fold it to the shape of the facade; the walls and roofs of the proposed buildings. Additionally, the concrete structure isshown in the facade to show the principal structure.The storage building and the computer center walls are glass blockswhich give a firm image to them, but permit the entrance of light.