While this vacation home was under construction, I was responsible for designing and producing a drawing set for the owner's kitchen. Due to the client's particular needs, it was necessary to maintain constant contact during the design process. Despite multiple revisions prior to release, the accuracy and detail of the set enabled the millworker to build directly without the need for extensive shop drawings.

The Maimonides School had undergone multiple renovations and additions since the original concrete vault and brick structure was built in the sixties. The congregation's request was to unify and expand their campus enabling them to accommodate a growing religious community. While working at Hajian Architects I was responsible for producing the building sections and details, an extensive millwork bid package, presentation models, and much more. The project stretched on for multiple years, during which time I documented the construction process, attended regular construction and client meetings, and dealt first hand with the general contractor.

(All photographs in this gallery are courtesy of Chris Johnson Architectural Photography)

This home in the suburbs of Boston no longer fit a growing family's needs. They approached Hajian Architects with a request for a new kitchen and family room, front entry vestibule, as well as a master suite. Built on a sloping site, the original home was surrounded by oversized renovations irrespective of their context, the owners were not interested in repeating that mistake. Ultimately a curved addition with sensitive massing that mirrored the landscape was built. I was responsible for developing the partner's initial sketch into a construction document set.

critic: Ellen Grimes

This first year studio introduced the techniques of representation in architecture and the need for rigorous thought in decision making. Presented with the task of reactivating a stagnant building in a spectacular location, the proposed addition utilized the existing formal orientation and introduced active cladding materials in order to give the occupants (intended for a technology based arts program) the ability to manipulate the physical presence of this historic Chicago landmark.

critic: Sydney Robinson

This first year studio dealt with the inevitable similarities and differences that arise when designing. Based on the notion that multiple solutions exist for any one request for a building, and that overlaps are abundant the problem presented was to distinguish between a chain bookstore and a public branch library. Latching onto two clear distinctions, the design proposals are similar but unique. Ultimately a bookstore is a commercial venture, meaning that the architecture must retain its profitability even if the bookstore is not successful. A branch library is not the repository of yesterday, but it is the community center of today and therefore must retain its position and stature within the neighborhood.

critic: Michael Arenson

This purpose of this exercise was to produce a set of documents that tracked the development of a design from the initial site and program diagrams all the way through the detailing of the exterior wall and cladding system in short, to produce a set of drawings suitable for bidding. The emphasis being on the technical development not the presentation.

collaborator: Michael Hanley
critics: Daniel Wheeler | David Brown

This project deals with the issues of mixed income housing, a historically isolated site (former location of public housing), the impact of vehicles on planning, and the necessity for housing to have the ability to adapt and grow as requirements change. Based on the concept of plug and play, a modular system was designed that allowed for different housing units to be plugged into an infrastructure host. Additionally, programmatic elements were physically and metaphorically introduced throughout the site in order to bridge the two parcels all linked to a central pedestrian spine.

collaborator: Carlyn So
critics: Doug Garofalo | Geoff Goldberg | Clare Lyster | Kathy O'Donnell

Where generally park functions are kept independent in the landscape, linked only by the exterior circulation, here we are asked to house two park activities, circulation, and utilities in one building. The activities housed may vary widely in lifestyle a skatepark and a velodrome, but they become inevitably intermingled at critical points where these distinct user cultures overlap. The universal, adaptive nature of the park building takes the form of a pristine box on three sides with the fourth side blending into the less defined circulation space. The landscaped utilities are used as anchors for these varied structures as well as to further tie this particular site into what is proposed to be a path or network of future parks.

collaborator: Joshua Cooper
critics: Daniel Wheeler | Jeremy Olsen
consultant: Walter Netsch

The Architecture Building at the University of Illinois at Chicago was never completed. The lack of funding that halted its completion has continued to be a burden. In addition, years of bad decisions and poor judgement has stripped the remaining dignity from it, leaving it the butt of every guest lecturers joke. This class sought to reverse the trend, but to do so within the guidelines of education. Proposals were made, budgets presented, approvals granted, supplies acquisitioned, hours or work completed, and ultimately awards and accolades received.

(All photographs in the "entire class" gallery are courtesy of Hedrich Blessing)

critics: David Brown | Bryant Pitak

In December of 2005, the Mayor's Institute on City Design met at the University of Illinois at Chicago. At this conference eight municipalities were teamed up with groups of architects in order to look at specific areas of infrastructure and transportation that are currently, or projected to be, issues of concern. This seminar provided the necessary research and documentation required to facilitate productive design charrettes. The work that was produced is currently being compiled into a publication that aims to graphically categorize and document metropolitan infrastructure.

critics: Xavier Vendrell | Doug Voigt

The University of Illinois at Chicago is located in a vibrant urban location Chicago. However, the campus suffers a profound displacement from that urban location. Many things have attributed to the current situation, and not all are addressable. History cannot be changed, the neighborhood that once thrived in this location has forever been erased, but that does not preclude the emergence of a new one one that is Chicago. Through the investigation of what distributes program in a city, what informs its layout and adjacencies, what attributes to its vibrancy, a new layer of urban fabric is proposed for UIC.