After six years of architecture and community planning education, I'm excited to begin to work with the populations that inspired my studies: those that are too often overlooked. I have a profound belief in the possibilities inherent in tight parameters, and love to model a more sustainable future in my work, but also through my writing, art, bicycle advocacy, gardening and community work.
I graduated at the top of UC's Master's of Architecture and Master of Community Planning class of 2012, winning the AIA School Medal. I've worked in all kinds of firms all across the nation on projects ranging from pre-design to bidding to RFI's. I've been involved in small single family remodels and huge hospital redesigns. My thesis brought this technical experience to bear in a small inner-city neighborhood subject to extreme environmental injustice, and sought to provoke communication about what the city should be while defining strategies for professionals working in tight-knit communities in need of redevelopment. I'm seeking my next challenging adventure.
NBBJ, Columbus, OH, US, Cooperative Education
Managed exterior cladding construction documents for the Southeast Louisiana Veterans Health Care System Replacement Hospital in New Orleans. This required developing and maintaining a system of consistent dimensioning logic across a series of four buildings during value engineering, as well as pitching in on detailing, tagging, and participating in the team effort. All work was performed in Revit across a series of six building files due to the size and detail of the model.
Niehoff Urban Studio | Community Design Center, Cincinnati, OH, US, Designer
Provided organization and administration for the nascent Cincinnati chapter of Architecture for Humanity, including design research, marketing, and fundraising research.
Created as-built drawings, schematic design and design development drawings (including a full sketch-up model) for Sidestreams, an integrated urban farming initiative in the Madisonville neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio that will provide tilapia, eggs, mushrooms, vegetables, and organic worm castings (fertilizer) to the Cincinnati market year-round while teaching youth job values as well as farming and nutrition skills. (see http://www.sidestreams.org/)
Fuller Center Disaster ReBuilders, Orange, Texas, Cooperative Education
Performed, learned, and taught housing renovation including deconstruction, framing, wiring, tiling, drywall hanging and finishing, painting, and woodwork. Interfaced with homeowners to provide phasing and design information in real time on site. Managed small, medium, and large groups of volunteers (up to and exceeding one hundred) on site and for meals and housing at headquarters. Documented the experience in the University of Cincinnati independent student paper, The News Record, attracting national attention from the head of the Fuller Center, and a federal emergency relief agency.
anderson architects, New York, NY, US, Cooperative Education
Gained experience in global retail on projects for O'Brien wetsuits and Levi's global branding initiatives, particularly shop-in-shop installations and adaptations of the master design to particular locales to provide a consistent brand experience. Also worked on sample procurement, Levi's HQ office tenant improvement, particularly the cafe layout. Finally, documented the existing office furniture and new office space to prepare for a move.
Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects (ZGF), Seattle, Cooperative Education
Gained experience in project management, RFI's, garage, security, and fire safety requirements, hospital interior construction documents, including elevations, sections and details. Also pre-design with a LEAN process design team developing new spaces for Children's Hospital Seattle.
Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects (ZGF), Portland, Cooperative Education
Gained experience with fire-safety plans, specifications, project coordination, Ecotect, and record documents on university and healthcare projects.
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, US, Masters, Community Planning
After completing my undergraduate in architecture, I knew I wanted to engage the community in which my buildings would live. It is people, and particularly neighborhoods, which turn buildings into treasures. Without this interaction they remain sterile. And so I plunged into the social-science and public administration that surround community planning and urban design. I participated in preparing a report for Butler County based on sustainable alternatives to traditional suburban development and the benefits offered by these alterations.
I specialized in physical planning, taking courses in transportation and housing, but my thesis was based in community place making through social capital. I identified viable development models currently used by architects, planners and landscape architects in the US to engage communities undergoing redevelopment. I then identified the characteristics of the communities that made these strategies useful to the professionals. By hypothesized terms to describe these communities I hope to help first-time community designers better understand the attitudes of their clients and somewhat less conventional means of engaging and involving the community to increase ownership and benefit of design.
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, US, MArch, Architecture
A heavily independent course of study, the Masters program at UC is designed to promote independent research. I focused my efforts on understanding community dynamics in inner cities and redevelopment projects, earning a Masters in Community Planning along the way.
I was a part of the first seminars establishing the UC EcoLab, a design-build space in Over-the-Rhine aiming to offer excellence in design to the community via innovative historic and modern spatial experiences and active construction.
My thesis focused on providing a possible route to redeveloping the neighborhood of Lower Price Hill while building the community up along the theory of social capital. The site is a notorious brownfield in the warehouse district that has laid vacant since a fire in 2004. The community is urban appalachian, and clearly set apart from all other Cincinnati populations both geographically and culturally. The solution was a wooded park offering a fusion of local and appalachian flora with intimate and large gathering spaces to host interactions between a wide array of Cincinnati residents, provoking dialog and interaction, reclaiming this beautiful neighborhood by offering new opportunities to the beautiful people who live there while remediating the site and minimizing noise, air, and water pollution in the area.
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, US, Bachelors, Architecture
A thorough introduction to architectural design in four years. History, theory, structures, construction, environmental concerns both on the macro and micro level were heavily addressed and integrated with twelve design studios throughout.
I travelled to the Southwest for a quarter to experience first hand the unique mix of cultures and the effect of this melding on architecture. I focused on the construction of home throughout the region, creating a cultural center that paid homage to each of the cultures while removing itself from the traditional trip-trap tourist culture into the mountains of New Mexico.
I was a member of Students for Ecological Design throughout, serving as a treasurer my sophomore year and USGBC liaison my senior year. I was on the Dean's list every quarter and earned my LEED AP in June 2009. I was also heavily involved in service and justice issues through my church, completing one building-based (2007) and one community-planning based (2008) service trip and participating in numerous service opportunities and dialogs.
Henry Adams Medal / AIA School Medal, 1st Place
From the website:
Each year The American Institute of Architects awards an engraved medal and certificate of merit to the top-ranking graduating student in each architecture program accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board (or CACB for Canadian schools)...
Formerly called "The School Medal", the AIA Henry Adams Medal and Certificate program began in 1914 and was awarded for "general excellence in architecture throughout the four-year course to graduating students of architecture schools recognized by the Institute."
Outstanding Student | Masters of Community Planning, 1st Place
The top award conferred through the School of Planning to a student exemplifying academic excellence and service.
Cincinnati Design Award, Honorable Mention
The product of my Green Historic Preservation Design Studio (Spring 2008) was compiled by a board of professionals into a book and submitted to this design competition, yielding an honorable mention. This process was designed to offer professionals and others insight as to how they might use public finance to make historic preservation and sustainability feasible in the inner city of Cincinnati. Winning a design award increased the exposure of our findings.
From the website:
The Cincinnati Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA Cincinnati), the International Interior Design Association (IIDA) Cincinnati/Dayton City Center, the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) Cincinnati/Dayton, the Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD) Cincinnati Chapter and the Miami Section of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) invite their members to present their best work in their respective annual design competitions. All entries will be judged by a common jury of distinguished guests connected to all facets of the design profession.
It is the goal of this program to recognize local and regional designers and design firms for their outstanding work in the community and also to educate the general public to the benefits of supporting quality design.
