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Maria Kobalyan

Maria Kobalyan

Los Angeles, CA, US

 
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About 

Maria Kobalyan is dynamic and detail-oriented designer with strong skills in art, architecture, design and sociable systems. She holds a B.F.A in Interior Architecture with Honors from Woodbury University School of Architecture. She has currently launched a jewelry line Vertexx. Vertexx focuses on an architectural approach where objects become starting points for daily conversations. Hence, creating genderless accessories by drawing the lines to emulate us towards human emotion. 

http://vertexx.la

Elsewhere:

Employment 

Goodnight and Company, Sherman Oaks, CA, US, Production Coordinator // Design Assistant

A full service union set construction and prop fabrication shop serving IATSE Locals in 33, 44, 729 and 800.

Managing film production schedules and budgets, meeting the needs of crew members on set, and performing detailed shop drawings for construction of sets.
Managing Social Media Platforms and documenting process of builds.

Oct 2017 - Feb 2020
 

Materials & Applications, Silver Lake, CA, Exhibition Coordinator

Event & Special Project Planning // Management, Grants, Workshops, Vendor Registration. Social Media Outreach with website and Instagram management.

Project Management:
TURF: A Mini-Golf Project explores the meaning of terrain and territory in Los Angeles through the architecture of mini-golf. The mini-golf course becomes a playful trope of the city of Los Angeles, articulated through artificial terrains, winding territories and fantastical architecture. Launched as an open call in 2015, TURF asked architects, designers and artists to design a single architectural obstacle that investigates a contemporary Los Angeles condition — including topics such as drought and lawns, parking and traffic, nature and neighborhoods, housing typologies and identity — in the form of the miniature and the absurd. Materials & Applications (M&A) presents nine architectural obstacles that explore topics relevant to Los Angeles today, including topography and territory, greenscapes and waterscapes, housing and traffic, and the ground beneath our feet. Both pleasure and obstacle are par for the course.

May 2015 - Dec 2016
 

Woodbury University, Burbank, CA, US, Instructor

Art of Architecture Summer Program Instructor (Summer 2015, Summer 2016)

Lesson Planning: summer architecture camp for students 4th – 8th grade.

"Students will be working in the computer lab, experimenting with 3-d printing and laser cutting, and learning about architecture through traditional and digital hand drawing and model making exercises. Projects from previous summers include building a group city model, designing building components using the laser cutter, constructing a bridge and testing its strength, and drawing a house using digital software."

Jun 2015 - Jul 2016
 

Woodbury University, Burbank, Teacher Assistant

Design Communications 2 Course -Teaching Undergraduates fundamental design skills such as layout, spatial organization, composition, color schemes, line-weights.
Introducing them such software: Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and In-Design, 3D modeling & Rendering with Rhino 3D (Maxwell) and AutoCad, advancing student research skills.

Jan 2014 - May 2016
 

Neil M. Denari Architects, Inc, Culver City, CA, US, Graphic Designer

Graphic Designer of book: Chromatopia: Generally DIfferent Towers for Shanghai

Project Director: Neil Denari
Editor: Jia Gu
Publisher: UCLA Architecture & Urban Design
Exhibition: Shanghai Urban Art Biennale 2015
September 2015

"Chromatopia, at first, aims to be a collective project designed by eight individuals, a collective enterprise that negotiates its individual differences within a regime of agreement. The utopic overtones (or undertones?) openly engage the premise of a new and different world, yet the world depicted here is made up of the existing impulses of Shanghai. More towers, more programs, more color - to offer at a political level more publicness too, which may be more atopic in its mission, that is, to make a borderless utopia, one that would infect the life and spirit of the city." - Neil Denari

What is left to be said, in 2015, about the state of the high rise, especially concerning Shanghai, a city that has more than 1400 buildings over 100 meters tall? Neil Denari and his students in the UCLA A.UD Research Studio 2014-15 investigate this question during a year-long study of high rise towers and vertical density in the city of Shanghai. The result is a collection of speculative designs (fictional and financial) and accompanying scenarios presented against a backdrop of topics including the global city, political conformity, social mobility, migrant labor, and invisible currencies - all in the form of 24 high rise towers.

The publication includes essays by Professor Neil Denari and UCLA Ph.D Student Jia Yi Gu, along with a selection of photos by Shanghai-based photographer Tim Franco.

Jul 2015 - Sep 2015
 

TRIO Entertainment Services Group, Burbank, Production Assistant

Internship: hands on experience in
-Assistant Design/ Scenic Painting
-Archiving/ Project Photography
-Banners/ Step and Repeat/ Billboards
-Vinyl cut lettering/ Signage
-Trade Shows/ Event Installation

May 2013 - Jan 2014
 

Education 

Woodbury University, Burbank, CA, US, Bachelors, Interior Architecture

Jan 2013 - May 2016
 

ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, CA, US, Public Programs- Variety

Jan 2010 - Dec 2012
 

Awards 

IIDA Haunt Couture 2014, 1st Place

Student Winner

2014
 

Areas of Specialization 

Skills