My name is Maria Michiko Yu, and I am a Princeton University 2016 alumni, with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Architecture, Magna Cum Laude, from the Princeton School of Architecture. I graduated with a 3.7 GPA, with a particular focus on urbanism and sustainability through urban development and planning.
At Princeton, I worked under the guidance of professionals including Elizabeth Diller of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Jesse Reiser of Reiser + Umemoto, Hayley Eber of EFGH Architectural Design Studio, Mario Gandelsonas, Stan Allen, Alejandro Zaera-Polo, among others in the field.
I am currently working as Project Manager and Designer for Mancini Duffy Architecture. My position includes the coordination of final design development and construction document sets between the contractors, technical consultants, engineers, clients, and city officials, while also setting and tracking deadlines and Project Schedules for all design and construction documentation and administration for both interior and base building projects from small, middle and large scale projects. I have also designed and executed a number of projects for large clients including Omnicom International, KPMG, the Federal Reserve Bank, and National Geographic.
I have experience in an array of computational programs, including Revit Building Information Modeling, AutoCAD, Rhino3D with Grasshopper and V-Ray Plug-Ins, Adobe Creative Suite Programs, including Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign, Arduino Software and Micro-controllers, Processing open-source Programming, and Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
Mancini Duffy, New York, NY, US, Project Manager/Designer
-Coordinate final design development and construction document sets between the contractors, technical consultants, engineers, clients, and city officials
-Set and track deadlines and Project Schedules for all design and construction documentation and administration for both interior and base building projects from small, middle and large scale projects
-Regularly review and file RFI’s and submittals for architecture projects
-Designed numerous projects, including for Omnicom International, Federal Reserve Bank, National Geographic, specifying both Architectural and Interior Finishes
-Research and review Building and Zoning Codes to produce an accurate building analysis, while also determining RSF, USF, and RSF/USF Seat Ratios to maximize buildable square footage
Cuningham, Culver City, CA, US, Intern
- Generated diagrams, plans, and renderings for current developments to visually communicate the form and function of future architectural designs, while designing presentation posters for proposal booklets and site walk-throughs to win new clients
- Collaborated with Construction Managers, Architects, Interior Designers, Engineers and clients to execute successful architectural
projects that intertwine qualitative and quantitative strategy and adaptable design
- Refined visual materials with the Marketing Division to promote the branding and express the quality of projects produced by the
firm to potential clients
Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors, New York, Operations Intern
- Updated the investment management firm’s portal system with client documents in order to improve efficiency and flow of information throughout the company
- Assisted in the implementation of operational policies and procedures related to third-party investor services and the contact management system in order to ensure security, efficiency and consistency within the department
- Developed an increased attention to detail by creating and updating investor online access accounts daily and tracked all updates using Microsoft Excel
- Verified necessary documentation in order to ensure proper backup for any investor capital account activity, including new investments, contributions, withdrawals, and liquidations
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, US, BArch, Architecture
Bachelor of Arts Degree in Architecture, Magna Cum Laude, High Honors
Coursework Includes: Independent Research Architecture Studio, Computational Design, Building Science and Technology, Designing Sustainable Systems, History of Architectural Theory, Architecture and the Visual Arts, Cities and Suburban Studies, Scenic Design, Baroque Art and Architecture, Business Ethics, Calculus, Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Statistics, Ecological Evolutionary Biology, Molecular Biology, Quantitative Reasoning, Japanese
Architecture courses under guidance of: Elizabeth Diller, Mario Gandelsonas, Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Hayley Eber, Jesse Reiser, Forrest Meggers, Axel Kilian, Stan Allen, Spyros Papapetros, Lucia Allais, Nat Oppenheimer
Senior Thesis:
Choreographing Architecture: The Body and The Building
Thesis Advisor: Hayley Eber, EFGH Architectural Design Studio
Description: Site specific choreography is a conditional art which responds to the environment by providing an intimate and physical reading of the site by both the artists and the audience. Placed among alternative performance spaces, site-specific choreography ultimately makes art that can be readable by the viewer the way site-specific choreography is writable by the choreographer.
In a break from traditional modes of dance and performance, site-specific choreography reimagines a space by contemplating the historical program versus the newly contemporary activation of a place, rethinking audience perspective, amplifying material and texture of a place, and reframing the ambient noise and natural light which permeates a space. From dimension to materiality to physicality and the form of gesture, site-specific choreography is the collaboration of moving bodies with an established site to render a new reading of an architectural space.
The significant impact of site-specific choreography lies in the art-form’s capacity to reach beyond its immediate context of a traditional theater audience, to become more relevant to people in quotidian, accessible spaces populated by a public society.
As a bodily response to architecture’s physical and invisible qualities, site-specific choreography operates as a vehicle for architectural investigation. Understanding the spatial sensibilities of a choreographer’s responses to a site’s given qualities serves to delineate and emphasize elements of architecture and space. Through the close reading analysis of three distinct cases of site-specific choreography, this thesis aims to prove that the interchange between choreography and dance, by employing site-specific choreography as an innovative representational technique, is able to provide a new lens in which to read and register the experience of the built environment.
