The Plug-and-Play Harvard House proposes a new model for academic housing that addresses the expanding role of networked digital culture in higher education. As classes, seminars, and research are increasingly co-ordinated and attended virtually, the academic residence is increasingly becoming the locus for educational activities. A new model must support these unconventional academic activities, while recognizing and embracing the resulting blurred boundaries between living, learning and play.

Rather than providing a rigid set of spatial resources, the residence must become a flexible infrastructure that allows for rapid adaptation to spontaneous academic and non-academic activities that are often driven by students themselves. Furthermore, it must allow for future unforeseen operational changes due to the rapidly changing social, technological and educational needs of students.

The ambition of the Fall 2008 GSD Housing studio was not only to imagine what student living might be like in 20 years, but also to directly engage those at Harvard who are currently in the process of planning the development of future undergraduate housing.

During the course of the term I set up communication with the Harvard Crimson newspaper to communicate the studio's design efforts, and was later chosen to present my design to the Allston Development Board, key members of the Faculty of Arts and Science, Deans of the Harvard Colleges, and the President of Harvard.

Cambridge, Ontario is a mid-sized post-industrial city located on the Grand River, Ontario. Once known for its extensive textile manufacturing industry, Cambridge has gone through a series of economic and demographic shifts due to the decline of the industrial manufacturing sector in its downtown.

Recently, the city has taken a number of steps towards the densification and renewal of its downtown core, including the relocation of the University of Waterloo School of Architecture. Along with several small art galleries and theatres, Cambridge has the potential to reposition itself as a creative city while maintaining a link to its industrial past. By relocating the Textile Museum of Canada to Cambridge, the opportunity exists to nurture an authentic urban culture in the historic downtown core.

The proposed Textile Museum of Canada defines an public urban space within downtown Cambridge to foster this vision. The museum links to the cultural and built heritage of Cambridge through its rich materiality, industrially scaled spaces, and connection to the Grand River.

The Mausoleum of Augustus is a tomb built to the emperor Caesar Augustus on the Campus Martius in Rome. Completed in 28BC, the structure has been used as a mausoleum for Roman imperial families, a fortified medieval castle, an aristocratic garden, an arena, and a 19th century enclosed concert hall. The surrounding Piazza Augusto Imperatore was cleared of adjoining late Renaissance structures by Mussolini in the 1930's and isolated as an inert ancient monument.

The following project proposes a new masterplan and architectural intervention that attempts to reconcile the various layers of the site's history, while using the Mausoleum itself to catalyze urban life in and around the piazza. The Mausoleum is aggressively re-imagined as a gallery for Augustan statuary.

A series of steel framed pavilions are inserted into the existing void spaces of the Mausoleum, and act as gallery spaces and lecture theatres. The pavilions are arranged to exploit the qualities of the existing spaces, and also reach out to connect and activate the surrounding urban context.

Founded in 2006, RVTR is a multidisciplinary academic research-based design/architecture/urbanism firm focusing on sustainable innovation. I worked to develop several design and research projects, including the Post-Carbon Highway, Pampas House and Latitude Housing.

The Post-Carbon Highway explores the urban potentials of regional infrastructure design, and speculates on how new fuels and transportation realities whill shape future populations, ecologies and economies along the highway.

The research focuses on Highway 401, the primary transportation trunk in the Great Lakes Megaregion. I worked to assemble and visualize ecological, economic, transportation and GIS data, and used this information to frame speculations of the potential future of the 401. RVTR's research is ongoing, and has been included in several exhibitions and publications, and was most recently featured in the Alphabet City/MIT Press publication FUEL.

The Pampas House represented research into the single family housing type sited in the Argentine Pampas. The prototype responds to program and performance criteria through a sculptural form made possible by advanced computer-controlled design and fabrication techniques.

The Latitude Housing system was developed as research into advanced sustainable housing and mass-customized production systems in extreme climate conditions. The approach recognizes the radical potential of single-family housing systems to evolve in response to socio-economic and environmental needs.

The Latitude Housing system was awarded Honorable Mention in the 2008 Living Steel International Design competition. As a team member I helped develop the overall design strategies, rapidly iterate design options, and execute the final competition entry.

The new Manitoba Hydro Place is a 22 storey office tower designed as an energy efficient model for extreme climate conditions. Acting as a catlyst for the revitalization of downtown Winnipeg, Manitoba, the building creates urban connections across the site through a public central atrium and external landscaping. Working with Transsolar, the tower is designed to maximize passive solar and ventillation effects, utilizing a series of stacked internal atriums that also create vertical social neighbourhoods.

As a member of the design team, I prepared construction documents and was directly involved in the design development of large scale building systems and interior elements. I developed key skills in detailing and advanced building envelope design. Furthermore, I took initiatives to use digital modelling as a method of designing, testing and ultimately communicating construction details.

The Manitoba Hydro Place is currently close to completion, and received a 2006 Canadian Architect Award of Excellence, as well as a number of sustainable building awards.

The Langara College Library is designed as a sustainable building that responds sculpturally to its specific urban and ecological context. The curvilinear roof form serves to maximize passive ventillation effects through strategically placed wind towers.

The spaces formed by the wind towers also generate a sequence of public spaces inside the building. Furthermore, the roof form inflects towards the surrounding public spaces of the college campus and up towards Vancouver's mountain range.

My major responsibilities included the development of the complex roof form, design visualization, and working drawings. I played a major role in rationalizing the roof geometry and preparing it for construction documentation.

The Langara College Library was recently completed, and received a 2005 Canadian Architect Award of Excellence, and a 2006 Holcim Award for Sustainable Design.