Portfolio

Moreo Riveraa portfolio of works

table of contents projects

gallery IIroom+gardenboat landingtrailergalleryIcube

exhibitions + competitions parking garagevirginia society3rd year competition stretto housegraphics

gallery II room+garden boat landing trailer gallery I cube

The gallery is situated on a site shared by the town of Blacksburg and the University. The program consists of an outdoor sculpture garden, large gallery space, auditorium, storage and mechanical space. As the proposal is intended to service both the academic and local community, the primary gallery space elevates itself from the town floor in order to form to large outdoor plaza spaces. The entrance lobby serves as the primary means of circulation as well as the bounding mass between the two plazas spaces. The large supports of the elevated floor plate serve as emergency egress, freighted access and mechanical shafts. Housed below the plaza spaces are the auditorium, administrative offices, storage space and mechanical facilities. By providing a place for gathering, the form of the elevated gallery acts as the mediator between the town fabric and that of the university. The flexibility of the bounded space facilitates use for town functions , gallery related events and general use of the university student body.

gallery II | a public space

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Photographs of models show how the manufacture of pre-cast concrete panels can be utilized on the gallery’s interior. By integrating the formwork into a systematic peg-like grid, strategic openings can be cast to control natural lighting. Fascened to mounts in the form-tie openings, a treated aluminium panel can used to wash the gallery walls with indirect natural light. One side of the panel can be treated to accomopany the displayed artwork while the other can remain reflective. A cove within the concrete opening can offer housing for artificial light depending on gallery hours or artwork demand.

The room and garden intervention was proposed for a restricted interior courtyard of a university building on the edge of downtown Blacksurg. When asked to make the proposal, it was expected that a new intervention stand alone however, the vertical nature of this urban room offered too great a potential to be ignored. The room already existed in a set of tangible conditions defined by brick and tightly bound open space. The idea for a grass pod system seemed fitting for a school heavily involved in agricultural research. In addition, the tension between a desire for urban density and the necessity for expanse in agriculture offered an opportunity to explore a dynamic interrelationship for future urban development. A secondary steel structure fastened by butterfly anchor bolts would be applied to the brick veneer and anchored to the primary CMU core structure. From this, a series of steel mounting rods would service as anchors for the grass-panel pods covering the brick face in an irregular, undulating form. The surface of the buildings transformed into a vertical grass garden that provides a large area for agricultural testing and a quiet space for observation and contemplation.

room + garden | an urban condition


The mounting structure extends beyond the limit of the interior facades in order to signify hidden program to passerbys on the main street sidewalk. The panel system appears to be a growth on the exisiting structures, offering a new articulation for this already exisiting urban room.

Perched on the banks of lake Lugano Switzerland, the boat landing proposal is a mediator between the land and water. Housing a small cafe, ticket booth and waiting area the terminal integrates itself into the existing Lugano boat service. The roof plane is given prominence as it offers the greatest opportunity for public gathering and views of the lake. As any other proposal would take valuable waterfront property away from the community, the stacked roofs planes offer a new geometric scape while providing areas of refuge and shelter from the elements. Wedged below the largest of the planes is the cafe waiting area and ticket booth. The steel atrium structure adjacent to it provides natural light, a covered walkway and access to an outdoor rest room. The cantilevered floor plate offers a perimeter vista as well as a direct access to the boat landing closest to the water front. Toward the south side of the cafe, the roof is held inward in order to maximize southern exposure for the winter months. Though the terminal is primarily used in the summer months, the form of the landing retains a universal use as it offers towns people consistent access to the waterfront.

boat landing | the roof plane


The floor plate of the terminal is angled and shifted outwards to invite the arrival of incoming boats. As passengers depart from the boat, they are met by the atrium space that leads directly into the cafe, public rest rooms or toward the town of Riva San Vitale. The irregular shift in the concrete plates generate areas of play and rest for the local people. With the integration of intermediate steps, the ascent to the roof offers a new perspective on the Swiss waterfront. Just south of the terminal, chunks of the roof plates are depressed into the ground for seating terraces that overlook a small bocce ball court.

Often considered a restriction by the industry standard, the module home dimension offers great potential. The seemingly small floor area brings the importance of quality architecture to the forefront. The 12 x 60 foot footprint encompasses 2 bedrooms, living space, kitchen and bath. The floor plan has no doors and attains the desired privacy through a series of shifted openings. The proposal utilizes a series of staggered, transparent roof structures in order to regulate the flooding of natural light into the space from above. Concealed within the roof line of the trailer below lies a curved, interior roof that provides thermal enclosure and a means of mitigating water. As the density of program demands acute attention to proper planning, so does the necessity to control natural lighting without sacrificing privacy. The hardened pine finish of the trailer’s exterior retains a neutral palette for the series of floating planes above. The boxed steel roof planes, with polypropylene fastened to top and bottom, appear to hover above the living vessel below. With minor steel mounts placed below, the roofs extend to provide shade and shelter to decks and walkways.

trailer | module living


The roof plan corresponds with the layout of the living space below. The two darker roofs on either end of the plan shade the bedrooms in order to instill a sense of privacy. The largest of the planes hovers over the living and kitchen area to diffuse more intense light in the common space. The concealed roof, below the other three, provides the most direct natural light along the walls of the internal circulation. As one walks from the living area to the rest room, they follow the most intense natural light generated by the choreography of the roof planes above.

The cube gallery is designed to house the work of 16 fellow students. Proceeding a project that required the design of a 16x16 inch cube, the gallery reflected a specific program; to display these cubes. Extracted from the cube design, are moments within the gallery that reveal material connections. Flanked by two timber framed structures is the heavy, concrete entrance that acts as the spine of the gallery. At the end of this concrete corridor is a large portal, framing a view of the stream on the site only feet below. As the transition is made from the entrance, turning left or right, the visitor is washed by natural light from above as they see the array of cubes for the first time. Organized in a linear fashion, the 2 rows of 4 cubes follow the flow of the stream from east to west. Perched on thin white frames, the cubes are displayed with the stream as the backdrop to the south and an opaque concrete wall to the north. The plan of the gallery mimics the order of the joint in the cube project; two uniform pieces, joined by a third through one internal structure. The structure of the floor is revealed through the glass on the south face. Acting as one, the parts of the gallery connect to make one cohesive room.

gallery I | a room for cubes


site plan

floor plan

Heavily weighted by the presence of large cherry wood members, the 16x16 inch cube is the result of a collision between 3 cubes and a cylinder. The interface of the 3 implied cubic members forms a 4th cube at the center. The primary face of this cube is delineated by a steel plate that when corroded, turns the reddish brown of the surrounding wood members. The individual members of cherry wood are held in doweled friction joints. The 1/8” revealed joint throughout fortifies a sense of interdependence. As the members were cut and drilled, so too were the dowels. The intricacies of connections reveal a network of planes and volumes that create a uniform whole. Through the assembly of parts, the finalization of the cube becomes more difficult however, ultimately more stable. In order to ascertain the solidarity of the cube, a sound understanding of and respect for the joints and materials was paramount. The language of the revealed joint connections is the same as that of the part to whole relationship between the cube and the secondary cubes.

cube | material + joint


The urban condition of Blacksburg is delineated along one axis created by Main Street. Most of the buildings downtown are oriented towards the vehicular traffic passing through the city. Instead of creating a single point of density to allow radial growth, the town stretches along Main Street. The position of the site is a crucial interstitial space between the outlying suburban areas, campus, and downtown. To this effect, the current use of the land as an open parking lot does not acknowledge its latent potential to laterally expand downtown. The proposal is for an urban mass where the bottom floors are occupied by a parking structure and grocery store, with the top floors devoted to residential usage. Carved out of the urban core are primary pedestrian paths, structural circulation cores, natural lighting setbacks and an urban park for public gathering. The dual orientation of the building, a unified, discernible facade and multiple interior facades demand the necessary development of rear elevations of buildings adjacent to main street.

parking garage | a new urban core

parking garage virginia society 3rd year competition stretto house graphics


The proposal in the 2010 Virginia society competition was for a visitor’s center on Belle Island Virginia. With deep roots from the civil war era, the island was home of a confederate army prison and transitively embodies a dramatic history. The visitor center design removes all narrative from existing relic’s and ruins. Housed below a major vehicular bridge, the walls of the proposal enclose a suspended pedestrian walkway. The burnt oak panels generate a long, dark space dimly lit by natural light from above. A series of bridges and openings offer points of access and observation for visitors. Below is the text provided to accompany the board in its final presentation.

‘space is a vehicle for observing and influencing human behavior. in this space the narrative acts as a dialect for the human behavior of the present through the romantic historicization of the past. the space is emancipated from its romantic narrative which frees the artifact from the latent past and brought to the conscious of the present.’

virginia society | interstice



The 3rd competition called for the design of a detonation tower, observation deck, lab testing facility and naturally ventilated material research space. The tower and facility were designed to accompany a local stone quarry. As the utility in function of quarry depletes over time, so too should the primary functions of the programmatic elements of the design proposal. The vignettes at the base of the board, show the natural growth in the adjacent wooded area in conjunction with the deterioration of the tower facility. Once the quarry is completely stripped, the observation deck is all that remains functional in the facility. Just as an object introduced into a body of water generates a change in the waters surface, the presence of the tower and quarry resemble ripples in the fabric of time.

3rd year competition | ripple in time



In conjunction with a class on structure and assembly, the case study exhibition was a tool to investigate the work of an architect while facilitating our development in presentation skills. The case study was in an depth analysis of Steven Holl’s Stetto House. A quarter inch section model was constructed to better understand the spatial relationships of the buildings interior as well as the formal relationships of the exterior. The dynamic interface of the curvilinear steel roof with the rectilinear CMU cores of the house complex generates an intricate whole comprised of seemingly disjunct parts. The cascade of orthogonal concrete plinths connecting the CMU components provide the foundation for the steel framework. Fastened to curved tube steel, the steel roof structure syncopates between the orthogonal forms. The drawings that accompanied the model emphasized structural connections and the overall architecture composition.

stretto house | case study



A semester long course in etch printing offered an opportunity to explore graphic layout and composition. Using steel plates and hand-mixed oil based paints, the print process demands patience and calculation in order to achieve a desired design. Once applied to the steel plates, the oil paint is transferred to a slightly soaked paper by being run through a steel rolling press. The studies offered insight to a new creative process and the work of graphic designers and architects.

graphics | print making



moreo rivera | a portfolio of worksbachelor of architecture virginia tech 2011

3 echo lanebrewster ny. 10509914. 646. [email protected]

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