This document contains Donald Olsen's graduate portfolio, which summarizes several of his architectural projects from graduate school. It includes brief descriptions of 9 projects he worked on, including urban design projects in Dallas and Rio de Janeiro, a border crossing design in Laredo, Texas, an elevated tree house museum, and his graduate thesis on designing modular housing. For each project there is a short description of the objectives and focus of Olsen's design work. The portfolio also includes diagrams, photos, and videos related to some of the projects.

1. Donald Olsen
Graduate Portfolio

2. Trinity River Revival 1
Dallas the Connected City
ARC 451- Urban Design
The Transition Between 3
Designing a Border Crossing
ARC 452- Design Integration
Elevated Life Tree House Museum 5
Displaying a Building Collection
ARC 550- Regional Design
2016 Olympic Legacy Plan for Rio De Janeiro 7
Designing a Community
ARC 551- Comprehensive Studio
Fabricating an Assembly of Connections 9
Graduate Thesis
ARC 552- Independent Thesis Studio
TABLE OF CONTENTS

3. Trinity River Revival
Dallas the Connected City
ARC 451- Urban Design
Dallas, Texas
• Objectives:
• Enhance major spine connections,
providing pedestrian-scale amenities.
• Create and develop new interest
along the levee to support the Trinity
River as a grand public space.
• Developed small, incremental
pedestrian nodes as the beginning of
new anchors for the area;
• One goal was to enhance existing
site and introduce new spaces
dominated by green space and water
elements to create an enjoyable
experience leading to and from the
river.
• Dallas the connected city as an
Urban design project offered me the
opportunity to design beyond the
context of one lot, one block, but
rather a large percentage of an entire
city. The site offered a number of
challenges including the highways,
flooding risks, and division of spaces.
• The main area of my focus was on
the Civic Center design as well as the
surrounding area.
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5. The Transition Between
Designing a Border Crossing
ARC 452- Design Integration
Laredo, Texas
• Objectives:
• This design challenge was to
redesign an existing border crossing.
• Due to the complexity of a border
crossing there were a number os
program space decisions needed
within the design including: a police
station, staff living quarters, offices,
an impound warehouse and dog
kennels.
• The smaller mid lane building is
intended to be a truck registration
and check in station. It would also
serve as a customs office for all the
commercial vehicles passing through.
• One of the major design goals
was continued lines of sight that run
from the interior to exterior of the
buildings.
• The bridge above the lanes is
intended to be an open walkable green
space open to the passing trucks who
may be stopped.
• The overall goal was to create an
inviting, efficient crossing.
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First Floor Plan Second Floor Plan
East/ West Section
North/ South Section
Scan QR Code for
Walk Through Video

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7. www.autodesk.com/revit
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Elevated Life Tree House Museum
Displaying a building collection
ARC 550- Regional Design
Rend Lake, Illinois
• Objectives:
• Develop and design a museum
for the purpose of displaying a
collection of treehouses.
• This design was based on the
inherant nature of an elevated space
while still trying to memorable spaces.
• One goal was to create the
“dinosaur effect”, meaning the
creation of an iconic grand entrance.
• To create the “dinosaur” this design
includes a permanant tree house built
into the main atrium space.
• Like many tree houses, this design
offers a multiple ways into the
exhibition space from the ground
level.
• The walking paths that travel
through the site lead to the rotating
building collection (not pictured).
• The exterior louvres are inspired
by a number of cladding systems
including the Loblolly House,
Maryland.
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Project Abstract: Designing a great tree house only requires two
things, imagination and desire. Tree houses are something created in
a plethora of regions all of the world and no two are exactly the same.
Each tree house does however share some similar guiding principals:
the tectonic relationship of the tree house to the tree itself, the variety
of styles of connections at these intersections, that have successfully
worked, the journey from ground to the platform, and the artistic
factor that comes into tree house design. The connections to the trees
is an important part of how tree houses work. Some rely on bolted
connections and cables while others let gravity do all the work. The
journey from the ground to the platform is an important element for
any tree house. It can tell a story, provide intended views, and leave
people with a variety of specific memories about their journey. The
artistic factor is clearly seen in overall design because overall there
are no rules beyond connection principles and physics in tree house
design. Creativity is something that is encouraged to run free with tree
houses, making them the ideal candidates to see the inner child come
out in many designers.
Elevated Life Tree House Museum is one that envisions
a community of both children and adults that are inspired by the
whimsical nature of a tree house. Our goal is one of exhibition,
inspiration and education pertaining to tree houses and the wonder
they excite in people based on the aforementioned guiding principles.
Ultimately our goal is to inspire more people to experience a view
from above and feel the magic that is a tree house.
Exploded Building Model
Building Section
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Walk Through Video
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9. 2016 Olympic Legacy Plan for Rio De Janeiro
Designing a Community
ARC 551- Comprehensive Studio
Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
• Objectives:
• Designed to be built in 2030, as
part of a sports legacy village plan by
AECOM for Rio.
• The master planning design utilized
a raised olympic way walk that helped
to divide the site between the more
permanent residents and the visiting
athletes.
• The Olympic way in this design
was intended to double as a retail mall
that would act as a point of interaction
between residents and travelers.
• The plan’s West side is intended
to create a sense of local community.
• The East side of the plan has a large
sports facility and hotel.
• My design focus was on the west
residential.
• Due to climate the intention of
the design was to create small
microclimates between the buildings.
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Scan for Residential
Walk Through Video
Scan for Complete Site
Walk Through Video

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11. Fabricating an Assembly of Connections
Graduate Thesis
ARC 552- Independent Thesis
• Objectives:
• Design housing as a kit of parts
that can be flat packed and assembled
with minimal building knowledge and
tools.
• The kit development is a study on
the various connection types that
make up a complete structure.
• One of the goals of the thesis is to
minimize the cost and tools needed to
create a complete structure.
• This construction assembly helps to
eliminate the need for large machines,
and a large skilled labor force.
• The kit is designed to utilize friction
connections to hold the structure
together rather than use hardware.
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Thesis Abstract: It took hundreds of thousands of years for the world population
to reach 1 billion, but only took from 1950 to 2011 for the world population
to double from 2.5 to 5 billion. As the population grows, so does the need
for affordable, easily constructed housing. Construction methods in the less
developed world vary from the standards currently seen in more developed
nations. Construction in the less developed world consists of far fewer
construction managers, guidelines, restrictions, and skilled labor. Perhaps there
is a way to eliminate the need for skilled labor and construction managers, by
developing a new construction assembly.
Designers spend large amounts of time working at computers to create
drawings that give direction to contractors and trades in carrying out their
intended visions. Our current construction methods prove slow in, wasteful of
materials, and require a large group of skilled labor. Through the use of digital
fabrication machines we are able to eliminate the need for a skilled labor force,
reduce construction waste, and time. For these reasons, digital fabrication
needs to be the next step in the evolution of construction. Rapidly generating
housing is a step towards aiding the need the world population growth poses in
the future.
This thesis poses the creation of a construction assembly method that
could create affordable, multi-story housing kit, cut using digital fabrication
machines. These housing kits could function in a number of capacities, but the
hope is that they will provide some options for the need for housing worldwide.
Precedents to Build On
Professor Larry Sass
MIT School of Architecture
Larry Sass has been doing research on the topic of modular
friction fit housing for nearly a decade. He is currently
writting a software in conjunction with Lujie Chen, of the
Singapore University of Technology and Design, that will
automatically add connection tabs and create planar surfaces
of any 3D object. His research is what has paved the way for
the research and process that I have been working on pushing
further.

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Corner Detail Assembly
The corner detail assembly is where I started my assembly design process. The reason for this decision is that the corner is a unique point where three different surfaces come
together. Most other parts of the assembly have instances where only two surfaces come together. By making the corner the first priority in the design it later would simplify the
remaining connections to be designed. The coner itself was a series of trials and errors. After many models itterations this was the settled on design method.

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