1. Portfolio / Virginia Blocher
Ranch Workshop Garage on simplicity to and loft, Medina TX costs,
A focus
with workshop
save on construction
Downtown Apartments
Constructed in 2004 passive air ventilation to keep cool during hot sum- Given a downtown location and self designed clients (an intellectual couple, an artist,
mer days, and a roof design to allow for rainwater and a bookstore owner) resolve the dream of living downtown.
collection.
There are three apartments and a bookstore along the Congress St. front. The apart-
ments were designed individually; all other aspects were designed as a team. Major
design issues were: how to react to the strict environment, creating a community, and
overcoming issues of privacy and accommodation.
Other group members: Etty Brish and Kwok Tsui
2. Portfolio / Virginia Blocher
Technological Incubator
Design a technological business incubator
for the University of Texas at Austin.
The Unversity above all needed a space that interacted with the students. Influenced greatly by Chrisopher
Alexander’s writings, I broke up the site and let the path of the students dominate. Dividing up the site into four
parts allowed for a more piece-meal and mini-campus type design, and decreased the size of the buildings to a
more tangible human scale. This Incubator is designed to be a gathering space for intellectuals and an opportu-
nity for human interaction.
3. Portfolio / Virginia Blocher
Big Shoulders School Dock Given an imaginary island
design a dock for Odysseus’
A pilot project to improve the educational environment by breaking down a ship. History, the founda-
large public K-12 school into three smaller schools. tion of our society, forms this
dock. It is the skeleton, the
To create a sense of community and interconnectedness the three schools bones, the foundation of the
surround a shared courtyard where the children can socialize, picnic, study, or earth revealed to weave the
sit in solitude. Each school is identical in content, with all grades mixed, and threshold between security
with an open assembly area. A large recreational center, library, cafeteria, and and the unforgiving sea.
administrative space are shared.
Technological Incubator Construction details.
4. Portfolio / Virginia Blocher
Austin Studies Several projects were completed Culture Center Using the ideas developed through-
focusing on austin: historic build- out the semester design a Cultural
Exhibited in 1999 Center that would address the
ings, the interaction of the Waller
Creek floodplanes with the historic division between East Austin and
buildings, and finally a proposal was Downtown, the impact of public
made for how to improve the Waller buildings such as the Convention
Creek urban area. Center, and the Mexican American
community.
This project was chosen for display
in the University of Texas’ 1998-99
Selected Student Works exhibit, the
2000 Architecture Accreditation Ex-
hibit, and for publication in Platform,
Spring 2000.
Following the path of a no longer pres-
ent East-West road through the site, I
reestablished a lost link by directing my
building’s major axis along that path.
This path served to connect, while the
building served to distract from the
Published in 2000 path. I shaped the building so that it at-
tempted to draw people into its spaces.
The building acted as a discovery; a
place to learn about the path. The
building also studies the idea of con-
nection and linking through its intersec-
tion of two circles,
the joining of two
materials (wood
and concrete), and
the vastly different
qualities of the two
wings (one small
and private, the
other open and
public).
6 weeks
spring 1998
5. Portfolio / Virginia Blocher
Cemetary Anchor & Floater
Anchor: objective, defined, perfect
Floater: subjective, undefined, imperfect
The dowels are the floaters which to-
gether form the anchor: the sphere.
Design a public cemetery, including Reorientation
a chapel and a mausoleum, within a large
and topographically complex site.
Using a grid I over simplified and abstracted the site, giving free-
dom for individualy owned and designed cemetery plots. The growth
and development of the cemetery would happen only as needed. The only
pre-existing and designed structures would be the chapel and the scattered
mausoleums. The rest of the cemetery would be left natural until developed; only
then would the presence of the grid be revealed.
Reorient an object by building a struc-
ture to support its reorientation.
6. Portfolio / Virginia Blocher
Bishop’s Gate
Given a dilapidated site in London we
were to integrate mixed use facilities into
a previous train stockyard and station that
would enrich the area
Other group members: Albert Gamboa
With a complicated site and area, we
tried to integrate a mixed use community
that was more pedestrian oriented by
looking at successful preexisting sites.
We considered the scale and details of
those existing surroundings to create
new community spaces.
