Salome Nikuradze

2012

CV Selected Work
Urban Gymnasium 01
ruin at the grid knot

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Spadina Corridor Regeneration

campus within a city

Design School Proposal

school within a campus

Source Code
DUMBO, NY

Toronto Sculpture Garden Niagara Falls & Table Rock

hyperscape

Pattern Recognition Donut Shop

donut/shop?

Line, Plane, Form Toronto Electric

city lights

Employment
An Te Liu Studio Atelier 3AM Khoury Levit Fong Bruce Mau Design 68 72 74 78

Salome Nikuradze
BA, M.Arch candidate 60 Mountview Avenue, 1709 Toronto ON M6P 2L4 T 416 939 9808 s.nikuradze@gmail.com 2009 - present

Professional Practice
An Te Liu Studio, Toronto Studio Assistant, Designer, Photographer 2011 ParaDesign SFMOMA, San Fracisco, CA installation assistant for Cloud, An Te Liu Philippe Rahm: Domestic Astronomy Eric Arthur Gallery, Toronto Curated by An Te Liu Assistant to the curator

2010

Education
2012 Master of Architecture (candidate) Faculty of Architecture, University of Toronto, Toronto Honours B.A., Visual Studies, Architectural Studies, Cinema Studies Faculty of Arts and Science, University of Toronto, Toronto 2012 2012

2008

Meanings in Architecture: The Early Works of George Baird 1957-1993 Eric Arthur Gallery, Toronto Curated by Michael Prokopow, Designed by Christine Elson Assistant Designer Atelier 3AM, Toronto Project Team, Zagreb Badel Site Redevelopment Competition Khoury Levit Fong Architects, Toronto Project Team, The Busan Opera House Ideas Competition Project Team, Changzhi Planning Exhibition Hall Competition Bruce Mau Design, Toronto Project Team, Visions for the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy ToRo Arts Group, Toronto Co-founder and Creative Director University of Toronto Film Festival, Toronto Festival Director Artex Fashions, Toronto Assistant Fashion Designer, Graphic Designer

Academic Practice
2011 2011 Architecture Summer Workshop Instructor ARC213: Architectural Design I Teaching Assistant ARC 1011Y:Architectural Design Studio 1: Introductory Design Teaching Assistant 2010

2011

2010

2007 - 10

Awards
2011 2011 2010 2010 2009 Frederick Coates Scholarship Canadian Institute of Steel Construction Ontario Region Fellowship Uno Prii Memorial Award for Excellence in Visual Communication Hattie Aileen Sommerville Scholarship Eleanor Cate Allen Fellowship

2007 - 08

2006 - 08

Exhibitions
2011 2010 2008 2008 2007 Here Be Monsters Eric Arthur Gallery, Toronto Source Code, DUMBO Arts Festival 2010, Brooklyn, NY Head.Sync Liberty Village, Toronto Anomaly 299 Augusta Avenue, Toronto 103 EEL Gallery, Toronto 5

Skills
digital analogue languages Procient in Rhino, AutoCad, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign Experience with 3ds Max, Final Cut Pro, After Effects Skilled in installation, model-making English, Russian, Georgian

Urban Gymnasium
Junction, Toronto, ON
2011
(second year, second semester)

Ruin at the grid knot

Although not originally present on the site, the project evolved as an industrial ruin, derelict and abandoned on the former industrial ground, shaped and dented by the collisions of urban and infrastructural networks - a debris of failed structural systems and cladding panels, it is revived through a radical programmatic takeover that builds upon it.

Formally the building is a continuous and relatively uniform mass, wedged into the site towards the west and jutting out of the ground and hovering above the infrastructural intersection towards the east. A continuous surface is achieved through a triangulated tube steel network, which is supplemented by the secondary quadrilateral network, matched - in its turn - with a shell of structurally insulated panels on the exterior, legible both at a human scale and as a governing facade pattern from the distance.

sections (cross and longitudinal)

elevation

plans

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physical model (1 : 200)

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The interior conditions unfold a certain architectural narrative that culminates at the Therapy and Wellness Centre. Well hidden within the structural mass of the building, these spaces aspire to the state of controlled purity in contrast to the public spaces on lower levels, explicit in the physicality of their architecture. The occupiable enclosures are clad in interactive surfaces providing a visitor with adaptive virtual experiences whilst the required infrastructure is carefully tucked away within the thickened walls. Glass panel in the corridors provides an occasional ghostly reminder of the technological complexity in service of the minimal ephemeral environments of the therapy centre.
conceptual perspectives

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The sectional detail models further emphasize the polarized condition of the building. The naked brutality of concrete and steel celebrate and fetishize the physicality of architecture, counterparted by cerebral environments floated above, where structure, secondary to the surface of the screen, hides itself within the mass of the wall.

sectional models (1 : 20)

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Spadina Corridor and the School of Architecture

Toronto, ON
2011
(second year, first semester)

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Spadina Corridor Regeneration

campus within a city

The ubiquity of Cerds grid in Barcelona is further emphasized when violently sliced by a prominent diagonal vector, such as Avinguda avenue. The resulting irregularities create peculiar redundancies in the system, open to incidental occupation and effectively become zones of public space. An attempt to regenerate this condition in Toronto resulted in a hybrid map of two cities, grids shifted diagonally to one another. However speculative, the simulation promised increases in both occupational density and amount of potential public space.

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Toronto Barcelona

hybrid aerial map of Toronto and Barcelona_ hybrid figure ground of Toronto and Barcelona, Collage 20 21

Additional analysis of the Toronto neighbourhoods along Spadina suggested further benefits to diagonal slicing through the established grid. Currently disparate residential, commercial and institutional zones could be linked together via direct shortcuts, reinvigorating the neighbourhood both as a transitional platform and a place of destination, while the residential development could help support the inflow of new metropolitan population. The same infrastructural matrix would deliver nearby student population to the university campus as well as connect local small scale retail and restaurants at the street level. The vehicular circulation would stay largely unaltered along Torontos orthographic grid, while pedestrians and cyclists would gain separate direct access through diagonal boulevards cutting through the city. Thus, without significantly compromising the existing infrastructure, the proposal implements a parallel circulation system benefiting both the pedestrian circulation and green public space.
residential commercial institutional

existing and proposed land use distribution on the site

existing and proposed pedestrian distribution on the site

solar study for winter months_ solar study 22 stitching of local neighbourhoods via proposed development 23

plans for proposed use

Vertically, program distribution would be characterized by mixed commercial/institutional on the bottom layers, followed by residential at the top, ensuring a vibrant 24 hour occupation.

axonometric for proposed use

residential commercial institutional

typical section (diagram)

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Design School Proposal

school within a campus

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When asked to design a school of architecture and visual studies at the southern edge of the proposed development the same organizational principle was used to drive the design forward. The objective was to take advantage of the peculiarities of the given condition: circular in shape and located in the middle of the Spadina Avenue, the site is occupied by a historical Neo-Gothic building facing south - an iconic Toronto view gracefully framed along Spadina. Since the urban proposal dealt heavily with the intensification of the urban surface, the building was conceived as an extension of its surroundings, growing directly out of its site, wrapping the existing building and dropping down into the ground to create a semi-protected public space in front. The site was scored with respect to its context, anticipating views and shortcuts within the new development. The faceted volume was generated using the score lines, promoting occupation of its surface on a multitude of levels and allowing pedestrian flow through the site, either over or under it. As the surface of the building winds up delivering students to various levels, a new type of public space originates as a byproduct of the circulation system.

section

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massing step-by-step diagram

plans

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perspective renderings

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Source Code
2010

site specific installation, DUMBO Arts Festival, Brooklyn, NY

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Designed objects originate from a state of pure data communicated via a conventionalized form of notation - an empirical code that allows the process of assembly to take place in accordance with the designers intent. However, upon realization, the built environment, although a physical manifestation of organized information, undergoes a process of depreciation, mutating the code embedded within. The installation extracts the measured dimensions from the site and subsequently applies them physically upon its surfaces. Formally alluding to both graffiti and utilitarian infrastructural markings, the exposed state of information is inevitably also an act of defacing, further altering the intended original.

installation views

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Toronto Sculpture Garden

(proposal)
2010

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This proposed intervention for the north west corner of the Toronto Sculpture Garden attempts to fold the given site condition into itself, rather than conventionally superimpose an independent object onto a site. The big gesture is made with a subtle corner peel of the preexisting grass lawn, only to reveal a supposed thick layer of chrome under the surface of the city. Major themes at play are the expectations for the anticipated and the resulting unexpected. This concept adapts the digital sensibility, where the infinity of the homogeneous data is individualized visually via texture mapping. The layer of chrome alludes to the ubiquitous liquidity of the urban infrastructural matrix, foundational to the patchwork of the program existing in a constant flux on the surface.

schematic assembly

rendered views

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Niagara Falls Table Rock

& (proposal)
2010
(first year, second semester)

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Conventionally perceived as natures mighty wonder, Niagara Falls has long ceased to be one. Physically reshaped to have a more picturesque appearance and its water yield regulated hourly, the Falls is a designed and precisely controlled simulatory device. It is a testament to human hegemony, where a curated virtual experience, projected upon a tourist is aimed to match their culturally preconceived expectations.
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fill excavation schematic site plan illustrating the remedial work carried out in 1950s

The proposed visitors centre inverts the spectators relationship to the Falls through celebrating the hyperreal theme park condition of this man-made cultural wonder, rather then subsuming to the existing pseudo-bucolic illusion. The occupiable landscape negotiates the level change and delivers visitors to three different viewing plateaus, each framing the Falls in the most iconographic postcard-like perspectives, likely to be familiar to the spectator already.

Niagara Falls seen from the various points of the site, digital drawing

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planometric sections through the landscape

proposed landscape geometry negoatiating the elevation change

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formation sequence of the proposed landscape geometry

On the formal level, the landscape adopts the least submissive appearance. Adapting its aesthetic from lo-fi computer generated visions of nature, the designed environment confronts its visitors, flaunting its hyper-artificiality as they navigate through. Rather then masking the simulatory quality of the Niagara Falls experience, the proposal authenticates it by admitting to it and capitalizing on the phenomenon.

proposed site plan season study 48

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Pattern Recognition
2010
(first year, second semester)

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Navigational systems, flows of data and visual imagery shape our experiences often by the incidental nature of their juxtapositions. The thresholds between these take on new meanings just by the virtue of circumstance as new patterns emerge. Designed as a traditional puzzle, the piece alludes to this condition where, despite expectation, re-combination of disparate pieces cannot result in a finalized coherent image. The solutions are numerous, each contradictory to each other. Driven by the desire to locate familiar patterns, the process of assembly allows random ones to appear in the process.

installation view

selected compositions, lasercut MDF, magnetic sheets, steel plate

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Donut Shop
donut/shop?
2009
(first year, first semester)

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A contemporary digital twist on Venturis Duck, the proposed building dominates the landscape as a giant medium for a visual message it projects outwards with respect to its program. The conventionally perceived flatness of the image is challenged by the breaking apart of its surface and distorting it from any given point of view except for the one that is being anamorphically catered to - that of an approaching vehicle. Hence, the resulting physical volume is extracted out of the process of distortion and perception manipulation in service of the primary pictoral experience.

1:100 model, millboard

model, millboard

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section perspective renderings

planometric renderings

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Line, Plane, Form

2009
(first year, first semester)

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The volume of the cube is pierced by an abstract volume, as two primitive forms, drawn on its surface, loft into one another. The work is a study of the spatial qualities of an abstract form and a speculation upon its scale, occupation, relationship to the body, point of perception, and materiality. First generated on paper, subsequently materialized and once again re-documented and developed further digitally, the object and space always exist and are experienced in a semi-virtual mode, folding and re-folding upon themselves.
section diagrams

model, copper plate

scale study, collage

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conceptual formal study

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Toronto Electric
2007

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Through a meticulous hand drawn study of urban infrastructure the city takes shape. The ghostly yet unmistakable traces of Toronto appear out of the point cloud of its innumerable street lights. The map operates at a variety of scales, focus shifting continuously between the overall network and an individual dot. The general make-up of the city on the lake and the density and qualities of its grid give way to peculiarities of lit park trails, highway corridors and empty voids of cemeteries, all encrypted within the logic of its illumination.
hand drawn ink on mylar, 95 x 45

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An Te Liu Studio
September 2009 - present designer, project development, fabrication photography (+ post production) installation coordination, assembly project coordination

selected projects

BLAST 2011
various materials installation view, MKG127

Cloud 2008
air purifiers, ionizers, sterilizers, washers, humidifiers, ozone air cleaners; 136 units running continuously Installation view, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, MOCCA

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Ennui Blanc 2010

neon sign Installation view, Out of Site / Nuit Blanche, Toronto

Fantasia in 24 Gauge 2011

sheet metal, brass, mirrored acrylic, glass Installation view, Hyper Spaces / Oakville Galleries, Oakville

Title Deed 2009 ID/EGO/SUPER 2011

lightbox latex block filler, paint, house Site specific installation, The Leona Drive Project, Willowdale

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Atelier 3AM
Spring 2012

Zagreb Badel Site Redevelopment Competition

competition team

Exploded axonometric

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Khoury Levit Fong Architects

Summer 2011

The Busan Opera House Ideas Competition

competition team

Lateral section perspectives

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Changzhi Planning Exhibition Hall

competition team

Interior rendering

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Bruce Mau Design

Summer 2010 model making photography graphic design
scale study

exhibit design for a new post-petroleum city

exterior views, model

interior views, model, collage

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