This is our first design project of the semester in this class. We were tasked by our teacher to create a restaurant in Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires, Argentina. We were introduced to the concept of Integrated Design in this class and we were told to try to design our buildings in this way. As part of the integrated design style, we created our own Vision Statement, Goals, and Benchmarks for these projects so we could gauge whether our building would be sustainable or not. Another new concept was the idea of creating our own program with our own square footages. We were told to provide a site plan, floor plans, elevations, a detailed building section, a detailed wall section, building performance analysis, and a series of renderings.

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I started on the project by setting my vision, goals and benchmarks. After that I started doing research and I very early on decided to design my building based on the sculptures of American artist Richard Serra. I started this project by making a series of designs based on sculptures by Serra that I am familiar with. After presenting my ideas to my teacher I narrowed my design choices down to two options, one inspired by Serra's Torqued Ellipse series and other inspired by Spin Out, for Robert Smithson, a piece in the sculpture garden of the Kroller Mulller Museum in the Netherlands. After presenting these concepts to my teacher I ultimately decided on the design inspired by Serra's Torqued Ellipse series. Once I decided on this idea, I sized the spaces of the program based on handouts my teacher gave us and the codebooks we've used in class. After this, I drew the shape I wanted in AutoCAD and I started to lay out the specific room locations. After this, I started to focus on the exterior of the building as we needed to seat at least 100 people in the restaurant itself. I started creating abstract forms as contrasting point with the very solid walls of the restaurant itself. I ultimately decided on two curved covers that acted as both covers for my outdoor seating areas as well as the mounting places for my solar panels. I used Eduardo Chillida as inspiration for the columns to support these curved elements; I felt they worked as Richard Serra and Eduardo Chillida both use CORTEN steel as the main material of their sculptures and I had used Chillida as inspiration in the Australian Passive House project so I knew how to design the columns. After this, with the help of one of my classmates, I was able to size both my solar array and my water collection system, where I learned I wouldn't be able to produce enough sunlight or to have enough water storage space to satisfy either of my benchmarks relating to sustainability. After this I finished furnishing the spaces and finalized the design.

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In terms of sustainable features, the major features are the water collection system and the solar array, other systems are heavily insulated walls and the use of local building materials.