Urban Alchemy grew out my partnership with the developer John Delia and our shared interest in promoting community development and positive change through the built environment.  With a desire to demonstrate productive use of vacant land within the city, we started a community garden on the city’s land bank property, founding a 501(c)(3) community development corporation in the process.  The combination of real estate and economic development plus architecture and design thinking for social change  informed our mission statement:

Urban Alchemy is an action-oriented 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that transforms overlooked and unproductive spaces into high visible developments. We work with community interests to increase occupancy, foster economic growth, and promote personal pride for residents.

After coordinating by-laws, articles of organization, and other organizational aspects, we set forth on a strategy to transform the foreclosure crisis and thousands of vacant, blighted urban property into an opportunity to create a sense of community and change the direction of a neighborhood.

Garden Design Build

Office Design Build

Identity and Graphic Design

Mural by Rather Severe

Urban Alchemy teamed up with Rather Severe (Jon Stommel & Travis Czekalski) to create a highly visible mural on the side of the local corner store.  We focused on a bright, inspirational beacon for the community and have been overwhelmed by the positive response.  Check out Rather Severe for more of their amazing work!

MetaMakers is working with JSDelia Real Estate and Investment to adaptively re-use a pair of existing historic urban buildings for a new coffee shop and market in downtown Columbus, Ohio.  Thus far, we have completed a thorough site analysis highlighting the project’s potential for urban revitalization, created as-built drawings that document the historic structures, undergone a rigorous analysis of spaces and functions for the program, and provided code research to determine feasibility.Working with our clients to establish a list of owner’s requirements of the space, we defined the activities that are to take place in the design and what the specific needs are for those functions.  The programming effort is the time where we define project goals, gather and analyze relevant data, reconcile projects desires and budgets, and describe the desired relationships between different functions.

We carefully assessed the particularities within downtown Columbus, Ohio. Location and neighborhood context, particularly within CCAD & Columbus State’s masterplans, played an important role, as well as traffic circulation and access to mass-transit. Site Analysis also includes zoning classifications and restrictions, and the location of adequate parking for the development.

Client: Kindred Spirits™ Brewing Company

A local micro-brewery that draws from it’s rural forrest surroundings, Kindred Spirits™ asked MetaMakers to define their image, starting with the signature beer, Astronomical Ale.  We created an iconic package with a family tree constellation that speaks to the brewery’s name, as well as the founder’s hobby of astronomy.

As the operation grows, MetaMakers will provide branding, packaging, and website design that speaks to Kindred Spirits’ attention to craft, the tradition of brewing, and the use of organic, local ingredients.

Project Type: Single-family home renovation, plus landscape design.

An Ohio couple asked MetaMakers to design an appealing, yet budget-conscious treatment to the garage and facades of their single-story home, as well as a design for the site.  The residence is situated in a rural setting among trees and so MetaMakers devised a landscape scheme that utilizes native Ohio plants, reduces lawn to be mowed, and needs little to no watering from the owners.

Cloud Collections is a blog written by MetaMakers and associates.  Our aim is assemble and curate the changes occurring in society, focusing on the built environment in particular. A description:

Cloud Collections condenses observations on being human in an increasingly globalized, technological, and ecologically-strained world. Through the lens of architecture, we seek to transform the difficulties created by change into a solid worldview for the individual.

For the blog, MetaMakers designed a WordPress theme, including CSS and PHP coding.  If you’re looking for a functional presence online, MetaMakers can create a beautiful and dynamic blog or website.

Coming Soon

Assuming the outward appearance and form of a generic pre-war home, the New Normal House amplifies the spatial possibilities of domestic living – combining the modernist predilection for open space with the privacy required for domestic life. The desire for open plan living is consummated on the ground floor, where a single continuous space is augmented by a series of “drop-ins,” hanging extrusions of the second story bedroom mass containing necessary programmatic elements determined by the individual requirements of the occupant. Conversely, the upper story is a series of floating rooms which are detached to provide double height spaces resulting in natural light, spatial and visual exchanges between above and below, private and public space.

Architectural renderings of a children’s hospital in New York created for Anshen + Allen Architects.

MetaMakers works with architects and designers in the creation of high-quality 2D illustrations and 3D still and animated renderings. Utilizing a diverse set of tools and techniques, we create photorealistic and stylized representations, bringing to life the materiality, lighting, environment and spatial implications of healthcare facilities, hospitals and laboratories.

Produced while project manager at MAD Ltd. Team: David Nightingale and Matthias Helmreich.

Asked by the client to propose a use for his hotel’s parking garage, MAD’s car lounge is a multi-purpose space for today’s China, designed to accommodate clubbing, fashion shows, and the display  of the clients expansive collection of Italian sports cars.

A new space was subtractively carved into the basement in order to transcend the barren concrete of an underground parking garage, and in creating an underground labyrinth of spaces, the numerous and unappealing aspect of a concrete garage is negated. Lightness is achieved and objects -people, cars, furniture- float in the blurred space.  Wall, ceiling, and floor are treated equally and flow into one another, even becoming seating and tables.

The backlit runway is a glamorous path for strutting  and being seen.  It uses the given width of a sports
car and cuts through the space, terminating in display turntables.  Seemingly independent of gravity, this pathway capitalizes on the flexible nature of the program: from car exhibition to fashion runway, bar to lounge.

In exhibiting cars, the “works” around you are more a part of your culture than today’s contemporary art.

Design work while employed by MAD, Ltd. in Beijing

As The City of Gardens and Water, Singapore’s identity is one which seeks harmony with its environment.  The Pinnacle Collection at Sentosa Cove finds a form in the continuously woven Greenbelt which arranges the building as a series of integrated garden spaces.  The Greenbelt brings to mind the symbol of infinity and creates an enduring flow, to let patrons wander and enjoy the surroundings with prescription, as in nature herself.

The slanted and arching form of the building welcomes patrons to the area with the tallest portions creating a pair of through-ways: grand gates celebrating entrance and framing vistas of the picturesque surroundings.  The forms refer to the Chinese character, 门 , literally, ‘gate’.

Undergraduate architecture studio at The University of Cincinnati culminates in the design of a spa complex that relates to the life and adjacent site of an historic Shaker community in Kentucky.  Shaker beliefs have generated a unique culture and ways of life that have enriched the cultural history of the United States as well as subsequently inspiring many modern fields.

Shakers designed their furniture with care, believing that making something well was in itself, “an act of prayer.”

The design connects site, culture, and history by celebrating fundamental craftsmanship, and local, natural resources.  It is a reference to the Shaker design philosophy without resorting to stylistic imitation.  Just as the historic group believed that everybody could find God within him or herself, the architecture of the spa is about creating spaces for the reflection and unfolding of personal consciousness.

The washhouse is the Shaker’s only remaining building on the portion of the site set aside for a spa. The  design proposes overlapping this structure with a new construction that respects the existing.  New operates withing the old, but never touches archeological remains of the used for washing clothes.By  juxtaposing the old with new methods and materials of construction, one can better gain a foothold of self in relation to the past.

Studies of experiential, aesthetic, and technical qualities of the thermal baths help describe the personal experience of a space. Production evolved into an exercise in developing intuition, and experimentation in constructing through experience- sculpting the representational model as it came to form- developing details and assembling through invention.