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ASHLEY STRUBLE

Bachelor of Architecture

Syracuse University | Class of 2026

Miami, FL

alstrubl@syr.edu | 305-308-3165

DISSASSEMBLY FACTORY ASSEMBLY

CARVED PLATFORMS AND RETAINING WALLS

MIGRATING TOWERS

FRAMED ROOMS AND FRAMED HALLWAYS TIMBER RESEARCH CENTER

01 DISSASSEMBLY FACTORY ASSEMBLY

Location: Syracuse, New York

Studio: Year 4 - Semester 2

Software: Twinmotion

This project reframes architecture as a reversible system rather than a permanent object, using a modular triangular framework to organize structure and program. The building is composed of a repeatable unit that aggregates into a larger field, allowing the form to expand, contract, or reconfigure as needed. This logic is visible across all scales, from the structural grid and floor plans to the roof, creating a consistent relationship between part and whole.

The plans show how the system produces variation within order. While the triangular grid remains constant, spaces shift in size, density, and enclosure, allowing different programmatic conditions to emerge. Circulation is embedded within the ﬁeld rather than imposed on it, creating a ﬂuid spatial experience. Moments of compression and openness are generated through the aggregation of units rather than singular gestures.

The project is conceived as a layered assembly of prefabricated components, including surface layers, structural frames, and joints that can be removed or replaced. A custom folded triangular sheet metal beam increases span and strength while remaining lightweight. By folding flat sheet metal into a triangular profile, rigidity is achieved through geometry rather than added material, allowing efficient performance as part of a truss system.

These beams connect through standardized nodes, creating a repeatable joint system that allows assembly, disassembly, and reconﬁguration over time. Dry connections reinforce reversibility, enabling parts to be removed without affecting the whole. Elevated on concrete piles, the structure remains adaptable to changing site conditions.

WINDOW VENTING APPLICATION

INTERNAL LOGIC JOINT AND SUPPORT LOGIC

ACCESSIBILITY

SYRACUSE ZONING

LONGITUDINAL SECTION

02 CARVED PLATFORMS AND RETAINING WALLS

Location: Elba, Italy

Studio: Year 3 - Semester 2

Software: V-Ray

Model: Concrete Casting, Wood

Using an existing abandoned retaining wall and dock in Elba, Italy, this project reactivates the site as a community-centered space for active engagement. By carving into the thickness of the retaining wall, the design creates a sequence of both enclosed and open spaces, allowing movement between the elevated level above and the shoreline below. This intervention transforms the wall from a barrier into a connector, both spatially and socially.

The architectural organization is derived from a reinterpretation of a rubble box system. A primary linear sequence of rooms establishes the core of the project, where each space varies in length and height but maintains a consistent width, creating continuity while allowing for diverse spatial experiences. Secondary sequences branch off from this main spine, expanding across the site and unifying it through a shared geometric logic.

Programmatically, the project centers on a self-sustaining, community-driven experience. Visitors can ﬁsh directly from ﬂoating docks that extend outward from the building sequence, bringing the act of harvesting into the architecture itself. The catch can then be prepared in open grilling areas integrated into the carved spaces or sold in a designated market zone.

The ﬁnal layer of the project introduces informal dining and gathering areas, picnic-like spaces that function as a restaurant environment without the commercial structure. It is a place where users cook, share, and occupy the space collectively, removing the traditional boundaries between producer and consumer. The result is an architecture that supports participation, social interaction, and a direct relationship to the landscape and food systems.

03 MIGRATING TOWERS

Location: Zanibar, Tanzania

Studio: Year 2 - Semester 2

Model: Chipboard, Wood, Net

The steel modular grid towers follow the contours of the African topography, allowing the building to step with the landscape and maintain a close relationship to the ground. Their placement is guided by site-speciﬁc bird migration paths, positioning each tower where seasonal occupation is most needed. Because these birds are migratory, the architecture responds to time as much as space, operating only when required.

A tensile net system transforms the structure based on use. When installed, the net stretches over the steel frame, softening its rigid geometry and creating enclosed, organic spaces for bird rehabilitation. This ﬂexible layer allows the architecture to adapt to the needs of different species while shifting the spatial experience from ﬁxed to responsive.

When the birds migrate, the net is removed, leaving the steel structure exposed. In this state, the towers function as open shelters for native wildlife. Not all towers are occupied at once, creating a system of buildings that appear and disappear over time. A connecting path links each tower, enabling access for specialists while reinforcing the project as a distributed, adaptive network rather than a single static building.

04 FRAMED ROOMS AND FRAMED HALLWAYS

Location: Elureka, California

Studio: Year 2 - Semester 1

Model: Lazer Cut Wood pannels

The Eureka Timber Research Center reimagines an existing wood yard as a hub for innovation, conservation, and historical continuity. The project uses timber construction to honor the site’s legacy while advancing sustainable forestry practices.

Designed as an X-shaped structure, the building is formed by two intersecting wooden frames that guide visitors through the site and establish a strong connection to the surrounding water. The entire building operates as a continuous framing system, where structure and architecture are inseparable. Hallways, rooms, and platforms are inserted within this larger structural framework, allowing the program to be organized as a series of spaces embedded within the frame rather than enclosed by independent walls.

The structure employs a nested framing system, where smaller wooden elements create elevated walkways with slatted viewing platforms, allowing visitors to observe timber fabrication processes below. The two arms of the X vary in height to accommodate different programs and intersect at a central atrium that promotes interaction between spaces. One arm is dedicated to public engagement and education, while the other supports research and production, creating a balance between openness and specialized use

MODEL OF FRAME AXON

05 STACKED COLUMNS HOUSING

Location: Syracuse, New Yorks

Studio: Year 3 - Semester 1

Model: Chipboard

Housing units are organized as vertical elements that grow from and reconnect through a larger ﬂoor system, which transitions into columns as it descends. This spatial system creates voids between the housing elements, forming courtyards that structure light, circulation, and shared space. The courtyards act as both physical and social organizers, bringing daylight deep into the housing, allowing for cross ventilation, and creating collective spaces for interaction. Rather than leftover space, they are intentional rooms carved between units, shaping views, movement, and moments of pause within the project.

The building maintains a consistent unit width to align with the surrounding city fabric and frame the Mohawk building, which is redeﬁned as the center of downtown Syracuse. Units are oriented toward the Mohawk and match its height along one edge, reinforcing its presence. This alignment also emphasizes the stepped proﬁle of the adjacent perpendicular building through the space created between them, with courtyards acting as mediating spaces that visually and spatially connect these conditions.

The larger floor system extends outward to become a bridge, lowering in height to align with the shopping mall in front of the Mohawk. This bridge acts as an entry point into a newly defined urban center. At the same time, the continuous wall of inward-facing housing units establishes a clear boundary, while the courtyards break this mass into a porous system that allows light, air, and movement to pass through. Together, they define a cohesive yet permeable city campus.

ROAD WAY BASED GRID

FORM WORK EXPANDING

DOWNTOWN SYRACUSE DENSITY MAP WITH ADDITION

SITE CAMPUS

FINAL CITY CAMPUS LAYOUT

HOUSING STACKING STRATEGY

FINAL UNIT AND BRIDGE DESGIN WITH HEIGHT RELATIONSHIP

FORM WORK USING ALEXANDRA ROAD HOUSING SHAPE

CAMPUS SCALE COMPARISON

VERTICAL HORIZONTAL

COLUMN CORNERS U-SHAPE

SURROUNDING BRIDGE

CIRCULATION OF HALWAYS AND EGGRESS

CORNER UNIT STACK COURTYARD SYSTEM

CAMPUS AXIS AND CITY FIGURE GROUND

VIEW FROM AXIS

DENSITY ON FINAL MODEL

06 REPRODUCTIVE RECESS

Location: None

Studio: Year 4 - Semester 1

Model: Chipboard

The functioning of the American capitalist system relies on the bases of the social pyramid to uphold it. One of those foundations is the realm of unpaid domestic labor. Without domestic labor, wage work would be too expensive a way to live, and capitalism would fail. In the 1960s, the emergence of the postwar nuclear family structure proliferated domestic work and childcare as the role of the woman. The domestication of “family” entrenched the constructed notion that “domestic work” is a woman’s natural duty. The ideals represented by the “nuclear family” reﬂect a singular society of a speciﬁc time and place, yet it still has many acolytes in the modern day.

This project is a critique on this system of “tolerated slavery.” In the 1960s, capitalists attempted to sell more efﬁcient ways of performing domestic tasks to us, and presented them as paradise. This project parodies the capitalist mentality, by providing a dystopian living space where all the amenities for performing a domestic task are in the same room. Pushing the capitalist notion of “working and living in the same building”, the people (non-gender speciﬁc) living in this space perform these service tasks as a means of making a living, and service everyone else in the building. The colorful imagery hides the more morbid designs of this “domestic prison”, the cramped sleeping space, the unsettling thresholds, and the undepicted mundanity and seething of performing the same, unappreciated tasks, day after day. This project seeks to provoke the viewer to question the social constructs that are manifested in this space. This project is a call to action, to question the system of capitalism in place, and yearn for a better way of living in these productive shared spaces.