Iryna Humenyuk// Architecture & Design Portfolio// University of Waterloo School of Architecture

IRYNA HUMENYUK

Bachelor of Architectural Studies, Honours Co-op University of Waterloo School of Architecture

WORKS

SYBIL’S CAVE

PROJECTIONS OF FILMS ONTO WALLS

Course

Type

Location

Instructor

Software

4A Design Studio

Museum

Rome, Italy

Lorenzo Pignatti

Rhinoceros 5, Illustrator, Photoshop

In ancient Roman mythology, the Sibyl of Cuma was a young maiden the god Apollo promised a wish in exchange for her virginity. Sybil took up Apollo’s offer, picking up a handful of sand and asking Apollo to give her as many years of life as grains of sand in her hand. Her request would ultimately go awry; when Sybil later rejected Apollo’s love, angered, the god would condemn Sybil to a life of old age in an decaying, decrepit body. It is said that Sybil lived out her years as a prophetess within the ancient caves of Cuma. The underground nature of my museum proposal makes reference to these very caves. So as not to deter from the impressive historical value of this site—a hilly park just south of the Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine in Rome—I chose to hide the majority of my architectural intervention within the earth itself, inspired by the primal, underground architectural spaces of Cuma. As is found in cave architecture, my rooms are similarly lit via oculi and skylights. They are impressive spaces in scale and height but humble in material, made of a limestone local to the site. Sybil’s role in mythical Rome was to foresee versions of the future empire of Rome; here, in the museum of which I’ve made her namesake, her visions—that is, the history of Rome as we know it today—are on display in for the whole of modernity to witness and enjoy.

1. Reflection pool.

2. Exhibition space.

3. Restoration lab.

4. Cleaning lab.

5. Cataloging lab.

6. Spiral stair.

7. Storage; mechanical.

8. Roman busts.

9. Viewing platform. 10. Eating pavilion.

1. Exhibition space.

2. Anastylosis.

3. Model of Rome.

4. Office.

5. Storage; mechanical.

6. Roman busts.

7. Viewing platform.

FIRST, I BUILT A TEMPLE FOR

THE SUN

Course Type

Location

Instructor

4B Design Studio

Artist’s Retreat and Sauna

Software Rhinoceros 5, Illustrator, Photoshop Andrew Levitt Toronto, Ontario

In 1971 artist Robert Morris built a land art piece in the Netherlands called ‘The Observatory’. The project comprised of two concentric earth mounds whose openings framed views of solar phenomenon. Charmed by Morris’ intentions to prioritize the natural vistas of his site, I decided to adopt this strategy for my own design. Rather than focusing on astrology, however, I picked the sun as my muse; the strongest move in this project, a 60m-diameter gabion wall, doubly plays a graphic homage as much as it protects my buildings from strong Western winds.

Erecting the gabion wall also allowed me to position my object-buildings almost directly on the coastal edge, maximizing their exposure to the South-facing sun and allowing views to be framed to Lake Ontario. A raised-pier decking on the site allow occupants to circulate through the uneven topography that exists at the coast, allowing occupants to move from studio to sauna to café, and back again.

COURTYARD

EXTERIOR PERSPECTIVE

ELEVATION

DANTE’S LOVECHILD

NARRATIVE DIAGRAM

Course

Type

Location

Instructor

Software

3B Design Studio

Production Design

Siteless

Marie-Paule Macdonald

Rhinoceros 5, Illustrator, Photoshop

When Dante sat down to write ‘The Divine Comedy’, he wrote ‘Inferno’ first, only then followed by ‘Purgatoria’ and ‘Paradiso’. Did he, too, feel that vice was more interesting than virtue? This project proposes a series of three siteless set designs, themed around the second circle of hell in Dante’s ‘Inferno’: lust.

In the baths I attempted to use architecture as a device to exhibit the female body. In this sequence, women emerge from the sea and climb into the temperaturecontrolled pool. The arches frame their bodies as they bathe in the moonlight.

In pop culture the motel is often associated with ideas of travel or private activities removed from domestic, homely life. In this set, women enjoy a moment of escapism, prancing around in their lavish rooms whose decorations are too sumptuous for daily life.

Not merely a traditional club with a dance floor, in the club set a Kusama-esque mirror room provides a means to experiences one’s vanity from every angle. A lion’s den protects a single women of choice from her beaus: one may look, but not touch, for fear of being mauled by animals.

ITALO CALVINO BUILDS A CABIN

CABIN

Course

Type

Location

Instructor

2B Design Studio

Hospitality

Toronto, Ontario

Lola Sheppard

Software Rhinoceros 5, Illustrator, Photoshop

Inspired by Italo Calvino’s seminal novel of fantastical cityscapes, ‘Invisible Cities’, I designed an artificial island with small cabins dotted around its landscapes. This is a project about a return to the wild could-have-beens,and the once-was.

The island I see is uninhabited, overgrown, marshy and free. Vegetation is lush. There are no paths. We circle around the island; admire her from afar. People are lost in the island if they venture too far— yet they also claim to be found.

And so the island has grown wild and blurred by the passage of lost time, lost thoughts, nostalgia and subsumed emotion. No longer real, no longer of this world, no longer loyal to the palettes of character, the truths of relational rifts; its veracities lost the moment of conception.

This is the island our minds return to, again and again—Marco Polo’s lost Venice—the invisible cities we will into self-imposed realities. ‘It was all possible,’ we chant as we trip atop the overgrowth, blindly wade into marshy waters, whack through the bush.

MEMORY IS A RUIN IN THE JUNGLE

JUNGLE

OF PERISTYLES

Course Type

Location

3B Structural Design

Installation

Xilitla, Mexico

Justin Forrest Breg

Instructor Software Rhinoceros 5, Illustrator, Photoshop

Las Pozas is a group of surrealistic structures located in the rain forests of Mexico. It’s famed auteur is the mid-century English poet and aristocrat Edward James. In his lifetime, James transformed some 80 acres of natural land into an what might best be descried as an outdoor art-park-cum-real-lifegarden-of-Eden with more than 200 concrete structures.

Since James’ death in 1984, Las Pozas has fallen to some degree of ruin, the tropical trees and plants interweaving with the existing structure and blending the natural and man-made worlds into one. In my structural design class, I proposed an installation that exacerbated this ruin-condition, by interweaving man-made cables and natural rock throughout the existing structures.