TOMMY CHEN
UNDERGRADUATE SELECTED WORKS PORTFOLIO
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA SOA
2023 - 2025
01 STEADFAST
Pg. 4-13 | Design Studio 7 Fall 2025
02
ANTHROPIC
Pg. 14-19 | Design Studio 3 Fall 2023
Pg. 20-25 | Design Studio 5 Fall 2024
Pg. 26-31 | Design Studio 6 Spring 2025
Pg. 32-33 | Design Studio 2 Summer 2023
Pg. 34-35 | Design Studio 3 Fall 2023
Pg. 36-39 | Design Studio 4 Spring 2024
01 Steadfast
Malachite Stronghold
Fire Station
Instructor: Peter Sprowls, Fall 2025
Location: Malachite, Colorado
The Malachite Stronghold reimagines the wildland fire station as an architecture of protection and resilience. Located in wildfire-prone Malachite, Colorado, the project draws parallels between contemporary emergency infrastructure and medieval fortresses, translating ideas of defense, endurance, and refuge into a modern civic form.
An irregular plan, tower-like elements, and a protected interior atrium organize a program that balances quiet preparedness with rapid response. Operating as both shield and sanctuary, the station occupies a contested frontier between preservation and destruction, serving as a civic outpost of memory, care, and collective readiness.
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The design of the fire station subtly integrates architectural characteristics found in castles and fortresses, including an irregular plan layout, elevated tower elements articulated with fortifying merlons, and a protected interior atrium enclosed by its surrounding walls. Prominent programmatic spaces include an interior garden, multiple office and meeting rooms, bunk spaces, a gym, and an expansive apparatus bay interrupted by a mezzanine level. Together, these spaces balance operational efficiency with moments of respite and care.
Newburny Guild
Strip Mall Union Hall
Instructor: Peter Sprowls, Fall 2025
Location: Gainesville, Florida
The theme of steadfastness is first explored through the Malachite Stronghold, where ideas of determination, resilience, and duty shape the design of a wildland fire station. These values are then subtly translated into a secondary study that tests how the same principles of public service and unwavering commitment can inhabit a more compressed and informal context: a strip mall. The Newburny Guild reinterprets the language and ethos of the Malachite Stronghold as a union hall for firefighters, both active and retired, serving as a space for gathering, knowledge-sharing, rest, and communal care. The interior is organized around a central assembly space, anchored by a raised dais for leadership, discussion, and ceremony, and supported by a job board that reinforces the guild’s role as a site of labor, opportunity, and continuity.
Spanning the interior, a series of arcades structure the space both spatially and symbolically. Architecturally, the arcades establish rhythm, scale, and hierarchy, breaking down the large open volume into legible zones while maintaining visual and communal continuity. They recall medieval guild halls, where arcaded interiors mediated between collective gathering and individual activity. Programmatically, they frame circulation, create moments of pause and encounter, and reinforce the hall’s identity as a shared civic interior. Drawing from medieval guild typologies, the Newburny Guild transforms a banal commercial shell into a resilient social infrastructure, one rooted in service, solidarity, and the enduring value of collective presence.
02 Anthropic
Ruins: Modernizing History
Tourist Center, Repository, Performance Area
Instructor: Gabriel Gonzalez Depalo, Fall 2023
Location: St. Marks, Florida
Anthropy in architecture describes the influence of human presence, labor, and occupation on the built environment. It acknowledges that sites and structures gain meaning not only through original construction, but through continued use, adaptation, and collective memory over time. This perspective frames architecture as a living record of human interaction, where material wear, spatial modification, and cultural imprint become integral to the identity of place. Approaching historic sites through anthropy allows architecture to be understood as an evolving condition shaped by both past and present inhabitation.
Through an examination of regional, local, and site mappings of Fort San Marcos de Apalache, this project identifies critical hydrological, urban, and ecological boundaries that have shaped the fort’s historical and contemporary presence. These layered readings informed the development of a site axonometric, establishing a framework for strategic future interventions and a deeper understanding of the site’s topography. The proposal unfolds through the restoration of the fort as a catalyst for sustainable tourism, reactivating these often-overlooked colonial ruins while preserving their historical and cultural significance. By blending careful preservation with immersive public engagement, the project reintroduces human presence as a means of continuity, allowing the fort to evolve as a living landscape shaped by both memory and use.
Charleston Proscenium
Performing Arts Institute
Instructor: Martin Gold, Fall 2024
Location: Charleston, South Carolina
My architectural proposal for a performing arts institute in Charleston, North Carolina is designed to offer a welcoming and enriching educational environment for individuals passionate about dance and music, while also encouraging public engagement with its specialized spaces.
The institute features a spacious, multi-level lobby that connects all three floors, fostering a sense of openness and movement. A grand auditorium on the first floor serves as a focal point for performances, complemented by an outdoor stage that invites spontaneous artistic expression. Dedicated dance studios and rehearsal rooms provide tailored spaces for practice and learning. The spatial arrangement transitions from vibrant, public areas on the ground floor to quieter, more private spaces on the upper levels.
Visually, the building’s form and façade evoke the presence of a theatrical stage, visible from surrounding sidewalks, neighboring structures, and nearby parkland. Its dynamic, flowing roofline captures the energy and rhythm of the performing arts, embodying the spirit of the activities
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The proscenium is the part of a theater that frames the stage, providing a “window” through which the audience views the performance. This helps give the performance a more formal appearance, accentuating the action within the frame and has the ability to enhance acoustics, lighting, and the overall visual experience by concentrating focus.
03 Ideal
Tides of Resilience
Speculative Intervention
Instructor: Donna Cohen, Spring 2025
Partner: Paulina Rios
Location: Manhattan, New York
Set in the year 3000 within a speculative future where sea levels have risen by 100 feet, submerging Manhattan’s streets and low-rise buildings, this project proposes an intervention situated along our core sample of Park Avenue in Midtown, featuring notable buildings such as: the Seagram Building, Lever House, and 425 Park Avenue. Designed as an exploration of urban resilience and adaptability, the proposal introduces large, modular floating structures anchored by cable-connected central support columns. The theme of ideal comes into play as the project exists only in the concept; desirable or perfect but abstract.
Hudson Vista Affordable Housing
Instructor: Donna Cohen, Spring 2025
Partner: Paulina Rios
Location: Manhattan, New York
The development at 388 Hudson Street in NYC is a thoughtfully designed affordable housing project that integrats high-quality residential living with vibrant public amenities and green spaces, fostering both community engagement and individual wellbeing. The project contributes a new public park that connects seamlessly with James J. Walker Park, offering a welcoming environment for relaxation and social gathering.
The building includes a public library, encouraging education, and a rooftop restaurant that provides a unique dining experience with panoramic views of the city. Residents benefit from a range of amenities that support a healthy and balanced lifestyle, including a fully equipped gym, a residential lounge, a rock climbing wall, and communal meeting rooms. By combining affordable living with access to recreational, educational, and social spaces, Hudson Vista sets a new standard for inclusive, community-focused urban development.
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04 Timeless
Light Box: Shadow Field
Final Assembly
Instructor: Peter Sprowls, Summer 2023
In architecture, enduring quality is not achieved through imitation or nostalgia, but through clarity of purpose and a lasting relationship to human experience. Architecture that resists trends and stylistic excess grounds itself in spatial principles that remain relevant across generations, such as proportion, light, structure, and ritual. It speaks to the present while remaining legible in the future, allowing buildings to age with dignity rather than obsolescence. As Frank Gehry states, architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness. This idea positions architecture as both contemporary and enduring, rooted in context yet unconstrained by it. Such work is not static, but adaptable and resilient, capable of absorbing change without losing meaning, and grounded in fundamental human needs such as gathering, shelter, and reflection.
The essence of the light box project is centered on the intricacies of crafting a mechanical lighting scheme and shadow projection. Through the marriage of a bristolgrounded model and a wooden intervention, shadows were manipulated to be casted upon the floor, displaying a dynamic and hierarchical profile that induces feelings of stillness and stability.
Door, Window, Stair: Desolate Beacon
Lighthouse
Instructor: Gabriel Gonzalez Depalo, Fall 2023
Location: New England Coast
Guided by principles of program, scale, hierarchy, and craft, the Desolate Beacon conveys a narrative of mystery and adventure while maintaining a disciplined architectural tone.
Carefully placed apertures direct circulation and flow, seamlessly blending spaces into a continuous spatial sequence.
Florida Landscape: Capabilities
Institute of Science
Instructor: Mark McGlothlin, Spring 2024
Location: Gainesville, Florida
At its core, Capabilities presents a visionary blueprint for a 50,000 square feet hub to accommodate a diverse array of scholars and luminaries spanning disciplines such as mathematics, engineering, theology, scientific inquiry, anthropology, and astronomy.
The deliberate integration of louvers into the facade is emblematic of a profound commitment to fostering an environment of undisturbed focus. Functioning as both guardians and guides, these architectural elements redirect perspectives, shielding the interior from external distractions while regulating the influx of natural light.
Tower: Vertical Despotism
Dystopian Civilization
Instructor: Mark McGlothlin, Spring 2024
Location: Gainesville, Florida
Embedded within the architecture is a narrative of dystopian intrigue, a world dominated by its own oppressive government and stratified social hierarchy.
Inspired by Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the apex of the tower lies the seat of power, the world government, watchfully surveilling the middle and upper echelons of society, recognizing their potential ability to revolt. Meanwhile, the lowest reaches of the tower, situated at the base of this dystopia, languish in neglect and poverty, their inhabitants are marginalized by systemic indifference, although celebrating a certain sense of freedom...
Fourth-year Undergraduate Architecture Student University of Florida
Contact:
email: tommychen7072@gmail.com
cell: (954)-536-1819
Tommy Chen