Wanda Katja Liebermann

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Wanda Katja Liebermann
DESIGN AND TEACHING PORTFOLIO
Built
Russell Street Addition
Berkeley, California
WWORKSHOP, 2010-2012
I was designer and project architect for this 400 square-foot master
bedroom addition to a 1937 neo-Tudor house. The traditional gable
form is reinterpreted through the use of contemporary materials and
detailing. The extruded, zinc-paneled tube, filled in at both ends
with a glass storefront system, overhangs the original stucco walls
to emphasize its additive nature.
Russell Street Addition
Berkeley, California
WWORKSHOP, 2010-2012
Russell Street Garden
Berkeley, California
WWORKSHOP, 2014
Currently under construction, the concept was inspired by a small
budged and space (made smaller by car storage). The design
transforms inexpensive commercial products like permeable
concrete pavers and an industrial steel roll-up door to extend the interior into an architectural garden. A two-foot square grid based on
the pavers organizes all the elements, including new fence, parking
screen, trellis, and ground coverings.
steel roll up
door at carport
wood fence
ENTRY
wood screen
planting
stone paver
CARPORT
paver with
gravel infill
permeaple paver
with grass infill
Lovell Avenue Residence Remodel
Mill Valley, California
WWORKSHOP, 2007-2008
The renovation included a new kitchen, which posed a number of
conceptual and technical challenges, including how to integrate
new forms that neither mimicked nor conflicted with the clear
geometry of the existing house by Daniel Liebermann. The kitchen
design emphasizes the horizontal lines of the masonry retaining
wall, creating a visual dialog with the tree-like central structure. The
resulting parallelogram with cantilevered peninsula appears to float.
kitchen
Lovell Avenue Residence Remodel
Mill Valley, California
WWORKSHOP, 2007-2008
de Young Building (Ritz-Carlton)
San Francisco, California, 2004-07
OFFICE OF CHARLES F. BLOSZIES ARCHITECTS
I managed the construction documents and construction administration for the restoration and addition of this Burnham & Root
high-rise, originally built in 1890 for San Francisco’s Chronicle
newspaper. In the 1960s it was envelped in a white steel skin. Fifty
years later, Ritz-Carlton’s transformation of it into a condominium
and timeshare property entailed twelve new floors, new steel core,
shotcrete jacket, all new building systems, and historic restoration.
de Young Building (Ritz-Carlton)
San Francisco, California, 2004-07
OFFICE OF CHARLES F. BLOSZIES ARCHITECTS
The three main challenges include providing a structure flexible
enough to withstand seismic shocks yet sufficiently rigid to stabilized the existing masonry walls; reconstructing the historic façade,
destroyed in the 1960s; and threading new mechanical, electrical,
and plumbing through the existing floors.
Timeline of construction, destruction, and reconstruction
1890 Burnham and Root original
1906: Earthquake damage
1920 Kearny addition
1990: 1960s steel cladding
2005: Construction scaffold
Commercial Interiors
1996-2014
I have designed many commercial interiors in the Bay Area, including a modern furniture showroom and diPietro Todd Salons in
San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Walnut Creek. My design approach
focuses on expressing the existing shell, maximizing the space,
building in flexibility of use, and creating new sociospatial awareness, such as features in the salons that play up the pleasure of
watching people.
Arkitektura Furniture Showroom in San Francisco; view of main
floor with interior kiosk.
DiPietro Todd Salon, Fillmore Street, San Francisco salon; view
from enty.
DiPietro Todd Salon, Walnut Creek; view from mezzanine to reception area.
DiPIETRO TODD SALON
San Francisco, California
WWORKSHOP, 2014
This is one of two identical freestanding reception desks I designed
that transforms the traditional reception to a mobile in the round
experience, integrating the latest communication, sheduling, and
payment technologies in a cutting edge salon. Hand work is an
important way to for me to work through and convey my ideas.
Here, paper and foam core represent white oak veneer panels and
recycled acrylic counter tops.
Unbuilt
Ribbon Housing
Berkeley, California
VIGILANTE ARCHITECTURE, 1992
Ribbon Housing, which was exhibited in the New Public Realm
Competition, is a proposal for the abandoned Santa Fe Railroad
right-of-way that cuts through 18 residential blocks in Berkeley.
The eleven-foot wide housing prototype creates a continuous
landscaped promenade that connects to the north Berkeley BART
station. Bridging elements over the walkway form courtyards and
define the passage. I was one of a team of three designers.
Ribbon Housing
Berkeley, California
VIGILANTE ARCHITECTURE, 1992
third floor
second floor
ground floor
Site plan
Site model, section model
View of existing block condition
San Francisco AIDS Life Center Competition
VIGILANTE ARCHITECTURE, 1990
The international San Francisco AIDS Life Center Competition
called for proposals for a new space for coordinated HIV/AIDS
services and a memorial space to exhibit the NAMES Project
quilt. This design imagined a central skylit, floating exhibit space,
suspended by surrounding rectangular bars, which house service
organization offices. I was one of a team of three designers.
Urban Shelter, SOMA
San Francisco, California
MASTER’S THESIS, 1996
Growing homelessness and gentrification of this formerly light
industrial neighborhood has made the South of Market Area of San
Francisco a critical arena of public-private conflicts. My thesis was
an exploration of these social and functional overlaps. I developed
four different approaches to “street furniture,” using found urban
features to create different models of urban shelter/use that explore
the idea of different users appropriating them as their needs dictate.
SITE 1: Public Swimming Pool
An Olympic-sized outdoor public swimming
pool occupies an excavated with wraparound
sub-sidewalk basements as locker rooms.
SITE 2: Parking Garden
Two interlocking zones--a tree garden and
car-parking court--meet along a zig-zag infrastructure, which cars plug into.
SITE 4: Urban Farm and Market
Bounded by the I-80 freeway, an arcade offers seating, water spigots, and sales stands.
Master of Architecture Studio Projects
UC Berkeley, California
SANCTUARY, 1995
Tucked along the banks of Strawberry Creek, this contemplative
space on the UC Berkeley Campus
brings awareness to the experiences of self and community, in
relationship to the landscape.
MEXICAN MUSEUM, 1995
This proposal for a space celebrating the arts and culture of Mexico
and the Americasin San Francisco
reinterprets Luis Barragan’s monolithic rectangular forms, intersected
with transluscent horizontal light
tubes.
Teaching
Wentworth Institute of Technology
Architecture 517, 2010
FRIENDS SCHOOL, JAMAICO POND, BOSTON, MA
was the final project in a studio focused on integrating environmental sustainability with Quaker traditions. As a section instructor
with a lot of autonomy, my goal was to foster formal speculation
grounded in research of Quaker teaching and spiritual practices,
and structural, material, and environmental systems.
Than Denduong
The starting point was to create an educational experience that literally bridged
a site depression within a copse of trees.
His idea was to engage students with the
experiences of inside and above the earth
by making spaces that juxtaposed a cave
and a treehouse.
Wentworth Institute of Technology
Architecture 517, 2010
FRIENDS SCHOOL, JAMAICO POND, BOSTON, MA
Brian Wood
The goal was to create a protective yet
visually porous buffer between the public
space of park and city and the elementary
school. Using the existing landscape to
cradle the courtyard allowed him to incorporate a terraced wetlands wastewater
treatment system.
Kyle Gagne
Kyle’s idea was to amplify the existing
bluff by creating converging inhabitable
vertical gardens as central organizational
and circulation elements. The green walls
also teach the elementary school students
about biological lifecycles, water reclamation systems, and land stewarship.
UC Berkeley
Architecture 100B, 2001
THEOLOGICAL UNION ANNEX & HOUSING
The Berkeley Divinity School was the site of this semester-long
project that explored different approaches to student housing and
other transient users. “Holy Hill” is a complex site: sloped, and
comprising multiple buildings styles, ranging from neo-Gothic to
modernist. The program asked students to develop an innovative
interpretation of local housing needs based on in-depth site and
programmatic research.
ADAM DAVIDSON
The project explores designing for people
who are visually impaired, who use cues of
light and dark to guide their movements. He
created a formal arrangement that enabled
the easy internalization of a mental map
from the predictability of repeated forms and
shadow patterns cast by the buildings.
UC Berkeley
Architecture 100B, 2002
ALAMEDA ISLAND FERRY TERMINAL
This was the final project in a series sited on a jetty of Alameda
Island. It required students to design for bodies that are, in various
ways, in transit. As part of the revitalization of the shoreline, the
program included commercial and public program elements related
to a new ferry terminal. I gave students leeway to interpret the program as part of a critical exercise in defining meaningful contextual
uses.
NICHOLAS MEDRANO
The idea was to create a museum procession entwining two educational strands:
the history of the former naval base on
Alameda Island and the relationship of the
tidal movements to the landscape. The
result was a series of stepped galleries
hovering over the flat verge of the bay.
BENNY HO
This student combined the kinetics and
culture of driving with shopping. He based
the design of driving aisles, parking and
exits on studies of major view corridors,
inspired by unobstructed views of the city,
Alcatraz and Yerba Buena Islands from
this jetty into San Francisco Bay.