Cover Letter 2011

OMAR RODRIGUEZ LAVANDERO
310 Elati Street
Denver CO, 80223
720 . 838 . 0103
Cover Letter
Dear Hiring Manager,
I am excited by the potential to work at your office and grow as a professional. I was chosen as
one of the 2007-2008 Laureate of the Archiprix USA: World’s Best Graduation Projects and
attended the Archiprix International Workshops in Shanghai, China. I have also studied abroad in:
Panama, Germany, Cuba, and Spain, for a degree in architecture, and I have earned a Master’s
degree also in architecture from the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of
Colorado at Denver. I have already completed my Intern Development Training Program and I
am ready to start the architectural licensing process. Your employment will make possible the
flexibility and help I need while I prepare myself to become a licensed architect by 2012.
Before starting my Master’s degree, I worked as a designer and construction manager for
Cubanacan S.A. It is an enterprise in charge of designing and building fine hotels. In that time I
became familiar with both design and construction processes. Since then I have worked on
projects requiring metaphorical expressions, environmental respect, excavation, roof construction,
interior wiring, and plumbing. Later as an intern, I focussed on areas that would better prepare me
to apply my understanding of construction to design, marketing and managing. Through these
efforts I have become familiar with 3D computer modeling, hand drawing, painting, sculpture,
modeling, computer drafting, digital photo manipulation, photography, computer animation and
office software on both PC and MAC environments including: Microsoft Office, Pages, Excel,
Power Point, Key Note, and Adobe Creative Suite, including Photoshop and In-Design.
I also have multiple years of office experience assisting in all aspects of the design, marketing and
construction management of architectural projects. As an accredited Leader on Energy and
Environmental Design, I hope to continue combining these skills with my interest in design,
management and environmentally conscious decisions.
I welcome the opportunity to talk further about possible employment at your office. My motivation
to succeed in the field of management, marketing and architectural design makes me an
excellent candidate for employment.
I am attaching a link/article for your attention: http://www.aia.org/practicing/AIAB082048 . It is a
piece about my work published on the National AIArchitect Magazine. Please look it over at your
convenience.
I would appreciate if you would also visit my online portfolio at http://www.3DMetaphors.com .
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Omar Rodriguez Lavandero
M.Arch, LEED AP, AIAA
310 Elati Street
Denver, CO 80223
720-838-0103
OMAR RODRIGUEZ LAVANDERO
310 Elati Street
Denver CO, 80223
720 . 838 . 0103
Résumé 1
“While Omar is exceptionally hard-working and motivated, he is also congenial, easy going, and
a great office planner.!In these difficult economic times, any office hiring needs a multi-talented
individual like Omar who can successfully complete any task at any time.! I recommend you
seriously consider Omar to be granted a job with your office.” Chris Klein, AIA, LEED AP
RELEVANT EXPERIENCE
2005-2009
DRA Architecture, LLC
Associate Designer, Intern Architect, Job Captain, Marketing Director
Lakewood New Emergency Operations Center and Municipal Courts Remodeling
Produced a winning proposal. Produced DDs and CDs. Coordinated among clients, consultants
and construction managers. Implemented code research. Lead meetings and improved team
productivity. This project for the City of Lakewood, Colorado included 10,040 square feet of new
spaces for the Police Department Communications Center, Radio Technicians, and Offices
Space, along with the City of Lakewood Operations Center and Network Operations Center.
Denver International Airport Marketplace
Managed project from schematic to design development, and continued through CD phase.
Created presentation boards after researching and selecting material options. Administered and
quality inspected during construction. Located in the main Terminal Building, The Marketplace
includes three separate vendor areas: a coffee and tea shop, snack shop and flower shop run by
small businesses. Here an overhead trellis with interwoven fabric provides a park like environment.
West Metro Communications Center
Assembled team and wrote proposal. Managed entire project to build-out of vacant space in the
West Metro Fire Protection District headquarters building located in Lakewood, Colorado. The
area successfully remodeled contains 2,833 square feet of new space for the Fire Department
Communications Center, Supervisor office, Storage Area, Lockers Room, and Storage Rooms.
Denver Public Schools Remodeling
Designed new interiors for DPS Bond 3021: Replacing windows, renewing carpet and paint,
repairing masonry and roofs. Created and reviewed bid packages. Administered CA coordination
among parties. Managed interiors budgets. Improved the use of the spaces on four DPS K-12
schools: Denison Montessori, Force, Knapp, and Sabin Elementary Schools. In addition
documented a historical building: Fairmont Elementary for a successful roof repair. Organized,
inspected and wrote all punch list reports.
Colorado Sickle Cell (CSC) Foundation Building
Presented conceptual ideas to clients. Provided alternative architectural design layouts. A design
project that gave the CSC organization its headquarter offices in Colorado. They offer awareness
and help families with cases of sickle sell anemia disease. This office building focussed on
sustainable energy design using natural light to its maximum capacity.
OMAR RODRIGUEZ LAVANDERO
Résumé 2
310 Elati Street
Denver CO, 80223
720 . 838 . 0103
RELEVANT EXPERIENCE CONTINUATION
2009-Present
3D Metaphors
Designer, Job Captain
Hernandez Residence Remodeling at the Vidal Neighborhood
Hurricanes Gustav and Ike inflicted grave damage in Cuba. This project returned two families’
homes to a functional state. It also presented additional challenges with a tight budget. Expertise
was provided to those that would not otherwise have been able to afford design services.
Gershwin Residence Remodeling at the One Cheesman Tower
This remodeling improved around 1,200 square feet of space making it handicap accessible. The
units’ entrance was relocated and all spaces were also restructured receiving a great new
material palette, better natural lighting, dimensions and architectural interconnection.
Cuban Cigar Factories: An Architectural Investigation
This investigation, lecture, exhibit, and pamphlet are still on production as a winner of the “Hunter
Traveling Grant 2010.” Investigating old factories that are located in cuban world heritage districts.
EDUCATION AND RECENT AWARDS
University of Colorado at Denver
School of Architecture and Planning
Masters Degree
United States Green Building Council
Leader on Energy and Environmental Design
LEED AP
Archiprix International
Best Worlds Graduation Projects 2007
AIA Young Architects Award Gala
2009 Runner Up
AIA Young Designers Challenge
2010 Winner
AIA James Hunter Traveling Grant
2010 Winner
REFERENCES
Chris Klein, AIA, LEED AP
Davis Partnership Architects
phone: 303 884 9439
[email protected]
Eric J. Morris, AIA
EMO Architecture, LLC
phone: 303 499 6368
[email protected]
Dennis Reseutek, AIA
DRA Architecture, LLC
phone: 303 575 6800
[email protected]
Mary Gershwin, PhD.
Business Champions, Inc.
phone: 303 884 1745
[email protected]
Emerging Professionals
Omar Rodriguez Lavandero, Assoc. AIA, uses synthetic landscape topography to
reconcile commerce and public space.
AIA Young Designers Challenge Winner
Market for T-City Builds an Urban Market Place by
Subtraction
by Zach Mortice, Associate Editor
Market for T-City, designed by Omar Rodriguez Lavandero, Assoc. AIA,
begins by turning one of the most basic assumptions about design and
architecture on its head. Typically, buildings begin with nothing. A frame is
constructed, then clad in an exterior material. Thus, an enclosure is created,
generating interior space. Market for T-City begins with a solid mass and then
carves out interior sections. Interior space is created, which is by definition
enclosed.
On the market’s roof is a
park-like public square.
For Rodriguez Lavandero, winner of the AIA Young Designers Challenge,
coupling this approach with flexibly inventive programming creates an
unrivaled urban porosity in a public mixed-use marketplace. Market for T-City
seeks to break the chain of discrete, self-contained commercial
developments that separate people into divided camps of consumer
demographics by offering an open, egalitarian place for people to shop, to
see and be seen, experience the entire social fabric of their city, and
subsequently, for the city to become aware of itself.
Commerce and the public realm
Rodriguez Lavandero received a MArch from the University of ColoradoDenver in 2005 and currently seeks to join a creative architectural design firm.
He originally came up with the concept for Market for T-City for another
competition that asked for urban marketplace designs.
Market for T-City is
sheathed in a
photovoltaic panelpowered glowing LED
cloth.
His project is as much a template for a new way of building as it is a single
design. Its hypothetical site is in the hypothetical T-City, near the border of KCity. The two cities are engaged in a real estate-driven conflict for tax base
revenue and have been haphazardly developing this border area. Both
cities lack coherent urban development strategies, and have placed shortterm revenue over the long-term health of their urban fabric. New plots of
land are consistently being parceled out and branded into single-use
commercial developments catering to different consumer groups; malls,
department stores, strip malls. Because open public spaces and parks
generate no rental or profits, no one with the money to change the shape of
the city advocates for them. “The result, of course, is the loss of public
spaces,” says Rodriguez Lavandero. The city becomes more and more
stratified and segregated by consumerist economic divisions and it loses
touch with its own wealth of diversity.
“For me, that’s not a very sustainable way of living,” he says.
Elemental inevitability
So Rodriguez Lavandero says he decided to “create my own landscape”
that would enable commercial activity, but would also foster a Central Parklike sense of open, democratic urbanism within a sustainable building. He
began his design with a basic rectangular mass made of a mutable meshsponge structure. He envisions the Market for T-City taking shape by carving
out sections of the mesh sponge to create interior spaces; construction by
subtraction. The materials removed in this way (Rodriguez Lavandero says
any material could be used for the market—wood, steel, glass) could then
be recycled into interior retail stalls, doors, and other structures. This way of
building places very few limits on form. “It’s potentially open to any type of
shape you want,” he says.
The market draws its
abstract, asymmetrical
shape from its irregular
site.
The result is a topographically rich expression that’s difficult to achieve for
buildings conceived the traditional way. By tunneling out spaces like this, a
sense of organic landscape emerges—at times cavernous, sloping, and
canyon-like. The structure reminds one of slowly evolving geologic strata
rather than ceilings, walls, and floors. Instead of millions of years of erosion
from wind and water and punishing subterranean forces, Market for T-City is
formed by the rivers of people that will flow through it, carving out spaces as
elementally inevitable as millennia-old creek beds and glacier-sculpted
mountains. The market’s quasi-landscapes lend the project an air of
permanence and dignity, a far cry from the shouting logos, signs, and
billboards that typically define retail environments. Such a synthetic
landscape blurs the boundaries between interior and exterior space,
creating a hybridized relationship to the city. It becomes a public forum with
the programming of a commercial marketplace, all within the spatial
presence of a natural landscape.
Market for T-City’s shapes are abstract, irregular, and asymmetrical, with
multi-story views and cantilevered masses. Rodriguez Lavandero says he
drew the form of the market from its irregularly-shaped site and from basic
structural requirements, not from any formally-guided and self-conscious
desire to differentiate it from the orthogonal and rectilinear shapes in typical
commercial projects. But nevertheless, that’s the effect. Market for T-City’s
Piranesian complexity promises to show visitors that retail environments can
be highly experiential places.
Most retail developments use space to focus the eye on the next product to
be bought in a sequential, linear fashion. Market for T-City lifts these blinders
and asks consumers to take in the entirety of their environment and shop as if
they’re taking a walk through an unexplored park or neighborhood.
Reconciliation
Market for T-City’s circulation patterns increase its urban porosity. Its
pedestrian walkways loop each other, it’s adjacent to a rail station, and is
accessible by foot, by bicycle via ramps, and by car. On the ground floor,
the market is dominated by cavernous parking areas where retailers can
park and sell their products out of truck beds or car trunks: house wares, food,
artisanal crafts, etc. Rodriguez
The market’s interior
spaces are carved out
like geological strata;
canyons, caverns, hills,
and gullies.
Lavandero also envisions rental stalls and storage spaces, and perhaps even
hydroponic farms. The second floor is a twisting, layered level of bazaars and
shops. The top level is a topographic outdoor public square with walkways
across the market roof. Photovoltaic panels soak up sunlight and use it to
power a LED cloth; a flexible fabric that sheaths the building, lighting it and
making it glow at night.
Urban public spaces and privatized retail areas have developed a strongly
inverse relationship: as retail areas grow, public space seems to consistently
contract. Market for T-City reconciles these two needs, first carving out space
in the building for commerce, and then carving out public space in the city.
AIA Architect Magazine
Emerging Professionals
January 2010 Edition
Digital Version: http://www.aia.org/practicing/AIAB082048
All images courtesy of Omar Rodriguez Lavandero