ADC3
Alternative Desert Cities 3
Quinones Urban Elevation

Alternative Desert Cities 3

Pair of urban elevations of an undulating grid of housing reacting to existing context by student Melissa QuinonesPair of urban elevations of an undulating grid of housing reacting to existing context by student Melissa QuinonesPair of urban elevations of an undulating grid of housing reacting to existing context by student Melissa QuinonesPair of urban elevations of an undulating grid of housing reacting to existing context by student Melissa Quinones

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The Butterfly Theater is a living pavilion—part sculpture, part habitat, part playground. It takes inspiration from the elegance of flamingos and the presence of butterflies in Miami Beach, transforming the park’s open center into a place of movement, color, and quiet spectacle.
Scaffolding is often seen as a temporary urban necessity—functional, but rarely celebrated. This project reimagines scaffolding as an architectural intervention and public art piece throughout Española Way, transforming it into a vibrant, interactive element in Miami Beach’s urban fabric.
In Tempe there are two pedestrian axes: Mill Avenue and Palm Walk. Mill Avenue is successful and Palm Walk is not. Is there a way to make the palm trees useful to the students? The PEP structure is powered by buried hydraulic pressure systems giving vertical movement to the layer/palm interface.
Seeing Park Avenue as an underutilized zone that connects four vibrant neighborhoods from 42nd Street to 144th Street, Infrastructural Infill is a study testing the potential to locate a combination of mixed-use housing and transportation in the residual spaces caused by urban infrastructure.
Expanding the mission of the local Biscayne National Park Institute, MICROGROVE is a living research community designed for scientists, ecologists, researchers, and eco-tourists, dedicated to the study, restoration, and increased social awareness of coastal ecosystems.
QTCT is tasked to blend these two identities onto one site—a give and take relationship between beach ambitions and urban necessities. QTCT is a sampling of two worlds: on one hand it is the embodiment of the language of the beach and on the other it is a detailed and exacting built urban space.
The challenge of creating a pair of studio apartments that can fill a lifted 16'x16' void necessitates the creation of a quick, mobile, and opportunistic building system that can react to the found conditions of the site. Access to the site is limited and the ground must be free.
Seating design is vital in fostering communal interactions in shared spaces. Rooted in the organic growth principles of the Metabolist movement and the transformational geometric language of digital Metaballs, Meta-Bench forms an experiential seating system which individuals can move and adjust.

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