Maria Guadalupe Morales ARCHITECT & URBANIST

ARCHITECTURE+SUSTAINABILITY The building is a simple design of 6 apartment of 60m2 each. It was separated in two buildings in order to allow each apartment had natural light and ventilation. The most remarkable of the building is that it has sustainability features like water harvesting in the roof, green areas on the roof, a green wall and gray water recollection in the showers that is reused in the bathrooms.

Water Harvesting in Street Medians

URBANISM+ SUSTAINABILITY Water Ridge took the median strips of a street of a neighborhood in the city and made them a rainwater collector. First by collecting the rainwater with a recollection system under the sidewalks. Second by implementing a caption system for the rainwater in the roofs of the buildings that are on the median strips such as schools, soccer fields, parking and police station.The water will be routed through a drainage network for purification and storage underground.

Social Dwelling Janitzio

ARCHITECTURE+ SUSTAINABILITY These set of 12 apartments for a vertical dwelling was a proposal for a contest launched by one of the most important companies of housing development in Mexico named GEO.Because of the continued expansion and lack of housing in the city, they look for a new prototype of housing in a vertical way.

Neighborhood Centre

ARCHITECTURE+URBANISM The Neighborhood Centre was a set of recreational buildings with plazas for the core of a quarter in Mexico City. A proposal for wasteland with the intention to improve the quality of the area and the life of their inhabitants. It is a combination of an urban intervention with an architecture one in order to enhance the public space of the city.

Sustainability Station

ARCHITECTURE+ URBANISM+ SUSTAINABILITY The Sustainability Stations is a project focused on solving Mexico City's problem of lack of water and floods. The extraction of the water causes many settlements throughout the city producing the city´s flooding, so the sewerage network cannot maintain the necessary slope for the eviction of the waste water. The main purpose of the project will be the water harvesting in order to avoid water table extraction for supply.

Neighborhood Intervention

ARCHITECTURE+URBANISM The city intervention was an urban proposal for two Mexico City townships. They needed an urban analysis to determine urban and architectonic strategies in order to enhance the area. After the urban analysis, an architecture strategy for one site in the study area was developed.

Alexandria Library

ARCHITECTURE+CIVIC+CULTURE The library project was situated in downtown Alexandria on the waterfront. The dynamic form responds to the most important view which is the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge that connects Alexandria with Maryland. The first floor concentrates all the services. The second floor is the library by itself and the third floor is the reading area. The library stairs are the main aesthetic element of the project that also relates to the dynamic of the form and the bridge.

Copa America

ARCHITECTURE+CIVIC+CULTURAL+SUSTAINABILITY The soccer field facilities was a proposal for Copa America soccer games were going to be held in Argentina. Therefore, they needed to construct some facilities to launched the championship. The concept is basically the sustainability in order to the project to be the most autonomous as possible. That´s the reason for the elements to be interrelated, allowing the group work and the supporting of activities.

Spaces fo Negotiation

DESIGN & URBAN ECOLOGIES STRATEGIES The project of platforms over Roosevelt Avenue in Queens was thought to create a space that local businesses and street vendors can use to increase their sells as for making them negotiate and ally to make a strong a coalition against the Business Improvement District (BID).

I believe in design as a tool to develop better solutions for designing buildings, open areas, communities, environments, and cities. I try to make my work as inclusive as possible in the hopes of providing, through design, equity for all.

I am interested in creating and promoting strategies that let all involved stakeholders rethink the current solutions and practices in architecture and urbanism while still taking on the challenge of envisioning and designing high-standard projects. I always try to approach and incorporate in my projects the sustainability component to help the environment within which the design interventions are located but also to increase the capacity and endurance of these interventions.

My practiceis a constant dialogue between design strategies for the built environment, the architecture, the landscape, design of ecological systems. I am always looking for the synergy between them.