Mikey

01

Horseshoe Addition

A client who owns an 1800s carriage house in Andes, New York, wanted a substantial addition. Our proposal consisted of a significant 25’-0” x 25’-0” wood-framed sunroom, a screened porch, and a mudroom

02

Between Two Walls

Between Two Walls is an installation proposal for Madison Square Park Conservancy in New York, NY. The proposal is a mile-long corridor consisting of over 300 8’ x 3’ tall wood & drywall boards that wind their way through the existing park landscape. The installation invites the public, young and old, to leave messages along their journey and allows bystanders to peak between the boards from afar.

03

A Dusty Reality

Five sand factories dot the coastal beach town of Laguna Beach, California. After noticing a lack of tourists, the homeowners took it upon themselves to replenish the pristine beaches through a bottom-up sand-making initiative. Their single-family home topology made it conducive to occupying the space between, beside, and adjacent to one another. The thesis looks at this proposal in 50-year increments. What does the beach look like in 2025 versus 2175? Rocks are brought in from local home development projects and pulverized into sand. As the years progress, factory workers occupy the homes they share close contact with. The owners grew weary of the constant sound, dust, and work necessary to preserve beaches and fled to other destinations. A dystopian future is produced, all in the act of preservation.

04

Between Mist & Reality

This proposal engages climatic elements as a primary agent of architecture, transforming the Storefront for Art and Architecture into a space to observe and experience the relationships between the city and the elements of a swamp. By building out three hyper-humid rooms of varying sizes, this proposal searches for and aims to encapsulate the transitional nature of the swamplands. By utilizing tinted PVC curtains to cover the primary apertures of the space and allowing artificially induced fog to trickle out, the public is invited to physically encapsulate themselves within the swamplands.

Like the swamplands, which are neither totally land nor totally water, these rooms create soft boundaries between the natural and artificial. Blurring the relationship between inside and outside, these rooms provide a platform in which different social encounters may unfold. An interpretation of the ephemeral, this intervention aims to make sense of the foggy, humid, wet, and biodiverse nature of swamplands often hidden from our human experience.

Swamplands act as buffers between human expansion and untamed wilderness, transitional zones rich with contradictions and mystique. Our proposal for Swamplands ties to these ‘misunderstood landscapes’ of Swamplands - creating three unique spaces that act as points for cultural engagement. We did this by simulating climatic factors such as humidity and fog, as equal agents, to evoke natural phenomena through artificially generated means.

Rich in experiential metaphors to what it is like to travel through the coastal areas of the Eastern seaboard, this proposal turns the building inside out, positioning the swamplands as a sensory experience from which to observe the dualities and ambiguities of New York City’s urban fabric. Like an imperfect translation, the ephemeral is evasive, yet it provides an opportunity to soften boundaries and question our relationship to the natural and built world.

05

TEDxRISD Conference

Secured $25,000 from the institution to organize the inaugural TEDxRISD speaker conference at the Rhode Island School of Design. We were yearning to bring back an experience that resembled the diversity of thought from a Foundation-year studio. Seeing, listening, and being inspired by students, faculty, and staff from across departments was the goal of this event. The event has since brought in over 60,000 YouTube views, helping boost donor engagement and interest prospective students & families. Learn more at: www.tedrisd.com

Nineteen graduates from The Rhode Island School of Design, Yale School of Art, and The Cooper Union converged in January 2023 to introduce their diverse creative practices to the City of New York. Determined to inspire discourse, these painters explore boundary-shattering mediums and techniques: Scope and scale were up for debate, while color and pattern were under investigation. United by an unwavering dedication to their craft and a fierce appetite for exploration, their “why not?” philosophy propelled the art of painting into the future.

'Surplus' Mentioned in Architect Magazine - Digital Tools for Construction Waste by Blaine Brownell

02.06.25

'Surplus' Featured in September 2024 Architecture Newspaper Sustainability Issue

09.01.24

‘Surplus’ Unveiled Its Digital Platform at “Newlabs” in Brooklyn During New York City Climate Week

10.15.24

RISD Unveils Ten Finalists for Terra Carta Design Lab launched by HM King Charles III and Sir Jony Ive

06.15.24

Michael Farris curates ‘Newly Available’ group art show in Tribecca, NYC featuring artists from RISD, Yale, & Cooper Union

01.15.24

$25,000 of funding secured to host the inaugural TEDxRISD speaker series - generating 50,000 YouTube Views

05.15.23

Michael starts the first ever student-led podcast series ‘rizdeology’ featuring architects: Nader Tehrani, Michael Maltzan, Deborah Burke

01.15.22