Architecture Portfolio | Javier A Silva Maldonado

About Me:

I'm an architect on track to licensure with six years of professional experience. I love everything that has to do with design, but my experience in architecture is mainly in high-end residential projects, with some hospitality, institutional, office, and retail design experience. With a passionate belief that great design can enhance lives and make a difference to those that use and engage with it, my aim is to bring quality design and a thoughtful connection to the environment in the projects I get to collaborate in. I enjoy working with people and being part of a team, I'm driven by diverse challenges and I hold high expectations. You'll find some examples of my work bellow and more will be uploaded in the near future.

Enjoy!

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Academic Work

Selected Works

Inhabiting the In-Between

Thesis Project

In this urban scale intervention, the Gándara Park is stretched over an abandoned lot and the Muñoz Rivera Avenue. The Park reinstates a basic idea from the initial plan for the New Center for San Juan: a city of people over cars with mulit-modal living, dense, mixed use squares and open space for ephemeral use. A student housing building and apartment complex over commercial spaces defines the park's new perimeter to the southnand serves the Polytechnic University and other higher learning institutions with easy access to public transportation the heart of the the city. The building's design is based in the idea of the interstice as a filter or threshold between undeniably different spaces to control their relationship, where typically a void of activity would give way to urban decay.

- Project completed with ArchiCad.

Bank of China

Academic Project

Connecting an abandoned strip of the Golden Mile in Hato Rey, the Bank of China faces the iconic "Wall-street of the Caribbean". The building starts off with just two levels and grows taller along with the surrounding buildings to reach a tower towards it's north facade. Following a simple rule of feng-sui, the long building is divided in to two faces, like a two headed dragon to attend the points of highest energy that challenge it's own energy. As the design grows vertically, it leaves great terraces overlooking a park to the west and the college campus to the east.

-Project completed with ArchiCad.

Villalba Villas

Freelance Work

A vacation property shares the view with four short term rental tiny villas in this 17.3 acre, lakeshore retreat. The site incorporates four 400sqft villas, a greenhouse, arrival pavilion, and the 2,800sqft residence in a way that allows privacy to the owners and visitors, while taking advantage of the views from every space. The main idea is the antithesis of private and public life coming together as the owners are public figures from Puerto Rico. As so, the design looks to create modern bunkers that open up to the views and take advantage of the steep terrain to allow the beautiful surroundings in and still maintain their privacy. This project is currently in it's Design Development phase and has been produced completely in Revit with Enscape for renders and walkthrough videos.

See videos here: https://vimeo.com/463180845 and https://vimeo.com/463689806

Back Bay Penthouse, Boston

Professional Work

This 3,545sqft penthouse has 360 views of the Boston, Back Bay area. It has three bedrooms with southern exposure and great north views in the living spaces. The layout felt clunky with an odd L-shaped laundry room, a large zig-zagging hallway entering the Master Bedroom, so it was simplified and squared out.

Dorado Beach Resort, East Beach Villa - Lot 12

Professional Work

This beachfront, +14,000sqf villa is located in a luxurious gated community of custom-built homes in Dorado, P.R. The main house has six bedrooms, eight bathrooms throughout its three levels, and a double height living room looking outward to the terrace, infinity pool, golf course and private beach. To the east side of the property is the guesthouse with three bedrooms, two baths, it's own terrace and a pickleball court. The finishes for this villa have the feel of the beach and natural landscape with coraline tile and wood slat accent walls on the outside and open, white spaces on the inside. All main bathrooms showers are open to the exterior in one way or another to give the owners an intimate space to hear the waves and feel a connection to the outdoors. I carried this design from schematic phase to site visits during construction, although the design was based on the neighboring villas floorplan and style and then customized to be unique and fit the owner's specific needs. Revit was used for this project from the beginning, which helped the owner visualize changes as they happened in this fast-tracked project. Like this project, I worked on four more similar residences in Dorado Beach East, one of which you can tour through in this video: https://youtu.be/lRNFzeIK6MU

Dorado Beach Resort - West Point Residences

Professional Work

This four story, six-unit condominium is part of a series of multi-family buildings along the coast of West Beach, all unique yet similar. It has an underground basement, two apartments on each of the first two floors and two duplex penthouse suites on it's third and fourth floor. The north façade opens up completely to the beach, as its all glass. Sliding doors hide into the walls to bring the view inside main bedrooms and living spaces. The biggest design challenge was coordinating the penthouses' rooftop pools with structural engineers and, during construction, making sure the contractor understood the design. CMA took this project on as Architect of Record, as the concept design belongs to SB Architects. Still, I feel I was able to leave my print on the end result, specially in the basement, penthouse foyer and general lighting design. This project's documents were made completely in Auto-Cad, but a Revit model was necessary at one point for coordination purposes. Like this project which is under construction, I worked on building V which does not include the underground garage as you'll see pictured below.

Dorado Beach Resort - Beach Club

Professional Work

This project sought to expand DBR's amenity options with a spa, restaurant, bar, play room, two pools and a jacuzzi. The lot sits between two apartment buildings which give the space a window to the sea condition with terraces and pools cascading towards the beach. The interior and exterior are merged in the spa with interior patios and huge terraces with wooden ceilings and pergolas deliver a beachy, rustic chic style throughout the project. The concept design belongs to Hart Howerton Architects and CMA are Architects of Record where I led the development of construction documents and coordinated with designers, kitchen consultant, lighting consultant, engineers and the client. Construction of this project is under way.

Back Bay Penthouse, Boston

Professional Work

Greenwich Village Townhouse

Professional Work

A landmarked townhouse in Greenwich. In this project every room was made to feel unique, united by the original stairs that thread it all together. We changed the layout in order to make some rooms bigger and accommodate an elevator. The cellar was dug under to make usable from a crawl space, now housing the Laundry and a Formula1 racing simulator. The construction process was somewhat prolonged by numerous changeorders due to changes in the clients expectations, but the end result was an incredibly playful but tasteful home.