Sheena V. Enriquez

Place and Memory 

Funerary chapel, mausolea, and landscape design for Chicago’s Rosehill Cemetery

Completed: Fall 2009
Project Type: Advanced Studio 
Instructors: Thomas Brock and Chandra Goldsmith-Grey

The City of Chicago established two rural cemeteries during the 1850s. Rosehill Cemetery served two functions for the citizens of Chicago: (1) it removed the potential health hazard of burying the deceased near where people lived, and (2) it served as a place for people to escape the hustle and bustle of an industrialized city. 

Over a century and a half later, we had been asked to develop a plan to build a new chapel and more mausolea using pre-cast concrete. This project maintains the rural, park-like setting while incorporating the mausolea throughout the landscape.

Methods/Softwares Used: Rhino3D, VRay, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, AutoCAD

Produce display boxes for Belli's Grocery

Completed: October 2013

Alexandra Curatolo had completed a Kickstarter campaign to fund the opening of a grocery store in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. In addition to selling locally grown produce and food products she planned to host weekly events open to the community. 

With three weeks to design and build the shelves, I proposed a modular system of produce crates that can be used as display shelving and rearranged to meet changing programmatic needs. Redmoon Theater Co. donated use of their build-shop and the wood to build the display boxes. Members of the Pilsen community and a handful of IIT Architecture alumni formed the volunteer corps that built and assembled the produce display boxes during the two-day “Community Build” events. 

Role: Designer / Fabricator / Community Build Day Coordinator
Collaborators: Alexandra Curatolo (owner, Belli's Grocery Chicago), Louis Fernandez (designer / fabricator), Andres Lemus-Spont (our contact at Redmoon Theater Co. who coordinated use of build space and material donation)

Methods/Softwares Used: Woodworking tools, Adobe Illustrator, AutoCAD

Observation tower in Grant Park

Completed: Spring 2011
Project Type: Advanced studio 

The focus of this semester was to learn  Grasshopper and to develop novel ways to generate form. The final project, a one hundred foot observation tower sited in Grant Park, morphs in section as the staircase winds to the top. The images shows one iteration of the parametric model.

Methods/Softwares Used: Rhino3D, Grasshopper, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, laser cutter

Furniture project

Completed: Spring 2010
Project Type: Furniture & Architecture course project
Instructor: Paul Pettigrew

Inspired by the protagonist’s journey in The Alchemist, this series of boxes is meant to hold keepsakes from travel. Four walls and a base piece (made from poplar boards and birch plywood, respectively) are adhered together to make each individual box. I cut the poplar to meet at a rabbet joint at each corner. Stacking the boxes produces a “reveal” that causes them to appear as if they are floating.

Methods/Softwares Used: Woodworking tools, AutoCAD

Home and school for female victims of trafficking in Mumbai, India made from Compressed Earth Stabilized Block. 

Completed: Fall 2009
Project Type: Interprofessional Research Project
Group Project with 13 others
Instructors:  Monica Chadha, Jeanne Gang, and Linda Pulik

This semester we were challenged to design a home and school for female victims of sexual trafficking in Mumbai, India. Two teams worked in concert to develop a prototype that addressed a unique combination of issues. I worked on the team that focused on modeling the physical structure of the home and school. The result is a full scale wall of compressed earth stabilized blocks (CSEB) and a booklet containing the results of our semester long research.

Methods/Softwares Used: Rhino3D, AutoCAD, hand drawing, wood working tools, compressed earth block press

Building models for Parkside of Old Town development

Completed: February 2014
Landon Bone Baker Architects
Role: Model Maker

I assisted the staff architect in completing building models for their Parkside of Old Town development proposal in Chicago. One focus was to show the scale of the building in relation  with the neighboring buildings. Another model showed the collection of materials on the building facade. First I conducted studies of how different papers can represent precast concrete in the scale model. Once the project team approved the material choices, I cut the model components on the laser cutter and helped the staff architect complete the model assembly. 

Methods/Materials:
laser cutter 
drawing paper, museum board, acrylic