Rose DiSarno

The Great Park Neighborhoods are a novel concept in community, embedded within and connected inextricably to the Orange County Great Park. With themes of heritage, innovation, sustainability, native landscapes and diverse communities, the Great Park is a place like no other. The overall site is a diverse matrix of land uses - held publicly and privately - that all coalesce to make the Orange County Great Park.

District 1 South - known as Base Camp - is where the Great Park and surrounding neighborhoods come together. Unique experiences including retail, entertainment, dining, nightlife, wellness, hospitality, offices, residential, family programming and world-class sports facilities come together in one vibrant district.

Base Camp defies expectations. It is a place where families mingle with professionals, where the work, lifestyle and practice of sports, health, and wellness combine. Instead of a traditional street setting, we broke the street grid down into a loose, informal network of paths and small-scale pavilion-like structures. We wanted a visit to Base Camp to feel like being in a park, with meandering paths met by planting on either side and unique experiences around every corner.

Type: Park; Residential; Retail

Location: Irvine, CA

Size: 2,300 acres

Office: Gensler, LA

Role: Lead Designer

Year: 2015 - present

The architectural language throughout Base Camp welcomes the community and surrounding neighborhoods. It serves as the place where residential and commercial meet, combining clean architectural features suited to food and beverage, flexible retail and live/work uses. Themes of “old meets new” and “rustic modern” can be seen through architectural elements. The understated nature of the design is intended to allow the landscape to act as the primary feature of Base Camp.

Characterized by three distinct zones - Daily Local, Family, Style/Cuisine/Leisure - Base Camp’s materiality has an air of regional familiarity while differentiating between programmatic uses. The materiality applied to both architectural and landscape elements helps to define the zones through a minimal, yet rich palette of natural materials and rustic modern articulation.

Type: Mixed-use Retail Development

Location: Irvine, CA

Size: 350,000 sf

Office: Gensler, LA

Role: Lead Designer

Year: 2015 - present

The scale and complexity of the Great Park posed a challenge: how do we tell the story of the park, each of its unique characteristics, and how they all weave into an over arching narrative? We created a book to help our client tell their story to prospective partners and city officials alike, and through the process enhanced the development of planning, program and architecture.

Type: Marketing Book

Size: 100 spreads

Office: Gensler, LA

Role: Lead Designer

The NIO flagship store in Chengdu was designed to showcase the sleek, streamlined and future-forward vision of China’s preeminent fully electric luxury car brand. The store serves as both a retail outlet and innovation lab.

Providing technical oversight to the design team at Consulate, my primary role was to lead the team in developing a set of documents and details in preparation for hand off to the local design institute for construction.

Type: Retail Flagship

Location: Chengdu, China

Office: Independent, in partnership with Consulate Design

Role: Technical Oversight

Year: 2018

Conceived as a gateway and catalyst for urban engagement, the tower at 400 Channelside stands at the convergence of downtown Tampa and the emerging Water Street District.  This speculative office tower strives to create an everyday experience that heightens mental and physical wellness, fluidly integrating access to the outdoors in the user’s daily activity.  Serving as a new icon for Tampa, the massing mitigates the scale of the tower as a vital pivot point between the larger scale buildings of the downtown commercial core and the more intimate, pedestrian scale of the Water Street District.   

The shifted massing provides a diversity of floor plate sizes ranging from 22,000 GSF to 36,000 GSF.  The core is offset from the center, thereby increasing the efficiency and flexibility of office space.  The concrete superstructure provides tenants with a creative, expressive base from which to invent their own identity.  Designed with wellness and walkable streets in mind, the block is lined with active retail, restaurants and cafes, as well as clearly identified stairs and elevators for the 1,700 car garage serving both the building and the district.

The building envelope is a high performance, unitized curtain wall with floor to ceiling vision glass.  The glazing panels are energy efficient, insulating units, with a Low E coating.  In addition, horizontal aluminum fins improve thermal comfort as well as enhance building efficiency through solar shading.  in designing the exterior wall, we strove to limit the number of unique panel types in order to minimize cost and streamline constructibility.

Type: Commercial Office Tower

Location: Tampa, FL

Office: Gensler, NYC

Role: Lead Designer

Year: 2016 - Present

The presence of the office tower along Channelside Dr is articulated by bold geometry, establishing a clear identity for the tower at street level.  Shuttle elevators transport guests from street level to a sky lobby located off the arrival courtyard at Level 3.  Terrazzo flooring with large aggregate media, ship-lapped wood paneling and antique brass accents are used on the interior of the building to create a clean, warm and unique modern aesthetic. 

Type: Commercial Office

Location: Tampa, FL

Office: Gensler, NYC

Role: Lead Designer

Year: 2016 - Present

Located in Burnaby, British Columbia, one of Vancouver’s bustling suburban districts, the 38-story residential tower at Wilson Ave. accommodates 180 units of 1, 2 and 3 bedroom condos. The tower itself is divided into four distinct masses: the glass lobby box lifting the tower over the townhouses, a twelve story lower residential mass that shares a height relationship to the existing neighboring residential towers, an amenity enclosure that is shifted from the tower both making it distinctive in the skyline as well as creating an outdoor porch, and an upper 22-story residential mass topped by penthouse apartments with outdoor terraces.

At street level, 2-story townhouses anchor the tower while maintaining the scale and character of the neighboring sites. Subterranean vehicular and bicycle parking is accessed at the north of the site, allowing the building to maintain a strong pedestrian connection along Wilson Ave, uninterrupted by curb cuts and drop offs.

The amenity programming for 5977 Wilson was designed to appeal to an international luxury market, as prospective buyers within the area are primarily from overseas. Offering two floors of diverse amenity spaces featured as the key architectural moment within the design, the developers hope to set the property apart from others within the market.

Type: Residential Tower

Location: Vancouver, Canada

Office: Gensler, NYC

Role: Designer

Year: 2018

The Marina District, a large-scale planning effort within the EKO Atlantic development of Victoria Island, is cohesively comprised of a collection of neighborhoods with different scales and characters. The district creates livable neighborhoods with dedicated pedestrian zones, access to amenities and walkable streets. The design and positioning of the residential towers aims to take advantage of desirable views across the marina.

Type: Luxury Residential Tower

Location: Lagos, Nigeria

Size: 29 stories

Office: Gensler, LA

Role: Lead Designer

Year: 2014

The design and palette for the units, lobbies and public spaces was heavily influenced by reoccurring themes in African fashion: folding, patterning and layering. Traditional textiles and techniques of craftsmanship provided inspiration for interior concepts that balance sleek, elegant spaces with warm, eclectic and inviting attributes.

Type: Luxury Residential Tower

Location: Lagos, Nigeria

Scope: Units, lobbies, public spaces

Office: Gensler, LA

Role: Lead Designer

Year: 2014

AVION Burbank is an integrated mixed-use project that offers creative office, retail and industrial space, ideally situated to serve the entertainment, aviation, general office and light industrial sectors of Burbank’s thriving market. On-site retail amenities serve the complex, extending beyond to the local community. Connectivity to future and existing transit, along with dedicated pedestrian and bike paths, makes this a forward looking project within the Burbank area.

The campus will consist of nine 2-story buildings, ranging between 6,500 and 22,000 SF. Inspired by the site’s aviation heritage, the design is simple, clean and modern. Features include open truss ceilings, extensive natural light, open and efficient floor plans, CLT flooring, roll-up doors and operable windows. The project promotes an indoor/outdoor lifestyle, featuring exterior meeting and working areas that are an extension of the office interior.

Type: Creative Office Campus

Location: Burbank, CA

Construction: Tilt-up Concrete

Size: 165,000 sf

Office : Gensler, LA

Role: Lead Designer

Year: 2016 - present

The Parisian, a 4.3M SF hotel and casino built by Las Vegas Sands, utilized modern technology and construction practices to design, coordinate and build a 34-story tower, podium and scale replica of the Eiffel tower. For a team trained in the practice of modern architecture, the task of designing a 3,500-key hotel that evokes the character and essence of Paris in the late 1800’s was a significant challenge.

The importance of historical accuracy was the driving force behind each design decision throughout the project. This was exceptionally maintained with regard to the Eiffel Tower, which was scaled to 48% of the original size, but replicated to account for each structural element down to the number of rivets.

Type: Hotel and Casino

Location: Cotai, Macau

Size: 4.3M SF

Office: Gensler, LA

Role: Designer

Year: 2012 - 2014

The client’s desire to create an experiential, historically accurate atmosphere at a grand scale challenged us to rethink the ways we detail and execute design given that typical modern projects are significantly less ornate. Utilizing Revit as the primary design and documentation tool, we were able to study in detail the proportionality, scale and 3-D qualities of each element.

Throughout the course of documentation and construction, as design architects we continued to play a critical role in maintaining the integrity of the original design intent, challenging the local architect, contractors and craftsmen to achieve an unprecedented level of quality in their work.

Type: Hotel and Casino

Location: Cotai, Macau

Size: 430,000 SF

Office: Gensler, LA

Role: Designer

Year: 2012 - 2014

The competition entry for Lenovo’s Headquarters + Research & Design Campus on the outskirts of Beijing was conceived as a series of low-rise buildings clustered around courtyards and seasonal gardens, emphasizing the linkage of outdoor spaces as generators for connectivity and interaction throughout the campus. The buildings utilize passive systems for heating and cooling, with an emphasis on sustainability as a future home for the forward-thinking company.

Type: Corporate Office Headquarters; Campus

Location: Beijing, China

Office: Atkins, Beijing

Role: Designer

Year: 2010

Competing in NEWH’s (Network of Executive Women in Hospitality) Product Runway 2018, Gensler was paired with Couristan Carpets to creatively transform raw products into couture fashion. Using the component materials in Couristan carpets, we designed a bespoke gown celebrating the transparency of the company’s manufacturing process. The garment is composed of a mixture of colorful yarns, woven and tufted into layers of mesh carpet backing. This technique enabled us to accentuate the materials and create visual moments of transparency and movement throughout the gown.

Type: Garment Design

Materiality: Wool yarn | Nylon yarn | carpet backing | carpet binding

Role: Design + Fabrication

Office: Gensler + Couristan

Year: 2018

Whenever possible, I travel. An unceasing desire to explore has led me to understand that our urban environment is composed of a certain juxtaposition of elements that both dictate and narrate the way we experience space. With this ideology I strive to understand who lives, how they live and what they leave behind. The perpetual evolution of the urban environment constantly challenges us to invent new ways to connect the intimacy of the individual to the city at large.

The vision for Armatura came together while on a backpacking trip through South America. I had spent months observing incredible patterns in everything from women’s garments to intricately carved Inca walls and wanted to create something that similarly embodied both strength and movement. In generating mass and scale through repetition I was able to use rigid materials to create a flexible system of connections that would move seamlessly with the natural flow of the body.

Type: Handmade Jewelry

Materiality: Woven wire | Split lock washers

Role: Design + Create + Construct

Year: 2012 - Present

What first began as a study in movement and strength then expanded to analyze weight, balance, composition and materiality. In designing for different applications of wear I have continued to explore the purity of minimal geometry and how it can be carved, layered and woven to create complexity from the simplest of building blocks.

Type: Handmade Jewelry

Materiality: Brass | Leather

Role: Design + Create + Construct

Year: 2012 - present

What first began as a study in movement and strength then expanded to analyze weight, balance, composition and materiality. In designing for different applications of wear I have continued to explore the purity of minimal geometry and how it can be carved, layered and woven to create complexity from the simplest of building blocks.

Type: Handmade Jewelry

Materiality: Leather | Brass | Wood | Silk

Role: Design + Create + Construct

Year: 2012 - Present

The dress was conceived as a single rectangular run of fabric. The design dealt with several factors: the desire for a truly unique garment, a pureness of form and construction, extreme weather conditions, a balance of color and a desire for modern elegance. Designed using traditional architectural methods, the challenge was sculpting linear, rigid lines to articulate the organic, fluid nature of the human form.

Type: Garment Design

Materiality: Silk

Role: Design + Fabrication

Year: 2014

With anticipation and playfulness in mind, this graphic suite was designed as a series of stand-alone messages that when brought together paint a joyous picture of the celebration yet to come. An eclectic representation of both the couple themselves and the guests joining them from around the world to celebrate with them, the invite is composed of unique elements that complement each other in the telling of a greater story.

Type: Graphic Design

Materiality: Screen Print

Role: Design

Year: 2014

The AA Haiti Visiting School is an annual workshop in experimental architectural design which develops projects contextualized for the climate and culture of Haiti. Focusing on the material properties of bamboo, students are pushed, immersed, and intensively tutored in a range of new skills to absorb, imagine and create. This agenda aims to propose a vision for a lightweight contemporary Haitian built environment.

Course: International Experimental Design Workshop

Role: Instructor

Affiliation: Architectural Association, London

Year: 2013 - Present

The second half of 2018 confronted Indonesia with a series of deadly earthquakes and tsunamis that resulted in the loss of more than 2,000 lives. Located within the Ring of Fire, Indonesia is prone to not only earthquakes, but also droughts, flooding and mudslides. The frequency and intensity of these conditions are expected to worsen due to climate change threatening the nearly 25 million Indonesian families living in informal housing.

Following the disaster in Lombok, social attitudes towards concrete and heavy masonry changed. Informal housing built without standards and codes were perceived as major contributors to the loss of life. In a place like Indonesia where there is an abundance of sustainable, lightweight natural building resources, bamboo presents the local population with an opportunity to consider affordable, sustainable and lightweight housing designed to sensitively address its practical and cultural considerations.

Therefore, in order to begin to change the perception of bamboo and propose and affordable and durable alternative to housing in Lombok, the AA Bamboo Lab, in partnership with Bandung Institute of Technology, held a design and construction workshop looking at creating an engaging vision for what bamboo can do structurally and spacially by designing a 25sqm core house that can be built for $4,000USD.

In small groups students began the design process through a method of consultation in order to better understand the needs, livelihoods, circumstances and priorities for the people impacted by the earthquake. They then began developing spacial models that were iterated both in physical and digital form, as well as at 1:1 scale using bamboo construction in order to be able to test ideas in real time.

Course: International Experimental Design Workshop

Role: Instructor

Affiliation: Architectural Association, London

Year: 2018 - Present