Maillard's

June 2021

Project Description

Located in Midland Beach, Staten Island, Maillard's is an easygoing bistro that offers healthy quick-bites and scenic beach views. This restaurant is named after Louis Camille Maillard, a French chemist who first documented and explained the Maillard reaction, which is a sequence of chemical reactions that gives caramelized vegetables, baked bread, and roasted meat their delicious, complex flavors.

Project Background

I created this project in one week as a personal challenge to grow my Revit knowledge. I was inspired by my experience growing up in Midland Beach-- a neighborhood that also happens to be an NYC Zone 1 emergency evacuation zone. Where I live, every rainstorm is a flash-flood alert, and ten-minute summer storms can turn streets into oceans. After the wrath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, living in Midland Beach felt like living in a perpetual construction zone. Today, many of the buildings in my neighborhood are elevated as a result of a post-Sandy FEMA initiative to create more resilient structures. In this project, I took inspiration from these elevated buildings and allowed my site location to influence my design decisions.

Construction Documents

MAILLARD'S CONSTRUCTION DOCUMENTS.pdf

Site Analysis

Project Location: 853 Father Capodanno Blvd, Staten Island, NY 10306

This location is bounded by Father Capodanno Blvd. to the south, Sioux St. to the west, and Cherokee St. to the east. This area is zoned as a mixed-use district with commercial and residential buildings. Additionally, this address is only about 500 feet away from the Midland Beach boardwalk, making it an ideal restaurant location for hungry beachgoers and local residents.

Using cadmapper.com, I imported this location's exact elevation levels into AutoCAD and Revit in order to build Maillard's on accurate topography. I explored various tools, annotation families, and visual settings in Revit to create a detailed site plan for this project.

Elevated Buildings: Pile Foundations

Maillard's is located in a FEMA-designated Zone AE area. Open pile foundations are quite useful in these zones. Pile foundations are created from a series of columns that extend beyond shallow soil to reach soil/rock with higher load-bearing capacities. Pilings transfer building loads deep into the ground, anchoring structures that might be vulnerable to sideways movement from flooding.