Subu Bhandari Design Portfolio

portfolio SUBU

2023

2019

SHUBHEKSHYA

shubhekshyab@gmail.com

865.312.4728

Masters of Science in Architectural Studies + Urbanism Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Bachelor of Architecture

University of Tennessee

2023

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Graduate Teaching Assistant : Architecture Options Studio “Turbulence in The Windy City”

The studio investigated different histories of Chicago through air as commons, climate and commodity a praxis of investigation.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Graduate Teaching Assistant : Contemporary Urbanism Pro-seminar

Engaged with students with their projects representing diverse global systems. Projects tackled multi-scalar and temporal representations of different urban conditions.

2018-2019

University of Tennessee Teaching Assistant : Design Representation 1

Teaching Assistant : Design Representation 2

Led first year architecture students develop their visual narrating skills.

2019

University of Tennessee Teaching Assistant : Architecture History

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MISTI Nepal Independent Research Fellow | Fall 2023

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MISTI Nepal Independent Research Fellow

Conducted a survey of the “State of the Village” in Rural Nepal focusing on livelihood impacts due to infrastructure expansions.

SUBU BHANDARI

summer 2022

NAZDEEK | New Delhi, India

A women-Led organization focused on betterment of marginalized communities in India and Nepal. My role as a designer guided the team of women human rights lawyers during the initial phases of a slum up-gradation project in South Delhi.

2019-2021

Krueck Sexton Partners | Chicago , IL

Worked on multiple design projects from the schematic design phase to construction documents.

Loyola Academy Theater

125 High Street Interior Renovation

Social Security Administration Phasing Study

summer 2018

Sam Sterling Architecture | Albuquerque, NM

Worked on the design development and construction phase of a historic community center in downtown Albuquerque.

summer 2017

Lewis Group architects | Knoxville, TN

Assisted in the schematic design phase for a high school in Roane County, Tennessee.

2015-2018

UTK College of Architecture + Design Office | Knoxville, TN

MISTI Nepal Research Grant | 2023 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Graduate Architecture Fellowship | 2021-2023 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Distinguished Design Award For Undergraduate Thesis | 2019 University of Tennessee

Undergraduate Thesis Selected for summer exhibition | 2019 University of Tennessee

Faculty Letter of Design Merit | 2019 University of Tennessee

Gilman Travel Fellowship | 2018 University of Tennessee Tau Sigma Delta Honor Society | 2017-2019

UNSETTLING ROADS

abstract

"Road" translates to "Bato" in Nepali. When I type "road' Its meaning takes on the same as Bato in Nepali, which accurately translates closer to "journey."

When mentioning 'roads' unless specified, I am speaking to everything such as the material condition, human experience and the atmospheric reality of such projects.

Ethnographies of Dust across Rural Nepal

MIT SMArchS Architecture + Urbanism 2023

Advised by : Mohamad Nahleh + Huma Gupta

Read by : Dane Carlson

Although the three of us traveled on the same foot-path our intimacy with the land will always be different. This thesis initiates a dialogue between my grandfather, my father, myself, and the roads we took to get home to Hatiya, Nepal. The conversation starts with footpaths and ends within a newly constructed highway, critiquing the method of construction and the spatial intrusions enforced.

Roads precede with expectations of stability and socio economic acceleration, however, In Nepal, and specifically Hatiya, they also unsettle ecological and cultural heritages. The intrusion of the Mid-hill highway along this valley has exploded into expansive networks of unfinished road projects that sit still, frozen and fragmented in a state of continuous construction and destruction. Less than twenty years ago, our hometown stood still and quiet, only connected by historic footpaths. Today, it has transformed into a regional resource anchor attracting many to resettle to Hatiya, lured by the road and the promises it brings.

Road building in Nepal is linked to decades of national promise of forthcoming economic prosperity. The reality is a contested network of material confluence. Over the last three generations, government involvement in rural road expansion has challenged existing notions of time, acceleration, and mobility, resulting in different waves of sociocultural shifts in rural regions of Nepal.

How can roads be deconstructed, redesigned, diverted, and striated, to initiate new types of intimacy with the land. A intimacy and rendering that allows for containment of some operations and the spilling of others. One that welcomes my grandfather's history, my fathers translations and my fragmented understanding and experiences of our hometown.

The following pages narrate the story of one footpath that has been subjected to continuous excavation, expansion, and explosion. The reality of the method has brought economic growth into the region, however, mismanagement and lack of appropriate building practices has saturated road corridors with pollutants and clouds of dust.

This thesis is much about the material transformation and territory expansion of roads as it is of the people who walk on it, inhaling the polluted atmosphere. It is for the unknown physical reality of farmers who are forced to walk on edges of highways. I argue that : The problem is not the promises brought from urban and economic growth, physically manifested, but the methods, management and maintenance to sustain such ambitions that, as I will demonstrate, are unfit for ecosystems in Nepal.

I want to view roads, as places of memory and accumulations. Places with complex narratives that frequently are overlooked among research dialogues. Roads, or "bato" is a way to physically and metaphorically enter a historically isolated region currently undergowing severe amounts of cultural and physical transformations.

Above : A photograph of Hatia in 1990. There are no roads, only footpaths. Over the past 30 years the introduction of the Mid-Hill highway has not only transformed the valley, but its influence has grown upward to peaks of mountains.

Left : A look at life during the 70's in Hatiya. Photographed is my father, Hem and his classmates working on the fields in Hatiya.

FROM THEN TO NOW

The following triptych depicts the horizontal and vertical transformations of the mid-hill landscape. Agrarian practices and heritages are slowly intruded by road expansion, extension and promises of speed and economic prosperity.

The new highway

Quickly facilitates economic growth anchoring new businesses catered towards economies of tourism and contemporary standards of living. Roads in this region have changed the lives of millions of people, bringing new resources to the region. This project welcomes such new development however it argues towards the methods that are used to deploy such networks. Methods that disregard the existing socioeconomical landscape.

The drawing ends with the current state of rural Nepal with roads and their pollutants occupying not only the valley but also its vertical movement onto the peaks of the Mid-Hills.

As accessibility increases in historically isolated regions of Nepal it is important to also plan for the environmental and social stresses that might emerge due to new construction that operate at historically larger scales.

Above : Highway Corridors

The section above depicts the intrusion of highways and their atmospheric and geological impacts. Issues of over excavation and delayed completions has left this landscape barren and still, materially responding to extreme seasonal forces. Dry seasons are met with clouds of dust while during wet seasons, the roads flow like water burying and destroying what sits in its path

Right : Seasons of Plenty

The life and peripheries of the highway is expressed on the diagram on the right, that exists in parallel with the site map. Instead of its physical reality, the map on the right depicts the seasonal lifespans of a single road. While the base shows the intersections between yearly road lifespans and water, the red highlights the subtle growth of roads and their peripheries. The cultivation has remained cyclical while the urban footprint has slowly started to increase. The drawing is read clockwise following the movement of the red as it starts to infiltrate the cultivated landscape. This impression escalates as the attraction of the road begins to bring in new businesses.

Above : Seasonal Spillage

Roads have existed in Hatiya, in the recent past only in the Valley. Over the past 10 years the economical attraction of road-sides has moved many to migrate into the Valley. The infrastructure and policy yet to keep up to such new social dynamics. What was once contained and considered as economical hubs, the speeds of the valley have spilled outwards and up. The reality being a landscape engulfed in dust, frozen in a state left incomplete. The heavy excavation of the earth, from the valleys to the peaks have widened the footprint of highways. These spaces exist on their own terms and times, forcing those inhabiting its peripheries to comply. This recent spillage up the mountains has intruded upon the farmers’ oasis. Their land which stood above the valley, existing with the seasons. The land which was green, and stable, now sits under a blanket of brown during winter, and gets carried with the water during monsoon season.

Hatiya Now

Hatiya’s built fabric continues to grow as its geopolitical position makes the region a primary corridor to western Nepal. The Midhill highway that runs through the main village is the longest stretch of “smooth” road in Galkot. This micro network has birthed new taxi economies while also accommodating the growth of trans-national commerce.

Before its current state, the highway was predominantly used by those traveling back home. Now the highway is occupied by trucks, and vehicles carrying merchandise. To some extent, the Mid-hill highway project was right to assume that many will shift their occupation to serve the demands of the highway. This demand has birthed new rural typologies, that breathes dust as long as the roads are alive.

The drawing renders the coating of pollutants in the immediate environment. If the growth and road building cultures are to continue at the current rate, the polluted reality will need to be addressed. This transformation and sudden intrusion of pollutants are accelerating at a faster pace than policy to manage the new systems introduced.

Present Hatiya Realities

The continued growth has challenged current human-land relations, diffusing historic intimacies naturally brought by the slowness of traveling. I argue that speed and acceleration of travel brought by the Mid-Hill Highway is connected to the loss of connection with the land, seeing it as an obstacle to overcome rather than an ecosystem to protect. New methods of mobility and desire for connectivity have created a disconnect that has culturally removed local interest in protecting land.

New space typologies have emerged disrupting previous urban–rural divisions. Historically these disruptions have been concentrated within the valley, however over the last decade the construction of new feeder roads have encroached higher altitudes. Senses of belonging and familiarity are lost with increase of capital flows.

The future of Hatiya lies adjacent to the future of road

construction. The current reality is a landscape where road construction and connectivity is valued higher than the preservation of land and culture. Modern standards of livelihood seems to be at the forefront of regional and national agendas.

I call on us to reconsider the method of development in the MidHill region of Nepal. A method that negotiates between human centered experience and machine built landscapes.

It has been a decade since the Mid-Hill highway was constructed following outdated and unfit national standards. The current state of the highway

Left: As development varieties continue, this image looks at the material layering and adaptation of new with the old in variously compelling ways.

Map of Greenmount Corridor. Highlighted in Pink is the chosen neighborhood based on proximity to resources such as schools, after school centers, and community centers.

PLAYFUL BALTIMORE The Child’s Neighborhood

MIT SMArchS Architecture + Urbanism

Taught by : Rafi Segal - 2022

abstract

Playful Baltimore reorganizes the typical Baltimore block typology by recalibrating existing informal methods of community based surveillance facing children and youth. The project builds off of communal methods of observation and introduces new types of block typologies that expand the child's playful territory. Although the roles of existing characters, such as the watchful neighbor, the corner store clerk and the mailman are maintained, their stage is manipulated, welcoming new opportunities for visual and social interaction.

The child's neighborhood expresses their own appropriations of their territories, sometimes formal, and sometimes playful in reaction to the outdated existing configurations. Manifesting in different scales, these block interventions allow for different methods of exploration and discovery.This project is a response towards multiple community meetings where parents and community leaders expressed the lack of safe spaces for children especially after school.

Since it first began, Baltimore’s black community has fought to secure, protect, and expand their individual and collective rights and opportunities in America. Today, the city is a study in contrasts. The once “black capital” turned into one of the most segregated cities in America. The site, Greenmount Avenue, is located in the northern part of the city center, in close proximity to both the Central Business District and the intersection of major corridors which serve as a City-wide transit hub. Along the avenue there are multiple residential blocks and major historical sites including the Greenmount Cemetery, the former Baltimore City Detention Center, and extends to the John Hopkins University.

Leveraging from existing vacancies, community anchors, and underutilized open spaces this projects considers a different Baltimore, one that is safe for children without traditional methods of policing and surveillance.

Above : What does a child’s neighborhood look like? What are their territories in and around their home and how do they appropriate space fit for their imagination?

Above are initial studies to understand the ways children visually and socially interact with different community members. Types of interactions include the corner store clerk, school teachers, and neighbors.

Left :

Study of different methods to bring more opportunities for community engagement. Children frequently appropriate their territory to fit their imagination and currently, the existing historic fabric of row house typologies limit their imagination.

Scale one : Neighborhood

How can the urban territory of children expand, perforating existing vacant houses. While working on the community scale, the focus was put on collecting and visualizing current vacancies and exploring ways to retrofit those vacancies to spatially and visually open the neighborhood, welcoming new types of community engagement and interaction

There are three types of common vacancies in the neighborhood that involve single, double and triple unit voids. This drawing explores potential methods to reclaim these voids, giving it back to the community as an asset that not only increases value, but brings spatial agency back to the community.

Pink represents moments where spaces previously occupied by vacant homes are opened up, and retrofitted.

This scale proposes a new Baltimore Block typology that slightly offsets each row house . By doing this the street-scape is internally focused while backyard courtyards focus externally. What might a visually child-safe space look like? How can a neighborhood be safe without traditional methods of surveillance?

Scale two : The Baltimore Block

IDENTITY CRISIS

Episodes of Border Exchange

Undergraduate Thesis - University of Tennessee

Advised by : Jennifer Akerman + Marshall Prado Distinguished Design Award - 2019

The artificiality of national borders have generated cycles of displacement, violent encounters, and diplomatic conflict. National borders are physical, political, contested, heavily guarded, and have unnaturally divided people in past and present histories. This investigation focuses on the spectrum of social injustices occurring within border landscapes and the generational identity crisis it has caused.

Borders are products of conflicts, agreements, and embody painful histories. They are hybrid conditions existing between lightly occupied and completely abandoned. Its a site of juxtaposing and similar identities. “Identity-Crisis’ questions the spatial language of national borders and considers potential opportunities for physical, ideological, and economical changes creating an economy generated by those displaced.

This investigation speculates the India-Pakistan border as a case study questioning the role of the displaced individual in reclaiming control of their land and identity and history. The absurd origin and ongoing debate of land ownership has implemented an unnatural duality to a once united region. The 2000 mile border is physically inconsistent, and has yielded moments of ecological, and generational trauma. Three episodes have been choreographed as a response to the speculation, imagining the border swellings as programmatic sites of exchange establishing civilian control and generating a new identity.

Right : Visualizing conflicts, unnatural divisions, split territories and altered histories. Thar, Punjab, and Kashmir are split, almost perfectly. One religion to the left and another to the right. Dead-end roads are marked with an X and instances of recorded violence and sites of protest are represented in red with an increase in density as one moves north along the border.

Three locations were chosen as case studies to host such interventions that disrupt existing normality of military and political control, allowing the displaced to find agency to reclaim their identity.

Three speculative episodes with their own typology, program, and characters set and operate a form of exchange. Each scene considers a reclaim of ownership, and birth of an off-spring identity of those constantly at risk because of the border. Each episode reflects its immediate conditions addressing themes of cultural collisions, political and religious tensions, cross border interactions, methods of filtration and self resilience.

/ IDENTITY - CRISIS

Episode One : The Thar Desert is occupied by the displaced Thari population who chose to stay in ancestral territory. They are oppressed, nationally un-recognized, and lack necessary resources to sustain healthy livelihoods. The border landscape is occupied by military agents, methods of territorial claim, camel agents, and the tourist attracted towards the picturesque desert landscape. This episode facilitates exchanges ranging from homegoods, to services in order to establish a self-sufficient economy.

Episode Two : Punjab is the gateway for illegal substances and the occurrence of displaced farmers due to the roughly 400 feet buffer set by India. The inconsistent border thickness, as well as location of highly regulated land is the site for illegal exchanges disguised by advanced farming techniques. This scenario imagines a site where siplaces farmers have adapted to their restricted access and have established advanced farming techniques that not only provide for nearby communities, but also becomes the main facilitator for illegal exchanges.

The artificiality of national borders have generated cycles of displacement, violent encounters, and diplomatic conflict. National borders are physical, political, contested, heavily guarded, and have unnaturally divided people in past and present histories. This investigation focuses on the spectrum of social injustices occurring within border landscapes and the generational identity crisis it has caused.

Borders are products of conflicts, agreements, and embody painful histories. They are hybrid conditions existing between lightly occupied and completely abandoned. Its a site of juxtaposing and similar identities. “Identity-Crisis’ questions the spatial language of national borders and considers potential opportunities for physical, idealogical, and economical changes creating an economy generated by those displaced.

This investigation speculates the IndiaPakistan border as a case study questioning the role of the displaced individual in reclaiming control of their land and identity and history. The absurd origin and ongoing debate of land ownership has implemented an unnatural duality to a once united region. The 2000 mile border is physically inconsistent, and has yielded moments of ecological, and generational trauma. Three episodes have been choreographed as a response to the speculation, imagining the border swellings as programmatic sites of exchange establishing civilian control and generating a new identity.

Episode Three : A question of identity, nationality and territory. Kashmir is the episode of the Kashmir stage. A space existing at the site of conflict. A stage under global speculation houses safe exchanges of ideas, thoughts, arts and cultures. The watchtower grows and occupies the thickness of the border , maintaining division but allowing methods of visual and verbal exchanges. Existing among a gridded field of adaptive bomb shelters, the tower is the meeting place, addressing separation and union.

UNDERGRADUATE THESIS / SPRING 2019 / ADVISED BY JENNIFER AKERMAN + MARSHALL DISTINGUISHED DESIGN AWARD

EPISODE ONE

This episode addresses different forms of trading, building on potential local capital. The site occupies No Mans Land with a marketplace operated by its immediate occupants, existing in flux. Controlled by the Thari people, inhabitants unable to co-exist with their respected nationality. Their current reality exists in exclusion and prosecution resulting in generational trauma and life in scarcity..

Watch Tower Scale : A possible future exists with programs arranged by types of trade and the nature of its occupancy. Temporary markets with a daily clock lack organization and are spatially allowed to regroup on a daily basis. Permanent services and practices are able to exist within a structured space.

Thari Identities

transportation across borders bringing supplies to military personnel. The Watchtower is a threshold for entry into the market. Traders arrive by train building off of the already existing train crossing.

Level One : The common marketplace with tents, stalls and vendors with mobile goods to sell or trade. This program builds off of the already existing culture of bartering.

Level Two : A semi-permanent structure open for claim by locals. The tower can be an accelerator for other types of economies.

The program becomes a growing process that reflects immediate needs. Form is unpredictable and structure acts as the only evidence of permanence. It is the foundation that welcomes vendors, healers, priests, shoppers to establish their market, build something permanent or dissemble any evidence of habitation.

All of the program floats above the natural desert landscape to allow existing pathways of wildlife to flow through. One character, the camel, exists as the main agent of

Level Three : Here starts a system and architectural form that has a radial organization allowing for future growth supporting more permanent forms of exchanges.

This is not any end result, it is a moment in time that reflects the current state of the market.

A possible future exists with programs arranged by types of trade and the nature of its occupancy. Temporary markets with a daily clock lack organization and is spatially allowed to regroup on a daily basis. Permanent services and practices are able to exist within a structured space.

All of the program floats above the natural desert landscape to allow existing pathways of wildlife to flow through. One character, the camel exist as main agents of transportation across borders bringing supplies to military personnel.

/ LANDSCAPE SCALE

/ WATCHTOWER SCALE

LANDSCAPE

SCALE :

/ LANDSCAPE SCALE

The program becomes a growing process that reflects immediate needs. Form is unpredictable and structure acts as the only evidence of permanence.

The program becomes a growing process that reflects immediate needs. Form is unpredictable and structure acts as the only evidence permanence. It is the foundation that welcomes vendors, healers, priests, shoppers to their market, build something permanent dissemble any evidence of habitation.

This is not any end result, it is a moment time that reflects the current state of market.

It is the foundation that welcomes vendors, healers, priests, shoppers to establish their market, build something permanent or dissemble any evidence of habitation.

This is not any end result, it is a moment in time that reflects the current state of the market.

EPISODE TWO Adaptive Misreadings

Punjab is the gateway for illegal substances and the occurrence of displaced farmlands due to the roughly 400 feet buffer set by India. The inconsistent border thickness, as well as locations of highly regulated farm lands is the site for this episode.

This episode imagines the border thickness condition as an adaptive farming region facilitated by illegal exchanges. An economy generated by overlooked networks, illegal systems, and landscape misreadings. The role and influence of authority is overlooked as the farmer adapts to political obstructions resulting in a region of “adaptive farming.”

The result is an alternate economy operated under post-

displaced farmers retaliating against the systems imposed against them. The farmer, whose farmlands exist within the border, has established methods of secret trade, using the watchtower, which was once a tool for power is transformed into anchors of resistance.

A program initiated to adapt to restrictions grows into the controller of border transactions. Farming machines, and other low maintenance practices occupy the border and are read as a normal condition benefiting landowners, however underground networks, usually overlooked, are the main actors and facilitators of multiple underground exchanges.

Below : New Watchtower Operations

Methods of Distraction / Center pivot irrigation systems, reflection methods, and underground channel networks are all main agents facilitating and surveying illegal movements and trade.

Watchtower Skeleton / Existing watchtowers become foundations for re-appropriating to function towards the needs of the displaced farmer.

As the watchtower transitions into opportunity for inhabitation, programs are introduced replicating traces of normality within an absurd landscape is implemented through single plots for inhabitants of the towers.

EPISODE THREE

This episode addresses the weaving of conflicts occurring in Kashmir in relation to youth identity, freedom of existence, and mending of broken communities through a series of stages of different scales and programs. The site exists around the border at locations surrounded by political tensions. It becomes a site of speculation under the global microscope. Those displaced can finally be seen and heard, by each other and by the world.

Characters such as youth protesters, military personnel, and displaced families migrate to the site as tensions climax, as a method to actively participate in their own representation to battle the systems of oppression against them.

The watchtower, when occupied, represents escalated tensions between India and Pakistan and when abandoned remains as a memorial of the conflict. During occupation, the structure and its immediate landscape is a zone of safety. Bomb shelters become homes, and the tower becomes a beacon of stages for expression and communication.

Occupation is a direct reflection of the political relationship between India and Pakistan and the effects of it on the Kashmir civilian.

Military authority is challenged as the watchtower grows under the global spectacle. Traces of normality are introduced through bomb shelter homes, “temporary” markets and other forms of leisure. It is a place of constant tension and stage vocalizing struggle and violations to human rights.

The resulting architecture is designed and controlled by the civilian. The result memorializes the conflict and struggles that are faced on a daily basis. The watchtower is isolated from its landscape, however a duality is still expressed through different

methods of building and adapting. Existing traces of military occupation have been transformed into methods of vertical circulation.

A systematic chaos exists by the non-architects choices based on necessity. Methods for sustainable habitations in a war zone, stages for representation, methods for cross border communication and infrastructure to allow speculation from global audiences are programmatic elements of the watchtower.

Kashmiri Stage

vertical

transformed

forms of leisure. It is a place of constant tension and stage vocalizing struggle and violations to human rights.

MAGNETIC ATTRACTIONS

abstract

Retooling Operations

University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design

Studio taught by : Andrew Madl

In Collaboration with Fernando Turpin

Tennessee ASLA Merit Award

Magnetic Attraction frames a spatial intervention and an habitat introduction to re-calibrate the movements and nesting sites of sandhill cranes, steering them away from urban sites and towards ‘ideal’ locations within Ocala National Forest.

Pine Castle bombing range, its peripheral landscape and weekly military test bombings plays a major role in reshaping the landscape. It is a collision zone where micro-controlled military regimes collide with unpredictable bird migration patterns. By embodying this dynamic relationship, the atmospheric volume engages with the landscape in a choreographic system of ecological habitat growth cycles.

Florida’s un-exaggerated landscape is molded and reshaped by retooling these military regimes to strategically bomb “ideal” zones, reforming the landscape into ideal attractions for Sandhill cranes

Right : Phases of Planting and Regeneration

The landscape evolves into a living system of cycles constantly rotating in state with burning, planting, and habitat regenerations. The drawings to the left show how this new regime is integrated into the existing landscape and how it will grow over time.

Phase One : Using grasshopper proximities, land between bodies of scattered water marshes are strategically bombed through re-calibrated military pathways. Through repetition and time, water-channels are formed resulting in a large network of water bodies.

Phase Two : With the extraction of land mass, mounds are formed and planted with appropriate vegetation to sustain and provide ideal foraging conditions for sandhill Cranes.

Phase Three : After the manipulation of the landscape and plantings, the new vegetation is maintained through existing maintenance methods such as controlled burning to regenerate plantings.

Three year Ocala Forest burning, restoration, and clustered delineation plan

Three year Ocala Marshland - Dormant to activated succession plan

the CLOUD a lab for CISCO

University of Tennessee College of Architecture + Design

Integration Studio taught by : James Rose - 2018

In Collaboration with E. Ott + S.Brown

Inspired by physical and metaphorical qualities of a cloud, the design for this laboratory is focused on creating a beacon to a disregarded site on the peripherals of University of Tennessee’s campus. “The Cloud” is a spatially transparent laboratory space focused on introducing new levels of interaction between the scientific community at the University of Tennessee and the people of Knoxville.

Cherokee farm, a newly acquired research park near the University of Tennessee lacks a sense of identity and attraction. The design intent acts as a lantern attracting a crowd outside of the usual research family.

The Cloud has a double enclosure system with a interior curtain wall surrounded by a perforated aluminum facade to minimize heat gain and fully embody the cloud aesthetic. Perforations of the facade vary according to levels of sight, allowing an appropriate amount of light into the exterior as well as views out onto the Tennessee River.

Multiple layers of transparency and identity are reinforced with a celebrated circulation system. Two ribbons of yellow stair tunnels circulate around the exterior. Although hidden by the facade during the day, at night it illuminates the area, becoming a beacon for the research community in the campus.

Right : A look at the laboratory at night and the design emphasis on circulation.

the cloud - a lab for cisco

Building Form :

To encourage spectators into the area, we pushed back the first level enclosure and minimized the ground footprint. A shaded plaza with seating becomes an anchor for social engagement. The first floor is also commercial space imagined to be occupied by a multicultural food hall.

To encourage spectators into the area, back the first level enclosure and minimized footprint. A shaded plaza with seating anchors for social engagement.

Few key moments of punctures are placed, highlighting hierarchy of spaces, and connecting the interior with the exterior landscape.

Relationships between the main office space, the core, and the 5’ cloud circulation.

Left :

Levels of transparency and relationship between structure, circulation and occupation is celebrated through the open floor plan.

The design critiques typical design of laboratories; Frequently closed, contained and isolated from its surroundings.

Below:

Moments within the interior spaces of the building, from the outwards focusing circulation to the open floor plan and balconies that welcome pause and visual exploration outwards.

ARCHIVAL SUBCONSCIOUS

Collective Memories

University of Tennessee College of Architecture + Design

Taught by Mark Stanley - 2017

An investigation revolving around the human subconscious reactions towards daily visual encounters. The “blur” in relation to memory is defined as the realms of all our daily forgotten interactions, our long-term forgotten memories, and the manipulation of past memories shaped by older generations.

Archival subconscious archives all human memories on Pier 57, a void within the southwest edge of Manhattan. As a

/SEQUENCE relations living system, human memory is stored as data and virtually transformed into a visual gallery of interactive projections.

The form of the archive focuses on few “strands” hat intersect one another at critical points. The weaving form mimics the interactions of different memories coming together into one. All data is extracted. All data is saved. All data has chance to become manipulated, and reformatted.

The design creates multiple experiential sequences. As a spectator enters the archive, they are led towards specific circulation pathways that frequently collide and intersect. Layouts are organized to allow wandering and getting lost. The longer the system is ran, the more information gets collected, as those who once were spectators, become the subject of observance.