IV. (the) MASS EXTINCTION

Critic:

Gisela Baurmann

08.30.22 - 12.13.22

Typology: Housing

Academic Graduate

Individual the MASS EXTINCTION is a proposal speculating on the cohabitation of humans and bees in an urban housing setting. The project seeks to recontextualize the interface between the human and nonhuman at the scale of high-rise housing in Queens, NY. The human-honey bee relationship is one of great significance for the bee’s responsibility in maintaining the agricultural industry in the face of existential climate threats that have decimated global hives, colonies, and populations. The proposal examines this relationship by adopting a non-anthropocentric position, defining user profiles as fluid roles of pollinator, fertilizer, and germinator. As a result, the building is not a fixed architectural operation, but rather an organism in its own capacity of equal consequence to the human and nonhuman users, leveling the status of the three user profiles to interdependent aspects of the proposal. The human spaces are a surrounding network of interchangeable units with individual urban farming gardens that transform into human composting chambers upon death, recycling all components of the organism’s life cycle and adapting housing into not only a model of life but also of death.

Mesh Green Wall Facade Pod Unit

The pod units are the core module of the building, collecting solar energy in adaptive louvers and offering unique studio living spaces.

The facade is a double skin system composed of a metal wire mesh that acts as an interface for vertical vegetation growth and allows for pollination to occur. The permeability of the mesh supports the movement of the bees as cohabitants.

Honeybee Atrium

Throughout the building, zones of cross-laminated timber act as cores to support the building’s construction and allow transportation and living spaces for the inhabitant bees. These zones harvest energy from the wax, honey, and kinetic movement of the bees.

Apiary

The top unit is reserved for the building’s resident beekeeper who maintains an attached public apiary that naturally sustains bee populations on the site.

Compost Chamber

Each unit contains an attached chamber for personal gardening until the user passes away, and it is then adapted into a bed of organic material for human composting. The user is then returned to the life cycle of the building.

Lightwood Infrastructure

The in-between spaces between modules are filled with a lightweight infrastructure of wood framing to propagate hanging gardens. These gardens are maintained by the building users to grow edible products for personal cooking.

The facade allows a permeability between interior and exterior encouraging the cohabitation of native honeybees that nest in crevices between units. Over time, the nesting logic will become a component of the architecture itself.

V. (the) UNBREATHABLE AIR

philadelphia,

Critic: Danielle Willems

08.10.21 - 10.14.21

Typology: Installation

Academic Graduate Group the UNBREATHABLE AIR explores the structural properties and fabrication strategies of carbon fiber as an experimental material to engage and interact with the chamber volume. The project extracts its shape from the boundary of the site subtracting double-curved polysurfaces to mold an undulated form. The self-sufficient structure is fabricated from resin-baked carbon fiber that is woven in various density patterns through a series of modules to reinforce its lightweight structural capacity. The gradient weaving patterns serve as a physical connection between the woven modules and the user perspective guiding views through materiality and allowing for an interactive, unpredictable visual experience. The digital expansion of the chamber also explores the incorporation of suspended solid between the layers of carbon in order to display the strength of the material as well as the proliferation of undulated formwork.