Portfolio Architectural explorations Hana Nihill
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About/// Hana Nihill +61 407 730 145 hnihill@student.unimelb.edu.au 225 Flemington Road, North Melbourne, 3051
I have recently commenced my postgraduate studies in architecture at the University of Melbourne. My undergraduate years, also at Melbourne, saw me complete my Bachelor of Environments degree majoring in Architecture. Throughout my time as an undergraduate I spent two years living at Ormond college, a residential college affiliated with the university, where I held various leadership positions including editor of the college’s annual academic journal and faculty representative. Living at college meant that during college breaks I was able to return to my family in London whereI have been living intermittently for the past three years. My main architectural interests centre themselves around the concept of agency in architecture and how it can be parcelled out to the architect or users respectively. I am particularly interested in the way the transition from design to fabrication can mediate this process and assist in creating systems rather than spaces. The projects that follow represent some of the key moments from my architectural education so far, be they representations of skill acquirement or a step forward in the way my design process works. I hope they are as illuminating for you as they were for me.
2014 2015
Education
References
BEnvs (H2A -78%- average) Unimelb
Domenic Trimboli /// Proffessional
MArch Unimelb (Commencing 03.03.2015)
Architecture Tutor at Ormond College and University of Melbourne
2012
Previous Work Experience
E: dtrimboli@ormond.unimelb.edu.au
Community service trip to Borneo where
P: +61 439 963 574
a group of students and I helped to
2013
design and build a school in a remote
John Harris /// Personal
village.
History and English tutor
Urbis Consulting Company
PhD candidate University of Melbourne
Worked as an intern in International
E: jharris@ormond.unimelb.edu.au
Property Economics, Urban Planning and
P: +61 432 097 475
Landscape architecture divisions.
2013
Tutoring For Excellence maths and english tutor
2013-2014 Private Tutor in high school maths Architectural Visualisation Consultant 2015 Leadership Positions 2011 2013
School Prefect Designer of and contributor to Ormond Papers
2014
Environments Faculty Representative
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Paper Lanterns
This wearable lantern represents one of the first architecture projects I attempted at university. I soon came to realise that it falls into a longstanding architectural tradition that concerns itself with the way architecture reacts with the human body but at the time, trying to get the previously untried software (Rhino) to produce a model that would somehow fit around my neck felt like impossible alchemy. Regardless, the design process took me through an exploration of the natural errosive process -that reccurs throughout nature- and introduced a series of digital fabrication techniques that eventually produced the latern to the left. Intended to create an immersive experience, the lantern is worn around the neck so the light falls directly onto the face and becomes the definitive component of the wearers immediate context.
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1 /// Sketched design development
2 /// Digital itterations
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3 /// Model Experimentation
Generating Change This proposal was developed in response to the L(and)A(rt)G(enerator)I(nitiave) in 2014 when the competition was based in Copenhagen. The design was pursued through an itterative process that began with concept sketches and developed into grasshopper models and physical models. One of the key factors influencing the design was its efficiency in generating electricity. This then had to be weighed against the amenity being provided to the residents of Copenhagen and the design’s potential for re-vitalising the greenfeilds site it was situated on. Using this workflow allowed for a rigorous assessment of each of these paramaters, as seen below in step four where the energy efficiency for several different itterations is explored to find the most efficient outcome.
4 /// Digital design justification
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First Floor
Ground Floor
Basement 01
The New Normal
The New Normal is a proposal for a new achives building at the University of Melbourne. The building references a cloister to induce a meditative quality in the centre of the space. The walls facing brunswick in Melbourne are solid, moving into a much more porous, glazed area in the interior. Throughout the building there is a constant visual connection to the archives, or to archival activities, reinforcing the importance of the buildings central function to the whole program.
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The combination of a gallery, cafe and bookstore made for a challenging brief. The solution in this proposal was to design furniture for the space that was moveable and modular so that each of the spaces could be reconfigured to suit the needs of each program. The central bench, as seen above, serves as a coffee station, a seating area and a space for book and 3D art display. This idea permeated the rest of the store with the shelving above able to become seating towards the base and then art space above. The
Coffee Craze 13
1_ Designing the joint
2_ Assembling the planar system
3_ Designing the gallery
Ben Quilty_ Gallery This project was one in a series of art galleries designed for “Gift to the City”, a studio loosely based around Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground. This model proposed a ‘wicked space’ that challenged the autonomy of the architecture and the agency of the architect in an attempt to create a more liberal space for the art to express itself. Instead of designing a traditional gallery space with prescriptive ciculation, patterns of opening and the like, a system was designed whereby the subject could arrange the model themselves and create a ‘mindscape’ of sorts. Drawing heavily on Derrida’s critique of Plato’s pharmakon, the space was intended as a language that engendered an imaginative process that would create an internal architecture that would be more subjectively meaningful than any more defined space.