Architecture Portfolio_22

imman suleiman

architecture + design portfolio

21 22

imman suleiman

1929 Plymouth Rd, Apt. 2000, Ann Arbor, MI 48105, USA

734.686.2258 imman@umich.edu

EDUCATION

Master of Science in Architecture, April ‘19 College of Architecture + Urban Planning University of Michigan | Ann Arbor, MI

Bachelor of Science in Architecture, April ‘16 College of Architecture + Urban Planning University of Michigan | Ann Arbor, MI

R A , A I A , L E E D G A

professional projects

MICHIGAN CENTRAL STATION

ACTIVITIES + AWARDS

Christopher Kelly Leadership Develepment Program Scholar AIA Detroit May ‘21 | Ann Arbor, MI

Fitwel Ambassador Quinn Evans March ‘20 | Ann Arbor, MI

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Architectural Designer Quinn Evans Nov ‘19- Present| Ann Arbor, MI

BioArt Design Assistant University of Michigan

Jan ‘19 - July ‘19 | Ann Arbor, MI

Architectural Drafter

University of Michigan - AEC

Jan ‘17 - Aug ‘17 | Ann Arbor, MI

Event Director

Architectural Resource

June ‘16 - Dec ‘16 | Ann Arbor, MI

Graduate Architecture Thesis Honors Project

Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning May ‘19 | Ann Arbor, MI

Student Show Nominee

Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning Feb ‘16 + ‘19 | Ann Arbor, MI

National Organization of Minority Architecture Students

E-Board | Event Planning Chair, Undergraduate Representative Jan ‘15 - April ‘16 | Ann Arbor, MI

SKILLS

Adobe Suite | InDesign CC- Illustrator CC - Photoshop CC

Drafting | Rhino - Microstation - AutoCAD - Zbrush - Revit - Maya

Microsoft Office | Word - Excel - Powerpoint

Languages | English - Amharic

FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD

acadamic projects

(NO)RTH (CO)RK(TO)WN HOUSING

AUGMENTED - IMAGINING THE REAL

PROJECTS ‘15 - Present 4 14 34

A FULLER NORTH CAMPUS

PARTIAL PARTS

ARTICULATION: ORIGINS

AIRPORT ASYLUM

graphic design and modeling

ROCKITE METAL

FABRIC PLASTER MODEL

SCALE UP, SCALE DOWN

TELEPRINTED FACADES

GRAPHIC DESIGN

24 46 60

54 66 74 76 78 80 82

MICHIGAN CENTRAL STATION

Evans - 2020 Historical Preservation and Restoration

In May 2018, Ford Motor Company (Ford) announced their intent to develop an autonomous vehicle/electric vehicle research and development hub in the heart of Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood, includ ing the revitalization of the historic Michigan Central Station railroad terminal at its core. Ford’s AV/EV hub will be informed by smart city technologies sur rounding concepts of mobility and connectivity while having a positive impact on the neighborhood’s social, economic, and cultural landscape. When completed, the revitalization of MCS will provide renewed public space with a mix of retail and commercial destinations, twenty-frst century work place environments, as well as two foors of hospitality.

Quinn

I was selected to be a part of the 40+ design ers in which I was responsible for accurately depicting siginif icant architectural elements using historical drawings and documenting scope. The famous Ticket Lobby, Reading Room, Tea Room, and Womens Waiting Room were my main area of focus for design, drawings, and graphical renderings. In addition to design, I was also responsible for creating MEP and Life Safety consultant coordination documents as part of the BIM quality check and assurance process.

reflected ceiling plan detial of reading room

elevation of women s waiting room

finishes rendering of women s waiting room

FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD

Quinn Evans - 2021 Renovation and Expansion

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Board) proposes to renovate and expand the Marriner S. Eccles Building and to renovate and construct an addition on the 1951 Building. The proposed project will maintain the historic character of the existing buildings and their surroundings, reflecting qualities of stability, dignity, and security that are sensitive to the Board’s civic responsibility as the central bank of the United States. It will include new state-of-the-arttechnology for the buildings’ entire infrastructure, security, and technology systems. The project will also improve code compliance measures as well as enable the Board to incorporate environmentally responsible design approaches expected to reduce energy consumption and improve indoor environmental quality.

Since joining the team of 50+ designers during the Design Development phase, I have undertaken a se ries of elevator cabs and cafe design studies for both Eccles and 1951 buildings. This entailed investigating and identifying existing building materials, and co ordinating with consultants and vendors to produce cohesive design studies through the use of BIM and rendering softwares.

(NO)RTH (CO)RK(TO)WN HOUSING

In anticipation of the influx of Ford employees in the near future, we propose NoCoTo for the SouthWestern part of North Corktown, Detroit. As it stands, this neighborhood is in desperate need of revitalization as much as most of Detroit. Located on Rosa Parks Blvd, NoCoTo’s mixed use mid rise buildings are spotted from all the way across the freeway. The location of our site is strategically chosen to allow for a 20 minute transit destination for Ford employees and the community.

M. Arch Studio III - Fall ‘18 In collaboration with Lucas Ratu and Alex Rossetti

Our mission is to enhance the current utilization of the neighborhood to create a hub which draws Detroi ters to live, work and play in this neighborhood which is comprised of an enjoyable market, an entertaining park, and a boisterous apartment. We care about North Corktown, its rich history and architectural context, and we have made sure to keep these treasures intact while integrating our vision for North Corktown’s future. Us ing form based code as a tool to guide our mid density mixed use programs, we have carefully designed a hub that is unique in design and organization to Detroit.

Our main program, NoCoTo Apartments, is desinged to be an affordable housing both for incoming Ford employees and the people within North Corktown. The integration and aggregation of seven towers comprised of a vertical core and units create an effect of a parts-to-whole design approach. In an effort to allow sunlight into the park, we conceived our housing to be light and porous while decreasing in height as it approaches the market. The systems approach to our design includes seven vertical circulation cores and a grid system providing structural support to the apartment units which are lifted above ground to activate the ground space as a night zone to contrast the park as a day zone. The ver tical cores, beyond being structural elements to our project, are also equipped with the building’s electrical, plumbing, heating, and water supply systems. Located underground, the parking basement provides parking for the tenants as well as storage for energy systems. By puncturing openings above ground and planting trees into the transition space from the building ground floor and the park, we are providing ventilation and visual aesthetics to the underground parking as well as the park. The design, structure and location of NoCoTo Apartments and our mixed use mid density approach to the neighborhood expresses our passion to elevate and nourish the current North Corktown and the community.

AUGMENTED - IMAGINING THE

REAL

M. Arch Thesis - Winter ‘19 In collaboration with Hannah Daugherty + Mariana de Carvalho

After several decades of advancement, the present cli mate surrounding automation and AI processes harbors unnerving undertones of concern, specifically around job loss and the ethical considerations of the technology. Augmented explores the integration of artificial intel ligence into the architectural discourse while examining its effects on topics of agency, intent, and special form generation. In order to adequately gauge this union of Architecture and machine learning, we propose a bath set within the post-human era, in which culture is no longer centrally developed around humans, streamlined workflows, automated processes, artificial intelligence will result in a reduction of labor force hours. Architectural theorist - Yuval Noah Harari - anticipates that mankind is likely to focus on the god-like pursuits of achieving immortality and long term happiness during this era.

THESIS APPROACH

Augmented explores architectural machine hal lucinations through the implementation of neural networking as a mechanism for design. Neural networks, in its most basic sense can be understood as a series of algorithms designed to analyse, interpret, and recognize content within sets of data. The Aug mented neural network produces images of architecture through the image classification process, where we fed AI our curated catalog of data, and it learned to compute regularly repeated patterns from all the data it received.

After successfully training our image classification model through python coding, the trained network model is then implemented into two generative adversarial networks (GAN) or generative classes of machine learning: Deep Dream and cycleGAN. These two network models produce dreams, or machine hallucinations, which are visual representations what our neural network “thinks” of as the essence of objects. With a system of this nature, we begin to speculate how an integrated pair ing of artificial intelligence and architectural authority would revolutionize the creative process of architecture.

The catalogue consists of 13 categories that pos sess atmospheric qualities, Maya generated mod els, historic baths, baroque and rococo interiors, arches, columns, etc. These image sets consist of around a thousand images of similar caliber.

PROOF OF CONCEPT

Augmented explored a new relationship between de signer and computer, where the computer transforms from a tool to an active partner that can expand the imagination of the designer. Our neural network learned to generate architectural spaces that are once disorienting, intriguing, and evocative without being prescriptive. It has the capability to actively design unimaginable variations; something a human designer could not conceive of in their detail and differentia tion. Our role as designers becomes one of a curator, steering the process and defining the desired design goals. This human machine interaction will ultimately serve to expand the designers imagination and creativity.

A FULLER NORTH CAMPUS

M. Arch Studio II - Winter ‘18

A Fuller North Campus addresses the challenges of North Campus and its lack of connectivity with other university campuses as well as the communities of Ann Arbor. Located on Fuller Road commuter parking lots and Mitchell Fields, this project addresses the shortage of faculty and staff housing, expansive unbuilt environments and surface parking lots, lack of indoor sports facilities, retail, and restaurants in North Campus. In addition to introducing attractive mixed use programs, A Fuller N. Campus also facilitates inter-campuses and campus-city connectivity by implementing a pedestrian and bike trail network that extends out from the site to North Campus, Central Campus, as well the communities of Ann Arbor.

The location of A Fuller North Campus and existing trails leading to university campuses and Ann Arbor communities create an op portunity for the site to become a center for a more pedestrian and bike-centric campus as one of the more pressing issues of North Campus is it’s car-centric layout. Site analysis such as existing soccer fields, parking lots, infrastructure and surrounding programs resulted in the proposal for a mixed-use program containing staff, student and faculty housing, a day-care center, indoor and outdoor recre ational centers, a continuous pedestrian and bike paths, underground parking, shops, restaurants, markets and a riverfront access zone.

roof plan

site model site model

outdoor running track entrance plaza

PARTIAL PARTS

M. Arch Studio - Fall ‘17

This project focuses on the relationship between two contrasting programs: a fire station and a maker space. The programmatic organization of fire station and maker space is mitigated by the use of columns and buffer spaces to allow spaces such as the apparatus bay to be observed by the public without accessing it. The columns or implied walls also function as a main form of circulation by using a variety of spac ing between columns, thus creating specific routes for the public. The formal language of the fire station is parts that share walls, and parts that overlap to create columned buffer spaces that firefighters and the pub lic can use when going from one room to another.

To help breakdown the gap between the external and internal qualities of the fire station, PARTIAL PARTS considers envelope and program as one and the same. The spatial arrangement of the diverse constit uent parts directly affects its out ward expression. After developing an understanding of part-to-whole and part-to-part relationships, nu anced articulations were created. These part relationships are aimed at working beyond formal organiza tion strategies and toward developing an institutional character and bias for the fire station; in other words, using parts to construct partiality

part to whole models

second floor

ARTICULATION: ORIGINS

Design Studio III - Fall ‘15

The Ukrainian Village is an immigrant communi ty in Chicago that originated in the early 20th cen tury. Its population increased drastically with the influx of Ukrainian refugees due to the coun try’s war torn government and rising poverty. The premise of this studio was to visit an abandoned parking lot located in the heart of the Ukrainian Village and to design a community center that will enable the continuous growth of the Ukrainian community and culture. This program allowed for the public use of a large market, food production and consumption areas, educational and admin istration spaces, and residential apartment units

Continuity of Space, derived from the articulation of point symmetrical curves, was the main design element to the building. This continuity creates a sense of fluidity in the various pro grams and wraps around the entirety of the Ukrainian Village Community Center. The organization of the pro gram and structure of the building relies heavily on a thick wall, which functions as a main circulation space for the public. The central location of this massive wall allows for the

smooth transition of public to pri vate space. The implementation of positive and negative spaces of the ground guided by curves responds to the overall design of the build ing. It also allows for visitors to have a dynamic experience as they are confronted by the dramatic chang es in elevation and absence of walls. Yellow being a color of home, life, community, and family aims to give back to the Ukrainian people as it has a symbolic significance to the culture.

south elevation

north elevation

AIRPORT ASYLUM

Wallenberg Studio - Winter ‘16

Inspired by the true story of Mehran Karimi Nasseri - an Iranian man who was forced to live in Terminal 1 of the Charles de Gaulle airport for 18 years - my project focuses on addressing the unfortunate reality of stateless and asylum seeking refugees who are subjected to similar situations. Due to the crises facing parts of the Middle East and Europe, the numbers of people leaving their homes by force is increasing and refugees are seeking protection in neighboring countries like France. Thinking about a project that addressed the theme “refuge”, I began to research the political stance of France’s recent acts of conservatism and push-back to the diversifying culture and religion of the country.

Focusing on terminal 1 of the Charles de Gaulle airport, I began to alter the thick existing walls of the terminal. This mode of intervention draws from the historical French architecture of Hotel Particuliers, in which the use of thick walls is essential for the solidity of the building and protection from the elements. This idea of seeking asylum in the thick walls of the terminal provides a temporary domesticity for refugees. The following diagrams demonstrate the trans formation in the terminal walls in the event of a refugee influx over the next decade.

CHARLES DE GAULLE AIRPORT, PARIS

internaltional zones

AIRPORT,

CHARLES DE GAULLE AIRPORT, PARIS

bedroom section kitchen section

GRAPHIC DESIGN AND MODELING

fabrication metalic rockite model taubman college - fall ‘15

representation contexual scaling up and down taubman college - winter 17

representation old school method of teleprinting facades taubman college - winter 18

graphic design perioperative services statistics michigan medicine - winter 19