Architecture Portfolio_Kanika Bhagat

Kanika Bhagat

Contents

01 EarthBound Library Integrative Studio | Second Year

02 Draw with a Thousand People Visual Representation Elective | Third Year

03 Enfield Food Pantry Core Design Studio | Third Year

04 The Tapachula Railway Station Structural Systems | Second Year

05 The Grounded Chair Core Design Studio | Second Year

06 Lightpaths Research Outpost Core Design Studio | First Year

07 Professional Experience Architecture Internship | Summer 2023

08 Independent Artwork Independent | 2021

01

EarthBound Library

Spring 2023

Second Year, Integrative Design Studio

Instructor: Marta H. Wisniewska

Situated on 917 West State Street, Ithaca at the intersection of the Finger Lake and Six Mile Creek inlets, the library marries architectural inspiration from the Hannae Forest of Wisdom in South Korea and the Alnatura Campus Headquarters in Germany. Positioned in upstate New York, the design explores the application of rammed earth in a cold climate—a nod to sustainability and resilience.

In response to the diversity of its users—from the growing residential community to the nearby homeless encampment, it transforms into a narrative repository, not just for the city’s information but also as a resonant echo of the stories embedded in its land, within the emabrace of rammed earth.

Adapting the parallel structural wall system from its precedent, the library employs prefabricated rammed earth units to form a structural gridin conjunction with steel columns. These walls go beyond supporting the roof; they seamlessly integrate into the program, serving as functional bookshelves, desks, and seating. The steel beam pitched roof introduces natural light through strategically positioned skylights, complemented by glazed walls facing southeast and northwest, offering glimpses of the surroundings and the inlet. Solid rammed earth walls shield the library from the bustling street, creating a serene atmosphere. The structure’s orientation aligns with the wind rose, facilitating cross-ventilation and a harmonious connection with the environment.

Chunk Model with Rammed Earth Bricks 1’=1/4”

Section

Aluminium Roofing

Steel I-beam Roof with Collar Ties

Steel Columns and Concrete Beams

Prefabricated

Rammed Earth

Walls with a Composite Floor

1. Standing seam aluminium roofing; sheathing; back ventilation; sheathing; breather membrane; rigid insulation; vapor retarder; fire protection board; gypsum; steel purlins

2. Aluminium trough gutter

3. Precast rammed earth unit (10” rammed earth; 6” foam glass aggregate insulation; 14” rammed earth) with 10” wide embedded steel bookshelves

4. Trass lime layer

5. Composite floor slab with concrete and steel

02

Draw with a Thousand People

Fall 2023

Third Year, Long Exposure: Generative Drawing Through Time

Instructor: Ryan Whitby

“What do 50 million drawings look like?”

Google’s Quickdraw database is a collection of doodles of 345 categories of objects, drawn by over 15 million people from all over the world. These drawings are broken down into textual data- the location of the person, whether the object drawn resembled the object described, the number of strokes, the time taken to draw these strokes. It is a remarkable insight into how people in different places draw, and what they first think of when they read a word. How does the language you write affect the direction in which you draw a circle? Which way does a chair face when you draw it? How many scoops of ice-cream do you imagine on your cone? Do you imagine a cone in the first place when you think of icecream?

This p5js project is a first step in analyzing these differences in the way we draw. It uses the Quickdraw database, as it prompts you to draw any of these objects, and allows you to compare your drawing in real time with the drawings of others all over the world. As you draw your strokes, the other doodles draw themselves. They use the same time in which they were drawn originally. Thus, everytime you lift your pen, you can stop and analyze how other people drew the same object. In the time you took to draw one stroke, how many strokes did they draw? Which part of the object did they start drawing? The objects are also color coded, from a range of blue to red depending on their degree of completeness.

The project is an ongoing endeavor, visualizing an exploratory tool which could use architectural databases to display relevant drawings/schemes as one makes their own drawings.

1. Home Screen, prompting user to draw a camera. 2. Progress after 1 stroke 3. Progress after 2 strokes 4. Progress after 4 strokes 5. Image with complete camera

Image analyzing drawings of a bicycle

03 Enfield Food Pantry

Fall 2023

Third Year, Core Design Studio

Instructor: Luben Dimcheff

Total Area:12,000 SF

Plus Program: Outdoor Teaching Garden/Amphitheater

Embracing the role of a food pantry as its anchor program, this community center in Enfield, NY addresses the critical need for communal spaces in a town with limited such resources. The focal point of the design radiates towards a central stepped courtyard, serving as a vibrant nucleus that encourages open interaction—an inviting homage to the concept of a traditional town square.

In a thoughtful integration with nature, the roof becomes a dynamic player, not just shielding the space but actively engaging with the elements. Rainwater gracefully descends into the central courtyard, channeling into a reservoir that supports agricultural initiatives on-site. The unfolding landscape itself forms bunds, creating varied microenvironments conducive to the growth of plants with distinct water and sunlight requirements.

The community center’s open plan design fosters flexibility, enabling the versatile use of indoor spaces. These spaces seamlessly extend outdoors, blurring the boundaries between indoor and outdoor programming. A captivating outdoor teaching amphitheater, adorned with planting beds on each step, doubles as a functional teaching garden during the day and transforms into a versatile venue for evening events such as film screenings or fundraisers.

04

Tapachula Railway Station

Fall 2022

Structural Systems

Instructor: Mark Cruvellier

Groupwork with Janya Aggarwal and Tracy Qiu

The Tapachula Railway Station was a public space project by Colectivo C733, built in Tapachula de Cordova y Ordonez, Mexico in 2021. It acts as a space for the community, where people can come together for sports and cultural activities. The architects emphasized the repetitions of the train tracks that once used to be present on the site in the structure of steel, reinforced with a system of tension cables, evoking the linearity and materiality of the rails. Anchored into an “exposed foundation” of concrete, the result is a wide-span roof, 19m high and 32 m wide. These walls serve as load bearing systems along with resisting shearing forces.

Through this model, we study this structural system at a smaller scale (model dimensions: 3ft x 1.5ft x 1.5ft | Scale 1:76). Plastic I beams are used to mimic the function of the steel ones in the larger structure. The model studies how the components worked together to resist the wind and seismic forces prevalent in the region, with the tension cables enabling the minimal depth of the steel beam structure, making rhe roof lightweight. It also looks at the details of the connections, with six unique joints between the components. Each I beam is supported by three pairs of tension cables, acting as bracing. Working at a smaller scale, we analyzed and adapted the connections to mimic their functions in the model study.

05 The Grounded Chair

Fall 2022

Second Year, A Chair, A House, A Signature: Conceptual Design Studio

Instructor: Martin Miller

“You don’t need a chair, just sit on the ground.”

It has been a longstanding tradition for people to sit on the floor in my culture, cross-legged, the body conforming to the contours of the ground, the ground shaping its contours in response to the body. The chair embodies this behaviour of the ground condition, allowing and encouraging the user to occupy it in multiple ways, opposed to a regular chair. The contours base themselves in that of my grandparents’ hometown, a small town surrounded by hills. They are then modified to accomodate various positions of a human body. The chair uses hidden offset base supports such that from a distance, the landmass appears to be supported only by a thin pillar. With the dense mass of the earth seemingly levitating above the surface, it is a place of reflection, as one leans against the tapered imposition in the center of the chair.

The Grounded Chair was constructed at 1:1 scale using chipboard, capable of supporting a person.

Exploded Axonometric Drawing

06 Lightpaths

Fall 2021

First Year, Acts of Climate: Conceptual Design Studio

Instructor: Felix Heisel

This project translates research about lightning as a weather phenomenon into a research outpost. The process involved the designing of a wearable device which negotiated between the phenomenon and the human body. The spatial, physical and architectural concepts of this device were then adapted to a topographical site, to form an observatory which negotiates between the phenomenon and the site itself. The design process began with a material exploration of paper. Considering the path of lightning through the air and ground, and adopting the geometric triangular language of the space-frame formed by these paths, a restrictive device was made which compels one to take shorter steps as they walk, reducing the step voltage and thus, the damage caused by the electric current. A network of paper pipes formed a rigid, dynamic system which could contort to the body as they mapped out the superficial veins on the site, restricting the thigh to a certain maximum stance length.

The final project was a research observatory which is an architectural interpretation and translation of the spatial probability of lightning in the air and through the ground. The first stage involved a material exploration of metal and glycerin, owing to their contrasting properties with respect to conductivity. The site of the observatory is Daggar, Pakistan, the sixth highest lightning hotspot in the world, which offers unique, precipitation-free conditions to observe the air conditions during a lightning strike. The structure positions itself in the direction of the wind, compressing it in an upward draft, towards a skeletal metal structure connected by an air column. There is a resulting downdraft formed in the direction of a similar metal network which starts at the peak of the mountain, exaggerating the slope of the topography. When lightning strikes the conducting structure, the air around it acquires a purplish glow, caused by the Corona effect, with different intensities owing to the varying concentration of impurities in the two air columns.

07 Professional Experience

Summer 2023

Architecture Internship at sp+a: Sameep Padora and Associates, Mumbai, India

Aashni and Co. is a luxury boutique store, located in Mumbai’s iconic Kala Ghoda. The interior design project involved renovating the first floor and the basement of Ador House, a protected heritage building. Thus, existing structures could not be dismantled. As an intern, I designed the pleated columns in the basement, which were constructed around the existing columns, sitting in several meetings with the client and contractors. Multiple site visits involved interacting with workers as they built the mockups. In addition, I designed details like the clothing-rails and display cases, along with the menswear section of the store, visualizing them through Enscape renders.

Around the Revel-Fire Lamp | 18 x 18 x 45 inches

The warmth of a bonfire, on a cold night spent camping in the woods of Bengal, invites a group of friends to huddle around it. The spirited banter of enchanting stories drowns the burble of the river, as it flows towards the abode of the mighty tiger. Bringing these magical memories to the living room, this lamp is made out of compressed jute fibers, interspersed with hand-worked skeletonized leaves, over a framework of dried branches collected from the forest floor. The running stitch (kantha), widely used by Bengali artisans to picturize folklores, encourages the narration of one’s own riveting stories.

Seedpods

Observational Graphite Drawing | 10 x 8 inches

As she rambles on the farm, she stops to admire the vibrant flowers, the fluttering butterflies and the swaying crops. The dried seedpods lay forgotten on the floor. They nurtured the seeds that gave birth to the blossoms, providing them with shelter and warmth. They shadowed them from the sweltering rays of the sun, guarded them from the pests, yet they don’t get a second glance. This still life is a humble reminder of all the people who have helped me grow. Picked up in my grandparents’ farm, the dried gourd symbolizes their love and encouragement. The pumpkin, simple and tough on the outside but complex on the inside, resembles my father. The eccentric lotus pods symbolize my mother, who has cultivated the qualities of patience, compassion and creativity in me. Without them, these seeds would not have turned into blossoms.

Alone with a Companion Bicolor Linoleum Print (Two prints, straight and inverted, on the same sheet) | 16 x 16 inches

Alone in a small, dark room, you look at the paint peeling off the old, grungy walls. You feel trapped, like the room is closing in. It’s been so long; you’ve lost count of the number of times the hand has gone around the clock. As you carve the word ‘help’ on the walls, you feel like you’re the only companion you have. Your thoughts are the only voice you hear.

Look at the sunlight finding its way through the blinds. It’s there: the hope. You can find a way out.

You will find your way out.