Contained Works Research & Design Projects 01 Terra-Forma 02 Data Driven
Experimental Projects 03 A study In Geometry 04 A Study In The Etherial Ultra-Real
Personal Explorations 05 A Study In the Visionary 06 The Final Frontier
Extra-curricular Activities 07 DATUM: Writing As Method 08 Graphic Design In The Age Of Science 09 Grand Beauty: Face of The Company 10 A family House
TerraForma
In this Project, we were asked to imagine a remote desert research station that sits in the Arid climatic Condition of the Desert, Through personal research and focus, I decided to place the project in the North Western desert of my country Kuwait. Eighty percent of natural wildlife was eradicated due to over glazing, unsupervised human activity and the 1990 gulf war that yielded the burning of 737 oil wells, polluting air, land and water. The aim of the project was to design an architecture that had the ability to terraform landscape in order to restore and revitalize a lost ecosystem in the desert while lessening dust storms and allowing researchers to occupy the architecture before its consumption by the desert as part of its healing process.
PROGRAM WIND SCULPTING S O LAR RESP.
W I N D T U N N E L ANALYS I S .
Wind Sculpting
DESERT SNAIL
WIND HARVEST
W A T E R S Y S. NUMBER T WO
W A T E R S Y S. NUMBER ONE
Body Shape Reflector
SAGUARO CACTUS
WAT E R R E S E R V O I R
PERSIAN WIND CAT C H E R
Cell Water Retention System
W a t e r R e s e r v o i r C o l l e c t i o n S y e t em
Wind Reception Barrier
Seal: during hotter climate The cells are made of material that are able to expand when the weather is warm, which will be able to seal water that was collected during rainfall. and allows the sand dunes to form while the water is sealed for later use.
Release: during cooler climate During cooler season when the dunes have formed, the cells then open to release the water into the sand and onto the seed blanket allowing plants to start to grow on and within the dune, to prevent the sand from participating in a sand storm.
Secondary Water Collection system The secondary water collection system that runs in between all the cells would, over a long period, continuously absorb and store water much like the saguaro cactus in a reservoir underground to keep water from evaporating due to high heat on the desert
Plant Seed Blanket For Revitalization The mesh- like blanket, would serve as the main element in which plants grow from. It aims to reduce the needed time for seeds to planted or to be transported naturally through air.The blanket carries native endanged plant seed, such as, Arfaj. The hope is that this method of growing protected plants on buildings would be the precursor to revitaliztion of a fragile and damaged ecosystem.
The Creatiion of the new shell, will not servve as the threshold in which one crosses between the harsh environement to one the offers protection, serenity and calmness, it will also provide nature with the opportunity to terraform and revitalize. Having an extreme solution to a problem that built up in 50 years and then suddenly accelarated by the effect of war, needs to be a counter force of equal measure, one where it forces terrformation.
The building’s outside shell, works as a performated mechanism for guidance, especially during the night time when the building shines like a beacon to heaven. An anology taken by understanding the MiddleEastern culture that looked to the skies for guidance during their endeavors many years ago.
Water Collecting
The diagramatic section are to explain a method in which the Building address vernacular strategies in order to collect water, cross ventillate and reflect excess Solar gain.
Wind Harvesting
Solar Shading
Winter Installation
Rain Collection
Skin Water Retention
Dust Storm Season
Sand Dune Formation & Warer Release in Winter
Desert Terraforming & Revitalization
Data Driven
During the age of data driven analysis, the very way architectural design is conducted is changing, Algorithms, mathmatical conduction and the evolutionary design stand point, have forever changed what we call the iterative process. More efficient, precise and driven by logic, this approach allowed for the chance to evaluate existing building to find out if the designs made by other architects and designs, were in fact the very best possible. Thus, bringing us to this project which in a group of Four: Myself, Xiao Gu, Zhehui Zhang and Shendao Li, have conducted analysis on SOM’s Time Warner building at Columbus Circle here in New York City.
Site
Site
Environmental Data
Environmental Data
Site
Site
Un-obstructed View
Gross Floor Area
Shadow Casting
Daylight
Compactness
Efficiency
Client Objectives
City Objectives
In this scenario, we decided to explore the possiblity that the two towers become one. This scenario pits the same criteria of judgement as the two tower scenario, and ask the Algorthimic software to run an evolutionary code in order to see if this scenario allows for better daylighting, gross floor area and allowance of solar movement all the way to central park.
The results we found suggests that the one tower scenarios are substantially at a higher efficiency rate due to the higher gross floor area ration and higher percentage of natural daylight making it to central park. we suspect however that the reason for this result is that the analysis put a rough estimation on elevator cores and fire escapes. The cores for the single tower in reality have to be much larger and substantial compared to two smaller cores in the two tower scenario. This offset, creates a discrepency in the analysis, which causes such a huge difference in between the one and two tower scenario.
Study In Geometry
` The project places it self into the context of the Affordable houses of Baruch, Located near Franklin bridge at lower South east side of Manhattan. A shady gray area where both affordability and crime and deterioration exists. The Proposal is aid the sustainability movement and support these relics to become viable and sustainble. This Project will explore taking the buildings down and creating a new “Animal� that sits within the site, one that looks into the parametric ways of the future and into the what can an algorithm generates to term it self with the environment.
Set of selected created components that were tested, during many phases of the design. the three pointed designs eventually Served best in order to reach the needed final result and resulted in their integration as a vital part of the final building and the others fell into dismay and left out at the end.
The Search yielded that The components rather than complex would take life in a much puristic manner, simple, eleagant and elemental. The triangle is labelled many times through out history as the perfect shape, one that can create all other shapes. Beyond the Davinci-an thought, the components through many iterations migrated from a triangle to a hexagon and a rectangle (multiples of triangles), but eventually returned to this form, as you will see in the next page.
Study In The Etherial Ultrareal
In this experiment, we engaged the opportunity to create hyper realiztis archtiectural renderings for made up rural or urban settings of our choosing. My partner and I, agreed early on that we should do ultra realistic rendering of a post-utopian urban setting, one which humanity is scarce and urbanity abandoned and have returned back to its dessimal existence. If one man survived what would be his condition? and how would we he come to peace with his existence? These images are the productions of that endeavorand the result of two highly imaginative minds come together.
In order to create such ultra realistic scenes, my self and may partner Rui Peng, experimented with many possiblities until reaching a solution that offered something rather surreal yet tangible.
Studies In The Visionary
Visionary architects have always been an integral part of the interest in architecture, they offered many possibilities that existed in the realm of both the fantastical and the realm of what the future could hold. My exploration delt directly with the obsurd and the biologically intense. Exploring and challenging what it means to land on a city, an invasion of urban space and what if an urban space was a biological building unit, offering land as part of an open stream, like a stream of mineral in the human body. Biology, afterall is us, so what if, we are it?
After conducting many experiment with biology and how to find an approachable moment in which the spatial stream could be manifested.Stems of bio-nodes become monumental living entities that give humans the opportunity stream along the designated pathways leading to their eventual obsurption into the natural. From Nature to nature.
Final Frontier
This project was done as a challenge to explore the a realm of scientifically fictional worlds that could manifested through geometric understanding a hexagonal shape. By its extrusion, bending, twistion and deformation, we arrive at a set of animals and anomalies that creation the inhabitor (the occupant) and the inhabited (the vessel). The processional movement from beginning to end signifies that exploration has a beginning and an end, an endeavor that set a number of questions and begs the approperiation of their eventual deaths. Exploration no matter what it is, is the final frontier.
Taking precedent from the natural world, I was able to construct these worlds out the notion that buildings unit of them are brought from and understood and the very veins that course through our bodies. Perhaps, the biggest exploration would eventually occur in the one place that is truly dictates us, which is within our own vessels.
Datum Writing As Method
During my undergraduate years at Iowa State University, I was a part of a student founded organization that explored and ciritcised the realm of architecture both in its educational and practiced form. The critical eye in which these have been explored allowed for the creation of a safe haven for student to come and voice their interests and drives of architecture. Each issue has an underlying theme that dictates which topics get published and how the projects that are contained negotiate and converse with the written works.
In this issue, we explored the notion of how can archtiecture be signified as bad. what constitutes the general opinion of architecture and its branches. My exploration dealth with the creation of cities that are based on a lie, a method of stiching, beautifying and repairing what is broken and reviving it into the occupants lives.
This issue focused on the approach of personal vision. Why do some architects decides the design method in which they operate is better suited for another profession. The extension of thought allowed me write a piece that questions that very notion. Do we only make buildings? or are archtiects just vessels in which to conduct problem solving and gain meaningful appriaches?
Graphic Design In The Age Of Science
I served as the sole design for several book covers for an upcoming book that related it self to the formation of theories. It offered me exploration into the realm of graphic design and the translation of an authors intent into visual and graphic form.
The rather poetic notion of science as it relates to the human world, gave me several constraints that their creation is rather mysterious, clear and understandable at the same time. It rather hard to imagine a time when they didn’t exist. The designs always expressed methods in these notion offered connection through points of understanding and its eventual reaching to a tangible and sensible matter of scientific achievement.
THEORIES
Grand Beauty: Face of The Company
I served as the sole design for the creation of a logo update, and several advertisment posters that would become the face the starting company Grand Beauty. I dealt with matters regarding securing copyrights, design approach, and the character in which the company was displayed to clients.
The focus of the posters is the advertisment of cosmetics . beaing such a grand gesture of human consumer products the company is aiming to create an approachable, fast delivery system for people. Their main request for the designs were to reach a classical feel of beauty rooted in which seemingly consumers long for. Thus, these designs work in order to achieve a minimalistic approach in which the model is always the focus and a hint of the products are presented as a method of guidance and showcase of result of product that when applied, could possibly provide and achieve.
A family House
Starting at January of 2015, I served and continuingly serve as the sole architect for a residential house project in Kuwait. The project is currently under construction and is on way to completion at the end of this year. I provided sets of floor plans, elevations and exterior designs that were approved by a civil engineer iand a general contractor that operated in the vacinity.
The client requested that the project builds upon the heritage of buildings that came before while keeping and sort of additional elements to straight vertical lines that offered a rather large house the opportunity of monumentality. The colors of choice were done in order counter the many sand storms that occur in th region, while creating an entity that was consious of its environment. The many degrees of a single color was an exploration that allowed the in the result of the final product.