Resume & Work Samples

Novera Momo

Experience

2023

2 months

2022

2 months

2019

2 months

2022-24

Education

2021-24

2017-21

2019

Skills

Publication

Awards/Fellowships

novera.momo@yale.edu

413 664 1372

Studio Gang

San Francisco

Projects: California College of Arts, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, Mission Rock F

Responsibilities: Storefront facade design, paver design analysis, coordination drawings, field notes for site visits, client interview primers, precedent and material research, and editing fabrication drawings

Leers Weinzapfel Associates

Boston

Projects: Williams College Davis Center, National Museum of Forest Service History Conservation Legacy Center

Responsibilities: Living Building Challenge submission, furcating mass timber column analysis, submittal and RFI logistics, and building a model

Williams College

Williamstown

Project: Room with a View

Responsibilities: Schematic design, drawing set, and construction

Yale University

New Haven

Assistant Site Manager: Poorvu Center

Curatorial Intern at Yale University Art Gallery: Sack Furniture Archive

Graduate Teaching Fellow: Structures I and II

Graduate Teaching Assistant: Port Cities and Reading Manfredo Tafuri

Yale School of Architecture

Master of Architecture

Williams College

Bachelor of Arts with Honors, Mathematics, Art History and Studio

Harvard GSD

Design Discovery, Architecture

Proficient in Rhino, Revit, Adobe Creative Suite, AutoCAD, V-Ray, Enscape, ArcGIS, Microsoft Excel, Bluebeam, Grasshopper, ClimateStudio, Ladybug Tools, and SketchUp

Knowledge of Living Building Challenge guidelines and building systems

Native speaker of Bengali, fluent in English, and proficient in Hindi

2023

YSoA Retrospecta 46: Studio project and seminar course work

Bronfman Scholar

Karl E. Weston Prize for Distinction in Art Class of 1960 Scholar

Robert J. Wilmers Jr. Memorial Fellow

Collin and Lily Roche Student Research Fellow

Selected Works

NOVERA RAHMAN MOMO

Yale School of Architecture | Master of Architecture

Williams College | Bachelor of Arts in Art and Math

THRESHOLDS

CYCLONE SHELTER

Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

A residential school and mosque that can be transformed into a cyclone shelter during deadly cyclones in coastal Bangladesh.

Fall 2023

Advanced Studio

Critics: Marina Tabassum and Gavin Hogben

This project is at the threshold of land and water, domesticity and wilderness, religious and secular, safety and danger, and control and submission.

The site is connected to a narrow but frequentlyused thoroughfare from downtown Cox’s Bazar to rural Himchari. It is only 1500 ft away from the ever-encroaching shoreline and gets inundated very often, especially during cyclones.

The building houses a set of programs in 3 wings of the building that holds the edge of the existing pond, providing a social space in the form of a ghat, and also holds the edge of existing paddy fields and betel nut groves.

The building consists of service towers providing structural support, storing water, and accommodating all service programs. The served spaces span between the towers and consist of the mosque, secular primary school, religious school, dorms for religious school pupils, an office for the disaster management committee, and a first-aid room.

The prescribed functions are overturned during the disaster. Women and children’s safety is an issue in cyclone centers and gender segregation is desired by communities. Smaller spaces like the dorm rooms can be occupied by women and children while larger spaces like the mosque

can be occupied by men. Most families bring their cattle with them which can occupy the verandas bordering most of the served spaces.

Because of how vulnerable the area is, residents live in the shelters for an average of 2 to 3 weeks, even after the flood has subsided since it takes a while for them to rebuild their houses. The flexible and unprogrammed space on the ground floor can be used by the communities to convene or for social events.

The formal decisions are guided by the site, the existing types of trees, and the programmatic needs.

Site Plan

Site Section

Massing study

Site Strategy

Existing Site

There is a small dilapidated cyclone shelter, built in the 90s that is supposed to serve a population of 1200 to 1500 people in the vicinity. A one-room building serves as the mosque, a religious school, as well as a dorm for the pupils.Both buildings along with a pond and paddy field flank the path to the shore.

Path Change

The path is subtly changed to align with the pond and Qibla for the mosque.

Demolish

Both decrepit and unusable buildings are demolished to make space for the new building.

Proposed Building

The proposed building has a larger footprint so that it can house 1500 people during the disasters with only 10 sq ft per person.

Water reservoir

Water reservoir

Active space

Water tower connecting all layers

The Service Space

The service towers that provide structural stability and store water have active spaces on the second floor that are sandwiched between water reservoirs. These spaces are either bathrooms, kitchens, staircases, or storage and have indirect diffused light.

The Served Space

The spaces spanning between service towers are either classrooms, dorms, dining rooms, prayer space, offices, or verandas. They have larger openings bringing in sunlight and air.

2023 Cyclone Shelter

Before the flood During the flood Facade systems:

Rollable blinds that can be easily assembled for privacy during the disaster and made of the local dried coconut and betel nut leaves.

Accordion window panels in served spaces so large windows can be opened with a small turning-radius when the rooms are crowded.

Service towers have thick concrete walls with rebars. Round walls are better for withstanding water pressure. The reservoir walls have an inner waterproofing layer.

Concrete roof has a top layer for water-proofing. The wooden form work is retained for a warmer interior.

Transverse section perspective: dorm rooms.

Transverse section perspective: bathrooms.

Section perspective: the mosque.

Thinner interior partitioning walls made of concrete and plaster sandwich.

INTERSTICES

CLIMATE LIBRARY

Bridgeport, CT

A library in a flood prone area that also provides spaces for healing to the communities in Bridgeport suffering from the psychological impacts of the climate crisis.

Fall 2022

Core III

Critic: Rachely Rotem

The library is situated in Bridgeport and is adjacent to the University of Bridgeport. The challenges that the community here faces are not limited to natural calamities and their aftermath but also the trauma and anxiety that is a consequence of the climate crisis.

My goal is to create an infrastructure through the design of the library that provides a nurturing environment for healing. The building is a composition of staggered volumes cantilevering off each other creating a variety of spaces: terraces, courtyards, doubleheight rooms, and lofts. Entry and exit points on multiple points makes it an accessible space in the large block it is situated in.

Whether it is being close to nature, being alone, being around people, or being around books, the flexibility of the structure attends to the patrons’ needs. In addition to being a library, it has a separate section that can be used to by non-profit or public organization to provide mental healthcare services to the community.

POROSITY

CHILDCARE FACILITY AND SPIRITUAL CENTER

Sylhet, Bangladesh

A community center, consisting of childcare and spiritual facilities, intended to serve the underprivileged ethnic minorities in a flood prone region in Northeastern Bangladesh.

Fall 2021

Core I

Critic: Nicholas McDermott

The building is situated next to a river in a remote town, called Lalakhal, in northeastern Bangladesh that is often inundated to due heavy rainfall.

The communities living in this region belong to an ethnicity originally based in neighboring India. They were brought to Bangladesh by the colonizing British to employ them in the growing tea industry. The primary occupation of the community is picking tea leaves in the adjacent privately owned tea gardens. Their literacy rate is very low and alcoholism is widespread. This building is designed in the hope that it can support the community and promote resilience.

The design of the Lalakhal Community Center, consisting of a childcare facility and a spiritual center, started with a pattern. The pattern is a watercolor sketch of bathroom tiles. The pattern presents the following operations: the addition and subtraction of semiand quarter-circles which were used to generate the plan and section. The base of the building is punctured with quarter-circle cisterns that collect rainwater. The vaulted ceilings guide rainwater into the cisterns and prevent flooding. The organization of the spaces is based on an interconnected system of bars. A central axis divides each halves of the building housing the childcare facility and spiritual center.

Exploded Axonometric

PIVOTS

ACCESSORY DWELLING UNIT

New Haven, CT

A one-bedroom single-family home for a previously unhoused family.

Spring 2022

Jim Vlock First Year Building

Project

Critics:

Adam Hopfner, Alex Kruhly, Beka Sturges, Ming

Thompson

With: Sebastian Beaghen, Amelia Gates, Tong Hsu, Fany Kuzmova, Gioia Pappalardo, Kevin Yang, Chloe Zhang

This project was a proposal for an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) to be built in the backyard of a house in New Haven. Yale School of Architecture, in partnership with Columbus House, rehabilitated a previously unhoused family into the newly constructed building.

The site came with several constraints such as proximity to rail-tracks, limited sunlight during colder months, and a sloping topography. We designed a thick wall adjacent to the tracks with no openings and placed storage, bathrooms and cabinetry against it to act as a sound buffer for the living spaces in the other side of the building.

The organization of the space is based on two grids, one that follows the tracks and fence and another that follows the surrounding buildings. The intersection of these grids creates the impression of a large space while demarcating the separation between the kitchen and living area. The bedroom window and door, and the back entrance are all aligned in an implicit hallway that is lit by skylights.

INTERSECTIONS

ROOM WITH A VIEW

Williamstown, MA

A temporary public pavilion built to provide a restricted view of trees changing color during fall.

Fall 2019

Architectural Design II

Critic: Ben Benedict

The Architectural Design studio at Williams College has a biennial competition in which the elected project gets built on a site on campus. The project for 2019 was called ‘Room with a view.’

It is a public pavilion made of wood with two intersecting parallelograms in the North and South elevations. It was designed with the intention of making it as different as possible from the surroundings and providing an escape from the chaos and stress of the campus.

The intersecting parallelograms create a space that only allows direct sunlight to enter through one opening. The section illustrates how the dimensions of the opening

provide a restricted view of the trees, blocking out the academic buildings in the vicinity.

The parallelograms, set against the strong verticals of the nearby buildings, give the structure a unique appearance and attract people to it. As it was kept on campus for the entire fall semester, it gave the users a framed view of the leaves changing color.

Exploded Axonometric

FURCATION

MASS TIMBER TREE

Missoula, MT

A mass timber colonnade of tree-like structures that wrap around the central building of the National Museum of Forest Service History Conservation Legacy Center.

Summer 2022

Professional work

Leers Weinzapfel Associates

Team: Tom Chung, Maryam Karime, Lucy Hawkins, Anthony Averbeck, Tammy Teng, and SGH

A colonnade formed of furcating mass timber tree (column) wraps around the main building of National Museum of Forest Service History Conservation Legacy Center.

Grasshopper was used to model different configuration of the branching structure with varying branch dimensions. The adjacent branches are connected by metal plates (SGH). These plate configurations are different at every tier and connection points (LWA).

The area beneath the colonnade is designed to evoke the sensation of being beneath a group of trees (LWA). One of the challenges was to determine the angle of the cut each branch

would need at the thirdtier connections nodes to accommodate the steel plates because six branches meet at those nodes.