Rok Oman / Špela Videčnik
Spaces of Isolation
Fall 2020
Studio Report
Rok Oman / Špela Videčnik
Spaces of Isolation
Spaces of Isolation Bridges Between Home and Health Care
Studio Instructor Rok Oman, Špela Videčnik
Modular units are an emerging and strategic development in triage within public health systems. The new reality brought about by the current pandemic exposed weak points in hospitals and other health care facilities – as well as highlighted the need for constant change and adaptability. The latest studies have indicated significant correlations between novel viruses and humanity’s careless attitude toward nature, which is primarily manifested in deforestation and other means of land conversion. Such practices are driving exotic species out of their evolutionary niches and into man-made environment, where they interact and breed new strains of disease.
Teaching Assistant Aryan Khalighy
During the seven-week course, we examined many possibilities for the development of future isolation schemes as possible. Home isolation is a valuable and valid alternative to a hospital setting, requires behavioral change, but no additional investment in infrastructure. The students tried to address this issue by proposing modular units of several different scales, applicable to different housing models. The principal feature of proposed isolation units is quick assembly and transportation between locations. Health care providers all over the world have repeatedly lamented the lack of effective communication and poor economic use of equipment. This situation requires novel micro-scale systems of help that could potentially ensure a higher quality of handling the pandemic in terms of the global community.
Technology Advisor Hanif Kara Students Xin Chen, Yuhe Ding, Haoran Zheng, Chun Chen, Sohun Kang, Sean Kim, Dania Ghuneim, Min Park, Jan Kwan, Gabriel Lam, Alice Han, Tianyue Xiao Review Critics Friedrich Ludewig, Hanif Kara, Markus Krauss, Marco Canevacci (Dr. Trouble), Yena Young (Ms. Bubble), Tobias Putrih, Dr. Marko Pokorn, Bekim Ramku, DK Osseo-Asare, Sarah Whiting
Introduction
Projects
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Bridges Between Home and Health Care Rok Oman Ĺ pela VideÄ?nik
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Healing in Isolation Xin Chen Yuhe Ding Haoran Zheng
From the New Normal to the New Future
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Quarantine with Green Chun Chen Sohun Kang
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Re-opening Gund Hall Sean Kim
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Storing Solitude Dania Ghuneim Min Park
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Familiar Recovery Jan Kwan Gabriel Lam
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Health Care on the Move Alice Han Tianyue Xiao
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Aryan Khalighy
182 Contributors
Haus-Rucker-Co, Ballon für Zwei, Apollogasse, Wien, 1967. Image © Haus-Rucker-Co, Gerald Zugmann
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Introduction
Bridges Between Home and Health Care
Rok Oman Špela Videčnik
The structure and envelope were supposed to be developed in detail. There was great emphasis on exploring and selecting materials that enable isolation and at the same time provide quality living experience. Modular systems offer adaptability and constant change and were therefore considered as a possible solution to the presented problem. We proposed analysis of real-life examples of applications of modular systems, such as Fangchang shelter hospitals in China. These large-scale temporary hospitals were built rapidly by converting existing public venues, such as stadiums and exhibition centres, into health-care facilities. Fangchang shelter hospitals bear some similarities to the makeshift and emergency field hospitals used during previous epidemics in other countries, as well as during natural disasters or wars. Fangchang shelter hospitals functioned not only as health-care facilities, but also as social spaces, providing basic living environment, emotional support, and social engagement for the large numbers of patients who were forced to live isolated from their families and communities. Plug in units, mobile and modular architectural solutions will be explored to offer all types of isolations: in residencies, hospitality, working environments and leisure. The students’ projects explored the above mentioned solutions on different scales, looking into specific aspects such as minimum standards, prefabrication and speed of assembly/ dismantling, interconnected construction and design as a response to a given context. Each group also proposed programs related to the term ‘Self-isolation Unit’, choosing among aspects of habitation, hospitality, working environment or hospital care. By working through issues presented by designing a smallscale prototype, students were encouraged to develop massing, details, connections, and erection sequence, ultimately reimagining the Space of Isolation.
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The 2020 health crisis with its unexpected challenges caused major issues for many previously well-functioning systems. They continue to struggle with delivering their services and adapting to the various new needs that emerge in the face of rapid, oftentimes radical changes. The COVID-19 pandemic we are experiencing at the moment resulted in lockdown measures around the world, causing many previously unimaginable needs to surface, such as alternatives to traditional education, novel solutions for public health systems or psychological support models which could ease the negative effects of isolation. While this problem is decentralized, communication barriers and the competitiveness of marketplaces hinder the ability of local groups and individuals to generate context-specific solutions from the bottom up and find the adequate human and physical resources to implement them. In the field of space planning, the pandemic opened a broader discussion on the topic of isolation. It seems imperative that besides establishment of isolated intensive care units, which is urgently required, there is also an urgent need to come up with prompt and temporary solutions for setting up isolated units in retirement facilities, residencies, hotels, student dorms, cruise ships, restaurants, schools and work places. The new reality exposed weak points in all of the above mentioned facilities and highlighted the need for constant change and adaptability. The studio’s aim was to investigate the idiom “spaces of isolation”. Starting from the analysis of the perceived differences in definition of isolation and quarantine, the the seven-week course provided a time frame for carefull examination of several references and as many possibilities for the development of future isolation schemes as possible. The students were expected to propose isolation units – Prototype – by the end of the semester on a micro site with specific program, both proposed by the students, preferably from their home environment.
From Spaces of Isolation Option Studio Introductory Presentation
Plastique Fantastique, Marco Canevacci (Dr. Trouble), Yena Young (Ms. Bubble)
Top: An aerial view shows the newly completed Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan [China Daily via Reuters] Bottom: The layout of the Fangcang shelter hospital of Hongshan Stadium (http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-03/03/c_138840039.htm)
Top: China has demanded four types of people in Wuhan to be put into mandatory isolation in quarantine stations: confirmed cases, suspected cases, people who have close contact with the former two, and those who have fever. Pictured, patients rest at a makeshift hospital (Source: Daily Mail UK) Bottom: Photo: AP/ Xiao Yijiu, Xinhua (Source: Global Times News)
The first fangcang hospital in Hong Kong, converted from the AsiaWorld-Expo exhibition center - Photo by Calvin Ng - China Daily
Pre-Handshake Handshake Device, Dominic Wilcox
Top: Equipped with elaborate air ventilation and filtration systems, the Mobile Quarantine Facility was used by Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. (NASM) Bottom: HERA, the Human Exploration Research Analog, is a three-story, closed habitat at NASA’s Johnson Space Center used to simulate long-duration human spaceflight missions. NASA
Walking Pods, https://utwpods.com/collections/wearable-pods/shield-pod
From the New Normal to the New Future
Aryan Khalighy
The studio has addressed a diverse range of conceptual to technical areas, from reflecting on the notion of ‘isolation’ to prototyping and fabrication in detail, ultimately reimagining the space of isolation. Among six projects of the studio we can identify three general approaches. The first approach is to modify existing industrial parts and objects and converting them to isolation units. In “Healing in Isolation” the project has used large scale industrial pipes, adapting them to isolation units, while “Health Care on the Move” has modified train cabins and abandoned railroads to house health care services. The second approach is to use custom made units, either nesting them inside an existing building, as “Quarantine with Green” has occupied an existing church with prefabricated greenhouse units, or attaching units to the exterior of existing buildings, as “Familiar Recovery” has employed parking garage buildings to host their plug-in isolation units. Finally, the third approach is to re-appropriate the interior space of existing buildings as isolation spaces, as “Re-opening Gund Hall” has imagined scenarios of reoccupation of Gund Hall by using the space within the roof structure above the trays, and finally, “Storing Solitude” has adopted a system of cabinets to enhance the interior conditions of existing residential units, offering mental relief in a contained space. To conclude, these projects are seeking an opportunity to display the power of architectural imagination in providing a vast array of possibilities to the challenges imposed by COVID-19 pandemic. The projects have achieved a high level of specific local solutions to respond to a global crisis which is probably the biggest crisis of our time. Nevertheless, by proposing post pandemic scenarios there is a sense of optimism in all the projects for a sustainable transition from the “new normal” to the “new future”.
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From the intricate, high-tech, and extremely efficient Dymaxion car proposed by Buckminster Fuller during the Great Depression, to massive dynamic megastructures of Metabolism after the WWII destruction of Japanese cities, to the utopian superstructure of the “Mobile architecture” proposed by Yona Friedman during the 1950s and 1960s social movements, to the avant-garde neo-futuristic self-contained living pods and plug-in units of Archigram’s “The Walking City” proposed for a future ruined world in the aftermath of a nuclear war, and to Haus-Rucker-Co’s “pneumatic air structures” of their Architectural Utopia as a reaction to fears regarding environmental pollution and potential catastrophe in the 1970s there is one common theme that they share despite the differences: there are analogous attempts to render architecture’s reaction to a crisis or a potential disastrous circumstance. In response to the instability and uncertainty of a nomadic society in a time of crisis architecture’s last resort is to offer a large scale highly dynamic infrastructural system, which is containing supporting and protecting individual habitation units. This reaction might be considered as architecture’s retreat to its most basic form to satisfy a fundamental need of human beings: shelter. However, despite the practical and pragmatic nature of this fundamental issue, the enormity of the crisis has feed architectural imagination and as a result there are multiple radical and visionary proposals that have emerged throughout the history. Studio “Spaces of Isolation” taught by Spela Videcnick and Rok Oman at Harvard Graduate School of Design summons this historical quest of architects for individual habitation units, regarding the unexpected challenges of COVID-19 global pandemic and the necessity of human isolation to stop the rapid growth of the pandemic. The students are asked to propose “context specific solutions” for a micro site with isolation units and specific programs, considering both pandemic and post-pandemic scenarios.
Top and Bottom: Free Time Node Trailer Cage, Ron Herron, Archigram 1966. Archigram Archives
Top: Dymaxion House Model Drawing, Buckminster Fuller
Domenica del Corriere - Walter Morino - 1962
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Projects
Xin Chen, Yuhe Ding, Haoran Zheng
The COVID 19 pandemic has not only claimed thousands of lives and brought the world’s economy to a halt but has also led us to distance ourselves from our humanity and society. People are encouraged to do Isolation or Quarantine which means staying home, separate themselves from others. At this moment, it could help monitor their health, and follow directions from their state or local health department. In order to keep someone who might have been exposed to COVID 19 away from others Quarantine helps prevent spread of disease that can occur before a person knows they are sick or if they are infected with the virus without feeling symptoms. Under the global coronavirus pandemic situation, when the very nature of human social activities has become both threatening and threatened P eople are limited to stay at home to be self quarantine or self isolation. Considering that a majority group of patients get infected on their way to the hospital/health center either through transportation systems or in the lines to get tested, we therefore want to let most citizens keep their status quo stay at home and provide on the spot medical services to large residential communities. In this case, housing plays a pivotal role in the post pandemic future. A new type of housings would create opportunities for people to monitor their health conditions and follow directions of the local health department. In the meanwhile, we shouldn’t force infected people to sleep in cold stadiums, adapted containers and anonymous camps, building the worst scenario that perhaps we can imagine as citizens facing the service that a health system has to give to citizens A developed modular type with healing isolation space respond to this crisis would provide multi functional space for people to deal with this pandemic situation.
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Healing in Isolation
31 Top: 4 Module Types Bottom: Vertical Scheme Assembly
Module Types
Healing in Isolation
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Xin Chen, Yuhe Ding, Haoran Zheng
4 Module Types
Healing in Isolation
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Xin Chen, Yuhe Ding, Haoran Zheng
4 Module Types
Healing in Isolation
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Xin Chen, Yuhe Ding, Haoran Zheng
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Top: Horizontal Scheme Roof Plan
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40 Top: Horizontal Scheme Perspective
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42 Top: Bridge Scheme Elevation Bottom: Bridge Scheme Section
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44 Top: Bridge Scheme Rendering
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46 Top: Vertical Scheme Section
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48 Top: Vertical Scheme Elevation
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Chun Chen, Sohun Kang
Pandemic is not an equalizer. It rather exploits vulnerable preconditions- be it physical, mental, spatial, economic, and urban. Pandemic created a large population of people who were required to quarantine and lockdown cities. Many people lost their jobs, and could no longer afford food to eat. Such food insecurities pervaded in the U.S. that one in five households are considered food insecure. Our project proposes using greenhouses as a quarantine space and means of production. During quarantine, people stay during greenhouses where they can use their time and energy to produce some food for leisure, their own consumption, or their neighbors who are food insecure. The chosen site is an abandoned church in Gary, Indiana. It is located at the heart of downtown. The city of Gary has preconditions: a shrinking city. The population has shrunk to half of its peak since the 1960s. The population decline means less revenue for the city while an increase in vacant and blighted properties, the maintenance cost of infrastructure, and public health costs. Within these vicious cycles of urban decline, the City Methodist Church still stands and is remembered as a place of the community although its architecture is ruined. Our project proposes to install greenhouses within the existing church envelope to provide quarantine spaces during the pandemic. People will quarantine alone but participate in a shared project of urban farming. Post pandemic, the shared memory of farming will become a foundation to establish an urban farming school where different stages of the plant life cycle will be arranged in relation to the cycles of human habitation. When the abandoned church is activated again, the project can be a turning point for the city of Gary to fight against the urban decline.
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Quarantine with Green
55 Top: Existing Types
Top: Parts Axonometric
Quarantine with Green
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Top: Parts Axonometric
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Chun Chen, Sohun Kang
58 Top: Concept Diagram
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Quarantine with Green
60 Modules and Programs, COVID vs Post COVID
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Chun Chen, Sohun Kang Modules and Programs, COVID vs Post COVID
62 Top: Plan, COVID Scenario
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64 Top: Section, COVID Scenario
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Quarantine with Green
66 Top: Section, COVID Scenario
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Chun Chen, Sohun Kang
Quarantine with Green
68 Top: Section, COVID Scenario
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Chun Chen, Sohun Kang
70 Top: Plan, Post COVID Scenario
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72 Top: Section, Post COVID Scenario
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74 Top: Section, Post COVID Scenario
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Quarantine with Green
76 Top: Section, Post COVID Scenario
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Chun Chen, Sohun Kang
Sean Kim
The project aims to find a way to design isolation units for the school’s reopening process. The units will be inserted to the roof structure of Gund hall with a separated circulation, accommodating students who are waiting for the COVID test result after they got back into the campus during the pandemic. After the pandemic, the unit will be used as a part of the tray, increasing both the number of floor area and the number of desks. To repopulate the tray in the pandemic and in the phase of New Normal, the plan incorporates additional volume in the middle of the building and to the roof structure creating additional circulation of the users as well as the space with isolation units and working space above to the tray. These structures fuse functional qualities regarding the pandemic to the original structure and keeps the quality of the space. The space organizing guidance is based on the government’s ordinance. The plan proposes three independent circulation system which serves the specific users in each different phase. There are three phases from one to three, one being severest situation where the building is used as a healthcare facility only, and three being the vigilant where all the students occupy the building with fewer people. And phase 2 is a hybrid situation where the students and the students who’re waiting for the test results on their way back to the campus from outside. The visual purview of the original tray is maintained, and the natural light dispersed through the translucent glass, gives more atmospheric aspect to the tray. The transparent metal grill can be a communicative duct between the unit on the roof and the tray. The permanent, and the temporal, furniture, occupants, movement, natural light and the tray is integrated through the sheathing of frosted glass.
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Re-opening Gund Hall
87 Top: Plan, Before and After
Re-opening Gund Hall
88 Top: Plan, Before and After
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Sean Kim Top: Plan, Before and After
90 Top: Proposed Section
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Re-opening Gund Hall
92 Top: Proposed Structure Module Parts and Layers
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Sean Kim Top: Proposed Structure Module Parts and Layers
Re-opening Gund Hall
94 Top and Bottom: Structure layers
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Sean Kim Top and Bottom: Structure layers
Top: Axon (Before)
Re-opening Gund Hall
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Sean Kim Bottom: Axon (After)
Central Elevation
Re-opening Gund Hall
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Sean Kim
Dania Ghuneim Min Park
As a result of the pandemic, a new normal has been inflicted upon society that relies on the home as a place of shelter and public safety, regardless of whether or not you’re infected. Consequently, we’ve been spending more time at home, and trying to fit aspects of our professional, personal, and social lives all within the same space. The current conditions of domestic spaces have proven to be limited to accommodate the new normal, and people are left to find relief through the window, detached from the home. Our proposal is thus to expand the use of each room by way of the window condition. In doing so, we aim to revive the concept of cabinet-as-room to better store and display room essentials, personal artifacts, and sensational objects, creating a compartment of spaces that simultaneously provide an inward and outward looking experience of the home. Storing Solitude proposes to deconstruct the home into a series of rooms. Adopting a system of cabinets, the room and its programmatic essentials are stored within cells that can be detached from their spine to reconfigure the room. The uses of the living room, dining room, bedroom, and kitchen corridor are normally motivated by the programmatic specificity each room offers, which results in active pressure mounting on the living room as the most programmatically ambiguous room of the home. Our proposal redistributes the activity throughout the home regardless of program, Spatial experience is no longer predetermined, and instead relies on a compartment of spaces that simultaneously provide the functional autonomy necessary for productive use, as well as unique and dynamic vantage points that offer mental relief in a contained space.
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Storing Solitude
107 Top: Stress Diagram, Before and After Intervention
Storing Solitude
108 Top: Before Conditions
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Dania Ghuneim, Min Park Top: Proposed Diagram Bottom: Cabinet Detail
Storing Solitude
110 Top Left: Kitchen Plan Top Right: Kitchen Elevation Bottom: Kitchen Perspective
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Dania Ghuneim, Min Park
Storing Solitude
114 Top Left: Bed Room Plan Top Right: Bed Room Elevation Bottom: Bed Room Perspective
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Dania Ghuneim, Min Park
Storing Solitude
118 Top Left: Dining Room Plan Top Right: Dining Room Elevation Bottom: Dining Room Perspective
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Dania Ghuneim, Min Park
Storing Solitude
122 Top Left: Living Room Plan Top Right: Living Room Elevation Bottom: Living Room Perspective
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Dania Ghuneim, Min Park
Jan Kwan Gabriel Lam
Utilizing an economically feasible and operationally light module based on market products, the modules reframe current formal typologies of housing; the prefabrication of modules with rapid deployment and installation techniques produces an architectural intervention on an increasingly obsolete infrastructural motif. Questions of micro-living are also brought into the scope of the project, as ideas of compact living must be investigated in conjunction to the experiential benefits and detriments of spatial compression. The parking structure, historically a manifestation of the growing significance of vehicular movement on the spatial demographic of the urban fabric is adapted and reclaimed by the introduction of isolation spaces. To some extent, the project proposes a product – the attachment system of clamps and hooks does not architecturally modify its site but rather rests lightly to emphasize its intention of temporality. However, it proceeds further to question the supposition of modular architecture as truly moveable as opposed to a set state of aggregation. Yet to answer the question of afterlife, and the permanence of architectural spaces as a medium of living, the project proposes two different possibilities – shall the parking structure no longer be needed for its old use, the opportunity for architectural intervention on the parking structure allows the modularity to act both its original purpose as isolated units but also a component for community gathering. On the other hand, should the modular system migrate to a completely new datum, the system provides a different set of effects when arrayed horizontally. The formality of the conventional row house and courtyard typologies are altered, as a framework for a process of producing easily deployable yet socially and architecturally desirable spaces of collective living.
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Familiar Recovery
129 Top and Bottom: Plug-in Assembly
Familiar Recovery
130 Top: Plug-in Modules
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Jan Kwan, Gabriel Lam Top: Parking Garage Plug-in Plan
Familiar Recovery
132 Top and Bottom: 3D Printed Model of Units
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Jan Kwan, Gabriel Lam Top and Bottom: 3D Printed Model of Units
134 Top: Plug-in Units Perspective from Inside
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Familiar Recovery
136 Top Left: Module 1 Section Top Right: Module 1 Plan Bottom: Module 1 Perspective
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Jan Kwan, Gabriel Lam Top: Interior Perspective
Familiar Recovery
138 Top: Module 1 Section Perspective
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Jan Kwan, Gabriel Lam Top: Module 1 Section Perspective
Familiar Recovery
140 Top: Module 1 Section Perspective
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Jan Kwan, Gabriel Lam Top: Module 1 Section Perspective
Familiar Recovery
142 Top: Module 1 Interior Perspective
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Jan Kwan, Gabriel Lam Top: Module 1 Inteiror Perspective
Familiar Recovery
144 Top Left: Module 2 Section Top Right: Module 2 Plan Bottom: Module 2 Perspective
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Jan Kwan, Gabriel Lam Top: Interior Perspective
Familiar Recovery
146 Top Left: Module 3 Section Top Right: Module 3 Plan Bottom: Module 3 Perspective
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Jan Kwan, Gabriel Lam Top: Interior Perspective
Familiar Recovery
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Jan Kwan, Gabriel Lam
Familiar Recovery
150 Top: Covid Scenario Site Plan
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Jan Kwan, Gabriel Lam Top: Post-Covid Scenario Site Plan
Familiar Recovery
152 Top and Bottom: Post-Covid Scenario Images
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Jan Kwan, Gabriel Lam Top and Bottom: Post-Covid Scenario Images
Alice Han Tianyue Xiao
The current condition of COVID-19 has transformed the urban environment into a new normal with an emphasis on isolation, in both spatial and social perspectives. As a critical factor of urban resilience, public health demands a new method of interpretation in order to alleviate the urban crisis in relation to spatial arrangement, density, and accessibility to resources. The project intention is to integrate the new urban norm with a system of mobility and explore a new dynamic of health care and sustainable urban environment (in dealing with urban challenges and emergencies). Under technological and social forces, the mobility patterns constructed and altered through the existing infrastructural systems will have the ability to facilitate the consolidation of and accessibility to health care, while ensuring efficient health outcomes and patient experiences. The mobility health care system we are envisioning are not only a response to the global pandemic currently urgent, but also a long-term solution for the achievement of urban resilience, for both the unpredictable transformation in physical environment and embedded social crisis. ‘Spaces of isolation’ does not follow with a single or static definition but one adapting to a variation of urban situations. While the infrastructural system eliminates the distance between one place and another, they marginalized fragments of urban spaces. With a nature of being ‘spaces of isolation’ for the new norm came along with COVID-19, the railway system is an ideal ‘campground’ to accommodate individuals with medical needs. However, from another perspective, these fragmented spaces demand modifications to accommodate and stimulate communal exchanges to build up a sustainable urban model that is transformative in multiple layers of urban engagement, in order to fit in different periods of time and stages.
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Health Care on the Move
159 Top: Health Care Mobility System Diagram
Health Care on the Move
160 Top and Bottom: Module A “Acute Care”
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Alice Han, Tianyue Xiao Top and Bottom: Module A “Acute Care”
Health Care on the Move
162 Top and Bottom: Module B “Inpatient Care”
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Alice Han, Tianyue Xiao Top and Bottom: Module B “Inpatient Care”
Health Care on the Move
164 Top and Bottom: Module C “Non-Acute Care”
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Alice Han, Tianyue Xiao Top: Module C “Non-Acute Care”
Health Care on the Move
166 Top: Module C Parts Axon Bottom: Module C Section
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Alice Han, Tianyue Xiao
Health Care on the Move
168 Top and Bottom: Post COVID Reconfiguration
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Alice Han, Tianyue Xiao Top and Bottom: Post COVID Reconfiguration
Health Care on the Move
170 Top and Bottom: Post COVID Reconfiguration
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Alice Han, Tianyue Xiao Top and Bottom: Post COVID Reconfiguration
172 Top: Post COVID Reconfiguration
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174 Top: Master Plan
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176 Top: Parts Axon Bottom: Section
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178 Top View
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Firstname Lastname
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Contributors
Rok Oman / Ĺ pela VideÄ?nik Both graduates of the University of Ljubljana School of Architecture and the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA) in London, established OFIS arhitekti in 1996, based in Ljubljana, Paris, and Moscow. Since its creation, the practice has received several awards and was invited to participate in Architecture Biennials in Venice, Moscow, and Beijing. OFIS works and communicates at an international level, taking part in competitions, lectures, and discourses. The practice has recently completed construction of a student residence in Paris and the football stadium Borisov Arena in Belarus, and are currently working on a Sports complex in Moscow. The activities of OFIS date to the 1990s, a particularly exciting yet difficult period for the former Yugoslavian republics undergoing intense self-reevaluation and reinvention, economically and cuturally. OFIS managed to impress with original thinking and clear concepts, winning several competitions including Ljubljana City Museum and Maribor Stadium. They have worked with various national and international clients from the private and commercial sectors, and state institutions. OFIS tries to find an issue with the brief, client, material, structural constraints, or site. In this way limitations become inspiration for difference and create identity - something that makes their work distinct - by using tactics of not surpassing, confronting, ignoring, or disobeying rules or limitations. Through their research and charity they have built and tested several units of habitations in extreme environments. They have taught at the Harvard GSD since 2012, and are also faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana and Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Architecture Paris-Val de Seine.
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Aryan Khalighy Aryan Khalighy is the teaching assistant of the studio “Spaces of Isolation”. He is a designer and writer from Tehran, Iran. He is currently a fourth year MArch I student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He was expelled from the Iranian public university due to his religious beliefs and the systemic discrimination against the Baha’i community in Iran. Later completed his Bachelor of Architecture at the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE). He has been a part of several research projects, focusing on the intersection of contemporary digital culture and the vernacular masonry architecture of Iran, producing 1:1 scale installations and pavilions. His design works and articles have been published in several journals and websites including Metropolis magazine, Designboom, THIS X THAT, Harvard GSD’s website, and Hamshahri Memari, one of the leading architecture journals in Iran. He has lectured at various institutions across the world such as Architecture Foundation of London, Bu-Ali Sina University in Hamedan, and Contemporary Architects Association of Iran. Aryan’s professional experience in the U.S. includes collaborations with Howeler + Yoon architects, Paul Lukez architects, and Jennifer Bonner/MALL. Since Fall 2019 he has been teaching courses on history and theory of modern architecture, as well as instructing architecture design studio at the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education. Aryan is currently doing research on rethinking the future of pedagogy and learning spaces in architecture for his Master’s degree thesis advised by Mohsen Mostafavi at Harvard Graduate School of Design.
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Hanif Kara Combines practice with teaching, currently as Professor in Practice of Architectural Technology at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institution of Structural Engineers, and the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (RSA); is on the board of trustees of the Architecture Foundation; is a former member of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment; and is a past member of the Design for London Advisory Group to the Mayor of London. As Design Director and cofounder of AKT II, his particular “design-led” approach and interest in innovative form, material uses, and complex analysis methods have allowed him to work on numerous award-winning projects.His published works include Design Engineering, a retrospective of AKT’s first decade (2008), Interdisciplinary Design: New Lessons from Architecture and Engineering (2012), and Deliverance of Design: Making, Mending, and Revitalising Structures, on the works of AKT II from 1996 to 2018.
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Aknowledgements We would like to thank Sarah M. Whiting, Dean and Joseph Llouis Sert Professor of Architecture and Mark Lee, Chair of the Department of Architecture for the opportunity to instruct this studio. Thanks to Jackie Piracini, Taylor Horner, and Maggie Chang, the Harvard GSD administration for their help. We extend our gratitude to the studio’s structural consultant and technology advisor, Hanif Kara; The jury critics for their important words during reviews; and, of course, the students for all of their hard work. Finally, special thanks to our teaching assistant, Aryan Khalighy, for his boundless energy, great organization of the semester, and assistance with publication.
Colophon
Spaces of Isolation Instructors Rok Oman, Špela Videčnik Technology Advisor Hanif Kara Report Design Aryan Khalighy Dean Sarah Whiting Chair of the Department of Architecture Mark Lee Copyright © 2020 President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without prior written permission from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Text and images © 2020 by their authors.
Image Credits Cover: Melvin Sokolsky, Bubble Series, 1963 The editors have attempted to acknowledge all sources of images used and apologize for any errors or omissions.
Harvard University Graduate School of Design 48 Quincy Street Cambridge, MA 02138 gsd.harvard.edu
Studio Report Fall 2020
Harvard GSD Department of Architecture
Students Xin Chen, Yuhe Ding, Haoran Zheng, Chun Chen, Sohun Kang, Sean Kim, Dania Ghuneim, Min Park, Jan Kwan, Gabriel Lam, Alice Han, Tianyue Xiao