Riya Kohli _ Undergraduate Portfolio (CEPT University)

PORTFOLIO

RIYA KOHLI

SELECTED WORKS 2018-23

CEPT UNIVERSITY

RIYA KOHLI

ar.riyakohli@gmail.com

+91 7042579348

Date of Birth

Languages

27.01.2000

English, Hindi

I am an architect who loves music, films and art. I dabble with making digital illustrations and hand portraits. I love travelling and enjoy conversations over a good cup of coffee!

Architecture helped me to translate my love for art into spaces that weave experiences and move people over time. I am a person who believes in the beauty of change, the only constant.

Education Workshop

2016 - 10th GRADE (CBSE): 10 CGPA

Apeejay School, Pitampura, New Delhi

2018 - 12th GRADE (CBSE): 91%

Apeejay School, Pitampura, New Delhi

2018 - NATA Score: 164.75

All India Rank: 9

2023- Bachelor’s of Architecture

CEPT University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat

Digital Skills

Drafting: Autodesk AutoCAD

3D Modelling: SketchUp, Rhinoceros 3D, Zbrush, Revit (Basic)

Space Syntax: Isovists, DepthmapX

Rendering/Graphics: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Lumion, Keyshot

Presentation: Adobe InDesign, MS Word, MS Excel, MS Powerpoint

Manual Skills

Drafting

Rendering

Sketching

Pen, Pencil, Charcoal, Watercolours

Model making - Wood, Acrylic, MDF, Thermocol, Clay, Foam

Fabrication - Laser cutting, wood and metal work

Competitions

Participant, Housing 2.0 by Archmello

Participant, Design School by Archmello

Research

Realm of the In-between: Expressions Through Stone (The case of Jaisalmer)

2019 - Earth Workshop, Hunnarshala

2021 - Painterly Objects: Speculations in the Digital Realm (Summer School’21)

2022 - Documentation and Reimagination of gdgdgrRuins, Bhuj (Winter School’22)

2023 - Computational Design Course - Learning fefefefeRhino, Grasshopper, Ladybug and Maya

Documentation

December, 2018 - RSP, Varanasi

January, 2020 - Pol Kholi, Ahemdabad

Professional Experience

Studio Interweave, Gangtok, Sikkim (Ar. Kailash Pradhan and Ar. Upendra Gurung)

Jan’22 - Jun’22 (23 weeks)

I was a part of multiple residential projects that were at different stages of execution where I created detailed SketchUp models, working drawings, construction and reinforcement drawings, door - window schedules, BOQ , cost estimations and coordinated with on-site workers. I was also involved in the design processes and solely designed the outdoor lighting of one of the projects.

Extra-Curricular

Navratri Installation, Metal Sculpture (2018)

Navratri Installation, Kinetic Wave (2022)

Marble Printing workshop, Roots (2020)

Human Chess, Tournament (2018)

Merchandise, KVDF (2023)

Areas of Academic Interest

Architectural Theory Material Expression and Detailing Phenomenology History

UNBOXING TOWERS NESTLED REVAMPED

MASS AND VOID RESPONSE TO CLIMATE mahousing. sunlight

Between Utopia and Reality: Reimagining Affordable Housing for the Millennials

Staggering of modules in this way creates multiple possibilities of mass-void relationships, modulating the amount of heat and light entering the shared spaces throughout the day

Monsoon 2022 (Sem 9)

Making Living Places

Monsoon 2019 (Sem 3)

The arrangement of modules creates different voids, allowing free-flow of winds, keeping the units as well as the shared spaces well ventilated throughout the day

Space Kinematics

Spring 2020 (Sem 4)

UNBOXING TOWERS

Studio: Between Utopia and Reality: Reimagining Affordable Housing for the Millennials

Year: Monsoon 2021 (Sem 9)

Faculty: Shikha Parmar and Sandeep Amin

Location: Old City, Ahmedabad, Gujarat

Studio Type: Housing

‘Quiet Quitting’ is a term that came into existence during covid. It means rejecting the notion of work taking over life or how employees work over and beyond their job description. Thus, people started following their passion and shifting to flexible work timings. ‘Unboxing Towers’ is an attempt at housing that caters to young millennials (who are either bachelors or small families) with flexible work timings. The housing explores units with flexible spaces that can be used differently during different times of the day while at the same time having room for future expansion.

SITE RESPONSE

Identifying access point and grid angle Locating Circulation cores Zoning gathering for residential, merce)

RESPONSE

gathering areas (yellow blue for com merce)

Vertical zoning (blue for co living and yellow for residential)

Adding bridge connections at various levels

Ground Floor Plan

The two courtyards (one for residents and the other for commerce) open up to the Plaza near the fort wall, connecting the site to the Ravivari and celebrating the Fort Wall.

Typical Floor Layout Studio Unit

The three residential units (studio, family dwelling and incremental unit) are clustered on the three wings (3 floor cluster) unconnected to each oth er.

Family Dwell ing

Incremental Unit

Units Typologies

The 4.8 m by 4.8 m column grid offered varying volumes of units based of the different user groups. All the services are tucked onto one corner to leave an open plan for other activities to overlap.

Studio Unit exploring activities like cooking, reading and spending leisure time

Incremental unit (Before Expansion): Unit exploring activities like cooking, reading, doing daily chores and spending leisure time

Small Family Dwelling (Upper Level): Unit exploring activities like cooking, reading and spending leisure time

Studio Unit exploring activities like resting, working and doing daily chores

Incremental unit (After Expansion): Unit exploring activities like cooking, reading, resting, doing daily chores and spending leisure time

Small Family Dwelling (Lower Level): Unit exploring activities like reading, resting and doing daily chores

Studio Unit

Family Dwelling

Incremental Unit

CLUSTER FORMATION and assembly

The clusters were formed with an attemp to provide a corner balcony to each dwelling unit, adding to the architectural language of the housing. The conventional corridors were replaced by a semiopen space which served as a spill-out for the units.

4th, 8th and 12th Floor: The Incremental units after expansion are segregated into different private and public zones, with a corner balcony for each zone

3rd, 7th and 11th Floor: The Studio units offer high flexibility in terms of use for the fixed and flexible timers throughout the day.

3rd, 7th and 11th Floor

4th, 8th and 12th Floor

5th and 9th Floor

Terrace Cafe

Cafe with private spaces shaded by pergolas to provide a secluded environment overlooking the riverfront.

Co-Living Level

Residential Units located at the periphery wings , whereas the common activities (such as community dining, laundry, lounge area) are located at the central wing.

Co-working Level

Co-workig Spaces that can be collaborated with companies like WeWork to generate revenue and tackle affordability. The level is directly connected to the riverfront for ease of access.

Sectional Perspective through the cluster and Plaza

NESTLED

Studio: Making Living Places

Year: Monsoon 2019 (Sem 3)

Faculty: Puneet Mehrotra and Juzar

Location: Ahmedabad, Gujarat

Studio Type: Visualization

There are places which make you feel more alive and freer. And there are places which deprive you of any feeling of life. The studio unit was focused on transforming lifedepriving places into life-enhancing ones, taking up the case of Gota Lake in Ahmedabad which is treated like a backyard dumping area by the locals. The lake appeared ‘lifeless’ and dead, due to the household waste and factory waste dumped by the locals. Places which are rich in detail and diversity coming about as a result of shared existence were thu identified. The existing latent centres on the site that had potential to be developed into strong centres were marked and developed to turn the edge of the lake into a life-enhancing for birds.

*The project was done in a group of 2 people

Model exploration

A mound was developed to attract the diversity of birds in the area. Different types of trees like Gulmohar, Mulberry, Palm etc were planted to attract the distinct variety of birds. The mound though facing towards the terraces on the lake edge, is inaccessible from it to create a sense of longing in the minds of the people sitting on the edge viewing the mound. The mound thus acts like a nest for birds, supported by the stone retaining wall hidden amidst the vegetation, suggestive of nature taking over the man-made structures.

NYC MAYHEM

Course: Painterly Objects: Speculations in the Digital Realm

Year: Summer School, 2021 Faculty: Subin Jameel

The enormous organic-looking tower amid the skyline of New York, creates a sense of confusion by breaking away from the conventional idea of a ‘skyscraper’ made as a vertical geometric and symmetrical form. The idea of an asymmetrical organic skyscraper questions the pre-existing notions of the built form itself, by setting an example of an alternative approach to design thinking. The tower is a composition of different patterns created using arraymesh and cladded on top of the base mesh in Zbrush, rendered in Keyshot, while the post production is done in Photoshop.

REVAMPED

Studio: Space Kinematice

Year: Spring 2020 (Sem 4)

Faculty: Muntaha Rushnaiwala and Anuj Anjaria

Location: Druk White Lotus School, Ladakh

Studio Type: Construction Drawing

Dynamic spaces in architecture transform the spatial quality by transforming itself through its envelope and the elements that make that very space. The project consists of a kinetic folding and opening door introduced at a workshop pavilion proposed at the Druk White Lotus School, Ladakh. The door enables the creation of shaded spill out spaces for children to work, protecting them from the harsh sun rays, emphasizing on the idea of learning beyond the limits of a classroom. The mechanism of the door is made interactive for the students by using a gear interlocking mechanism operated by a wheel.

Proposed workshop pavilion

exploded view of the kinetic door

The folding door helps in the ease of movement from the outside to the inside, while the door when opened up using the mechanism creates a shaded spill - out space for the children, protecting them from the harsh rays of the sun due to the high altitude.

INTERTWINE

Course: Camping in the Ruins of Chavda Rakhal

Year: Winter School, 2022

Faculty: Sankalpa

Location: Kutchh, Gujarat

Heightened awareness can happen in an environment which is unknown. The Rakhal offers an unknown environment due to the presence of a tropical landscape in an arid region. The idea is to intensify one’s senses to appreciate that unknown and make people sensitive towards conserving such environments.

The Rakhal could itself function as an interpretation centre, where the ruins act as a threshold between the arid and the tropical landscape. The idea is to inculcate a journey of exploration and discovery (be it as an individual or a group), where one travels though the arid into the tropical landscape, coming across various spaces that heightens one’s senses making them more alert and conscious about their surroundings. The exhibition space is made in the form of a maze, to inculcate a journey of exploration, giving glimpses of the ruins along the journey, acting as a bridge between the tropical garden and the arid region of Kutchh.

MUSEUM OF CONFLICT

Studio: Strange Details

Year: Spring 2021 (Sem 6)

Faculty: Mehul Bhatt and Rajan Bhatt

Location: Ahmedabad, Gujarat

Studio Type: Working Drawing

During the process of designing, it is quite common for the initial ideas to fade away and be unseen in the final product. The Topography of Terror, a museum for documentation of the Nazi activitites, an unbuilt project by Peter Zumthor (originally proposed in Berlin) was selected and translocated in Ahemdabad. The project was redesigned, keeping in mind the initial ideas and attributes of the architect, and considering the climate of the new allocated site. The new museum focused on the documentation of the Gujarat riots. Features like the rectilinear plan, interplay of light and shadow, transparency, and precast structure were retained. Changes were made to emphasize the monumentality, scale, and experience of the structure.

Interpretation Model

The series of columns appeared as a ‘fence’, protecting the history. The long narrow building creates a controlled perspective, giving a ‘tunnel-like’ feeling, as if going into a time capsule.

Initial Idea

Bridges were proposed between the 3 exhibition volumes to create an alternate between history and reality, where the exhibtion spaces were more secluded, and the bridges connected the viewers to the existing Hindu-Muslim communities in the outside.

Alternate between history and reality compared with the interplay of light and shadow

SECTION DD’

SECTIONAL AXONOMETRIC OF THE BRIDGE

NEBULA

Course: Painterly Objects: Speculations in the Digital Realm

Year: Summer School, 2021 Faculty: Subin Jameel

Sci-fi movies have been a major part of our childhood, constantly leaving us awestruck with their gigantic spaceships and aircrafts. The Nebula is thus a creation of my deep admiration for sci-fi movies. The surface of the spaceship has been made using the greeble texture, with one mesh on top of the other to give a sense of lighting and materiality, adding on to the complex nature of the structure of the spaceship. The wings of the nebula have been created using bend arc deformation method modelled in Zbrush.

UDAAN

Studio: Social Learning

Year: Monsoon 2020 (Sem 5)

Faculty: Catherine Desai and Freyaan Anklesaria

Location: Ahmedabad, Gujarat

Studio Type: Designing through Space Syntax

Program: School till 8th grade

Knowledge is free, and there shouldn’t be any restrictions in the exchange of knowledge. The school aims to create a flexible learning environment, by maintaining a balance between classroom based focussed learning and peer learning. The design aims to enable healthy interaction between students of different age groups which can aid in peer learning, while at the same time maintaining their individual identity. It tries to blur the boundaries between work and play, by giving equal importance to both curricular and co curricular learning. The idea of a non correspondent model at earlier stages shifts to a correspondent model in the higher grades and the role of a teacher shifts to that of a mentor or a fellow travellor.

Classrooms with overlooking balconies viewing the common areas such as the playground on the outside and the atrium on the inside. Staggering the masses can help create interesting facades and self shading patterns.

Each academic block will be connected to immediate lower or higher grade block through a semi-open shared space acting as a spillover for the two, enabling peer learning between students of different age groups.

A double volume semi-open space could be shared between two academic blocks acting as a spillover for various co-curricular activities. This would help reduce the gap between children belonging to different age groups, and aid in peer learning.

The academic blocks could open up into central shared space or atrium. Each academic block is connected to its adjacent block through a semi-open shared space opening up to playground.

THINKING THROUGH

The idea was to design a school, or rather a learning peer, individual and

to its through spillover between into the academic through to the learning curve that enables the concept of taught, observatory learning.

The foundation block can have low-heighted walls (or bookshelves) for the classrooms such that the activities within a classroom are private and intimate for the students, however, the teachers can view all the classrooms at one, generating a higher degree of control.

An open hall type space with adjacent classrooms, and corridors running through the classrooms to create a montessori school learning environment.

THROUGH DIAGRAMS

The idea was to design an academic block cluster where all the classrooms and the peer learning spaces have a very similar experience in terms of visibility, adjacency and accessibility.

FOUNDATIONAL BLOCK PREPORATORY BLOCK MIDDLE SCHOOL BLOCK

1st and 2nd grade 3rd, 4th and 5th grade 6th, 7th and 8th grade

The classrooms are intented to have a low value of compactness to aid in peer learning across classrooms, supporting the Montessori school based pedagogy of the block. The classrooms are thus divided by low heighted walls cum bookshelves to support the same.

The classrooms have a wide range of compactness values catering to the different students. The students requiring a more focused place to work could sit in a more compact space This way the teacher could also decide which student should sit in a more ecompact space based on his/her ability to learn.

The middle school block is meant for more focused and classroom based learning. Hence, the compactness values of the classrooms in this block are higher than the other blocks.

*Compactness (Cv) expresses the shape property (relative to a circle) of all space visible from a location. In an isovist field, compactness identifies the regions of plan in which an observer’s spatial experience is contiguously consistent.

hues of riko

I want people to know me by my art someday...

Hues of Riko is an attempt to unleash the creative part of my brain into the world of digital art. I treat it as an escape from my everyday work routine, by illustrating/ cartooning people, places and things. Creating digital art has made me more sensitive and observative towards my surroundings. Through my art I try to capture the emotion and detail we see in our everday lives but fail to take notice. My art thus strives to create a meaningful impact by capturing the tiny emotions from our ordinary lives.

STUDIO INTERWEAVE

Studio Interweave is an ambitious collaboration of two most aspiring architects of Sikkim. Their perception towards life and love towards the place helps the studio to produce extremely context rooted spaces and designs that sink into the hills. They are deeply concerned about the character of urban spaces in our cities and their thoughts and ideas are inspired by the drive to discover environment sensitive building technologies and celebrate vernacular methods and indigenous craft through their work.

The culture at Studio Interweave is to participate in all walks of life. From dialogues, workshops and site visits, to music sessions, late evenings at the office and jovial discussions around the desk,

“we aspire to find interconnections in life and weave them into our work”

Ar. Kailash Pradhan and Ar. Upendra Gurung

Gangtok, Sikkim

RANKA RESIDENCE

OUTDOOR LIGHTING DESIGN

OUTDOOR LIGHTING - parapet wall and staircase

prototyping

RESIDENCE, RANKA date: 14.04.22

interweave dwg no. 1

REINFORCEMENT DRAWINGS

SILIGURI RESIDENCE

FIRST DESIGN PROPOSAL

The brief was to design a house for a young couple with a child, with an open kitchen and a backyard seating overlooking the tea gardens on the south. As the existing boundary wall couldn’t be altered, the house was elevated by 4’2”, where the boundary wall acted as a parapet giving an uninterrupted view of the gardens.