Work Samples

S N E H A

A I Y E R

ARCHITECT MS AAD ‘20 | GSAPP | Columbia University B Arch | School of Architecture | CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India contact: sra2163@columbia.edu | 317-5603407

WORK SAMPLES

FALL 2019 CONCEPT AND “THE NEW TYPE OF”: NEW PROGRAMS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY INFRASTRUCTURE: THE FOOD COLLECTIVE & FIRE STATION Critic: Bernard Tschumi Group: Sneha Aiyer, Xutian Liu

Manhattan as an island consumes without any knowledge of – “what goes on in the production?”. All supporting infrastructural activities are often driven to peripheral suburban areas. The infrastructure serves to bring means of production to the city along with empowering the citizens with disaster resilience. The attempt is to create a prototype that can be replicated and serves as a network of infrastructure to the city. Two programs are proposed next to one another in a hypothetical Manhattan block. The food collective is a place where food is grown (farm), and stored (warehouse), processed (factory) and sold (market). While the fire station is a place that becomes a safe space in case of a natural disaster but on a regular day, it benefits from public participation drawn in by the food collective. As it often occurs within the Manhattan Block that two completely autonomous buildings become neighbors here the attempt is to collaborate and bring peoples’ participation in the infrastructural activities such as agriculture and disaster management. Instead of these activities being isolated from the people of the city the people become active participants.

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Second Floor Plan

FALL 2019 INFRASTRUCTURE: THE FOOD COLLECTIVE & FIRE STATION

Roof Plan

First Floor Plan

realtionship to the city

SERVICES

bringing public to the core

service bay & movement

CORE: TRAINING AND INFORMATION

circulation of material through structure

FACADE: EXTINGUISHER TANKS

FIRESTATION storage of material & formal type

THE FOOD COLLECTIVE

ROOF: FARMLANDS

STAIRS: MARKET

FACADE: HERB GARDEN

ENCLOSURE:FACTORY

STRUCTURE: WAREHOUSE

Section AA’

9 FALL 2019 INFRASTRUCTURE: THE FOOD COLLECTIVE & FIRE STATION

The movement intersects with the production areas and opens on to the public space creating an internal market street. The large staircase is interrupted with these small shops that break the monotony of the movement to create a sense of a street.

The porosity at ground level encorages better relaionship between the street and the firestation in case of a disaster

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FALL 2019 INFRASTRUCTURE: THE FOOD COLLECTIVE & FIRE STATION

Section BB’

BUILT WORK SHARADASHISH SCHOOL Worked as Project Co-ordinator for Indigo Architects Client: VMKM Trust | Built-up Area: 60,000 sq. ft.

My Role: Project coordinator responsible for conceptual design presentation, production of construction drawings set, client meetings, co-ordination with the service and structural consultants, on-site inspection and management of intern team.

The project was part of the “Corporate Social Responsibility� initiative of Torrent Power Ltd. based in Ahmedabad.

The site admeasuring 10 acres was barren and contoured. The overall region is fertile while ravines mark the earlier paths of water and define the larger grazing zones. The program for the school campus was to include, a preprimary, primary, secondary and higher secondary school, administration, an assembly hall, playground, library, and congregational spaces. The higher secondary block, assembly hall and administration block were completed in the first phase. The broad design strategies address the following issues.

Creation of a central institutional core to which individual buildings could relate.Occupy the mounds lightly and playfully so as to create a cascading built form that scales and shades.

Locate the entry along with public functions that overlap with community use along the road edge, thereby addressing the identity of the school with the local community.

Ecologically and technically appropriate strategies for achieving thermal comfort, judicious use of water and improving the bio diversity of the site and adjacent lands.

Recycling all water from wash zones except soil waste to the planters and soil using French- drains feed water loving grasses and plants such as canna and bananas. Storm water is guided and directed away to follow the natural terrain, slowed by pits along swales to encourage percolation and prevent run off.

Special emphasis on sanitation, drinking water, disposal of sanitary waste using chutes, incinerators on site, flushing and cleaning systems to ensure an odor free environment, audible messaging system in the toilets along with visual written instructions were some of the new initiatives on the project to orient the users.

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1. Drop- off zone 2. Entry 3. Foyer 4. High school court 5. Toilets 6. Passages 7. Exhibition space 8. Classrooms 199. Principal’s office 10. Admin. offices 11. Teachers’ room 12. Trustee’s room 13. Records’ room 14. Assembly hall 15. Sports ground 16. Parking 17. Pump room 18. Security 19. Plantation 20. Central court

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Site model: Initial proposal

Process model : Phase I

Process models of high school building

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PROFESSIONAL WORK:SHARDASHISH SCHOOL

1.Kota Stone 2.Reflective china mosaic with lime concrete on roof 3.Roof Gutter 4. Deep-set vertical louver windows reduce glare and bring in breeze 5. Lime plastered walls reduce the internal temperature by 10C 6. Pre-cast concrete block screen openings above lintel level

7. Pebble-crete 8. Random rubble stone masonry of the retaining walls used to hold the levels of the contoured landscape takes over the ground floor of the building unifying the architectural expression and defining a datum against the lay of the land 9. Mass produced mild steel railings 10. Local stone flooring and skirting

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PROFESSIONAL WORK:SHARDASHISH SCHOOL

SUMMER 2019 ON STRATA ECOLOGY AND METAPHORICAL PERCEPTIONS OF THE CITY UNDERSTANDING STRATA OF TIME THROUGH LAND WATER RELATIONSHIPS

Critics: Jorge Ambrosi & Gabriela Etchegaray

Individual Project

A 100-year flood plain map indicating the territories water will take over the island of Manhattan has been a cause of concern for a while now. Often met with schemes of resilience. Through the immediate and distant history of the Island, one concludes that this relationship has always been viewed as a binary - either water or land. However, it is a territory of a gradient where instead of a singular normal, several normals can be defined such that this ephemeral relationship is justly represented.

So, how do we embrace the fact that the definitions are ever changing? Instead of thinking of how to hold it what if one is to pivot this idea and think from water. How to let it flow? How do we design for time rather than space?

The manifestations of influences over time are clearly seen in the land water relationships and they will continue to shape the ever-changing territory that it shares. The project is a speculation over time and looks for an ephemeral and temporal architecture that can assimilate and evolve rather than resist.

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SUMMER 2019 UNDERSTANDING STRATA OF TIME THROUGH LAND AND WATER RELATIONSHIPS

NOW EXHIBITS HISTORY AND FUTURE

2025 AWARENESS AND CRITIQUE

Now the museum exhibits the social and cultural history and future of the city.

This will be the year of awarness and critique. So, the interiors of the public buildung are revealed while preserving the memory of a landmark. Excavating the ground allows for the building to harvest the water.

2050 ACTION: UTILIZE AND PRESERVE RESOURCES AND NATURAL ENVIRONMENT

2075 NATURAL RESOURCES = POWER & ECONOMY

Resources have now become scarce and thus valuable. The museum now becomes a place of action and activism. The movable volumes respond to changing functions and sea level rise.

2100 DEGREE OF WETNESS INCREASES As we move towards 2100, the degree of wetness increases and the built form grows.

The museum now becomes a natural resource reserve and grows as the requirement changes or increses. Part of the built form is a green house that hosts an edible landscape of the near extinct plant species. It hosts various avaians and aquatic species.

Rainwater collecting umberalla roof modules

Water Tanks

Expandable Grid for future growth

Museum Facade Preserved

BUILT WORK LIME HOUSE #4 Worked as Project Co-ordinator for Indigo Architects Client: Bhrambhatt Family | Site Area:18000 sq ft | Built up area: 6000 sq ft My Role: complete project management including conceptual development, client meetings production of working drawings, service and structural consultants co-ordination and site co-ordination.

The site for this nuclear family house is part of a gated community of affluent homes on the western edge of Ahmedabad. Many illustrious architects have built residences in this gated community over the years. Exposed brick and concrete houses are nestled deep amongst thick foliage of local species of trees in these prototypical plots of land. This leaves the streets empty and abandoned as no builtform attempts to engage with the streets.

In this project, an attempt to engage with the street is made by the gesture of siting the builtform on the street edge while opening the house inward to a defined landscaped court. The notion of a backyard is eliminated. The built mass is functionally divided into two parts- the served spaces on southwest while services on southeast. The living room is a visual connector for the northern garden court and southern street side court.

The challenge was to define an identity and address pertinent issues of - using appropriate materials and providing thermal comfort. Lime as a material is naturally emissive and Indian architecture has a rich history of traditional lime construction.

25 PROFESSIONAL WORK: LIME HOUSE #4 1. Entrance 2. Prayer room 3. Living room 4. Family room 5. Dining room 6. Powder room 7. Kitchen 8. Guestroom 9. Study 10. Kid ’s room 11. Bath 12. Kids play area 13. Utility 14. Kitchen store 15. Clothes drying 16. Verandah 17. Walkway 18. Garage 19. Gym 20. Quarters 21. Lap Pool

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Details: assembly of flitched section column of the walkway

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PROFESSIONAL WORK: LIME HOUSE #4

Detailed Plan: Walkway

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PROFESSIONAL WORK: LIME HOUSE #4

North-Western corner screen and window details

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PROFESSIONAL WORK: LIME HOUSE #4

SPRING 2020

MEDIATIC DEVICES OF MEASURING THE VIETNAM WAR WAR MEDIA COLLECTION & UXO DECONTAMINATION UNIT Faculty: Mark Wasiuta

Individual Project

The documentation of war seems to be as important as annihilating the enemy’s environment. How do you visualize the war? How do you visualize winning a war? cartographic practices have been effective in translating the destruction and consecutive occupation of the enemy’s territory into visual data. During the Vietnam war, the camera became an asset to these practices. It was quick visual evidence of the military activities that could feign precision of action.

The research looks into the analogous means of survey and documentation and the creation of visual and spatial data. The project commemorates the mediatic devices of the military and marks the histories of bombing as mediated by -scopic and informatics systems explicating ongoing decontamination processes. The juxtaposition of the two ends on the spectrum of the history of data visualization creates a symbiotic system- i.e. the exhibition loop and decontamination plug-in mobile modules.

33 SPRING 2020 MEDIATIC DEVICES OF MEASURING THE VIETNAM WAR

As one looks down the projection is interrupted to give a glimpse of the imprint of bombing left on the ground.

Perceiving the way the images were captured ingrains a better comprehension of the process and dimensions, across which these techniques were employed. It removes the documentation device and replaces it with the human body to experience the profusion of violence in first person.

Flexible and Mobile Modules connect to the loop and perform UXO mapping and detonation offsite

37 SPRING 2020 MEDIATIC DEVICES OF MEASURING THE VIETNAM WAR

Images from the Forward Camera of the Aircraft situated with the view of the bomb craters and safe detonation of UXO

The LED screen runs a loop of film and images captured from a height of 2000’ scaled down to a viewing distance of 500’

G. I. A. N PAVILION INDIVIDUAL PROFESSIONAL PROJECT FOR SA+D: at Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India Client: National Innovation Foundation, India Architect: Sneha Aiyer

Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network (1997) led by Prof. Anil Gupta is an organisation that works towards commercialisation of viable grassroots innovations and provides with required linkages to modern science and technology, market research, design institutions and funding organisations. Its goal is to generate new models of poverty alleviation, rural development, employment generation and conservation of natural resources without impairing the ecological balance. The GIAN pavilion is a place wherein localised solutions to issues of Indian rural life and activities are discussed, developed, exhibited and eventually made commercially available.

It is an ‘open for all’ place wherein the sense of inside and outside dissolves as the spatial experience of the pavilion resonates with the feeling of sitting under a foliage of trees with light filtering through. The idea is to have a porous spatial sense where one function flows into the other and employs the transitional spaces and the shaded courts with multiple levels to negotiate the blurry boundaries, presenting ‘coalescence of parts to form a unified whole’.

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1. Arrival space 2. Exhibition 3. Passage 4. Innovation workshop 5. Mezzanine workshop 6. Exhibition court 7. Pavillion 8. Waterbody 9. Toilets 10. Culinary workshop

Photo-collage to visualize the spatial experience

The site is within the National Innovation Foundation campus a local species of trees. It is an ‘open for all’ place wherein the se dissolves as the spatial experience of the pavilion resonates with t a foliage of trees with light filtering through.

e of the project

amongst a thicket of many ense of inside and outside the feeling of sitting under