Urban Loop

“NOMAS” Competition Detroit

Collaborators: GT NOMAS Design Team

Position: Modeling and Drawing

Located just outside of downtown Detroit, the former site of the Brewster-Douglas Homes seems destined to fail. Physically disconnected from the surrounding environment and its resources through the construction of the adjacent highways, a site rich in culture was abandoned. Previously known as the “Motor City,” Detroit is receiving recognition as the “Bike City” due to its implementation of Greenways-corridors of land intended to facilitate connections between places and people. Logistically, the existing Midtown Loop and Dequindre Cut would serve as points of connection for various modes of transportation, including bikes, scooters, people, animals, and natural resources. Ultimately, the architectural design proposal aims to weave itself into the city’s infrastructural plans for the future of Detroit in order to create a fixed connection between the NOMA Legacy Headquarters and everything it represents.

Chambers of Hallucination

Interactive Installation

Instructor: Danielle Willems

Collaborator: Sahil Shah, Wenyi Zhang , Tianqi Han

Position: Design and Physical Modeling

This project is an investigation of the possibilities of hallucination in an architectural context. The overall geometry is based on three tunnels interlocking with each other and the solid members creating the hallucinated effects by means of several different applications of the mirrors, including the mirror reflecting the real world, the mirror reflecting the tunnel itself and creating the non-existing infinite space and the angled mirror reflecting single object to infinity. Integrating the weaving patterns created by the material of carbon fiber and the three-dimensional drawing patterns designed upon the planar surfaces of the overall geometries, this installation create an atmosphere of illusions so that a question of “whether it is real or fake” and “believe it or not” is thrown out to the audience. Overall, the idea of the installation is manifesting architectural hallucination versus real world. We focus on how the hallucinations could be developed in the interior void and finally how the façades could be ambiguously dizzy by means of the patterns.

Material Use

Lifecycle Building Center

Recycled Terracotta Roof Tiles

Wall Veil

Terracotta Tile Reuse

Instructor: Débora Mesa

Collaborator: Sam Amick

Position: Design and Physical Modeling

In the project “Wall Veil,” we attempted to transform the use of life-scene building material and embrace its roughness and imperfection. Known for its heaviness and opaqueness, terracotta roof tiles, we think, can also be reinterpreted into a form of translucency and delicacy, like a “wall veil”. Collaborated with Lifecycle building center in Atlanta, we recycled and reused salvaged terracotta roof tiles to build an architectural sculpture. Throughout the process, we gained hands-on experience in the digital fabrication lab at Georgia Tech, learned waterjet cutting techniques, and finally designed a joinery system that can be installed onsite with rebars, clipped fasteners, and bolts.