Watney Solid +/- Void

Watney Solid +/- Void is an art installation for SXSW, the premier music, film, and technology festival in Austin, TX. The design process began with a catalogue of nearly 150 forms. After several iterations and further development of three schemes, a single form was selected.

TEXAS 2050

By the year 2050 the United States population will increase by half, with 70% living in a megaregion (Regional Plan Association, 2006). These numbers emphasize the critical link between large-scale territorial expansion and the prospects for successful urbanism. Currently, 11 mega-regions exist in the U.S., each bound together by a unique mixture of demographics, infrastructure, culture, and environment. As each megaregion grows, it must identify and leverage critical infrastructures that are capable of binding geographies and increasing efficiencies. This project speculates about one such strategy for the emerging megaregion known as the Texas Triangle.

Hybroot

The design of Hybroot reflects the balance between the urban fabric and natural landscape that is indicative of the site. The 10-acre landfill that once occupied the site has been covered by a new layer of earth, re-mediating the brown-field and providing the Circle Acres Neighborhood of Montoplis a community park and gathering space in Austin, TX.

Landing Global Industry in the City

The goods of global resource industries pass through the post-industrial city in the form of piles, pipelines, tanks, and silos. Gravel, salt, sand, cobbles, and scrap metal are some of the materials fundamental to making and maintaining the urban environment, but their physical and operational relationship to the city is largely unconsidered beyond conventional single-use zoning practices that simply isolate such resource industries from so-called incompatible uses.

SXSW Eco Backdrops

This project was for the design of stage backdrops for the 2015 SXSW Eco Conference held in Austin, TX. The backdrops provided a consistent branding for the event that spanned three days and took place on seven stages. Due to the quick turnover between events held at the Austin Convention Center, the backdrop had to be fully assembled and disassembled using union labor and within two hours.

Temple in a House

In 2011, 15 families of the Burmese refugee community on Buffalo’s Westside collectively purchased a vacant house in Buffalo at 349 Plymouth Ave. They wanted to convert the house to a Buddhist temple and residence for three monks. ‘Temple in a House’ is an adaptive project designed in collaboration with local architect and artist Dennis Maher (University at Buffalo), which presented a significant challenge: that of trying to reconcile a very radical change of program, use, and cultural references. Beyond the project’s unique socio-economic characteristics pertaining to Buffalo, this project has global implications. Changing world demographics, as a result of different economic and migratory dynamics, are increasingly asking designers to negotiate complex cultural, social, religious, and economic systems.

Interfacing the Skin

Several technologies are converging to drastically change local and global spatio temporal relationships, including autonomous robotics, cyber-physical systems, ubiquitous sensing networks, and synthetic biological systems. These technologies provide architects and designers with opportunities to redefine models of human-machine-environment interactions that encompass more complex methods of simulated intelligence and nuanced response across a range of scales from the micro to the macro.

New Orders In Search of a New Point-Block Diagram for Hong Kong

The project explores a series of alternative structures for housing through a design-research prototyping process. Nine proto- structures are developed through the conception and realization of columns cast in concrete. The series explores specific structural principles at 1 to 1 scale, which are further architecturally tested as speculative towers for urban living at 1 to 100 scale.

High Living

The extreme density in Dharavi Slum, one of the largest in the world, produce two opposite aspects, one is the unique locality and dynamic energy as a part of greater Mumbai urban dynamics, and the other is the cause of disaster in public health, safety and well-being. The lack of infrastructure, complicated ownership, illegal settlement and poverty make many previous conventional redevelopment efforts a cosmetic dream. Responding to this problem, High-Living, the prefabricated connected towers, can provide radical but realistic cure. The phasing strategy starting from minimal area for construction is to gradually gain open spaces on the ground and provide quality living/working space in the tower. It can maintain the density vertically, keeping the rich spatial configuration in newly constructed prefabricated modules, while providing innovative solutions in four points; Structure, Life Safety, Sustainability and Happiness (Socio-cultural Well-being).

Grey Matter: Louisville Children's Museum Competition

Children are naturally curious, seeking opportunities to playfully explore the wondrous world. Wonder and the process of discovery are fundamental to the mission of a children’s museum and our strategy. We seek to engage the mind’s potential via an innovative architectural expression that activates the senses, ignites imagination, and heightens anticipation of new discoveries yet to be revealed.