Posts

2026 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part VII

/in , /by
In Part VII of the 2026 Study Architecture Student Showcase, we feature incredible projects centered on housing. From affordable housing and modular structural systems to trauma-informed designs and community-centered policies, these projects explore the expansive ways architecture can be used as a tool to design housing that meets both community and individual needs.

Wall as Commons: Minimum Collective Infrastructures for Informal Domesticity and Growth by Raveena Deshpande, M.Arch. ’26
Rhode Island School of Design | Advisor: Surella Segu

Why Wall? 

As urban populations grow, access to affordable housing declines, pushing certain sections of the population to build informal settlements outside legal and formal construction systems. These settlements often lack access to basic living infrastructure—water, sanitation, and electricity—even as they house a large share of the population in developing countries.

Current models of designing for informality exist as top-down planning approaches that ignore lived realities at the scale of the home. These design models are incongruent with informal lifestyles and undermine the sense of belonging that comes with rituals of self-authorship in space-making that exist in such settlements.

Wall for Domesticity

This thesis proposes an alternative: repositioning design for informal housing as a wall- a tool to articulate growth through collective infrastructure that delivers minimum essential utilities (water, electricity, drainage, sewage) for domestic stability, while facilitating self-building of homes along the wall, preserving inhabitants’ belonging and ownership. Different wall types are explored based on density and the type of growth they could catalyse (doubly loaded/ singly loaded/ alternately loaded for open space), as well as based on the benefactor’s budget for infrastructure investment (low investment versus high investment walls, i.e: wall as plane versus wall as room). Studies of how planning authorities might employ different wall types to organise and plan for informality as part of urbanity and ensure fair and comfortable amenities to all are conducted. 

Wall for More

The thesis also imagines the wall as a way to introduce public amenities such as play areas and work areas that such organically growing settlements lack. These include wall for worship (as circumambulatory paths), wall for work, wall for play, wall for water (common water spouts and WCs).

This project won the Department Thesis Award.

Instagram: @ravwlv, @workingrav, @surellasegu

Right up Your Alley: Integrating Affordable Housing and Walkable Infrastructure to Revitalize Denver’s Neighborhoods by Mason Anchondo, M.Arch. ‘26
North Dakota State University | Advisor: Charlott Greub

This thesis examines how existing single-family neighborhoods in Denver, Colorado, can be transformed into more walkable, socially connected, and affordable communities by reactivating the city’s underutilized mid-block alleyways. Through policy analysis, data-driven spatial analysis, and on-site neighborhood observation, the study identifies opportunities to introduce accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and pedestrian-oriented design strategies that improve connectivity and housing diversity without displacing existing residents.

A multi-scalar site selection process ultimately focuses on the Barnum and West Barnum neighborhoods, where intact alley networks and demographic conditions support a replicable framework for gentle densification. Informed by case studies and interdisciplinary research on walkability, human-scale design, and zoning reform, the project proposes incremental interventions that expand accessible housing opportunities, reduce car dependency, and strengthen neighborhood cohesion. The resulting approach demonstrates how modest, community-centered design and policy changes can reshape aging suburban neighborhoods into healthier, more sustainable urban environments.

This project was selected as a finalist for the McKenzie Award.

The Interflow by Kevin Juarez-Martinez, B.Arch. ‘26
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona | Advisor: Katrin Terstegen

Located at the intersection of South Broadway and Slauson Avenue in South Los Angeles, California, the project responds to a historically and culturally vibrant community through a mixed-use housing project that combines residential, commercial, and communal spaces using mass timber. The project is organized around an elevated courtyard and circulation system that allows for movement to become a social experience amongst residents and visitors. Rather than isolating residents within conventional apartment corridors, the design challenges this concept and introduces terraces, bridges, and outdoor gathering spaces and gardens that encourage interaction between neighbors while also maintaining privacy within individual units. The proposal contains one, two, three bedroom configurations that support various family sizes. 

Mass timber serves as both the structural and design strategy, with members spanning into the courtyard. A repetitive system of CLT panels and columns establishes an efficient, modular framework that supports prefabrication, reduces construction waste, and lowers embodied carbon. Applications of biophilic living conditions, such as terraced gardens, are also supplemented in the exposed timber elements to enhance the residents’ interaction with the building. 

The ground floor is a mass timber grid, supporting the residences above, in a post-and-beam structural design. The structural members are connected with the consideration of disassembly at the building’s end of life. The beams capture the mass timber floor panels, which are also typical throughout the project, to allow for mass shipment through prefabrication of all members. 

The floor-to-floor height of the project is consistent at each level to provide a uniform dimension, simplifying the design and providing an efficient solution that saves material, cost,  and fabrication time. The mass timber grid also extends up through the residential units to consider carbon emissions in the construction process. 

At the ground level, retail and community-oriented programs activate the street and strengthen connections between residents, local businesses, and transit users. By integrating housing with shared public amenities, the proposal creates a vibrant urban ecosystem. 

Click here to learn more. 

Instagram: @kevin_j.m, @katrinterstegen

Domus Ianicula by Alan Watts, BS in Architecture ‘26
University of Virginia | Advisor: Peter Waldman

Domus Ianicula explores the design of a dwelling system on Roanoke Island in the Outer Banks of North Carolina in the form of a multi-generational home fostering an experience of living in the coastal threshold. Sited on a strand of 23 small islands towards the southeast side of the main island, this thesis provides a counter-proposal for the development of this previously protected natural space. 

An individual dwelling on one of these islands faces two ways: the Roanoke Sound and the Atlantic to the east and a protected marsh and the mainland to the west. Those who live in the dwelling share an experience intensified by their relationship to the land as they fish in the sea and garden in the marsh–with no land connection to the rest of Roanoke Island, residents access their dwellings and the community through smaller jon boats on the west side and larger offshore fishing boats from the east side. 

The home begins as a small gathering around a hearth and grows with time and the family via a modular system. A truss system holds a light roof of corrugated metal above the dwelling, protecting the few enclosed living spaces as well as covering shared outdoor spaces. The roof collects water into two cisterns, which is purified, stored, and used by the residents via one central water line running through the dwelling. The main two masses of the building are separated by a central hearth and the intersection of a north-south path which connects dwellings along the strip of 23 islands. This system for housing, once deployed across several of the islands over time, creates a unique anti-urban community for year-round residents that directly interact with the surrounding communities of Wanchese and Manteo.

Instagram: @architectalan.dwg 

Subaltern Alternatives: Reclaiming Agency Through Spatial Articulation by Nadirah Ali, B.Arch. ’26

Kennesaw State University | Advisor: ​​Jade Yang

The concept of the subaltern [was] introduced by Antonio Gramsci to describe populations excluded from political, social, and economic power while still being used to sustain dominant systems. Today, migrant construction workers often occupy this condition: essential to urban growth, yet denied dignity, visibility, and participation in the cities they build. Their housing is frequently reduced to an instrument of control—spaces designed to contain labor rather than support life. This thesis proposes an architectural alternative.

The project examines contemporary cases of labor exploitation in the United States, Qatar, and Singapore, where migrant workers have faced unsafe conditions, wage theft, overcrowded dormitories, and social exclusion. Among these, Singapore becomes the primary site of study. As the city advances new “live-work-play” districts and large-scale redevelopment, thousands of migrant workers are imported to construct this vision, yet remain housed far from the city center with little access to the urban life they create. The thesis asks: when city design decisions are made about who participates in urban life, who is truly at the table?

To answer this, the project studies architecture as a political tool. Precedents such as adaptable collective housing, civic border infrastructures, and hospitals organized through humane circulation demonstrate that space determines who is seen, who participates, and who is excluded. Rather than reproduce another dormitory model, this thesis begins with the everyday spatial practices of the workers themselves. Cultural studies of Indian, Bangladeshi, and Chinese domestic life reveal shared needs: communal cooking, floor-based gathering, prayer, flexible sleeping arrangements, and courtyard-centered social life.

From these observations, the thesis develops a modular kit-of-parts housing system organized around the courtyard as a social and civic core. Kitchens, living quarters, prayer rooms, wash areas, and gathering spaces can be assembled, expanded, or relocated according to changing labor populations and construction timelines. Designed to fit Singapore’s construction grids and transport systems, the kit can occupy vacant urban parcels and active building sites near employment centers.

Tested within Singapore’s CBD fringe redevelopment zone, the proposal repositions worker housing from distant containment to visible urban participation. Subaltern Alternatives argues that architecture must move beyond shelter as control and instead become a framework for agency, citizenship, and dignity. If workers participate in building the city, they must also have the right to participate in living within it.

Click here to learn more. 

This project was selected as one of the Top 5 Thesis Projects for the Niles Bolton KSU Thesis Competition and received an Honorable Mention.

Instagram: @nadirah_ali6_, @​​jadeyjadeyang

Invisible Fragments: Strengthening a Small Informal Settlement within a Transforming Buenos Aires by Camilla Greppi, B.Arch. ’26
Tulane University | Advisors: Ammar Eloueini & Juan Medina

Located in Buenos Aires, Barrio Saldías is a small, often forgotten informal settlement positioned at the edge of major urban transformations. This thesis strengthens the community without erasing its existing fabric or displacing residents. Through selective retrofitting, structurally viable homes are improved with safer circulation, pitched roofs, windows, and doors, while underutilized warehouses are reused for essential programs like education, healthcare, and food access. New incremental housing follows the scale and spatial logic of existing dwellings, allowing families to expand horizontally over time. An abandoned rail corridor becomes a railroad park, creating a public spine that reconnects Barrio Saldías to Villa 31, the port, and the broader city. 

Click here for a closer look. 

This received a Thesis Commendation during the Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment Diploma Ceremony in May 2026.

Instagram: @greppiarchitecture, @eloueini, @salazarsequeromedina

Teaching TID: Reframing Shelter as a Site of Productive Making by Haley Beverlin, M.Arch. ’26
Lawrence Technological University | Advisor: Scott Shall

Homelessness is a systemic, multi-disciplinary issue that demands collaboration across diverse stakeholders to develop shelter models promoting dignity and challenging the current limitations. While not solely an architectural crisis, AEC professionals serve as the link within the design process to ensure final projects translate the needs of users. Current shelter models perpetuate a simplified generic mass-production model of room design. To serve a universal audience, rooms begin to lack personality and limit personal choice, in turn making each room identical to the one next to it. Each person has different forms of trauma, meaning healing is also multi-layered. These differences highlight that residents may have different ideas of what a space for healing may look like.

The approach of Trauma-Informed Designed (TID) fosters ideas of connection, choice, comfort, and safety (Shopworks, 2025). “Choice, closely tied to the concepts of autonomy and control, emerged as a powerful determinant of the residents’ well-being” and heavily influenced whether residents felt “protected or restricted” (Shopworks, 2025). While choice typically comes in the form of navigating independently on site, there is an opportunity to increase this. Makerspaces parallel these ideas by providing people access to “tap into the unique history, culture, or characteristics of their host communities” (Debowski, 4). For those who have been displaced, this is a chance to reconnect with place and identity (see Figure 1).

This thesis argues that the design and creation of objects can be a means to marry the acts of making and healing, for it places the agency in the hands of the residents inhabiting the space to alter it as they please. The incorporation of a makerspace provides a unique opportunity to explore new skills, build connections, and incorporate vocational training within the architectural programming of the shelter. Reimagining the potential of these spaces aims to empower residents within the realm of choice and enhance this element of TID within the building designs. This all could lead to a truly trauma-informed design; the structure given by the architect, but the details defined by the taught users.

Click here to learn more. 

Instagram: @haleybeverlin, @​​scott_shall

Cultivating Agency in Multi-Generational Co-Housing: Respecting Choice with Spatial Articulation for the Betterment of Aging and Growing Communities by Logan Croghan, M.Arch. ’26
Lawrence Technological University | Advisor: Scott Shall

Current housing options in the U.S. limit how individual and family units operate in their homes and communities by reducing their ability to maintain permanent residence. Each year, approximately 40 million Americans move out of their homes due to financial insufficiencies and physical inflexibility. An estimated 63% of households choose to remain in the same county, citing familiarity in their community, existing social ties, and established routines as primary reasons for staying, despite their unsustainable housing options (Harvard University, 2020).

Of the affected households, older Americans are seeking alternatives to institutional settings that support aging in place and their rapidly changing lifestyles more than ever. The University of Michigan found that 88% of Americans aged 55 to 80 wanted to live in their homes as long as possible but did not believe they had the tools to do so (Institute of Healthcare Policy and Innovation, 2022). Housing options with supportive and adaptable qualities would enable older individuals to remain in their established communities and gain the emotional and social comfort that benefits their overall health and those who interact with them (Sharifi, 2023).

 As an alternative option, co-housing can encourage long-term residence among older populations and growing families alike. An iteration of the model can not only expand to include multi-generational households to increase community support, but also incorporate architectural elements that give residents the power to shift spaces as needed. To further understand the impact of spatial alterations over time, shared and privatized spaces require investigation to articulate how negotiation between neighbors can determine the iterations’ legitimacy in encouraging individuals to work together towards the collective goal of remaining in their forever homes.

Click here to learn more. 

Instagram: @taycroghan929, @​​scott_shall

Building Memory: Constructing Collage Architecture in Outer Urban Spaces by Emily Grimaldi, B.Arch. ’26
Virginia Tech | Advisor: Gonzalo Munoz-Vera

Building Memory: Constructing Collage Architecture in Outer Urban Spaces is an architectural thesis that investigates how new development can engage the layered identities of interstitial urban neighborhoods without erasing their cultural and spatial memory. Centered in Astoria, Queens, the project critiques conventional redevelopment practices that replace existing urban fabric with uniform, commodified architecture, often resulting in visual and cultural disconnection. Instead, the proposal advances an alternative design methodology rooted in “collage architecture,” an additive process that preserves, reinterprets, and builds upon the accumulated layers of the built environment.

The thesis is grounded in the understanding that outer urban areas—unlike iconic city centers—evolve incrementally through human-scale interventions over time. Buildings in these neighborhoods are shaped by diverse occupants, resulting in a heterogeneous architectural language rich in memory and identity. These environments function as living archives, where facades, materials, and spatial patterns act as artifacts of social and cultural history. New construction that ignores these qualities risks not only aesthetic disruption but also the erasure of collective memory.

In response, the project proposes a design framework composed of three primary elements: the artifact, the ghost, and the new mass. Artifacts preserve the most historically significant portions of the existing site—such as facades or structural remnants—maintaining their symbolic and material presence. Ghosts reinterpret less significant but spatially important elements as lightweight, frame-like structures that retain the memory of what once existed while creating openness and new public connections. The new mass introduces necessary program—primarily housing—designed to align with the scale, spatial logic, and social dynamics of the surrounding neighborhood.

Through this tripartite strategy, the project creates a “city within a city,” integrating density with familiarity. Housing units are configured to support social interaction, drawing from the spatial principles of traditional Queens homes, while varied materials and forms reinforce the language of collage at multiple scales. Ultimately, Building Memory argues that sustainable urban growth must be rooted in continuity rather than replacement. By embedding memory into the design process, architecture can foster a more empathetic, connected, and contextually responsive urban future.

This project was one of eleven Fifth-Year Thesis Honors Finalists.

Instagram: @grimaldi_ad, @gmunozvera

Empathetic Architecture: Mixed-Use Housing for Young Adults with Autism by Brooklyn Watson, B.Arch. ’26
Kennesaw State University | Advisor: Robin Puttock

Architecture, by its very definition, is the art or science of building; that is, specifically the art or practice of designing and building structures, especially habitable ones (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Besides being an art of habitable spaces, architecture influences how people experience belonging, comfort, and autonomy, yet contemporary design often overlooks the needs of all types of people, such as the neurodivergent experience. Despite advances in technology and policy, architectural design continues to lag in addressing the full spectrum of disability needs. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires accessibility in new construction, but is often interpreted through minimal interventions such as ramps, elevators, and accessible restrooms (ADA National Network, 2024). While these measures are critical, they primarily serve visible and physical disabilities, leaving the sensory and cognitive needs of neurodivergent individuals, such as autistic young adults, largely unconsidered. Research has shown that inclusive design practices remain inconsistently implemented across the building industry, with many professionals still defaulting to compliance rather than innovation (Zallio & Clarkson, 2021).

The result is that many built environments remain overstimulating, alienating, or exclusionary. This research redefines accessibility as empathy; an active design approach grounded in human diversity. Through precedent studies, literature, and site analysis, it identifies inclusive tactics such as predictable circulation, sensory zoning, adaptable lighting, and acoustic control. The site at 77 North Park Square in Marietta provides an urban setting where civic and residential systems intersect, fostering both independence and connection. Synthesizing therapeutic, educational, and architectural insights, the project proposes empathetic housing that nurtures comfort, sensory balance, and belonging. Rather than separating neurodivergent and neurotypical users, the design celebrates difference, using architecture as a medium of care, inclusion, and shared humanity.

Instagram: @robinzputtock

Within the Lakou by Bedgid Aurelie Laguerre, Abigail Bauman & Cheyenne Granahan, M.Arch. ’26
Washington University in St. Louis | Advisor: Wyly Brown

This project responds to Haiti’s ongoing displacement crisis by proposing a decentralized housing model for a young professional couple relocating from Port-au-Prince to Cap-Haïtien. Inspired by the traditional Haitian Lakou system, the design combines a compact microhome with a community-oriented framework that promotes collective resilience and mutual support. The proposal reinterprets the spatial and social qualities of the Lakou, including shared outdoor spaces, cultural exchange, and strong social networks, within a contemporary housing solution. By integrating climate-responsive strategies and adaptable construction methods, the project provides safe, dignified, and sustainable housing while supporting cultural continuity and community well-being.

Click here to learn more.

This project was shortlisted for MICROHOME 10 Competition.

Instagram: @B_the_architect, @Dysynchronized, @Cheyennegranahan, @washusamfoxschool

Evolum – Evolving Housing by Antonio Tejeda, B.Arch. ’26
Universidad Anáhuac Querétaro | Advisors: Jorge Javier, Patricia Cutiño, Federico Hernández, Álvaro de los Cobos & Guillermo Márquez

The project emerges as a response to the social, economic, and demographic transformations that have reshaped contemporary ways of living in the city. Today, the largest segment of the economically active population is shared between young adults and established professionals; however, it is paradoxical that younger generations, despite representing one of the most productive sectors of society, face the greatest barriers to accessing a first home. In response to this condition, the proposal introduces an evolutionary housing model based on flexibility, customization, and incremental growth. Conceived as a system of modular vertical-lot towers, the project allows each dwelling to adapt and evolve alongside its occupants. Strategically located in an area with strong connectivity, accessibility, and proximity to urban services, the development promotes efficient land use while ensuring optimal daylight, natural ventilation, and environmental comfort.

Affordability serves as the project’s guiding principle and informs every design decision. To reduce the final cost of housing, underground parking was intentionally avoided, as its construction would have significantly increased the cost per square meter. Instead, parking is resolved at grade alongside the residential towers. Material selection likewise prioritizes durability, low maintenance, and economic efficiency, incorporating exposed three-piece stone-faced concrete block walls that age gracefully without additional finishes, terrazzo flooring that utilizes the structural compression layer as the final surface finish, and permeable linear pavers that facilitate natural groundwater infiltration. In addition, shared amenities are concentrated within outdoor communal spaces, allowing maintenance costs to be distributed across the entire development rather than individual buildings, substantially reducing long-term operational expenses.

Architecturally, each tower is composed of four dwelling units confined by load-bearing walls that provide structural rigidity to the overall system. These units are organized around a central vertical circulation core that opens into a shared lobby, from which each residence is accessed.

The modular structural system is a key element in making this growth strategy feasible.

Instagram: @antoniotejedaa, @arquitectura_anahuac, @arqwave

Stay tuned for Part VIII!

2026 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part VI

/in , /by
Today’s edition of the 2026 Study Architecture Student Showcase explores the intersections of education and design. Part VI features adaptive learning centers, modular kits for adaptable classrooms, education centers for vulnerable adolescents, and research spaces. These outstanding projects also use design as a tool to interrogate and address nuanced topics in education, including preserving student creativity in today’s digital age and how architecture can bridge and facilitate workplace integration for community college students.

Reframing the Learning Landscape by Valeria Lemus, M.Arch. ‘26
University of Florida |  Advisors: Eugene Damaso, Albertus S. Wang & Stephen Bender

Reframing the Learning Landscape explores how outdoor learning environments can become an essential component of education in Florida. Located in an urban context adjacent to Parramore, [a neighborhood] in Orlando, the project challenges conventional school models that prioritize indoor, standardized learning environments and instead proposes a campus that integrates nature, health, community, and education into the daily learning experience.

The project is informed by research on whole-child development, environmental psychology, experiential learning, and adaptive educational environments. Findings from literature reviews, case studies, and educator feedback identified four primary design drivers: connection to nature, adaptive learning environments, experiential learning, and long-term adaptability. These drivers informed a series of spatial strategies that blur the boundary between indoor and outdoor learning.

The proposed school organizes classrooms, community spaces, activity zones, nutrition gardens, and outdoor learning environments around a network of shaded transitional spaces that encourage movement, exploration, and social interaction. Native landscapes, productive gardens, water-focused learning environments, and passive climate-responsive design strategies support both environmental stewardship and student well-being. Building orientation, shading systems, landscape buffers, and outdoor classrooms respond to Florida’s climate while reducing dependence on conditioned space.

Rather than treating outdoor space as a recreational amenity, the project positions nature as educational infrastructure. Learning landscapes become places for discovery, collaboration, physical activity, and environmental awareness. The design demonstrates how schools can simultaneously address educational outcomes, community health, ecological resilience, and climate responsiveness while creating more meaningful connections between students, their environment, and the communities they serve.

Instagram: @valelemus1, @stephen.bender

Extraction, Control and Permanence of Memory by Jack Allison, BS in Architecture ‘26
University of Virginia | Advisor: Peter Waldman

This thesis uses the existing Bingham Copper Mine as a site for an environmental institute that examines limits to extraction, control, and permanence within Utah’s Salt Lake Valley by reclaiming an architectural understanding of the desert that defines it. With this reading of the place, the thesis becomes a critique of Latter-day Saint settlement patterns that sought to superficially “make the desert bloom.” In their taming of the Desert, they became apathetic to the existing landscape, creating a disconnection from ‘The Place,’ most profoundly seen at the Bingham Copper Mine. 

By unraveling the extent of environmental destruction produced by the mine over its 120-year lifespan through a network of cultural, ecological, and research spaces, this place of extraction becomes a site for understanding the histories that shaped it and the future that reimagines it. Reclamation, connection, and memory bring the locale closer to the neglected environment, prioritizing experiential contact and aesthetic retrospection.

With the Bingham Mine’s lifespan extended through 2040, the future remains unclear regarding what will happen after it is discontinued. This thesis seeks to answer the question of ‘what next?’ for the mine and future extraction in the Salt Lake Valley.

The thesis uses a multidisciplinary program that will reclaim, reconnect, and remember the site in its own way. Environmental research laboratories analyze the progression of ecological health at the site. Art studios frame views, using the landscape’s expression to define an aesthetic experience, preserving moments of destruction, stagnation, and rejuvenation. Exhibition space creates an experiential, physical narrative journey through the mine’s history, while public classrooms and workshops showcase professional humanities skills to be passed down. 

This project uses architecture as a medium to access and understand the mine and the process of healing its ecologies. By using architecture to bridge the gap between the urban and the landscape, we can learn the importance of our roles within a larger ecological order, thereby reinforcing a local commitment to it. Understanding it by observing and then connecting to the landscape physically by working within and for it.

Logged Inside the Box: The Replacement of Childhood Imagination by Digital Content and Its Effect on Creative Development  by Joangelisse R. García-Rivera, B.Arch. ‘26
Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico | Advisor: Pedro A. Rosario-Torres

In a time marked by rapid technological growth, digital devices have become essential to daily life, profoundly changing how children learn, play, and experience the world around them. While technology provides endless access to information, games, and entertainment, its excessive use during childhood raises growing concerns about the decline of creativity and imagination. As screens increasingly replace traditional forms of play, exploration, and hands-on activities, children risk becoming passive consumers of content rather than active creators and problem-solvers. This shift raises an important question: how does constant exposure to digital media impact the natural development of creativity and the ability to generate original ideas?

Research by Kyung Hee Kim, through her study of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT), shows a steady decline in creative performance among younger generations, even though today’s children often score higher on intelligence measures but are less creative. These findings suggest that while technological advancements expand knowledge and efficiency, they may also unintentionally limit imagination, originality, and creative development, especially during formative years when curiosity and play are essential.

This research examines how digital content replaces childhood imagination and its effects on creative growth. It considers multiple frameworks: theoretical, sociocultural, ecological, economic, and regulatory. It also investigates how design can help restore balance between technology and imagination, exploring how environments and educational systems influence creative potential. Understanding this relationship is crucial for preserving the human spark of creativity and invites reflection on whether modern progress truly nurtures or unintentionally constrains the minds of future generations.

This project was nominated for the Francisco Luis Porrata-Doria Medal for Excellence in Design.

Overcrowding to Opportunity: Reinventing the Portable Classroom by Evan Lehner, M.Arch. & MRED ‘26
University of Maryland, College Park | Advisors: Michael Kleiss, Peter Noonan & Tanya Bansal

As schools across the United States grapple with overcrowding and chronic underfunding, many turn to portable classrooms as a cheap, quick, and temporary solution. Despite widespread usage, this typology is largely neglected by architects. Portables are critical for many overpopulated and underfunded schools to operate. Consequently, when schools are unable to afford new buildings or extensive renovations, these “temporary” structures become permanent. Numerous studies reveal that these portables often do not meet adequate standards to foster a productive learning and teaching environment. Their antiquated design renders them difficult to transport and a financial liability for their schools. This project asks, “How might portable classrooms be reinvented to be more adaptable, flexible, and reliable learning environments?”

Methods of analysis included interviews with school administrators, facilities managers, portable classroom distributors, students, and teachers, a review of existing literature, and a site visit to a portable prefabrication facility to understand both stakeholder and producer perspectives.

The resulting “Adaptive Modular Classroom” (AMC) utilizes a prefabricated, modular “kit of parts”, all of which can be shipped on a standard flatbed. The AMC can be programmed to provide additional space for other much-needed common areas, including gyms, libraries, and makerspaces. The kit is designed for flexibility. Spaces can expand or contract, and facades can quickly be interchanged. High-performance envelopes made from carbon-sequestering materials embody sustainable principles. Care was also given to imagine how the outdoor spaces between AMCs could contribute to a school’s sense of community.

Although designed to be deployable anywhere, a site was selected to test how the AMCs could be deployed on a real school campus. Careful siting and arrangement demonstrate that the AMC is not merely a better portable, but a replicable framework for rethinking how schools grow, adapt, and invest in their learning communities over time.

Click here to get a closer look.

Instagram: @evan_lehner12

Anti-Gang Architecture: Youth, Labor, and Spatial Agency in Mexico by Arturo Resendiz, B.Arch. ’26

Kennesaw State University | Advisor: ​​Ehsan Sheikholharam

This project responds to the lack of safe public spaces for young people in Matamoros, Mexico, a border city where many teenagers are vulnerable to gang recruitment. As opportunities for youth continue to diminish, architecture has the potential to offer alternatives by creating spaces that encourage learning, work, and community engagement. Rather than functioning as a conventional youth center, the project proposes a place where education, art, and vocational training come together to support long-term personal growth. The site is located between existing schools and adjacent to a public park.

The project provides a place for after-school activities, giving high school students an alternative to returning directly home or spending their afternoons without meaningful opportunities. It offers a range of programs that channel students’ talents and energy toward skill development, community service, the arts, and sports.

The design is grounded in the belief that architecture can strengthen connections between generations. Inspired by Giancarlo Mazzanti’s understanding of architecture as a tool for social inclusion, the project creates spaces where young people can build confidence, develop practical skills, and eventually return as mentors for future generations. In this way, the center becomes part of an ongoing cycle of community development.

A central challenge was balancing safety with openness. My design addresses this through a sequence of thresholds and a circulation system that accommodates different users while maintaining clear visibility throughout the building. Along the perimeter, heavier massing and compressed volumes establish a clear threshold from the uncertainty of the street. As visitors move deeper into the building, spaces gradually become more open, and ceilings rise, creating a stronger sense of safety and belonging. Clear circulation, visible gathering spaces, and flexible programs encourage interaction while minimizing isolated areas, allowing the architecture itself to support security, trust, and community life.

Click here to get a closer look.

This project received an honorable mention in the 2026 Niles Bolton Thesis Competition.

Instagram: @arxuro

Bridging Campus and Career by Farshad Beheshti, M.Arch. ’26
Academy of Art University | Advisor: Eric Reeder

This thesis investigates the role of architecture in facilitating the transition from education to the workforce, with a focus on students and graduates of Canada College. Community colleges serve a highly diverse and often non-traditional population, many of whom balance education with employment and face limited access to professional environments, networks, and career opportunities. This project responds to the gap between academic experience and workforce entry by proposing an integrated spatial framework that supports learning, professional development, and community engagement within a shared environment.

Situated in Redwood City, the project extends the role of the campus beyond its conventional boundaries, positioning it as an active interface between students, graduates, and the broader community of San Mateo County and the Bay Area. The design introduces a range of adaptable spaces that accommodate individual and collaborative work, mentorship, networking, and engagement with industry. By embedding opportunities for interaction with employers and entrepreneurial initiatives, the project fosters a dynamic ecosystem that supports both career entry and ongoing professional growth.

The research explores how architecture can mediate social and economic challenges related to accessibility, affordability, and workforce inclusion. Emphasis is placed on creating an environment that is welcoming to users of different backgrounds, ages, and levels of experience, while maintaining a strong connection to the values of the community college system. Through spatial flexibility, inclusive design strategies, and a focus on user experience, the project aims to redefine the educational campus as a civic and professional infrastructure that supports long-term development and economic mobility.

Instagram: @ericreeder.architect

TADI – Craftsmanship, Design, and Identity Workshops by Valeria Martínez, B.Arch. ’26
Universidad Anáhuac Querétaro | Advisors: Jorge Javier, Patricia Cutiño, Federico Hernández, Álvaro de los Cobos & Guillermo Márquez

TADI is an architectural proposal located in Querétaro, Mexico, conceived as a platform for the preservation, empowerment, and evolution of local craftsmanship. The project responds to the growing challenges faced by artisans, including economic precarity, lack of adequate workspaces, limited access to markets, and the gradual loss of traditional knowledge due to globalization and changing production systems.

Rather than functioning solely as a production facility, TADI is envisioned as a multidisciplinary hub where artisans, designers, students, and visitors can interact through making, learning, exhibiting, and exchanging knowledge. The program integrates workshops for different craft disciplines, educational spaces, collaborative design studios, exhibition galleries, retail areas, and administrative facilities that support cultural and economic development.

The architectural concept is grounded in the idea of dignifying craftsmanship by making the creative process visible and accessible. Spaces are organized around shared courtyards and public circulation routes that encourage interaction between makers and visitors, transforming the act of production into a cultural experience. The project seeks to strengthen the connection between heritage and contemporary design while creating new opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship.

Beyond its physical form, TADI aims to redefine the role of craft within contemporary society. By fostering direct relationships between artisans and consumers, promoting co-design practices, and providing infrastructure for education and commercialization, the project contributes to a more sustainable and equitable creative economy. TADI ultimately serves as a catalyst for cultural preservation, social inclusion, and regional identity, demonstrating how architecture can support both community development and the continuity of intangible cultural heritage.

Instagram: @valemartinnez, @arquitectura_anahuac, @arqwave

Stay tuned for Part VII!

2026 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part V

/in , /by

Part V of the 2026 Study Architecture Student Showcase shines a spotlight on innovative designs in agriculture. From the Prairie to home gardens, these projects propose design methodologies that integrate architecture, community engagement, ecology, sustainability, construction, and climate-responsive programs to cultivate strong agricultural practices.

Between Earth and Sky by Jane Grant & Jack Taliaferro, M.Arch. ‘26
Kansas State University | Advisor: David Dowell

Founded as a nonprofit organization in 1976, The Land Institute (TLI) is committed to researching and developing food production methods that sustain the land and soil, a precious resource in an increasingly precarious state around the globe.

“The history of Earth-abuse through agriculture has been horrendous. Essentially, all of nature’s ecosystems are perennial polycultures. Agriculture reversed that. Consequently, soil erosion became a problem. The wilderness has to become a standard against which we judge our agricultural and cultural practices.”

–Wes Jackson, co-founder, The Land Institute.

In this fast-paced, intensive and collaborative studio, we were asked by The Land Institute to reimagine the original implements barn, hand-built by Wes, as a New Event Barn to host TLI’s annual Prairie Festival and as a Welcome Center to acknowledge TLI’s increasingly important role as a destination and public gathering place for people seeking inspiration in regenerative agriculture best practices. Prairie Festival is currently on hold and will reemerge in September 2026. The work of this studio helps define what that looks like, as a direct application of ideas generated this fall and as a longer-term vision.

This is a real project, located in native mixed-grass prairie north of TLI’s research facilities. Our work started in August 2025 with understanding context – history, site environmental conditions, barn vernacular, innovative material and structural systems. We worked with environmental consultants, architects, landscape architects, scientists, contractors, TLI staff and leadership to program, design and prototype multiple visions for this important new facility, for a groundbreaking institution. TLI’s executive director, Rachel Stroer, challenged us to create an architectural approach and model that parallels The Land Institute’s ethos of regenerative problem solving.

This booklet, a shared production from graduate architecture students at Washington University in St. Louis’s Sam Fox School and Kansas State University’s College of Architecture, Planning and Design, contains evidence of our diverse responses to this challenge. Organized collaborations between universities ebbed and flowed throughout the semester.

It’s been an eye-opening semester for a host of reasons, not the least of which is processing the challenge of what constitutes regenerative architecture, what stories materials offer both in terms of what’s currently given and where design and construction industries could and must evolve. The core problem The Land Institute has in its crosshairs is ten thousand years in the making. To have a chance for architecture to both participate in problem solving with TLI and to embody their core values, we have to look not only at what is, but also imagine what will be.

Our event barn design for The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, is conceived as a direct exploration of the dialogue between two fundamental planes: earth and sky. By treating these planes as active, shifting surfaces rather than static boundaries, the building

becomes a mediator between the natural and the built, allowing visitors to experience how architecture can heighten their relationship to the prairie landscape. Upon entry, the earth and sky planes merge, where visitors ascend into the skyline plane and gain a new vantage point over the surrounding tallgrass prairie. The ground plane, shaped by the site’s natural slope, turns into a grass amphitheater that invites gathering and immersion in the prairie. We utilize steel in our design to maintain a light touch on the land while also offering longevity and flexibility for future uses. Together, these elements create a space that is both rooted and elevated, aligning closely with The Land Institute’s mission to immerse individuals in landscapes. Designed to host a broad range of community events, our barn becomes not only a functional venue but also a space that encourages visitors to feel the land and participate in their community.

Instagram: @taliaferro._.9, @jane.k.grant, @ksudesignmake

Soil Rites: Cultivating a New Perennial Commons by Samantha Agostinelli & Ellis Donahue, B. Arch. ‘26
Pratt Institute | Advisors: Evan Tribus, Cathryn Dwyre & Saul Anton

Industrial agriculture has pushed Midwestern soils to the brink of collapse, and no technical fix can restore what a deeper cultural rupture has broken. Soil Rites proposes that architecture, working intimately with living soil systems, can do more than mitigate ecological crisis—it can reorganize collective life around the act of ecological care. By treating soil as a public agent rather than a passive ground, our project argues that regenerative land stewardship can become the basis for a new perennial commons. Can architecture, working intimately with soil-based strategies, perform both ecological work and produce common meaning? What spatial and tectonic frameworks allow communities to cultivate land stewardship as a shared cultural practice rather than an extractive obligation?

A second Dust Bowl—driven by accelerating soil degradation, aquifer depletion, and the eastward shift of the 100th meridian—is no longer a speculative future but an emerging design condition. In response, this project proposes a regenerative farming collective and eco-community on 80 acres in Ionia, Nebraska, structured as a Community Land Trust. Using the compost cycle as a design methodology, three interdependent systems—landscape, architecture, and ritual—work simultaneously to build soil, form space, and produce collective life, yielding a habitable windbreak, an earth-built community, and a ceremonial framework through which ecological labor becomes culture.

This project won the 2026 Best Degree Project and the 2026 Michael Hollander Drawing Excellence Award (Honorable Mention). 

Instagram: @samamam._, @ellis.donahue, @pressg5, @pneumacat, @saulanton1

Built From Permanence and Return: Pre-Engineered Metal Building (PEMB) by Carlos Baez, Aidan Cannon, Keyshawn Lewis & Ty Blumberg, M.Arch. ‘26
Kansas State University & Washington University in St. Louis | Advisor: David Dowell

Founded as a nonprofit organization in 1976, The Land Institute (TLI) is committed to researching and developing food production methods that sustain the land and soil, a precious resource in an increasingly precarious state around the globe.

“The history of Earth-abuse through agriculture has been horrendous. Essentially, all of nature’s ecosystems are perennial polycultures. Agriculture reversed that. Consequently, soil erosion became a problem. The wilderness has to become a standard against which we judge our agricultural and cultural practices.”

–Wes Jackson, co-founder, The Land Institute.

In this fast-paced, intensive and collaborative studio, we were asked by The Land Institute to reimagine the original implements barn, hand-built by Wes, as a New Event Barn to host TLI’s annual Prairie Festival and as a Welcome Center to acknowledge TLI’s increasingly important role as a destination and public gathering place for people seeking inspiration in regenerative agriculture best practices. Prairie Festival is currently on hold and will reemerge in September 2026. The work of this studio helps define what that looks like, as a direct application of ideas generated this fall and as a longer-term vision.

This is a real project, located in native mixed-grass prairie north of TLI’s research facilities. Our work started in August 2025 with understanding context – history, site environmental conditions, barn vernacular, innovative material and structural systems. We worked with environmental consultants, architects, landscape architects, scientists, contractors, TLI staff and leadership to program, design and prototype multiple visions for this important new facility, for a groundbreaking institution. TLI’s executive director, Rachel Stroer, challenged us to create an architectural approach and model that parallels The Land Institute’s ethos of regenerative problem solving.

This work, a shared production from graduate architecture students at Washington University in St. Louis’s Sam Fox School and Kansas State University’s College of Architecture, Planning and Design, contains evidence of our diverse responses to this challenge. Organized collaborations between universities ebbed and flowed throughout the semester. Presented here are a range of proposals organized around core constructive materials – rammed earth, dimensional lumber, stone, steel, reclaimed barns, mass timber and pre-engineered metal.

It’s been an eye-opening semester for a host of reasons, not the least of which is processing the challenge of what constitutes regenerative architecture, what stories materials offer both in terms of what’s currently given and where design and construction industries could and must evolve.

The core problem The Land Institute has in its crosshairs is ten thousand years in the making. To have a chance for architecture to both participate in problem solving with TLI and to embody their core values, we have to look not only at what is, but also imagine what will be.

The use of a Pre-Engineered Metal Building (PEMB) system represents a sustainable and contextually appropriate material choice. PEMB structures are highly material-efficient, minimizing waste through factory fabrication and precise sizing of structural components. The steel system is durable, recyclable, and designed for long life spans with minimal maintenance. Additionally, the large clear-span capability reduces the need for interior supports, allowing flexible program use while optimizing material performance. In a prairie environment such as Salina, the PEMB system responds effectively to climate, wind loads, and expansive site conditions, making it both an environmentally responsible and pragmatic construction solution.

For the second material strategy, straw bales were introduced to help define and organize interior spaces within the PEMB event barn. Rather than functioning as permanent walls, the straw bales are envisioned as modular partition elements that can be manipulated, rearranged, and reconfigured based on the needs of different events. This approach allows the interior to remain flexible while maintaining the openness of the primary structure. In addition to spatial definition, the use of straw bales provides on-site storage when not in use as partitions, reinforcing the building’s agricultural character while supporting adaptability, material efficiency, and reuse.

Instagram: @c_los1812, @keyshawn._, @ksudesignmake

Tandem – Agri-Food Innovation Centre by Regina Ortega, B.Arch. ’26
Universidad Anáhuac Querétaro | Advisors: Jorge Javier, Patricia Cutiño, Federico Hernández, Álvaro de los Cobos & Guillermo Márquez

Located in Los Olvera, Corregidora, Querétaro, Tandem addresses an activity deeply rooted in the region’s economic and social identity: meat production, processing, and commercialization. While the meat industry is vital to Mexico’s agri-food sector, fragmented processes often limit growth for local merchants, producers, and entrepreneurs.

Tandem proposes a new architectural typology that unifies innovation, education, and production within a single infrastructure. Rather than operating as a conventional, specialized building, it serves as a knowledge-exchange platform where butchers, producers, students, researchers, and industry partners collaborate to strengthen this regional economic pillar.

Crucially, the facility is not a slaughterhouse; it does not involve animal sacrifice. Pre-certified meat arrives from authorized facilities for reception, sanitary inspection, cold storage, processing, research, and commercialization. This operational shift allows Tandem to focus on professionalizing the production chain through technical training, process certification, value-added product development, and technology transfer.

The architectural program includes meat-processing facilities, laboratories, innovation workshops, training classrooms, coworking spaces, an auditorium, and commercial areas. The spatial organization balances educational and sanitary requirements, separating clean from contaminated zones to guarantee food safety while distinguishing productive areas from learning environments. The layout of the building volumes visualizes the synergy between production, innovation, and education, transforming architecture into a tool for knowledge transfer.

Tandem aims to boost the local economy by supporting sector formalization, driving entrepreneurship, and fostering collaboration between producers, academic institutions, and specialized corporations to enhance regional competitiveness.

Structurally, the project features glued laminated timber (GLT) made from radiata pine and exposed concrete. This material combination balances industrial efficiency, sustainability, and spatial quality. 

Ultimately, Tandem offers a replicable model of productive infrastructure that transforms a traditional trade into a platform for innovation, economic development, and social cohesion in Querétaro.

Instagram: @regina_ortegaz, @arquitectura_anahuac, @arqwave

Celebrating the Prairie, Modular Heavy Timber by Pony Alongkornvilai, Abi Bauman, Aleah Delgado, Cheyenne Granahan & Lindsay Miller, M.Arch. ’26

Kansas State University & Washington University in St. Louis | Advisor: David Dowell

Founded as a nonprofit organization in 1976, The Land Institute (TLI) is committed to researching and developing food production methods that sustain the land and soil, a precious resource in an increasingly precarious state around the globe.

“The history of Earth-abuse through agriculture has been horrendous. Essentially, all of nature’s ecosystems are perennial polycultures. Agriculture reversed that. Consequently, soil erosion became a problem. The wilderness has to become a standard against which we judge our agricultural and cultural practices.”

–Wes Jackson, co-founder, The Land Institute.

In this fast-paced, intensive and collaborative studio, we were asked by The Land Institute to reimagine the original implements barn, hand-built by Wes, as a New Event Barn to host TLI’s annual Prairie Festival and as a Welcome Center to acknowledge TLI’s increasingly important role as a destination and public gathering place for people seeking inspiration in regenerative agriculture best practices. Prairie Festival is currently on hold and will reemerge in September 2026. The work of this studio helps define what that looks like, as a direct application of ideas generated this fall and as a longer-term vision.

This is a real project, located in native mixed-grass prairie north of TLI’s research facilities. Our work started in August 2025 with understanding context – history, site environmental conditions, barn vernacular, innovative material and structural systems. We worked with

environmental consultants, architects, landscape architects, scientists, contractors, TLI staff and leadership to program, design and prototype multiple visions for this important new facility, for a groundbreaking institution.

TLI’s executive director, Rachel Stroer, challenged us to create an architectural approach and model that parallels The Land Institute’s ethos of regenerative problem solving.

This booklet, a shared production from graduate architecture students at Washington University in St. Louis’s Sam Fox School and Kansas State University’s College of Architecture, Planning and Design, contains evidence of our diverse responses to this challenge. Organized collaborations between universities ebbed and flowed throughout the semester. Presented here are a range of proposals organized around core constructive materials – rammed earth, dimensional lumber, stone, steel, reclaimed barns, mass timber and pre-engineered metal.

It’s been an eye-opening semester for a host of reasons, not the least of which is processing the challenge of what constitutes regenerative architecture, what stories materials offer both in terms of what’s currently given and where design and construction industries could and must evolve. The core problem The Land Institute has in its crosshairs is ten thousand years in the making. To have a chance for architecture to both participate in problem solving with TLI and to embody their core values, we have to look not only at what is, but also imagine what will be.

Keeping The Land Institute (TLI) principles in mind, we propose a space designed to celebrate the prairie through thoughtful design in terms of environment, form, and material. We strive to develop a relationship between building and prairie, while accommodating

the diverse range of programming that the building will support throughout the year.

The project proposes a modular construction method where systems are composed of standardized and repeatable components. There are many benefits to this construction process.

Cross-Laminated-Timber (CLT) is the proposed structural material. CLT provides two directions of structural reinforcement. It additionally has environmental, sustainable, and atmospheric qualities that achieve the goal of the overarching driving concept of the project.

A prairie green roof is proposed to camouflage the built structure into the landscape, alongside environmental benefits. Along with recognizing some of the values of TLI, we

have also incorporated the six design principles identified by TLI Masterplan author, MASS Design Group:

Establishing the Commons

Deepening Roots

Designing for a Public Threshold

Solving for Service

Phasing Campus Evolution

Designed with and for the Land

Instagram: @poniebuoy, @aleahdelgado, @cheyennegranahan, @dysynchronized, @lindsay_miller4045, @ksudesignmake

House & Garden by Lola Garvie, BS. in Arch. ’26
University of Virginia | Advisor: WG Clark

A radical transformation of the suburban home has been in order for decades. The current house-and-yard model provides little more than a place to sleep, while sprawling development continues to consume land and reinforce dependence on centralized food systems. Yet the immense infrastructure supporting American suburbia makes wholesale restructuring impractical, and displacing residents would be both unethical and unnecessary. Instead, meaningful change can begin at the scale of the individual home.

House & Garden proposes a new suburban housing typology that integrates the house and yard into a productive garden, drawing from successful models of urban agriculture. On a standard suburban lot, this deployable single-family housing system challenges conventional suburban planning and capitalist food markets by combining domestic living with highly productive farming.

The house is pushed to one edge of the site, freeing up to 80% of the lot for in-ground agricultural production. A single scaffolding-like superstructure contains all the systems necessary to support both the family and the farm. After the superstructure is assembled, housing and farming components are installed according to each family’s needs. A living room might sit near the entrance for families who frequently host guests or farther back for greater privacy. As families grow, the home can expand within the superstructure, which may be sized in anticipation of future needs.

This adaptable system allows individual families interested in sustainability and reform to have responsibility in the production of their own food while remaining rooted in their communities. For some, the garden remains a private extension of the home; for others, it becomes a shared neighborhood resource. While one family may adopt the model independently, entire streets could gradually transform, creating communities that live, cultivate, and grow together. Rather than replacing suburbia, House & Garden reimagines it from within, offering an economically viable framework for a more sustainable and resilient American dream.

Instagram: @lola_garvie, @aschool_uva

Old Barns, New Roots by Quinn Adam, Krista Gerstner, Carter Grothusen & Zach Toth, M.Arch. ’26
Kansas State University & Washington University in St. Louis | Advisor: David Dowell

Our initial meetings with TLI revealed a sensibility with the land that must be kept paramount in our intervention. The existing is the landscape, and the dichotomy of old against new must be made as a backdrop towards the greater landscape. The material for the semester chosen was reclaimed timber, initially as a strategy of salvage and on-site construction within the prairie, embracing the carbon neutrality benefits that emerge with an active reuse of existing wooden structure. But, as the course progressed, the strategy morphed into one of true adaptive reuse in the preservation and readaptation of two historic barns found available on the market. We propose that the barns can be readily moved onto the site, stripped of their old weathered cladding, braced with new structural interventions, and made new with simple but dynamic design decisions that continue to frame the existing landscape. The barns should support each other in anticipation of the Prairie Festival, but also set a tone for a surprisingly cost-efficient method of building that could potentially be expanded upon for the future of the Land Institute’s mission for the site. We are living in the age of the Anthropocene, and as such, we need to crystallize solutions that rethink our traditional methods of building, which align with the disruption that TLI hopes to create in the perennial agricultural industry.

Instagram: @quinnadam_design, @z.othhh, @kristagerstner, @cartire_31, @ksudesignmake

Stay tuned for Part VI!

2025 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part XIV

/in , , /by

And that’s a wrap on the 2025 Study Architecture Student Showcase! In our finale, we highlight miscellaneous student work that captures a range of topics. From centers celebrating Caribbean food culture and sea-farming operations to spaces for children and an urban crematorium, each project demonstrates skill and innovation.

BREAKWATER: A Living Infrastructure for Food, Culture and Climate by Colin Cantwell, B.Arch ’25
The University of Texas at Austin | Advisor: Nichole Wiedemann

The defining characteristic of the Caribbean is perhaps interdependence. These resilient islands, marked in various ways by violent histories of colonialism, now face an unwritten future as newly independent nations. Central to this new regional identity is a cooperative and self-reliant system of food production and distribution, de-emphasizing international exports and strengthening local agriculture and trade. 

Barbados is poised to become a critical node in this network with the opening of the International Food Science Centre in Oistins, as well as the upcoming Barbados-Guyana food terminal outside Bridgetown. Within this context, how can architecture participate in a regional food culture? Can a restaurant not only nourish bodies but also fuel a network of food sovereignty? 

“Breakwater” is a hub for this evolving food future, a place where chefs and diners share not only cuisine, but knowledge, memory, and care. Emphasizing porosity, informality, and connection, the project acts as a framework that supports the emergence of a contemporary Caribbean food culture. 

The restaurant and research center welcome the public with a direct path from city to sea. A 250-foot pier extends into the water, receiving fresh seafood and produce delivered by local and regional vessels. Breakwater is embedded within the rhythms of trade, supply, and cultural exchange that flow across the sea.

As Bajans move from cafe to restaurant or from street to beach, they can stop for a quick meal or be seated for a full-course experience guided by a visiting chef behind the counter. Spaces ebb and flow, creating opportunity for informal gatherings and chef-guest encounters. With two sites connected by the urban artery of Bay Street, Breakwater becomes a culinary campus: a space of hospitality and collaboration.

This project was entered in the Lyceum Competition.

Instagram: @fields0fblue, @nicholewiedemann

LookOut by Nick Alonzo, Nicole Roach, Jackson Franks & Olivia Tine, M.Arch ‘25
Northeastern University | Advisor: Jeremy Munn

Inspired by studio thesis topics, students worked in groups to develop an innovative business model by thinking critically about the skills they developed in pursuit of an Architecture degree and how to flex those skills to develop new value propositions. 

The idea for LookOut sprouted from a personal experience. I spend a lot of time outdoors, biking from spot to spot, whether it be for birdwatching, hikes, runs, or anything else. I live in a city where there are plenty of parks, and thus plenty of new places for me to explore. Most people, including myself, when going to a new park would simply look it up on Google Maps to get information on directions, hours, and a general sense of quality. This was the case when I headed to Belle Isle Marsh in Boston. Once there, I quickly learned that there was more information that I should have known beforehand. The park was absolutely overrun by mosquitoes, to such an extent that it was unbearable to stand still or even walk. Despite a high Google Maps rating, and being a clearly great, scenic park, my experience at Belle Isle Marsh was unpleasant and brief. If I had somehow known about this mosquito situation, I could have dressed appropriately and packed bug spray.

This is just one example of the lack of relevant park information that Google Maps and similar apps are able to provide. LookOut analyzes open source data, GIS-centric algorithms, and crowd-sourced information to present users with comprehensive, yet simple visualizations – catered to their needs and interests – about the parks they want to visit. This allows our customers to get all the information they need without needing to learn it the hard way. Examples include environmental risks like mosquitoes and flooding, social risks like crime reports and disruptive events, as well as positive features including unique wildlife sightings or special events. Our hope is to make the ups and downs of the great outdoors a more accessible and safe experience for all!

Click here to view the full business plan. 

Instagram: @jeremy.munn.001

Cultivated Archive by Fredrick Ubah, B.Arch ’25
Texas Tech University | Advisor: Erin Hunt

This project draws conceptual and formal inspiration from the utilitarian vertical gutters found along Austin’s East 6th Street, where concrete and wood are juxtaposed across historic and contemporary structures. These gutters, bridging rooflines to the ground, express a raw clarity that resonates with Modernism’s ideals of exposure, honesty, and tectonic legibility. The integration contrasts wood’s warmth and decorative softness with the stark presence of concrete, creating a balance between directness and welcome. The design explores vertical continuity while elevating functional components—such as exposed gutters—as aesthetic features. The facade merges disjointed yet deliberate elements of wood and concrete, reinforcing a Modernist commitment to revealing structure. Diagonal framing, influenced by Frankengram patterns and informed by fragmented urban stair logics, introduces an “implied organizational frame” that challenges conventional facade hierarchies and spatial expectations. Beyond form, the project incorporates sustainable water management through implied gutters that serve as active hydrological systems. Rainwater is guided through the structure into a passive aquaponics system, enabling ecological productivity without mechanical input. In Austin’s semi-arid context, this approach reduces runoff, enhances biodiversity, and mitigates heat.

Altogether, the facade becomes a layered system—materially honest, formally complex, and ecologically performative—bridging architectural expression with environmental stewardship.

Instagram: @Urfredrick, @erinlinseyhunt 

Convergence of Culture, Land, and Sea on a Barrier Island: A New Form of Community on Sapelo Island, Georgia by Cecilia Brock, B.S. in Architecture ’25
University of Virginia | Advisor: Peter Waldman

This thesis explores a new model of coastal community living on Sapelo Island, rooted in the cultural and environmental knowledge of the Gullah Geechee people of Coastal Georgia. Rather than simply preserving the existing community of Hogg Hammock, the project envisions a future community on the north end of the island where marine farming and agriculture sustain both the local economy and the local population. 

Explored entirely through hand-drawing, the design moves beyond conventional buildings, focusing on spaces defined by activity rather than form. It considers housing not as isolated structures but as a network of small, essential elements—tools for living that support daily rhythms, seasonal changes, and the evolving needs of the community. Inspired by the traditional Saltwater Geechee family compound, the proposal prioritizes flexible, interconnected spaces where work, gathering, and sustenance shape the built environment. Local materials are prioritized, with the structures being composed of wood from the site, tabby made from native oysters, and salvaged metal. 

At the heart of the project is a sea-farming operation, extending from the land into the water as a continuous, working landscape from west to east. Housing clusters, gardens, porches and paths emerge from this axis, fostering a way of life where shelter, work, and nature are inseparable. This project ultimately serves as a temporary home for students from the University of Georgia Marine Institute and volunteers from Sapelo’s SOLO Program, who support the cultivation of the island’s three main agricultural products: Purple Sugarcane, sour oranges, and Sapelo Red Peas. By designing for the patterns of daily life—hour to hour, season to season—the project aims to create an adaptable, living architecture that strengthens both community and environment.

This project received Highest Honors for 4th year Thesis, University of Virginia Pre-Professional Program.

Instagram: @cecilia.brock 

Memphis Urban Crematorium by Marah Al-Tal, M.Arch ’25
University of Memphis | Advisor: Brian Andrews

This urban crematorium project creates a meaningful path between the ceremony and cremation areas, connected by a symbolic bridge. This bridge allows mourners a reflective farewell and provides a journey for the departed. The urban crematorium includes spaces for administration, cremation, ceremonies, dining, accommodation, and a columbarium. The layout is organized by function, with the reception, cremation, and administrative areas on the first floor, the columbarium on the second floor, dining and ceremonial spaces on the third floor, and accommodation on the fourth floor. The concept centers on a gap between the ceremonial and cremation areas, joined by a bridge that creates a unique passage for the final farewell. This gap also houses the columbarium, symbolizing the connection between life and death. The design acknowledges our complex feelings about death—both distant and unavoidable—while creating a respectful place for final goodbyes.

Click here to learn more.

This project received the 3rd-place AIA Memphis Student Award.

Instagram: @marah.tal, @aiasuofm 

TURNING THE PAGE ON TRENDS: Children’s Library & Daycare In North St. Louis by Rebecca Spratt, M.Arch ’25
Washington University in St. Louis | Advisor: Julie Bauer

“Turning the Page on Trends” is a proposal that responds to the needs of children amidst the current social and socioeconomic climate of North St. Louis. Designed to improve reading comprehension rates among the youngest members of this community while providing a safe space for learning and play, this project is a hybrid proposal that combines a children’s daycare and library in the Grand Center neighborhood. The building includes reading rooms, play areas, dining space, a volunteer kitchen, a family resource center, and an exterior garden. The design is centered around the reading and garden spaces, keeping nature at the core of the educational experience. Beyond serving children, the project aspires to create meaningful engagement among youth, families, and the wider community. Architecturally, the project is influenced by the bookshelf, a modular element integrated throughout the design to embed the library into the structure of the building itself.

Instagram: @rebeccaspratt, @julie.e.bauer  

Soundscapes of Change by Sarah Jane Graven, M.Arch ’25
University of Maryland | Advisors: Brittany Williams, Brian Kelly & Julie Gabrielli

America’s approach to childcare often places additional stress on parenting and hinders child development. The United States is the only developed country that does not have a federally mandated paid parental leave policy. Without guaranteed parental leave, parents are forced to find childcare, which is often unaffordable and inaccessible. Not only is society and policy making childhood and parenthood difficult, the built environment is as well. The built environment is designed as though children do not exist. America’s hostility towards children has enforced a mindset that children should be seen, not heard. This research reorients the design process and puts acoustics at the center to rethink the built environment in a way that supports both children and parents. Children are our future, and they deserve to be a visible and welcome part of the present. 

This thesis aims to explore how acoustic strategies can be implemented into traditionally quiet spaces to address, engage, and celebrate children and families in civic life. By designing spaces that are flexible and will fit the needs of the user, acoustic design will create environments where people of all ages can relax, enjoy, and learn. This thesis challenges the social norms in traditionally quiet spaces. By designing spaces with acoustics at the center of the process, spaces will be more comfortable and welcoming to children and families. This thesis aims to reimagine the design process and put acoustics at the center to integrate children and families into civic life.

Instagram: @sarahjanegraven, @br.ttw.ll

Extension to Lundgaard & Tranberg’s Architectural Office by Madeline Wettstein & Eleanor Lewis, M.Arch ’25
University of Washington | Advisors: Peter Cohan & Lene Tranberg

The project was assigned for the 2024 Scan Design Studio, co-taught by UW Professor Peter Cohan and famed Copenhagen-based architect Lene Tranberg of Lundgaard & Tranberg as Visiting Professor. The studio is generously funded by the Scan Design Foundation and provides student travel to Copenhagen before the studio commences, and allows the Visiting Professor to spend several weeks in Seattle working directly with students. 

The assigned project was the expansion of Lundgaard & Tranberg’s office through the adaptive reuse of an existing building and addition. This proposal more than doubles the available square footage of the office and aims to enhance the building’s connection both to its historic surroundings and to nature. Two new wings hug the existing courtyard at the heart of the site, providing a more private space for team gatherings, complete with a small pond along the exposed brick wall. All wings open onto this courtyard, creating a dialogue between old and new while allowing circulation to flow seamlessly through and around it. A new west wing houses the kitchen, meeting rooms, and bathrooms, while the south wing proposes a multifunction model shop. The two are separated by an exterior pedestrian connection on the ground level, but connected above by a barrel vaulted roof whose curved form embraces the working space of the atelier below.

This project received commends for the studio.

Thanks for tuning in to the 2025 Study Architecture Student Showcase!

2025 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part X

/in , , /by
Architecture tells a story. The capstones and theses highlighted in Part X of the 2025 Study Architecture Student Showcase use texture, material, and spatial configuration as visual narratives. From short films to renderings, each project uses a unique medium of storytelling. The displayed work ranges from memorials inspired by speculative fiction and design interventions using augmented reality to exhibitions on womanhood and visualizations of poetry.
Scroll down for a closer look!

Thread by Thread by Emily Dross, B.Arch ’25
Ball State University | Advisor: James F. Kerestes

“Thread by Thread” is a short film, created as part of the course Cinematic Environments: Uncanny AI, explores hybridized architectural conditions through a speculative and surreal lens. Set in a richly imagined built environment, the narrative unfolds through the movements and interactions of fluffy, stuffed animal-like creatures—anthropomorphic figures that serve as both inhabitants and interpreters of the space. These soft-bodied protagonists navigate a world that oscillates between the familiar and the uncanny, offering a playful yet critical reflection on contemporary architectural and environmental issues.

The project operates within the “fuzzy space” between realism and speculation, where exaggerated materials, textures, and spatial configurations provoke questions about the future of the built environment. By merging whimsical imagery with architectural inquiry, the film engages themes of technological transformation and post-Anthropocene speculation. The soft, plush inhabitants stand in stark contrast to the often rigid, industrial aesthetic of traditional architectural spaces—suggesting alternative, more empathetic ways of occupying and designing environments.

Through visual storytelling, “Thread by Thread” reflects a critical position on how architecture might respond to pressing global concerns while embracing unconventional narratives and mediums. Ultimately, the film is a provocative gesture—one that reimagines the role of architecture in shaping not only physical space but also cultural and emotional landscapes. It invites viewers to question the boundaries of architectural representation and consider the value of softness, fantasy, and hybridity in the discourse of design.

Instagram: @em.dross, @jameskerestes

Echoes of the Land: A Pilgrimage of Wilderness and Spirit by Andrea Frank, M.Arch ‘25
North Dakota State University | Advisor: Stephen Wischer

This thesis explores how architecture can bridge humanity and the natural world, restoring a connection eroded by technology, overconsumption, and distraction. While cities offer curated encounters with nature, they cannot replace the deep peace found in wilderness. This connection is essential to humanity’s survival. If humanity fails to understand its relationship with the environment and engage with it responsibly, it jeopardizes the ecological balance of the world and humanity’s own existence.

Architecture, once in dialogue with nature, now often serves function, spectacle, or profit. This work reimagines architecture as a mediator that fosters kinship with the earth through a threefold approach: a pilgrimage across city, edge, and wilderness; poetic uncovering of ancient site stories; and sensory engagement with the four classical elements. In doing so, architecture becomes a vessel for atmosphere, memory, and meaning, guiding individuals to a deeper awareness of themselves and their world.

This project received an AIA Medal for Academic Excellence.

Instagram: @andrea.frank10

A Place for Pilgrimage by Andy Packwood, B.S. in Architecture ’25
University of Virginia | Advisor: Peter Waldman

The project synthesizes two years of fascination for and research into the climate-threatened coastal community of Tangier, speculating as to what will ultimately happen to rural, low-income American communities in the wake of inevitable sea level rise. My interest lay not in the proposal of any sort of savior infrastructural solution, not in the proposal of a managed retreat plan, nor in the design of a mainland relocation for displaced refugee residents. I chose to develop a memorialized destination that could still exist on the island long after its ridges have turned to marsh, its homes have been barged away, and normally perceived connotations of inhabitability have all but vanished. I chose to create “A Place for Pilgrimage”, inspired by my own pilgrimage of El Camino de Santiago this past March.

Simply put, the proposal is an adaptive reuse of the tallest structure on Tangier: its water tower. Adding a spiraling staircase and pushing the structure fifty years into the unknown, the design creates a single space in the sky through the removal of half of the tower’s upper dome. The approach is incredibly important; much of the final pin-up focused on rendering this pilgrimage step by step. Starting from the dock of the mainland resettlement, looking out into the Chesapeake Bay, a line of buoys trails towards the horizon. A bird soars toward the tower in the distance, the vestiges of marsh poking out of the water. Cameron Evans, current vice mayor and young watermen of the Island, embarks as this future pilgrim by skiff. He carries with him a gravestone; many cemeteries on the Island are often inundated by tidal flooding, and residents must move these tombs to higher ground, again and again.

What I have proposed is a final resting place, safe from the heights of sea level rise. A place for generations to visit, to bring tokens of remembrance, to occupy overnight, or to even continue their trade as watermen. Up within the dome of the water tower is a cenotaph for the people, memories, culture, history, and beauty of Tangier. We will need one.

This project was awarded High Honors for Thesis.

Ephemeral Spaces — Presence and Absence by Robin Xiao, B.S. in Architecture ’25
University of Virginia | Advisor: Peter Waldman

This thesis explores how architecture can emerge from the debris of the everyday to construct a space of ritual and transition—between life and death, presence and absence, memory and forgetting. 

Situated in the post-industrial landscape of Skaramangas, Athens, the project transforms three abandoned military interchange tunnels into a procession of ephemeral architecture: a crematorium, a columbarium, and spaces for reflection, and spaces of pause/entry/exit. 

Through a series of five conceptual models, material fragments—broken light bulbs, candles, metal tubing, computer chips, wood scraps—become instruments of spatial inquiry, offering alternative ways to think about temporality, transformation, and the sacred. Each model gives rise to a set of sectional drawings, collaged with elemental forces—earth, fire, air, water—revealing a layered architecture of transition. 

The resulting proposal is not a fixed structure, but a choreography of spaces that invite the living to move with the dead, through tunnels repurposed as thresholds. This work situates ephemerality not as loss, but as an architectural condition of becoming—an act of spatial murmuration shaped by light, material residue, and memory in motion.

This project received High Honors for Undergraduate Thesis.

Instagram: @robinxiaostudio

MOVING FUTURES VERTICAL SCHOOL by Alex Hoover & Zach Izzo, M.Arch ’25
University at Buffalo | Advisor: Jin Young Song

Located in Songdo, Seoul, our project reimagines the typical Korean private educational institutions, known as Hagwon, by prioritizing spatial flexibility and community engagement. Traditional Hagwons often feature cramped, efficiency-driven classrooms. However, research shows that children learn better in environments with diverse spatial qualities—high ceilings, minimal partitions, vibrant colors, and flexible layouts. To address this, we designed a highly adaptable building with movable interior and exterior components. Each main floor features partition walls on ceiling-mounted tracks, allowing spaces to transform easily—from small study rooms to large lecture halls or art galleries. This system ensures both spatial diversity for students and long-term adaptability for future tenants or programs. 

The facade similarly emphasizes flexibility, offering a reinterpretation of Korea’s dense, intrusive urban signage. The three-layer facade system integrates architecture, community identity, and student expression. The outer layer consists of LED media panels and sun-shading devices, configurable to display student artwork or community visuals, establishing the building as a neighborhood landmark. The second layer features sliding perforated metal signage panels, subtly blending information with the architecture rather than overwhelming it. The innermost layer wraps the social stair, visible from both adjacent streets, inviting public interaction and showcasing movement within the building. Smaller panels provide localized signage, such as floor numbers and bulletin boards. Together, the dynamic facade and transformable interior create a learning environment that fosters both community visibility and spatial flexibility, promoting a more engaging, human-centered educational experience.

The project was selected for the Cram Urbanism and Vertical Learning Space International symposium

Instagram: @_alex_hoover, @jinyoung___song  

The Market of Joy by Shefa Quazi, M.ArchD ’25
Oxford Brookes University | Advisors: Toby Smith, Alexandra Lacatusu, Toby Shew, Charles Parrack

In a world dominated by seamless digital consumption, where screens dictate desires and algorithms predict movement, The Covered Market in Oxford becomes a site of rebellion—a place where reality is glitched, distorted, and reclaimed from commercial control. Instead of a polished, hyper-commercial spectacle designed to guide users into predictable behaviors, the proposed series of interventions hijack the mechanics of digital consumerism and turns them against themselves to exaggerate them into a physical, pseudo-reality. Attempting to readminister the loss currency of joy.

The market transforms into a disruptive, anti-brand arcade—a physical and augmented experience that interrupts, unsettles, and reawakens users to the absurdity of algorithm-driven life. Augmented Reality, typically a tool for corporate control (filters, tracking, gamified shopping), is instead repurposed to create moments of détournement, where the commercial is undermined, and participation leads not to consumption, but to adding weight to reality and human interaction. Overall revaluing the High Street as a whole. 

Instead of guiding users toward consumption, the market becomes a disobedient space, forcing engagement away from passive scrolling and toward critical awareness of spectacle itself. The interactions don’t feed an algorithm—they break it. The market is no longer a relic of pre-digital commerce but a living, evolving site of resistance against digital saturation and corporate control.

This project received the Oxford Brookes University Reginald W. Cave Award.

Instagram: @sheevz_q, @oxarch

The Inner Mechanism by Jared Roberts, M.Arch ’25
Lawrence Technological University | Advisor: Masataka Yoshikawa

This project sees the physical model and 2D illustration of the hypothetical device abstracted to create architectural forms and spaces. The form derives itself from the concepts dealt with in the inner mechanisms and particularly information storage. The “nested” nature of digital information storage (i.e., nested file folders on a computer) translates to nested architectural forms that sometimes exist within or even overlap other parts of the model. Another concept was that of information’s changes and persistence over time. The form is constructed like a timeline that exists in all three dimensions, inspired by the flow map of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, which charts various different variables including location, population, time, events and more about Napoleon’s Russian campaign. In the same way, the timeline is a two-dimensional visual representation of information gathered about events in history; this model is a three-dimensional representation of the information gathered and stored by the hypothetical device. 

Instagram: @masataka.yoshikawa

Echoes of Home by Zuha Arab Sabbagh & Rana Abdelhadi, B.Arch ’25
American University of Sharjah | Advisor: Gregory Thomas Spaw

‘Echoes of Home’ responds broadly to displacement in our globalised world. Specifically, on the generational displacement of Syrians. Centralised on the intimate and underappreciated labour of homemaking, the project acts as a recognition and celebration of Womanhood as a discipline. It is designed to mark the story of displacement – building and rebuilding – into an inconstant world. The project tentatively approaches the need to capture the complicated ephemerality in our modern understanding of what ‘home’ is.

In designing a secondary residence-exhibition, the studio deployed the renaissance phenomenon of the cabinet of curiosities to challenge us to create spatially charged architecture focused on the exhibition of artifacts. We selected fictitious clients, curated a selection of curiosities to display, picked a suitable site, and decided the extent of distinction between the residence and the exhibition.

Designing a residence required an examination of the notion of ‘home’. Historically, ‘home’ has been explored as a vehicle for living and, with the rise of modernism, critiqued as performative. The programs selected recognise the labour of homemaking and extend to capture the performance of hosting and the pleasure of gathering. ‘Home’ has consistently been placed in women’s domain. The practice of homemaking falls under the discipline of Womanhood. The project adheres to the practice and rejects criticism, accommodating for it spatially. The kitchen, game room, bathing space, bedrooms, bathrooms, and guest room all double as exhibition spaces. The integrated spaces create opportunities for gathering and hakawayti (storytelling). Homes tell a story of past, present and future, and the project acts as a natural extension.

Encouraged to design spaces from the inside out, the client and narrative guided design decisions. The Characters: a mother, daughter and grandmother, based on Syrian women in our vicinity, emphasise the generational distinctions in modes of displacement: immigrant, diaspora and refugee. The clients’ stories resemble those of many diasporas. 

Instagram: @gregoryspaw

An Anchor in Time: A Dwelling Reflecting the Interplay of Time and Space by Salma Hani Mubarak Ali, B.Arch ’25
American University of Sharjah | Advisor: Gregory Thomas Spaw

In the vast stillness of the desert, this residence becomes a compass of time—a place where shifting sands echo the dance of the stars, grounding life within the endless drift of the cosmos. The design emerges from the client’s collection of astrological instruments, shaping spatial arrangements that enhance functionality and interaction. Objects inform the layout, with dedicated areas that invite exploration and observation. Strategic openings frame views of the night sky and desert, enriching the experience of celestial observation. This residence serves as both a home and an observatory, fostering a profound connection to the cosmos while celebrating the beauty of time and change. (Text: Salma Hani Mubarak Ali)

Cabinet of Curiosities: Exploring the Ensemble (aka, house of the collector) is an option studio utilizing the 16th-century-18th-century phenomenon of the Cabinet of Curiosities or Wunderkammers (wonder-rooms) as a point of departure to explore the exhibition of ensembles of artifacts with the goal of creating spatially charged architecture.

Working as individuals or in pairs, students had the opportunity to curate their own collection of curiosities and develop a novel architectural language to facilitate the display of the exquisite objects. Associated with the collection was a real or imagined client that served to further drive a generated domestic program. With the scale of the overall proposals being purposely manageable, students had the opportunity to focus on developing architectural assemblies that directly engage with issues of materiality, connections, and details. As such, physical and digital models were heavily employed as tools to study the interplay of elements at a series of scales

This project won the RIBA Gulf: Future Architects 2024 Overall Best Model Award.

Click here to learn more.

 Instagram: @salma.hani.ali, @gregoryspaw

Evermore: A Cemetery For The City by Mo Karnes, B.Arch ’25
Mississippi State University | Advisors: Jassen Callender, David Buege, Aaron White, Mark Vaughan & David Perkes

My uncle died less than two years before I was born. I never met him, but his death is only an obstacle in my ability to know him. Chris was an artist and poet who left behind many things for me to know him by, including a poem entitled Evermore, written during his struggle with AIDS. The meditation is: 

I will walk unlonely,

Holding me up

As I begin to fall,

You Lead the way

And sometimes follow.

Our passage now is

Evermore.

(To be repeated, Unending).

To be ‘unlonely’ is a profound response to the impending, seeming loneliness that is death. Loneliness for those dying and those left behind. Chris’s poem is not just a meditation for himself, but for those struggling with loss. As a dying man, Chris places himself shoulder to shoulder with the reader; their journey is one and the same.

“Evermore: A Cemetery For The City” is a small cemetery complex adjacent to the Cathedral of St. Peter the Apostle in Downtown Jackson, Mississippi. The complex comprises a crematorium, vertical columbarium, and chapel. The site is rectangular, bound on all sides by concrete walls with only one threshold for entry. Two masses seemingly float behind the concrete boundary walls that veil them, the smaller chapel and the larger columbarium. Both stoic in form, they disguise the intricacies hidden in the interiors of their masses.  

The ambition of this project is to integrate the awareness of mortality into the city, while supplying architectural means to confront it. This awareness is not a means of oppression, but an attempt to convey the gift that is life. This cemetery is intended to be a public space where inhabitants can experience the city with citizens who came before them, inducing a relationship with the past, generating an appreciation of those who came before, and propelling the city forward with the intent to befriend and mentor the future.  

This project received the CDFL Capstone Studio Travel Award. 

Instagram: @mo.karnes, @jassencallender

IMAGINATIVE REALITY: INVENTION OF SYNERGISTIC NARRATIVES by Chey Isiguzo, M.Arch ’25
Toronto Metropolitan University | Advisor: Lisa Landrum

Imagination is both an act and a familiar, safe space, evoking nostalgic feelings rooted in our reality. 

This space can become unfamiliar when cultural expressions changes, leading to multifaceted identities and undeveloped narratives. This dynamic contributes to cultural conflict and highlights the juxtaposition of traditional and contemporary African architectural narratives. As a space, imagination can generate narrative 

characters and elements by creating synergistic stories that incorporate traditional craftsmanship into contemporary African architecture. The imaginative process consists of three components. Imagining while thinking is an act that uses mental images from memories, dreams, fantasies, or visions to create one’s reality. Imagining while making is the act of craftsmanship used to speculate the distinction between traditional and contemporary architectural narratives through the lens of cultural expressions. Imagining while drawing is an act of translation by utilizing narrative characters—building elements like windows and doors—to dissect fragments of both traditional and contemporary architecture to find new narratives. 

These narrative characters work alongside structural elements, such as walls, roofs, layouts, courtyards, and compounds, to convey new stories that showcase materials and design techniques rooted in Igbo craftsmanship. To develop synergistic narratives, one can explore the evolution of traditional African craftsmanship, particularly within Igbo culture, across ancestral, post-colonial, and contemporary contexts. This exploration reveals how the architectural narratives of traditional and contemporary styles are increasingly distinct. Consequently, this imaginative space becomes a reality that examines the relationship between what is real and what is envisioned through architectural craftsmanship.

Instagram: @sumisi000, @ucisi_studios, @tmu_archgrad

When I’m Sixty-Four: Flourishing at Falkland by George Mannix, M.ArchD ’25
Oxford Brookes School of Architecture | Advisors: Melissa Kinnear & Alex Towler

This project proposes a “therapeutic cooperative” that reimagines later life as a time for purpose, legacy, and connection. Designed for people aged 64 and over, the initiative creates a living environment where older adults can flourish by sharing life experiences with younger visitors while contributing to environmental and social regeneration. 

Central to the concept is the cohabitation of residents with Tamworth pigs, which serve both symbolic and ecological roles—facilitating intergenerational dialogue and promoting biodiversity through trophic rewilding.

Located at Kilgour, a Victorian farm steading on Scotland’s Falkland estate, the site carries historical significance and a past tied to pig-rearing and the celebration of endings. 

Accommodation includes accessible apartments, communal gardens, and a biodiversity-rich courtyard. Pigs will live in creatively built “Ad-Hog” styes using reclaimed materials. A chapel-like “Memory Archive” will hold personal stories of residents’ lives, offering a space for reflection and remembrance.

The project unfolds in three phases: first, clearing and revitalising the site with community involvement; second, welcoming the first residents and establishing the Memory Archive; and third, expanding the model across Scotland to transform abandoned steadings and boost natural regeneration.

Younger visitors, whom we have dubbed “biodiversity-backpackers,” can stay in on-site hostel lodgings, with the hope of fostering meaningful interaction between generations. Funding comes from elderly participants downsizing their homes, combined with national grants, giving them control over their later years.

Ultimately, this initiative responds to the growing issue of isolation among the elderly in Scotland. By embedding legacy, memory, and biocentric living into the design, it aims to help people see out their days with dignity whilst living with renewed purpose.

This project received the Ackroyd Lowrie Prize.

Instagram: @georgemannix, @ds3_obu

POLISH PAVILION – RIYADH EXPO 2030 by Oskar Karos, B.Sc. in Architecture ’25
University of the District of Columbia | Advisor: Golnar Ahmadi

Set in Riyadh for Expo 2030, the Polish Pavilion reinterprets the nation’s geography and ecological identity through architecture. Designed as a living map of Poland, the pavilion invites visitors to journey from the southern Tatra Mountains to the northern Baltic Sea, experiencing the country’s topography, climate, and innovation within one continuous landscape. The project explores how architecture can embody an entire nation’s ecosystem, transforming exhibition space into a self-sustaining organism.

Poland’s diverse terrain—from its rugged mountains to fertile plains and coastal winds—inspired a spatial narrative divided into eight regions. Each represents two neighboring voivodeships, blending their natural and technological identities: wind power in Pomorskie, hydropower in Warmińsko-Mazurskie, sustainable farming in Podlaskie, and smart urbanism in Mazowieckie, among others. 

Visitors move northward along a symbolic Vistula River, linking interactive installations that demonstrate Poland’s leadership in renewable energy, circular economy, and ecological stewardship. Constructed with steel, wood, stone, and glass, the pavilion merges material authenticity with sustainability. A closed water cycle system replicates natural evaporation and rainfall, powering greenery and regulating humidity. The accessible green roof offers shaded paths and aerial views of Poland’s “living topography,” blending innovation with environmental harmony.

Beyond a national exhibition, the pavilion is a statement of coexistence—between people and nature, culture and technology. It celebrates Poland not through static displays, but as a breathing ecosystem where every element, from water to wind, participates in a cycle of renewal.

Instagram: @Golnarahmadi

Stay tuned for Part XI!

2025 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part IX

/in , , /by
Today’s installment of the 2025 Study Architecture Student Showcases includes exceptional capstone and thesis projects centered on public spaces. Part IX features a variety of public spaces, including marketplaces, museums, mixed-use buildings, music venues, recreation centers, and more. Each design creates an opportunity for connection and growth by promoting inclusivity, accessibility, and sustainable practices. Read more about these outstanding projects below!

Sprouting Market by Ryn Blackburn, B.S. in Architecture ’25
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Advisor: Wei Zhao

“Sprouting Market” offers the local community access to a vibrant market space set on the waters of the Tam Giang Lagoon, where many residents live on boats. Utilizing a steel space-frame structure with tensile fabric for shading, the design minimizes contact with the terrain to preserve the region’s delicate aquaculture. Fully open to its surroundings, the market allows boats and people to pass through freely or gather beneath an organically shaped roof where commercial activities and social exchanges unfold. Inspired by the traditional floating markets of the lagoon’s coast, the design reinterprets this tradition while introducing programmed and programmable spaces for both locals and visitors. 

At the heart of one leaf-like cluster is a community garden that supports food security; the opposing cluster accommodates flexible spaces for social gatherings and cultural performances. A smaller canopy structure marks the dock along the shoreline, creating both a visual and functional link between the new market and the existing onshore one. The structure is thoughtfully designed to accommodate the lagoon’s fluctuating water levels throughout the day. While portions of the central circular platform may be partially submerged, the docks are built to float, adapting seamlessly to the changing tides. More than just a marketplace, Sprouting Market is a place of connection, community, and collective growth.

The Museum of Water and Sustainability in Querétaro by Fabricio Guerra Hernández, B.Arch ‘25
Universidad Anáhuac Querétaro | Advisors: Guillermo Márquez, Patricia Cutiño & Jorge Javier

The museum is an educational and cultural initiative aimed at raising awareness about the importance of water and sustainable practices in a region increasingly impacted by water scarcity. Located in the Historic Center of Querétaro, the museum serves as a dynamic space where community members can engage with environmental issues through interactive exhibits, educational programs, and sustainable architectural design.

The mission of the museum is to promote knowledge, reflection, and active participation in water conservation and sustainable living. It integrates the historical narrative of water management in Querétaro with current global and local strategies for sustainability, creating a powerful bridge between past practices and future solutions. Through immersive experiences, the museum seeks to foster a culture of environmental responsibility, particularly among younger generations.

The design of the museum emphasizes green building principles, using renewable energy systems, rainwater harvesting, and eco-efficient materials, positioning it as a model of sustainable urban regeneration. It also functions as a research and innovation center for water-related issues, collaborating with local institutions, scientists, and environmentalists.

By addressing the complex challenges of water management and climate change, the Museum of Water and Sustainability aims to become a reference point for other regions facing similar issues. It offers not only an informative journey but also a call to action—highlighting the urgent need for collective awareness and efforts toward environmental stewardship. Ultimately, the museum stands as a beacon of hope, education, and community empowerment, contributing to the long-term resilience and sustainability of Querétaro and beyond.

Instagram: @fabriciog17, @arquitectura_anahuac, @arqwave

Folding Seoul: Reframing the Capital’s Central Station by Jungbin Sheen, B.Arch ’25
Myongji University | Advisor: Junsuk Lee

The Seoul Station is the central station of the national capital, including public buildings and plazas that are essential urban elements, and is close to several national symbols such as Sungnyemun Gate and Seoul Plaza in the former Hanyang Fortress, and serves as a node that is easily accessible from various directions using various transportation systems such as taxis, buses, and pedestrian traffic. The integrated history of Seoul Station has not fulfilled its status as the central station of the national capital, with large commercial facilities occupying most of the area, a pedestrian plaza narrowed by the horizontal expansion of the transportation system, and a lack of frontality due to the logic of civilian development. The spatial experience of the existing Seoul Station, and its circulation system, provides a sense of passing through large commercial facilities or wandering through the corridor space of the exterior staircase plaza, which we considered as a lack of symbolism in the experience of the capital’s central station. What kind of symbolism could represent ‘Seoul Station’?

The project begins with the discovery of a linear piece of land on the southeast side of Seoul Station with an odd shape. The site is privately owned and is lined with a narrow row of dilapidated neighborhood facilities, making it a place with dull development potential and a challenge in securing the symbolism and frontage of Seoul Station. Recognizing the development potential of the site, the project considers the place of ‘Seoul Station’ as a central station and proposes symbolic exterior materials and structures that encompass the spatial experience of rail passengers in the space of Seoul Station. [It also considers] the need for an urban open space where citizens who do not come to Seoul Station for the purpose of using the railroad can come and rest and spend time, through a method of expansion that demolishes only a small part of the existing structure. The Seoul Station pedestrian plaza, which was expanded by the relocation of the taxi stand, and the urban lounge, which is open to anyone regardless of their purpose of use, are separated by a curved louvered curtain derived from the form of the existing Seoul Station. It presents a white backdrop that juxtaposes the existing marginalized cultural station, Seoul 284, and the behavior of rail passengers using the interior space becomes transparent through the thin vertical structure. Depending on the inflection point of the curve and the position of the visitor, the frontality of the plaza and Seoul Station is received by the viewer as a coexistence of the white folding screen with the exterior reflection of the urban lounge.

Click here to learn more. 

Instagram: @bin__cong, @myongji_univ

Place-Reclaiming Chinatown: Repairing the Urban Landscape of Manhattan Chinatown by Katherine Shi, B.S. in Architecture ’25
University of Virginia | Advisor: Mona El Khafif

Chinatowns exist worldwide, and in nearly every major American city. Historically formed as ethnic enclaves of Chinese immigrants facing persecution from legislation such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, they have evolved into important socio-economic centers of activity and community hubs within their respective cities. New York City is home to nine Chinatowns, making it the largest center of Chinese Americans in the Western Hemisphere. However, many Chinatowns are shrinking due to urban development and gentrification, and Manhattan’s Chinatown, one of the first Chinatowns established in the US, is no exception. Asian residents and local businesses have been pushed out, resulting in closed storefronts, land loss, and displaced community members, especially following COVID-19. More significantly, there is the risk of cultural erasure as a result of these changes.

An important part of local identity, for example, is Chinatown’s distinctive use of public space, as seen in its culture of street vending and sidewalk appropriation. Columbus Park and Sara D. Roosevelt Park are some of the most important public spaces in the district. This is where residents socialize, play mahjong, exercise, and greet each other in their native tongue. However, large roadway infrastructure creates a significant and dangerous disconnect at the heart of Chinatown.

This thesis, therefore, proposes an urban design approach for Manhattan Chinatown that seeks to reconnect green spaces in a traffic-torn cultural district, provide needed social infrastructure support, and reclaim the identity of the Manhattan Bridge Plaza as a Chinatown gateway. The intention is to bring vibrancy to underutilized sites at the heart of the community, not only by preserving and celebrating Chinatown culture and history, but also by supporting residents’ way of life within a transforming district. 

Instagram: @pro_kat_stinator, @monaelkhafif

2-in-1, CULINARY CENTER AND RESEARCH HOSTEL by Julius Lin, M.Arch ’25
University of California, Berkeley | Advisor: Rene Davids

Madrid’s Plaza de España, where a culinary center and residential hostel are planned, reveals a confluence of “dry” and “wet” areas; the former is associated with buildings, while the latter is linked to a network of green spaces that connect several key areas including the Sabatini Gardens and Plaza de Oriente to the south, Casa de Campo, Campo del Moro, and Madrid Río to the west, as well as Parque del Oeste to the north. As a result, Plaza de España can be envisioned as a green gateway to a transversal network that extends from the Manzanares River into the heart of the city.

The project translated these observations into an architectural form consisting of twin towers: one transparent (wet) and the other solid (dry). The transparent building was designed for growing food and hosting public programs. In contrast, the more opaque and solid tower was intended to house a more private and enclosed hostel.

Each tower features a unique structural system. The transparent tower employs a core-based structure that maximizes openness, utilizing lightweight materials such as metal grating for the floors and an exposed I-beam grid to enhance transparency. Planters are integrated into the grid system, allowing users to harvest ingredients for educational or culinary purposes. When looking up, the ceiling reveals that these plants extend to the upper floors. Inspired by the subtle flavor of rice pudding, one of Spain’s favorite desserts —a dish with a subtle profile that features layers of flavor —the façade of the transparent tower evolved into a delicate glass curtain wall with a gradual gradient rhythm, influenced by the varying root depth that houses the rich, sensuous interior.  The opaque tower, by contrast, utilizes a regular column grid with a secondary system inspired by tree trunks that organizes the space inside, combining concrete structure, wooden partitions, and a brick façade to create a grounded and inviting atmosphere.

The pair of renderings illustrates the visual connections between the two towers. Despite their differing materials and structures, there is an intentional ambiguity at the threshold, providing glimpses, overlaps, and shared experiences between the two. 

This project was a finalist for the UC Berkeley Design Excellence Awards. 

Instagram: @julius___007, @r.davids

Vessel of Light: A Spiritual Descent into Earth by Aarsh Dipak Nandani, M.Arch ’25
New York Institute of Technology | Advisors: Marcella Del Signore & Evan Shieh

Located in São Cristóvão, a culturally diverse neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, “Vessel of Light” is a thesis project that reimagines sacred space as an inclusive, contemplative landscape rooted in the elemental and experiential. The proposal responds to the city’s layered history of religion, culture, and infrastructure, revealed through analytical mappings of population density, cultural institutions, open spaces, public services, and mobility networks.

The design expresses spirituality not through religious symbolism, but through sensory experience, shaped by the four fundamental elements: earth, air, water, and light. The entire building is embedded below ground, allowing the site’s surface to function as a fully public park, accessible to all regardless of intent to enter the space. Above ground, only skylight turrets punctuate the landscape, sculptural forms that channel daylight and natural ventilation into the interior, while symbolizing moments of vertical spiritual connection.

The single-floor subterranean structure includes spaces for prayer, meditation, ritual ceremonies, and collective gatherings. A cultural zone features classrooms, a library, workshops, an exhibition gallery, and an amphitheater, programs that serve both children and adults throughout the day. The spatial arrangement varies in scale, lighting quality, and degree of openness, allowing the building to support both individual reflection and collective activity.

The sequencing of spaces is informed by principles of centrality, progression, and spatial hierarchy, guiding visitors from more public, active areas toward increasingly quiet, inward, and sacred spaces. A matrix of geometric explorations, rooted in historical forms associated with spirituality, led to a language of hybridized shapes generated through addition and subtraction.

Materiality reinforces the elemental narrative: terracotta surfaces evoke earth; open skylights bring air and light into the heart of the structure; and two stepwells, one publicly accessible in the park, and one interior, honor water as both sacred and shared.

“Vessel of Light: A Spiritual Descent into Earth” offers a space of reflection, communion, and return, embedding sacred experience directly into the everyday life of the city.

Instagram: @aarsh_nandani, @marcelladelsi, @ev07

THE INTERLACE: CREATING SUBURBAN CONNECTIONS by Annikka Fairfield, B.Arch ’25
Kennesaw State University | Advisor: Robin Puttock

Many cities in the United States are designed based on suburban sprawl, which contributes to excessive automobile-dependency and unwelcoming streets for pedestrians, and metro Atlanta is no exception. Alpharetta, Georgia, is a growing city with the potential to become a more walkable suburban city. Alpharetta can be invigorated along specific corridors at the human scale to increase both walkability and connectivity by focusing on pedestrian wellbeing. Research shows that Biophilia’s various facets have the power to improve human wellbeing. Prospect, refuge, and presence of water were selected to guide the thesis design. Urban-scale precedents like the Beltline in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Emerald Necklace in Boston, Massachusetts, inspired The Interlace, a 17.5-mile pedestrian loop that expands upon the existing Greenway Trail and connects multiple nodes across the city. 

“The Interlace” is designed along specific corridors to significantly improve pedestrian access along roads that are currently car-oriented. Research suggested that improved pedestrian access alone will not increase walkability; destinations must also be created to encourage walking. Inspired by the Parc de la Villette in Paris, France, twenty different proposed architectural installations, also called nodes, are strategically designed along The Interlace to create destinations. Different combinations of programs are implemented in each node to support each surrounding community. The nodes are all designed with a similar materiality, inspired by Alpharetta’s history, which ties the architecture together and facilitates placemaking by creating a new identity. Five of the twenty nodes are more fully developed, featuring how prospect, refuge, and presence of water can be implemented at the architectural scale to improve pedestrian wellbeing and thus increase walkability and connectivity at the broader urban scale.

Click here to learn more.

This project was a finalist for the ​​ARCC King Student Medal.

Instagram: @annikkafairfield, @robinzputtock 

Wellness Activity Center by Angel Niemczyk, AA in Architecture ’25
Community College of Philadelphia | Advisor: Elizabeth Master

The project site was selected in central Oregon, at 45°N latitude, and within the 6a climate zone, which influences key factors such as wind directions and local flora.

The design draws inspiration from the turkey tail mushroom, featuring organic, curving shapes that promote a calming atmosphere. This architecture integrates ample natural light through large windows and skylights, enhancing well-being and reducing energy costs.

To foster a strong connection with nature, the design incorporates mushroom-inspired forms and features abundant live vegetation throughout the building and in the surrounding gardens. A park has been added to the adjacent parking lot, featuring a pathway that leads to a nearby forested trail.

Other enhancements include:

– A café with fair trade coffee and healthy snacks.

– Separate mechanical and electrical rooms on each floor for improved energy management.

– Four additional restrooms for increased capacity.

– A fire escape near the north entrance.

– A “Heritage Pavilion” inspired by Native American architecture.

– An organic produce garden and a pollinator garden to support biodiversity and collaborate with the kitchen.

The pollinator garden attracts bees and butterflies, enriching the local environment and enhancing visitors’ experiences, while the produce garden fosters growth through natural cycles, utilizing kitchen waste as fertilizer.

This project won the second-place CCCAP 2025 Student Award. 

Instagram: @ADC_CCP 

Valley Sports Complex: Sports, Recreation, and Fitness Opportunities for Every Season by Blake Douglas, M.Arch ’25
Academy of Art University | Advisor: Aurgho Jyoti

The community of Flathead County, Montana, requires an indoor recreation space. Long winters with short daylight hours significantly impact the community’s ability to be active and recreate through winter months and shoulder seasons. Snow is on the ground for up to eight months of the year, limiting available outdoor recreation opportunities. The winter climate also has an impact on mental wellness, as seasonal depression due to a lack of sunlight is common. Combined with a lack of recreation opportunities, the community would be well served to have a place to commune and interact throughout the winter season. Montana is known for its rugged and beautiful landscape; the built environment should respect and respond to that. The structure of the building will be locally sourced mass timber, and the overall form will be respectful to the context in which it sits. A sports center that will respect the landscape, enhance a sense of community, and provide recreation.

This project received the M.Arch Thesis Award. 

Click here to learn more.

Instagram: @b_doug_arch, @aur.architecture

The Capitol Collective: A Community Centered Creator’s Hub that Enhances the Pedestrian Experience by Ashley Miller, M.Arch ’25
Virginia Tech | Advisors: Andrew Linn, Susan Piedmont-Palladino, Paul Kelsch

“The Capitol Collective” is a community-centered creator’s hub that anchors the proposed Capitol Hill Art Trail – an alley network programmed to enhance local beauty and promote community pride. Located in one of the most walkable cities in the United States, Washington, D.C., this thesis explores pedestrian environments that are deemed ‘the best’ according to the District’s Pedestrian Friendliness Index (PFI), with a focus on the Capitol Hill neighborhood. While dozens of blocks in the area are ranked within the top 1,000 of the District, several others are deemed less desirable. This begs the question: what constitutes an ideal pedestrian environment, and how can we as designers contribute to creating architecture that thoughtfully integrates with, and improves upon, the pedestrian experience? 

Observing and documenting street conditions of both higher and lower-ranked blocks demonstrated that blocks with higher rankings embraced the walker’s experience by incorporating programs such as sidewalk cafes and restaurants, inviting transit plazas, playgrounds, outdoor markets, and more. Through this initial research, a scope of roughly twenty-seven blocks was identified as an area that could be improved upon. The existing area has the foundation for a flourishing, walkable hub for the community, but it currently lacks the inviting qualities that its neighboring blocks have. This thesis proposes to fill these gaps through the built environment by creating a programmed art trail that is anchored through a community workshop and residence. 

The Capitol Collective’s mission is to build community through creation. At the heart of the project are the wood shop and metal fabrication lab, which are open to all community members. There are also classrooms where individuals can learn from one another, a tool library where locals can rent out items, and studio spaces for local recurring artists. The ground floor of the newly constructed building also boasts a cafe and warehouse-like spaces for local artists to set up and sell their goods. Levels two through three of the new construction building are programmed with affordable housing that prioritizes individuals who are committed to improving and supporting the local community.

This project received the WAAC Thesis Award. 

Click here to learn more.

Instagram: @ashley.miller15, @VT_WAAC

The Voids of the Forgotten: Stories Layered in Unmaking by Sophie Hutton, BFA in Architecture’25
James Madison University | Advisor: Dylan Krueger

This thesis begins not with the act of making, but with the act of unmaking—a journey into the forgotten, the overlooked, and the lost.

Architecture is often thought of as something permanent—something that stands tall against time. But what if the first gesture in design was not to assert, but to dissolve? What if architecture could listen, rather than impose? What if the act of unmaking could be the beginning of creation?

Unmaking is a meditation on impermanence. It is about architecture that dissolves instead of dominates, about creating spaces that listen to the land rather than claim it. To unmake is not destruction. It is revelation. It is peeling back the layers of time to expose what has been buried. To make visible the hidden histories, the suppressed memories, and the erasures that still resonate beneath the soil. Architecture, in this sense, is not a monument to permanence but a vessel for memory, decay, and regeneration.

This exploration centers on a forgotten history, one hidden beneath the surface of Central Park, New York, where Seneca Village once stood—a thriving minority community in the 19th century, full of life, resilience, and faith. But it was erased, displaced under the guise of progress. Beneath the park’s manicured lawns lies a history that has yet to be remembered.

The design is centered around three areas in the park, each a meditation on memory, erasure, and reclamation. These speculative site plans visualize futures shaped by absence: nature overtaking roads, forgotten street grids returning, memory lines resisting imposed order. Each is an act of unmaking—a gesture toward revealing what has been hidden and allowing the land to speak again.

Unmaking is not failure, but resistance and revelation. It asks us to design with the rhythm of life. To unmake is to remember.

This project won the James Madison University Thesis Prize.  

Instagram: @sopharcd, @dylan.things

DESIGNING FOR THE SENSES: HARNESSING LIGHT, TRANSPARENCY, AND VISUAL CONNECTIVITY TO CREATE RESPONSIVE ARCHITECTURE FOR THE DEAF COMMUNITY by Jennifer Pennington, M.Arch ’25
Florida A&M University | Advisors: George Epolito, Andrew Chin

This thesis explores how architectural design can be thoughtfully informed by Deaf space principles to create environments that enhance navigation, communication, and inclusivity for the Deaf community. Centered on the strategic application of light, transparency, and visual porosity, the project seeks to dismantle spatial and sensory barriers that often leave Deaf individuals navigating spaces that fail to support their lived experiences.

The research focuses on designing a community hub in Tallahassee, Florida—an inclusive space that promotes visibility, intuitive movement, and social connection. Current architectural practices frequently neglect Deaf users, resulting in spaces that are visually fragmented or lack necessary cues for spatial awareness. This study responds by investigating design strategies that prioritize visual access, clear sightlines, and unobstructed circulation.

Using Deaf space design theory as a foundation, the project integrates spatial transparency and natural light to support non-verbal communication, while employing visual rhythm and layered spatial relationships to guide users organically through the environment. Through case studies, spatial analysis, and architectural modeling, the research establishes a set of principles for creating spaces that do not merely accommodate but actively empower Deaf individuals.

The resulting design envisions a community hub that is both functionally accessible and emotionally enriching—encouraging interaction within the Deaf community while also inviting greater engagement with the broader public. In doing so, the thesis advocates for a more holistic and humane architectural practice, one that values sensory diversity as a driver for innovation and social equity.

 Instagram: @famu_masterofarch, @famusaet

The Last Lookout by Keaton Bruce, M.Arch ’25
Temple University | Advisors: Sally Harrison, Jeffrey Nesbit & Kate Wingert-Playdon

Our forest has been completely designed.

The production of artificial boundaries, unassuming objects, and pervasive cultural imaginaries, the United States Forest Service constructs American forests in the image of a naturalized occupying state. Contemporary architecture, in its reliance on this manufactured forest, sustains violent neoliberal fantasies of displacements disguised as world-saving visions of productivity and progress.

So how might we imagine the future of architecture, of our forest, of resistance? If the National Forest Service is a tool of an occupying state, a new vision of the forest is delayed until the current system of commodification and nationalization is dismantled. The project speculates on a final form – the last lookout – and asks how this end can be just as valuable as a beginning in realizing a new future – an architecture after the Forest Service.

Based on the Multi-Use Sustained-Yield Act of 1960, which set forth five productivity mandates for USFS-managed lands (watershed, logging, recreation, range, and wildlife), the project satirizes five architectural endings of the forest: the MAUSOLEUM, the PENITENTARY, the MUSEUM, the COMMONS, and the AFTERLIFE. Each forest rendered in plan, perspective, and physical model investigates the symbiotic relationship between forest imaginary, architectural vessel, urban form, and political agency in an acontextual superimposition on the Oregon State Capitol Complex.

The forest we inherit need not be the forest we leave behind, but the forest we ultimately construct must be the forest we imagine.

Concourse on 5th by Maverick Santos & Luke Slay, M.Arch ’25
University of Texas at Austin | Advisor: Matt Fajkus

“Concourse on 5th” is a bold reimagining of downtown Austin’s civic landscape, designed to facilitate the city’s cultural vibrancy and active urban lifestyle. Strategically placed at the intersection of 5th Street and Guadalupe, the project redefines the role of circulation by transforming it into an “activated concourse” — a connective public platform that links a performance theater, community recreation spaces, and residences within a single cohesive building. By layering programs that operate on varied cycles, the building sustains continuous activity, becoming a dynamic place that serves diverse users throughout the day and night.

Located adjacent to Republic Square, the site capitalizes on its proximity to green space to prioritize the pedestrian experience. The theater’s monumental entry sequence, directly facing the park, establishes a strong civic presence and a sense of arrival. Along Guadalupe Street, the entrance to the community center is activated by an exterior stair that ascends to the elevated podium, where a running track and green spaces extend the square, promoting public engagement and visual transparency. The lightly articulated facade along this edge offers curated glimpses into the building’s interior, where warm wood finishes and the vertical ascent of a rock-climbing wall become visible markers of internal activity. On the 6th Street edge, the residential tower entrance is discreetly integrated alongside a highly visible sports court, reinforcing the project’s active interface with the city.

Internally, the theater is defined by sweeping, sculptural wood forms that foster a close and immersive relationship between audience and performance. The contrast between the refined urban exterior and the expressive, tactile interior enhances the experience within the project. The recreation program complements the performance spaces through its strategic integration, featuring moments where the climbing wall ascends along the theater’s edge, connecting multiple floors and drawing visual continuity between arts and athletics. 

The project challenges conventional typologies of event venues, which often remain unoccupied outside of peak hours. Instead, Concourse on 5th activates its circulation zones as multifunctional social spaces. Vertical and horizontal circulation paths double as areas for spontaneous interaction, bridging programs and communities. In the atrium, patrons exiting a performance might encounter climbers in motion or glimpse a yoga class underway; a choreography of simultaneous experience. This overlap fosters moments of connection and shared occupation, elevating the concourse from mere infrastructure to an essential part of the building’s public life.

Ultimately, Concourse on 5th functions as a hybrid space, serving as a platform for art, recreation, and everyday life. It reclaims space in downtown Austin for collective use through a design rooted in transparency, spatial porosity, and programmatic overlap. The project reimagines how architecture can enable continuous activation, creating a vibrant and inclusive environment that adapts to the city it serves.

This project was a finalist for the UT Design Excellence Award.

Instagram: @mikhail.maverick, @luke_slay01, @mf.architecture

The Natatorium and the Wall by Grace Kotomi Owens, B.Arch ’25
Mississippi State University | Advisors: Jassen Callender, David Buege, Mark Vaughan, Aaron White & David Perkes

Pools are about floating and swimming; they are about feeling the water, feeling its temperature, its resistance to our movements, its weight, and our weightlessness. They are undoubtedly experiential destinations. In our increasingly digital world, I began this project hoping a natatorium in downtown Jackson, MS, would simultaneously bring people together and provide a place for people to be present, a place of focus and sanctuary. 

As the semester progressed, my project became about many things.  

My initial explorations were about void space. I find it insufficient to say that architecture creates space — it instead divides and thereby gives identity to and further defines the “empty” space that is already there.  

There was one question that I consistently asked myself in designing the natatorium: how close do two surfaces have to be for people to feel the space between them?  Voids became a bit of an obsession: the implied void of ribbon of windows wrapping the west and south facades, the unusual entry sequence in the void of the west elevation, the void behind the square window, the unoccupiable spaces of light wells and sculpture pockets seen in plan, the conical void of the south elevation, and of course, the void of the pool… negative space – present tangibly and intangibly throughout.  

This project also led me to explore architecture’s contribution to the city.  Designing a natatorium – a fairly suburban building in its standard form – for an urban context… This became an incredible challenge.  

My desire to meaningfully contribute to the city manifested itself in the design of “The Wall,” which can be seen in my West elevation. The Wall is almost totally detached from the rest of the natatorium, joined only by the cuboidal space protruding from the wall as a square window.  The Wall serves to acknowledge the suburban scale of the program it conceals: locker rooms, restrooms, and small offices.  Without such an acknowledgement, the natatorium would be dwarfed by the surrounding context.

In the end, I designed the natatorium and its wall as a monument to the city of Jackson. 

This project was chosen for display in the McNeel Architecture Gallery. 

Instagram: @grace.kotomi, @jassencallender

Continuum Library by Joyce Lin, Ronny Nowland, Ashlyn Okazaki, Natalie Ou & Ran Shen, D.Arch ’25
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa | Advisors: Clark Llewellyn & Ferdinand Johns

In the bustling Chinese city of Shanghai, “Continuum” reimagines a forgotten infrastructural void beneath the historic Nanpu Bridge’s spiraling access ramps as a dynamic art and fashion-focused library and cultural center. Rooted in the city’s identity as a place of contrasts, where historic tradition interweaves with global innovation, Continuum explores the concept of duality through architecture, program, and materiality.

The design embraces Shanghai’s industrial heritage by preserving and exposing the structural steel elements of the site while layering contemporary interventions that reflect the city’s evolving creative identity. A long-span steel canopy nestled under the undulating descending slope of the site’s green park bridges the old and new, creating an iconic gesture that anchors the site and provides shelter for public gatherings, exhibitions, and performances.

Continuum’s program is split between traditional library services and a “+” space dedicated to fashion archives, design workshops, maker labs, and rotating gallery exhibitions. This not only supports education and creative exchange but also activates local industries and emerging designers. Public spaces flow seamlessly from interior to exterior, with open reading terraces, pop-up markets, and interactive art installations drawing pedestrians and cyclists into the space.

The project’s strategy of adaptive reuse reduces environmental impact while celebrating the poetic tension between heavy infrastructure and light cultural use. By stitching together circulation paths, layered programming, and expressive steel structure, Continuum becomes a new node in Shanghai’s civic network, a platform for exchange, creativity, and community resilience.

In a city of constant flux, Continuum offers a space for pause, reflection, and cultural production, anchored in history, yet always looking forward.

Instagram: @as.h_l.and, @joyce.lyx, @artravelersr, @natalie.xy.ou, @archawaii, @global_track_architecture

The Creative Exchange by Bridget Knudtson, Sarah Gurevitch & Jasmin Dickinson, M.Arch ’25
University of Texas at Austin | Advisor: Matt Fajkus

“The Creative Exchange” is an artist collective and performing arts theater in downtown Austin, located across from Republic Square. Designed to unify Austin’s disconnected arts scene, the project provides a hub where both locals and visitors can easily engage with the city’s vibrant cultural offerings. The raised proscenium theater, capable of accommodating a variety of performances, allows the ground level to remain entirely open to the public, ensuring it remains activated even when performances are not occurring. The design incorporates bold, angled geometries that signify the cross-pollination of ideas happening within the building. 

Central to the Creative Exchange is a grand staircase that connects all six floors of the podium, ascending from the ground floor lobby up to the theater. This staircase serves as a visual and physical cue, inviting movement upward and symbolizing the exchange of ideas and collaboration among artists. In the floors between, an artist’s collective provides studio space, a workshop, and other resources to Austin’s creative community. A perforated metal facade shields these interior spaces from direct sunlight, protecting the art inside and enhancing energy efficiency in Austin’s hot climate. 

The top floors of the podium include an asymmetrical theater design, meant to invert the hierarchies created by a traditional auditorium layout. Encasing these floors is a massive steel truss that runs along the building’s perimeter, enabling the front and back of house programs to cantilever on the north and south facades. On the Republic Square side, this cantilever creates a grand, sheltered entry and drop-off zone, while on the 6th Street side, it frames a large garden terrace, adding much-needed green space to the bustling urban context. Similar cutouts in the residential tower above provide views out to the city. 

Altogether, the building’s design effectively and efficiently fills the needs of Austin’s growing artistic community. Its distinctive visual language, innovative structural design, and careful mixing of programs establish the Creative Exchange as a clear cultural hub for the City of Austin. 

This project was nominated for a Design Excellence Award at the UT School of Architecture and was a finalist among award selections.

Instagram: @bridgetthetwin, @sarah_gurevitch, @jazzy_colors, @mf.architecture

(IN) ORDINATIO by Luis Leonardo Flores Hernández, B.Arch ’25
Tecnológico de Monterrey | Advisors: Guillermo Nieto Ross & Jorge Santos Quiroz

“Ordinatio” is an innovative architectural and urban masterplan strategically designed to transform the community of Ocoyucan in Puebla, México, by directly addressing socio-spatial segregation and fostering inclusive community integration. Positioned at the intersection of diverse socio-economic contexts, the project elegantly blends traditional urban patterns from Santa Clara Ocoyucan with the contemporary residential fabric of Lomas de Angelópolis, creating dynamic spaces for equitable interaction and communal growth.

The project’s central feature is a vibrant marketplace comprising agricultural and culinary sectors, complemented by advanced aeroponic greenhouses, significantly reducing resource consumption while directly benefiting approximately 65% of local families dependent on small-scale farming. This strategic economic and cultural hub acts as a catalyst for communal exchange, revitalizing the local economy and nurturing social cohesion.

Architecturally, Ordinatio reinterprets traditional forms through contemporary lenses, utilizing locally sourced materials and visible structural elements to promote a sense of identity and ownership among residents. The community plaza and ephemeral market spaces—framed by elegantly detailed corridors—create essential social nodes that encourage diverse community interactions and cultural activities, reactivating collective memories and traditions.

Integral to the project’s vision is the thoughtful inclusion of a multimodal mobility node, which connects public transport and cycling routes, ensuring everyday urban mobility becomes an enriching communal experience. Additionally, environmental sustainability is woven into the design through ecological restoration along the adjacent Atoyac River, creating essential green corridors and public parks that enhance biodiversity and offer restorative communal spaces.

Ordinatio exemplifies architecture’s potential as a regenerative tool, mitigating socio-economic disparities, avoiding social resentment, and promoting harmonious urban coexistence. This holistic approach not only revitalizes the urban landscape but positions Ocoyucan as a compelling model of equitable, sustainable, and community-driven urban development.

Click here for a closer look.

This project was exhibited at ITESM University’s national architecture festival, “How Space Can?” It was also selected to be presented at EXPO EAAD.

Instagram: @luish_137, @arq.pue.tec

Vortex Theater by Joshua Jolly, M.Arch ’25
Pennsylvania State University | Advisor: Ute Poerschke

The project task was to design a theatre in-the-round as an addition to the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia.

“Vortex Theater” — This design places the theatre as the eye of the storm, a tornado’s core. The central ramp becomes the force around which people, spaces, and artifacts spiral. Its continuous motion reinforces the vertical energy, pulling people into the experiences that the theater has to offer. The surrounding spaces (lobbies, rehearsal halls) act as the rotating winds, positioned in a way that reacts to the ramp’s motion. Due to the ramp’s centrality, each level has a visual sight between programs, enhancing the sense of being caught in a swirling motion and thrown out of the winds. The concept is amplified through the structure and surrounding programs. The ramp isn’t just a means of circulation; it’s the driving force of the architectural experience, pulling everything and everyone into its swirling grasp.

This project won the Design Excellence Award. 

 Instagram: @_jollyj

Stay tuned for Part X!

2025 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part VIII

/in , , /by

A city’s infrastructure has a large impact on its community. Part VIII of the 2025 Study Architecture Student Showcase features projects that reimagine infrastructure in innovative ways. With interconnectedness at the forefront, these designs re-envision highways, commuter routes, and hybrid energy sources. Each project presents a design solution that increases accessibility, promotes connection, and makes a positive difference in its respective community. 

Scroll down for a closer look at these outstanding projects!

ARC HORIZON: Anchoring Humankind’s Future in the Orbital Era by Travis Colton Taylor, B.Arch ’25
Woodbury University | Advisor: Gerard Smulevich

“Arc Horizon” is an architectural redefinition of urban fabric in response to climate change, resource scarcity, and technological evolution. Faced with desertification, migration, and the weaknesses in traditional cities, humanity shifts toward vertical urbanism and orbital expansion. Anchor site mega-structures and orbital cities form a new interconnected system, enabling rewilding on the surface, autonomous mobility, and off-world industry. This three-dimensional urban fabric transcends terrestrial limits, catalyzing a regenerative, symbiotic relationship with the planet. As the orbital economy supplants geopolitics, humanity transitions to an interplanetary species, one that thrives across Earth and orbit, united through innovation and stewardship of the planet.

This project received the Architecture Degree Project Design Excellence Award.

UNRAVEL & REWEAVE: I-794 AS MILWAUKEE’S URBAN GREEN SPINE by Sean Thiel, B.S. in Architecture ‘25
University of Virginia | Advisor: Mona El Khafif

Milwaukee’s downtown and its surrounding neighborhoods have long been divided by the I‑794 freeway spur– an aging band of concrete built in the 1960s and ‘70s that now requires immense repair costs, poses a multitude of safety hazards, and leaves vast amounts of underused land in one of Wisconsin’s most valuable urban districts. Rather than viewing the freeway simply as an obstacle, it can be reimagined as a spine around which an integrated, multi‑modal network of streets, pathways, programs, and parks can emerge and flourish, connecting the North and South on a higher level, and connecting the waterfronts that the site lies between.

Scaling back access for automobiles— removing the “spaghetti” of on‑ and off‑ramps and consolidating access eastward at the Lake Interchange —reveals hundreds of thousands of square feet for housing and commercial development, a central greenway, and pedestrian-centric infrastructure. This new land emerges as the city’s connective tissue, linking important spaces of recreation and forming a new neighborhood to stitch together the central business district of Juneau Town and the Third Ward.   

Rather than a simple removal, a negotiated balance preserves critical commuter routes that aren’t supported by the current transit system while converting a majority of the former freeway footprint into a continuous open space connecting the greenspaces of the Milwaukee Riverfront to the state and county parks on the Shores of Lake Michigan. Housing, shops, cafés, and cultural venues step down to human scale at street level; the space beneath the elevated roadways becomes reclaimed for the city and bridges the gap between the freeway spur and the neighborhoods it divides. These new buildings integrate parking garages that are directly accessible from the I-794 overpass, allowing vehicles to enter and exit without encroaching on street-level activity. This approach helps relegate car traffic away from pedestrian spaces, promoting a vibrant street life and encouraging ‘park-and-walk’ rather than driving directly to one’s destination. Transit stops and bike hubs nestle at key intersections, linking bus and rail lines to pedestrian pathways that flow seamlessly into adjacent neighborhoods.

This symbiosis stitches together the city’s disconnected urban grid, transforming the concrete barriers into green corridors and crafting connectivity between people, place, and nature. Instead of a unimodal freeway, I‑794 becomes an interconnected downtown system where pedestrian mobility, outdoor recreation, and a new community thrive.

Instagram: @sean.thiel, @smt_arch, @monaelkhafif

Energy Networks: Stitching Infrastructure through Land & Water by Neha Mudu & Sarvesh Joshi, M.Arch ’25
New York Institute of Technology | Advisors: Marcella Del Signore & Evan Shieh

[This] proposal envisions a renewable energy power plant designed to act as a resilient backup system for Rio de Janeiro’s industrial zones, addressing the city’s recurring power outages while supporting long-term sustainable urban development. The design responds not only to the functional need for energy resilience but also to the environmental and social challenges faced by rapidly urbanizing coastal cities.

At the heart of the project is a hybrid energy infrastructure that integrates four key renewable sources — hydroelectric, geothermal, solar, and wind. These systems are carefully sited and layered across the landscape, forming a continuous network that blends with both the urban and natural context. The infrastructure is not hidden away, but exposed and celebrated, functioning as both a power-generating engine and a public experience.

A central feature of the project is a spine-like elevated pedestrian walkway. This linear path connects the energy-producing nodes across the site, guiding movement and interaction while educating the public about sustainable energy systems. The walkway is embedded with piezoelectric panels that convert foot traffic into electricity, symbolizing how everyday public activity can contribute to a collective energy future.

Along this spine, key programmatic zones unfold — including educational centres, community spaces, research pods, and waterfront public areas. The project becomes more than a utility; it transforms into a civic landscape where infrastructure, technology, and people converge.

By treating renewable energy infrastructure as a public asset, this proposal aims to blur the boundaries between utility and urban experience. It supports energy independence, encourages public engagement, and creates a resilient framework that can adapt to future environmental and social needs.

This project was featured in the NYC X DESIGN Presentation Showcase.

Instagram: @nehamudu, @sarveshjoshi2697, @ev07, @marcelladelsi

ELEVATE: Rethinking Urban Mobility Infrastructure by  Luke Stefanchik, B.Arch ’25
New York Institute of Technology | Advisor: Farzana Gandhi

Cities around the world are removing or decking over their highways in favor of linear parks and boulevards. Is this enough to repair decades of damage caused by highways and car-centric infrastructure? We need to develop a new typology that weaves public transit with community services and adaptive reuse, and bridges the divide created by highways. New public transit projects in NYC and innovations in architecture and infrastructure provide an opportunity to rethink the city’s existing transit corridors. [This project redevelops] the intersection of the sunken Brooklyn-Queens Expressway with the elevated Hell Gate rail bridge along Astoria Boulevard between Steinway Street and 43rd Street in Queens. This is a densely-populated and diverse area that lacks recreation and community spaces, and was split in half by the highway. 

Right now, two different projects plan to make use of the railway — Metro-North’s Penn Station Access and MTA’s Interborough Express — which is currently only used by Amtrak and freight trains. Merging these projects creates an opportunity to develop this new typology. I am proposing to add two bus rapid transit lanes to the BQE for the M60 bus to LaGuardia Airport. At street level, the expressway will be decked over to create a park with exhibition and performance spaces for local artists. A section of the bridge will be torn down and rebuilt with modern, lightweight materials to support a new train station for the Metro-North, Amtrak, and Interborough Express. The space under the bridge will house prefabricated, modular workshops for local artisans to create and sell their work. Sustainable aspects incorporated into the project include hanging vegetation, solar canopies, and retrofitted shipping containers in the park. This hub will bridge the divide created by the expressway and serve as a catalyst for future transit design.

Click here to learn more. 

This project received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Architecture and was featured during the 2025 NYIT Symposium of University Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE) and the 2025 NYCxDesign Festival.

Instagram: @luke.js, @fg_architecture

The SVX Pavilion: EL Salvador At Expo 2030 by Elaine Bonilla-Villatoro, B.Sc. in Architecture ’25
University of the District of Columbia | Advisor: Golnar Ahmadi

The SVX Pavilion, designed for Expo 2030 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, symbolizes El Salvador’s bold leap into a digital and sustainable future. Rooted in an expressive steel structure, the pavilion expresses a national identity through architectural elements, merging cultural roots with the country’s adoption of Bitcoin as a legal tender, which makes it the first nation to do so.

Inspired by the Ceiba tree, the pavilion features branching rolled steel columns that rise continuously from the ground floor to the roof and support a canopy and the glazed roof, which allows the spaces to be filtered with desert light. These structural columns shape the main circulation spaces and frame key exhibition zones while representing strength and interconnectedness, a metaphor for El Salvador’s digital network. A golden perforated panel facade references blockchain technology’s traditional craft and digital mesh, creating a visual connection between the past and future.

At its core, the SVX Pavilion includes the Bitcoin Lounge and Innovation Hub, with holographic displays representing El Salvador’s digital economy. These spaces offer a platform for education, interaction, and diplomacy while inviting global visitors to reflect on how emerging technologies shape sovereign futures and redefine national narratives.

Surrounding the pavilion, the “Digital Forest Garden” combines native Salvadoran plants that can adapt to Riyadh’s desert climate. This makes the futuristic structure belong in nature and promotes ecological resilience. The landscape is a metaphor for sustainable adaptation and a thermal buffer that enhances passive climate control.

Steel is not only the structural core of the SVX Pavilion but also a symbol of strength, modularity, and meaningful possibilities. Its use enables rapid fabrication and bold sculptural identity, which supports the project’s narrative of innovation and transformation. The SVX Pavilion is more than a national exhibition. It is a statement of El Salvador’s emerging role in the global dialogue on technology and sovereignty.

Instagram: @golnarahmadi

Stay tuned for Part IX!

2025 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part VI

/in , , /by

Today’s installment of the 2025 Student Showcase highlights projects with a focus on landscape and agriculture. Part VI features student work that takes place in diverse settings, including New Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Alaska, and more. Each project utilizes architecture as a tool to promote sustainability, social equity, and community resilience. 

Scroll down for a closer look at these outstanding student projects!

The Agrarian City by Aneesha Muthuraj & Rajni Kathiriya, M.Arch ‘25
New York Institute of Technology | Advisors: Marcella del Signore & Evan Shieh

In a time when urban centers face growing food insecurity and rural traditions risk being forgotten, architecture has the potential to bridge the gap between cultural heritage and contemporary urban challenges. 

This project began with two key questions: 

  • How can architecture reconnect Brazil’s deep agrarian identity with its current urban food insecurity?
  • And how can we transform abandoned structures into systems that grow food, share knowledge, and empower local communities?

 From these questions, “The Agrarian City” was born, a design framework that proposes scaffolding systems and modular toolkit insertions to retrofit unused buildings into vertical teaching farms. These structures not only produce food but also serve as platforms for education, skill-building, and community gathering. 

Our pilot site in São Cristóvão, Rio de Janeiro, is rooted in the principles of adaptive reuse, seasonal crop planning, and integrated spatial systems that blur the lines between agriculture, learning, and public life. By treating architecture as an evolving, regenerative system rather than a static form, the project aims to demonstrate how the built environment can support ecological restoration, food justice, and social empowerment. At its core, The Agrarian City is about growing, reusing, and educating, rethinking the role of architecture as a living system that cultivates resilience and belonging within the urban fabric.

Instagram: @aneesha_muthuraj, @ev07, @marcelladelsi

Nuclear Landscapes of New Mexico by Amanda Champion, Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA)’25
University of New Mexico | Advisors: Catherine Page Harris, Chris Wilson, Nora Wendl & Dr. Myrriah Gomez

Champion (MLA 2025) investigated Acid Canyon, Los Alamos, NM, through her master’s project, making visible water moving plutonium through public recreational landscapes into the Rio Grande. Champion wrote, “The landscapes of nuclear sites, both historic and contemporary, are designed spaces that tell specific stories about the societies we live in. Whether highly visible industrial infrastructure or naturalistic spaces touched by the invisible yet toxic hand of radiation, these landscapes are woven into the fabric of the New Mexican landscape … Many of these landscapes are unknown due to the intentional secrecy of the federal government around the nuclear weapons industry.”

This project received a master’s distinction.

Instagram: @a_man_dog, @cph_landart

Roots and Rails by Alyssa Ascani, Naomi Metzger & Siraphat Sukarom, M.Arch ’25
New York Institute of Technology | Advisors: Marcella Del Signore & Evan Shieh

“Roots and Rails” is a design thesis focused on reimagining food distribution infrastructure in Brazil at a micro scale, specifically in the São Cristóvão neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro. The project addresses issues of food insecurity, infrastructure inequality, and community disconnection, proposing a local food network.

Brazil is a major exporter of agricultural goods, but simultaneously imports rising amounts of processed food. In neighborhoods like São Cristóvão, this results in food deserts and traffic congestion from export-driven transport. Mapping studies revealed that large portions of the population live beyond walkable distances to grocery stores, especially in dense areas like favelas.    

Our solution transforms underutilized land and divides urban infrastructure, specifically the railway corridor, into a linear public food system. We identified three vacant or unproductive sites along the railway and connected them with a continuous “spine” built above the tracks. This elevated path hosts production, consumption, exchange, and celebration programs, forming the core of a new community-based food network.

The spine includes community gardens, open markets, dining areas, and public spaces. It is accessible via existing pedestrian bridges and integrates with surrounding neighborhoods, connecting local businesses, bars, restaurants, and homes. The spine’s design allows programs to “bleed” into adjacent areas, transitioning from large-scale infrastructure to neighborhood-scale interventions.

Gardens are divided into private, communal, and market plots, with varied sizes to serve individuals, families, and elders. These plots supply fresh produce to local vendors and cafes located along the spine, and excess goods can be distributed via the adjacent railway. Additional elements include amphitheaters, educational classrooms, seed exchange hubs, and compost stations.

A management team oversees garden plot rentals, market operations, and waste management. Organic waste is collected, composted, and returned as fertilizer, creating a sustainable loop that reduces pollution and supports local agriculture.

Roots and Rails reclaim neglected infrastructure to serve the local community, transforming a divisive element of the city into a unifying, productive space. The project not only tackles food insecurity but also fosters local economies, environmental sustainability, and community resilience through thoughtful urban design

Instagram: @ascaniarchitecture, @naomilewinter, @pattapsp, @ev07, @marcelladelsi

Reimagining Concon Estuary: Reclaiming Concon With Community-Led Catalysts by Mutita (Maeve) Ouk, Vicky Sindac Gomez, Daisy Castro & Qingyi (Eva) Gan, M.S. Architecture and Urban Design (MSAUD) ’25
Columbia University | Advisors: Kate Orff, Geeta Mehta, Sebastian Delpino, Gabriel Vergara, Emanuel Admassu & Lucas Coelho Netto

What if the Concon Estuary and the surrounding wetland ecosystem were restored to enhance the well-being of local flora, fauna, and community?

The Concon Estuary, located in the coastal region of Valparaiso, Chile, is a vital transitional zone between the Aconcagua River and the Pacific Ocean. It boasts rich biodiversity and a dynamic landscape that constantly changes throughout the days, seasons, and years– where river meanders, ocean tides fluctuate, sediment flows, and birds are free to come and go. However, human activities, including urban development, pollution from the ENAP oil refinery, the Asfalcom cement factory, sand mining, waste dumping, and unregulated recreational activities, have placed significant pressure on the ecosystem. This constant resource extraction and exploitation has led to more frequent and intense storm surges, increased flood risks due to rising sea levels, habitat loss, saltwater intrusion, shifting river course, and unregulated activities. 

ENAP, the primary polluter, contributes little to the local economy. Locals rely on small businesses along the beach that are poorly constructed and are exposed to flood risks due to the abrupt transition between the coastline and the urban area. Given Chile’s policy goals of replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and the risk of sea level rise, we envision a future where ENAP is gradually phased out, paving the way for sustainable energy sources. Throughout this transition, the existing industrial structures and operations will be integrated into the design process to mitigate pollution and environmental impacts. Additionally, sand mining will be banned to facilitate the regeneration of the wetland ecosystem and restore its natural space. This will also create new job opportunities, supporting a more resilient and sustainable way of life for the community.

Click here to learn more.

Instagram: @mutita.ouk.arch, @vsg.arch, @dyc_urbdesign, @gsapp_aud, @mehtageeta999, @gabrielvergarag, @sdelpino_arq, @eadmassu, @lucascoelhonetto

Mount Baker Urban Farm [CLT Cannibalism Studio] by David Oluwamayowa Asokeji, M.Arch ’25
University of Washington | Advisor: Susan Jones

“Mount Baker’s Urban Farm” is a transformative community-based project that confronts food insecurity and economic disinvestment in Seattle’s Black and African American neighborhoods. Designed as a local response to systemic inequities in food access, the project reimagines urban agriculture as both a cultural anchor and a platform for environmental resilience.

At its heart is the Cassava plant—an essential staple crop widely used across West Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America. Known for its versatility and low-waste processing, cassava becomes both the functional and symbolic backbone of the farm. The crop supports not only flour-based food production but also textile, paper, and material research initiatives, making it a dynamic resource for community-building and circular design.

This urban farm integrates a greenhouse, processing plant, teaching kitchen, community food bank, textile fabrication studio, and a public-facing retail space. Together, these programs create a closed-loop system of cultivation, education, and empowerment. The design fosters hands-on learning through cooking classes and sustainable farming workshops, while simultaneously supporting food relief through onsite distribution.

An open-air courtyard anchors the project, acting as a communal gathering space and visible nexus of exchange. Here, architecture supports transparency, wellness, and social cohesion—inviting the public into the often-hidden processes of food production and collective stewardship.

More than just a farm, Mount Baker’s Urban Farm positions architecture as a tool for social equity, ecological intelligence, and economic resilience. It exemplifies how built environments can honor cultural heritage, activate underutilized spaces, and nourish both people and place.

Click here to learn more.

Instagram: @davidasokeji_0, @dbaarchitecture, @atelierjones

Equinox House: Contextual Materiality of a Residence by Austin Small, B.S. in Architecture ’25
University of Virginia | Advisor: Peter Waldman

Rabbit Lake, southeast of Anchorage, Alaska, is a peacefully calm, yet brutally intense landscape tucked into a corner of the Chugach Mountains. Reaching the lake involves a two-mile hike from the nearest road access point after driving 10 miles out of the city. Sitting higher than the alpine line, roughly 3200ft above sea level, the lake and its surrounding mountains are void of trees; the shores instead are dotted with shrubs and littered with rocks that have been shed in avalanches over the years. 

One half of the project sits atop a bluff on the western bank, bridging a creek fed by the lake: this is the summer house. Across the lake, directly to its east and braced into the mountain behind, lies the opposing winter house. The two dwellings are connected by their compass alignment and the journey made between them; one that the project proposes is initiated by the solar path on both the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. With one window in both structures directly facing the other, the sunrise and sunset on the equinoxes act as a seasonal sundial, initiating the changeover journey between winter and summer. 

A more immediate indication of movement, the long covered bridge of the summer dwelling is a kinetic structure proposing a blend of interior and exterior. The glass walls on each side of the bridge are designed to rotate and open upward, transforming the span into a livable breezeway. While the Western dwelling is light, breathable, and tectonic, the Eastern house is a burly cave in contrast. Made from the stone found on site, [its] thick walls and a centrally located hearth offer protection and comfort from the sub-zero temperatures of the winter months. The protective western wall guards the structure from harsh winds coming off the lake, while the clerestories of the saw-toothed roof take in as much of the minimal daylight as possible and offer views of the “Aurora Borealis” in the northern night sky.

In an attempt to design a house precisely unique to its setting, this project proposes a response both to the seasonally extreme nature of Rabbit Lake and to the traditional Alaskan lifestyle, a way of living that is intrinsically exterior. The proposal imagines a cast of characters: a nomadic countryman with a possible family, living off the land and lake as much as possible, and maintaining the dwellings in a simple and slow lifestyle by returning to nature. As a result of the drastic seasonal differences in both light and temperature, the project splits the home into two respective dwellings, living not only on the site but with the site; allowing the landscape, and interaction thereof, to complete the proposed design.

This project received the Highest Honors for the 2025 Fourth Year Thesis at the UVA School of Architecture.

Stay tuned for Part VII!

2025 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part I

/in , , /by
Welcome to the 2025 Study Architecture Student Showcase!
Over the summer, we asked architecture faculty around the world to celebrate graduating students whose work embodies excellence in architectural education. The submitted theses, projects, and capstones reflect the various skills and concepts that are taught in architecture schools. With the Fall semester in full swing, we are excited to share these outstanding projects with you over the next few weeks.
With topics ranging from Infrastructure and Equity to Sustainability and Housing, each project has the power to inspire current and future architecture students. Tune in every Tuesday and Thursday to browse a collection of outstanding student work.
Today’s showcase features projects that explore different elements of education. From Pre-K through 8th-grade Montessori schools to university campuses and vocational schools, these designs capture the variety of educational venues. Each project provides design solutions that address diverse student needs, community well-being, safety, learning conditions, and more.

Transforming Trios: Typologies for Adaptive Education, Safety, and Community by Sheen Wang,  BS Architecture ‘25
University of Virginia | Advisor: Mona El Khafif

At Hutchison Beach Elementary in Panama City Beach, Florida, students adapt how they learn in response to their changing environment. Situated in a coastal, tourist-centered community along the Gulf of Mexico, the school frequently endures hurricanes and severe storms. With no dedicated community centers, schools here serve as storm shelters—often without enough space to meet demand.

This presents a unique design opportunity. The school’s campus includes numerous portable classrooms, originally meant as temporary solutions to overcrowding. Typically built at minimal cost, these structures are often uncomfortable and unsafe. But at Beach Elementary, there’s a shift: these portables are being reimagined as flexible, collaborative spaces where students and teachers co-create their learning environments to foster joy and exploration.

In a place defined by constant change, this thesis asks: How can a new, adaptive typology for portable classrooms support education, shelter, and community in one modular space? How can it integrate with existing school structures while engaging the surrounding landscape? How might these units aggregate both horizontally and vertically to form larger spaces?

This thesis proposes modular, adaptive structures that meet programmatic needs—education, safety, and community—while responding to the site’s outdoor uses, from wetlands to playgrounds to sports fields. The architectural skin of each module supports both interior and exterior use, enabling hybrid, temporary programming that flexes with the rhythms of the school and environment.

Instagram: @sheen.w_, @monaelkhafif

Descubre Cultural Academy by  Leonardo Sánchez Jiménez, B.Arch ’25
Universidad Anáhuac Querétaro | Advisors: Guillermo Márquez, Patricia Cutiño & Jorge Javier

This architectural project is part of the development of cultural spaces as a tool for strengthening the social fabric and preserving intangible heritage in historic urban contexts. The proposal seeks to contribute to the access and dissemination of artistic expression, fostering community participation and dialogue between tradition and contemporaneity. This type of intervention is essential in areas with heritage value, as it promotes the sustainable use of the built environment, activates cultural and social dynamics, and strengthens local identity, all in alignment with urban development and cultural conservation policies.

Through an analysis of the project’s intentions for the community, a concept was developed that seeks to encompass the actions, artistic expression, and experiences that the project is expected to generate and provide to its users. The words discovery and rediscovery are defined as the act of finding, identifying, or exploring something that was ignored or went unnoticed; in the case of rediscovery, it is the same, but something that was thought to be forgotten, hidden, or undervalued. These terms imply not only the revelation of unknown or rediscovered aspects but also a new appreciation or perspective on what has been rediscovered. It is a process that combines memory and innovation, inviting us to reinterpret and value elements of the past in a contemporary context. It goes hand in hand with the type of user who experiences it, whether local or outside the neighborhood.

However, it is possible to create a route that allows both locals and outsiders to gain an insight into these spaces, with the aim of awakening curiosity and passion for the neighborhood’s identity and tradition, thanks to elements that frame specific spaces in the context, as well as plays of heights, levels, and terraces that allow for distinct views that perhaps is not commonly appreciated as they should be.

Instagram: @leosanj05, @asili.arq, @arquitectura_anahuac, @arqwave

The 5-Minute School by Anoushka Sarkar, BS Architecture ‘25
University of Virginia | Advisor: Mona El Khafif

Set in Fairhill, Philadelphia – a neighborhood affected by historic disinvestment in education, high vacancy rates, and limited public infrastructure, “The 5-Minute School” explores how education can be embedded into the everyday fabric of the city. Rather than designing a single school building, the project proposes a network of public learning spaces within a 5 to 10 minute walking and biking radius, transforming vacant urban lots into active, community-driven educational sites.

At the center of the proposal is the site of the former Fairhill Elementary School, closed since 2013, reimagined as a multi-generational learning center with wings dedicated to food and ecology, the arts, technology, fitness, and early childhood education. The design is structured on a 20’x20′ modular grid system with interchangeable roof and façade components, allowing for flexibility, sensory variation, and user autonomy.

Radiating from the main hub are six “satellite” sites, including a rain pavilion, art park, solar garden, edible walkway, bike kitchen, and outdoor movement plaza. Each [site] offers hands-on, multi-generational, and place-specific educational opportunities. These sites are connected by a walkable and bikeable loop, which weaves through the neighborhood and links together existing community assets like libraries, rec centers, and social service organizations.

“The 5-Minute School” reimagines education as something lifelong, all around us, and capable of transforming neighborhoods into more vibrant, walkable, and healthy communities.

Anoushka received the Faculty of Architecture Award for Design Excellence for her yearlong work, including this thesis project. 

Instagram: @anoushkasarkar, @monaelkhafif

AMUSEMENT PARK by James Herlihy, Jack McGowan & Anthony Meli, M.Arch ’25
University at Buffalo | Advisor: Jin Young Song

South Korea faces the growing challenge of vertical schools, where even children as young as 2 to 5 years old attend regular classes followed by up to four additional hours at private institutions. These facilities often keep students until the late evening, intensifying stress for families and fueling social inequalities. Private educational institutions have become symbols of South Korea’s hyper-competitive educational culture, also affecting real estate markets and the urban landscape. In response, this project reimagines the vertical school as a socially engaging and visually vibrant space. Inspired by theme parks, the building emphasizes circulation and spontaneous social interactions across all floors. The façade design directly relates to both the building’s interior spaces and the vivid colors of the surrounding urban signage. Using a unitized curtain wall system, the façade incorporates angled fins, expansive windows, and transparent glass walls. A variety of fin typologies encourages playful engagement from both inside and outside the building, creating dynamic focal points. On the front elevation, glass and fins are strategically arranged to emphasize circulation routes, program elements, and to transform the building’s appearance between day and night.

This project was featured in “Cram Urbanism And Vertical Learning Space,” an international symposium and exhibition in Seoul, South Korea. 

Instagram: @arcmeli02, @jinyoung___song

University of Providence Campus and Community Visioning by Harrison Bluestein, Andrew Rosenberg, Kiki Simmons & Nick Tournour, M.Urban Design & B.Arch. ’25
University of Miami | Advisor: Joanna Lombard

Nearly 100 years ago, the Sisters of Providence, the Ursuline Sisters, the Catholic Bishop of Great Falls and the Great Falls community began to integrate their educational vision with the unique ministries that had developed from the earliest years of the Sisters of Providence’s founding of a hospital and school in 1892 and 1894, respectively. Building on this early relationship of shared commitment to an academic and community-based education, the University of Miami Urban Design studio opened with analysis of the current form, historic architecture, as well as the social and physical context of the campus and Great Falls community to explore the potential for the physical campus to plan for a future that expresses the founding mission of integration and advancement and contributes to the future flourishing of university and the community of Great Falls. The student teams worked in collaboration with University of Providence leadership, faculty and students to develop prototypes for how the physical environment could most effectively frame and support the campus and community in the coming decades.

Studio-based multidisciplinary investigations and collaborations with leading professionals and a continuity of communication throughout the semester enabled rapid response as ideas were proposed, analyzed, developed and refined. This dynamic exploration was conducted with the Providence St. Joseph Health and University of Providence team members, as well as Great Falls advisers, resulting in a penultimate presentation at the end of the semester, after which the work was organized into a slide presentation that can be utilized by the University of Providence.

Instagram: @hb23_, @andrewrosenberg7, @u_soa

Pathways to Possibilities: Montessori, re-imagined and expanded for every path in life by Melanie Nin, B.Arch ’25
Kennesaw State University | Advisor: Robin Puttock

“Pathways to Possibilities” explores the importance of establishing a Montessori Pre-K through 8th-grade school for a large population of children, highlighting the unique challenges they face in accessing an education that meets their fundamental needs. By incorporating Montessori design principles and learning theories, the proposed school aims to create an inclusive, supportive environment that fosters self-directed learning, creativity, and social engagement. It advocates expanding the Montessori model to a larger school that fosters an inclusive environment that supports diverse students’ needs.

Thesis Question:

How can Montessori learning theory and design principles be implemented in a large-scale public school to provide an innovative school in Norcross, GA, that expands the accessibility of Montessori education to a larger community?

Problem:

Students face several challenges when trying to attend Montessori schools, including cost, lack of information, cultural and language barriers, and limited access.

Solution:

To expand the current Montessori model into a vibrant, inclusive learning community where every child can grow and thrive.

Hypothesis:

Designing flexible learning spaces that follow the 10 Montessori Principles while optimizing space efficiency.

Click here to learn more.

This project was selected as a Thesis Semi-finalist (Top 20 of 90+).

Instagram: @melaniespov, @robinzputtock

Crosswing Hall: a Biophilic Student Hub for Well-Being and Connection by Marianna Sanchez, B.Arch ’25
Kennesaw State University | Advisor: Robin Puttock

Crosswing Hall stands as a vibrant intersection of connection, community, and growth at Kennesaw State University’s Marietta campus. Inspired by the convergence of diverse paths and ideas, the name symbolizes both the physical design of the building—marked by angular, wing-like forms—and its purpose as a space where students and alumni come together. As a central hub, Crosswing Hall fosters interdisciplinary exchange, reduces anxiety through thoughtful design and natural elements, and cultivates lasting connections that extend beyond graduation. By providing an environment where students feel supported, engaged, and at home, Crosswing Hall strengthens campus pride, encourages meaningful relationships, and ensures that every visitor—whether a first-year student or returning alum—feels part of the university’s ongoing story.

Click here to learn more.

This project was selected as a Thesis Semi-finalist (Top 20 of 90+).

Instagram: @msg2002, @robinzputtock

Uvalde Strong: Youth and Community Center by Eric Grossman, M.Arch ’25
Academy of Art University | Advisor: Eric Reeder

The proposed Youth and Community Center in Uvalde, Texas, aims to address two tragic questions: the nature of social isolation and its ties to violence, and the nature of community healing.

On May 24th, 2022, 19 elementary school students and 2 teachers were murdered by an 18-year-old active shooter at the Robb Elementary School. The shooting directly affected 21 families and indirectly several more. Uvalde is a small town where people know each other. An uncle of one of the victims stated, “If the shooter was involved and was able to be active and play, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.” A few months later, on September 9th, 2022, two teenagers of 16 and 18 years were shot in an alleged drug deal at the same site.

Drugs and gang affiliations may also be causing increased youth gun violence, in addition to social isolation. Currently, the Uvalde area hosts few mental health resources and facilities. According to US News, “The only mental health center in the area — just blocks from Robb Elementary — was seldom used or discussed, raising worries about the lack of awareness regarding signs and symptoms of mental illness and the stigma surrounding seeking help.”

Grieving together through recreation and community has helped Uvalde begin to heal. The parents of one victim started an organization that hosts wilderness retreats for victims’ families and survivors. Residents also come together in social media groups where they can share mental health resources and express their grief. 

By bringing in places to gather as families and as a community along with being able to play, we may be able to foster more inclusion in school environments. A recreation center, community center, and place to gather can give these kids an opportunity to engage in play and change their direction. A chance to compete in sports and be a part of a team can lead children through self-discovery. Through play, children can interact with others in a positive environment. Social interaction and civic engagement can trigger some of the solutions for these issues through organized activities. The proposal is a Youth and Community Center that can facilitate these activities.

Click here to learn more. 

This proposal received the Graduate School of Architecture Prize for Outstanding Thesis Project.

Instagram: @ericreeder.architect

School of Roots by Eva Shaw, M.Arch ’25
Academy of Art University | Advisor: Eric Reeder

Sustainability must lead our educational efforts to address the planet’s pressing challenges. While complex, the issue can be met with intention and thoughtful design. This elementary school teaches sustainability through direct exposure and lived experience. Targeting elementary-aged students is intentional—Piaget’s Concrete Operational Stage marks a critical period when children form logical ideas from concrete experiences. At this stage, space and time are vital in shaping thought, making the built environment especially influential. 

“School of Roots” embraces this developmental window to cultivate future stewards of the land. Designed with a rotating visiting schedule, it serves as a learning model for other schools and opens to the public when not in use, broadening its educational impact. Located in a dense urban area in Berkeley, California, the site minimizes sprawl and transportation needs, with direct access to public transit. This ensures both environmental responsibility and community accessibility. The building includes flexible workspaces, demonstration labs, and dining areas. Its strong emphasis is on outdoor learning, which reconnects users with nature. School of Roots is a foundational effort to align education with planetary health. Engaging children at their most formative stage offers a hopeful path toward a sustainable future.

Click here to learn more. 

This design was awarded the 2025 Spring Show Prize for Outstanding M.Arch Thesis Project.

Instagram: @evashaw_architecture, @ericreeder.architect

Designing for Tomorrow: Elevating Learning and Shaping Growth by Vira Grace Williams, B.Arch ’25
Belmont University | Advisors: Tom Lowing & Dennis Daniels

As I considered my approach to this project, I reflected on O’More College’s place within Belmont University. Though it has been part of Belmont for only seven years—and its architecture program for just five—it stands as the only architecture school in Middle Tennessee. While O’More has already been shaped by Belmont’s broader vision, the university now has a unique opportunity to define a design school that sets itself apart—not just regionally, but nationally. One of the key ways O’More differentiates itself is through its mission-driven approach to design education. The question this proposal is trying to answer is: how can this renovation and expansion strengthen that identity and help position the program as a leader in design education?

One of Belmont’s 2030 initiatives is a commitment to whole-person formation—a strategic focus on academic, emotional, social, and spiritual development. This idea resonates deeply with me as I reflect on my own education. The question, then, is how the building itself can reinforce this vision while strengthening O’More’s institutional identity.

 At its core, this project is about the student experience. Design fields—whether architecture, interior design, or fashion—are often defined by long hours, intense deadlines, and constant pressure. The existing O’More building, while rich in history and character, has reached a point where expansion is not just an opportunity but a necessity. Through analyzing the Hitch building and drawing from personal experience, it was clear that the lack of spatial variety, accessibility, and common areas limited interaction between cohorts, while poor daylighting and ventilation increased energy demands. These challenges helped shape the design approach: addressing the gaps in the current spaces while creating a healthier, more supportive learning environment—one where students want to stay, work, and grow.

Architecturally, this vision takes shape through quiet areas, collaborative commons, or breakout pods. This allows the building to support social interaction and individual well-being—both essential to whole-person formation. While the project provides the necessary studios, classrooms, and presentation spaces, its true priority is ensuring that students have spaces that accommodate different working styles. By aligning the physical environment with the values of care, well-being, and connection, this addition ensures that O’More is a place where students are supported not only as designers, but as whole people.

Instagram: @vira_semkiv_design, @omore.architecture

Village for Children by Zake Bjontegard, B.Arch ’25
University of Texas at Austin | Advisor: Nichole Wiedemann

Situated near the southern border of Senegal, the Nursery School repositions early childhood education toward a community-oriented model that leverages the resilience of local materials and techniques. The school mimics vernacular village structures through careful positioning, aggregation, and a focus on interstitial space. 

In turn, the grounds form a child-centered micro-village where young children can explore a sense of freedom and agency within a managed system. The askew masses showcase a necklace of indistinguishable “hut-like” classrooms positioned around a central courtyard encased in bamboo. Each classroom shares an educational play space with a neighboring classroom, as well as direct access to the free-play courtyard. 

The model of learning emphasizes flexibility, allowing the school to adjust connections and spaces depending upon the needs of local youth. Upon approach, the profile of the complex resembles a neighborly system of material and assembly—diffusing into the surrounding context of thatch and earth. Children are encouraged to feel a sense of familiarity with the shapes, forms, and textures of the complex, embracing conservation in the pursuit of innovation. 

The project utilizes two major local materials: rammed earth and bamboo. The rammed earth wraps the perimeter of the complex, presenting itself outwardly as a depiction of privacy and strength. In contrast, a softer bamboo inner membrane gives way to looser, more permissive thresholds between classes and age groups. The construction and building of these materials are possible through local techniques—not significantly different from the construction of the traditional Senegalese home. 

In all, the Nursery School works to preserve the sensitive traditions of rural Senegal while capitalizing on the potential for subtle modifications—both in architecture and within the broader early childhood education system.

This project was submitted to the Kaira Loora Competition.

Instagram: @zakebjontegard, @nicholewiedemann

Inside Out – Outside In by Nguyen Thanh Minh, D.Arch ’25
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa | Advisor: Yasushi Ishida

“Inside Out – Outside In” is a K-12 vertical school design that creates a biophilic learning environment through modular classroom spaces that support faster construction and easy adaptability to meet future education needs. The blending of interior and exterior allows the design to get a natural flow that helps the students learn, grow, and live in harmony with the environment. 

The green pockets are located throughout different levels of the buildings to welcome natural elements such as sunlight, fresh air, and greenery, which allows students to feel the presence of nature in every part of their learning experience. The green pockets can also become areas for relaxation, exploration, and social interaction. 

“Inside Out–Outside In” reimagines the vertical K–12 typology within urban Honolulu. It challenges the traditional single-corridor model by creating dynamic, layered learning environments organized around the extended open-air green pockets. These green zones act as continuous outdoor extensions of each classroom cluster, creating additional outdoor space for learning activities.

The first principle of the design is “Design for Well-being.” The project was developed to support students’ physical, mental, and emotional health. Brise soleil manages sunlight and glare, while open corridors and operable walls promote natural ventilation. The landscape in the center becomes learning gardens, and soft vegetative buffers attract students to gather under shades, fostering calm, comfort, and sensory richness.

The second principle is “Design for Change”. It is evident in the modular classroom configuration and flexible partitions. As education evolves, the building can accommodate new changes, enrollment fluctuations, or even entirely different age group needs without major structural intervention.

The school is designed to serve all students of different ages, from elementary to high school, with tailored experiences. Ensuring that it’s secure, and has playful outdoor areas for younger children and flexible zones for older students. Together, these spaces create a vertical learning landscape that nurtures collaboration, and connection to the natural world.

This project was nominated for the AIA Honolulu People’s Choice Awards 2025. 

Instagram: @archawaii

Restoring Vocation by Mason Burress, M.Arch ’25
Washington University in St. Louis | Advisor: Donald N. Koster, AIA

“Restoring Vocation” is a response to the self-initiated research and design proposal fulfilling the degree project requirements for the first-professional Master’s degree program in the Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design at Washington University in St. Louis. [This studio’s work] is the architectural response to the intentional, programmatic, and situational project brief developed through in-depth research into a specific transect of the St. Louis Region conducted during the previous semester. 

Once a center for hands-on learning, North St. Louis was home to several vocational schools that equipped students with practical skills in woodworking, metalworking, welding, fashion, auto mechanics, and the MEP (mechanical, electrical, and plumbing) trades, among others. However, since the mid-1960s, these institutions have steadily disappeared. Restoring Vocation seeks to bring the spirit of vocational education back — by establishing a new affiliate school designed to work in concert with the four major high schools in the surrounding area as a celebration of the trades. 

The new educational facility expresses its practical mission by honoring familiar industrial typologies. The structure is mass timber and the building’s north-facing sawtooth skylights are designed to maximize natural light within the vocational classroom spaces and shops. Adaptable workshops are organized along a linear spine that doubles as a collaborative large project working space and primary circulation. The building’s structure and systems are intentionally exposed to serve as an instructive tool for learning. 

This project received the 2025 Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design Degree Project Award.

Instagram: @masonburress.arch

Convergence – DAS Transformed by Evelyn Foster & Marko Jovanovic, B.ArchSc ’25
Toronto Metropolitan University | Advisor: John Cirka

The TMU campus is currently a space to pass through, not to inhabit. “Convergence” aims to reimagine this by proposing more than just a new Architecture Building; it is a vision for a lively public realm. At its core is the transformation of Kerr Hall into a vibrant central square, with the new building framing a key path from Dundas Square. Human-scaled programming and public space activate Church Street, drawing visitors into a generous social area at the south entrance. This space leads to “The Square,” a multi-purpose atrium for lectures, presentations, and casual interaction, anchoring the building’s layout. Circulating through the building concludes with the sixth-floor space, a celebratory space under a CLT roof, flooding with natural light. At this point, the visitors have reached the pinnacle of the new Architecture building, and are invited to look out over the campus and city beyond.

Click here to learn more. 

This project was selected as an Honourable Mention – Bold Visions Transforming Futures.

Instagram: @ev.shoob, @marko.jovanovic.29, @lisalandrum.arch

It Takes a Village by Evan Cage, M.Arch ’25
Morgan State University| Advisors: Carlos Reimers & Howard Mack

“It Takes a Village” investigates the role of architecture in fostering intergenerational learning and cultural continuity, especially within historically rich, yet systemically underserved, communities like Mid-City, New Orleans. Research into social sustainability, community-based education, and the spatial marginalization of elders and youth reveals a critical need: the environments where we learn, grow, and gather often fail to reflect the full richness of our identities or support the passing down of lived wisdom. This project responds to that need by proposing a new model for educational and community spaces—one that elevates legacy-building through shared experience, cultural exchange, and intentional spatial design. By connecting elders and youth in a four-story, dual-building community center organized around arts, storytelling, culinary traditions, language, and civic engagement, It Takes a Village challenges conventional notions of schooling and reclaims education as a lifelong, communal journey.

This project received the Outstanding Architectural Design Award. 

Instagram: @sosmoov3, @reimerscarlos, @h_mack

Stay tuned for Part II!

2024 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part XII

/in , , /by

Now more than ever, sustainability is a top concern in architecture as we continue to witness the impacts of climate change. Part XII of the 2024 Study Architecture Student Showcase features projects that promote sustainable, eco-friendly practices.

From design solutions to reduce the production of harmful greenhouse gases to innovative use of green technologies such as rainwater harvesting, solar cells, etc), this showcase presents various strategies to address sustainability concerns. The featured projects seek to support not only humankind but the flora and fauna that share the planet as well. The award-winning designs also emphasize the importance of community preservation, integration, and education.

Spirit of Water, Empire of Sun Designing for Desert Living by Nate Dansie, BS in Architecture ‘24
University of Virginia | Advisor: Mona El Khafif

Historically, the Southwest [of the] United States has been defined as a place of rampant westward expansion by American citizens in one of the most iconic landscapes on this planet. Accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Southwest has gone through a renewal of rapid growth, where the landscape of mountains and sand has transformed from monuments of nature to backdrops for newly planned communities. 

Through a society driven by individual and economic success, these large development projects in growing towns are made as cheaply and quickly as possible. This becomes a plastic city in a landscape that is losing its identity as it continues to fill with more and more people. In hand with this increasing population, the Southwest is facing some of the most prominent climate change effects in the world. From rising temperatures, spreading desertification, and uncontrollable wildfire, to the most severe drought in the last 1,200 years, the future of desert living will be defined by how we adapt to climate change’s outcomes. This unsustainable growth of capital-driven small-town populations in juxtaposition to the increasing effects of climate change provides a dangerous future that we are heading towards. The city of St. George, Utah typifies these conditions and serves as the site for this thesis proposal. Known as one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the United States, it is dealing with one of the most severe water crises- with the demand for water expected to pass the supply by the year 2030.

The story of this town needs to shift from a one-directional water system into a cyclical and sustainable metabolism that addresses all scales of design. The proposed solution comes through a duality of increasing the water supply through a new master-planned housing typology at the community scale, and a sociological shift in our relationship with water through the architectural and individual scale to conserve what we have. We must reinvent how we live in a place to accommodate sustainable urban growth and amplify the original identity and ecology of the desert landscape.

This project was recognized as the Best Project of the 2023 Thesis Cohort.

Instagram: @natedansie.design, @aschool_uva

Skyscraper/ Megastructure Design Studio by Ko Harmes, B. Arch ’24
Endicott College | Advisor: Robert Augustine

Concept Brief: Eco-Portal to a Sustainable Future in the City of Boston

Located on a waterfront site, near the Charlestown Naval Yard, this advanced Mega Structure / Skyscraper / “Eco-Ark” serves as an inspiration for a sustainable, green future.

These two, organic-shaped, net zero towers, serve as stewards of the environment, featuring living green roofs and balconies that mitigate urban heat island effects. Special features include large, multi-story green-walled atriums, rainwater harvesting systems, and thin solar cell glass windows that generate over 25% of the power used by the facilities.

Built, in part, from the recycled remnants of the adjacent Tobin Bridge, currently slated for demolition, these organic-shaped towers celebrate advancements in environmentally responsive, sustainable, green technologies. 

The Site: One of potentially the most important landmark sites along Boston’s harborfront, the existing site can currently be described as mostly “a parking lot”… a hardscape/ industrial wasteland. The proposal re-establishs an eco-system that re-introduces nature back into this brittle area that once was home to native species of plants like the Sugar Maple, Eastern White Pine, Highbush Blueberry and Woodland Sunflower also helping re-introduce wildlife and pollinators back into the ecosystem.

Program: Mixed-use apartments, shopping malls, hospitality/ hotel space and a large informational eco-sphere / sky bridge, suspended between the two towers provide a green sky garden and a digital communication outer sphere. 

Structure

A mega core with an outrigger framing system, similar to that used in the construction of the Burj Khalifa, currently the tallest skyscraper standing today. The mega core system requires larger cross sections in addition to a shear wall that is part of a composite core or reinforced concrete. This allows for the system to have no column or shear walls on the outer perimeter because the mega core can resist all the vertical and lateral loads.

Facilitating Extrastructure by Reilly Walker, M. Arch ‘24
University of Toronto | Advisor: Jeannie Kim

Amidst a megadrought, Arizona has announced water-saving plans that include direct potable reuse: upgrading municipal wastewater treatment facilities to produce effluent suitable for processing into drinking water. In this high-risk decision, how can these new additions create spaces that are interwoven with the communities they serve? This thesis focuses upon the fenceline as the experiential threshold of these typically off-limits facilities: interlacing fence and building to provide new vantage points; manipulating border and landscape to provide new visual access; and transforming the boundary into an infrastructure of maintenance and care.
Instagram: @reindustrial

Village of the Levy: Switchgrass by  Brenda R. Castillo, B. Arch ’24
University of Houston | Advisor: Roya Plauche

“The Village of the Levy” is a visionary project dedicated to nurturing and caring for the Earth by creating a machine composed of natural systems and ecosystems that fulfill environmental, architectural, and cultural roles. This project centers around switchgrass, a perennial grass with incredible potential for improving soil health, flood control, and carbon sequestration. Through detailed micro and macro studies, the project explores the morphology, structure, and growth of switchgrass and its suitability for producing cellulosic ethanol, an eco-friendly alternative to traditional ethanol sources.

The project conceptualizes “Switchgrass Pods,” establishing a village of programmed framed systems within one of the many placement areas proposed by Project 9 on the Houston Ship Channel. These systems protest against the existing refinery infrastructure along Buffalo Bayou, highlighting the need for sustainable practices. The site integrates human, natural, and industrial ecology, by programmatically offering a research and nature center for the adjacent communities. 

The project includes potential site planning and urban/architectural responses, culminating in detailed floor plans, sections, and isometric views of the “machines.” “The Village of the Levy” aims to create a system between nature and urban development, demonstrating the potential for ecological innovation in addressing environmental challenges.

This project won the Super Jury First Place prize.

Instagram: @brcarq, @rocio.arq, @royaplauche

ReGen Hall by Lexi Hudson, Saba Abdolshahi, Michael Alada, Dariya Fallon, Catherine Graubard, Marcell Hajmuhammad, Qin He, Ruiqi Huang, Zane Johnson & Sarah Rosseau, MSSD (Sustainable Design) / M. Arch / B. Arch / Chemical Engineering / Mechanical Engineering ’24
University of Texas at Austin | Advisor: Michael Garrison

Addressing the pressing need for student housing at UT, ReGen Hall integrates ecological sustainability and affordability while meeting the housing requirements of Dell Medical students and the adjacent neighborhood. Positioned at a unique edge between Austin’s East Campus and the historic Blackland neighborhood, ReGen Hall prioritizes health through its design, program, materials, and environmental considerations. The design promotes collaborative living, encouraging community interaction and adaptability through interconnected spaces.

The design features seven courtyards, providing medical students with outdoor access and spaces for respite. Optimal cross-ventilation is ensured through thoughtful window placement and modular design, enhancing air quality within residences and communal areas. To accommodate varying schedules, bedrooms are equipped with rolling exterior shading systems for daylight control, while sound insulation was considered to ensure residents’ sleep quality. 

Sustainable practices are integral, incorporating Passive House level insulation as well as a photovoltaic system on the roof and western facade to achieve net zero operational energy. ReGen Hall exemplifies a holistic approach to sustainable architecture through both design and engineering.

Further enriching community engagement, the ground floor hosts a free clinic staffed by medical residents, offering essential services to the historically underserved Blackland neighborhood. The project’s modular construction reduces costs, absorbing the upfront cost of high-performance insulation and photovoltaics. Designed with consideration for neighborhood scale, the building steps in height from two stories along the neighborhood side to six stories facing the university, responding to community feedback for enhanced integration and preservation of local character.

This project was a 2024 Solar Decathlon Design Challenge Finalist. 

Instagram: @utsolarhorns, @utsoa

Fort Point Channel: Gillette Site by William Prout, BS in Architecture ’24
Roger Williams University | Advisor: Edgar Adams

The planned movement of manufacturing facilities from Gillette’s Boston headquarters to a remote site provides a unique opportunity to explore the potential of this crucial site as an exploration of the issues of sustainable density and coastal resilience. The site is a vulnerable pathway for the flooding of the Fort Point Neighborhood and a crucial link between the Seaport and South Boston.

Suburban Symbiosis: Balancing Ecology and Economics in Suburban Development by Diego Courtney, M. Arch ’24
Lawrence Technological University | Advisor: Scott Shall

Following World War II, a mass exodus from cities to suburbs necessitated new building patterns that prioritized economics and speed over environmental considerations, changing landscapes and having a negative influence on ecosystems. This growth, which we now know as sprawl, combined with profit-driven motives, has led to an emphasis on quick, low-cost construction methods like stick framing, which frequently ignore the impact on the local environment and result in significant waste. In the profit-driven model, the residential development process begins with street layout, then lot/parcel maximization, with ecological and landscaping considerations as afterthoughts. This foregrounds the concerns of the car over the environment, prompting developers to sterilize the environment, resulting in fragmented habitats and homogeneous ecosystems that are detrimental to regional biodiversity. 

The consequences of this uncontained sprawl, which are already significant, will be exposed by the inevitable natural disasters, which are anticipated to become more frequent as a result of climate change. The current suburban development pattern is flawed, outdated, and unprepared for these environmental changes which we must contend with as architects.

To investigate this concern, this thesis will investigate an alternative development pattern, tested within the parameters of a neighborhood located within the rapidly sprawling city of Austin, Texas. This development strategy is intended to balance economic needs with environmental sustainability, with the goal of establishing a widely adopted, US-based model that corresponds with current economic proformas while regenerating and preserving the surrounding ecology. This thesis aims to address the concerns of both profit and the environment by attempting to achieve symbiosis with the environment at the suburban scale using the Living Building Challenge.

Instagram: @diego_courtney, @scott_shall

Choreography of Topography: Dalieh’s Calibrated Auto-Datum & E-co Interplay by Doria Doubal, B. Arch ’24
American University of Beirut | Advisors: Dr. Howayda Al-Harithy & Sinan Hassan

“Choreography of Topography: Dalieh’s Calibrated Auto-Datum & E-co Interplay” redefines the concept of ground by exploring its philosophical and spatial dimensions. Ground is not just a physical foundation but a dynamic entity influenced by the interaction of natural and artificial forces. This thesis examines Dalieh, a site in Beirut known for its historical significance as a vineyard, characterized by perpetual transformation.

The architecture harnesses humidity for irrigation, uses solar and wind energy to generate movement, and incorporates systems that expand, contract, inflate, and deflate in response to environmental conditions.

Central to this approach are the metaphors of the pergola and fishnet, reflecting Dalieh’s identity and the daily lives of local fishermen. The interventions are connected physically and conceptually by a temporal grid put throughout the site that interacts with the ground, people, and birds. Key interventions include:

  1. Reintegrating Lost Identity: Revitalizing the site by planting a vineyard and restoring Dalieh’s historical significance as a “vineyard” in Arabic.
  2. Vegetation Restoration: Addressing areas ruined by construction, this intervention includes:
  • Mist & Propel: Harvests atmospheric moisture to cool the air and disperse seeds.
  • Eco-Kinetic Soil Revive: Uses kinetic mechanisms to aerate the soil and inject nutrients.
  • Seed Shooter: Disperses native seeds to promote biodiversity.
  • AquaBloom Irrigator: Collects fog moisture for irrigation.

These systems regenerate the soil and enhance flora and fauna for public use.

  1. Vegetation Conservation: Attracting birds and providing feeding and shelter areas, ensuring ecological balance and integrating human interaction through designed seating spaces.
  2. Fishermen Strip: Supporting the primary users of the site, this area creates a fluid connection between the corniche and the water, facilitating economic activities by day and transforming into cultural spaces by night.
  3. Temporal Grid: A flexible structure throughout the site, used by the public for various activities depending on the season, festivals, weather, and time of day.

This project embraces the temporality and ephemerality of Dalieh, creating an ever-evolving architecture that responds to the rhythms of nature and human activity. It reimagines ground as a multilayered, dynamic entity, fostering a harmonious interplay between the environment and its users.

This project was the 3rd Place Winner of the Areen Projects Awards for Excellence in Architecture.

Instagram: @ard_aub

From Waste to Wealth: Food and Community Nexus by Fatema Dula & Rachel Aronbayev, M. Arch ’24
New York Institute of Technology | Advisors: Marcela Del Signore & Evan Shieh

The food waste processing facility is strategically designed to bridge both the literal and metaphorical divide between the hilltop favela residents in São Cristóvão, and the bustling food market below, a critical cultural hub. Situated on a hill, the facility not only connects these separate communities but also aims to serve as a vital nexus, enhancing interactions and mutual benefits between the informal settlements and the market. The facility is envisioned as a symbol of unity, sustainability, and progress, bringing together diverse groups for a common purpose.

The building is structured into three clusters, each dedicated to a specific treatment type: Composting, Anaerobic Digestion, and Recycling. Within each cluster, there are three distinct areas: a waste zone for processing, a communal area for collaborative activities, and a recreational space for leisure and relaxation. The design of these clusters ensures that the facility is not just a processing plant but a community center that encourages participation, education, and engagement in sustainable practices.

The three clusters are linked by a versatile circulation path that ranges from fully outdoor to semi-outdoor and indoor segments, enabling traversal from the hilltop down to the food market level. This path is designed to be accessible and inviting, with shaded walkways, benches, and educational signage about waste management and environmental stewardship. It serves as a continuous thread weaving through the facility, fostering a sense of connection and flow.

In addition to its primary function of waste processing, the facility is intended to host workshops, community meetings, and educational programs focused on sustainability. It aims to empower residents with the knowledge and tools to reduce waste, recycle more effectively, and participate in a circular economy. Through these initiatives, the facility aspires to create a more resilient and interconnected community.

Instagram: @fatty_2109, @marcelladelsi, @ev07

Natural Reflection: Reducing the Environmental Impact of Architecture through Biomimetic Design by Keenan Doricent, B. Arch ’24
Kennesaw State University | Advisor: Robin Puttock

The use of biomimetic design can be used to develop construction techniques and integrated building systems that reduce the increased amount of operational and embodied energy consumed by contemporary approaches to building. Factors like material production, site preparation, and equipment use are just a few examples of contributors to the amount of embodied energy consumed by a structure before it is even completed, while active building systems consume energy throughout the life of an occupied building. Because of greenhouse gasses, the long-term effects of historical and current architectural and infrastructural strategies have had a detrimental effect on the climate. The forest, desert, tundra, mountain, and aquatic biomes are all home to countless types of plant and animal life that adapted to their respective surroundings to become a part of the natural cycles that occur within any given area. This thesis project strives to study plants and animals that occupy and interact with the environment in order to reduce energy consumption and the ecological footprint of typical buildings.

This project was a finalist for the ARCC King Student Medal Award.

Instagram: @thenumber1fun, @xkdesign1

Powering Equality: Teaching Clean Energy on Multiple Grounds by Sabrina Innamorato, M. Arch ’24
New York Institute of Technology | Advisors: Marcella Del Signore & Evan Shieh

Due to the complex nature of the São Cristóvão neighborhood, in-depth research and an understanding of the mounting spatial and social issues were paramount prior to the development of an urban intervention for the city. Resiliency and vulnerability at the urban and human scale were analyzed through three interconnected lenses: social/cultural, environmental/ecological, and infrastructural/networked.

The proposal looks to develop public, peaceful nodes that operate on “urban collision” sites by hybridizing clean energy infrastructure with social programs. The proposal transforms former “pass-through” sites into places that are productive and social.

The concept is to allow the site context to inform an organizational armature. Building near the coast requires an attitude about not just having multiple floors of a building, but also about offsetting multiple ground planes. A diagrid column system acts not only as the main structure but also creates light wells and, at times, is occupied by supporting programs like egress cores or plumbing chases. There are a series of small pavilions for 5 clean energy systems: Geothermal, Hydro, Biogas, Wind, and Solar. The systems function on the site and the pavilions include teaching space to inform community members and stakeholders about the operation and importance of clean energy, while the space between is a public park. Ultimately the project is an infrastructural playscape.

Through a series of teaching pavilions, observable clean energy infrastructure, and public green space, the architecture provides a physical ground for knowledge building, where community members can become ambassadors for spatial and social change in São Cristóvão and beyond. The project looks to acknowledge and adapt to the already irreversible effects of climate change by offsetting and creating multiple grounds that anticipate and accept sea level rise, and simultaneously address the importance of mitigating future climate change. The park is a prototype for a larger strategy that can begin to bridge social and spatial divides and heal communities at an urban scale, by teaching clean energy on multiple grounds.

The project was presented at NYCxDesign 2024 Student Showcase at F.I.T., and the cartographic model was exhibited at Salone del Mobile in Milan, Italy, along with the Gold Certificate of Excellence in Design and the ARCC King Medal.

Instagram: @sabrinainnamorato, @si_archidesign, @marcelladelsi, @ev07

UrbanSymbio by Bharat Satish & Nicholas Reid, M. Arch ’24
New York Institute of Technology | Advisors: Marcella Del Signore & Evan Shieh

The UrbanSymbio can be viewed as a self-sustaining and carbon-neutral organism that coexists harmoniously with its surrounding urban environment, promoting energy circularity in São Cristóvão. Its growth is guided by the cellular automation algorithm, which mimics natural processes of organic growth and adaptation, ensuring a sustainable and efficient use of resources. Like living organisms that evolve in response to their environment, this kit of parts expands and transforms itself based on the changing needs of its inhabitants and the available space within the urban fabric.

Its modular and flexible nature allows it to seamlessly infill and occupy underutilized or vacant spaces, repurposing and revitalizing them without causing significant demolition or displacement. This minimizes waste and maximizes the use of existing resources. The system’s self-organizing capabilities and sensitivity to changes within itself and its surroundings enable it to grow sustainably by utilizing renewable energy sources and implementing circular processes that minimize resource consumption and carbon footprint. Its adaptive nature ensures that as the city evolves, the system can continuously reconfigure itself to optimize energy efficiency and resource utilization, avoiding the creation of obsolete or redundant structures that contribute to urban blight and environmental degradation. This system could act as a prototype that could be implemented in any city worldwide.

Instagram: @0ero_persepctive, @unruly.don_, @marcelladelsi, @ev07

Dataism Motion Exhibition Center by Begimai Baibachaeva, B. Arch ’24
Boston Architectural College | Advisors: David Eccleston & Robert Gillig

Location: 40 Commercial St, Portland, ME 04101 

Project: Exhibition Center

Site Description: Portland is a center of connectivity, equity, sustainability, and authenticity. Portland’s Eastern Waterfront is one of the primary economic hubs that serve as a center for travel, fishing, commerce, and shipping. Thus, it’s essential to continue supporting the waterfront in a rapidly changing world. The concept of the project is to revive Portland’s waterfront while celebrating its heritage and innovation. 

Considering that our site is a center of various activities, my vision was to create a seamless connection between the distinct boundaries of land and water, particularly through the exhibition hall experience, visually at the heart of the building. But also mimicking the freedom and fluidity of water, envisioning a scenario where these two natural elements (land and water) coexist harmoniously. The approach included providing people with access to water through strategic landscape design.

Concept: The architectural thesis envisions a dynamic synthesis of Umberto Boccioni’s “Development of a Bottle in Space” and the progressive essence of artificial intelligence, merging seemingly disparate concepts through the lens of time and motion. Set in Portland, Maine, the design employs curves in both the facade and interior spaces, integrating intelligent program design and enhancing the user experience. The primary structure, a space frame, supports the organic design, while a cylindrical curtain wall pays homage to Boccioni’s sculpture, marrying the rhythmic dance of form with the seamless interconnectivity of data.

This project received Commendations: Bachelor’s Degree Project in Architecture and the Edwin T. Steffian Centennial Award: Bachelor’s Degree Project in Architecture.

Instagram: @begimay_b_, @thebacboston

Walking with Gentle Giants by Manshi Manojkumar Parikh, M. Arch ’24
Boston Architectural College | Advisor: Ralph Jackson, FAIA

Humans have long sought to dominate and exploit every corner of the planet. As civilization advances, coexistence with other species becomes increasingly dystopian thought. Humans have harmed the environment and imposed our presence on the voiceless, including the majestic Asiatic elephants, who face abuse and exploitation, with some populations nearing extinction. Elephants act as ecosystem architects, playing a vital role as keystone species in creating forests and maintaining biodiversity. The endangerment of these critical species signals a potential loss of other interconnected species, jeopardizing nature’s essential services. Preserving nature and developing strategies to adapt to climate change is crucial for the survival of endangered species. Caring for animals and plants is about safeguarding the Earth’s natural caretakers. 

At the beginning of the last century, the world had 100,000 Asian elephants. Over the past three generations, their population has dwindled by at least 50 percent. India is home to more than 50 percent of the elephant population. Habitat reduction, fragmentation, commercial poaching, and the illegal trade of live elephants drive these nomadic creatures to near extinction. In December 2022, India reported the loss of almost 500 elephants due to electrocution, train collisions, poaching, and poisoning. This data underscores the challenges of protecting elephants, with most deaths in West Bengal caused by train collisions between 2012 and 2017. Since 2018, 379 elephants died from electrocution, 80 from train accidents, 40 from poaching, and 25 from poisoning. 

The aim [of this thesis] is to create a safe haven for these gentle giants, protecting them and the environment that makes our planet unique. A holistic design approach can bridge our worlds, fostering understanding and shared living. Through architecture, we can create a space where humanity’s impact shifts from exploitation to harmonious coexistence. This thesis explores solutions for conserving Asiatic elephants in the West Bengal region of India focusing on one of the elephant corridors situated between the Apalchand forest and the Gorumara Wildlife Sanctuary, by designing a facility that serves as a refuge for elephants in need, inspiring, educating, and providing a research base for conservation. The goal is to enhance the well-being of these gentle giants with a holistic approach, creating a coexisting environment. This sanctuary aims to go beyond traditional conservation models, reviving the migration corridor and positively impacting both humans and elephants. 

This project received the M. Arch Thesis Commends.

Bio-Encapsulation by Justin Wolkenstein-Giuliano & Crystal Hope Giard, B. Arch ’24
Syracuse University | Advisors: Britt Eversole & Julie Larsen

Harmful freshwater and saltwater algae blooms, which are caused by phosphorous and nitrate from agricultural and wastewater runoff mixing with increasingly warm waters, constitute a widespread environmental crisis. As a response, architecture must develop environmentally responsible construction and innovate with novel materials. We propose that, in navigating ongoing ecological degradation from harmful algae blooms, we can develop a unique design language and material expression that captures problematic substances and redirects them toward literally constructive ends. 

Our design research explores the bio-material robotic fabrication possibilities that might arise from intervening in the environmental cycle of agricultural production, runoff, and algae growth. To give form to the formless and explore the aesthetics of the toxic, we built a prototype 3D algae printer that extracts algae from the environment and, using a proprietary admixture that we developed, redirects it to build novel architectural assemblies. Agricultural industries use a hydrogel called sodium polyacrylate to mitigate liquid runoff. When combined with liquid, this dry powder will absorb and expand, creating a gel. Our 3D printer makes use of existing sodium polyacrylate and existing toxic algae; when combined and then applied to sand mold formworks and allowed to cure, the algae hardens into three-dimensional forms and thin folded and warped surfaces. 

Our design research operates at a 1:1 scale, rather than analogs or models. In terms of size, we have managed to produce large-format components, approaching 3’-0” in length. However, the system, chemical combinations, and logic of manufacturing can scale up. The system we have created will serve to index a degrading ecology but also offer the possibility of creating a new cycle of pollution remediation and growth: one where design is not a solution to the toxicity of our world, but rather an opportunity to collaborate with toxins, resulting in a new formal language of bio-encapsulation.

Instagram: @syr_arch, @jmlarsen, @g_britt_eversole, @justinwg64

Saltscapes: Architectural Systems for Salt Reuse by Peiyu Luo & Shengxuan Yu, B. Arch ’24
Syracuse University | Advisors: Britt Eversole & Julie Larsen

Our design research investigates the many scales—local, regional, and continental—of the material and environmental economy of salt. Salt is both a naturally occurring and manmade substance that is entangled with the human environment. Salt is in and on our bodies and food. It is found in masonry, stucco, mortar, and cement. It is an essential substance in countless industries. Its most harmful application, however, is the massive amount of salt deployed on roads and highways during the winter to melt snow and prevent ice buildup. High concentrations of road salt circulate through the environment, leaching into the watershed where it harms plants and animals, especially amphibians.

Our project speculates on the role of architecture, infrastructure, and design in remediating the ongoing problem of salinization caused by road salt usage in the United States’s transportation infrastructure system. The salt used for wintertime road treatment is either extracted from mining or formed from the natural crystallization of salt flats. The enormous quantity of road salt used in the United States taps into a complex shipping network that moves salt around the Nation and even imports salt from multiple countries. Throughout the northeastern states, storage facilities for keeping and spreading the salt serve as the local nodes of this network, which underlines the architectural and infrastructural possibilities for intervening in this economy.

After visualizing the global and regional economies of salt, as well as the ways in which it reenters and pollutes local environments, we explored the possibility of building infrastructural interventions that would capture runoff and crystalize the road salt, making visible the enormous quantities of an otherwise invisible substance. We imagine occupying the medians of interstate freeways, where we would rebuild the architectural infrastructure of salt distribution and, more importantly, capture runoff and construct saltwater habitats. We explored different crystallization methods as well as substrates for the constructions, ultimately settling on engineered timber tetrapod units that could be structurally stacked or linked in predetermined geometric configurations, or piled and accumulated to create structures that rely on friction for their structural stability. Salt would accrue on the units and collect underneath them, while saltwater plant species would flourish and animals would take over other areas as habitats. However, given climate change, we project that the need for road salt will decrease as snowfall in the Northeast declines. Our project therefore has a lifespan of 50 to 100 years, by which time the wood units will decay, and the medians can return to being non-saline environments.

Lastly, we explored visualization strategies—using both physical and digital modeling—to represent the constantly forming and unforming state of the matter in construction. During the summer, the assemblies would largely be devoid of salt, whereas during the winter the medians would become saline environments, requiring us to develop particle-based drawing and modeling strategies that represent material and environmental change over time. Our final model assemblages and architecture drawings were created as a means of epitomizing all our research on salt, providing a detailed visualization connecting all the research information we found on road salt usage, and picturing a design response to our research subject.

This project won the Dean’s Citation for Excellence in Design.

Instagram: @syr_arch, @jmlarsen, @g_britt_eversole, @cass_peiyu

Stay tuned for Part XIII!