Nature Lab Expansion
This was a cooperative project in which I teamed up with a textiles major (Whitney Nekoroski) and the Nature Lab at RISD to develop innovative solutions to resilient buildings.
Resilience in architecture is achieved when a building can respond not only to diurnal and annual changes in its environment, but also to long term global changes. This work is to be considered as its own ecosystem, defined as a community of organisms and their environment funtioning as an ecological unit.
I investigated structures in nature, particularly those of coral and fungi under a microscope and began to extract concepts for a new structural system. In this process I eventually discovered a system in which alternating twisting fins worked in tandem to create a structure that evenly distributes the weight throughout, transfering all loads to the ground evenly. Using this new concept, I created a new design for the RISD Nature Lab to expand its space to a new location on campus.
This studio had a heavy emphasis on model making and construction, so this model was the highlight. It was built at 1/2” = 1’ scale making it roughly 4’ x 4’ x 4’ in size.
Resilience in architecture is achieved when a building can respond not only to diurnal and annual changes in its environment, but also to long term global changes. This work is to be considered as its own ecosystem, defined as a community of organisms and their environment funtioning as an ecological unit.
I investigated structures in nature, particularly those of coral and fungi under a microscope and began to extract concepts for a new structural system. In this process I eventually discovered a system in which alternating twisting fins worked in tandem to create a structure that evenly distributes the weight throughout, transfering all loads to the ground evenly. Using this new concept, I created a new design for the RISD Nature Lab to expand its space to a new location on campus.
This studio had a heavy emphasis on model making and construction, so this model was the highlight. It was built at 1/2” = 1’ scale making it roughly 4’ x 4’ x 4’ in size.