AKAND ABIR DESIGN PORTFOLIO
AKAND ABIR Email: akandabir@gmail.com Phone: 647 544 6416 Address: 369 Beechgrove Dr. Toronto, Ontario, Canada. https://akandabir.wixsite.com/arch
CONTENTS
SANKOFA COMMUNITY GARDEN A community garden and educational center built in an under-developed part of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
MODULAR HOUSING A modular house that can be designed on an easy-to-use website, built by one person and expanded in the future. The house is designed to be made with CNC pieces and ensures maximum flexibility for the users.
THE TIME CAPSULE A summer house designed to be a part of nature as well as be a passive house in the middle of the woods.
KINDERGARTEN
An educational complex that was designed for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It consisted of children ages 3 - 14. And the building was upto local code and fire regulations.
THE BEAVER DAM
A swimming complex that was inspired by the structure of a beaver dam. The complex housed 2 Olympic sized pools and 1 deep dive pool that were upto the local University Campus code and regulations.
HOUSE BY A.I A set of houses that was constructed using machine learning and A.I. The total number of floorplans created for the dataset was around 800.
THE CUBE
A group project that was focused on wood joinery and construction as well as the structural strength of wood.
THE PLASTIC BRIDGE
A group project that was focused on PVC plastic joinery and the possibilty of building a bridge with plastic.
RENDERS
A collection of visualizations created with Rhino, V-Ray, Lumion and Photoshop.
SANKOFA COM
MMUNITY GARDEN
SANKOFA COMMUNITY GARDEN The project is about telling stories. A story about experience and movement through the site. This story is unique to each individual, which is achieved by users taking different routes throughout the site and all of them converging to one single element where the users can share their experiences amongst eachother. Because sharing experiences is one of the most important part of the journey. The site has pavement patterns that differentiate the routes and alows users to move freely in the site, and their journey ends on the second floor where a single corridor with shared lounge spaces encourages people to share their experiences and collaborate.
Rendered with Rhino and Lumion
The building is organised with the neighbourhood grid and the curves connects the 2 corners that bring in most people to the site, which is from the school and the busway. The building at those two corners also acts as a lightbulb.
Concept 1: SITE IS AN INTERSECTION POINT
The project invites users for a sense of humbleness as a gardening center, while being efficient and pays respect to the sorrounding. And the outdoor activities are placed on the north side for shade from the building. The building uses phytoremediation for cleaner water and geo-thermal for efficient temperature control.
Concept 2: MULTIPLE CIRCULATION PATHS FOR UNIQUE EXPERIENCES
The roof slants along the curve to allow more sunlight and uses transparent solar panels at intermediate spaces between the thatched roof. The garden beds, apple orchard and the greenhouse are positioned on the south side for optimum sunlight. The solar panels are used for electricity as well as the thatched roof for insulation purposes.
Concept 3: ROOF IS TILTED FOR SOLAR ADVANTAGES
LEVEL 2 The second floor plan shows the central corridor that connects everything. It promotes a collaborative space and encourages people to share their experiences amongst eachother. It also helps with natural ventilation.
LEVEL 1 The classrooms are placed infront of the gardening sector and acts as a buffer between the public and private sides of the building. The building also has an open market structure next to the garden beds so that the customers can have a visual where the food being sold is coming from.
This view shows the North exterior playground that is shaded from the sun by using the building. This also shows the playground and workshop can be directly seen from the classrooms for better communications.
EXTERIOR RENDER: PLAYGROUND
This view shows the singular hallway leading to the Greenhouse on the 2nd floor. This hallway will be used by everyone and as a result will encourage communication between classes, students and faculty as they walk past each other.
INTERIOR RENDER: HALLWAY TO GREENHOUSE
This view shows corridor between classrooms. The classrooms will have windows facing eachother to ensure maximum transparency and communication between them.
INTERIOR RENDER: CLASSROOM HALLWAY
The exploded axon shows how people are using the site. The building is designed to allow users to explore the site and use different routes for different experiences and sensations. The structure is CLT wood construction and the pitched roof is supported by fink trusses. The structural principal is derived from a typical American barn since this building has to do with education of gardening and farming. The Greenhouse is situated on the second floor to allow access to students directly from the classrooms during winter, as it will be difficult for all the students to perform outdoor activities in the cold. The Greenhouse has a ceiling that is covered with transparent solar panels and the roof is tilted towards South to allow maximum sunlight into the Greenhouse. The gradual roof transition from solid to transparent follows a rhythm. The rhythm is defined by the grid lines from the neighborhood houses.
This detailed wall axonometric shows that the Thatched roof helps with insulation and the facade of the building has adjustable vertical wooden fins that help to control daylighting. The yellow parts of the roof are thatch. The thatched roof helps with R-value for insulation and can also be used in the rainwater harvesting process. The HVAC ducts also run through the building with a VAV-system that helps regulate temperatures for 4 different zones of the building.
MODULAR
HOUSING
MODULAR HOUSING Imagine a 3 bedroom house that can be fully built within $ 25,000. And not only that, it will require a single person a month to build. This all sounds promising but what really drives this project forward is the ability for each user to completely customize the layout and form of the house. To explore this exciting dream, me, Marzena Nowobilski and Harrison Lawrence set out to research Modular Housing in Peru by architect James Striling. After taking inspiration from his design principles we devolped our own version of modular housing. We designed a fully functioning website where people can design and build a custom house that fits their needs. Then they can download the files and take it to a local CNC shop to cut the pieces. And all the raw materials can fit in one 20’ long shipping container. The design of the house was focued on maximum flexibility, lower the cost of construction and to make the whole house building process a DIY process. Website : akandabir.wixsite.com/9squares
Here is a step by step process of how James Stirling designed his modular houses with concrete. Even though his process was modular, it required a lot of time and man power. Our design solved all those problems and lowered the costs as well.
BEAMS
COLUMNS
WALL PANELS
STAIRCASE
FLOOR PANELS
HOUSE DESIGN Here is an axon of the finished house design that a customer can build all by himself. The spaces are desgined for optimum ventilation and light, as well as maximum configurability . Below you can see some of the options a customer can select depending on his/her needs for the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens and square footage with his/her budget. The customer can download the files and take it to any CNC shop to cut the pieces and start building it himself/herself.
LAYOUT 1
LAYOUT 2
LAYOUT 3
LAYOUT 4
$24,000
$38,000
$62,000
$76,000
2 x Bedrooms 1 x Living Room 1 x Kitchen 1 x Bathroom
4 x Bedrooms 2 x Living Room 1 x Kitchen 2 x Bathroom
7 x Bedrooms 1 x Living Room 1 x Kitchen 3 x Bathroom
7 x Bedrooms 2 x Living Room 2 x Kitchen 4 x Bathroom
WEB INTERFACE
We designed the website interface to be as simple as possible for the users. The website guides users through the design process in a easy to use format. Below are the steps that an user would take to design their house.
HOME PAGE This page provides an overview of the 4 simple steps you need to design your own house.
STEP 1 The first step asks the user to place an AR model of the house on the site and decide on how many floors he/she wants.
STEP 2 In the next step the user is asked to choose a type of house they want from the options shown, depending on how many rooms and square footage they need.
STEP 3 In this step the user is asked to slect the layout of the floorplans, i.e , the order of rooms they want. They are also provided with an 3d model of the house and an interior render of the house.
STEP 4 For the final step the user gets a summary of all the choices he/she made and is finally able to downlod the CNC files.
Website : akandabir.wixsite.com/9squares
THE TIM
ME CAPSULE
THE TIME CAPSULE The house is designed as an escape from the tensions that tie reality with the unknown. This place is disconnected from everything else so it lets its users fully immerse themselves into mother nature. The simple A-frame structure has been inspired from the native trees and it also allows the structure to be self sustaining without the need of thick beams. The openings are alligned so that as soon as someone walks into the place, they get a view out the large window and the building acts as a gate where on on side it is the distractions from the outside world and on the other side it is peace and freedom. The Architecture has been kept simple so it isn’t a distraction itself. Programs used were Rhino with V-Ray, Lumion and Photoshop.
INTERIOR RENDERING OF THE LIVING ROOM AND KITCHEN.
INTERIOR RENDERING OF THE BEDROOM.
KINDERGARTEN Kids grow up playing with cubes. So the building’s form was created by placing “cubes” that represent classrooms to make spaces that are usable and unique to the kids. They are placed adjacent to eachother to create intermediate spaces that the kids can use to play and collaborate between different age groups and use as common ground to share ideas etc. The exterior uses wood fins to control day lighting and get maximum views out into the sorrounding.
Rendered with Rhino and Lumion
LEVEL 1
Every kid played with cubes one time or the other. For this Kindergarten design I placed cubes along the perimeter of the site. Those cubes are in blue and will be classrooms. They are placed along the perimeter to open up a space in the center. A central courtyard that the kids can safely play in. This also ensures plenty of natural light and ventilation for the classrooms. And all these cubes/classrooms are connected via corridor spaces highlighted in dark brown here. These spaces are big enough for kids to play in from different grades and classes.
The entrance of the kindergarten has a garden and sitting area for parents to sit or kids to wait for their parents as they bring the car around. All the glass walls are on the North side to allow indirect sunlight into the classrooms, and the Southern glass walls aren’t that transparent to block sunlight. And the central staircase in enclosed in a beautiful glass cube that is also fire-rated.
THE BEAVER DAM A Swimming complex requires a balance between long spanning structures and small enclosures. This complex was a project in the center of PennState campus. So for the inspiration behind this building, beaver dams were studied. Beavers built their dams in what seems like a random structure to many, but they have their own system to place one twig after the other to create their home in water with just twigs. This amazing building technique inspired the roof of this Natatorium, where the pattern might seem random but there is a system of beams and trusses that blend in with the pattern.
Rendered with Rhino and Lumion
LEVEL 1
IRREGULAR CRISS-CROSS PATTERN
The shape of the building was inspired from a traditional house roof. To make the users feel safe as if they were inside someone’s house. And the structure of the swimming complex was inspired from the criss-cross pattern the beavers made when making their lodges. This irregular pattern couldnt be structural at this scale, so a regular truss design was used for the roof but it was blended with the random pattern of the beams to make it look like the beaver lodge. This allowed plenty light to go into the complex and allow the users to be enthusiastic and absorb all the benefits of natural light.
HIDDEN REGULAR TRUSS SYSTEM
The front of the building hosts a floor fountain area for kids to play with, along with large open green areas. There are also buttresses along the perimeter of the building to support the columns and roof.
HANDCRAFTED MODEL WITH EXTERIOR SWIMMING POOL
HOUSE
E BY A.I
HOUSE BY A.I This house has been designed through machine learning. The process involves creating a dataset of 500-2000 images and feeding it into the machine. Then creating an algorithm to process the images which generates floorplans that can be reinterpreted and reorganized. The machine learning software used here is called Runway ML. It is used with GAN 1 and GAN 2 algorithms to generate these floorplans. The dataset consists of images that are created from a strict set of rules that we created, and therefore the machine picks up on these rules and introduces some of its own to generate new iterations of them. This was a group project by me, Kris Soto and Isiah Friedman.
Rendered with Revit and Lumion
GENERATION PROCESS: STEP 1 Create a grid system based on the Plan Rules and a system of golden ratios Use the grid to create rooms/spaces Add apertures for circulation according to chimney rules: add windows according to local symmetry Split the plan in half and mirror to create globally symmetrical plans
GENERATION PROCESS: STEP 2 Pick interior rooms and rotate it in increments of 90º clockwise or counterclockwise. Add a point of rotation. The rotated rooms may stick out. Adjust the walls to match it accordingly.
GENERATION PROCESS: STEP 3
Mirror it along the central mirror line in the x-axis. The mirror line is placed along a prominent wall in the floorplan, can be in the x and y axis. Move the vertical mirror line in the y-axis and mirror any side. Move the horizontal mirror line in the x-axis and mirror any side. Make sure the symmetry of chimneys are preserved. If the plan is symmetrical along the y-axis, like in process A and B, you may start from step 1 again and continue making newer floor plans as it is a recursive process.
The house typology looked at here is the traditional in USA. These are the dataset images (floorplans) that was uploaded to the machine learning algorithm. There are about 1000 images generated by the user with a strict set of rules that consists of the floorplan layout, room adjacencies, use of each room and the size of each room. The Federal House has always been symmetrical, and that was a very important aspect we focused on. The symmetry is highlighted in the facade but is lost as you look into the interior of the house and as you go further back of the house. The symmetry and the placement of chimneys was the foundation rules that was used to generate these floorplans.
FORMATIONS OF EXTENSION :
GRID CONTORTIONS :
After the machine generated 100s of outputs, I selected the one that had the most interesting results and I analysed it here. I then created my own floorplan based on the machine’s floorplan. The result was a house that had two entrances. which lead to a house that was an extensionof the federal house, while the other part was just the normal federal house typology. Even though these two houses were totally different, they needed eachother to maintain the perfect symmetrical facade that is required. The extension part of the house had larger windows and was more communal, while the normal part of the house was closed off and more private. There are windows in specific parts of the house where the users can get a glimpse into eachother’s houses to see the contrast in lifestyle.
LEVEL 1
EXTENSION AND NORMAL PARTS OF THJE HOUSE
INTERIOR RENDER WITH A WINDOW LOOKING INTO THE EXTENSION HOUSE
THE CUBE
Through the use of axial symmetry and play of solid and void, the cube demonstrates the central concept of graceful erosion, which starts from the center and fades to the exterior. Simultaneously, the two opposing main masses, primarily due to their symmetry and mirrored orientation, maintain a strong dialog while the cube extracted from the corners draws the attention to the solid and void of the cube. With this design established, structural considerations had to be made. For example, the masses on the bottom corner would need to provide enough support for the upper corner which must be lightweight. This was a group project with Benjamin Nahum, Sean Rutala, Paul Panassow, Manushiben Patel, Marzena Nowobilski and me.
THE PLASTIC BRIDGE
The plastic bridge was a very interesting project where we were tasked to crate a 12’ long bridge out of plastic. We created a triangular truss that we trimmed to act like a bridge. The structure was very strong and the interesting part is that there was no glue or screw used.. The plastic pipes were heated up and bent to wrap around the other pipes to be held together. Then to strengthen everything a thin layer of plastic wrap was used. This was a group project with Marzena Nowobilski, Manushi Patel, Thamer Alsalem and me.
REND
APARTMENT IN NYC Photoshop Rhino V-RAY Lumion
DERS
STORE IN TORONTO Photoshop Rhino V-Ray Lumion
HOUSE IN TORONTO Photoshop Rhino Lumion
HOUSE IN SEATTLE Photoshop Rhino Lumion
EXHIBITIONS Photoshop Rhino Lumion
HOUSE IN L.A Photoshop Rhino Revit V-Ray Lumion
THANK YOU