DN_Portfolio

Contents // Selected works

| 2024 - 2026

PROJECT + DESCRIPTION :

01

THE ARCADE

02

THE OPEN MIDDLE

03

THE CUBE

WORK 04

THE WEEK I BUILT SOMETHING IN SWITZERLAND SELECTED WORKS 2023 - 2026 Diya Nathan [ B.Arch ]

05

THESIS BEGINNINGS

B.Arch // Virginia Tech

KROW ] hcrA.B [ nahtaN ayiD 6202 - 3202 SKROW DETCELES

Contents // Selected works

| 2024 - 2026

PROJECT + DESCRIPTION :

01

THE ARCADE

02

THE OPEN MIDDLE

03

THE CUBE

04

THE WEEK I BUILT SOMETHING IN SWITZERLAND

05

THESIS BEGINNINGS

B.Arch // Virginia Tech

1

01 THE ARCADE Mixed Use Residential Building in DC Duration : 16 weeks

This project is a mixed-use residential building designed to serve both the public and senators, integrating living spaces with functional government areas. The arcade, provides a sheltered, pedestrian pathway along the ground level, linking the building’s public spaces with the surrounding area.

This arcade enhances accessibility, guiding the public through the building while maintaining separation from the more secure spaces occupied by senators.

The design fosters interaction between the community and the political process, ensuring transparency and openness. The upper floors house residential apartments within the building. The combination of mixed-use functions with a strong public connection ensures that the building serves as both a home and a civic hub

FALL 2024

3

FALL 2024

The Arcade

// Mixed Use Residential Building in DC

Ground level floorplan that facilates pedestrian movement towards Union station

Mapping of the capitol complex

5

Level 2 floorplan

FALL 2024

The Arcade

// Mixed Use Residential Building in DC

7

Parapet at metal wall panel panel finish match coping copper Prefinished Prefinished copper coping to matchtometal panelmetal finish 2x nailer treated Pressure Pressure treated 2x nailer Parapet Exterior sheathing Exterior sheathing

Air gap Air gap Spray foam insulation at roof/wall Spray foam insulation at roof/wall Rigid insulation Rigid insulation

Bent plate edgeBent plate edge

Firestopping Insulation FIRESTOPPING INSULATION Concrete Floor CONCRETE FLOOR Rigid Insulation RIGID INSULATION Steel Structure STEEL STRUCTURE SpraySPRAY applied fire proofing APPLIED FIRE PROOFING CopperCOPPER Cladding CLADDING

Vertical metalwall wall panel Verticaljoint joint metal panel

Parapet

FALL 2024

The Arcade

// Mixed Use Residential Building in DC

Green roof detail Herbaceous Perrenial ground cover Herbaceous perrenial ground cover withwater high water retention capacity Soil with Soil high retention capacity

Galvanized steelsteel forforwater drainage Galvanized water drainage Dual shell breathable high density Dual shell breathable high density polyethylene polyethylene waterproofing waterproofing Foam insulation Foam Insulation Vapor barrier

Vapor Barrier

Curtain wall at termination

Mullion Mullion

Perimeter Heating Enclosure Perimeter Heating Enclosure Sealed GlazingUnit Unit Sealed Galzing SnapCap Cap Snap Pressure Plate Pressure Plate Drainage Path Drainage Path

Formed Metal Base Formed Metal Base

Rigid Insulation Insulation Rigid Membrane Membrane TieTie-In - In Waterproof Membrane Waterproof Membrane Exterior Grade Exterior Grade

Concrete Curb Concrete Curb

9

FALL 2024

The Arcade

// Mixed Use Residential Building in DC

11

THE OPEN MIDDLE Teaching kitchen & Community center in Riva san Vitale Duration : 12 weeks

This project supports students studying abroad by providing a shared space for refuge, social interaction, and cultural exchange. Located on the villa property, this project replaces an old shed with a teaching kitchen, dining, and gathering space. The design propsal is based on prospect and refuge theory. Drawing from local cultural precedents, the courtyard functions as the primary connective element between the villa and the open middle, structuring movement while providing a shared outdoor refuge for students studying abroad. The center supports informal gathering and reinforces the project’s emphasis on community, ritual, and everyday use.

SPRING 2025

13

SPRING 2025

The Open middle // Teaching kitchen and community center in Riva san Vitale

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The Open middle // Teaching kitchen and community center in Riva san Vitale

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04 The Cube Art mueseum in Downtown Blacksburg Duration : 8 weeks

The CUBE aims to reimagine and revitalize an underutilized parking lot in the heart of Blacksburg. The surrounding area will be transformed into inviting greenspaces, offering a vibrant public gathering place for residents and visitors alike. By leveraging the landscape as an extension of the public realm, improving pedestrian flow and creating opportunities for informal gathering. A recessed ground level increases transparency and permeability at the street, while the copper-clad upper volume provides a durable material expression that establishes a clear institutional identity within the existing urban context.

SPRING 2024

19

SPRING 2024

The Cube // Art mueseum in Blacksburg

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SPRING 2024

The Cube // Art mueseum in Blacksburg

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30FT 0″-1′=1/8″

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05 The Week I built something in switzerland Duration : 1 week

A temporary community pavilion in Riva San Vitale, designed and built in just one week by my 3 friends and I to give back to the community that had welcomed us into the town for a semester. Made from simple wood dowels found at the local hardware store into modular structures, the pavilion and two benches create an open, playful space for gathering, interaction, and pause.

It’s modularity encourages people to change how they would like to make it a different experience for each person, and integrated plants were for the community to take home and remember us by!

25

SPRING 2025

The week i built something in switzerland // Riva San vitale

Thesis Beginnings My thesis explores the threshold between movement on land and movement through air and how this moment of transition is shaped not by mechanical efficiency but by the spatial qualities of abstract sculpture.

Rather than treating the airport as a machine optimized only for efficiency, this project asks how architecture can express the experience of flight. By treating architecture itself as a sculptural medium— capable of expressing movement, continuity, and transformation through abstraction The design process began with paint. By using it as a way to intuitively explore motion—how flight feels rather than how it works. These paintings mapped rhythm, acceleration, compression, and release through abstract gestures.

By translating these 2D studies into 3D by scanning and layering them into stacked acrylic model, it allowed these fluid marks to accumulate into volume, revealing how curvature and tension could generate space. The wire mesh studies explored elasticity, contouring and tension, helping me understand how surfaces could stretch, fold, compress and relaese.

From these experiments, I developed a design method I call Tensional Folding.

Folding

FALL 2025

29

Airports are some of the most emotionally charged spaces we occupy. They are places of anticipation, departure, waiting, and separation—yet their architecture is often reduced to neutral infrastructure. I believe the threshold between land and air deserves spatial intensity. intensity This thesis challenges the idea that infrastructure must be rigid or only purely functional, it proposes these necessary constraints—movement, structure, security, light, can become generative forces for architectural expression Hollywood Burbank Airport (BUR) became the ideal site for this thesis. Unlike major hub airports defined by overwhelming scale, BUR operates at a smaller scale.The constant growth in size and advancement of planes places all airports in this state of constant evolution. evolution Located within the creative fabric of Los Angeles, BUR serves industries built on motion, storytelling, and abstraction, making this propsal a contextual response rather than an anomaly.

B-727

6m concourse 93 sq m per Departure

Tarmac

8.85’

B-707

6m concourse 140 sq m per Departure

10’

DC-10/L -1011

10.6m concourse 325 sq m per Departure

15’

B-747

12m concourse 511 sq m per Departure

15.7’

A380

40m concourse

B-777

744 sq m per Departure

23’

38m concourse 650 sq m per Departure

20’

THE FORM OF AIRPORTS ARE UNSTABLE, CONSTANTLY EVOLVING

Thesis Beginnings // Hollywood Burbank Airport

31

My goal is to design this gateway generated through tensional folding. A continuous, sculptural terminal that embodies fluidity, movement, and upward transition.

Tensional folding describes an architectural process in which surfaces deform under tensile forces, forces producing continuous folds that integrate structure, circulation, and enclosure. The fold is not a formal gesture—it is the spatial expression of internal and external forces acting on a surface. Rather than fragmenting architecture into floors, walls, and roofs, tensional folding produces a continuous field where surfaces gradually change state—from horizontal to vertical, from solid to void, from compression to release.

At Burbank Airport, the threshold between land and air is no longer just a moment of transit—it becomes a spatial experience that feels like taking flight.

Thesis Beginnings // Hollywood Burbank Airport

PORTFOLIO OF DIYA NATHAN Bachelor of Architecture Virginia Tech diyanathan212@gmail.com