To me, design is an active and evolving process. I believe in pushing the boundaries between what a design is expected to be and what it can truly become. Growing up in a developing country, I had limited exposure to diverse design mediums. Most of what I saw were simple, boxy white houses lacking distinct character. However, traveling to different parts of the world opened my eyes to a wide variety of design approaches. I was struck by how much more there was to design and experience beyond what I had known. That’s when I realized my desire to explore more experimental techniques rather than settle for traditional or common designs.
I’ve always found solace in expressing my designs through forms, figures, and colors. In *met·a·mor·pho·sis*, you’ll experience my ongoing exploration of strategies that challenge and redefine the norms of design. Embracing technology as the future of design, the architecture in this collection pushes formal, material, and spatial expressions to their limits. As you journey through, you’ll encounter designs that offer sustainable, innovative solutions to the social and environmental challenges of today.
I present to you *met·a·mor·pho·sis* — a visual journey of evolution, brought to life through a series of drawings and figures that represent the culmination of my design exploration.
HARSANA
CHAPTERS
ACADEMIC WORK
001 Influenced Reclamation A PLACE TO MEANDER
002 Embellished Framework
SOMETHING TO WEAR & A PLACE TO EXPLORE
003 AmungUs
A PLACE TO REMEMBER
004 Design and Belonging (Thesis) THE INTERSECTION OF CULTURE, SPACE AND EXPRESSION
PROFESSIONAL WORK
005 Confeidential, NJ (Project Design Team)
006 Private Residence, NY (Visualizer)
007 Next Stop: (Design Team and Lead AI Image developer)
008 Student Work (Instructor)
Influenced Reclamation
Though often associated with each other, architecture and sustainability are actually quite contradictory to one another, for how can a building that destroys the environment be seen as something that betters it? The well-being of our Earth, climate change, and other environment-related issues are pressing matters and global crises that worsen each day as humans continue to exist the way we do today. It is time for the environment to reclaim its rightful place at the forefront of the building industry and as a priority to society. Influenced Reclamation attempts to bring about sustainability and recycling to its design as it focuses on using natural and organic materials, such as wood and mycelium, that have infinite life cycles. It also integrates itself with nature, allowing the Earth to consume it and influence its exterior program and facades. Thus, ultimately creating an icon that celebrates the relationship and connection between all forms of life, natural and human, as influenced reclamation becomes a place where natural life and human life coexist harmoniously as one.
An Artist Residency
Inspired by RAIR’S mission of interjecting the waste stream, our building chooses to do the same as it uses reclaimed wood as a key material throughout the project. Not only is reclaimed wood found throughout the site, but the concept of wood as something that is capillary and a living, breathing hygroscopic organism that interacts with other forms of life comes into fruition on the facade, in the landscape, and in the building itself. Furthermore, wood is also a recyclable material that has the potential to have an infinite cycle, as it can be used from the beginning of its life as a sapling until its end as it is re-purposed and its life cycle begins again.
The material study aimed to explore mycelium as a new building medium and investigate how it would interact and exist with other organisms in and outside of an ecosystem, as it would with wood throughout the project.
The mycelium layers add depth to the facade but also allow for the mycelium to impact the surrounding environment, as it interacts with the other materials on the facade and the ground of the site itself.
Façades
//Three different types facade within Influenced Reclamation
Mycelium Growth Test
//Left Image - Mycelium on substrate | Right Image - Mycelium Brick
// Left Image - Mycelium and Wood Rain screen while installation Right Image - Mycelium and Wood Rain screen after a few years
// Left Image - Perpendicular End-grain Pieces while installation Right Image - Morphed End-grain Pieces due to change in air moisture
As an experiment of nature invading, the cladding is set to slowly transform over time. Each of them changes the user experience of the space and its interaction. We hope that artists take the opportunity of change as a way to design art around it and take pieces of the cladding as inspiration or literal pieces to include in their design.
Over the years, the Mycelium would grow to create a new environment of rot and life.
Mycelium Brick | Wood Rain Screen
Double Laminated Glass Facade
Wood Screen
Architecture as mountain. The mountain is the icon of the exterior that visitors can meander and experience the site as it embraces its connection to nature instead of architecture determining the heart of the site. With wood and its life cycle at the heart of the project, the dome is a focal point for RAIR’s new building as it reflects RAIR’s mission and the overall concept behind the building. It also represents the relationship of nature’s ecosystem that is found within the project, from microorganisms to macro.
Embellished Framework
SOMETHING TO WEAR & PLACE TO EXPLORE
Translating ancient to present garment techniques such as boning, crinoline, and draping into a hybridized piece of garment that identifies the time and cultural relevance of fashion of the century. A digital medium was used to re-examine the above techniques concerning the human body on various scales. These techniques of pattern, texture, tactility, shape, profile, color, kinetics and augmentation found in fashion can be closely read and translated into new architectural elements and details.
The hybridization is further developed by extracting the techniques used and translating that into architectural language. Boning becomes structure, and draping becomes cladding. The cladding utilizes advanced material and construction techniques while emphasizing abstract fashion techniques developed earlier.
A Garment & A Facade Design
Entrance Perspective //Ornamentation from the garment is translated to cladding as a layer that transforms to accommodate human activities
Overall Garment
//Different techniques include Crinoline, Boning and draping
AmungUs
A PLACE TO REMEMBER
What does it look like to be in a world where humans are not in control? A world of co-existence where there is always a balance between mankind and nature.
We exist in a world where wilderness is not actually wilderness, yet another place that is defined by mankind. Nature is no longer its own being but one that is governed and intruded upon by humans and our habits. It’s time for a balance to be restored and for the wilderness to redefine itself, based on the nature that existed before humans. AmungUs lies a creature that works its way to create a new balance in this world. It is geared towards its efforts of restoring nature and deterring humans. Its bottom head is made up of granulated active carbon, a medium used in the bio-filtration process, to help clean the polluted air AmungUs was drawn to. AmungUs also contains a variety of floral, which encourage bio-remediation, that it germinates the area with along its journey. It is also home to a multitude of bacteria that thrive in the toxicity housed within AmungUs. Thus, creating a co-dependent relationship with AmungUs and the environment in which it exists within.
Homuncular Hub
AmungUs identifies its target environment to begin its process of re-balancing the relationship between the built environment and nature. AmungUs is observant and protective of its new environment as it prepares for germination. Overtime, AmungUs will decay into the ground and become one with its environment, which was once dominated by infrastructure and human interventions, is now left rejuvenated with a nature that can be occupied by all: flora, fauna, and mankind.
AmungUs Miniature Model
AmungUs Material Exploration
An architectural hub is designed along the I-10 in Los Angeles to world of what we could develop. Simultaneously, this hub would to further research on AmungUs and its process. The community spreading the word on the new nature and the homunculi.
to house this New Nature as a reminder to the would be a community center and a laboratory community center would be hard geared towards
Longitudinal Section Through the Homunculi
// Focusing on different spaces that help develop a community and facilitate new nature growth in a hub
Hub
AmungUs’ emergence reveals to us a history of a world that once was as well as a creation of a world that is yet to come. As ancient grottoes are revealed, and new grottoes emerge with the introduction of AmungUs’ new balance. The homuncular grotto becomes a place of remembrance for the world that was once filled with smog and pollutants, an exhibition of all the change that AmungUs has brought to the world through the preserved homunculi garden, and a nod to the new world in the science exhibition center and homunculi laboratory where new homunculi can emerge and evolve over time.
New Nature Laboratory
Billboard Series for the New Nature
Design and Belonging
THE INTERSECTION OF CULTURE, SPACE AND EXPRESSION
Design and Belonging: The Intersection of Culture, Space, and Expression delves into the significance of spatial awareness. My thesis investigates the concept of fostering the immediate surroundings within a region’s natural and cultural context, utilizing mapping analysis, material understanding and artifact studies.
This work provides a brief overview of various studies conducted in two distinct locations: Philadelphia, PA, and Cappadocia, Turkey. Each artifact represents a moment of expression, revealed through specific material and spatial interactions. The primary goal of these artifact and mapping studies is to establish a series of relationships that function across different timeframes and scales, ranging from global relevance to its connection with local environments
Thesis Overview
Figural Site Analysis
HOK, PHILADELPHIA
007 NEXT STOP:
AI COMPETITION ENTRY
Design and Belonging: The Intersection of Culture, Space, and Expression delves into the significance of spatial awareness. My thesis investigates the concept of fostering the immediate surroundings within a region’s natural and cultural context, utilizing mapping analysis, material understanding and artifact studies.
This work provides a brief overview of various studies conducted in two distinct locations: Philadelphia, PA, and Cappadocia, Turkey. Each artifact represents a moment of expression, revealed through specific material and spatial interactions. The primary goal of these artifact and mapping studies is to establish a series of relationships that function across different timeframes and scales, ranging from global relevance to its connection with local environments
