Mikail Maqsood Portfolio 2022

Mikail Maqsood

Architecture Portfolio, Spring 2022 Cornell B.Arch 2022

email: mmm437@cornell.edu Website (WIP) : https://mikmaq.squarespace.com/ 1

Mikail Maqsood

Architecture Degree Candidate Cornell University

B.Arch 2022 GPA 3.763 (3 Times Dean’s List)

email: mmm437@cornell.edu website: mikmaq.squarespace.com languages: English, Urdu

Software:

Skills:

Rhino Autocad Sketchup V-Ray DIVA Grasshopper Unreal Engine Painting Photoshop Premier pro Indesign Illustrator Logic Pro

VR Dev Model Making Woodwork Metalwork Daylight Sim Rendering Thermal Sim 3D Printing Music Production Video Editing Debate Basic Python

Design’s most enduring value for me lies in service of better ways of being in this world.Through processes of discovery and critique, I look forward to developing more meaningful ways of organizing ideas, people and materials.

Work Experience 2019: Architecture Intern at ARCOP 1.5 months, Karachi. Worked on the early development of a home for a client. Made axonometric and sectional diagrams for a winning high-rise competition entry. Developed a low-cost shading system for a sprawling graveyard in an increasingly urban context, included site documentation using drone imagery and model making.

2012: Architecture Intern at Design Options 1.5 months, Karachi. Assisted with visualization and detail design. Attended numerous site visits 2011: Architecture Intern at Ali Alam Design 1.5 months, Karachi. CAD work and visualization. Designed staircase and pool area that were realized in a dwelling. Attended numerous site visits.

Select Coursework:

Other Experiences

Cornell Tech Product Studio Architectural Analysis Building Technology 1 Building technology 2 Structural systems 1 Structural systems 2 Environmental systems 1 Environmental systems 2 Architectural history 1 Architectural history 2 Time Builds Visual Imaging (VR) South Asian Diaspora Intro to Cognitive Science Community Outreach Technology and the Moving Body Aesthetics FWS

2019-2020: Cornell Medium Design Collective 5+months. Research and design work. Currently in a team designing a device to spontaneously create deep interactions between strangers on campus, to be exhibited at RAW Expo.

2019-Karachi Biennale Group Exhibition Contributed a painting to a large modular canvas comprised of Karachi’s map. Each local artist had to paint over an area.

2018 Fall: Ithaca Locally Grown Dance Contributions Created and taught several generative performance movements to dancers.

2018 Fall: Thumbnail Member Helped plan the bi-annual interdisciplinary Pecha Kucha event.

2017 Cornell Dragon Week: Head of Documentation 2 weeks. Documented multiple events that transpired over a week as well as strategizing their build-ups. I also designed the logo.

2016: Karachi Flood Relief Charity Group Exhibition Exhibited in a large group show towards flood relief.

3

P.6

Type: Planning For: Coursework (Team w. Planner)

P.30

Type:Design Object For: Coursework (Team)

P.50

Type: Site Strategy For: Internship

P.16

P.22

Type: Urban Design For: Coursework

Type: Material Systems For: Coursework (Team)

P.36

P.44

Type: Urban Strategy For: Coursework

Type: Structural Form For: Coursework

P.54

P.58

Type: Analysis For: Coursework

Type: Art For: Mixed

Index

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TEAMWORK: Collaboration w. Planner I.T Blair

The Meadowlands Rolling Data Landscape Activating Data Centers as Flood-Responsive Civic and Ecological Placemaking Type: Planning For: Coursework This project asks what relationships might emerge if infrastructural planning in the meadowlands were to move beyond the long-standing developer vs environment debate: What if capital could meet its demands while being closely wedded to supporting civic and ecological needs in a flood-risk landscape?

By leveraging experimental innovations and economic momentum behind data centers, new legislations and there resultant forms were speculated: datacenter architecture tied to rolling-easement, entering mutually beneficial reciprocities in service of people and nature.

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Plan illustrating existing and proposed conditions for NJ meadowlands datacenter infrastructure, in relation to NYC

9

An eclectic archive of artifacts found while looking at information systems in NJ Meadowlands

Plan illustrating existing and proposed conditions for NJ meadowlands datacenter infrastructure, in relation to NYC

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Multi-zoned rolling easement

Component drawings and diagrams: The heat-exchange extensions act as ecological cleansers

Eco-shell decomposition sequence 13

Participatory planning elements from our physical presentation

Exemplars: Speculating examplary reciprocities between data center and context 15

Ithaca Sloped Music Hall Making an insular typology more civically meaningful Type: Urban Design For: Coursework The Sloped Music hall manages to further vitalize an already happening area at the ‘gateway of Ithaca’ by affording an increased publicness, avoiding the introverted nature of many music halls : concert programming spills into the corridors, and a prominent urban corridor is recontextualized a stage for urban emergence. .

17

Site plan

19

Ground floor plan

Basement plan

21

PARTLY TEAMWORK: Material Research w. Zekun Tong

Chongqing Speculative Print Farm Fabric: Integrating Living, Farming and 3D Printing on the Fringes of Urbanity Type: Material Systems For: Coursework This speculative project fundamentally re-imagines the relationship between the two main components of 3D printed material by asking what could be possible if the support material was not removed from the precise printed material, but rather included as part of the design.

The applications of intentionally calibrating their relationships was explored in relation to local design practices on the edge conditions of Chinese urbanism at numerous design scales.

23

Material research into SLA 3D printing (Conducted w. Zekun Tong)

Experimenting with different interactions between print, support and infill 25

3.Local masonary + print -Structural reinforcements

3.Filling print with mortar -Structural walls -Transparencies

3.Intra-print space-making -Thresholds -Resting Spaces

3.Unstructured support material -Curtain partitions -rough, expedited space-making -Interior/Exterior gradation

Spectrum of performative applications from varying relationship between print and support material

Initial dwelling speculation (collaboration with Zekun Tong)

Threshold

Wetwall

Filled Wall

Shelving

Shelving

6’

12’

24’

Dwelling plan (above) and section (below)

27

Urban to rural fabric transition

Sub-cluster axon and protocol

1:Printing 2: Transport

3.Situating and filling

Sub-Cluster Plan 29

TEAMWORK: Collaboration w. Benjiman Magin

Music Machine A musical device that engages the entire body and disassembles to fit in a case Type :Design Object For: Coursework A playful hybridization of a violin and hurdy gurdy, this stringed-instrument’s full-body engagement arose from the idea that increased musical expression could be afforded if a foot-pedal was used to generate the foundational friction, freeing both hands to add further expressivity.

Particularly instructive was designing the process of collapsing the device to fit into a portable case, not only because user-experience was placed at the forefront, but there was a resonance between the relationship of instrument and its case and the contents of a program and its architecture.

31

Uncasing and assembly sequence

Exploded axonometric

Side view

35

Bronx Infill Housing Strategic community revitizalization in the face of gentrification Type: Urban Stategy For: Coursework Working as an multi-stage infill scheme within a Bronx neighbourhood, this project cultivates a communal ecosystem through specific residential, commercial, and civic interventions that attempt to appropriately assist a community averse to conventional notions of development What ultimately emerges is a lively and connected urban corridor on the interior of several blocks.

37

Site usage analysis

Site plan

Site sectional research

Infill configurations built off sectional research

Long-term Infill Development Sequence: Empty, Residential, Commerical, Amenities

39

South section looking North

West entrance

View from park/cultural center

41

Perspective montage from a day-in-the-life

43

Rational Form Making

Arriving at a structurally rational form to support emergent creative practices Type: Structural Form Finding For: Coursework Building on rigorous precedent research, a dynamic and lightweight shading system was designed to consolidate and better support the free-form creative production that is emerging in the area behind foundry, a quaint and historic wood frame structure.

An array of units constructed of a cast iron frame and a PTFE coated fabric delineate potential functions and bring in soft northern light, ideal for a workshop. The tie countering the cantilever’s weight can be adjusted to raise and lower the unit as needed.

45

Fourth Rail Bridge, Edinburgh

Moom Tensegrity Pavilion,

Snowden Aviary, London

Zarzuela Hippodrome, Madrid

47

Sections

9.5’

40’ 1.3’ 12’

11. 2

Unit axon and details 49

Parametric Graveyard Shading System

Designing a ruleset to address indeterminate and sensitive site conditions Type: Site Strategy For: Internship As part of my internship with ARCOP, I was tasked with designing a shading system for a graveyard. The main design challenge arose due to the inaccuracy of the official site survey (compounded by the difficulty of discerning informal burials).

To resolve this lack of specfic information, I designed a ruleset that respond to any instantion of site conditions, as well as a supporting low-cost shading module appropriate to local construction methods and materials.

51

Lashing connection between truss and shading

Lateral double rafter 19’

Knee Bracing 1

Knee Bracing 2

Splicing with internal union

9’ unbraced bamboo height

Bamboo connection to footing Diagrams redrawn from : Bamboo Joinery and Construction Techniques by Guadua Bamboo Bamboo Construction Sourcebook by CAN Bamboo Design and Construction by J.F Correal

Shading module axon

ISO 1”=8’

Top: Exterior perspective

Below: Interior perspective

Bottom: North-South section, looking West

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El Tunal Experimental Analysis

Investigating how architectural affordances/transformations can strengthen community Type: Analaysis For: Coursework This analysis explores how El Tunal Experimental, a low-rise and high density housing project creates an enduring long term community through shared investment in modifcation of public and semi public space at the scale of unit, building and block. Modifying the building on one-floor affects the affordances of neighboring units. The underlying framework of the project was then slightly modified to explore how agency could be improved (not shown).

Image source:Collectivo BTA 55

Above: Diagrams illustrating how building out on the lower floors affects the affordances of floors-above to build

Emergence of community-affording fabric through unit aggregations 57

Select Artworks

A small collection of artworks that I would like to share Type: Art For: Mixed

A1 A2 A3 A4 A5

Acrylic on Canson 59

Digital

Pen on paper 61

Mikail Maqsood

Architecture Portfolio, Spring 2022 Cornell B.Arch 2022

email: mmm437@cornell.edu Website (WIP) : https://mikmaq.squarespace.com/