Architecture Portfolio_2024

Samarth Vachhrajani

Architecture Portfolio // Selected Works

Table Of Contents

1/ Textile Co-Op - Dia Beacon Art Residency

2/ Pigneto Social Hub

3/ Des Moines Art Center - Downtown

4/ Four-Mile Creek Greenway Community Recreation Center

5/ Pickard Chilton Summer Internship Work

6/ Palaces of the People (Exhibition)

7/ Digital Fabrication

8/ Publications

Textile Co-Op - Dia Beacon Artist Residency

Beacon // New York

Textiles are objects which carry stories and memories in them. They signify the conditions that once existed. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, where we found ourselves trapped in our houses, textiles could ground oneself to remember the stories attached on the fabric with each stitch and stain.

This Textile Co-Op is located in Beacon, NY, a place where multiple hat factories existed. The city was once known as the “hat factory making capital of New York State.” Our project recognizes this past of Beacon, NY through art residencies within the Dia:Beacon Museum. The existing art museum and renovated factory features several large site specific sculptures including work from Richard Serra, Sam Gilliam, Andy Warhol and Dan Flavin. The proposed residency located to the west of the museum is where textile artists have the opportunity to participate and lead discussions on oral histories. The artists create tapestries and other such pieces which not only respect the oral histories connected to the pieces and the place but also act as a speculative form of generating new knowledge and art.

The building is a co-working collective space for sharing skills and stories with other artists and the public visiting the Dia Beacon Museum.

Site

Digital

STORAGE

Ground Level

ResidentEntry

Residential Units

Oral Histories

First Level

Personal Value

Wall tapestry made by grandma

Khaki Cloth, part of Indian Freedom Struggle

SEWING MACHINES LOOMS

Second Level

Materializing Oral Histories

Third Level

Fourth Level

Viewtotheoutside.

Sewing Supplies.

Yarn Thread Measuring Tape Needle

Bobbin Spool

Recognizing the Past Tironda Hat Factory, Beacon

Dia Beacon

Old Nabisco Factory

Render - Basement Maker space

Render - Artist Residence

Artist Residences

1.

2.

1.

1.

Artist Residence Type - A

Artist Residence Type -

Artist Residence Type - C

Sewn Floor Plan

Pigneto Social Hub

Rome, IT

Multiple typologies and social dynamics shape the neighborhood of Pigneto in Rome. Benevolo argues in The European City that “a city’s physical form derives from a complex combination of geographical and historical factors; its various aspects constitute an array still more varied than that presented by those economic, social, and cultural events.” Pigneto in Rome is a rapidly changing Peripheral neighborhood, which acted as a collective space for people not served by Rome’s stagnant center.

Our proposal works as a porous “spine” or an “edge” continuous with the push and pull of the city’s urban fabric - connecting the neighborhood to the Park and The Torrione Monument. Programs are divided into three main buildings - Student housing, central public building, and the workshops. The entry sequence is created through thresholds and edges - marked by the geometry of the buildings. These series of interconnected collective spaces become a part of the landscape and adapt to the changing topography through ramps and stairs. The Facades become the walls of the public spaces, a complex mechanism mediating dialogue between the interiors and the exteriors. Our facades are a series of shifted columns that allow for natural light to be filtered into the spaces and provide views into the city. They become a binding element among the three buildings, which are otherwise unique formally.

Pigneto was built by its citizens over time, building with it strong solidarity and community. The social hub is a designated place for the culture of Pigneto and creates space for its future growth.

Site Axonometric Drawing

Exploded Axonometry

Floor Plans

Site Section

Perspective Render

Building Section

Context Diagram - South

Context Diagram - North

Floor Plan Diagram - Circulation

Perspective Section

Des Moines Art Center - Downtown

Des Moines, IA

The Downtown Des Moines Art Center is dedicated to reflecting on the important social and cultural conversations of Des Moines and connecting larger national occurrences of injustice to its local manifestation. The design strategy is to stand in continuation of the long axis of the Papa John Sculpture Park. Our building from the west slowly opens up to the sculpture park aided by the processional march of the colonnade. Our proposal also consists of Long span folded plates structure, on the volumetric double heighted gallery and auditorium spaces, which also help in bringing diffused light into the gallery.

The large double-height gallery space acts as an open space that allows for discourse around important issues and a place where the museum visitors can reflect and take civic action. These galleries also provide a space for showcasing work by emerging and established artists of color, and provides them a space to bring light to injustices in an unfiltered way. In contrast to the larger gallery two smaller galleries on second level are condensed spaces where the visitors interact with the context in a more intimate setting for quiet reflection.

Massing Diagrams

Structure Diagram

Folded Plates

Girders

Exterior Colonnade

Exhibition Galleries

Cafe + Store Auditorium Lobby

Interior Gallery Render Program Diagrams

Summer Solstice Sun Study // 12PM

East Section

Winter Solstice Sun Study // 12PM

Corten Steel Clading

Mullions

Exterior colonnade

Bat Insulation

Rigid Insulation

Sub Structure Anchor

Metal Stud Wall

Concrete Floor

C-Channel

Exterior colonnade

Mullions

Glass Sliver

Rigid Insulation

Bat Insulation

Gypsum Board

Concrete Floor

Rendered Wall Details

Wall Plan Detail with Corten Steel Cladding

Four Mile Creek Recreation Center

Des Moines, Iowa

Tim Ingold suggests that architecture is a knot between the earth and the sky. Taking this as our thesis, the project is an exploration of reconceptualizing a community center. Our site is in a deurbanising neighborhood, in Des Moines, Iowa, due to its geographical location in a flood plane. The site is a food desert, and as we unbuild/build-over the existing recreation center, we are taking the opportunity to address theses issues of the community. We are asking the questions of how can we redefine recreation as a means to communal sustainability. And, how can traditional recreation be transformed or used to address these issues.

The interior programs of the existing building housed a basketball court, gym, dining room/gathering area, empty administrative offices, and a kitchen. To reorganize the building to better suit the needs of the existing occupants we moved the gym to the front of the building to mainly increase the safety of its users. The kitchen expanded and moved locations and now functions as a place for experimentation and education through the use of test kitchens and a classroom. The new exterior basketball court allows for a community activation space to be infilled in its place. The flexible programming of this recreation center allows for control depending on if it is a market space, town hall meeting, after school program, meal program, or annual event.

SUMMER

SPRING

Seasonal Elevations

South Section 1

South Section 2

Detail // Laser cut Wood Model

EXTERIOR RENDER (Externally Produced)

Material Palette Studies

Client Presentation Packages

Lobby Ceiling Studies

Palaces of the People

Iowa State University

Palaces of the People was a curatorial project, with Prof. Vladimir Kulic, Peter Miller, Zhaoyue Chen and Samarth Vachhrajani. The exhibition was curated as a part of conference ‘Learning from Socialism: Alternative Modernities in the Second World.’ The Project assembled four projects located in Ahmedabad, India; Bosnia and Herzegovina, Beijing, China and Croatia, that looked at architectures built for the people and by the people under socialist state imagination.

Digital Fabrication

3-D Printing + Casting

Diagrams

Digital Fabrication

Ceramic 3-D Printing

Diagrams

Datum 11: End (contributor)

Paprika! 9: Abolition in Practice (Editor, MED Working Group)

Datum 12: Care (Editor)

Datum 13: Collective (Editor)

SUDTH (participant, Contributor)

Canadian Center for Architecture, How to: do no harm (contributor)

Bnieuws 55/03 Where (Contributor)

Publications

Pidgin, Issue 32, Princeton School of Architecture: For issue 32, Pidgin has commissioned an essay on the India-Bangladesh Border. Forthcoming in Spring 2024.

Paprika! Volume 9, Issue 3 ‘Abolition in Practice’ : Contributing editor for Paprika, with MED Working group. Our publication solicited pieces that stage architectural practice and its implication in the death dealing logics of racial capitalism.

Canadian Center for Architecture, How to: do no harm: selected for a three week residency at the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal, to think and discuss the complicity of architectural practice in environmental and social harms. The residency ended in a collaborative editorial, published on the CCA website.

Bnieuws, Issue 55 / 03 Where: invited to co-write for journal based our of TU Delft, Faculty of architecture, titled ‘Where.’ In this exchange, we ruminated about care, collective, beauty and its place in architectural discourse.

Datum, Student Journal Of Architecture, Iowa State University: engaged in student publication, as contributor and editor at large for Datum. During my time, we published three issues titled, End, Care and Collective respectively.