Taha K. Suhrawardy Design Portfolio

(part)folio Taha K. Suhrawardy is a Virginia-based Architectural Designer. He is in his second year of Master of Architecture at the University of Virginia and holds a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Michigan.

This is a curation of his design work.

Second offset of edge increases

First offset of edge increases

time Pancorb’s Orbs Corpse Fall 2018, Critic: Luis Pancorbo

With deep reverence for the fate of the World War One era steamships of Mallows Bay, sealed before it had even begun, this project reimagines the visitor’s experience of this monumental ship graveyard by variously immersing them in the amphibological interstitial spaces between the ships, between the natural land, and between the ships that have themselves become land over the past 100 years. The Copse of structures placed within the site engages visitors in different ways according to the specific structure’s location, elevation, size, and orientation.

The design draws inspiration from the past and current conditions of the vessels. Where the ships created double hulls, the Orbs employ double skins consisting of an inner geodesic dome and its mathematically equivalent weak dual as a superstructure. This outer mantle over time is then annexed by the same biological and natural processes that have claimed ownership of the ships themselves in the past one hundred years. Together, these paired Corpses will become a marine sanctuary that will continually remind us of both the solemn casualties of war and nature’s inescapable loving embrace.

1 1

2 2

3

3

4

4

5

5

rehabilitation Silo Schoooooooool Winter 2019, Critic: Jeana Ripple, Belen Auranguren

Chicago has difficult yet liberating geographical features and environmental phenomena, as well as critical socio-economic infrastructures that make designing in it a dangerous game. This project seeks to respect and highlight some of these, such as by working along a gridded logic, albeit not the same one as the rest of Chicago. The project also tries to make the most of the topographical and hydrological features of the site to make a playful inscription into the fabric of Chicago.

The site strategy entails relocation of the existing silos into a campus, and then reinvents the construction technique used for Heatherwick’s Silo Hotel, which carves out voids in existing concrete silos and reinforces the remaining structure by a new layer of concrete. This proposal uses this technique as a design tool by destroying certain portions of the existing and adding concrete to them either for reinforcement of the apertures or for functional forms appended to the cylindrical form. This relocation and reconstruction of the silos, connected with floating “bridges” establish a new pedagogy of childhood education by establishing open learn-, play-, and work-space between the nodal anchors (i.e. silos), whose individualized programs provide breakout spaces for the children.

Silo Hotel

Umemoto - Concrete Vase

Silo Hotel Construction Process

1 + 2 Rock Climbing Wall

N

Reconstructed Silos

3 Zen Garden

4

N

Jungle Gym

5 Slide + Egress

N

6 + 7 Library + Egress

N

N

A-A Section longitudinal through center of site

urbanism Voxel Grounds Fall 2019; Critic: Mona El-Khafif; Partner: Ye Tao

Manhattan’s intensely urban quality of life makes this triangular site doubly important in becoming an entrance gate to the island while simultaneously offering a microcosm of NY’s urbanism and being an integral urban node of the city. The project presents a system of pixelated mini towers, yet nonetheless divides, opens, and encloses itself in different dimensions to create urban density and a new form of urbanity at a distinctly human scale.

This smaller, human scale - consisting of an urban alphabet of modular elements - expresses itself when the site’s ground gets extruded up towards the sky and voxelized, incorporating voids according to sight lines and the urban fabric, thereby creating these critical human scale spaces. These voxel voids generate outdoor spaces that can be occupied publicly, privately, and semi-privately.

This strategy allows for high density while paradoxically creating more usable outdoor space than an empty site. Moreover, the collection of these outdoor spaces comprises a “set of grounds”, from “First Ground” at ground level, to public “Second Grounds” that sit atop an elevated plinth occupied by four high schools, to “Third Grounds” that hover high in the air, accessible by residents and working professionals.

The agglomeration of these voxels creates new spaces offering urban niches for different user groups.

Shared spaces like the library, the “Second Grounds”, and a community art gallery constitute in part an entire catalog of spatial conditions that a voxel can generate. This diversity creates a series of smaller and larger communities that are not only programmatically, but socially, commercially, domestically, and visually connected throughout the greater site context and structured through the circulations system.

New York City’s topographic nature is represented as a formal and programmatic microcosm in the agglomeration of these voxels, which address simultaneously the human scale. This mountainous constitution is reflected in section, where New York City and Voxel Grounds become deeply integrated and indistinguishable from each other.

Urban Influences

Architectural Operations

Extraction of Human Scale 4132 3718 3305 2892

10x10 Pixel

2479 2066 1652 1239 826 413 0 hours of sunlight

Figure-Ground High FAR on Site

Hourly Solar Analysis per Year

residential

Facade Pixel Typologies and Aggregregation

Urban Fabric vs Urban Objects office space “third grounds”

Sight lines Through Site server space high school #2 high school #1

Intersecting Grids

high school #4

“second ground”

high school #3

to w

n

To C

rcia

lD

ist

critical voxel moments

To

me

Ch ina

om

ric

t an Bridge

To Manhatt

entry

ict

istr

lD

central school courtyard

To

ncia

oo Br

ina

F To

mini school courtyards

school shared space

n kly e

g id

Br

Sight lines and Viewsheds

Horizontal Circulation + Entry

Program Distribution

“first ground” egress loop

3x 2x 2x 2x 2x

2x

2x 2x

3x

2x 2x

pixel area doubled pixel area maintained

2x

2x

2x 3x

pixel area erased

2x

2x

2x

2x

2x 2x 2x

2x 2x

2x

pixel area tripled

2x

2x 2x

2x

2x

2x 2x 2x

Total Outdoor Space = 122% of empty site

2x

vertical circulation

vertical circulation

community space

egress loop

egress platforms

Access

Vertical Circulation + Egress

Micro-Neighborhoods

Multiplicity of Voxels and Grounds

Voxel Alphabet for Housing

My role: site analysis project design, formal massing, model fabrication, diagrams, programmatic layout, section, facade design, render outputs.

Partner: site analysis, project design input, plans, exploded axon, pixel alphabet, mini sections, renders post processing.

temporary architecture Sic Parvis Magna Cafe Winter 2019; AIA Virginia Prize Competition (Best of School Award)

“Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.”

-Orson Welles This pop-up Magna Cafe places itself at the crossroads of exciting cuisine, eco-living, and community merriment. Its pliability as a collapsible, transportable pavilion + accessories allows it to be an efficient and dynamic mode of dining, much like a kangaroo with hors d’oeuvres. The pavilion structure folds inward like an umbrella, with its trusses stacking internally. The seating and counters + storage also fit together when packed, similar to Russian dolls. Lastly, the open lattice barriers fold inward on hinges into a compact bundle to be easily carried.

Once set up, the life of Magna Cafe ensues with the herb garden in the eye of its pavilion. Here, customers find a variety of locally growing herbs and spices, such as mint, cardamom, ginger, and turmeric, which they can personally pick to add to their teas and drinks. This brings to the customer a closer connection to their fare, and thus engenders a closer relationship to the environment, especially with the adjacent compost bins.

True to a sustainable ethos, Magna Cafe derives its energy via the photovoltaic cells woven into the fabric of the cover, which provide electricity for lighting and cooking needs, as well as the water collection apparatus that gives life to the herb garden, completing the circle of the resource flows within th system.

241

.45

151

.25

0

40

35.

.20

139

computation Intuitive Vortals Winter 2018; Critic: Sean Vance

This project combines the ambition to develop new spatialities for educational institutions subject to the parameters of limited space with the facilitation of parametric modeling.

Beginning with the scheme of a central circulation tower surrounded by classrooms units, the goal is to produce an algorithm capable of outputting a tower “drape�, complete with mullions, materiality, and floor slabs, with a single input consisting of a massed object.

Shapes of classrooms were also explored in combination with different methods of fitting desks inside the classroom. The maximum number of desks could fit inside shapes that approached the rotundity of a circle. In addition, the tightest fit for desks was found to use a logic of winding the desks one by one along the inside perimeter of the classroom, then intersecting the buffer spaces of the next desk with two previously placed desks. Grid-based placing was also explored in order to create an orderly layout.

25’ 8”

25’ 8”

25’ 8”

22’ 0”

18’ 4”

14’ 8”

11’ 0”

7’ 4”

3’ 8”

0”

25’ 8”

25’ 8”

22’ 0”

22’ 0”

18’ 4”

18’ 4”

14’ 8”

14’ 8”

11’ 0”

11’ 0”

7’ 4”

7’ 4”

3’ 8”

3’ 8”

0”

0” 25’ 8”

25’ 8”

25’ 8”

22’ 0”

18’ 4”

14’ 8”

11’ 0”

7’ 4”

3’ 8”

0”