Architecture Portfolio 23-25

VISHWAL RAM GOWDA EDUCATION

Currently pursuing B.Arch School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi (2020-2025).

ACHIEVEMENTS SKILLS

Evolo Skyscraper Competition, Honorable Mention (2021).

Habitat 2.0 Student Housing Competition, Honorable Mention (2022).

NonArchitecture Idea Competition, Editorial Pick (2023).

SPAKRITI, college installation society

Co-Coordinator

National Railway Museum, Re-design

Re-Design Project Exhibition

:

Rhino 7 Grasshopper

Maya

Blender

Photoshop

Illustrator

Revit

Autocad

Enscape

Unreal Engine 5

LANGUAGES

English - Native

- Intermediate to Advanced Proficiency

- Parametric Modelling, Basic Knowledge of Plugin development

- Organic Massing & Ideating

- Basic Proficiency

- Intermediate to Advanced Proficiency

- Basic to Intermediate Proficiency

- Beginner Proficiency

- Intermediate Proficiency

- Rendering

- Rendering

Hindi - Intermediate

French - Beginner

Kannada - Intermediate

1.

2.

3.

Competition: 5G Bamboo Pavillion

Group: Vishwal Ram, Karan Jain

Participation

ARRIVAL

The brief of this competition mainly comprised of two objectives, Design a pavillion for an IT Park in Assam meant to communicate the significance of 5G in a relatable way, and Design it to be made almost entirely out of Bamboo.

To think about such a premise lead one to relate to the ‘Museum of the Future’ in Abu Dhabi, where the exhibits and the design communicated an educated guess on the future and the state of technology.

With this vision in mind the final concept needed to be an interpretation of the future, with an alien-like building seemingly possible only with alien technology, inspired from pop cultural interpretations which looks outlandish and familiar at the same time.

The final product is an arrangement of opaque and heavy, floating solids that interpret the overall pursuit of 5G as the concept being free from physical thethers at the most complex scale, allowing more intricate activities to be achieved without the presence of a physical connecting medium.

The heart of the brief being the use of bamboo as the main material came as a boon since bamboo’s structural properties were very synonymous with the principles of ‘Tensegrity’, a structural system devised by Frei Otto which banks on the phrase “ Tensile integrity”; a perfect balance between the tensile push and pull. This was to be the interpretation of alien-like technology which would make the structure “float”.

CORE OF THE CONCEPT: ‘Arrival’

The main inspiration for the final product came from the movie ’Arrival’ wherein one sees aliens arriving to earth on opaque and heavy elongated spherical masses which float seemingly by breaking the laws of physics. And so, the concept evolved out of the thought “If technology and the internet keep on evolving and developing towards an un-ending goal, would’nt future technology look similiar to our interpretation of alien technology in the present? ”

MEDIUM OF THE CONCEPT: ‘Tensegrity’

In pursuit of ‘alien technology’, one saw the light and deceptively unstable nature of Tensegrity as the answer.

Tensegrity is a structural concept where elements like rods or beams are held together by a balance of tension and compression forces. Imagine a floating sculpture - the rods push outward, while cables pull inward. This balance creates stability and allows for unique, lightweight structures.

Loose Arrangement Manual Tension Loose Intermediate Unstable System

Conflicting Tension Stable System

MAIN STRUCTURE

Outer Frame + Floor Slabs

INNER FRAMING

OUTER FINISH

Thatch outer finish

2x 100 mm dia Bamboo Members

80 mm dia Bamboo Members

INDIVIDUAL ‘SHELL’ FRAMING

LEGEND:

1- Pavillion Entry

2- Underbelly Seating

3- Admin

4- Cafe

5- Pavillion Exit

6- Exhibit Space

DETAIL D 4 Cable Joinery Junction

DETAIL A

Bamboo Anchored to the Ground

DETAIL E

Multiple Cable Joinery Junction

DETAIL B

Bamboo to Bamboo Joinery

DETAIL C

Steel Cable Anchored to Ground

DETAIL F

Bamboo Strut Cable Joinery

SINGLE TENSEGRITY UNIT

Competition:Habitat 2.0

Honorable Mention Group: Vishwal Ram, Karan Jain

MINI VILLAGE

This competition gave the opportunity to redesign and redefine student housing, so as a student this became quite a personal project. The challenge was to design a student housing complex in Banglore, Karnataka, India which has 150 units along with amenities such as convenience stores, libraries, sports facilities and a common mess/eating area.

The final product provided additional amenities such as a laundromat, pharmacy ,barber and an informal ‘under yard’ for every unit. The emphasis for the unit design was put on how to give value to the amount being invested by the student while also maintaining the quality of facility for all the types of units.

The planning was done horizontally rather than vertically, giving each unit the feeling of an individual house rather than an apparthment giving students a sense of belonging after coming from far away places. The design also emphasises community and social melding, having to cooperate to use amenities.

The social and traversal spaces were designed like an above-ground chicago pedway as the spaces have a multilevel, multi-layered, explanatory qualtiy with different spacial funcitons blending with each other in order to provoke optional social dialogue.

I II IV

Every unit is designed with the consideration of having 2 floors, for minimal ground coverage while having highly economical spaces, giving residents the feel of territory. There are 2 variations for each unit type.

All units are arranged in Tetris-like clusters, promoting interactions within different unit types, each cluster has a dedicated common space for communal gathering. Clusters are then placed nest to each other at staggered levels, this progression gives us the building footprint.

Each unit has 4 things, a living space, a resting/ working space, a wash/restroom and an open-tosky space to connect all the spaces which also acts as ventilation exhaust, these functions were taken as 1:1 squares and arranged around the open-to-sky space in various permutations to achieve 6 different types of units. This creates the perception of choice allowing for the students to gain some form of control, coming to a new region by themselves.

The nature of the units and by result the entire design is meant to be constructed by the means of preabrication, allowing for fast constuction and lowering the cost of the entire project, enticing the connected institutions to allow for a lower price making the stay here an amenity rather than a luxury.

A problem in most student housings in Delhi is the lack of effective, cheap ventilation that is natural and consistent. To solvethis, a system of wind catchers fitted with low energy fans that are solar powered are used, there funnel air underground to be cooled naturally and then distributed to every unit.

MODULAR FIELD STATION

Competition: Ethos, Transparence 16.0

Group: Vishwal Ram, Karan Jain Participation

Transparence is a yearly competition hosted by ethos, the briefs typically have an overarching goal of sustainability in mind. For this year the brief highlighed the waste of land in relation to run down airstips, these are narrow and large pieces of land that are left unused after their ability to fulfill a purpose runs out.

The goal of the brief was to ask how would this land can be reused, and even after being reused, can one develope a solution that dosent go to waste as did the original airstrip itself? how would a reversible architecture solution look like? To answer these questions first one had to decide the function that would inhabit the strip.

‘AN AGRICULTURE & FOOD SCIENCES INCUBATION CENTRE FOR DEVELOPING IDEAS AND INVENTIONS’

In response to the need of a reversible building, a modular hive-like system of truncated octahedrons, chosen for having all vertices of equal lengths, all of which are suspended under 6 tensegrity based, deconstructible arches. The modules are meant to be reprogrammed and repurposed and the arches are meant to be broken down ivnto wires and rods.

SELECTED SITE: Kolar RAF Airstrip

The airstrip is located around a slew of farms and a complete lack of research infrastructure. Introducing an ‘incubation centre’ here would lead to percolation of relevant knowledge and motivation to educate oneself considering the ease of access to the site.

TRUNCATED POLYHEDRON UNITS (EACH UNIT HAS 2 FLOORS)

APPROACH:

We defined reversibilty by focusing on modular reversibility.

RESULTANT FORM (THE UNITS ARE SUSPENDED ON THE ARCHES)

TENSEGRITY BASED STRUCTURAL SUPPORT & CORES

ZONING:

Sports+ SocialSpillout

Pavillion Labs+Residential+ Recreational+Office+Research Collaborative

42mAirstrip

RECREATION (14 units)

LABS (55 units)

Parking

SITE PLAN

Exhibits

GreenHouses+LoadingDocks+ Storage

OFFICE (22 units)

RESIDENTIAL (10 units)

COLLABORATIVE (9 units)

RESEARCH (34 units)

UNITS:

A truncated octahedron was chosen as all edges are oof equal length.

Modular Panels (Made with bamboo,thatch insulation and gypboard).

Floor Slabs(Made with timbercrete, bamboo, epoxy flooring(labs)/ wood flooring).

Bamboo Frame Members (Treated for climate resistance).

Service Core(Made with bamboo, particle board and gypboard.

Roof Panel Windows Panel

Windows Panel Blank Panel

SQUARE PANEL

HEXAGON PANEL

Fitted with Solar Panels

STRUCTURAL DETAILS:

The units are suspended from tensegrity arches by steel cables, the cores, while also following tensegrity are separate isolated units. The only permanent parts of the design are the foundations. DETAIL C DETAIL D

SPRING JOINT: (To allow for differential expansion)

DETAIL A

Tensile Cable

DETAIL C

MULTI-CABLE JOINT

TWO CABLES JOINT

DETAIL D

DETAIL

DETAIL B DETAIL

Steel Mast

Cables connecting to ball and socket joints

Ball and socket joint( All struts)

REVERSIBILTY:

MODULAR CLUSTERS ARE REUSED AS INDEPENDENT BUILT FORMS.

INDEPENDENT CLUSTER CAN BE ADAPTED BASED ON PROGRAM.

TENSEGRITY ARCHES CAN BE TAKEN APART INTO THEIR PURE COMPONENTS.

INDEPENDENT CLUSTER CAN BE ADAPTED BASED ON PROGRAM.

WATER COLLECTING SYSTEM THAT CAN BE DISMANTLED AND USED IN SMALLER SCALES.

UNIT DETAILS:

Flooring Layer

Timbercrete Slabs

DETAIL E

DETAIL D

DETAIL C

DETAIL A

DETAIL B

Bamboo Frame

DETAIL D

DETAIL E

Solar Panel

Addon

Gyppboard

Outer Layer

Thatch Insulation Layer

Inner Bamboo

Framing

Outer Bamboo

Border

Gypboard Inner Layer

* MICELLANEOUS

MICELLANEOUS

AUTONOMOUS, SOLAR URBAN INFILLS

Competition: Non Architecture, Powerless City

Acheivement: Editorial Pick

Group: Vishwal Ram, Pranjal Saini, Hritovash Sarkar, Karan Jain

SPAKRITI

College Installation Society Society Co-ordinator

For the span of 1 year i was one of 6 coordinators for my colleges installation socitety, this comes with responsibilty to decorate any and all college spaces with large to small scale installations and/or lights in respect to events.

The entire experience has taught me what it means to be a Leader in the sense, of managing a large budget an the flow and distribution of materials to various workforces. This also taught me how to manage expectations, delegate work as well as manage a workforce and instill motivation in other and the meaning it bears.

This also taught me how to efficiently teach people the techniques required for certain types of work.

We were also responsible for organizing 50 person workshops to teach juniors about the significance of the society.

For large scale events one had to make posters calling for ideas, this brings the community together and gets people interested and commited to the work.

This is a large scale Tensegrity based, glowing ‘Floating Crystal’ Installation, in the main college courtyard, meant to serve as a chill spot after the partying during our college fest.

PVC pipes were used for the floating crystal and the surrounding prisms are made of steel frames dug into the ground.

Parametric pentagonal arches meant to decorate the main college entry.

Punctured PVC pipes were used for the arches, these are modular a and can be deconstructed. They are fixed to the ground with bamboo.