Arena Green site is a nature’s miracle in the heart of San Jose’s urban environment. Our Proposal “Temple of Nature” celebrates the beauty of nature by creating a spatial experience through dynamic parametric structure and engagement of the surrounding environment with architecture. The Icon (Temple of Nature) will be located in the central portion of the Arena Green site on the Northern side of Guadalupe River between St. John Street and Confluence point.

The Icon will act as a bridge pavilion which will connect the Arena green west to Arena green east through Guadalupe River. The form of an icon evolved from regular hexagram, which allows an individual to capture the breathtaking vistas of Arena Green through its six fins, which are formed by doubly sheltered hyperbolic paraboloid roof. The parametric structural form of an icon celebrates the innovation and technological advancement in Silicon Valley, which facilitates generating the intricate geometric shapes. The circular path surrounded the central void inside the Icon allows an Individual to observe the beauty, sound, and depth of the Guadalupe River. The Oculus (circular opening in the center of a roof) enables the penetration of sun rays inside the structure. Sunrays combined with mist will form a “Rainbow” inside. The mist will be created through an artificial mechanism located around Oculus. Natural lighting, Open cross ventilation, and use of locally available material will minimize the carbon footprint, hence will make this Icon as “Net Zero.”

Temple of Nature will provide a unique opportunity to the viewers to enjoy the phenomenal beauty of nature and innovation in its most mystical way.

The Ambulatory Surgery Center ASC) is located in Ames, Iowa, to provide a facility for an outpatient surgery service in the city through master planning of the whole site. The massing and positioning of the building has been carefully considered for the optimum sun exposure and to allow room for future growth and expansion horizontally and vertically. Amescape is a destination of youthfulness and example of modern design incorporation in the healthcare environment to integrate the facility with the surrounding student community creating a strong architectural statement. Transparent curtain walls around the waiting area, consultation lounge and staff lounge with a unique shading device, and careful placement of skylights imparts a meaningful architectural response to provide natural light into the interior. The placement of PP and all the lounges providing views facilitate a sense of connection to its recreational and empathetic landscape while an interior rock garden provides the same experience of positive distraction as well as daylight exposure within a contained green-house like setting to minimize infection.

Design Process

The demographic and socio-economic analysis for the adjacent area and the county has been a primary design driver – the young and energetic student population of Iowa State University, the predominant age-group of Ames. Adjacency and relational map has been prepared to guide the decision making for efficient space planning and circulation to minimize infection and provide as much natural view as possible for the patients, visitors and staffs. This project was designed during the covid19 lockdown phase, which made me realize the need of a multipurpose and flexible space in any facility to be converted during emergency situation.

Design Concepts

This ASC is designed with the concept of ‘Vogue’ - a prevailing style of particular time. It has imparted its own presence and identity amongst the monotonous architectural style and the flat landscape of Iowa. This facility portrays the gesture of modernity and elegance which will serve as a destination for the millennials surmounting the clinical environment. The strategic goal was to maximize efficiency and quality outcomes in order to minimize risks of infection through space planning and advanced technology. The tactical goal was to provide a variety of design strategies indoor and outdoor, that could make a positive effect on patients and their caregivers to reduce stress and anxiety in different areas. The innovation was to make a provision for a flexible space in an ASC to illustrate adaptability by converting the space with separate entrance and exit, when necessary.

Outcomes

Patient and staff outcome was anticipated through efficient zoning and programming, positive distractions and natural view for stress relief, and daylight strategies with skylights, light corridors, interior garden and windows. The outcome focus was also on the experience of patient family and visitors during their waiting time in the facility with variety of indoor and outdoor landscaping, sitting and lounge provisions integrated with minimalistic and contemporary design elements through material, texture, color and furnishing featuring a modern, transparent and vibrant scheme. The number of young population visiting the facility and the time spent by the visitors and stuffs using various indoor and outdoor relaxing features would be the measure for success. Converting the ASC into a quarantine test center would actually prove the adaptability and efficiency of its emergency pandemic planning. A Post Occupancy Research is needed to be conducted to identify the improvement in reduction of stress and anxiety and minimization of hospital born infections.

Research

Were research papers and other forms of evidence evaluated during design? Were research questions developed? Was there a specific hypothesis about the relationship of a design concept to an outcome? Is a research project envisioned?

EBD based research literature has been consulted to develop a minimalistic and stylistic hospital environment that would attract the youth minimizing the risk of infection and reducing the stress and anxiety for both patients and stuff. The project was also the result of my investigation about transforming a facility during a pandemic situation like covid19. WHO guidelines for Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (Sari) Treatment Facility Design was consulted for proposing a flexible area, envisioned as a consultation lounge to alter and redesign as a quarantine test center during an emergency situation.

Evidence-Based Design

EBD process was applied in the project through defining objectives, and finding sources for relevant evidence in the healthcare environment, for nature distractions and positive effect of daylight, and improved floor layouts and work settings

There are not much EBD research available yet to design hospital environments to combat an infectious pandemic situation which was another driver for this ASC design.

The project seeks to establish the identity of its site by embracing both its scale and its presence within the distinctive context of Seattle. The way we perceive the city tells the story of its place, and this museum aims to extend that narrative not only by showcasing the air and water activity of Lake Union, but also by evoking the expansive relationship between sky and sea.

Located on a portion of Gas Works Park an area renowned for its historic preservation and layered narratives the museum respects the rhythm of its surroundings while acting as an axial marker, connecting parkland, water, and city. Acknowledging the seaplane activity that animates the lake, the building presents itself with quiet austerity in the landscape, inviting visitors to reach outward, figuratively engaging with the movement of the lake and the sky.

From its inception, the museum has been conceived not merely as a vessel for objects, but as an active dialogue between architecture and artifact. Its parametric façade, intricate yet responsive, becomes part of the environment itself, shaping and being shaped by the natural and urban context. How visitors encounter the structure, both inside and out, is integral to the museum’s experiential narrative.

Rwanda Chapel is a space for enlightenment which connects the soul of native people with nature through its program.The Chapel serves as a gathering space for the whole community & enhances the relationship between MAN & NATURE through its connection of indoor and outdoor.

Facade, local material usage, like bamboo, brick ,rammed earth and local stones celebrates the holiness & purity of mother earth to provoke the humbleness of human nature.

BY DEBANJANA & ANIKET

What “Mirage: The Reconstructed Space”

Aniket Nagdive’s Mirage: The Reconstructed Space is a site-specific, full-scale spatial installation staged inside a dormant seed-drying facility at the Black Contemporary field station near Ames, Iowa. The work is conceived as a “research assembly” that uses experiential perception as the primary design instrument, meaning the project is not just represented as drawings or images but is constructed at inhabitable scale so that perception, movement, and bodily proximity become the medium through which “space” is produced and understood. Within that repurposed agricultural container, Mirage is designed to be initially difficult to perceive, then to “appear” as the visitor crosses the threshold into the bin. The primary formal device is a calibrated field of line work (wires) whose muted visual weight and subtle reflectivity allow it to hover between visible and invisible depending on where the body stands and how light grazes the surface. This makes the installation operate like its namesake, a mirage, where perception is produced by atmospheric and optical conditions rather than by an obvious object on display.

What “Mirage: The Reconstructed Space” expresses

1) It advances architecture’s core subject, how humans perceive and construct “space,” not just form

Architecture is not only the shaping of material, it is the shaping of experience. Mirage makes that claim testable. Instead of treating atmosphere as a background condition, the project uses ambience, darkness, glare, and reflectivity as active design variables that control what a visitor can and cannot see, and when. This is a rigorous architectural move because it frames space as something that emerges through embodied interaction (movement, threshold crossing, changing angles of view), not merely as geometry in plan and section. This aligns with established architectural discourse that treats atmosphere and felt space as central to architectural effect, and it does so through built evidence rather than rhetoric. In practical terms, Mirage is an architectural prototype that demonstrates how perceptual “invariants” and occlusions can be produced through minimal means, creating a spatial event that unfolds over time.

2) It converts rural agricultural infrastructure into a contemporary architectural laboratory

A major contribution of the project is its reuse strategy, not as renovation for program, but as reuse for research. The seed-drying facility and bin are not neutral containers. They are part of a working agricultural landscape whose technologies manage air, moisture, heat, and time. Mirage reframes that industrial rural artifact as an instrument for architectural inquiry, where the building’s existing darkness, curvature, enclosure, and latent mechanical logic become design partners. This matters in the architectural field because adaptive reuse is often evaluated by new program, new facade, or carbon savings alone. Mirage argues for another form of reuse value, intellectual value, where underutilized or “quiescent” rural sites can host experimental spatial practice and public cultural engagement. That expands the discipline’s territory beyond the city and beyond the museum, into landscapes where architecture is intertwined with land use, labor, and ecological cycles.

3) It makes “invisible systems” legible, energy flows, processes, and atmospheric work

Mirage explicitly positions itself as an expression of Iowa’s agricultural landscape that “delineates the seen and unseen energy flow” of the harvest field. Architecturally, this is significant because it reframes building performance and infrastructural process as experiential content. Instead of explaining the bin’s purpose with diagrams, the installation uses line work and reflectivity to evoke the “cloaked flows of energy and processes” central to corn drying bins.

That approach is not metaphor-only. Grain drying and storage are literally energy-and-air systems, involving airflow management, fans, and the movement of drying or cooling fronts through stored grain. By turning the bin into an optical and spatial instrument, Mirage translates this otherwise hidden operational reality into a perceptible architectural encounter.

4) It contributes an original spatial technique, the “threshold reveal” as a designed event

One of the most architecturally precise aspects of Mirage is its choreography of appearance. The plane of wires is “concealed upon the introductory approach” and then introduces itself as the visitor crosses into the interior. This is not accidental, it is a deliberate sequencing of perception, where threshold is treated as a switch that changes the visual field and converts ambiguity into recognition. This technique matters because it offers a transferable method for architects working with minimal means. The project demonstrates how calibrated micro-decisions (wire spacing, connection points, alignment to light entry, relation to curvature) can generate macro-level spatial effect, an “aura of simplicity” that is actually the result of high control.

5) It engages a pressing architectural topic, rural spatial instability and land-use futures

Mirage’s written framing ties the installation to the social and spatial consequences of agricultural modernization: mechanization, consolidation, dependence on market forces and policy, and the resulting pattern of vacant or restructured farm sites. Importantly, this is not presented as abstract commentary, it is tied to the specific Iowa grid landscape and to the lived condition of rural communities.

Architecturally, this is a major significant claim because it positions design practice as a tool for             re-occupying and reinterpreting landscapes under transformation, creating a platform where architecture can participate in land-use discourse through cultural production, not only through planning policy or real estate development.

6) It operates inside a curated research platform with public-facing discourse

Mirage is not a one-off object placed in a gallery. It is situated within Black Contemporary’s broader mission as an “experiential laboratory” investigating atmospheric logics, perception, and spatial phenomena through exhibitions, dialogues, and interdisciplinary participation. Rural Route 3 (RR3) is described as an annual spring exhibition transforming the field station into a public art site, intentionally staged as an evolving environment “between design process and fabrication” and “between sensorial gauges and installation.”

Saint Louis has hot and humid summers and cold and humid winters. The goal was to design an energy efficient building with facades analogous to the sun orientation and passive design strategies. We maintained the street orientation which was 21.5 degree off axis to integrate the building with the existing site topography. The important aspects that were considered while designing the building facades were, the amount of natural light for the interior spaces, public/private spaces connection, downtown location, Saint Louis arch vistas and the ratio of transparency vs opaque on the facades. The main building has a user friendly south facade, with operable louvers. Openings in the slabs allow natural ventilation and stack effect.  Roof of the community center will be use for planting vegetables and rain water collection. Solar panels were also installed to consume energy and to lowering the energy cost . The roofs of the town houses were provided by cozy relaxation space, with great vistas of Saint Louis skyline.         

Team : Aniket Nagdive and Bogdan Machedon 

Instructor : Ulrike Passe and Kris Nelson 

The Challenge

Design a mobile visitor center, using shipping containers. The centers will be transported and set up in various locations around the city, based on a specific event.

Conceptual Idea

Visitors Centre is an important building of any city. It gives you the important information regarding the city and the events happening throughout the year. Because of its particular functionality and identity, the building should be something which symbolizes the city and its culture.Considering this concept, I have designed my visitor’s center as an Installation + Visitors center. The visitor’s center consist of 5 shipping containers which can be   accessible for North and South directions. Floor-to-ceiling glazing walls on the east and west facades admit natural light and allow visitors inside to remain a part of the activity of the square.In north and south sides, each shipping container contains colorful vertical metal strips which symbolizes LOVE and HAPPINESS,expressing the culture of brotherly love of Philadelphia. Thus colorful visitor’s center act as a Visitor’s Centre + Installation.Upper floor of the visitor’s centre consist of 40’ long shipping container which act as a "Panorama Gallery" in which visitors can have a panoramic vistas of the particular place.

On Headlines

http://archive.design.iastate.edu/news/6/16/2016/nagdive

In an urban milieu of Chicago this residential building along the Lake Michigan, stand unique with complementing to its surrounding.The structure in this landscape feels something contained rather than a rigid framework.Exposed concrete and brick walls are systematically designed to allow volume of air and light to pass through the building.The spaces are designed considering the usability of the area and its connectivity with the outside world. The juxtaposing of the spaces are done in such a way that it feels they are evolve in an organic progression.The outside sitting space is oriented towards Lake Michigan which gives a canonical view of the surrounding. The sitting lounge consist of two unique spaces, an alcove library in which we can enjoy reading in an enclosed space and a visual corner, I call it as a magical sit out, where we can see an infinite Lake Michigan along with the building skyline.Two bedrooms with attached bathroom are located towards west which are accessible through dreaming space. Dreaming space is a semi enclosed transparent roof space between two bedrooms where we can rest and see the night sky for long hours, hence entering towards dream world.The south is consist of kitchen /dinning space along with one bedroom which are connected with the outside view of the surroundings.

Chatri ruins conservation at Balapur, Maharashtra India

The initial thought of designing the logo was to make it as minimal as possible. I was trying some alteration with Squares and Straight lines. The juxtaposition of words with elongated rectangles were also considered during the initial phase. Gradually, I broke down a square into triangles and played with the words to achieve symmetry.
The final logo was evolved by breaking down the triangle which was separated from a square.

Font : DIN Narrow

Colors : Black & Grey