One morning, we all woke up into a world that has been challenged with Covid-19 pandemic. The virus has forced each one of us to reconsider our habits, food chain, health services, transportation, living spaces as well as our education. Although many people across the word have reacted as well as anticipated quite unknown future, we had to invent new ways to sustain our education.
Much more than a lecture, architectural design studio is a mutual learning environment that encourages students to constantly question and evaluate the world, their surroundings, and the meaning of the profession as an intellectual. The role of the instructor in the design studio is to understand the ideas of the students, share her/ his comments regarding possible risks pertaining to the proposals based on his/her personal and professional experiences and open information channels. The instructor dissolves in the studio’s dynamics, observes the environment, and provokes student curiosity. The instructor shapes the structure of the design studio; however, it is the studio participants that lead the process.
Therefore, I would like to thank all my 12 students (I am sad that 2 of them could not complete the semester and 1 could not even start) for their efforts and resiliency during 2020 Fall semester.
Check the project at https://arch391.wordpress.com
“The concept of the activity center in EMU campus is such a place to take all the negative energy from us as a student and from you as instructors or locals, the idea is not about just the students. It is about taking all the people under one ceiling whatever our age, gender, religion, sexual orientation is etc. As people we need something to have together. This activity center is the only place to gather us and to make us having common thing, direct connections. This is the main idea behind this project. The ceiling is kind a thing which covers us, protects us and gather us whatever and whoever we are. The way I arranged the functions reflects the needs of the community we have here. After analyzing the site, I got some point about it: Site constraints which are the lack of strong presence in the internal community, lack of semi open spaces around the site, weak connection between building diversity. On the other hand, we had the potential of development on open spaces and green spaces and the location of the site.”
More about the Land Saver by Omar Abdallah Waleed Alwazani
“The project is based on the idea of balance and harmony that we reach when combining the three essential entities of an individual, which are THE BODY, SPIRIT and MIND. Since the main concern here especially after this pandemic situation is the mental health stability. That is the main idea of the project, it is what affects the performance and quality of life. The daily stressful and busy life has to be broken. And this center is what is supposed to break it in order to create the balance, this reminded me of the Ying & Yang dualities and how with every down there is an up, how the two contrary ideas can interlock and be interdependent. The idea of the form came from here the main three blocks are the essential entities of the individual, soul mind and body, and the connection between them is when these three components are balanced which I used to create the green spaces inside of my project to show how beautiful life gets when you balance them, the form is also influenced from the ups and downs. And the activities that will be held there are activities that will serve the three entities, for example for the body we have the physical activities like Pilates and Yoga, while for the soul we have art and meditation counseling and also social activities, finally the mind for which we have library for reading and classrooms seminars for learning.”
More about The Ying & Yang by Ghizlane Ouabou
“I want to mention my inspiration of this project which is Vessel project in New York City, the idea is to have a heart in the project that reflect the feeling inside and outside, and the attraction also vertical circulation. This project is attracting people to get them inside and take benefit of the visual connection between the floors.The main section is explaining the connection of the tower with the rest of the building, we can see the horizontal circulation, when people are standing on one floor, they can find themselves in another floor with a continuity of functions each part with a specific theme relating to the other parts. The connection of main tower with the building is made by taking extensions from the edges of each twisted floor. In addition to that I played with solids and voids in those connections. The first floor is where we have all the facilities for the students and locals as workshops and cinema screen room etc.). Third floor is where the meditation and Pilates studios are placed leading us to the fourth floor directly to a calm space where we have yoga studio with an outdoor Yoga terrace.”
More about the Exchange Center by Safaa Nohair
“Boycott” and it’s a strong standing building representing determination of activist people and the reason behind it is the concept activism. Activism is an action of passive or aggressively campaigning for a change but in Famagusta there is no such a space that they can group up and use the power of majority. This building will give this opportunity with both education and entertainment. To design a building for activism it needs to feel aggressive and strong from exterior but free in site, to express this idea I used Brutalism style in design. Brutalism is a style with rough surface, unusual shapes, massive forms and expression of structure. It uses large scale of site cast reinforced concrete. To use this style in my design I needed to reinterpret it. In my case I am designing it with bigger opening and most importantly using columns with concrete at exterior space of the structure as 45 degree angled, intersecting with each other but beams as steel.”
More about the Boycott by Onur Dokuzoğlu
“Pandora is an active, creative gameing hub, where people of all ages can come together and interact, create and learn, with and from eachother. Pandora is based around the concept of nature inevitably taking back what ever man builds. In pandora this is taken as the unifier between the modern and the historic aspects of architecture. The tree branches represent nature and bring all around together while spreading light to all parts of the structure.”
More about Pandora by Garreth Iain Rous
“My main idea was to make the creative zone of the building look more playful in terms of form and shape and then make the wellness zone look more serene. I achieved this by moving the wellness zone underground leaving the creative zone of the building more perceptible. I then used a bridge to connect these two parts together. I left a part of the building above ground to serve as a reception and main entry point. I also created a sunken plaza to serve as a central circulation space for socializing and relaxing.”
The Merridan Creative and Wellness Center by Christabel Hyelhira Madu (ARCH 391, Fall 2020, Bogac Studio) https://arch391.wordpress.com/…/the-merridan-creative…/ 
The Merridan Creative and Wellness Center by Christabel Hyelhira Madu (ARCH 391, Fall 2020, Bogac Studio) https://arch391.wordpress.com/…/the-merridan-creative…/ 
The Merridan Creative and Wellness Center by Christabel Hyelhira Madu (ARCH 391, Fall 2020, Bogac Studio) https://arch391.wordpress.com/…/the-merridan-creative…/
More about The Merridan Creative and Wellness Center by Christabel Hyelhira Madu
“This project based on idea to have many activities under one roof, as many cases I have read this kind of roof use to collect many activities or at least two main activity. And this is a point I use in my concept, also this kind of roof is can be used to create green roofs, so good landscaping on top of our building. Also, I used the benefit of different levels to have the visual connection between the activities, so strong connection them and this another point I use in my concept, so different levels and mezzanine floors and double high unites are used in my design. So as a result of this points I built my concept to merge sport activities and education activities under one roof and make visual connection between them by the different levels that most of them have. And this kind of activities can gather any kind of people there, also this visual connection will help the people to share their different level of experience, so they can learn from each other.”
More about Up and Down by Ahmad H.H. Darnaser
“The main idea behind my project is inspired by 3 different case studies, my case study comes from the groundbreaking 15th century literary poem that inspired arts and films and pop culture, Dante’s Alighieri. my second case study come from the 1920s horror film the cabinet of Dr. Caligiri (which is going to be themed as the inferno) since I wanted to grab a relation with a functions that I was going to do in the center I wanted to get inspired by one of the greatest films that dawned on the history of cinematography and my 3rd case study was inspired from the circulation of the New School in New York. The main philosophy behind these case studies is the emphasis of the human experience and morality somehow inspired by the religious poem or the psychology of the human being. I conceptualized the spaces according to these agendas , my main purpose was transparency between these units and levels to make it seem permeable as the human emotion and morality which constantly changes throughout their living through time ,in the inferno which happens to be in the basement was resembled as deception and deceit of minimal pleasure, as it claims the human weakness that leads them into ones desires , in the Purgotoria I wanted to emphasize the growth, the path of decision between the good and bad (the Inferno and Paradiso) ,and the Paradiso the way it was emphasized using its hierarchy and the closest to divine has concentric spheres that brings day light to the spaces inside.”
More about Dante’s Paradiso by Danah Osama M El-Madhoun
“The main idea was creating physical entertainment center by separation of forums into box shape and have a canyon like a big gab as a focal point going into the project it’s going wider and smaller creating a nice circulation and distribute the function by the gab which aim to create a language get the attraction of different ages and gather them to get them rid of stress. Therefore, the gap is dividing the project into two parts; public part and private part which are connecting totally in the basement by ramps and bridges in the upper level.”
More about The EMU Canyon by Ahmad Zianat
“Firstly my urban proposal which explains how I’m going to integrate my project within the city and let locals and students benefit from is to have a performance art center which was influenced by the spring festival in our campus. So, every spring we have this spring festival where the main idea of the spring festival is to perform and it’s the most event that brings locals and students together, that’s why I took axis from the main performing center inside the campus and out of the campus to lead people to the project. Since the preforming is based on movement so my concept is to have a movement in the project. In the spring festival we go through a trade exhibition and food trucks that lead us to the main stage (main performing area) therefore, in my ground floor I tried to apply the same idea.”
More about Performace Center by Abdulhamid Nassereddin S. Abdulgabar
“This Project aims to create a platform that help the students and the other users to release the negative energy that is acquired from the university lifestyle or the daily pressure and also let them expand them talented as the place will provide all them needs. As design decision and because of the lack of trees I decided to use the front part of the project as a green platform park and called the EMU Green Park.”
More about EMU Green Park by Mohammed Yaslam M. Ba Surra
More about Central Dream by Amirmohammad Teymour Pour
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