ICT For Urban Heritage: Palermo
A co-design workshop ↗ in Palermo to envision the future of an abandoned warehouse, serving as the first field test for my dissertation research on propositional modeling. I designed two competing architectural proposals (conservative and radical) and used my AR platform, Wikar, to allow local stakeholders to view them on-site. By testing the proposals at different scales (a 1:500 map vs. 1:1 walkthroughs), the process surfaced the community's deep attachment to the site's recent, unwritten history as a local park. This visualization work made their tacit knowledge empirically grounded, and the feedback directly informed the final design, which preserved the area as a public plaza.
Related Projects
"Scan To Ar": Palermo
A co-design workshop using rapid 3D site capture and an AR design tool with a library of design primitives (akin to Lego bricks). The goal was to repurpose abandoned industrial heritage in Palermo. I collaborated with Federico La Russa to facilitate the workshop, using Wikar (my augmented reality platform) to swiftly mock up and review architectural proposals with stakeholders over a single weekend. The public space opened in October 2022. Conference presentation and publication documented the methodology.
"Patio Walk": Córdoba
A pair of web applications for a Dariah Udigish Working Group project on the intangible cultural heritage of Córdoba's communal patios. The first was a site-specific recording tool for field workers that automatically linked photos, texts, audio interviews, and surveys to their GPS locations in a GIS database. The second was an interactive map-based visualization that displayed all collected materials overlaid on the city's patios. As a member of the working group, I was responsible for the design and development of both the data collection and final visualization tools.
Recovering Urban Memory: Beijing
Chicago Studio Award (First Place), 2019An architectural intervention to redesign an abandoned farmer's market in the historic heart of Beijing's Baitasi District, resurrecting collective spaces such as farmers' markets and cafes that had slowly disappeared from the community fabric. I developed this proposal through the UIUC Plym Studio, exploring lost cultural practices and spaces in the district from the turn of the century through to the late modern period. The studio was led in collaboration with Dong Gong of Vector Architects and Professor Botund Bognar. See an interview about this project with Mayur Mistry.
BEEP Energy Sim
An AR energy-use visualization showing expected energy loads for every room in a heritage building over the year, taking into account climatic comfort. I built the visualization to explain green infrastructure investments for the adaptive reuse project. More information on the project can be found here.