ADC2
Alternative Desert Cities 2
Cao Model

Alternative Desert Cities 2

Model of serpentine housing bars made up of stacked units along the contours of Camelback Mountain by student Donglei CaoModel of serpentine housing bars made up of stacked units along the contours of Camelback Mountain by student Donglei CaoModel of serpentine housing bars made up of stacked units along the contours of Camelback Mountain by student Donglei CaoModel of serpentine housing bars made up of stacked units along the contours of Camelback Mountain by student Donglei Cao

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University Island is a swirling shapeshifter, in both the landscape and the architecture, that offers it’s undefined field of opportunities to the students and anticipates that each will discover and produce their own individual relationship with the island and their education.
The Miami Beach House is constructed as a series of platformed spaces that continuously step upward within a tropically climatized shell. Continuing the structural experiments of the Metabolist movement, thirteen modular concrete platforms branch from two vertical cores.
The GBN project sites itself as this link connecting the busiest night life district and revitalized neighborhood park in the north, the largest beach front in the city to the south, and establishes the cities first large public plaza and recreation fields adjacent to the new building.
Framework: Inverted Square Pyramid (FW:ISP) reimagines the traditional pyramid by flipping it upside down, shifting its focus from the cosmos to the people. The structure’s apexes become seating points within a flexible, interactive framework that encourages public engagement and play.
Infrastructure as urban performance. Serving as both a backdrop to elegant theatrical dances and a framework for holding a wandering public, the Dance Machine enacts performance through both its program and its existence as a merged urban extension of the Queensboro Bridge.
Scaffolding is often seen as a temporary urban necessity—functional, but rarely celebrated. This project reimagines scaffolding as an architectural intervention and public art piece throughout Española Way, transforming it into a vibrant, interactive element in Miami Beach’s urban fabric.
The Butterfly Theater is a living pavilion—part sculpture, part habitat, part playground. It takes inspiration from the elegance of flamingos and the presence of butterflies in Miami Beach, transforming the park’s open center into a place of movement, color, and quiet spectacle.
The CART live/work housing prototype adds a vertical profile to downtown while converting an underutilized public path into an urban gesture by introducing of a specialized food cart zone in New Haven. The CART residents would rent and appropriate the moving space as a means of expanding their zone.

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