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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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.
Seeing Park Avenue as an underutilized zone that connects four vibrant neighborhoods from 42nd Street to 144th Street, Infrastructural Infill is a study testing the potential to locate a combination of mixed-use housing and transportation in the residual spaces caused by urban infrastructure.
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.
Seating design is vital in fostering communal interactions in shared spaces. Rooted in the organic growth principles of the Metabolist movement and the transformational geometric language of digital Metaballs, Meta-Bench forms an experiential seating system which individuals can move and adjust.
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 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.
The Craft School is a participatory design and construction initiative that places students at the center of creating their own learning environment. It recognizes that education is not only about what happens inside the classroom, but also how the classroom comes to be.
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.

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