Graduate Directory 2020: Architecture

Khorshid Naderi-Azad
Harvard Graduate School of Design, US

The Jiggly, Chewable, Hardly Reducible San Giuseppe Ball Hall is an imagined counterpoint to its ‘perfectly symmetrical’ neighbour, Foster + Partners’ Apple Park in Silicon Valley. It proposes a new rigour for the ‘bulbous’ and the ‘anexact’, says Naderi-Azad, who currently works at KPF New York.

Valeria Laura Szegal
Royal College of Art, UK

Inspired by a theatrical event on Moscow’s historic Garden Ring, Szegal shows how a one-off happening could be the catalyst for long-term urban transformation with the help of a stop-frame animation film. Russian-born Szegal, who grew up in Hungary, is currently working as a 3D-designer in London.

Yi Jennifer Yip 
The University of Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, city development is often prioritised over preservation of environment. Since the colonial rule, Hong Kong has relied heavily on reclamation for its urban growth.

Meg Anderson
University of California, Berkeley, US

Anderson’s project investigates the potential of a maze as the starting point for a communal social housing model. The design acknowledges the psychological impact of collective living, and promotes the act of wandering, getting lost and chance meetings. Anderson currently works for SO-IL.

Mathilde Berner and Léa Gauchoux
EPFL, Switzerland
 

A ‘sublime and monstrous’ pleasure machine, Berner and Gauchoux’s sex and love palace, Eropolis, explores the role of architecture in the ‘rebirth of eroticism’ and the obsession with the body in today’s society.

Iris Xiaoxue Ma and Christopher Yi
Cornell University, US

Celebrated Encounters envisions a new set of spaces embedded into the walls of Sanskar Kendra, the museum designed by Le Corbusier in Ahmedabad. Water towers respond to the local climate, while markets and festivals enliven the public areas.

Yiting Zhou and Courtnay Ives
Manchester School of Architecture, UK
 

Responding to a local council brief, the Rochdale Bath House Project is a wellness complex connecting two heritage buildings. Zhou and Ives found common interest in architectural history and placemaking.

Marcos García Mouronte
Columbia GSAPP, US

Examining the national and corporate players competing for access to the South China Sea, Flickering Sovereignties examines how an ‘architecture of artificial islands’ could help solve territorial disputes. NYC and Madridbased Mouronte is currently part of the Independent Projects team at Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

Siong Yu Hsiang Wang
Architectural Association, UK

Exploring post-colonial debates, Wang’s thesis project focuses on the ‘static and centralised’ practice of museology in the West through an often irreverent reclassification of cultural artefacts. Before his studies, Wang worked as an architectural designer in Taiwan; he now works with Meiri Shinohara in Tokyo.

Jerome Ng Xin Hao
Bartlett School of Architecture, UK

Ng’s project offers an alternative vision for Singapore’s 1970s Metabolist-style Golden Mile complex, currently facing demolition. A fan of visual communication as well as architecture, Ng now works as a storyteller of the built environment, producing drawings and films.

Anna Östberg
KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Östberg‘s Otium public bathhouse project is designed to combat decreased attention spans by engaging the body and mind through sensory awareness. A specialist in wood construction, Östberg is currently working at Urban Couture Architects in Stockholm.

Cheng Zhu
TU Delft, The Netherlands

Inspired by a photo of Paris’ Jardin du Palais Royal, Zhu’s Archi-Nature focuses on the renovation of the 1982 AMC hospital in the Netherlands. The design imagines a natural healing community and the development of ‘in-between space’ that seeks to improve patients’ recovery and staff performance.

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