Advanced Design - Fall 2024,
with Violet Zhang and Ananya Bajaj
Distinguished Project Award 2024
Building on Mark Pauly's research into pneumatic surfaces, the project explores how a 2D pattern of parallel tubes, when inflated, self-organizes into a 3D form. The central question was whether that behavior could scale into architecture, and specifically whether tube bifurcation could be used to create partitions between spaces without disrupting the overall form.
The built structure had two connected dome chambers with an asymmetrical entrance that pulled visitors into the larger chamber first, the smaller one only becoming visible once you were already inside. Installed near the Pratt campus library, it functioned as an interactive space for anyone curious about how inflatable architecture actually behaves. The whole structure required fewer materials, less time, and less labor than any conventional construction of the same volume, which was part of the argument.
The Form
The Space
The Inhabitants
Hypothesis
Fabrication
Process
First iteration
Studying Bifurcation
Integrating Bifurcation
Second Iteration
Final Iteration
Pattern Development
Model walkthrough and inflation documentation
