Waterloo Architecture graduate student Chanel Dehond is a winner of the American Society of Architectural Illustrators Student Award of Merit for illustrations from her project The Lost: A Design for a Day Spa. The project was completed last spring for the 4B Comprehensive Building Design Studio with Professor Andrew Levitt.
The Lost: Autumn Interior by Chanel Dehond.
The project takes as its parti two definitions of “lost”: 1. Unable to find one’s way; not knowing one’s whereabouts: “I am lost in the maze,” and 2. To be fully consumed or engrossed: “I am lost in my thoughts.” In this spa, “as their native animal surfaces, the technological world disintegrates, and the modern human loses themselves in sensuality.” The work will be shown as part of the twenty-ninth annual Architecture in Perspective exhibition beginning October 15 with an awards ceremony in Dallas, Texas, which Dehond plans to attend.
The Lost: Winter Exterior by Chanel Dehond.
Safira Lakhani, a soon-to-be fourth-year undergraduate currently on an eight-month co-op term at Lacina Heitler Architects in Manhattan, is a finalist for the Student A+ Award of the 2014 AZ Awards for Design Excellence. Her project, Revitalizing Bamyan, was completed at Waterloo Architecture last fall during the 3B Design Studio with Professor John McMinn, the E Studio.
Bamyan site map by Safira Lakhani.
The E studio focused “on renewable energy strategies…which will shape and impact the way architecture and urban form is conceived, planned, and implemented in the immediate and near future” and questioned “how the technical exigencies of [base principle] approaches…mesh with a larger holistic vision of architecture as a connective tissue to the ecological context on which human cultural environments depend.”
Bamyan site section by Safira Lakhani.
Bamyan is a rural, central-Afghan town facing challenges of infrastructural devastation, ethnic discrimination, and climatic conditions. A reliance on foreign aid and troops in the region has decreased Taliban activity, but also reduced local economic opportunities.
Lower (l) and upper (r) dwelling plans by Safira Lakhani.
The project addresses these issues by fostering self-sustainability through a tripartite program: multigenerational housing based on vernacular typologies, locally constructed greenhouses that help to rebuild local agriculture, and a variety of water-retention infrastructure.
Spring (l) and summer (r) in Bamyan, by Safira Lakhani.
Revitalizing Bamyan aims to generate a culture of self-sustainability “by simultaneously respecting and challenging forces at play in the given society.” As a finalist in the AZ Awards, Lakhani’s work is also up for the People’s Choice Award. Register to vote for nominees in the A+ Award for student work and other categories, including Design, Architecture, Interiors, and Concepts. Voting runs until May 2.
I am a graduate student at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture, currently completing my MArch thesis on the design and collective memory of Indian residential schools in Canada.
