STUDENT WORK / Dues Ex Machina / 3A Studio

In his 3A studio project, Amir explored the idea of blending commercial and residential programs in a sculptural steel building.

Monday and Thursday are studio days. On these days in particular, the third floor undergraduate studio is filled with a frenetic energy of design, research, and exploration. Students can usually be found talking excitedly with design professors and classmates in a habitat saturated with trace sketches, study models, and empty coffee cups. Every week we’ll share a completed project, churned out from this energetic studio environment.

Amir Ghazanfari’s “Dues Ex Machina”

3A Studio Hyper Buildings: Urbanity / Productivity / Domesticity | Rick Andrighetti, Mona El Khafif, and Rolf Seifert
Canadian Institute of Steel Construction Award

Putting the modern separation of workplace and home under the microscope, gave way to the idea of: what if the program was such that allowed for residents to combine the two? Collector spaces that allowed the resident to set up his or her office at home. Tall ceilings that accommodated for DIY culture.
All a while, the ground plane is left open to the public, a type of space becoming increasingly scarce in Toronto due to its exponential growth.

Heritage interpretation master plan for Old Town Toronto. The plan is in place to turn Front Street, Parliament Street, and Esplanade into enhanced corridors to connect the Old Town to the Toronto fabric. Coincidentally, these corridors run alongside the site, intersecting one another. This can create the potential for the site to become a traffic node.

The main structure consists of steel columns and trusses. On the outer skin, the tower is cross-braced using hollow steel tubes that define the sculptural shape of the tower. Steel panel louvers are places at consistent 40 cm apart all around the tower as shading devices. Through the second facade, sun is blocked at certain angles of the summer, while the louvers let in the winter sun. This is part of a passive design strategy adopted by the architecture and executed through the use of steel.