This was a student project by Kaveh Arbab for Jiminez Lai's ARCH 341 course, Autumn 2007. After an analysis of Columbus and drawing from personal living experience, it was noted that the downtown region does not have any considerable green space comparable to other cities around the world such as New York City, Paris, Quebec etc.. The closest green space to the downtown [Goodale Park] lies adjacent to the site given for the project. The goal for this project was to create a topological continuity from the park through the site to downtown. This allows inhabitants of the housing and the city to be re-introduced to natural environments and ecology suggesting a move forward to more primitive life styles. In order to do this, the mass of housing was pulled above ground creating topological continuity on both the upper and lower surfaces beneath the mass. The form for the mass and the units themselves was discovered through a series of plaster mold studies. Voids were created from burnt foam which plaster was then poured over. Following this, the foam was then burnt out creating spaces within the voided plaster. The desired effect was to create cavernous forms which would be on the elevated platform of the site overlooking I-670. This reflects ancient cliff dwellings created by First Nation communities in what is now the south west United States. -- Kaveh Arbab This work is a part of the online collections of the Knowlton School of Architecture Student Archives, The Ohio State University. It is part of an effort to make accessible student work ranging from the first student that graduated from the program in 1903 to the present. The effort to preserve and digitize drawings in the Student Archives was sponsored in part by the Graham Foundation. Keywords: student work, KSA.
