Fasai Chainuvati FW25

Selected Works

University of Pennsylvania, Weitzman School of Design

Master of Architecture

In Suspension

Race St Pier, Philadelphia

University of Pennsylvania, Weitzman School of Design

Master of Architecture

Spring 2025

602 Comprehensive Studio

Supervisor

Simon Kim

Software: Rhino, Illustrator, Photoshop, V-Ray, Visual Analysis

Hardware: 3D printing, Laser cutting, Casting, Woodworking, Model-making

In Suspension is a performance and rehearsal center sited across from FringeArts in Philadelphia, designed to celebrate the often-overlooked processes of creative development. The project investigates the duality between exposure and enclosure, support and suspension, rehearsal and performance, articulating these tensions through a structurally expressive and materially layered design. At its core is a Vierendeel truss system, elevated and supported by four offset cores, from which a series of inverted curves are suspended. These forms, drawing inspiration from boat hulls and the sectional language of Peter Salter, create a spatial language of sweeping voids, dynamic compression, and dramatic cantilevers. The design leverages this structural clarity to define circulation, program, and form simultaneously.

Translucent screening and wooden slats veil and reveal the building’s internal activity, transforming it into a “living box theater” that performs architecturally as much as the events it houses. Drawing cues from the adjacent FringeArts and its ethos of experimentation, the project embraces a shifted grid that aligns its interior to the cultural node across the street, allowing rehearsal rooms, circulation paths, and public views to orient toward moments of creative encounter. Materially, the project combines warm wood, heavy precast concrete, and light-diffusing façades to create contrast and atmosphere, modulating light and offering privacy while hinting at presence. In Suspension proposes not only a space for performance, but a framework for witnessing the processes, movements, and improvisations that typically remain hidden—suspending them, both literally and figuratively, in the public eye.

We Have Gone As Far As We Can Together Artists, October 2023

FringeArts began in 1997 as the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, creating a platform for performing artists.

Each year, the festival brings over 1,000 performances to venues across the city, blending world-class curated works with open-access productions in the spirit of the global Fringe movement.

Performance and rehearsal are fundamental processes that shape creative expression, skill mastery, and audience engagement. While performance is the culmination of effort, rehearsal serves as the iterative space where ideas evolve, and mistakes transform into strengths.

Developemtal sketches

A System of Mutual Dependency

The proposal subsists as each element works to support one another. The four cores supports the Vierendeel truss, which suspends the inverted curves creating a system of mutual dependancy.

Transluscent screening and wooden slats discloses activity within, transforming the builidng into a living box theatre, sofetning the external and internal.

Detailed Section A

Screening and Disconnecting Floor Plates

The building extends beyond the site and onto the public park adjacent to the building. This attempts to physically connect the two elements together to emphasise the sense of invitation and blur between the privacy of practice.

North - South Section

The translucent screen acts visual access, it introduces a sense partially obscuring form. What walking,

Screening Materiality and Detailing

as a veil and part boundary, part invitation. Rather than offering full sense of ambiguity, allowing light and shadow to pass through while What becomes visible is not detail, but motion, a flicker of someone

walking, the silhouette of a figure pausing, the shifting tone of daylight.

Exploded Axonometric Structural Diagram

This shift is not arbitrary as it is oriented toward FringeArts, a cultural anchor across the street. By skewing the grid, the

interior spaces begin to gesture outward, drawing visual and spatial attention toward this civic landmark. Interior spaces catch oblique light, walls open up to diagonal views.

Simplified Structural Diagram

Expressing Translusency an Solidity

The use of wooden slats help to suggest translucency. This material move allows the creation of filtered view, where the experience shifts based on the viewer’s angle, distance, and the time of day. The wood also introduces warmth and texture that contrasts with harder adjacent materials.

Recorded in Residence

50 - 42 Hudson St, NY, New York

University of Pennsylvania, Weitzman School of Design

Master of Architecture

Fall 2024

601 Housing Studio

Supervisor Ben Krone

Software: Rhino (SubD modelling), Illustsrator, Photoshop, V-Ray, Revit

Hardware: 3D printing, Laser cutting, Model-making

This proposal draws upon the rich oral histories of artists who once inhabited the site, infusing their trace into the architectural concept. Historically, artists retrofitted lofts into unique and creative spaces, merging their studios and homes in ways that were both functional and personal. This creative process of transforming industrial spaces preserved its original character while allowing for the expression of each individual’s occupant identity.

New York City lofts were often personalized through informal means by artists seeking unique spaces. These artists contributed to the evolution of loft living and the blend of the building’s inherent features, preserved alongside each artist’s modifications, leaves a multifaceted story. This proposal plays with this ethos: a design that reflects the layers created by each occupant.

This building is conceived as an analog tracing device—its walls and spaces recording the history of each occupant, their creative output. and their interactions with the structure. In this way, the building itself becomes a living archive, continuously producing work over time. The public commons, functioning as an open archive, showcases this ongoing process, where the layers of history, both personal and architectural, accumulate.

This design proposal embraces the spirit of New York’s loft laws—legalized spaces that allow for the adaptive reuse of industrial buildings for residential and artistic purposes—while celebrating the rich history of the artists who were among the first to redefine urban living. The building becomes not just a place to live, but a living archive, where the intersection of individual creativity and architectural history creates an ever-evolving space for the future.

The site consists of three existing buildings which span 50 - 42 Hudson St. The project stitches together these buildings to create a seamless residential space. Utilizing insertion techniques, the design addresses the challenges of deep and uneven floor plates between buildings by using

vertical circulation elements, openings within the new build and implementing a loft unit typologies. The site allows for around 50,000 sq ft of development across all three structures.

The lived record inform

dialogue.

project begins with the Tribeca Pioneer’s Tale. Recorded by an artist who lived in the area, the story serves as the foundation for the project’s essence. The record reveals the layers of time and provides a tapestry of movements which inform the analog model. This becomes a tool which helps physically manifest relationships in the project through architecurally interpreting and framing this dialogue.

A Tribeca Pioneer’s Tale

On January 1, 1970—forty-five years ago—I moved into the fourth floor at 145 West Broadway, on the northeast corner of Thomas Street and West Broadway. In the decade before that I had been living in an Upper West Side studio apartment on 68th Street just off Central Park West...

...The first was at Columbus Ave between 67th and 68th Streets, a block away. It was in a two-story commercial building—now long gone—that had shops on the street floor and small businesses arranged along a long hallway above...

... When the Columbus Avenue studio also began to seem small, I moved operations to a similar, although larger, building near the Chelsea Hotel on the southeast corner of Seventh Avenue and 23rd Street.

... But after a short time in that studio I realized I could easily do with even more space. I also thought that perhaps I might combine “working” with “living” once again and thereby avoid a daily studio commute...

... And so I began to be on the lookout for a loft...

... One day Alvin told me that a nearby loft was available and he put me in touch with the owners of the building. It was two doors away at number 145, on the northeast

... Over the coming years other artists began moving in to the building...it pleases me...the floors are lit up by artists’ studios (those of Bobbie Oliver, Sophie Matisse and Rand Hardy, all friends)...

Source: Tribeca Citizen, Jan 1 2015

Tracing the Tribeca Pioneer’s Tale

Following the Tribeca pioneer’s tale and their proximities inspired the conceptual making of the analog model. The possible movements through the neighborhood, the curves of their pathways, and their interactionst were mapped and abstracted into fluid forms and shapes. Modular rotation becomes a key method to represent these dynamic interactions, allowing the analog models (right) to capture the essence of movement and transformation. This process

Iterative Analog Models and Additive Assembly Rules

Designing through the Analog

This project explores the concept of trace, positioning the building as an analog tracing device for the existing architectural structural fabric and the individual details of artists. The units are carefully inserted into the existing framework, respecting and preserving the uneven floorplates, which serve as tangible remnants of the building’s history.

2-Bedroom Unit

Elevated loft conditions, (labelled a and b), created by uneven floorplates between the two existing buildings.

1-Bedroom Unit

Cluster of Units: unit insertion strategy into existing 44 and 42 Hudson Street

The design of this building employs a programmatic layering approach. Peelaway layering and screening techniques are incorporated, allowing each unit to reflect the individuality of its occupant while maintaining a unified architectural language. Each space serves as both a private residence and a part of a larger

Screening condition onto existing building on 44 Hudson Street to make its facade a flase front

Units and Inhabiting the Existing Facade

Fifth floor unit arrangement plan: the left is an extenison which sits on top of 50 Hudson St and is semi open-air. The right is the insertion into the existing. The design of this building employs a programmatic layering approach. Peelaway layering and screening techniques are incorporated, allowing each unit to reflect the individuality of its occupant while maintaining a unified architectural language.

Ground floor public commons and first floor peel-away: (left) artists in residence archive and library. (right) insertion into existing buildings.Each space serves as both a private residence and a part of a larger communal narrative, where the existing facade is repurposed into inhabitable space.

Layered Trace and Visibility

The units are inter-connected. The architecture, in its layered design, continually frames the existing while connecting each unit through a false facade inspired by the function of the fire-escape where the skin becomes communal space. Through this interplay of transluscent material and structure, the building stands as a testament to the legacy of loft living which reveals to the public the activities which occur within.

Unchartered Waters

Callowhill Viaduct, Philadelphia, PA

University of Pennsylvania, Weitzman School of Design

Master of Architecture

Fall 2024

502 Core Studio

Supervisor Ryan Palidar

Software: Rhino, Illustsrator, Photoshop, V-Ray, GIS Software

Hardware: 3D printing, Laser cutting, Model-making

Philadelphia is a water-rich site, prone to flooding.The project responds to this by initially propsing a speculative city-wide intervention.

Through looking at topography and elevation, the intervention addresses storm system overflood by implementing barnacle-like systems throughout the city. These systems act as checkpoints which collects water and slows down water at low elevation where water accumulates most. The greywater is then carried to the batthouse where heuntreated water exists in confronting harmony with the cleansed. The semester’s building program is a bathhouse. The formation of the building’s landscape is reanimated in response as an instrument to highlight how water is taken advantage in the city.

Accumulation of stored water introduces the question the project aims to answer: where does waste go? This is where the batthouse becomes a testing ground for water-waste as the building’s construction material continuously builds up the proposal. While accomodating the local area through its batthouse functions, the project evolves as new material is developed fostering overgrowth into the viaduct.

The implementation of moving and stagnant water through landscape step design curates new urban and natural growth. Both through the porous construction material and fostered humidity level, the line between natural and built is blurred as growth becomes a part of the structure and the building morphs into its surroundings.

The project responds to the city’s water abundance by responding to the city’s topography to propose a system which seamlessly turns this problem into a testing solution.

Cutaway axo: the three modules, existing truss system, and new trusses and ramps

The Philadelphia Water Department (PWD), launched an initiative which focuses on creating infrastructure, such as rain gardens and permeable pavements to reduce run-off and lessen the burden on the city’s sewer system. Despite these efforts, especially during extreme weather conditions, these problems persist.

Philadelphia works with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to manage flood plains and provide better flood risk maps for the city.

The use of this data helped identify the location of these water collection nodes. The plan focuses on the investment of stormwater management which relies on natural systems to absorb rainwater while integrating into the existing interventions.

1 water collection node 2 initial irrigation strategy

3.1 concept

Physical Model, the three nodes

Conceptual physical 2.5D model: acts as an intermediary between the city wide plan and immediate bathhouse. This shows the footprint of the three modules and their proximity to one another.

+ flood prevention vertices loc.

untreated water pools

existing truss structure

Street view of facaility facing South East. Ramp circulation connects to the existing sturcture

Bathing pools and untreated water (left to right). Irrigation flows through the middle.

North facing view of the open facility and incorporated existing truss system from elevated pathways, looking down into the second floor level

Long Section (North-South), cleansed water pictured above and untreated water follows irrigated pathways below, Both co-exist in close yet detached proximity

E-Formeral

Previously Exhibited at the ICA, Philadelphia

University of Pennsylvania, Weitzman School of Design

Master of Architecture

Spring 2025

501 Towers Project

Supervisor Anthony Gagliardi

Software: Rhino, Illustrator, Photoshop, Keyshot

Hardware: 3D printing, CNC Milling, Hand-Cutting and Assembly, Large-Scale Model-making

The brief of this project challenged us to define the idea of monumentality in our own way, through the making of our ‘tower’

Commonly, monumentality is often associated with the idea of megaliths: large stoic masses composed of a homogenous texture that stands imposingly through time. This project seeks to defy this by introducing an assembly of textures which are extracted from real weathered materials then scanned, scaled, modelled and physically fabricated, to compose an amalgamation of physical and digital. The main body of the model is hand carved and sawn while the texture is hand carved and sawn while the texture is composed of photogrammed scanned elements. This blurs the line between what is digital and physically as what we craft physically, was modelled digitally and what we produce digitally, was derived from the natural.

The timeline of this project continuously questions these ideas as we attempt to create materiality that represents the physical, yet its final appearance reflects something unreal. Through the tower, we set out to make the original scanned material ambiguous, coalescing the real and digital.

1. Physical reductive process: pieces of foam core are hand sawn and textures of each pieces are identified

2. Digitization of textures: each texture is scanned and then converted into digital model which can be printed onto required geometry

3. Assembly: All main body parts are assembled

5. Detail Assembly: Tower is placed onto base and piping detail is assembled. painting is also included in this process. The pipes

4. Assembly Detail: the main body is composed of reused foam core, layered to avoid excess

Merging the Digital and Physical

The blend of digital information gathering and physical fabrication aims question how we may create a tower which tests the boundaries between what is real and imagined.

Dynamic Veil

ICA, Philadelphia, PA

University of Pennsylvania, Weitzman School of Design

Master of Architecture

Spring 2025

501 Core Studio

Supervisor Anthony Gagliardi

Software: Rhino, Illustrator, Photoshop, Vray

Hardware: 3D printing, Resin Printing, Model-making

Time is inextricably linked to monumentality as linear where chronology is positively related to it.

The project aims to connect the legacy of the ICA by formally reacting to the existing and surrounding context. It will celebrate its context while adding to it: generating a superimposed patina. Through this reactivity, design methodology is defined to generate a system of formwork which unveils and alters existing shapes. This will attempt to evoke cohesive conflict in texture that emerges through the variegated formwork.

The veiling system becomes a method that illustrates the contemporary nature of the art that passes through the non-collecting museum. Conflict in texture emerges from the existing and new to further express how the structure must adapt to whatever art resides in it at any given time and fluidity is emphasised through forms that bleed into the interior to generate their own internal spaces. As the materiality bleeds into the internal walls, the new system that lays on top of the existing becomes truly embedded within the future of the museum.

Paired with the dynamic way the structure figuratively peels away from the existing context, the extension will continuously frame constant change and adaptation, fully embedding itself at present and constantly over-time.

Veiling system diagram diagram

3/32” = 1’-0” model placed in site model comes apart to reveal bleeding into interior materiality

the Existing

The facade system is incremented in such a way that maches up to existing openings as to accomodate the existing ICA structure that is to be recladded.

Detailed, massing and removable section models

The system aims to represent the way the veiling system drapes over the altered existing form. The formwork is applied onto the structure but existing openings which define the ICA to those on the street is left through the suggested window cutout.

The outside materiality bleeds into the interior and further defines spaces which exist inside. The use of limestone reflects accents of the building which surround it while the repetition of it draws attention to and sets the building apart.

Fluidity and Embeddedness

The proposed dynamic veil clads the exterior, its materiality bleeding into the interior walls to create a cohesive yet conflicting texture. The system of formwork unveils and alters existing shapes, a reference to the legacy of the ICA and its context.

The limestone accents mirror the existing structure. The extension serves as both a superimposed patina and a blank canvas, allowing the museum to adapt to the art it houses.

Works