Design–Build at City Tech: Summer Installation
During the month of July, a team of ten B.Tech and B.Arch students in ARCH 4831: Design-to-Build designed and built a 16-foot-tall wood-frame installation in the courtyard of NAMM, City Tech's central administrative building.
Over the five-week summer term, B.Tech and B.Arch students at City Tech’s Department of Architectural Technology explored wood-frame construction through both study and hands-on practice. The students learned balloon and platform framing techniques, examined the history and development of wood-frame construction, documented their ideas through sketches, developed physical and digital models, and ultimately brought the project to life through full-scale construction.
The final design consists of four distinct modules, each assembled from four unique prefabricated balloon-framed panels that are tipped into place on site. The modules progressively increase in height, culminating in a platform-framed tower.
Design-to-Build Design Animation [link]
The installation is intentionally adaptable, allowing the space to support a variety of uses and forms of public activation. The interiors of the modules provide covered seating while also forming a stair that ascends toward the tower. This combination of circulation, seating, enclosure, and vertical structure creates opportunities for gathering, speaking, observing, and informal occupation.
Design-to-Build Construction Video [link]
The project brings construction techniques typically associated with single-family residential building into an urban and public context. Through repetition, variation, and changes in scale, the installation reinterprets familiar wood-framing methods as a civic architectural system, challenging conventional relationships between construction technique, program, context, and architectural specificity.
The completed installation will remain on view in the NAMM courtyard through the first week of the fall semester.
Course: ARCH 4831: Design-to-Build, Summer Term 2026
Student Team: Tehreem Nadeem, Kevin Gadsden, Levi Fraser, Amanda Mostafa, Chandanee Deodat, Thomas Plunkett, Arianna Roman, Diego Lopez Barrientos, Nakeri Samuel, Diana Luna-Garcia, and Louis Mendoza I
Faculty: Professors Colin Cathcart and Elena M'Bouroukounda