In order to go back to school to get my Master of Architecture degree I had to make a design portfolio to send the prospective schools. The only problem was I had never made a design portfolio before. All of the ones before were just based off of my current work but the schools made it apparent they wanted portfolios that showed off creative conceptual designs. So I had to get to work creating stuff. This one came off the old noodle when I was driving through the town. I remember having the idea but no where to put it so I wouldn’t forget so I drew a rough sketch in the dust of my car. Gross.

Anyway, what that sketch was was just a thought of three towers which suspended a building in the middle which also supported a building underneath it. Now I’m not a structural guy so I’m not even going to know how this would be structurally done or how it would even pass building or fire codes, but that wasn’t the point. This was just pure design.

I didn’t have any program to use or really anything to go off of other than the concept so I went to work playing with a floor plan idea. I know I wanted three towers in equal intervals off of the main central hub. This hub would be used as a lobby of sorts for the three towers and could be used as a gathering space. The three towers would just be programmed as business occupancy.

Next came the idea of how to make the Floating Island actually work. I figured that it shouldn’t be at the absolute top because that would defeat the concept of seeing it from the top. It couldn’t be at the middle point because the suspended island had to be hanging there somewhere. In the end I put it around the 75% mark which was supported on all three towers and had walkways that would take you to the center suspended atrium. You would then be able to take an elevator to the Suspended Island portion for a full 360 degree view of the towers and the cityscape.

What also was added was a skylight in the double height atrium on the ground floor. This would allow anyone walking through it to gaze up and see the floating and suspended islands above them to hopefully inspire wonder in them.

I had never tried to do a curtain wall tower building before, let alone three of them. This taught me a lot of how to actually use them to your benefit to make fun shapes. Again, structure isn’t taken into account here, nor are plenum spaces or spandrel windows. This was pure design.

Project Information:

Portfolio Design Project

Fall 2021