This was my first project for my Masters Degree. A real flesh-and-blood client in downtown Bryan, TX had purchased a former farm and truck dealership building and wanted ideas on how to convert the building into a more commercial attraction for downtown.

I chose to redesign the central room of the structure (seen in the picture on the top left), which had a nice clearstory that allowed a lot of light in the room. The client felt that the space had a lot of potential to be a "quiet and meditative" area. I proposed convert the room into an interior garden, complete with a large waterfall and colored glass windows. All these natural features would contrast with the industrial setting, as if nature had reclaimed it (as seen in the top right picture of the model).

I also decided to retain the old exhaust tubes that hung from the ceiling, since they provided and interesting feature to the otherwise blocky building and converted them into light fixtures that would be used at night, giving the garden a whole different looks than its daytime persona. Also at night, the stream going through the garden would also be backlit, but with "cool" colors to contrast with the reds and yellows dominating the ceiling. These features can be seen in the two model pictures on the bottom.