Sharani Somasundaram
student
Anna University - Tamil Nadu
India
Architecture
Community Complex with residential aprtments, corporate office and commercial stores more
Yangyang Lu
advisor
https://www.arch.columbia.edu/
Chinese
Darian Lu is a practicing architect in New York. She earned her Bachelor of Architecture from Iowa… more
Sharani’s mixed-use development project is both thorough and thoughtful. She successfully tackled the project from a holistic planning perspective that blended multiple building types together (eg. residential, commercial, corporate offices), as well as details (eg. Shading over private balconies, multiple unit plannings) that brought human scales to her architecture. Both of these aspects contributed to the richness of this project. My suggestion to her is continue her emphasis on bringing human connectivities into her project. For example, can bridge connections between buildings be purposed for community leisure use; can private balconies scattered in a way that one is able to form a small community with one’s neighbors? I would also encourage her to explore the possibilities of mixed programs - different building types that do not have clear boundaries.