Reclaiming the Courtyard as a Platform for Spatial Agency
Cloud is a temporary inflatable pavilion installed at Columbia GSAPP’s Avery Plaza in October 2024. Developed over two semesters through the design-build course Outside In, the project reimagines the courtyard as a spatial commons that challenges the boundary between interior and exterior architecture (GSAPP News Release, 2024). I participated as a structural team member, contributing digital modeling, load-based design iterations, and material performance analysis. The project was led by Professors Laurie Hawkinson and Galia Solomonoff, with engineering guidance from Hubert Chang of Silman Structural Engineers and fabrication by Àrea Cúbica. For this work, I was awarded a High Pass distinction in studio evaluation.
Suspension as a Collective Design Strategy
The pavilion consists of a 20-meter-wide inflated metallic form, suspended by 25 tension cables between Avery and Fayerweather Halls, and anchored into the plaza’s landscape (Dezeen, 2024). Above the inflatable, a net system integrates seating that descends into the courtyard, allowing users to reposition furniture and transform spatial conditions through participation. As noted in the project booklet, this interplay between light structure and collective action embodies a shift in how temporality and agency are expressed in architectural form (Outside In Booklet, 2024).
Atmosphere as Architectural Presence
Rather than acting as enclosure, Cloud performs as atmosphere. The inflated body hovers over the ground, refracting light, capturing shadow, and generating a new microclimate of experience (The Architect’s Newspaper, 2024). Its reflective surface and adaptive geometry enhance the ambiguity between inside and outside—an experience heightened by its visual continuity with classroom windows and courtyard ground. As emphasized in GSAPP’s publication, the form “bursts from the building,” resisting containment and inviting porous thresholds of use (Outside In Booklet, 2024).
