Grace La of LA DALLMAN Architects came to the faculty with a 3-day  challenge that required students to design and communicate a small bathhouse located on Walden Pond. It was requested that the project take inspiration from the philosopher and poet, Henry David Thoreau, as he was famously known for spending much of his time at Walden Pond to bring himself into a peaceful and meditative state of mind. To fulfill this request, Refraction was developed to offer a variety of social and meditative experiences by traversing Thoreau’s Cove on Walden Pond as an extension of the surrounding trails while breaking away from the bustling tourism the park is known for today. One may walk along the pond path, or diverge onto Refraction's open plaza. The procession continues toward the bathhouse below, within which various apertures draw light in or focus views to the surrounding natural landscape. Our team developed the project’s form in just two days using quick sketches and simple massing iterations in Rhino 3D. The third and final day consisted of detailing the 3D model to capture renders, output a 3D model, and develop complete plans of the bathhouse. Each team member contributed evenly to the project’s development - my role involved sketching, 3D modeling, and rendering the final visualizations. 

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