Studio Fall 2025
Intimate Immensity - Midterm Project
Professor Adam Hopfner
Carved into the cliff face of East Rock Park, this project explores how the human body inhabits geological space. Conceived as a temporary refuge for a single occupant, the design mediates between two scales: the intimacy of the body and the vastness of the landscape. The structure does not sit on the rock, but within it—an architecture of subtraction rather than addition.
The project began with a fascination for East Rock’s iron-rich stone—its shifting color, its layered texture. Two aspects guided my investigation: color, explored through a weathering Corten-steel façade that rusts over time to match the rock’s deep orange tone; and texture, translated through perforations patterned directly from the stone’s surface. A single aperture lofts upward into intersecting trapezoidal forms, drawing light into the carved volume. Dappled light fi lters through the perforations, animating the interior and allowing the occupant to experience the geology of East Rock from within.
As the body ascends, each footstep meets less stair and more stone. Dappled light falls across the rock surface, shifting throughout the day
At the threshold the body is between the abstraction and the reality of the rock texture before turning into the central space
