The Hinman Research Building at Georgia Tech was designed by Paul Heffernan and built in 1939. In 2010, NADAA + LAS renovated the building and created a courtyard behind it. However, the courtyard has not been used as much as originally intended. As a result, we designed exterior architectural elements to draw people from the interior of the building to inhabit the outdoor space and turn it into their own.

The largest, and most central of the three proposals is a pavilion, a formally ambiguous object that functions to readjust spatial conditions and promote an enlarged program for this underutilized outdoor space.

Spatially, this structure continues the axis and several spatial datums from the elevated front door of Heffernan’s great shell. The view is now terminated, and the space of the room is defined, by a twenty-foot green wall of Phyllostachys Nidularia bamboo. The pavilion substantively defines the garden courtyard as an outdoor room and simultaneously gives an address to the minor street behind.