ARKIOS

The Village Green:

A Semester in Design

by Katharina Wang

Where Hiking Meets Architecture

When tasked with designing a micro-apartment complex in New York City’s East Village, my first few design concepts were fairly mundane. While these may have yielded a perfectly standard framework within which to design, I decided to push myself to work with a more experimental idea. After all, architecture school is the time to experiment with design. I found myself wanting to create an outdoor experience to benefit the community we would be designing within, when I asked myself a question that would ultimately shape the project:

What if a building could provide urban hiking?

At first, this idea felt like a stretch—more like a thought experiment than a viable architectural concept. Was it too experimental? My professor was intrigued, and so was I. In a city where green spaces are rare, overshadowing from buildings limits access to sunlight, and hiking trails are a car ride away (assuming you even own a car in NYC), the idea of a vertical hiking trail with public terraces and greenery felt… compelling.

The initial massing model I created was simple, almost naive, but it captured the core of the idea: a stepped facade that offered sunlight-filled terraces, an urban hiking experience, and public spaces that gave back what the site would lose—a beloved community garden and park. At that stage, I felt confident. Optimistic, even.

Then reality hit

The Design Spiral

As the program developed, so did the challenges. My neat little massing model was torn apart by building codes, vertical circulation requirements, and the very real limits of space in a micro-apartment complex. I spent hours moving and adjusting staircases, trying to balance travel distances while still fitting all the required units into the building. Finally, I sat back and looked at what I had created. And a sinking feeling came over me.

Everything fit. Everything worked. But… is it ugly?

I marinated in the feeling of defeat. All the effort I’d poured into solving logistical puzzles had chipped away at the clarity of my concept. The urban hiking trail, which was supposed to be the heart of the design, now looked like an afterthought. The swooping lines I’d imagined, inspired by Saarinen’s TWA Flight Center staircase, weren’t fluid or graceful—they were clunky. I stared at the screen, feeling like I had painted myself into a corner.

Mortified, I presented the update in studio the next day. I explained the adjustments I’d made, but inside, I felt exposed. The exterior stairs that formed the hiking trail didn’t feel integrated, and I was painfully aware of how far the design had strayed from my original vision. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had failed.

This, I’ve come to learn, is an often-overlooked part of the design process, written in tiny font somewhere between Schematic Design and Design Development: Failure.

Those crushing moments when your vision seems to slip through the lines on your screen, leaving you haunted by the ghost of the idea you’re chasing.

So, I did what I always do when I’m too close to a project to see it clearly. I turned to my secret weapon: collaboration. The friends, faculty, and industry professionals I reached out to gave me a mix of advice— some encouraging, some brutally honest. A few even suggested abandoning the concept altogether, but it was too deep into the semester to start over, and I had promised urban hiking! Others helped me refine my thinking: adjust the angles, make the terraces larger, and let them serve multiple functions. Their optimism helped me see the opportunities buried in the design.

And just like that, I was back in the ring—or rather, the virtual expanse of Revit—chiseling away at the design and reshaping it into something I wasn’t mortified to present.

The Build: Filament, Film, and Fairy Lights

If design is a marathon, building the physical model is the final leg, lined with a series of hurdles. I’ve developed a love for model-making, but it wasn’t always easy for me. As someone with a joint condition that affects my hands, cutting materials can be physically taxing. Luckily, the digital fabrication tools at LSU, including laser cutters and 3D printers, have transformed how I am able to build. With each new project I like to challenge myself to learn something new or experiment with a material or technique.

For The Village Green, I challenged myself to push my boundaries. I set three goals:

1. Use 3D printing as much as possible. (Because I’ve been wanting to learn more about it.)

2. Find a way to model my curved glazing cleanly. (Because this was a struggle on my last model.)

3. Illuminate the model from within. (Because I’ve had a gorgeous illuminated model saved for inspiration on Pinterest since last year)

Let’s just say the road to completion wasn’t smooth.

The 3D printing process taught me a lot about efficiency, optimization, and reinforced the value of collaboration. I spent what felt like half the semester in the print lab, learning minimize waste and troubleshoot unforeseen challenges.

For the glazing, I found a thin acrylic film that I could cut on the laser cutter and slide into channels I’d integrated into the printed model parts. It worked beautifully.

The lights, however, were another story.

Inspired by a glowing Pinterest model, I purchased a 99-foot strand of remote controlled fairy lights, only to discover that they created unsightly hotspots on the floors above. After this 11 p.m. discovery I went to bed, frustrated and just about ready to give up. The next day, a casual chat with a graduate student from the School of Art changed everything. They simply asked if I had considered tin foil to block the light. I had not. It was so simple and perfect for what I needed. It worked like magic!

nstalling the lights became a labor of love, requiring hours of careful folding, twisting, and hiding of excess lengths of wire. I even adjusted the lights to make the building feel “lived in,” with some rooms glowing while others remained dark.

After weeks of assembly, messing with wires, gluing model plants and trees into planters, and installing model turf on the rooftop garden, the build was finally complete. If design is a marathon, this is the runner’s high.

The Superbowl Moment

After following my model build process for several weeks, one of my friends jokingly said that final presentations must be like my personal Superbowl, and honestly, it stuck. Despite the many sports references, I am no athlete, nor do I follow sports. But when the final presentation day arrived, it felt like my personal Superbowl. Our studio had created a shared site model of the East Village in New York, scaled to fit each of our projects at the center. As I placed The Village Green on the site and began presenting, one of the guest reviewers remarked, “I wish I could see how it looks at night.”

Touchdown! Perfect segue.

I turned off the lights and with a click of the remote in my jacket pocket, the model lit up, glowing warmly from within. Something about the lighting transformed it from a building model on a table into something more real. The curved glazing reflected its surroundings, the tiny model people and trees cast shadows, and our replica of the East Village seemed somehow more alive.

A classmate remarked that I should post my model on Pinterest. Field goal!

It was a moment of triumph—proof that all the setbacks, late nights, and endless tinkering had been worth it.

Design through Discovery

If I’ve learned anything from The Village Green, it’s that the best solutions often come from unexpected places. Whether it’s a roll of tin foil or a passing insight from a colleague, collaboration and curiosity are what push ideas forward.

Design isn’t just about solving problems. It’s about embracing them, wrestling with them, and turning them into opportunities.

If you’ve done everything right—even the failures—the final design allows the journey to shine through.

About the Author

Katharina Wang is a graduate student in LSU’s School of Architecture with a background in interior design and a passion for creative problem-solving. She earned her Bachelor of Interior Design from LSU in 2017 and spent five years working in an architecture firm before returning to pursue her Master of Architecture. She now teaches Revit in the LSU School of Interior Design and loves finding new ways to integrate the software into her own design process.

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