This is our midterm project in this class. We were tasked to create an auditorium for the citizenship ceremony on the site of Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay. This project was for a competition that we were required to submit a booklet for. We were given a set of drawings: site plan, at least one floor plan, and a series of renderings. We were also given a set of requirements: the auditorium must be able to seat 1,000 people, it must be contemplative when it's not in use as an auditorium, and it must provide storage for tables and chairs. We must include four to six moderately sized spaces on-site for smaller groups of people, and a mix of intimate spaces for smaller groups. We also needed an office space to act as administration and a tour meet-up area.

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I immediately decided on a design with the auditorium suspended over San Francisco Bay since it wasn't specified that we couldn't build over the bay and since we don't have a large amount of space on the grounds of the Station for the auditorium. I also intended to design a tiered sculpture terrace (inspired by Asian rice terraces) and a water garden in the shape of a ship that would partially flood with water with the tides (inspired by the Forth Worth Water Gardens by Phillip Johnson). I originally intended to design the space to be mounted on piles embedded in the sea floor of the bay, however, this design changed after meeting with my instructor, who suggested a design suspended over San Francisco Bay in a manner similar to suspension or cable-stayed bridges. I came up with a design for the auditorium inspired by the aft ends of cruise ships with a curved façade overlooking the bay. I also designed a larger walking area on the roof of the auditorium so people could look over the bay. For the water garden I chose a design with a series of platforms at various heights to allow for different views of the bay; I chose to create a tunnel connecting two portions of the water garden; this was based on the Vaillancourt Fountain in San Francisco itself. I added safety railings and staircases to some portions of the garden while I left some without staircases so people could either climb up onto them or they weren't meant to be accessible. For the terraced sculpture garden, I integrated the office into the base level of the garden. I then tiered the garden four times above the initial level, on each level I designed an abstract sculpture inspired by the flag of a country that some population of people came Angel Island through. Around each sculpture I created a reflecting pool and at the top of the garden I created a waterfall feature. I didn't modify the rest of the site to allow for history to remain.