high-tech architecture
12 weeks — 2024

Project
XY

My interest in go-karting grew from the process behind racing — the discipline of repeating, learning and refining. Project XY carries this process into architecture, with the helmet becoming the starting point for a building shaped through testing, persistence and continuous refinement.

“Perhaps persistence is found in the return. In falling, recovering, and choosing to begin again… a mindset I carried from the track into the process of making, testing and refining this project — Not knowing where it would lead, but continuing to push it forward…”

“Perhaps architecture begins with a question?”

A question of place, movement, scale and the moments that make a space worth inhabiting.
Beyond its physical boundaries lies a deeper composition of memory, atmosphere, movement and meaning.

“What makes a place worthy of attention?”
.

Casa Ombra — offset portrait of interior threshold
“Before something is added, what deserves to remain?”

Intervention becomes an act of negotiation — between what exists, what is remembered, and what might yet emerge.
“What can be measured, and what can only be perceived?”

Every site carries visible and invisible traces of stories embedded within its rhythms, rituals and relationships.
“What happens when an idea acquires physical presence?”

Small fragments become instruments of scale, testing how form might negotiate with its surroundings.

“How large can an intervention become before it changes the place itself?”

Scale is not simply measured — it is felt through presence, movement and impact.

“How is architecture encountered before it is entered?”

Movement becomes a way of discovering the space — through approach, passage, pause and encounter.
Casa Ombra — section drawing through roof and patio

“Why one path and not another?”

Routes emerge through instinct, attraction, resistance and discovery.

“What happens when structure begins to shape behaviour?”

The frame becomes more than a means of support — it establishes the conditions for movement, encounter and occupation.

“What makes a space invite us to participate?”

Architecture becomes relational. Shaped not only by what it contains — but by what happens within it.

“When does a space become a place?”

When there is no longer a need to move — when the space allows us to simply remain, even for a moment.

“What makes someone want to return?”

Perhaps belonging is not created by architecture alone, but through the experiences that gradually become attached to it.

project information

Project xy
motorsport exhibition
salford, united kingdom
→ 2024
bsc1

credits - hanif shah