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Design was selected from College of Architecture and Environmental Design’s 2012 MATr PROJECT  

Student designers do not always have their designed projects come to life. But for ��ñ��College of Architecture and Environmental Design graduate students Zachary Hoyt and Siaraa Abulhamayel, their sculpture project has now become a reality. Their project,The Embrace, a 10-foot-tall sculpture has been installed between Taylor Hall, the Gym Annex and Johnson Hall.

The College of Architecture and Environmental Design Lecture Committee, led by Committee Chair Kathryn Strand, held its second annual MATr PROJECT, which supports the conceptualization and actualization of innovative and experimental material research through full-scale making within the college. The project encourages the exploration of instances of correspondence between the material and immaterial, the real and abstract and the ephemeral and particular.

When a project is selected, the student receives $2,500 to cover costs of materials and installation, and the project is installed on the Kent Campus during the Fall 2012 Semester.

Hoyt and Abulhamayel, along with their advisor, Professor Frederick Lucak, designed the sculpture.

“The 10-foot-tall conceptualized structure is an exhibition of the most expressive human gesture: ‘the embrace,’” says Abulhamayel. “The Embrace celebrates the coalescence between contradictory ideas manifesting in a realization that poetically entwines divergent themes.”

Hoyt continues, “The abstracted human figure balances the symbiotic relationship between the tangible and abstract while displaying the correspondence of the envelope condition to the structural members. It is a public experience of enclosure versus openness, organic versus geometric and soft versus mechanical.”

The Embrace design team is excited to see the design actualized and credits the success to teamwork.

“Undoubtedly this experience was invaluable,” says Hoyt. “There aren't many opportunities to work in a team within the architecture curriculum. However, the real world is the complete opposite. This project helps to foster and showcase the benefit of collaboration and teamwork.”

Although this project was a part of a competition, Hoyt believes that the process helped him experience more than just success in seeing their design come to life.

“Another life lesson involved the realization that manifesting our intricate architectural designs can be a process of compromise and discovery,” says Hoyt. “Project constraints of economy, capability and schedule all combine to extend the design process, continually shaping the initial concept.

“The ability to maintain flexibility is a necessary component of creation that must be equally tempered with the unwavering pursuit of an idealized vision,” Hoyt adds. “The juxtaposition of these two extremes can be an integral catalyst for successful design.”

Abulhamayel says that the wide range of architectural applications these days is inordinate.

“The Embrace is a great demonstration of multiple students’ capabilities. This project is one way to communicate architecture students’ aptitudes to the public,” she says.

For more information about the sculpture, contact Hoyt at zhoyt@kent.edu or Abulhamayel at sabulham@kent.edu.