Tamzid Jaigirdar

About

Longhouseinvestigating the borders in living

Core III / Term I, 2024
Prof. Gary Bates
Typology: Housing
West Harlem, New York

Collaborative Work: Omar Ismail




Recognizing the unique conditions of social and Recognizing the unique conditions of social and physical barriers and encroachments around our proposed site in West Harlem, our housing project uses these moments as a provocation to explore a blurring of boundaries within an apartment building. Through the blurring of boundaries between party walls and circulatory space, harsh boundaries are perforated and thickened to become places of interaction and sharing. Residents are able to delineate a gradient of privacy built around their living habits in a variety of unit sizes.

You can imagine a book collector curating reading material every week and displaying them conspicuously such that neighbors may choose to borrow and read a book on their way through the building. Youth living in the building roam freely under the watchful eyes of other residents. Here they can be exposed to hobbies, stories, or even the elderly wisdom of an aging neighbor. Likewise, this aging neighbor can feel confident in having a support network of familiar neighbors. At its heart our project is driven by the idea of challenging the ideal nuclear family, subverting typical modes of isolated living experienced by many in New York City.

Using a Co-Op model, the project aims to provide residents a sense of ownership and community that is often deprived in apartment complexes across the city.

*All material was completed collabratively.








Disarming Defensesdisused millitary infratructure as places of worship
for the Muslim community of Staten Island

Advanced Studio IV / Term II, 2025
Prof. Ziad Jamaleddine
Typology: Religious
Staten Island, New York

Collaborative Work: Omar Ismail


Disarming Defenses repurposes the long forgotten coastal defense infrastructure of Fort Wadsworth for worship and through doing so aims to heal a fractured landscape. The large early concrete structures portrayed heroic forms whose meaning has long since been forgotten. In a previous life these defensive batteries were the state of art of American military technology during the Endicott period, (1880-1930), which was a time when the country leaned more towards isolationism. While costing millions to build these weapons were never used in combat and were soon made obsolete through the invention of airplanes and missiles. Leaving these structures to decay while suburban Staten Island m.sland grew around them. Sitting only yards away from backyards these structures haunt Staten Island of a war that never came.

Using the Islamic Law concept of a “Waqf”, which designates a property to a cause in perpetuity, these long-abandoned structures are given new life as places of worship for the commuting muslims of New York. Sitting adjacent to the Varrazano Bridge, the site allows for visitors to perform daily religious rituals before continuing their commutes. Aware of the optics of such an action, the idea to turn an American military base into a Mosque came from a desire to reorient the intentions of the site. Once looking upon the water in fear of outsiders. The same place can now be a sanctuary for immigrants that had to leave their homes due to American interventionism.






Bricolagepavillion made of design waste

The Great Reuse / Term II, 2025
Prof. Mireia Luzarraga Alvarez
Typology: temporary pavillion
Morningside Campus, New York


Collabrative Work: Angie Mendoza, Chang Cao, Doei
Kang, Delaram Haghdel, Laurent-Shixun HuangBricollage aimed to bring elements of domesticity to Columbia’s campus by providing a place to relax and have a meal together during the week before finals. The pavillion aimed to provide students a refuge and break from school, especially at a time when places like home are missed the most. Anchored around the tree outside of Avery, the structure brings people closer to nature at a time when most of us are locked to our screens completing drawings. Tasked with creating a temporary pavillion made entirely out of disused mateial. The project uses the waste stream of the Columbia GSAPP studios and makerspace as it’s constituent parts. The thrown away drawings from our peers desk crits and past iteations are sewn together to become a continious curtin. The thrown away scrap plywood from forgotten models are ziptied together to create a generous dining table.

Installed at a contentious time when displays of the domesticty in public spaces were and are still seen as threats, the pavillion became an unexpected scene of resillance and protest.

My roles in the project involved the design and fabrication of the table and curtains alongside my teammates, with a focus on the curtains. I also acted as a project manager, by creating schedules, deadlines, and assigning tasks to group members.

Cronuspotential steakhouse / slaughterhouse
on top of Newark Penn station’s roof

Core Studio II / Term II, 2024
Prof. Joshua Uhl
Typology: hospitality / agriculture
Newark, New Jersey
Cronus uses the mass production of beef products as a device to highlight the damage done to Newark through its parasitic relationship with New York. Similar to the spaces of beef production, Newark is a city that suffers from unnatural and depleted landscapes through extraction to feed capitalistic incentivized consumption. Contemporary cattle cows have become highly controlled and mechanized to the point where cattle in the US require gas gasket release valves to maintain their unnatural diet and slaughterhouses feature intricate absurd machines to extract maximum value from the cattle.

Similarly, Newark exists within depleted soil and contaminated air from the decades of damage inflicted on the city through its relationship with New York. Cronus, the newest addition to Newark, allows for visitors of Penn Station to take in the scarred landscape of the city while enjoying a farm-to-table steak. Coming from a desire to take advantage of the many commuters who pass through the station for business purposes either in Newark or elsewhere, Cronus transforms Newark Penn Station into a destination in itself rather than a stop along the journey. The impetus to choose Newark Penn Station as a site stems from the station representing two key themes. The Mckim, Mead, and White station reflects the city at its peak and its subsequent neglect and disrepair serve as a perfect symbol for Newark as a whole. The station also symbolizes Newark’s inseparable relationship with New York which continues to damage the city.

Amara Nanu Ranna  provocations on desi diasporic life in New York 

Advanced V / Term I, 2025
Prof. Sumayya Vally
Typology: hospitality / residential


Reference images: John Greenberg /
The New York Times Amara Nanu Ranna reinterprets the spacial qualities of Curry Row to form an architecture that fosters a diasporic community through offering them a space to practice their daily lives uninhibited from western spatial assumptions, (for example, that one needs to be seated to eat food).  

The former facade and carriage house that once existed on the site before demolition in the 1950s are recomposed and around them fragments of Curry Row are reinterpreted to provide new spatial and programmatic meaning. The sweeping fabric draping the ceiling of Mitali East becomes a vaulted slab to rest, eat, and play. The Limo of Abu Sufian, the first Bengali Millionaire and Curry Row alum becomes the organizing point for classes and meetings. And the facade is punctured, extruded, and added to to allow for inhabitation within it.  The secret garden dining of the past restaurants became the “Charbagh” or heaven on earth. Playing into the urban rumors that the restaurants of Curry Row all shared one kitchen. A zone where lot lines dissolve and communal sharing is encouraged through garden follies that allow for meaning to be put upon them. Returning to the restaurant, filling in an infill lot. The structure is a skeleton of the buildings that once existed on the site.Amara Nanu Ranna is an anomaly within the Manhattan grid that offers an alternative to our current relationship to property, capital, and living.









McExtraction spatializing a Big Mac

Core Studio II / Term II, 2024
Prof. Joshua Uhl
Typology:  Spatial Research
USA
Investigating the mass production of beef products, the project explores the built forms and infrastructure of the cattle industry to expose the unnaturalness of the process as a whole. Using McDonald’s as a case study, the cow is tracked at the point of slaughter into its subsequent division and distribution into several products. Through research on the process, it became abundantly clear that the tools of extraction of beef itself was a strange and mechanized process.

The relationship of these devices was then combined with tools of consumption such as the Happy Meal. The result allows for these objects of extraction to be taken at face value and for the absurdity of the process to become clear. No longer a Happy Meal, the final product is instead a “Sad Meal”. Following these investigations, a film was made that further explores the abstracted world of the “Sad Meal”. Through the film the viewer is challenged to consider the credibility of the contemporary beef industry and if such a system should exist in its current form.

About  

tamzidjaigirdar@gmail.com
IG: @tamzidjaigirdar




I’m an architectural designer, master’s student, and educator currently based in New York, New York. My interests in the field revolve around the adaptation of existing buildings, architecture driven by new financial and social models, and the exploration of alternative materialities. Born and raised in Detroit and a child to immigrants, my upbringing has shaped a design methodology centered on equity, resilience, and dignity.   

I like making things with my hands, photography, old buildings, historical archives, film, cooking, vintage clothes, sketching, reading in Central Park, hopping around different galleries, walking down Riverside Park, teaching students about design, writing, the NBA, jazz from across the world, Motown music, wood, the color orange, and many other things.

Thank you for stopping by and feel free to reach out over email. 



     Education

Columbia University 
M.Arch
sep 2023 - may 2026
University of Detroit Mercy 
BS.Arch
sep 2019 - may 2023

Experience

L.E.FT Architects 
freelance designer
oct 2025 - dec 2025
Perkins & WIll 
Architectural Intern
Jun 2025 - Aug 2025
Uhl Architecture 
Architectural Intern
May 2024 - Aug 2024
Smithgroup
Architectural Intern
May 2023 - Aug 2023
Detroit Collabrative Design Center
Emerging Designer
jan 2023 - apr 2023
Intoto Studio 
Architectural Intern
jan 2022 - apr 2022 Teaching

Columbia University GSAPP
Teaching Assistant II
Core I: Material Ecologies, fa2025 
Core II: Scaling Up, sp2026 
Barnard College Design Center
Graduate Assistant
jan 2025 - ongoing
University of Detroit Mercy SACD
Teaching Assistant
Repersentation, fa 2022
Tech, sp 2021

Top ↑