The Wilmington Timeworks

Time is not only read on a dial—it can be expressed through art, movement, light, and the activity of people. This project approaches time in that way: the building itself is a collection of devices that mark, reflect, and interpret it. Submitting a building to a clock competition is unconventional, but if clocks communicate time, architecture communicates it on a larger, public scale. Wilmington does not have a prominent public clock, and this project seizes that opportunity, offering a space where the rhythms of the city, the light, and the movement of people all come together to make time visible.The building is anchored by two literal timekeepers. A column rises from the plaza, spreading outward at its top and carrying two clocks that mark the hours. In front, a circular sundial with numbered markers lets visitors witness time directly. Paths, light, and sightlines guide the way, turning movement through the space into a subtle measure of passing hours.This project unfolds every layer—the program, the structure, the Autodesk workflow, and the narratives of the community—but at its core it remains simple: a clock you can walk into, stand beneath, and experience.

Supplies

G15 Laptop

Revit

Twin motion

Adobe Illustrator

Step 1: Anchoring a Story in Wilmington

Wilmington’s downtown is full of high-rises for banking corporations, but this site was different: an underused parking lot punctuated by a single modest mid-rise. It felt like a blank page, a place waiting for a story. I considered other cities, even Philadelphia, but none felt personal or compelling; I didn’t know them well, and they didn’t inspire me. Wilmington, by contrast, is familiar. I know the rhythms of the city, the people who move through it, and the gaps in its cultural landscape. Here, the streets were quiet, the spaces empty, and the city was missing a destination that could anchor both daily life and shared experiences. I wanted to change that. I imagined a tower, a community space, a place that could transform this underused corner into something meaningful, not just a downtown for bankers, but a public stage for the city itself. Its proximity to the river, I-95, and the YMCA meant this wasn’t just a random plot; it was a connector, a beginning point for the city’s story.

Step 2: Where Time Lives

Once a site is chosen, the next question is simple: what will this place do? Wilmington’s downtown needed more than another tower; it needed a space that could show, record, and celebrate the passage of time. The program became the answer. The building is organized around three core ideas: observing time, creating time, and reflecting on time. The museum preserves personal and community stories, capturing moments from the past in exhibitions that evolve and shift. Studios invite visitors to craft their own timelines, record narratives, and experiment with new ways of making and measuring time. The auditorium hosts performances, rituals, and gatherings that explore cycles and shared experiences, blending history with the present and glimpses of what might come. Every space is conceived as a layer in a larger narrative — not static, not isolated, but part of a rhythm that moves through hours, days, and seasons. Time here is not read from a single dial; it is made, witnessed, and felt in the flow of activity, the accumulation of stories, and the energy of the building itself. This is the program distilled: a place to see, make, and understand time through art, performance, and creation.

Step 3: Seeing Ideas Take Shape With Revit

Before the building could take shape, I needed a way to turn ideas into something I could see, test, and explore. That’s where Revit came in—a 3D architectural software from Autodesk that I first discovered through this website, then learned more deeply in my Technical Drafting and Design course, honed further during my co-op at an architecture firm, and finally pushed to its limits through this competition. With Revit, I could transform the abstract program into spaces that breathe, interact, and respond, letting me explore forms, layouts, and light long before a single wall or window existed.

Step 4: Massing Studies: Exploring Shape and Scale

Before the details, before the glass, before the atrium, there was form. Massing studies are the simplest way to explore a building’s size, shape, and presence in the city, the envelope that contains everything to come. I began with two primary studies: one showing two distinct buildings, the other experimenting with different floor sizes and proportions. These black-and-white shapes weren’t about finishes or materials; they were about ideas, possibilities, and constraints. Each form tests a question: How should the building sit in Wilmington? How can it interact with light, streets, and the river? How can the shape hint at movement, cycles, or the passage of time? These early studies let me quickly throw ideas out, evaluate them, and discard what didn’t fit. They are the conceptual skeleton on which everything else — program, circulation, and experience — would be built.

Step 5: Context Integration: Tracing Streets and Surroundings

Once the massing studies established the building’s shape and volume, the next step was to see how it would sit in the real city. I traced streets, sidewalks, and surrounding buildings from Google Earth into Revit, creating a simplified but accurate canvas for the project. This exercise revealed sightlines, street rhythms, and the ways pedestrians would encounter the building. By overlaying the massing onto this traced context, I could test how the forms interacted with the city: which edges caught light, which façades faced major streets, and how the building might frame key views. Massing and context became inseparable, one defined shape, the other defined its story in the urban fabric.

Step 6: First Floor: Public Life and Time in Action

The first floor is where the city meets the building. Open plazas and pockets of greenery offer quiet corners to pause, escape the urban buzz, and experience the rhythms of the day. One key feature is the sundial plaza: numbers are engraved directly into the floor, and as the sun moves across the sky, shadows point to the current hour. Here, time is literally written into the ground, turning sunlight into a public clock that anyone can witness. A café sits nearby, activating the space even when no events are scheduled, giving visitors a reason to linger and interact with the architecture. Essential but often overlooked elements, bathrooms, offices, and back-of-house spaces, are tucked thoughtfully out of sight, quietly supporting the building’s function without interrupting the visitor experience. This floor establishes the building’s dual purpose: a cultural destination that educates and engages, and a flexible, welcoming urban space that can exist even when the “main show” isn’t happening. Conceptually, it’s the first touchpoint where time, art, and public life converge.

Step 7: Second Floor: the Auditorium Emerges

On the second floor, the building begins to take on its performance character. This is where the auditorium starts to rise, with the first tiers of seating shaping the spatial experience and hinting at the larger volumes to come. The stage and backstage areas are positioned to allow seamless movement of performers and staff, while storage rooms and offices quietly support operations behind the scenes. This floor marks the transition from public, open spaces to a more focused, program-driven zone. Here, the building begins to guide visitors through a curated experience of time, from gathering in the plazas below to entering a space designed for shared moments, storytelling, and performance. The form and layout of this level start to reveal how the architecture orchestrates attention, framing the act of watching and being part of events as a measure of human time in the building.

Step 8: Upper Floors: Third & Fourth Levels

The third floor begins to shrink in footprint, creating opportunities for terraces and a rooftop garden that offers quiet reflection above the bustle of the city. Here, the auditorium seating entry starts to fully engage visitors, guiding them upward into the performance space, while a larger viewing platform wraps around the atrium, giving visitors a panoramic stage for the displays. This level balances circulation, program, and open space, letting people move freely while still feeling connected to the unfolding story below. The fourth floor is the smallest in footprint and almost exclusively devoted to the final displays. Elevated above the rest of the building, it provides some of the best views of Wilmington while allowing visitors to complete the narrative arc of the museum. From here, time is both seen and felt — a vertical journey from the ground up, where light, movement, and exhibition converge.

Step 9: Atrium: a Vertical Measure of Time

At the heart of the building stretches the atrium, a space spanning all four floors and serving as the vertical spine of the project. It’s designed to be flexible and ever-changing, just like time itself. Galleries, displays, and circulation wrap around this core, letting visitors experience the museum from multiple perspectives. Light floods in from above and through the glass façades, animating the space and marking the passage of hours, days, and seasons. The atrium is both a connector and a stage: it links floors, guides movement, and frames views while allowing exhibits and installations to shift and evolve. Visitors can stand beneath it, look up through the layers of activity, or pause on platforms to reflect, each vantage point offering a different encounter with time, space, and storytelling.

Step 10: Breathing Life Into Time With Twinmotion

After months of exploring the building in Revit, Twinmotion added the final layer of life, color, and light. As a free tool included with Revit through Autodesk and powered by Epic Games, it became the cherry on top, letting me cast shadows, reflections, and atmosphere over the Wilmington Timeworks, transforming models into spaces that feel tangible and real. With Twinmotion, the building became more than shapes on a screen—it became a place you can step into with your eyes, senses, and imagination, leading directly to the final renders and videos.

Step 11: Exterior

Step 12: Renders

Step 13: A Story of Time

This project was me stepping into the unknown, embracing limits that made every choice matter. Like a poem unfolding, it tells the story of time—its passage, its cycles, its fleeting moments—and how we live within them. Through every sketch, model, and render, my artistic sense and love for architecture found their voice, shaping ideas into spaces that can be seen, felt, and experienced. Wilmington Timeworks is more than a building; it is a story, a rhythm, and a reflection of the moments we carry with us.