Whispering Currents — Architecture Portfolio copy 2

Selected works

Vengatesh Ravichandren (b. 1998) is a Master of Architecture graduate from the University of Sydney, with a passion for thoughtful design and experience in architectural drafting, visualisation, and design development.

For more info, please get in touch with me at
work.veng@gmail.com.

His practice spans architecture, interiors, and objects, grounded in design fundamentals and evolving methods, shaped through experience across varied design roles and university learning, with a habit of questioning conventions.

Resume

veng

Whispering Currents, in the quiet heart of an industrial body.

2025
330 King St
Newtown NSW

The Project reimagines the abandoned Newtown Tram Depot in Sydney as a contemporary public bathhouse that transforms a former industrial structure into a civic space of rest, ritual, and wellbeing. The project explores adaptive reuse through a phenomenological design approach, using water, steam, light, sound, and tactility to humanise the monumental scale of the existing depot while preserving its heritage character and structural memory.

This building is not a ruin.
Ruins decay.
Ruins crumble.
Ruins we love, because we pity.
But this-
This is endurance.
This is waiting.
This is strength paused.

Newtown tram depot - Existing Structure

Memory

Play

Fold

Rather than erasing the site’s industrial identity, the intervention carefully inserts intimate bathing spaces, thermal pools, thresholds, and circulation folds within the original steel-and-brick shell. Inspired by Sydney’s coastal pool culture, Roman thermae, and theories of atmosphere and embodiment, the design positions bathing as a collective ritual of pause, reflection, and sensory awareness.

1/8 Site Plan

2/8 Model

3/8 Master Plan

4/8 Elevations

5/8 Section

6/8 Sectional Elevation

7/8 Axonometric Projection

8/8 Context study

The proposal reconnects architecture with the human body, transforming movement-based infrastructure into a place of stillness and immersion. Existing materials such as brick, steel, and concrete are reinterpreted through warmth, moisture, shadow, and acoustics to create layered spatial experiences.

1/4

2/4

3/4

4/4

Through plans, sections, physical models, and atmospheric visualisations, the project demonstrates how obsolete heritage structures can be reactivated as socially vibrant public environments that foster community, wellness, memory, and a renewed relationship between city life and water.

1/4

2/4

3/4

4/4