Diamond Ring - Brasilia Cathedral

grabcad

My name is Harshul Makwana, and I am a high school sophomore at the Academy of Mathematics, Science, and Engineering in Morris County. I chose to redesign and innovate the Brasilia Cathedral, a beautiful cathedral designed by Oscar Niemeyer, a famous Brazilian architect. The cathedral itself, interestingly, was designed to have a glass roof that appeared to reach up, as if opening to heaven. Since its construction, visitors from every corner of the world have adored this breathtaking monument, and during my trip to Brazil, I was also fortunate enough to explore this building. Due to this, I decided to create a different use for this building, and chose to remake it into what would eventually become a diamond ring. The shape of the cathedral itself was quite versatile in application, but having the ability to make the cathedral into a piece of jewelry while also re-inventing the purpose of it allowed for me to create the best of both architecture and jewelry. So how exactly was the ring designed? Foremost, after using a model building, I measured various lengths, widths, and heights of the cathedral, which I would later use to loft the sharp edged curves around the base of the cathedral. This turned out to be the most tedious aspect of the project due to the number of measurements that had to be taken, which also had to be scaled up as well. Next was the diamond, one of the most beautiful aspects of the ring I designed. This diamond was unique as I used a series of lofts, obtaining angled faces that made the diamond reflect light distinctively and differently from those found in jewelry stores. The final part of the diamond ring was the ring itself, where a person would place their finger to show off this masterpiece. This was another intricate piece, as I managed to get an engraving of my name into the front face of the ring, using a special font and tracing over an image with this font. Additionally, the ring was also designed with different colors and polishes around its various faces, which added to the beauty of the ring while maintaining simplicity. In summation, this project allowed me to create an elegant piece of jewelry, all while learning about architecture and its different implementations, as well as strengthening my skills in designing.