Ring Master: A Portal to Otherworldly Architecture

The space under a motorway is one of the most reliably unloved places in any city. Concrete columns, tire noise, no programme, no light. Ring Master, designed by Miguelangel Murillo and Alexis Escobar, treats exactly this condition as an opportunity. The project hangs a cluster of glowing rings from the underside of a viaduct and transforms the leftover space into a kinetic civic stage: part canopy, part chandelier, part machine.

Shortlisted as a People's Choice entry in the Down Below competition on uni.xyz, Ring Master is a proposal for what to do with the air beneath urban infrastructure. It does not tear the highway down. It does not build a new building next to it. It inhabits the shadow the highway already casts, and uses light, water, and mechanical motion to make that shadow the most interesting public space in the neighbourhood.

The Site: A Map of Unloved Spaces

The site diagram reads the existing intersection as a set of programmes waiting for hosts. Annotated bubbles label what each leftover pocket could become: the Adjacent Rotunda, the Factory Work as a Rest zone, the Seasonal Circus as Play, a Water element for cooling, and a Youth Center as Gathering. The drawing argues, before any form is proposed, that the problem under the viaduct is not emptiness. It is unnamed programme.

By labelling every pocket and tagging it with a social function, the project turns the chaotic underside of an urban intersection into a programmed landscape. The installation that follows is not dropped onto a random site. It is placed at the only point where all five programme zones converge. The design is a response to a reading, not an imposition.

The Installation: A Chandelier for the City

The night renders show what the intervention looks like in place. A cluster of luminous rings hangs from the underside of the concrete highway. Below them, a small platform is lit in warm yellow. A handful of figures gather. The scale is deliberate: the rings are large enough to read from the surrounding streets and small enough to feel like a single object, not a colonisation. The viaduct is the ceiling. The rings are the room.

This is the project's most important move. Rather than building a new structure that competes with the highway, Ring Master accepts the highway as the building. The concrete deck becomes the roof. The columns become the walls. All the project needs to add is a chandelier, and the civic room assembles itself.

The Kit: Canopy, Rings, Arms, Lift

The exploded diagram is the project's most technical drawing. It labels every component of the central cluster: the Hydroshade Canopy ring that provides cooling mist, the Aqua Rings that carry water and light, the central Stage, Illuminator Units with Acoustic Manipulators, Robotic Arms, a Track System, and a Hydraulic Lift. Each piece is drawn as a discrete mechanical element, ready to be assembled or replaced.

This drawing is what separates Ring Master from most competition entries. It is not just a mood. It is a machine. The project identifies the parts, assigns them functions, and shows how they fit together. The rings are not just lights. They deliver water, sound, and stage equipment. The structure is not just a chandelier. It is a kinetic rig that can rotate, descend, and reconfigure for different events.

The Interior: Rings, Crowds, Cameras

The main interior render shows what the installation looks like in performance mode. Concentric LED rings hang from a deep steel grid ceiling and converge on a central kinetic chandelier. Diamond-shaped illuminator units descend on cables above a circular stage. Audiences sit on the surrounding plinth, watching as the mechanical arms rearrange the light and sound above them. The atmosphere is somewhere between a concert, a cathedral, and a factory floor.

This is where Ring Master stops being a lighting project and becomes an architecture project. The rings are not decorative. They define a room in space: a circle of light large enough to hold a crowd, low enough to feel intimate, and high enough to stay legible from outside. The under-highway void is finally given a scale, and the scale is civic.

Why This Project Matters

Down Below asked entrants to imagine life under urban infrastructure. Most responses proposed new buildings, new platforms, new ground. Ring Master answered with a lighter question: what if you did not build anything new on the ground at all, and instead hung a machine from the ceiling the city already built? The proposal is cheaper, faster, and more reversible than anything that touches the road itself. It is also more theatrical.

For anyone studying adaptive reuse of infrastructure, tactical urbanism, or the design of kinetic public installations, Ring Master is a useful reference. It treats the underside of a viaduct as a ceiling, the columns as walls, and the emptiness as an opportunity to hang a chandelier. The result is not a building. It is a stage. And the city, for a few hours each night, becomes the audience.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designers: Miguelangel Murillo, Alexis Escobar

Enter a Design Competition on uni.xyz

If kinetic architecture, infrastructure reuse, or public installation design is the kind of work you want to explore, uni.xyz runs competitions year-round that reward proposals with spatial intelligence and real site reading.

Project credits: Ring Master by Miguelangel Murillo and Alexis Escobar. People's Choice entry, Down Below (uni.xyz).