YW

The Yanqi Wetland in Tianfu New District of Chengdu has a rich cultural characteristics of the Linpan area in Western Sichuan. The design intends to fully preserve the landscape that farm house and canal, gully, and farmland coexist with each other, and explore how architecture brings continuity that invites nature into our site. On the basis, the lightweight roof using the new material i-mesh absorbs and connects the surrounding landscape view through the expanding and folding, forming a three-dimensional, continuous landscape picture scroll, it also integrates the original buildings of different scales. The volume is incorporated under the continuous and complete roof, and enclosed in a tranquil water courtyard space. Mountains, water, forests, vegetation, roofs, new materials, and old houses here join together to form a habitat that immerced within the natual landscpae of Yanqi Wetland Ecological Demonstration Zone, a cloud pavilion floating among the undulating forest ravines in western Sichuan.

Designers are asked to choose I-mesh as a new material added in the old building. The project started with re-examining the poetic expression of the I-mesh material that is imposed on our site. It inherently has a sense of transparency with uncertainly, and we would like to maximize it's capacity of bringing that lightness into the existing old building, using it as a spatial tool as to re-define the relationship between old and new rather than make it only a skin decoration. We also see I-mesh as a way of filtering that blends architecture and nature. With its flexiblity to be adapted into various shapes, we intend to create a three-dimensional form that functions as a continuous canopy as completing the existing courtyard, bringing lights and winds into the space.

The central water court natually joins the planned two types of rooms. Public- the new added outdoor garden and indoor lounge space, and Private- a multi-purpose room that is capable of easily turned into a meeting room or a dining room, closely associated with adjacent open kitchen, and finally the tea room with full bookshelf integrated on the wall as to create a sense of privacy. We imagine theses spaces are flexible to be used by multiple groups and occationally exclusively one group for special events.

The Renmin Canal, rooted in the forest plate mechanism in western Sichuan, not only diverts water to irrigate farmland, nurtures the soil and water, but also connects the future ecology of Kaizhou New City and the cultural link of the local memory. The concept intends to concentrate the 6-kilometer-long landscape of Renmin Canal, and extract spatial intentions such as "canals", "peaks", "valleys", "islands", and "ponds" to condense them into a ring to create a Man-made scenery with the theme of "water". In this sensory garden with "water" as the carrier, we create a variety of water forms-"waterfall", "water curtain", and "shallow pond"-from dynamic to static-depicting the differences depicted by water Sound and timbre compose a musical chapter about praising water. We believe that in the near future, this design will become the monument of Renmin Canal and the business card of Kaizhou's urban public space.

The entire project is embedded in the ground, and a continuous, gentle and varied landscape boundary is outlined in a humble manner on the ground by raising a circular pool with a height of 1 meter. When approaching it, when it is located in the surrounding valleys, with the falling green floating islands pouring into the raised "mountains", a strong sense of stage is created.

The project- Green Ribbon is a miniature of the future planned greenway system in Chengdu city. It is a greenway with the greenway. The design concept is to explore the reciprocity between architecture and landscape as a hybrid typology in the field of contemporary urban landscape. By inventing an undulated green ribbon as roof of the building, a series of inward-outward boundaries creating architecture and landscape mutually penetrates each other and generates multiple layers of transparency that encourage a maximized interaction with the public.

The program planning of the building is imagined to be flowing along the geometry of the greenway and vertically sitting underneath it. The program includes a flower-theme restaurant that functions as anchor program, a bookstore with boutique flower shop embedded inside, an auditorium that holds special event such as wedding ceremony and small size concert, and a gym that represents healthy lifestyle. All these activities can be running independently yet connected by singular roof and visually dialoging with each other, which builds up a sense of them being a truly collectively coherent space. The roof, at the same time, will be occupied by landscape and public path for the public. The design is open to any further topological design study that represents great flexibility of accommodating programs of various scales and numbers as a positive response to the highly potential uncertainties of the site development in near future. Rather than designing flower field in a literal way, the aim of the concept is to provide an incubator that is open for both architect, landscape architect, artist and future tenants to work together as a team articulating the space as a collection of ideas sprouting from this future planned urban park.

The project intends to invent a temporary structure that captures the ephemerality of tulip blossom in Amsterdam spring season in both abstract and sensitive senses. It is also designed to be a special outdoor sculptural piece as part of the annual Amsterdam tulip festival. The site is chosen next to the statue of Joost van den Vondel in Vondelaprk, among which is the most iconic spot that represents the park’s history and its linkage with the rest of urban fabric. Architecturally, the pavilion approaches openness and transparency by consisting three elements vertically. Base is the free-standing high-density foam with man-made topographical variations that is articulated according to human body scale, at about 7m height 64 tulip-resembled shape balloons with frit texture are capped by a series of rings that are hung to the base. The pavilion base is assembled by 22 pieces of variable scales, which is conceived to be capable of being distributed all over the Vondelpark and becoming a network of urban furniture.

Line, in an abstract sense, is an invisible threshold that is simultaneously thin and thick. Line sets up boundary, it also could be the opportunity for crossing. The project intends to investigate the meaning of line and widen the threshold across multi-disciplinary fields through architectural instrument, inventing an incubator of innovation and collaboration for North Design Union.

The most prominent architectural move- a diagonally cut through the building, where each floor is divided by this conceptual “WALL” into two compartments-open office space and interactive urban public space, purposefully misaligning between typical office level and public space level, which suggests dynamic visual dialogue between each two levels of activities and offers the heterogeneous spatial character of always seeing and being seen. This new typological intervention creates reciprocity between concentration and interaction as responding to the present homogeneous working environment as general.

Through its minimum footprint occupancy on ground and maximized 30m height on elevation, the exterior of the building resembles massive screen exhibiting the creative design process from NDU designers at all levels, that engages the city with an open plaza that emerged with ground floor lobby entry, auditorium and cafeteria.

The concept is further articulated by challenging the traditional centralized office core layout and proposing an inside-out expressed core that grows from the central diagonal LINE- two pairs of scenic lifts are allocated in two atrium that one dedicated to office and the other serves for public space floors, while the egress stairs and service zone are exposed at the two ends, defining a vigorous urban interface.

As digital tools are heavily relied in the present working environment of design field, we believe design creativity is more a process of interactive communication and mutual inspiration. Flexibility is largely encouraged by introducing uninterrupted open floors as for accommodating changing numbers of groups. On a more intimate scale, mutually permeated spaces between the line on all floors allows for meeting/discussion/multi-media exhibition/workshops inhabiting smaller groups that generates constant interaction between formal and informal.

Section A-A Thin Line

Section B-B Medium Line

Section C-C Thick Line

The coexistence of the two seemingly contradicted spatial conditions - partition and openness, is common goal but more of a cliché in Le Corbusier’s Domino system in majority of office/institutional types of architecture.

In this project, we aim to establish a new pedagogical model that embraces both conditions through thinking “LINE” as new spatial apparatus. The line generates spatial division of two clear territories, where a flexibly defined “third” space dancing in between, amorphous in terms of both abstract form and articulated functionality, encourages clarity on plan and differentiation on section.

Borders hold deep meaning, but they are just lines. Throughout history, the definition of territory has remained a fundamental determinant of power. Borders carry immense historical, political, and cultural implications; at the center of conflict, there is delineation; there is drawing lines. Borders are representations in plan view–lines on a map which are not necessarily tied to any physical thing. At most, they materialize in the common form of a wall which seldom traces the entire length of the border it delineates. One notable exception is the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). 

If the traditional border is a line, then the DMZ is a surface. At four (4) kilometers-wide, it is a border territory: a border with its own border; a boundary space; a materialized, geopolitical line separating North and South Korea. It is one of the most heavily militarized and fortified borders in the world, and is representative to the nature of one of the most high-tensioned, ongoing, conflicts in recent history. 

A border is an imaginary line that divides two territories. Wall often occupies the physical space of a border as its materialized form. In our proposal, we introduced an undulating wall along the border between North Korea and South Korea below surface to reshape their undefined underground territories. However, the undulating wall is mutually permeable to encourage communication between the two sides and therefore inverts the meaning of border. To reinterpret the traditional Korean jjimjilbang, a series of open pools and individual rooms are organized along the permeable wall to accommodate both individuality and collectiveness.

The project aims to explore how border functions as key element that embraces two contradicted territories into one united entity rather than separates them. By introducing an undulated line that dramatically dances in-between the two countries, a continuously weaving underground wall ties a series of collectively shared open pools and solid individual rooms with round shape geometry which is inherited from the mechanism of traditional Korean bathhouse typology Jimjilbang. By inviting natural sunlight and topographical landscape from above-ground to underground, this form creates multiple crossing-border interstitial conditions that mutually encourages people from both North and South Korea to interact physically. 

The characteristic of Sharjah is deeply rooted in its unique nomadic desert landscape and rich cultural heritages. The project investigates the meaning of Arab modern art museum as an urban artifact to the resilient urbanism of Sharjah by designing a monument rising from the horizontal urban morphology, which are embraced by a series of peripheries from all directions layer by layer. The physical relation between the center GEM and surroundings are envisioned as the juxtaposition of intertwined intangible Arab-Islamic culture tradition and tangible everyday life. The concept is also a metaphoric move that the Arab modern art museum is a shining emblem connecting the past and present of Sharjah’s belonging memory, the simple yet powerful move deviates from the boredom of migrating Islamic cultural heritage into elite modern architectural language which only offers an immediate labeled image of Sharjah or UAE as a whole. On the contrary, the design not only creates featured symbol of local culture but also praises the ordinary life, the true beauty of the exhibited Arab modern art pieces in-between is then subtly revealed through these two major types of mutually complementary spatial experience in the museum.

Characteristic of Natian flower fields is the culture established within the diverse nature that emerged from the man-made biological diversity and complexity. It is important to further investigate this sustainable interrelationship within contemporary context of Chinese urban built environment. 

Understanding the existing flower fields as a representation of natural resources, the project aims to generate a monolithic infrastructure that articulates the identity of the place through introducing a greenhouse inspired typology and expanding the seasonally influenced tourism towards a four-season celebration of nature.

The building enriches visitor’s sensibility to nature on every sense through a series of instrumentally created micro-climate and atmosphere that dramatically transforms from extroversive outdoor to introversive indoor experience, through which a series of exhibiting, growing, researching and performing events occur with rhythm. 

The educative journey would eventually provoke a collective awareness of the significance of careful balance between human and non-human by appreciating the poetic beauty of the nature.

Legacy of Natian

The inherit mechanism of existing condition of the site is horizontally expanded and embodies sunlight, water, soil, plants, stone and other natural elements. Taking the site condition as a spatial prototype, our building is chosen as a fragment of the current flower fields and intends to invite a topographical intervention that breaks down this horizontality into multiple pieces and gradually leads to a new dimension of intimacy with the plant species.

The Folded Path

The site is situated in between multiple public pathways that run through the flower fields. It is also a spatial continuation of the elevated bridge which connects the site to a larger context. The architectural geometry folds the linear experience of outdoor pathways into a much higher intensity of movement, capturing the fluidity of river and the solidity of flower fields simultaneously. This level of abstraction raises visitor's recognition of familiarity as well as difference.

One Year, Four Season, Nine Scenes

The seasonally anchored activities further define the dialogue between the building and context, ranging from one day, through one month, one season and a whole year. Flower viewing and gardening serves as the fundamental setup for tourism. Educational events such as agricultural lectures, summer planting workshops for children are allocated in the off-school season. Art exhibition, fashion show, performance are also integrated into the annually programmed open plans as a public stage for not only the flower fields but also the city.

Man-made Topographical Continuity

The visitor's experience begins with an exterior terraced flower fields that smoothly leads people from above grade to underground, the process of which gradually immerses the visitors into a series of adventures.  The elevated path within the building constantly interacts with the stepping plant fields at multiple levels. From a person's view perspective, one can always see the exterior flower fields as a coordinate reference and channel through the dialogue between indoor and outdoor. The variety of plants is carefully curated to create density transitions along visitors' walk as well as seasonal changes as an entirety of biomass.

Sectional Simultaneity

The monolithic structure and fragmented terraced planting fields creates a drastic contradiction in terms of the spatial integrity. But at the same time, it enables visitor to be aware of where they are through looking at the giant roof when they move along the zigzag pathways. Also, the undulating roof and sunken ground generates a series of height different moments where people feel drastic changing of intimacy with surroundings.

The giant atrium is where the interiority of the space reaches its peak dynamics. Visitor’s physical movements at both horizontal and vertical the associated with multiple layers of planting fields are simultaneously exhibited under the monolithic roof structure. This is also the moment when indoor elevated pathway are aligned with the outdoor ground which creates a mutually dependent visual interaction. From either side, the relationship between seeing and being seen brings an intricate collectivity.  

The project aims to systematically understand traditional courtyard house in Sichuan as a typology that two most important elements- Streetscape and Courtyard are being able to be merged as continuation of the preexisting urban fabric, this mutually independent yet intimately connected typology, allows small scale building being flexibly rent and developed for multiple boutique venues and become an open background stage for showing people's daily life. This new typology is called - Gathering Courtyards. The design brings multiple possibilities for merging streetscape and courtyard, and it is thought to be highly adaptable for any given sites, which will create a unified urban design with dynamic from each block. Within the site, each courtyard's outdoor landscape smoothly joins the interior with exterior, the courtyard provides space for planting as well as urban public life. In terms of program planning, the project intends to articulate through cultural and creative industries and largely promotes small scale retail, boutique local food and beverages, co-working space and artisan workshops, and to closely relate them to the adjacent courtyards, trying to generate continuous indoor-outdoor spatial experience.

Japan is a long island with a rich, seasonally influenced life, surrounded by ocean and mountains. Characteristic of Japan is the life and culture established within the diverse nature that emerged from the island’s topographical complexity. It is important to investigate this sustainable interrelationship within today’s context of globalization.

In the 20th century, the development of industry, guided by the value of optimum efficiency, significantly changed world structure. It happened in cities as well in rural areas. The increasing specialization and industrialization of industry led to the decline of unproductive activities such as hunting, harvesting wild plants, and forest management, with the decline of forestry especially impacting the rural village landscape. Economic growth starting in the 1960s attracted many young people from rural areas to pursue employment in cities. Rural areas are now confronting a shrinking and aging population and the lack of the income from industry, which threatens the landscapes of rural villages. How can we propose architecture in such a context? How can architecture contribute to sustain local diversity?

French philosopher Bruno Latour’s Actor Network Theory invites nonhumans to participate in with humans and re-identifies a new set of social network. Rather than simply defining social groups by occupation or class, this theory justifies social as a collection of associations that involves constant movement and change in both size and content. 
The project aims to further examine the Actor Network Theory in the context of Kitamoto city in Saitama Prefecture which is suburban village that is 50km away from Tokyo, and take forestry as an agency to generate a series of actor network that integrates with natural forest resources, social welfare and educational system and mobility infrastructure. Forest regarded as a new form of capital that can be optimized by bringing new values into the process of forestry production and engages multiple associations’ behaviors which articulates both geographically, spatially and socially.

The geographical relationship between urban settlements and natural forest is in multiple conditions, all of which is articulated through specific associations that ties the whole city into together. The forests in rural area is intimately associated with farming field and forms a spectacular natural landscape, which has a natural observation park, outdoor activity center and other tourism and education related programmatic arrangements, whereas forest in the urban area is way from well managed. 

These forests are of great biodiversity that forms an established ecosystem that has been managed by a non-profit organization, who organizes forestry activities such as cutting trees, weeding and collecting leaves, and the processed wood can be transformed to products and relates to a larger social network. Cut wood is being used for making furniture and panels, weeded branches are for making traditional Japanese art product, collected leaves are for making agricultural fertilizers and so on. All these activities are conducted by multiple social groups in all occupations and ages, and intimately tied with seasons. In every spring festival in March and April there are special events including public cooking and dining and exterior concert house that attracts people from Tokyo to come to the forest and enjoy.

Geographically, the Kitamoto Central Green Forests are outspreaded among the neighborhood. The new architecture attempts to invent an office for the non-profit organization to hold weekly meeting and observation and cleaning activities, a day care center for elder people to have day time activity, a bus station that bridges the forest with larger city area and an atelier house for having furniture workshop.

The tree species in the forest, however, is not suitable for construction. The wood material used for structure comes from another town in the Saitama Prefecture which is adjacent to Cedar and Cypress forest that is about 80 minutes’ drive. So the construction of the building is bridging the Kitamoto Central Green Forests with other resources and maps out a larger network. 

The design approaches the edge of the forest by providing a horizontal canopy that connects interior and exterior activities. The expanded geometry aims to minimize the impact of architecture to existing forest condition as well as fully embrace the nature. The four parts of the building forms a cycle that reveals every process of forest related activity. 

The section depicts a scene on the spring festival and reveal the interrelation among different actors. People come from Tokyo and join the forest events. Wood cut from the forest is for making fire. Local agricultural food seller come to sell food to the tourist. Tourist use exterior fire place to cook and eat in the forest. By having this bus station as a response to the existing abandoned parking lot, this section of the architecture serves as an intermediate between city and nature and activates new behaviors of the social. 

Our project intends to discuss the dynamic intimacy between bridge and water in the context of Amstel River. Rather than thinking of a bridge as a connector and passage between two points, we reimagine it to be a focal point and an attractor in the middle of the river where the bridge touches water with ever changing volume as the water level rises and descends through time, creating an event space along with seasons change and served as a structural support for the bridge. The topographical urban landscape is then embedded along this center and spread out to both side of river that joints pedestrian street. We believe that in this way art is significantly engaged in constant open interaction with public and the bridge functions as an extension from Hermitage museum. Multiple forms of joining art and collective events including water-sculpture park, performance amphitheater and ice-skating rink can occur in all four seasons.

This option studio examines the role of the academic institution as a driver of an intermediate scale urban project. The studio will focus on how the campus, conceived as an open canvas for architectural and urban experimentation, can serve as a generator of new spatial relationships between institution and city within the Purisima Alameda District in downtown Monterrey (Mexico).

For 2016, the Universidad Regiomontana (U-ERRE) has agreed to construct the first gateless university in Mexico. With the implementation of a new institutional model, the campus must reframe the relationship between the spaces of the academy, the neighborhood, and the city at large. A fresh institutional perspective, paired with significant investment in the university’s campus, has an enormous potential to completely rethink the Purisima Alameda District and in doing so transform it into a new university city model for Monterrey and beyond.

Taking this new institutional development initiative as a point of departure, the studio will explore the agency of architecture and design in shaping a new campus—all in an effort to construct new spatial formats that can help us rethink the space of the experimental campus for the 21st Century University.

-http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/courses/details.cgi?term=201440&course=STU-01506

The existing university campus buildings occupy urban blocks to different extent. how the existing university campus engages in the fragmented blocks from north to south. which invisibly creates a tendency on direction that students are moving. Due to the safety issue the campus is gated, so the movement of students is internalized.

The variation of the way how new buildings eat up the block is basically based on the level of publicity at streets on east-west direction. The new campus is remained in the periphery within 5 minutes’ walk. Program distribution along the spine shows how educational space, public amenity and domestic space is arranged into the site. Including university campus, market-rate housing, retail and catering, dormitory, rental office and commercial complex.

The new corners largely benefit the district by their flexibility of adapting themselves to specific existing situation as a respectful response as well as their feasibility of being co-developed by multiple sectors and architects in sequent periods of time. The articulation of groups of L shape buildings is identified by introducing diversity of programs into the corner with the use of architectural elements to define the public space distinctively.

The overall strategy in urban scale is zoomed into multiple particularly architecturalized moments to show the quality and potential of the project, through hybridized program, exterior to interior open space and architectural materiality and structure as ways of expression. The variation of corner condition on section facilitates me to think the buildings not in mass and volume of programs but in many ways how people are moving in the exterior void along corner is more important in order to determine the interior space and program.

The design follows the spatial layout of the original factory. The horizontal factory on the east side creates a continuous playground where children are allowed to play between “sky” and “ground”. The three-story building on the west side provides classroom and dormitory functions. The landscape was introduced along the east-west direction, completing the transition from horizontal to vertical. 

Landscape is regarded as a continuation of the surrounding environment. We hope to innovatively represent the surrounding rivers and mountains into in-door landscape, creating a unique spatial quality which blurs the boundary between nature and man-made.

The “sky” consists of a uniform band-shaped roof, which is a new interpretation of the original factory roof, while its rhythm is still consistent with the original roof. In each space, the rhythm of the roof creates a rich light environment corresponding to the use of the space. Different functions are separated by an outdoor space, and the undulating ground connects the space together, making the entire playground a divided but also continuous state. In terms of the functions, the reception, playground, research center, garden, library, and basketball fields are expanded from north to south. When entering from the northern entrance, people will find the stacking of numerous spaces a wonderful visual paradise.

The project intends to expand the threshold between public and private to become a territory that embrace the Youngchuan countryside landscape. it also brings delicate subtly to the transition between interior and exterior, transforming singular point of entry to toilet into aperture that emphasize the pavilion as a atmospheric place which coexists with the defined program. The U shape form introduces the reciprocity between mass and void and frames monumental views facing farmland topography. The symphony between man-made field and nature brings poetic senses to this public infrastructure.

The site is chosen at No.2 plot in Songgai village area that is situated at back of mountain and adjacent to public road. The toilet aims to create a public path that connects road system and lower side farmland by shaping the toilet as a focal point that can pass through. The pavilion itself also has contradicted front side and back side to creates rich characteristics of enclosure.

The building physically transits heaviness to lightness by adopting stone material that defines adhesiveness to earth on the base and shifting to timber frame system and finally the thin metal panel on top. The gap between roof and burned timber wall surfaces invites natural light and wind into building and blurs definition between inside and outside, also creates dramatic contract from the dark tone color on building finishing surface.

Compost toilet system

The internal mechanism of the toilets relieves from septic tanks or sewer systems and adopt compost toilet system which decomposes human excreta organic matter and under controlled aerobic conditions the microorganism is carried out in this biological process. It takes advantage of building base and turns it into cavities that embed the accessories within this process. With this method the building is largely free from long-term maintenance on connecting to any urban infrastructure to have access to water and benefits greatly on implementing ecological sanitation.

Every year about 40,000 medium- to large-sized icebergs calve from the edges of Greenland glaciers. After slipping into the ocean, the bergs float in frosty arctic bays melting slowly as they pass through the Davis Strait and into the Labrador Current toward St. John’s, Newfoundland. Only about 400 to 800 bergs make it this far south. It is this annual cycle that has given this outpost stretched across the eastern coast of the 108,000 km2 island of Newfoundland the nickname of “iceberg alley.” Along this oceanic alleyway sits Twillingate, the proclaimed “iceberg capital of the world,” which is one of Newfoundland’s best locations for admiring the drifting ice giants. In addition to providing fodder for the adventure-seeking tourist, these freshwater masses are also supplying water for boutique industries such as iceberg water and iceberg vodka. In addition to the icebergs, tourists are attracted to the region to see whales, ocean birds, and other coastal species. Tourism has recently become a significant new contributor to the province’s economy.

Newfoundland’s modest origins are steeped in maritime culture and have weathered the transition from subsistence fishing to commercial fishing to the more recent introduction of the oil and tourism economy. Following the devastating collapse of the cod fishery in the early 1990s, the province suffered record unemployment rates and population decrease. The transition toward an oil economy soon followed. After decades of surveying and site preparation, oil production began on the Hibernia field 315 km off the coast of southeast Newfoundland in 1997 and has shifted the local economy toward a more global paradigm. The oil industry accounted for 35 per cent of the provincial GDP in 2007. This echoes the province’s history of boom and bust economies due to over-reliance on single resources.

Newfoundland contains numerous outports (a local term for “small isolated coastal communities”) that have weathered this boom-and-bust economy. In addition to economic difficulties, out ports have endured consistent pressure to depopulate in order to concentrate government services in-land. The out port remains an endangered condition. This studio will observe “iceberg alley” and its out ports as demanding of an architecture that must negotiate the hyper-local and the global; the vernacular and the generic; the reactive and the imposed. Students will conduct research and develop a design project that directly addresses programmatic and economic opportunities emerging from the pressure on out port infrastructure and the need to simultaneously serve and expand beyond the tourism and resource industry.

Courtyard, as one of the most significant urban identity of Baitasi as well as historical part of Beijing, imprints not only lively collective memory but also intelligently respond to the ever-changing interrelation between built-environment and nature.

In the present context, courtyard has been gradually transformed from inner-faced private courtyard house to more opened shared micro privately owned semi-public space. On a typical linear alley space like the site, courtyard and public corridor are integrated as to create a new order of publicity, which may intrigue behaviors of both visitors and local residences with high flexibility. It also discusses the interaction between new and old in terms of architecture structural integrity and materiality.

The site is situated in between Qianchaoshou Hutong and Dongjiadao Hutong, long and narrow from East to West side. With this condition, how workshop, exhibition and living space are integrated with the idea of experience and playful is represented through the concept of "courtyard- corridor". From the current site condition, a traditional wood structure building is now being reconstructed, from which is envisioned as interior workshop and exhibition space, and the corridor aside will become public space for passing through and an extension of the interior.

"Workshop"-

Workshop space is inserted into a renovated traditional wood structure building with aesthetic expression. The interior space is being divided into cafe, dining, micro library, workshop space, the view interaction between the creator and visitor is enhanced by the transparent and openable surface between the exterior and interior. On the very West side, the renovated building is opened to public entirely and becomes a place where local residence participate in the workshop and other civic activities.

"Living"-

Living space on the West side of the site is created as to make a relatively separated semi-private zone compared to the East side workshop space. A sense of transformation from movement to stay is intended to be experienced by the people who pass through the site. In the day time, the courtyards are served for public, while in the evening it is more privately enjoyed by the people who live in here.

“Live in courtyard”:

The contents of courtyard are being articulated by the change of season, program, relationship with the old building and in house landscape. In summer, people gather and drink in the chatting courtyard; in winter, viewing courtyard is being filled with snow, with a few Taihu rock, a dialogue between the sites with Baitasi.

“Structural flexibility”:

Light steel structure system is adopted as the dominant structure in the design. The exterior and interior are blurred by the structure and forms a sense of transparency and lightness. The building technique enables an optimized flexibility on adopting this strategy to any other site and being easily bridged with historical building.

-Concept

The Fallen Rocks is a piece of nature emerge from the cliff. It camouflages, by emulating the processes of falling rock in its composition, and integrates with the natural environment, complying with the nature laws. Carving into the mountain, Torre de Savina serves as a nail driving through programs, emphasizing verticality of the composition and as a start point of the circulation.

-Composition

Composition of rocks on cliff are stepping, bigger piece and smaller piece repeat in rhythm, and, rocks are embodied each other. When transforming the solid language into architecture voids, space penetrates each other and generates an order of space – from public to private, and from open to tranquil.

-Moments

Arriving at the fork in the boardwalk，the artist detours from the tourist, walking down along the cliff. First encounter of the house is the arch with circular skylight carving in the rocks at the bottom of Torre de Savinar. Arriving at the platform is the artist’s own gallery with view to the sea. Walking down a long stairs is the finale of spaces of the house - a studio which sees through every room and with the view towards es Vedra

Absolute freedom sometimes scares but this decision should be taken as an absolute degree of freedom but at the same time of some risk, since as we have previously told in a delicate landscape, with a great landscape potential where the concept of limit, the horizon, the detail, the earthly, the vegetation, the pre-existence… should be put on a scale and try to balance, as it is said, virtue.

A shopping plaza for the 21st Century should not only pursue commercial profits by maximizing the number of renting retails but also need to address social and cultural needs by provoking visitor's sense of experience and involvement in diverse forms and presence. So a shopping plaza is not a collection of shops, but a stage where multiple commercial, cultural and institutional events occurs. 

The sense of experience in a shopping plaza is associated with the fusion of regularity and irregularity, formal and informal, which is very well translated in the traditional Chinese garden as architectural form. The key element of making a Chinese garden is a continuous corridor that connects architectural pavilions, stages, walls and man-made landscapes including rocks, hills, ponds and plants, which creates ever-changing scenes as people move inside the corridor. 

In a traditional shopping center, corridor is only regarded as a way of connecting retail stores which is not well conceived and integrated into the space. Instead, as a concept, corridor is the intermediate membrane between interal and external that activates  boarder and boundary.

A 21st Century  shopping plaza is an incubator for urban life, where people not only purchase commodities but also exchange ideas. The concept of urban corridor which transformed from traditional Chinese Garden in Shanghai enables an experience of being intimately engaged in the city while people are wandering both inside and outside the space. It is a city within a city that the exterior space is always shared by the public and surrounding neighborhood.  It creates an new identity for Shanghai inherited from the old.

The central open space is seen as a collage image of urban life. Event Space with architectural expression streches out from corridor space into the central, creating multiple scences that implies cultural, commercial and social activities inside it. The conflict among architecture's geometrical forms is also an abstraction of man-made landscape from traditional Chinese garden.

In the context of China’s overwhelming urban construction outspread, numerous newborn cities spring up at yesterday’s farmland. However, this apparent prosperity may actually be a polished but fake veneer. Utopian urban planning makes cities become dreadfully alike. By pursuing broad roads and lavish museums and theaters, our cities gradually lost its intimate sense of scale and its regional sense of identity that it once had. Under these circumstances, as being a future architect, we should search for a way to response the monotonous expansion of modern city as well as strengthen the ties between architecture and city in order to reshape the urban sense of scale. 

Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival provides a solution. This huge masterpiece was created by ancient Chinese painter Zhang zeduan, in which tries to depict the city scene of Song dynasty. Behind his proficient skills, what particularly attracts me is the amiable atmosphere among people’s urban social life and the texture freely extends along riverside, and especially, those all kinds of bridges. 

The bridge plays a crucial role in the history of Chinese urban development. It not only serves the city via a special way but also incites the format development of river’s source and end. Although the bridge is a traffic structure, its role and responsibility have unwittingly beyond its proper function, which means at this time the bridge is functioning its own role in the name of Architecture. Thus, the dividing line between bridge and architecture has been blurred. From then on the architecture melts in the city. 

Based on the consideration above, I am trying to interpret the function of bridge by using modern architectural language. Meanwhile, I am also attempting to make the architecture turn into a part from the whole urban landscape. I am looking forward the impending possibilities when the architecture is given to a new carrier. 

Types of bridge are categorized into six conditions that corresponds to their scale, ways of construction and materiality, relation to the surrounding contexts. 1, The smallest scale in the village; 2, The only one wooden structure, with one side cutting through the building to the lane along the river; 3, With a special wall to visually separate the street and the bridge; 4, With steeper stairs, occupying the space of building; 5, An dispensible part of the village, connecting the ground floor of surrounding buildings with their second floor, playing an role for both architecture and village; 6, With 40 meters wide,connecting North and South side of the main river in the village, also it has become a landmark.

On section, different levels of connectivity among floors are shown. Architecture and urban infrastructure are mutually penertrated and transformed into integrated entity. The architecturalized bridge innovatively inherits the infrastructural role of bridge as well as brings new meaning in it.

The whole structure is a giant steel box supported by two concrete beam column constructions. The steel box pulls up the lower floors with columns below. As the program on the river is redefined, a sense of transparency is what I want to exaggerate. With no interior columns, the space is flexible and neat, functioning as the town's platform, a place for displaying the history and culture of Zhujiajiao. At the same time, this steel box is viewed as a landmark, having a conversation with the old bridge—Fangsheng Bridge, which is sitting right on hundreds of meters of the east side. The new is not only a derivation of the old, but also a transformation. 

Several physical model photos depict specific moments of daily life in the village that happen around and on the bridge. The new bridge functions as a place where people's interactions are encouraged. Also the length of a day is extended because of new civic and commercial programs are inserted into the bridge, making the bridge as an observatory deck for tourists to learn about local and a window for local to see the outside.

Liberty Enlightening the World (Statue of Liberty), is a colossal statue given to the United States by France in 1886, standing at Liberty Island, New York in the mouth of the Hudson River in New York Harbour. The statue is the  symbol of civic freedom to the people of the world, since the civil war in USA. The broken shackles on the feet of the statue asks people to be free from oppression and resistance. Designed by Frederic Bartholdi, the statue was a modern day rendition of Roman goddess Libertas, who represented freedom from tyranny and oppression.

By understanding the Statue of Liberty as a monument that enlightens every individual who aspires for freedom and civil rights, the project aims to transform the great spirituality of it into a new monument with both solidness and openness. By creating a solid Enclosure with a grand three-dimensional circle shape void excavated in the center, a sense of unexpectedness is born through the contrast. The solid volume from the exterior perspective tries to reinterpret the base of the Statue of Liberty as a specific form of Landscape on the island. At the same time, apertures are created to break the solidity and dialogue with both the Statue of Liberty and the New York City. The grand circle provides an outdoor amphitheater that invites visitors to come into this open space even though they are not going inside the building. People are also welcome to reach the rooftop level which is at the same height as the base of the Statue of Liberty and seeing the New York City from this giant observation deck.  

Going more detailed from the drawing, the building is organized with a continuous circulation going up from lobby on the basement level to rooftop for people of multiple purpose to experience the spirit of the museum. The rhythm of light and shadow implies the dark past of what human beings have been suffered and the bright future we envision. Exhibitions are held in multiple formats, including photography, movie, audio and physical models. Lecture halls and seminar rooms are capable of organizing gathering activities in different scales of group. The grand circle bridges not only programmatic fragments but also bridges the interior and exterior space and make them into a singular entity with mutual character. 

Manhattan is currently undergoing a significant housing shortage. As most new residential developments in the city cater to more profitable higher end markets, the supply of mid-range and affordable housing is extremely limited. In response to this shortage, Mayor Bill de Blasio has promised to provide 200,000 affordable housing units in the next ten years. If this agenda is pushed aggressively it would have to drastically alter current inclusionary zoning laws, and aggressively transform the way affordable housing is introduced into developers’ financial templates. Standard zoning regulation currently makes it almost impossible to introduce new mixed income housing projects into many neighborhoods of Manhattan. 

The moment is ripe to rethink the capacity of Manhattan grid to accommodate a significant increase in density and, in doing so, provide new alternatives for domestic urban life. Given the cost of land in and around Manhattan, it is only through a drastic increase in density that more accessible housing units can be introduced into the market. Beyond the introduction of additional units, a significant increase in FAR also allows us to question more general conventions of urban life. A new block configuration opens up a myriad of new relationships that can alter the conventions of urban life. How does an increase in residential density affect mixed-use programs in the block and its surrounding areas? How does it impact existing infrastructural networks (mobility networks, educational facilities, etc.)? How does it question conventions and scales of public and private open space? What are the new relationships between unit, building, block and city? Through a series of abstract and applied strategies, the project attempts to tackle this and many other questions regarding housing as a driver of urban transformation.

Courtyard house has become the representative typology in Beijing since 600 years ago.  Based on the consideration of local solar exposure, wind direction, spaces are distributed by different scales of courtyards, making people feel warm in the Winter and cool in the Summer, which is the main factor of Beijing courtyard house.

To some extent, Beijing courtyard house, reflects traditional Chinese philosophy towards human and nature. Typically it can be difined as two parts, front couryard and back courtyard. The back courtyard mainly serves as daily living function, distributed on two sides of North to South axis, facing one rectangular couryard, symbolized as “Round sky and square earth”. People can feel the repeating change of day and night, seasons and years from this inner-faced “window”, the courtyrad. 

The organization of courtyards in the house is clear that  every one is strictly separated from each other, forming hierarchy and order of master and servant, male and female, elder and young.

Fan is a portable invention from China with thousands of years history. The movable skeleton of fan enables the form of which can adjust to two distinct forms according to specific requirements. When the fan is not needed, the shape could be transferred to a stick-shape. So here comes the question, is architecture form also capable of switching shape to meet the need of function and space?

The well known phrase "Form Follows Function" bought up by Louis H. Sullivan in his article called The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered in 1896. Initially it was a starting point for the consideration of ornament and structure, whereas it was privileged by functionalism that function is the predominant determinant of form. 

Is there any other key element of  determining an architecture’s form? 

What if variable form define changable functions and space of an architecture??

The finalizing process involves true knowledge of materials and components connection. We went to wood machining factories and Hardware stores to learn and understand what we might need. After a discreet comparison, we made a decision and came up with the way of constructing. The final result showed the counterbalance between structural machanics for supporting, lightness for rotating and cost. 

The final construction is situated at the courtyard of School of Architecture building, it can not as easily move as what we expected because of the limit of grassland, but the result turned out that it is more friendly to surroundings than we thought. The  entrance of this little cute building formed naturally, attracting people who visit the School of Architecture building to go into this device. It is not only a structure but also a mystery waiting to be discovered.

 Speaking of the stair function, one of the professor’s 10 years old son succeeded in going to the top, while other students achieved half hight. It is a comparatively stable structure in terms of supporting weight under 200KG. 

During the next three months after completed, this structure was becoming a space for students to have their delivery food in daytime, enjoying the natural sunlight and smooth wind. Seeing this scene, we used remanent wood panels to several chairs as derivatives for them to sit on.