Annie An Portfolio 2025

ARCHITECTURAL PORTFOLIO

ANNIE AN 2020-2024|Select Works

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CONTENTS 122 apartments in nyc M.ARCH Core III| Fall 2024 | Group (2)

GEOGRAPHIES OF THE URBAN NIGHT M.ARCH Core I| Fall 2023 | Indivdual

memories of the city B.A Studio III | Fall 2020 | Indivdual

Timed experience Photogrammetry| Fall 2020 |Group (4)

Toxic heritage Thesis Research Seminar| 2021-2022 | Indivdual

Urban farming as sensory therapy M.ARCH Core II| Spring 2024 | Indivdual

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01 122 apartments in New York Year: FALL 2024

| Type: group (w/Benjamin Spears) | Instructor : eric bunge semester long - affordable housing

“The modern house had its origin in three fictions: the house as a place of rest, as if work could be separated from life; the house as private property within everyone’s reach, as if when considering it a commodity it would not be determined by market-driven dynamics; and the house as a sanctuary for the nuclear family, as if there were no other forms of coexistence, and the private and the public were two independent fractions[...]” ~Fernanda Canales

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he shift from domestic to public life is stark, scaling from daily interactions with two people to an entire city like Manhattan. Abstract relationships to strangers at this city-scale cannot meaningfully define a domestic condition. Instead, we envision community as a gradual, overlapping network: sharing a kitchen with 3–4 people, hosting dinner for 16 floor-mates, and connecting with 70 residents through building-wide events.

Abstract relationships to strangers at this city-scale cannot meaningfully define a domestic condition. Housing as an additive, multiscalar weaving of communities on a given site rather than the division of a number of individuals apart from each other. Armature at the element, building, and neighborhood scale become 3 different scales of community; the room, the group of rooms, the city block. A whole floor of the building is at once your own space, but not only your space. The idea of the unit is interrogated and disassembled – it is a bed, but also a room, a floor, the whole building, the entire neighborhood.

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Part 1: ROOMS AS ARMATURE

1. Variation in room sizes and shapes to accomocate different residents

3.

2. Accomodating children’s room next door; residents can choose

4. Shared living spaces (domestic functions) repeated

and also sculpt shared spaces

to “take over” more rooms as needed

typical floor plan (Floors 2,5,8,11)

Two beds in the same “unit” for residents with proximity needs

through delinated “zones”, further emphasizing the next scale of community.

Part 2: voids as armature

The layout of a “unit” is reassessed: it can be a room, a pod of rooms, the entire floor. Or every 3 floors, each 3 floors having its own “focal point”, an enlarged domestic space for larger scale gatherings. People can find all scales of gathering opportunties.

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Part 2: voids as armature

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Part 3: NEIGHBORHOOD as armature

ground floor plan

ground floor - communal kitchen 7

w 128th street

dining void render

typical floor layout render

w 128th street

The design process drew from the modernist housing language, particularly Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation, using it as a “double” to engage in dialogue with the work. This approach evaluated what aspects were effective, what needed deviation, and which features warranted emphasis, shaping a reimagined model of living.

w 127th Street

level 3 &4 - bath house void

w 127th Street

level 6 & 7 - large dining void 8

CONCEPTUAL PHYSICAL MODEL OF A UNIT (FLOOR)

street view

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1/4’’ scale physical model

transverse section

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GEOGRAPHIES OF THE URBAN NIGHT Year: FALL 2023 | Type: Individual | Instructor : KEVIN HAI PHAM 3 WEEKS - INVESTIGATION OF URBAN HETEROTOPIA

“Thus we arrive at the following definition: A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.”

- Emile Durkheim

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ightlife spaces are a form of escape from the mundane --where people can explore other modes of being. These spaces often encourage and challenge what the respective society considers “normal” during the day. My design juxtaposes the two environments in which the sacred and illicit activities occur – the church and the nightclub. The collective consciousness of society used to be religion as a common belief, as society becomes more secular, this collective consciousness becomes more diluted – but many do find common worship in the even more abstract feeling obtained from being in nightclubs and the phenomenological experience evoked.

The design proposes a network of adapted churches - the refunctionalization of peripheral urban structures as night time escape spots. Through simple intervening methods, the ease of conversion between two seemingly different programs is demonstrated.

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Part 1: spatial and functional comparison between church and nightclub

Our Lady of Pompeii Church 25 Carmine Street, NYC

St. John’s Lutheran 81 Christopher Street, NYC

A juxtaposition of the priest at the altar to the DJ at the disc, holy water to alcohol, effects of stained glass to disco and LED lights, and positionality of audience to a central worship.

St. Luke in the Field Church 487 Hudson St, NYC

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Part 2: DESIGN STRATEGY

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03 Memories of the City Year: 2020 | Type: Individual | Instructor : Adrian Phiffer 6 weeks - Residential Housing for two INHABITANTS

“One can say that the city itself is the collective memory of its people, and like memory it is associated with objects and places. This individuality ultimately is connected to an original artifact … it is an event and a form.”

- Aldo Rossi

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collective city is one interlinked by memories. The facade of the house is made up from materials gathered from antique shops, demolished waste sites, recycling facilities, items spotted in old photographs from the community and even my own neighborhood’s refuse -- all of which are items that have experienced time and encapsulate their own stories. The items are assembled to form the walls of the house with metal beams framing in these objects as if showcasing artifacts from art galleries or museums. All of the artifacts are conjoined at this intersection, which can be understood as the intersection -- both metaphorically and physically manifested in the objects -- memories of this city.

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Part 1: site analysis

78 Lowther Avenue - unit 1

Historical: an original Eaton Family Coach House Reuse: Condo-type Townhouse 2000-2500ft/unit (4 units total)

Backyard view into dining room

380 Macpherson Ave - “Madison Avenue Lofts”

Historical: a Toronto Hydro Storage Facility Reuse: Contemporary Condo

Chandelier in living room of condo unit

275 Macpherson Ave - “Lofts”

Historical: a commerical building Reuse: live-work 2 storey townhouse

Second floor bathroom of unit

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Part 2: design process

LEFT: Items collected in antique shops, garage sales, old photographs

1. Maximum area of lot

2. Angled Cross-Pitch roof

3. Upcycling of antiques

4.Corrugated metal and metal beams for facade framing

5. Experimenting with placement of parts like puzzle pieces

6. Voilá!

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A

B

B

Section A-A

Section B-B

C

C

A

Ground Floor

Loft

Section C-C

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04 timed experience Year: 2021 | Type: group (4) | Instructor : jay pooley 4 WEEKS - DIGIT AL TWINNING hot togramme grammetr try y DIGITAL T WINNING ppho xi xia aorui an, Jing Yan, Chenxi cai, yunhe zh zha ao

A cabinet of curiosities stored and exhibited a wide variety of objects and artifacts. Through the selection of objects, they told a particular story about the world and its history.

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his project looks for alternative ways to represent history than that of its usual methods -- the reading of words or viewing of artifacts in a displaced modern environment. Can digital twin actively represent these scenes to create a more immersive experience of history? By engaging with modern technology of photogrammetry, objects are scanned, collected, and assembled together to create a full 3D experience.

Through projection of the environment into physical space and onto digital platforms, the project aims to make the seemingly distant events and objects more vivid. It functions as an interactive digital archive of architectural and urban objects, overlaid with sounds and narrations, to turn past events into a more wholesome experience.

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World building collection process photogrammetry scans of yonge-dundas square

Collecting assets with photogrammetry

These scans serve as the background 3D base file for our project. Each street was video recorded and converted into 3D models with Agisoft.

Collecting elements resembling different historical periods to iterate the progression of Yonge-Dundas Square.

Old Train Station

Old Cabin

Victorian Facade

Trial run for assemblage of scans as mesh, assemblage by Cassie Cai

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World building building Immersive World Immersive methods methods Physical Physical iMMERSIVE iMMERSIVE Interaction Interaction

Video rending with Unreal Engine by Nancy Zhao Video rending with Unreal Engine by Nancy Zhao

Using projection techniques on all four walls within a small enclosed space, the audience is invited into the scenes of the re-creation with body-to-object Using projection techniques on all four walls within a small enclosed space, interaction. The videos use ambiant noise of objects and related soundtracks the audience is invited into the scenes of the with body-to-object to engage viewers into the re-creation environment. interaction. The videos use ambiant noise of objects and related soundtracks to engage viewers into the environment.

Digitial DigitialImmersive ImmersiveiNTERACTION iNTERACTION

Assemblage on Mozilla Hubs by Cassie Cai Assemblage on Mozilla Hubs by Cassie Cai

By using Mozilla Hubs as a 3D interactive space, a digitial engagment with the content is created. With the addition of voice-over narration iterating the historical events and By using Mozilla Hubs as a 3D interactive space, a digitial engagment with the content sound track of ambiant environment noise, vistors can explore the digital space, and is created. With the addition of voice-over narration iteratinginformation. the historical events and approach objects to engage with the historical sound track of ambiant environment noise, vistors can explore the digital space, and approach objects to engage with the historical information.

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05 toxic heritage Year: 2021

| Type: Individual | Instructor : simon rabyniuk 8 months - UNDERGRADUATE THESIS

“I am heir of all human effort, I claim all as my identity.”

- Frantz Fanon

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y reinviting human activities to fields of toxicity, this project is about redefining the scope of cultural heritage by envisioning active toxic waste storage facilities as an essential heritage of human legacy. By bringing people to the immediacy of the issue, can this vehicle be used to aid our recognition of environmental problems? A site as heritage is a program used to populate a place of underrepresentation. This project hopes to expand cultural imagination on the topic of heritage, waste and the hidden frameworks both preserving and threatening human lives. The project focuses on the byproducts of material production -- steel manufacture from iron ore that has created iron deposits along the beach of the Cantabrian Sea. Inspired by Richard Serra’s action-verb scultpures, the project proposes a network of site-markers emulating action verbs relating to the sites’ history to extraction, manufacture, export, import, and disposal of iron ore in Bilbao, Spain.

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Part 1: technofossils of the anthropocene new geological formations due to human activities Trinitite Desert of New Mexico July 16th, 1945 Nuclear Bomb Test

Plastiglomerate Shorelines of Kamilo Beach, Hawaii Campfire on beach (molten plastic and sand)

Minium Broken Hill, Australia 1800s Mining Fire

U.S Embassy, Norway

Tommy Thompson Park, Toronto, Canada

September 14 - November 17th, 2021

1959 - Present

Runit Dome, Marshall Island, USA

Exhibition

Reuse

1977 - Present

In 2002, the United States raised a fence to protect the Embassy during the War on Terror. In 2017, Norway declared the building a National Monument, calling for the demolition of the fence. The listing carefully excluded the 9/11 fence as unsightly, preserving only the mid-century building and creating an idealized image of the U.S. presence in Oslo.

Esturary of Bilbao, Spain

Fresh Kill Park, Staten Island, USA

2018 - ongoing

2008 - fully developed in 2038

Exhibition

Remediation

Between 1920 and 1970, the metallurgic industry Altos Hornos de Vizcaya dumped more than 30,000,000 tonnes of industrial waste into the Cantabric Sea. Residues washed up on nearby shores formed a 6-meter-tall ridge of brown rock, constituting a stratified fossil record for the geological epoch of the modern Anthropocene.

The Fresh Kills Landfill was a landfill covering 2,200 acres on Staten Island in the United States. In 1986, Fresh Kills received 29,000 tons of residential waste per day. Today, it is a public park with the waste moved and hidden elsewhere.

Millions of cubic metres of earth fill, dredged sand and construction debris have been used to create a site that now extends about five kilometres into Lake Ontario.

More than 100,000 visitors enjoy Tommy Thompson Park every year.

Storage The island is the site of a radioactive waste repository left by the United States after it conducted a series of nuclear tests on Enewetak Atoll. There are ongoing concerns around deterioration of the waste site and a potential radioactive spill.

Abhurite Sharm Abhur, Jeddah, Red Sea 14th Century BCE Uluburun Shipwreck

Sulaibiya Tire Graveyard, Kuwait ? - Present Storage Gigantic holes are dug out from the sandy earth and filled with old tyres every year there are now over 7 million. The expanse of rubber is so vast that the sizeable fields are now visible from space.

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Gorrondatxe Beach in Bilbao Spain exhibits large scale charactersitics of “techno-fossils”. Between 1902 and 1995 -- within almost a century long period, 30 million tonnes of blast furnace waste was tipped offshore. Wave activity transported the waste back to the coast and it re-sedimented as a beachrock deposit about 1.8 km long and 7m tall.

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Part 2: history and formation

This drawing maps out the locations of the manufacturing companies along the estuary between the 1880s to 1970s. The left bank of the river consists of factories and working class neighborhoods, the right consisting of commercial, historical and residential areas.

~1.8km long

2. Waste from factory sewage system is released into the sea

3. The waves of the water carries the waste obejcts back onto land

4. Formulates into a 6m wide and 1.8km long strata of sedimented iron slag, with fire bricks and plastic still intact

1. Alto Hornos and other iron and steel manufacturing companies dumps 30 million tons of industrial waste into the Cantabrian sea between the 1930-70s

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Part 3: FORENSIC site analysis 1. extraction

2. Manufacture

HISTORIC paintings as RESEARCHmethodology Paintings from the era and photos from each of the present manufacturing companies was used to piece together conditions of the past and present.

The industrial age and the production company appears as a subject in many artworks and postcards, validating this time as a vital part of collective memory.

3. export

4. import

5. disposal

network of sites

“Bilbao Blast Furnace” Dario De Regoyos, 1908

“Night view of the port of Bilbao Blast Furnace”, Jose Echenagusia, 1870

Estuary of Bilbao

“Bilbao Alto Hornos” Postcard

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Part 4: Designing with action verbs - to cut and reveal

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06 URBAN farming AS SENSORY therapy Year: SPRING 2024 | Type: Individual | Instructor : JOSH UHL 4 WEEKS - damage control in newark

“Newark faces significant pollution challenges that severely impact residents’ physical health, contributing to higher rates of respiratory illnesses, developmental disorders, and other chronic health conditions.”

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urrently, new sublime territories of toxic landscapes define the environments we reside in, certain communities living in close proximity are powerless over these conditions. As a direct result of poor environmental conditions in Ironbound, Newark, 1 in 20 children is diagnosed with autism. This issue is adressed by creating a network of vertical farms managed by young adults with autism, which also serve as therapeutic spaces with a focus on sensory design. Gardening, a form of horticultural therapy, provides a healthy environment through repetitive activities and offers employment opportunities for autistic youth. Given the longterm nature of superfund cleanups, the number of autistic children requiring diagnosis and support facilities will continue to grow. These vertical farms will not only provide therapy and employment but also produce fresh food for the community, improving access to healthy options. This proposal aims to create a positive impact on the neighborhood by supporting autistic youth and contributing valuable resources to the community.

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Part 1: site analysis

In the form of a board game, this physical model depicts the power struggle of residents of the Ironbound living next to the Diamond Alkali superfund cleanup site. The goal of the game is to clean up the contaminated tiles, in orange. Two players play in cooperation to win against the board game itself. The duration expressed in the model is not necessarily linear progression but the struggle one experienced in time. When one plays the game and is pushed back and forth between switching of the tiles, it emulates the experience of being pushed back and forth in reality between lines of forces and the never ending struggle for those powerless to change the damaged landscapes that is their home.

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part 2: sensory study + plant needs The spectrum for autism ranges greatly, the design hopes to provide safe spaces for all based on different sensory needs

1. tactile room 3.

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Padded walls + Earth filled space

Soil provides rich tactile and olfactory experiences

Deep rooted plants

2. VISUAL ROOM

Rotating Panels

4.

Gives flexibility to spaces; user can tailor to their needs

Green algae growth

3. kinesthetic room 1.

Elevated heights

for users who likes to stretch their bodies

Shallow rooted plants

Absorb sound reflections and block external noise

Herbs + leafy greens

4. AUDITORY ROOM

Anechoic Chamber

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Ground floor market place

neutral refresh space (2nd floor)

grow rooms (3rd floor) 34

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