Annie An: Architecture Portfolio

ARCHITECTURAL PORTFOLIO

ANNIE AN 2020-2023|Select Works

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

memories of the city Studio III | Fall 2020 | Indivdual

Timed experience Photogrammetry| Fall 2020 |Group (4)

baishizhou urban village Urban History| Winter 2021 | Group (2)

Toxic heritage Thesis Research Seminar| Fall 2021 | Indivdual

semiotics in architecture Studio IV | Winter 2021 | Indivdual

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GEOGRAPHIES OF THE URBAN NIGHT Year: 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

N

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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02 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

A

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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03 timed experience Year: 2021 | Type: group (4) | Instructor : jay pooley 4 WEEKS - DIGITAL TWINNING photogrammetry xiaorui an, Jing Yan, Chenxi cai, yunhe zhao

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.

T

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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04 BAISHIZHOU URBAN VILLAGE Year: 2021

| Type: group (2) | Instructor : Roberto Damiani 4 WEEKS - uRBAN NETWORK RESEARCH ANALYSIS xiaorui an, yansong huang

Instead of total destruction and building anew, accountability towards social and cultural factors that shaped many generations of people in the village should not -- and cannot be -- wiped clean. What are the ways in which these factors can be preserved?

T

his research is an investigation into the phenomena of Urban Villages in the city of ShenZhen, China, with a specific focus on the Baishizhou Urban Village in the economic center of Nan Shan district.

Home to 150,000 people, the village grew from irregular planning and unanticipated human development, yet what erratically sprung within these narrow, crowded winding streets is not just chaos and poverty. Within this 0.6km² “mistake” resulting from lack of urban planning lies a distinct set of social and cultural phenomenons, nonduplicable by any carefully articulated urban plan.

Our task for this research is to examine the use of urban villages, why they are difficult to eliminate, and most importantly -- their future development possibilities highlighting its unique characters worth preserving.

* all included works completed individually 17

street street hierarchy hierarchy

Main Primary Axis Main Primary Axis

~12m ~12m

Secondary Axis Secondary Axis (Vehicle Accessible) (Vehicle Accessible)

~8m ~8m

Secondary Axis Secondary Axis (Commercial) (Commercial)

Tertiary Axis Tertiary Axis (Residential) (Residential)

4-6m 4-6m

0.5-5m 0.5-5m

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spontaneous architecture 7.4m

6.4m

4.9m 3.1m 5.5m

1m 10m

8.5m

3m

6.6m

6m

2.5m

2.8m 4.8m 2.9m 4m

13.6m

3.7m

Baizhishou, under land-use and financial constraints, interpreted itself into useable resources over and over, taking creative advantage of existing spaces rather than occupying new land. These “no-good” buildings that can hardly be called “architectures” give “stubborn honesty” in response to their surroundings and programmatic requirements at the most efficient resolve possible. Documented here are infills, stand-alones, the repurposed, and the pre-existing before and after densification.

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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

B

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 sEMIOTICS IN ARCHITECTURE Year: 2021

| Type: Individual | Instructor : DINA SARHANE 6 weeks - student residence

To remind of identity in the modern urban setting of abstracted, rationalized, grids. To specifically create architectural semiotics that helps negotiate sociocultural identities.

T

his project use signs and symbols to propel memorial and cultural recollection. The importance of memory and culture lie in the fact that it helps individuals form connections to a greater social environment. It helps us understand each other. Our memories, like culture, are forever dynamic and always changing, we remember specific details abstracted from the actual event or object. As time passes, we abstract the image in our mind more and more. We recall them in less and less detail. Hence why we constantly need reminders -- or symbols -- in the environment around us to remind us of our own identities and places in the world.

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Part 1: Room precedent

representation of Movement within static images

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Part 2: Mandate to design

Indivdual perception without collective coherence is meaningless perception

Building forms make up the lived environment.

Total abstraction of place is stifling for the imagination

Understanding of the world is validated by agreements made together. Meaning is assigned to the external world, communicated through signs and symbols

Circulation should promote interaction

We need visual reminders of our place and identity in the world, grounding us in society

Only then can conversation flow, can meaningful interactions be created

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Generating conversation

Unit window view into building interior - visual interaction

Aimless Wandering Attending Events Cooking + Eating

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01 Memories of the City Year: 2020

| Type: Individual

|

Instructor : Adrian Phiffer Swimming

Units

“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 (referring to the urban structure) ultimately is connected to an original artifact … it is an event and a form.”

- Aldo Rossi

Religious Practice

Theatre

Library

A

collective city is one interlinked by memories. The Dining 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 also even my own neighborhood from what people were throwing out -- all of which are items that have experienced time and encapsulates their own stories. The items are assembled to form the walls of the house with metal frames framing in these objects as if showcasing artworks or artifacts from art galleries or museums. All of the artifacts are conjoined at this Basketball intersection, which can be understood as the intersection -- both metaphorically and physically manifested in the objects -- memories of this city.

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