Peien Zhang-past projects

Analysis of Past Design Projects Peien Zhang (375568)

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Introduction

Design is like a journey with a zigzag route from point A to point B. Rethinking about my past design projects, I totally agree with that saying. There is an architecture thread exists in the process of any design. When I was doing those designs in the past years, I did not realize my thread that clearly. But carefully analyzing my projects give me a chance to find out that thread.

The system I used to analyze my project is the same one plays an important role in designing, it consists of:

1. Context Analysis Context analysis is the first step I engage the project, what is it? What is the context? This part of the process focuses on seeking for the problems.

2. Narrative and Stories After knowing something of the existing environment, I start to figure out what events I want to make to happen at this area. Try to imagine the images of the change of people's behaviors and acitivities. The difference of these changes is the meaning of my design. This part of the process shows the ambition of my building.

3. Function and Form Think big, do specific. In order to make those images into reality, I begin to calculate how much functional space I need and the way of distribution. Form is another issue to be considered at the same time. These two parts are closely connected and reflect to each other in every step of the design development.

Projects Selection I choose 3 projects of my student work in my bachelor degree to analyze. They were designed in my 3rd year, 4th year and 5th year of bachelor study respectively. These projects have different topics, scales and levels of difficulties. By analyzing these continuous works within three years, the change of my design thinking can be observed, so does those blind points of my design process. They are:

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Analysis of Past Design Projects Peien Zhang (375568)

I Community Centre, Shenzhen, China (3rd year's studio work) Community public building for residents, simple functional space, simple complexity.

II High-­‐rise Office Building, Shenzhen, China (4th year's studio work) Office building with public space, different functional space, medium complexity.

III Redevelopment of Shenzhen Citizen Centre, Shenzhen, China (Graduation Thesis) A groups of public and office serving both government and the normal residents, various functional space, high complexity.

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Analysis of Past Design Projects Peien Zhang (375568)

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1. Context Analysis

Every design happens for reasons and problems, this is a process for discovering the challenges and opportunities.

Community Centre (Nanshan district, Shenzhen) The site is located in a triangle shape closely relates to the Nanshan bookstore building nearby. There are six to seven residential areas surrounding the site. However, the interaction of neighbourhood is weak. As being in the central position of the neighbourhood, it gives the site an opportunity to be developed as a central stage for community events.

First, I try to treat the community centre and Nanshan bookstore as a whole, which provides interconnected services to the public. Then make the community centre echo with Nanshan Bookstore in terms of building's volume and shape.

In this process of the project, the status of the site is quite stable as it is in an enclosed area surrounded by lots of high-­‐rise buildings. Although there are some relationships and restrictions from the surrounding environment I mainly focused on building's own character in this district.

High-­‐rise Office Building (Futian district, Shenzhen)

Comparing to the site analysis in the 3rd year, this 4th year's analysis is more specific and convincing. As the character of the area is developing its character from an industrial one to a new CBD, I observed the influence of the building from urban scale to site scale to figure how my building should be looked at in this district.

The site is quite open to the public. It locates at the edge of this future CBD with its south facade facing to the main avenue of the city. Comparing to the existing high-­‐rise building nearby, this building has its multi-­‐functional space, such as theatre, shopping area and office area, to activate the CBD's develpoment.

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Analysis of Past Design Projects Peien Zhang (375568)

In order to get to know how intensive people's activities can be around the site, I collaborated with my classmates to calculate the number of people passing by the site in normal working days.

The conclusion of the operation is, our site is able to have some stage-­‐effect at this area.

Redevelopment of Citizen Centre (Futian district, Shenzhen)

The Citizen Centre project is a redeveloped project, rather than designing a new one. The project is to re-­‐allocate the interior space to be more efficient and insert functional space into its world's biggest roof. Citizen Centre is a building offering public space to the citizen and office space to the government. It is standing at the central axis of Shenzhen city.

The site analysis is a group work, allocated to every member in this studio. We analyzed the building types distributed at the central axis, the urban design at this district and realize the difference of what should be and what it is. In short, the problem of current Citizen Centre is: no citizen in the citizen centre. Attracting people to be here is the priority.

Conclusion The complexity and the workload of the context analysis in these three projects show a rapid increase. In the Citizen Centre, we used more than three weeks to do the site analysis, read numerous context readings and communicate with the government officials. In my opinion, the analysis work should be rational and reasonable or we may at a risk to do some utopian design.

However, no matter if I facing to a simple or extremely complex site design, I make an effort to simplify the cues to reach the heart of the problems. I can hardly see anything important has been omitted at here, but there are always those details to be improved to gain more useful context information, for example architect's own analysis, reference reading of context and interview with the clients and future users.

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Analysis of Past Design Projects Peien Zhang (375568)

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2. Narrative and Stories

Except I know what events I want to happen in my building, I can not design anything. All the buildings serve certain group of people. If we ignore the requirement of people, the design can never make sense. It is like you are writing scripts for people as your actors to perform in your space.

Community Centre

I did some research towards people's behavior in open space. Obviously, the completely open space is not suitable for public activities. A piece of roof or wall can define the boundaries of an area and offer people a 'safe place' feeling.

High-­‐rise Office Building Being as the CBD stage, people will be at the building to tackle various activities. They are free to across the site, sit at some corner of the site to have a coffee, go to the theatre to enjoy a play and go to work upstairs.

Redevelopment of Citizen Centre

The central axis comprises almost all the types of people's activities, working, living, shopping, exhibiting and wondering. However, Citizen Centre mainly offers citizen a tunnel to pass from this end of the axis to the other, people are forbidden and not willing to stay. What I want to

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Analysis of Past Design Projects Peien Zhang (375568)

reach is to grab all those main activities into the Citizen Centre by redeveloping the existing space and adding new functional space to its roof.

Conclusion When I recalled the design thinking in my projects and put them together to compare with each other, I found there is a problem of my narrative. Although I tried so hard at the analysis part and figure what might happen, sometimes I failed to set a clear priority between different activities.

The problem is that I always attempt to insert too many stories into a space. In high-­‐rise office building design, although it has its multi-­‐character, office function is the key point. Because I want to add so many activities into the project, it once blocked me for two to three weeks to rearrange the space for shopping and other activities. Finally, I simplify the functions of the project and remove the commerce space at the ground floor to progress the design. I think that was the moment I was confused by my many ideas at the same time, only being too ambitious to feel hard to identify the priority.

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Analysis of Past Design Projects Peien Zhang (375568)

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3. Function and Form

Community Centre

In a period of ten weeks, I did a lot of research of different plans to progress the design. By trying different approaches, I have an idea of the proper volume of the building belongs to this site, and finally pick up the most reasonable to develop to be my final project. I used a large folding plate to as a tool to connect the different space and offer people an area of safety.

In the process, I also considered the color and material issues of forming this 'community belt'. I tried another metal board with golden color in the rendering software to check the results.

Through the comparison, I thought the thin and light concrete plate seems better to reach the feeling of simplicity and highlight the linear appearance of the building. Whereas, the construction detail design of this main feature has been omitted. I did not offer any evidence to support my design at this part.

When the people are having activities in this building, they can feel a changing experience of hollowness and solid. Sometimes they are exposed to the sunlight when they are standing under the holes of the folding plate, or may feel peaceful when they are staying the sinking down plaza space covered by the shelter stuff.

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Analysis of Past Design Projects Peien Zhang (375568)

High-­‐rise Office Building

Using sketching model to test the relationship between my building and the site is one of my favourite design approaches. This gives me a quick look of how high and big my building should to orientate the environment, especially for those big projects with hybrid space.

Gathering the basic information, I began to engage the space design. Instead as of laying the same floor plate one after another, I extended the building area at each floor to decrease the height of my building.

So the sight will not be totally blocked through the south facade. Furthermore, as the each floor has more area, I have the freedom to design some flexible inner space and use another linkage to pass through the building. The irregular and twisted transparent tunnel space is designed to across different functional space inside the building and change its position at each floor. Those people working at different level are likely to have various senses towards this 'hybrid tunnel'.

Again, I lost the opportunity of figure out the construction composition of the soul of my design. I just know how it may perform in my space, but have no idea how it can be built exactly.

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Analysis of Past Design Projects Peien Zhang (375568)

Both the floor plate and the 'hybrid tunnel' are changing at each floor. The trip from the ground level to the roof is quite exciting, people are passing a cluster of inner space and exterior space.

The construction method is stick to the traditional frame construction system. But I also seek for the construction's attribution to the creation of space atmosphere. Instead of wrapping the whole construction with concrete, at the central part of my building, part of the construction components are exposed to the open space. The beam and column are made of steel to have an impressive of comparison of different architecture materials in the atrium space.

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Analysis of Past Design Projects Peien Zhang (375568)

Redevelopment of Citizen Centre The whole project is divided into two parts, redistribution of the existing space and Roof space design.

-­‐ Redistribution of the existing space

What makes the citizen stay away from the citizen? The public space in the central part of the building is usually locked by the authority. This results from the lack of the separation of public and government office space. So, I tried to move all the citizen space to the middle to engage those activities happening at central axis of the city. All the government office space were allocated to both wings of the building to increase working efficiency.

The redeveloped Citizen Centre has a very clear separation between public and the government areas. The new public areas offer more possibilities to the citizen's intercommunication.

The vertical circulation space is messy distributed at both wings of Citizen Centre. As the roof will be added with diverse functional space, it needs extra construction support from the bottom. I rearranged the traffic and extended the cores to the roof as columns to support the new roof.

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Analysis of Past Design Projects Peien Zhang (375568)

-­‐ Roof space design

In case of developing functional space in the huge roof, the existing roof volume is not thick enough to be inserted with so much space. I adjusted the outline of the roof to meet the requirements of both functional space and being harmonious to the urban context.

Then to think about what kind of space should be added at here under the name of "Citizen Centre". It should consists of residential (or hotel) and public space, such as museum, restaurants and recreation centre.

Is it reasonable to insert so many things into the roof, and what kind of urban texture this roof could be? I did a research of the principal cities' urban context around the world. In normal situation, the area of roof can accommodate 3 to 4 streets of buildings at here.

Finally, the new roof is presented with much public space and a bunch of residential area along

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Analysis of Past Design Projects Peien Zhang (375568)

the side of the roof. There is a swimming pool in the centre of the roof. Once again, the construction problem happened. As my tutor really want me to get rid of the restriction of construction, he asked me to ignore the construction solution and add anything that is fit for citizen activities. I tried to develop the core space as the big cores to support, but it will not work out obviously. This roof redevelopment is a beautiful but utopian idea.

The distribution of functional space on the roof: commercial space took up a lot in the middle, residential part was set along the edge area, public open space was added at the junction and corner, a five-­‐star hotel is located at the central part of the roof with its swimming pool and the museum space extended from the bottom of two towers (square and circle) to the roof.

I intended to keep the existing facade of the office building, but developing another style of skin for the roof to have a very strong comparison between these two kind of functional spaces, which shows public and government, lively and serious, random and uniform. The facade of the 'functional roof' is a series of curved and irregular openings, it decreased from the centre to the sides according to the increase of privacy of different functional space (from commercial to residential).

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Analysis of Past Design Projects Peien Zhang (375568)

The design of central residential area was developed into details. As these rooms are surrounded by the commercial and public areas, they were not facing to the exterior space directly. Sunlight could only enter the space through the top. So atrium space is the key of light. In order to add some Chinese element, I put some bamboo at here. However, inspired by the lecture of 'Chinese scholar garden', I think these house can be planned together and have a big sharing atrium space with Chinese garden landscape design. By doing this, the landscape can be more interesting and the residents' intercommunication is strengthen.

The roof of the two office buildings was designed to be the platform to connect citizen from roof to the ground. Actually, through such a large building, I aimed to control and gather people's activities and circulation through 10 platform area. There are basically 3 options for them to travel through the Citizen Centre, when they arrived at the central platform they can take elevators to reach the roof directly, or they may choose to go to the public area located at the roof of both office buildings to have a coffee or go shopping before going back to home.

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Analysis of Past Design Projects Peien Zhang (375568)

Conclusion When I finished my projects, I always ask myself some questions: is this plan really your answer response to this design task? Does it still exist a huge difference between what it is and what it could be? Are you really satisfied with your current work? And do you think it will work and play a role you set up in your previous analysis processes?

In general, I think all the final plans in different projects are the best I have through different experiments of approaches. All my projects achieve their aim at a basic level, but how convincing they are finally depends on the level of design thinking in details. This is what I have been seriously omitted in my projects.

Detail design not only refers to the construction detail, but events detail and those design to make these events to happen. For example, the conversation between the people been to my Citizen Centre may presents like this:

A: "Do you know that new Citizen Centre? I have been to there last weekend?"

B: "Oh, really? I heard it is fantastic. There are a lot of interesting places in the roof, isn't it?"

A:"Ye........ah. It is quite different, my wife and I had our dinner in the restaurant in the roof space, the view of central axis is really great. But when we were walking in those space, you have the feeling of hollowness, especially at the present time when there are not a great many of people."

B:"How it happen?"

A:"Uh...... going to the roof to enjoy broad views of the city is quite amazing, but the placement and design of those gardens and public space is a little bit uniform and not lively enough. When I walked from the east part to the west one, you know what? The space is completely the same, that's not an exciting experience. It may be a place for to go to there once in a while, but I don't want to be there too often."

This conversation is generated by my mind, when I staring at my work before the final presentation. I think the problem of the design results origins from a serious of omitting details and one omitting behavior results in another omitting behavior. Finally you see the difference of what it is and what could be. At the moment I sitting at there, I feel extremely disappointing and lack of confidence. Although I standed at the stage with a tough and extremely confident gesture and gained the highest mark (87/100) of the final presentation, the problems are still there. What I did is using my powerful presentation skills to lead those critics' attention to follow the thread of my design to make them believe everything is quite reasonable. However, as a designer, you can persuade your clients but you can never cheat on yourself.

In terms of the other specific disadvantages of my design thinking, I think most of them derived from the practical weakness. That is the ability to present your ideas to be something tangible for

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Analysis of Past Design Projects Peien Zhang (375568)

you to do the further development. I realize the difference between the best students and I is not creative thinking, we all have exciting ideas all the time. But unless you present it on your computer screen or through physical models, you will never what needs to be developed as the next step. Taking the Citizen Centre again as example, I have numerous ideas through the whole design process. The roof floor plan does not have to be mirrored at both sides, the garden could have more Chinese elements, the traffic tunnel connecting the ground platform to the roof does not have to be linear but a changing prototype. I did not make all of these changes to happen because I was not able to pull up my roof model in Rhino until 2 weeks before the final presentation. All I could do is endlessly calculating the area for redistribution and think about the changing slope space in the roof through 2d floor plan. This is not something directly related to the normal design thinking, but it is most important factor which blocked my design thinking from developing and results in the unfinished status of my project in the final submission.

Another area that I have usually omitted is the application of construction detail. In fact, I paid much more interest towards the forms, function, atmosphere and psychological behavior of human and always tried to stay away of the technical construction stuff. The consequence is, I always design something I really have few ideas how it can be worked out.

Moreover, the attempts to use different materials and different forms of construction system are quite poor. Although in some of the design, I had experiments towards different materials and different styles of exposing the structure to the public, these researches only take little part of my time in my design. The application of different materials has no detail strategies for certain space. The framework construction system is the only I used in my projects. Citizen Centre's utopian construction method is not even worthy to be mentioned.

One more thing, my skills for dealing with the narrative and cues of the architecture space still need to be discussed. This is the part I once felt I was quite good at it, as many ideas comes to my mind to imagine all the possibilities of people's interaction in certain project. But having ideas is one thing, using it effectively to progress your design is another. Sometimes, I felt I was restricted by those too many possibilities and fail to find out the priorities. This makes me struggling in the brainstorm and design research processes.

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Analysis of Past Design Projects Peien Zhang (375568)

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Comparison to the Current work (Studio D)

Light, Shadow & Time (Annemarie Brennan)

This semester's studio work is composed of a cluster of lighting experiments, fixtures and a housing prototype design. Unlike process of my past projects in my bachelor degree, Annmarie made us to think a design from the detail to the building. The final project only takes up less than three weeks. We have spent most of our time to think and develop many experiments and fixtures related to natural lighting and artificial lighting. Finally, we insert the fixtures into the final project as the soul of this lighting house.

Actually, the process of this studio totally opposes my design thinking. As I am always trying to show my respect to the context and seek for inspiration from the existing environment, I can not

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Analysis of Past Design Projects Peien Zhang (375568)

understand the aim of doing a design in this way. We did not even have the site when we began to tackle, only to be told about the approximate size of the site. What is the relationship? What is the narrative? In the end, I choose to create a 'inner universe'. That is, design an enclosed house.

People get in touch with the sunlight through direct and indirect ways. I do not think a building should open to the exterior space all the time, under the help of darkness, the light can prove its existence. I insisted to take narrative in front of all the factors, all my space and lighting fixtures are serving for making the images of my mind into reality. Whereas, Annmarie was not agreed in this way, that is the reason why I feel so tough in the last three weeks to finish my final project.

Sarcastically, the critics in the final presentation were quite satisfied with my work, she insisted to claim that I have 'a great lost of opportunities' in my design. But I think architects should have their own faith and be confident and true to themselves. To be honest, if I have enough money I would probably build out this project to be my own house. Even there is always something to be improved, I am satisfied with it. That is enough.

However, in the process of the whole studio work, I showed a great improvement of the construction detail design. Actually, I am not that disagree with the design thinking start from the detail. By inserting those lighting fixture systems, my building is able to has its own multi-­‐character with natural light and artificial light. When I finished this design, I am curious about if I can tackle a design from the both sides. At one side, I continued to engage the context analysis and narrative to seek for problems and inspirations. At the other hand, I spend some time on the detail research to meet the potential development of my design. How to balance these two thinking and make them stimulating each other would be something interesting.

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