Portfolio. Candice Chen
The entrance of Sahaflar Çarşısı (Second-Hand Book Market) hand-drawn over a passage from Orhan Pamuk's "Istanbul: Memories and the City".
[01]
Undergraduate Year 3 P2
Salford Music & Art Collective
[02.2023 - 05.2023]
[02]
Undergraduate Year 3 P1
Mazal Pazari [Folklore Market]
[10.2022 - 01.2023]
[03]
Undergraduate Year 2 P3
One Degree of Separation
[02.2022 - 05.2022]
[04]
Buildner Microhome Competition
The Peathouse (group work) [01.2024 - 05.2024] [05]
Featured additional work
British Museum Youth Collective [09.2024]
Handrawn elevation showing the proximity between the enclaves of London Chinatown and Soho, for my research project in Summer 2022 exploring the intersectional links between Chinatowns and gay villages.
Year 3 P2
Salford Music & Art Collective
[02.2023 - 05.2023]
Salford Music and Art Collective transforms an existing Victorian warehouse turned printing studio into a dynamic hub for the Manchester Digital Music Archive. Housing a museum, library, archive, and intimate music venue, the project revitalizes Salford’s culture, both day and night. It reimagines how an archive can engage audiences through both physical and digital exhibitions, while exploring the dual role of music as both a historical artifact and a live experience.
SITE HISTORY
Examining maps of this area of Salford over time shows an evolution from dense Victorian working-class housing, to warehouses and factories, to high-rise apartments for young professionals. This set of streets that once had two schools, two churches, three pubs and a theatre now has no real culture.
SITE STRATEGY
The site strategy improves the existing building’s street presence, which has been overshadowed in recent years by high-rise new-build flats. The extension pushes forward to engage with the street, creating a bold yet leafy and inviting frontage, while maintaining a low-rise, welcoming entrance.
The cafe and library are at the front of the building to be in use by the local population, while the musuem and archive occupy the back of the building, quieter and more private.
DEVELOPMENT PLANS AND SECTIONS
The diagram above details three iterations of the design in plan view.
Stage 1 laid out the main spaces (museum, archive, library, cafe and music venue) based on quiet zones and busy zones.
Stage 2 refined zones of public and private, and added additional traditional and digial exhibition spaces.
Stage 3 ensured a corridor of circulation between back and front entrances.
MASSING MODEL
Early on in the design, created two iterations of a massing model
Model 1 helped me decide the height of various parts of the building compared to nearby structures.
Model 2 helped me refine the roof design, window placement, and areas of brick versus wood.
Massing Model 2
1:200 Massing Model 1
Night elevation from Oldfield Road (East)
Day elevation from Hope Street (North)
LIBRARY
The cafe and library, at the front of the building on the main street, offer passersbys the opportunity to peer in, and come in to sit and have a coffee. The stacked library has seating below, and the music museum archive reading room on the top floor.
MUSEUM
The museum sits towards the back of the building. In the permanent exhibition, visitors can explore Manchester's music history through its fan culture - the photography, zines, and fashion. Visitors can place post-it notes on the walls of the museum to add their memories of events, artists, and moments.
MUSEUM FOYER
The central museum foyer (above) is the meeting point for the building's various functions. Positioned at the edge of the old existing site, it rises with an uneven gable roof fitted with skylights. Acting as the building's core, it facilitates natural ventilation for the music venue, community hall, and archive offices with the stack effect.
Year 3 P1
Mazal Pazari [Folklore Market]
[10.2022 - 01.2023]
Mazal Pazari (Folklore Market), a second hand book market in Istanbul aims to preserve Turkish and world folklore traditions, a dying culture. Alongside the book market, there is outdoor space for performance of folk music and theatre, invigorating the local area with community engagement.
Taking inspiration from traditional caravanserais’ courtyard design, Masal Pazari creates a space not just for commerce but is also a leafy oasis of escapism in a busy urban centre.
DEVELOPMENT
I used the courtyard layout of a caravanserai (traditional travelling inn and marketplace on the Silk Road) as a starting off point.
Initial plans and sections show 3 separated market buildings with small shops accessed from the outside. However, without an internal corridor, it did not feel like a market hall, so they were later joined together.
Exterior
FACADE
The facade, inspired by traditional rural Turkish wood and stone home construction, consists of a timber frame with small stone panels inserted in.
This creates a nostalgic, folk atmosphere offering a warm contrast to the surrounding stone and concrete buildings, while incorporating a modern touch.
FACADE TESTING
made a 1:100 model on which tested out different wood thin spacings.
decided on 2m spacing between wood thins for the main market hall to give it a uniform exterior.
STRUCTURE
tested an idea of using suspension cords to hold up the 1st floor deck, and glulam trusses to hold up the hold up the 1st floor of the market, to avoid column obstructing views.
However chose to use a simpler structure as shown in the structural axonometric (on the right).
1:5 Detail Model
Structural Axonometric
1:100 Testing Model
Initial Section showing suspension cord idea
COURTYARD
The central courtyard has opportunities for more informal trading of books on stalls and tables. It also features an outdoor performance space and seating area, which can be utilised for small plays, folk music performances, and book readings.
WALKWAYS
The walkways around the courtyard connect the community room above the cafe with the upstairs market, forming a welcoming threshhold to enter the courtyard through. Near the lift, the walkway provides views of the Golden Horn and Bosphorus.
MARKET HALL
The market hall has an open plan layout, with roughly equal sized segments for booksellers defined by the placement of the columns. The hall accomodates up to 28 booksellers, as well as offering plenty of space for visitors and customers to browse and wander. The frequent entry points from the street creates a permeable, open atmosphere.
CAFE
The cafe space can sprawl out into Eminonu Square, enhancing a lively, communal street life.
Above the cafe is a flexible room that can be used for meetings between booksellers and other staff, or as a learning centre for school groups.
1:200 Elevations at A1
Year 2 P3
One Degree of Separation [02.2022 - 05.2022]
1DOS is a housing project in the London Road area of Sheffield that seeks to combat two problems with the current residential situation in the UK: loneliness in tower blocks that lack any social spaces for real human interaction, and housing inequality in which the majority of homes are not affordable.
The residence offers three types of unit allocated by need, accomodating a wide range of users including single dwellers, couples, young families and integenerational families.
SITE
The building's site is near London Road, a diverse area of Sheffield with large Middle Eastern and Chinese communities. Historically, it has been an industrial area with both warehouses and working-class terrace housing.
Immediately next to 1DOS is a mental health charity centre, which helped inform the main brief of the project: loneliness.
DEVELOPMENT
The diagram above shows the development of the project's form: first, carving out a partial courtyard; creating permeability from the street on the ground floor; developing the deck access; adding lift access; and designing the roof.
The permeable ground floor reflects its semi-public spaces like the shared kitchen, as shown in the diagram on the left.
Manifesto Pamphlet
Site Drawing
Exterior Perspective from inside the Courtyard
View entering the Courtyard from the Street
Exterior Perspective from Street
Axonometric view
SHARED SPACES
The entire ground floor of the residence is shared semi-public space.
The North building has a shared kitchen and dining area, encouraging neighbours to share cultures and food.
Meanwhile, the South building has a laundry room and bike storage, as well as a large community space with a children's library and play area.
Additionally, at the heart of the courtyard is a reflection room, an isolated place for contemplation and comfortable solitude.
There
[04]
Buildner Microhome Competition
The Peathouse
[01.2024 - 05.2024] (group work)
a blueprint for affordable off-grid living that aids and promotes the growth of peat bogs around the world
Submitted to the Buildner Microhome Competition 2024, this project envisions a community of 25m² microhomes designed to support the regeneration of peat bogs on Langlands Moss, near Glasgow.
Residents are young professionals who commute to the city or work remotely. They contribute in volunteering to maintain and support the nature reserve in their free time.
The design allows for both rural privacy and community living, where certain resources, systems and spaces are shared. Taking inspiration from Chinese and Japanese tea room architecture, we propose a comfortable, affordable, air-tight micro-home with integrated floor storage.
This competition submission was completed in a two-person team. I contributed 50/50 with the research, concept and design of the microhome; all of the drawings on these two pages except the integrated storage and bed diagrams were done by me.
BUILDING ON PEAT
Although peatlands make up just 3% of land on Earth, they store twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests combined. But when peatlands become dry, they release carbon - actually contributing to carbon emissions. Our homes are designed to both utilise rainwater for everyday use and return as much treated greywater as possible back into the bog.
MODULAR DESIGN
As our microhome is fully modular, residents would be able to construct the home themselves (aside from piledriving) with no prior experience, cutting down on costs heavily.
INTEGRATED STORAGE
We have designed integrated underfloor storage consisting of interlocking plywood pieces that double as seating and tablespace. The integrated table design has been designed to allow for expansion and flexibility of movement, with interlocking table legs that can be easily assembled when necessary. With elevated sleeping and living zones, two steps provide pullout storage, on top of the 32 integrated storage compartments provided with the underfloor storage.
RETRACTABLE CEILING BED
To increase the amount of space in the bedroom during the day, the bed can lift into the ceiling using a remote control.
Axonometric integrated storage "parts" diagram and bed mechanism diagram
Between February and December 2024, I volunteered as part of the British Museum Youth Collective, organising events to engage young people aged 18-24.
For part of an evening event about the Silk Roads, I designed this paper fortune teller, which guides visitor to artifacts around the museum with fascinating stories linked to the Silk Roads, and suggests two of the other activities and workshops happening on the day.
It took inspiration from patterns, mosiacs, and fabrics found along the Silk Roads, as well as important plants sold as medicines, spices, teas, and scents.
