2016 Work samples

XUANYI NIE | ARCHITECTURAL WORK

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The Horizon & the Floating Island GSD Fall Optional Studio - Mack Scogin

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The Convolute & the Function of Time GSD Fall Optional Studio - Farshid Moussavi

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The Interstitial & the Compacted Exteriority GSD Third Semester Core - Integrate

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Unfold: the Perimeter Plan GSD Firiist Core Studio - Organization

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Hidden Room: Perspective/Projective GSD Firiist Core Studio - Geometry

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Space

Work Experience - Re-imagining the Wall Internship work at Kengo Kuma Paris Office Digital Fabrication - The Beast Puke Ariki Museum Exhibition for Prefabrication

Project 1 - Horizon: The Floating Island

The Convergence of a Buddhist Temple, PGA Golf Course and a Club House Instructor: Mack Scogin

‘It is in this sense that we may say that great beauty in a woman kills the desire for her. To desire her we must forget she is beautiful, because desire is a plunge into the heart of existence, into what is most contingent and absurd.’

Jean-Paul Sartre explains how beauty puts things out of reach, prompting feelings of ‘sad disinterest’. The architecture should try to bury the rhetoric of space, but leaving the essential yet pristine relationship between man and volume.

Jean-Paul Sartre explains how beauty puts things out of reach, prompting feelings of ‘sad disinterest’. Spatial sequence is constructed out of segments of memories, and memories are inspired by human sentiments, the inward exposition of existence. On one hand, sentiments are ephemeral that there is no imagery description of them; on the other hand, they are also physical since they shape the way we sense the world.

This ambiguous boundary between ephemerality and physicality is what marks sentiments unique tto human. So does a horizon. A horizon marks the boundary between imagination and reality.

Before the horizon is the tangible reality, beyond is the realm of imagination.

But within the horizon, imagination and reality are one.

A horizon is so close yet so far. It remarks a world upwards and a world downwards, there is both parity and disparity between. Yet it remarks the dualistic oppositions of the programs, and the architecture is a place where these oppositions encounter each other. The world turned upside-down is an image of disorder and political, and within the horizon opposites are conflated.

Spatial sequence is constructed out of segments of memories, and memories are inspired by human sentiments. Sentiments are ephemeral that there is no imagery description of them; they are also physical since they shape the way we sense the world. This ambiguous boundary between ephemerality and physicality is what marks sentiments unique to human.

So does a horizon. A horizon marks the boundary between imagination and reality. But within the horizon, imagination and reality are one. The horizon marks a world aboveground and a world underground. The architecture should try to bury the rhetoric of space, but leaving the essential yet pristine relationship between man and volume.

Buddhist temple: monumental & transparent

Clubhouse First Foor: Internal Landscape

Clubhouse Second Floor: Ribbon

Clubhouse Roof Plan: Euclidean & Convoluted

Underground is the reality, the monumental, hidden and Euclidian. Aboveground is the imagination, the transparent, explicit and convoluted. Through the movement in between them, there will be cinematic scenarios that mark the reference of memories. The stenographic spatial setups will trigger fundamental sentiments, and the resulting sensations, forced into foreground, pushes consciousness into apperception.

Project 2 - Convolute: the Function of Time

The Cultural Center at London Olympic Park Instructor: Farshid Moussavi

Atrium is a crucial architectural element. In a cultural building, this element is particularly powerful as it allows interactions and among different programs either visually or physically. When the programs are blurred together, interesting things will start to emerge. The sharing is happened through the interplay between visual and physical connections. The building geometry is based on helix surfaces ramping up, connecting more regular floors at the two ends. In this scenario, the ramps perform as the ‘elastic’ bridges, opening up possibilities of interplay among different programs.

The Function of Time

System of the Convolute

The Programmatic Agglomoration Some of the overlapping or intertwining surfaces allows visual connections but not physical connection, such as the path of gallery - theater. It is a discrete system acting as a continuous system. At the same time, only public programs are shared through the ramping, while more private and fixed programs are located at the periphery for certain privacy.

Time: Day Program: Victoria & Albert Gallery Gain: From Sandler’s Dance Theater

Time: Night Program: Victoria & Albert Gallery Loss: From Sandler’s Dance Theater

Time: Day Program: Sandler’s Dance Theater Loss: To Victoria & Albert Gallery

Time: Night Program: Sandler’s Dance Theater Gain: From Victoria & Albert Gallery

Time: Day Program: School of Arts London Share: With Sandler’s Dance Theater

Time: Night Program: School of Arts London Share: With Museum of Contemporary Art

Time: Day Program: Museum of Contemporary Art Gain: From School of Art London

Time: Night Program: Museum of Contemporary Art Loss: To School of Art London

Plan Level 1

+04.00m

Plan Level 2 +10.00m

Plan Level 3 +16.00m

Plan Level 4 +20.50m

Plan Level 7 +31.00m

The Discrete acting as Continuous Some of the overlapping or intertwining surfaces allows visual connections but not physical connection, such as the path of gallery - theater. It is a discrete system acting as a continuous system. At the same time, only public programs are shared through the ramping, while more private and fixed programs are located at the periphery for certain privacy. In this scenario, the ramps perform as the ‘elastic’ bridges, opening up possibilities of interplay among different programs.

Project 3 - Interstitial: the Compacted Exteriority

Intervening Montreal city with a mixed-use Highrise Instructor: Maryann Thompson

While the replication of urbanism and architecture has been criticized such as Guy Debord’s tracing of the development of modern society as being a mere representation and reduplication; the transient moment of history and its image have been overly absorbed by human perception through affection, allowing the commodity complete its colonization of social life. As Deleuze says, it is no longer the material structure that curls around the contour to develop the figure; it is rather the figure that passes through the contour in order to dissipate into the material structure.

Thermaldynamic Reciprocity

- 5.00m

+ 0.00m - 5.60m

- 5.00m

- 2.80m

+ 0.00m

Floor Plan - Ground Floor Lobby Level 01 +2.00m

Floor Plan - Hotel Rooms Level 10 +44.20m

Floor Plan - Top Floor Restauraunt Level 25 +101.80m

Side (South-west facade) Longitudinal Section The reciprocal condition is that the carved out void also forms what is read as the central atrium that encompasses the interiority.The inner void allows south-facing sun penetrate through, enabling the street front with sunlight that is not accessible with normal high-rise.

As a result, the building introverts the exteriority through the void, inviting public to the compacted exteriority of the inside, allowing the permeating performance.

Formal Reciprocity

Project 4- Unfold: the Perimeter Plan

Folding/unfoling geometry with 960ft-long ribben Instructor: Ingeborg Rocker

This project explores paradigmatic possibility of facade manipulation within certain constraints, while creates the connotation of architectonic behind the facade per se. The central staircase is the mainengine that triggers the floor plate differentiation, resulting chasms on both floor plates and facades. These facade fluctuation inevitably result in disproportion as being read. With constraint of the perimeter, the transformation is reflected on the oather side of the face, which leads to corresponding cracking of facade.

Facade Reciprocity The paradoxical systems here are resolved by the reciprocality of information reflected upon each other. In order to maintain facade plump to ground, they are discrete to myriad corbels, with each one perpendicular to ground, framed within the given perimeter, aggregated back to the facade narrative.

Project 5 - Hidden Room: Perspective/Projective

Explicitly hidding the 5th room with 4 other rooms Instructor: Ingeborg Rocker

The ‘hiddenness’ in this project is expected as being contradictory to users’ spatial comprehension, which is gained form sequential visual perception. The conflict that formulates the drama of hidden room is reflected upon the dialogue between ‘cognitive movement’ inside the envelope and the ‘phenomenological reading’. The users’ understanding of its inner structural is dependent upon their movement in relation with their vision being adjusted and modified through perspectives.

Cognitive & Phonomenological

The internal structure divides the overall volume into four sections, names the four other rooms, with the interstitial volume as the repertoire for hidden room creation. Symmetrical projection of two elevations also renders the internal volume explicit. By stitching the central void with a folded piece, calibrated to coalesce with the projection of geometry above, a visual partition is created.

The purpose is to further divide the central volume to two segments, independent from each other visually, as the cognitive hidden room and phenomenological hidden room respectively.

Project 4 - Re-imagining the Wall

Competition Entry at Kengo Kuma & Associates Supervisor: Marion Geinzer & Diego Lopez Team: Giacomo Sponzilli, Edwardo Binda, Nadine Kabbani

The alignment and distribution of building volume aimed at a maximized use of daylight in the Gebäudetiefeab. The geometry of the structure is ideal for a daylight optimized design of the facade, in order to maximize the quality of stay and the same time to minimize the need for artificial lighting. A big contribution thereby maximizing the use of the existing building. This reduces both the construction period, the construction costs, the impairment of the residents as well as the energy costs of construction. The modularity of the system, a connection of the existing building will be pulled at the same time or later into consideration. About One summer night air flushing is the thermal mass of the building are activated and the offices and the library naturally cooled.

Project 5 - Digital Fabrication: The Beast

Exhibition Installation (Built) Supervisor: Mark Southcombe , NZCAD

This project explores paradigmatic possibility of facade manipulation. Research Assistant & Computer technician for the installation in: “From the Cottage to Cutting Edge - The New Zealand Prefabricated Home� exhibition Puke Ariki Museum March 2012, in collaboration with (FNZIA) Mark Southcombe & Jeremy Robinson.

The Museum is seeking for innovational as well as pragmatic prefabrication techniques in New Zealand. Along with other projects conducted under traditional NZ prefabrication tectonics, this screen design offers an opportunity for visitors to scope on the future potential of digital fabrication. The design was initiated by digitally fabricated screen in a computer model. This piece of screen shall hang along the entrance corridor, as an introduction to the space.

Drawing A3 - Cross Section

Drawing A1 - Reflective Ceiling

Drawing A2 - Longitudinal Section

Colour Coded Assembly Diagram

97

89

81

73 65

105

57

113

49 41

121

33 25

17

9

129

1

137 8 145 161

16

153

24 80

72

64

56

48

40

32

Rendering showing Fabricated Surface in the Exhibition

Xuanyi (Maxwell) Nie Education: M.Arch I, Harvard University, USA BSA, Victora University of Wellington, NZ Telephone: 857-259-8617 Email: niexuanyi@gmail.com