Design Portfolio 2020 - David Ling

DAVID LING

Design Portfolio Master in Architecture 2020

Harvard Graduate School of Design

CONTENTS Zero-Energy Highrise Gigantic Miniature Room for Play Glomma Museum Film Studio Order & Flexibility Paper Folding Stephenson Tripod

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Presentation Model

Museum Board & Wood, 1:300

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Low-Energy | High-Rise

One of the basic human requirements is the need to dwell, and one of the central human acts is the act of inhabiting, of connecting ourselves, however temporarily, with a place on the planet which belongs to us, and to which we belong. This is not, especially in the tumultuous present, an easy act...and it requires help: we need allies in inhabitation.

Charles Moore from the foreward to In Praise of Shadows

Low-Energy | High-Rise

Dubai, UAE

Spring 2019 | Recipient of the 2nd Prize in the SKYHIVE Skyscraper Challenge Instructors: Ali Malkawi & Gordon Gill In cities with extreme climates such as Dubai, energy consumption is mostly spent on keeping spaces cool; however, this condition is reflective of a more significant problem associated with the generic all-glass developer’s condos common to the region. In Dubai, residential architecture is conceived as ‘standing capital’ instead of as site-sensitive places for dwelling. This project re-imagines the low-energy residential high rise as a holistic relationship between wind, light, shadow, and culture. It aims to expand the definition of architectural environmentalism by including place-specific aesthetic and atmospheric concerns alongside thermal regulation and energy-use.

This ambition is realized through a deep relationship with light and wind. As the carrier of both heat energy and architectural atmosphere, the light of a place has long shaped the built environment of vernacular cultures.

In reference to such practices, this project engrains its relationship to the site’s light and wind into its hollow concrete structure, which acts as a passively cooled thermal mass while imbuing the dwelling spaces with a sense of thickness and intimacy. Its narrow slab-like massing orients the spaces to receive optimal prevailing winds, which both passively cool the thermal mass and provide cross ventilation through each unit.

At every step, the typical developer’s condo solutions are replaced with ones appropriate to the site and with the sensibilities that emerge when residential units are treated as places for living, rather than for selling.

Shadow and ambient light characterize the atmospheric expression of interior spaces, while boundaries between inside and out are softened with respect to vernacular practices of dwelling in the liminal zone. As Dubai matures from an international playground to a diverse economy with a growing middle-class, it is due time to reconsider its built environment and what it means to dwell in this unique city. This project is a proposal for a uniquely Dubai architecture.

Introduction

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Diagram

Building System Chunk

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Low-Energy | High-Rise

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Site Plan

Downtown Dubai

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Site Model

Z-Core, 1:1000

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01- The single-loaded gallery opens the elevator-to-unit procession to the air, while oversized louvers reflect indirect light into this space while preventing heat gain from direct light 02- The hollowed concrete structure doubles as a thermal mass which is chilled in the evening by passively flushing cooler prevailing winds through its cores 03- During the day, when air temperatures are higher than those of the internal thermal mass, kinetic dampers close the hollow floor plates to the hot exterior air, thus preventing unnecessary heat gain 04- The building’s mass is oriented to optimize prevailing wind capture; variably sized prefabricated window units direct views toward the downtown while preventing direct sun exposure in the late afternoon

Building System

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Section Perspective

Thermal Performance & Space

The core concept of the building resides in the integration of structure, passive cooling, and spatial organization achieved through the use of pre-cast hollow-core concrete walls and slabs. The central living space of each unit is enclosed by this system, which behaves as insulating thermal masses. As heat builds through the day, the concrete is chilled by cooler evening winds, which are channeled through the hollow floor slabs.

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Low-Energy | High-Rise

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04 Section Perspective

Thermal Performance & Space

01- Cool air from prevailing winds is drawn into hollow cores through dampers between floor plates 02- Incoming air is channeled from floor plates to hollow cores in walls using prefabricated elbows 03-Warm air is flushed out the opposing side using the air pressure from incoming prevailing wind 04- The system is contained to individual units allowing personalization of thermal comfort Structure, Thermal, Space

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Bedroom

View to Downtown Dubai from bedroom window

At the unit scale, this project rejects the typical notion of ‘capitalized air space’ in favour of a mode of dwelling characterized by ambient light and the liminal space between interior and exterior.

The open-air gallery (g) blurs with the dwelling unit in the liminal zone that might be called the front patio (f ). The narrow floor plate opens the unit to penetrating views from one side of the building to the other while simultaneously enhancing the cooling effects of cross-ventilation (a). The central living space (b) is bracketed by the seemingly-monolithic structural thermal masses (h), producing a dwelling space characterized by shadow and ambient light in reference to the vernacular dwelling spaces of the region. On either side of the living space, ambient light washes along the walls, hinting at the two recessed patio spaces (c) that serve as exterior extensions to the living area. While the spatial attitude is anything but commercial, the large northern window (e) faces a view of the Burj Khalifa, produce a moment of spectacle in the otherwise subdued interior.

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Low-Energy | High-Rise

Plan Perspective

2 Bedroom Unit

Unit Organization

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Section Perspective

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Low-Energy | High-Rise

Gallery 1

View of unit entrace from gallery

Part to Whole

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Floor Plan Typical

Gallery 2

View of units from gallery separated by operable breezeway

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Low-Energy | High-Rise

Floor Organization

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Terrace House

Partial view of terrace house from Arbutus St

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Gigantic Miniature

Gigantic Miniature

Vancouver, BC

MArch I Thesis, Spring 2020 Advisor: Martin Bechthold

The Gigantic Miniature is a project that looks to the unintentional imprecisions of the physical model as a way of investigating how meaning might be found in pre-fabricated cross-laminated timber housing through the lens of historic architectural questions regarding the representational, the ontological, and the role of structural construction materials in shaping architectural sensibilities. Locating the proposal in Hollywood North (Vancouver, Canada) – an alias given to the city in part for its reputation of being a generic urban backdrop capable of representing any other city for filmmakers on a budget – this project contends that in the global generic city, a sense of place and authenticity in the dwelling is not found in representational forms or ornament, but rather in the empathy established for the material objects - that together with our own bodies - form the physical environment.

The Gigantic Miniature proposes that for the representational model, the fracture into the object’s ontological presence is found in the slips and cracks of its edges and corners that together form a kind of ontological syntax. Given the procedural and performative similitudes between cross-laminated timber and the rigid sheet material of the architectural studio, this project proposes that CLT housing is a model at full scale, capable of inflecting meaning and presence into the dwelling through the cracks and slips that index its physicality. This project optimistically puts forward a stance on authenticity and the nature of dwelling in the global generic city through the engagement of new structural materials and manufacturing technologies.

Dwelling in this sense, is not an act of inhabitation within the hollows of inanimate objects, but an act of cohabitation with the gigantic things among us.

[Above] [Below]

Introduction

CLT as Full Scale Modeling Material Scenographic Aesthetic of Imprecision 15

1.Syntax in Planes

2.Syntax in Corners

3.Scenography of Syntax

4.Syntax in Facade

Environmental consciousnesss has as much to do with aesthetics as it does with performance. The Gigantic Miniature is a project about finding a mode of design that addresses both through the medium of CLT and architectural model-making. The evidence of imprecision in the studio is developed into a syntax of corners and planes whose scale is fluidly explored through the use of scale figures and photography. What once may have been filtered out of concsciousness is here amplified to define the aesthetic identity of the interior space and light, spatial organization, and exterior expression. The gaps, cracks, slips and folds of a gigantic miniature model shift the locus of meaning of the wall from its surface to the corner, offering a nonrepresentational/ontological mode of expression for this new sheet material.

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Gigantic Miniature

Syntax Development

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Module Catalogue

Modules become model-making blocks to be stacked and arranged

Module Construction

Exploded axonometric of block assembly

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Gigantic Miniature

The syntax of details explored in early study models are brought into architectural application by combining the concept of primitive blocks and prefabricated modules. Domestic elements such as storage, kitchens, staircases and wet cells become elemental blocks to be stacked and arranged to produce the architectural space in-between. At a higher-resolution, these blocks are defined by their planar construction and the treatment of their corners. These blocks are based on a 1.25m x 1.25m grid module - a common dimension for pre-fabricated elements. The blocks can be arranged in both plan - in spatial organizational studies - or in perspective - in exploring the potential to design architecture through scenographic arrangement.

Block Modules

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Module Catalogue (partial)

Arranged on 1.25m x 1.25m Grid

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Gigantic Miniature

1.1.25m x 1.25 grid

2.Arrangement of block forms

3.Poche study

3.Realized plan

Unit Plan

Examples of units found in Terrace 1

Terraced Housing

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Terraced Housing

Partial view of terraced housing from Arbutus St

Terrace 1 Plan

Floor Plan of Terraced Housing

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Gigantic Miniature

Terraced Housing

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Interior 1

Basement view towards below-grade courtyard

Where the project explores novel concepts of spatial organization for housing at the larger scale in the Terraced Housing, spatial experience, and aesthetic expression are the smaller-scale focus for the design of the Terrace House. Here, the 3-storey Terrace House is first examined 3-dimensionally through the stacked organization of low-resolution modular blocks. By designing in this way, the inherent imprecisions of modelmaking through stacking are combined with the corner and plane syntax built in to the modules at the higherresolution.

While the plan is used to communicate the practical occupation of the resulting space, design through orthographic representation is eschewed for design through 3-dimensional model-making viewed through the digital lens.

Module Stack

Diagram depicting low-resolution design process

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Gigantic Miniature

Interior 2

Ceiling opening articulated by folded plane

Unit Plan

Basement & Ground Floor

Terrace House

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Interior 3

Ground floor living space defined by WC & storage modules

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Gigantic Miniature

Terrace House

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Exterior Opening

Openings are formed by the space between block modules

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Gigantic Miniature

Terrace House

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Terrace House

View of terrace house from Arbutus Greenway

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Gigantic Miniature

Terrace House

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Room for Play

Room for Play

Los Angeles, CA

Spring 2018 Partner: Han Cheol Yi Instructor: Jeannette Kuo

A city is defined by the diversity of its people. Diversity of age, culture, and means of living among many other things. Such diversity is most strongly represented in the dwelling, as the home is as much a private dominion as it is a practical place of shelter and functions. It must accommodate inexhaustibly heterogeneous modes of dwelling.

Market forces on the other hand tend to generate housing within the city that impose a contradictory homogeneity. This project uses the rigid homogeneity that tends to manifest in the American housing market as a foundational principle to - find heterogeneity - of space, resident background, and modes of dwelling.

This project operationalizes the functional necessities of dwelling by compressing them into a standardized, repeatable and ultimately figural series of ‘programmatic cores’, simultaneously becoming the structure, the mechanical, and the system of ordering that defines the building’s expression; they are the ‘infrastructure of dwelling’. When the machinery of living is flattened into the matter of the architecture, the space in-between becomes the pure domain of the individual.

A space that is almost nothing becomes a space of freedom, a room for play.

Introduction

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The Volkswagon Type 2 Microbus became an icon of freedom in post-war America, particularly in the the autocentric region along the coast. The Bus is capable of providing the practical necessities for multi-day travel, and is versatile in its ability to be filled with things. If the highway is infrastructure that activates a dispersed urbanism, the Microbus is the infrastructure that sustains life on it. This life is also life-style, where life “on the road” and the romance of one’s life in a container on wheels becomes equivocated with a sense of freedom. The “open road” is inflected with a sense of ownership and possibility when seen as a ‘backyard’ to the microbus which contains the necessities and responsibilities of living. Seen as a distinctly Angelino sensibility, the Microbus becomes the image of this project, provoking us to re-imagine the concept of ‘emptiness’.

Volkswagon Type 2

Advertisement, 1963

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Room for Play

[Above] [Below]

Segment 2 Unit Plan Sculpting the Core

Concept

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Floor Plans

Ground, Typical, Terrace

Elevation North

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Room for Play

Site

Downtown Los Angeles

Organization

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Sectional Model MDF, 1:50

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Room for Play

Isometric

Terrace Levels

Organization

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Ground

South elevation

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Room for Play

Experience

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Unit Interior

View from south balcony

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Room for Play

Experience

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Terrace Level

View from vertical boardwalk

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Room for Play

Experience

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Ground

North elevation and plaza

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Room for Play

Experience

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Unit Plan 1/2

Floor Plan

Segment 2

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Room for Play

Unit Plan 2/2

Scalar Relationship

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Presentation Model

Chipboard, 1:100

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Room for Play

Section Perspective Scalar Relationship

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North Facade

Entrance corridor to research wing in winter

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Glomma Museum

Glomma Museum

Fetsund, Norway

Summer 2020 | Competition Entry Partners: Kaoru Lovett & Konrad Holtsmark

This project is a proposal for a hybrid institution that combines wetlands museum, timber industry museum, workshops, event space, and research facilities into a singular architectural gesture. The ambition of this project was to blur the distinctions between otherwise siloed programmatic spaces in an effort to re-define the museum experience. Here, exhibitions double as ecological testing grounds, and laboratories are opened to the curious eye of visitors of all ages and backgrounds.

Site Isometric

View of building placement as it integrates landscape

Introduction

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Section 1

Section through exterior circulation corridor

Section 2

Section through auditorium, shop, and site

River Pier

View of riverside entrance displaying wetlands experimentation/exhibition plots

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Glomma Museum

Site Integration

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Ground Floor Plan

The rich programmatic diversity is brought together by the generous interior avenue, at once stitching together spaces for exhibition, education, presentation, and craft while giving them room to breath in a way that softens the boundary between inside and out. Blurring the lines between research, learning, and the appreciation of the site, the research museum puts forward a new kind of place where the site’s past and future are drawn together by the beauty of its evolving present.

The interior avenue loosely organizes the center into three parts: the north-east wing hosts space for research, teaching, presentation, and public gathering; the timber museum at the northern center and the wetlands museum at the southern center are joined by the open-air thoroughfare that connects the entrance hall to the workshop spaces towards the south.

Environmental Performance

Interaction between structural members and environmental factors

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Glomma Museum

[Above] [Below]

Main Entrance Exterior Circulation Corridor Organization & Experience

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Film Studio

Boston, MA

Spring 2017 Instructor: Zeina Koreitem

A film studio is a representation machine. In Boston, it is the architecture of the new economy, taking over a post-industrial site within the seaport district. This project references the architecture of seminal American factory architect Albert Kahn, re-conceiving the role of the structural element in spaces of production. Here, the structural is exaggerated and oversized beyond pragmatic necessity, becoming simultaneously spatial and figural.

Presentation Model

Mixed media, 1:200

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Film Studio

Sectional Model

Mixed media, 1:75

2017

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Order & Flexibility

Kunsthaus, Bregenz

Spring 2013 Instructor: Katy Chey

While models hold an historical place in the process of architectural design and presentation, when produced after the completion of the project they become didactic tools through the process of 3-dimensional interpretation.

This project is a loose reading - or mis-reading - of Peter Zumthor’s Kunsthaus in Bregenz, Austria that examines the relationship between the rigid ordering system of the grid and potential flexibility.

Sectional Model

Demonstrating flexible assembly process

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Order & Flexibility

Sectional Model

MDF & acrylic, 1:75

2013

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Paper Folding Fall 2012 Instructor: Katy Chey

Unexpected and original design can emerge when a technique-based approach is taken towards the work.

In this case, a simple folding technique that produced a tessellation pattern was examined. The result is a sinuous form that protectively wraps two separated spaces. The sculptural object was folded from a single piece of watercolor paper.

Folding Instructions

Graphite on Vellum

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Paper Folding

Folded Object

Watercolor paper & salt water

2012

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Stephenson Tripod Summer 2018 In collaboration with Richard Henriquez, HPA An aluminum and brass kinetic sculpture. Each element in the assembly, including hardware, has been designed to produce a sculptural gesture that is put into motion by Vancouver’s wind and rain.

The tripod stands ~8’ tall.

Elevations

Front and Side

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Stephenson Tripod

Vancouver, Canada

Components

Machined and brushed aluminum

2018

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Stephenson Tripod

Details

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Stephenson Tripod

Details

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