Dave Zheng's Portfolio

Dave Zheng Selected Works DZ

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3. The Dove Facade

2. MYCO-000-23-S-T-W55

1. Mateo Canopy Trees

5. The New Public Center

6. Flow Garden

7. Plastic Playground

8. Metropolis Park

4. Metro Mix

Mateo Canopy Trees (BNS)

Two Overlapping Canopies... are proposed for Mateo as a public art installation for residents and the public users of the shops, cafes and restaurants nearby. Using parametric design the circles vary in 7 different sizes allowing for daylight to pass through colored glass panes to create a passage way. The design incorporates the building as a structural attachment for one of the canopies to connect it to the public walk way. This project included the designing from schematic design all the way through to fabricating the project in house at Ball-Nogues Studio. The canopy not only creates a striking image of two overlapping trees in the sky, but also depending on the position of the sun creates a interactive walkway drawing in the public to explore.

A Frame...

was welded together connceting metal rings by steel connector bars. A sand blasted finishing was applied to smooth out the coloring to match the sophisticated clean look of the modern high- rise that one of two canopies would be tied to. The other canopy will be connected to the top of a free standing structural pole and the column of a building that almost touch. A metal spoke system is created to allow for lateral forces, where weatherproof foam is used as a shock absorber for the glass panes. To allow for transportation to the site, each canopy is created as 7 separate chunks, which would be connected on site for it’s final reveal.

PRESTAGING WEST UNDER SOFFIT

ARTWORK

520 MATEO ST.

PRESTAGING EAST

The “Steel Trees”...

utilised the previous experience from other steel projects demonstrated in projects like the Healing Pavillion located Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to help conceptualize the steel frame. While other projects such as the Cradle located in Santa Monica where an entire form constructed from individual balls are connected by cables to a single point, inspired the strategy for the structural components of the project. Parametric design allowed for some play in terms of determining the most aesthetically pleasing design, while remaining within the budget. This project was especilaly enriching, because of the opportunity to see a project through from design, documentation, permitting and hands on contribution to constructing the project both in the studio and on site.

How Can We Grow...

Architecture and what does that mean for the way we dwell as humon beings. This project takes place in the near future of LA as conditions become more humid and food becomes more scarce. Humans experiment with new ways of dwelling as a response to the changes in the environment to adapt and survive. Myco-000-23-S-T-W55 is an iteration where a building is grown from fungi to be both edible and alive, which condenses the distance between people, food and buildings.

4. Garden of Discordant Forms

Growing Lair (Structural)

Fungal Market

Entrance

An Edible Building...

is created using the rotational movement of a decommissioned roundhouse located on the site to disperse spores to grow into habitual space. Massing models of several different iterations were created in search of a shape that could represent a growing building that encompassed both the cultivation from man, along with natures natural tendency to grow on it’s own agenda. The mass ing study looked at organic geome tries that resembled mushrooms and began creating a language that would set up the frame work of the project.

DUPLICATE GROW CONNECT REVOLVE ROTATE

FRUIT

A Circular Logic...

BODY

is introduced to the building as a new way of dwelling for humans. First mushrooms are grown in the existings warehouse of the site to accumulate mycelium for bricks. The bricks are then used to build a shelter for humans. Once the shelter is build pink oyster mushrooms, cultivated for their nutrtion and growibility is grafted on the interior of the building to serve as a primary food source. The Mushrooms are then cooked in the structure to feed the inhabitants. Excess mushrooms are traded with the public on the ground floor at the Fungal Market to serve as a source of economy. Finally human-made waste and decaying bricks are fed back to the new batch of mushrooms that will become bricks. Therefore there is a cannibilistic characteristric of the building to digest itself to continue to grow.

To Control Spores...

The building open and closes towards the spore spreader depending on program. So when the rotationally moving spore spread passes through only programs that ultilize the mushrooms as either a food source or a decorative purpose are exposed to itsuch as the Growing Lair and the Slumber Chamber, whereas the consumption hall and the cultivation levels are open to allow an accumulation of mushroom overtime. So there is a performative exterior brick condition, followed by insulative mycelium with an edible layer on the interior which serves as food , economy or decoration.

Incinerator

Entrance/Exit

Wall Making Room

Rotting Room

Waste Extraction Room

The Watchers Room

1. Chopping Room

2. Feeding Tubes 3. Feeding Tubes

Symbiotic Garden 6. Private Consumption Room 7. Human Socialization Room

The Spore Rotator

Slumber Chamber

Waste Extraction Room

Consumption Room

Rotting Room

Entrance/Exit

M. Brick Air Gap

M. Sheathing

M. Insulation

Substrate

M. Board Finish

Pink Oyster Mushroom

Steel Decking

I-Beam

Steel Shelf Angle

What Appears..

to be a victory for mankind, is short lived as Myco-ooo-23-S-T-W55 is allowed to continue to grow and spores continue to spread. Residents, Scaffolding and landscape alike are swallowed whole by the building as a precautious tables of nature always prevailing when we try and conquer her, instead of learning from our mistakes. This project is an example of growing architecture in spaces that can continue to grow and change to accomondate a change in population. It also challenges how we dwell currently, in that our bedroom, our food, and our work is all completely separate currently, and we could condense those distances. Finally there is a underlying theme of considering preventative measures in terms of climate change, as we often slap bandaids instead of address the real issue at hand.

The Dove Facade (Palo Alto Community Center; BNS)

A Dove...

was proposed by the client to became a facade that would represent a symbol for the community. A message of both peace and hope would be spread to the community in Palo Alto and the visitors of the newly proposed community center. The challenge was to create a impressive facade that would be able to fill the role of a powerful symbol in the most economic way as possible. The challenge was eagerly accepted as an opportunity to design a new type of project for BNS. Early on an economic strategy was proposed using models and site visits to determine the height, width and other dimensions using view points from the sidewalk and across the street to minimize the material required justified by only what can be seen.

The Envelope...

would be layered metal strips, that could be built up until the boundary between opaque and transparentwas found to allow for both a visually striking facade, but also an economic strategy to reducing use of material. This aesthetic was inspired by the Fish by Gehry, where a woven patterh from the metal strips are created. The woven pattern resemble the texture of feathers to work with the form and allows for some flexibility with multiple layers for non-professionals to be able to help with fabrication of the facade. The structure uses generic trusses to support majority of the structure as an economic strategy , where Radius Tracking is use for the outline of the wings and body of the dove.

Materials...

that can be woven in parametric ways that could be randomized would help blur the structure from the viewer as well as create a system that individuals of any skill level can fabricate. This would allow the client to have volunteers or others involved in the community of Palo Alto to assist. In order to do so the structure had to be very tight and dialed in, where as the strips would be tied to the structure at 3 different points and one overlapping point of the adjacent strip. The Joists would serve as a starting point for the design to take place. This randomized overlapping method of creating the envelope would be also directional so that the pattern could resemble feathers to support for the form.

The New Public Center

A Mass Timber Project...

Shear moment organizes it’s program into two towers connected by a mat building, forming a centralized courtyard. This courtyard allows for ventilation, daylight acccess and a gathering place for the public. The retail and public amenities are on ground level for easy access, whereas the shortterm housing units are placed higher to distance the residential units to create privacy from the ground level foot traffic as well as reduce noise from vehicle traffic.

Isometric View from Metro Station

Two Towers...

are pulled apart to create a direct pathway through an architectural stairway to a rooftop courtyard. The commercial south tower is sheared to the east to allow circulation to the rooftop courtyard while the short term housing north tower is pulled to the west, away from the metro station to enhance this view and privacy from the metro pedestrians. The south marketplace is also sheared to the south to create shading for the rooftop courtyard above the community centre.

ArtCentreWayNE

Resident Yoga Room

Resident Gym

Public Multipurpose Room

Public Gym

Public Lounge

Sitting Area

Patio

Bedroom

Floor Plates: CLT Floor-

board and Curtain Wall

Anchor

Frame : Glulam Columns, Trusses and Beams

Lateral Resistance : Footings CLT Paneled Cores

Foundation: Reinforced Concrete Footings

North Elevation East Elevation West Elevation South Elevation

Passive Shading Passive Heating (Heated Air Column) Passive Cooling (Ventillation)

A Multi Purpose...

double skin is used for wrap the structure. The double skin allows for ventillation and thermoregulation of the building. This double skin becomes an architectural staircase on the west facade bringing the public onto the courtyard. In the central courtyard, the double skin forms two solar chimneys that assist with passive heating and ventillation as well as bring light into the long span mat building. Outdoor interior spaces are created in the north and south facade forming an urban market space and a public sitting area

Wood Slatted Cladding...

is used as a facade to emphasize the shear logic of the building and assists with forming shaded exterior spaces on the south and north end to allow for program to spill outwards from the building inviting the public in and bringing traffic to the retail space on the ground floor.

Passive Strategies

Passive Shading

The shearing of the southern tower allows the building to cantilever over both the south entrance and the rooftop courtyard creating passive shading in the humid Atlanta summers.. The cladding of the skin accentuates the shading by screening UV rays from the curtain wall and helps

Passive Heating Stacking effect

During the winter season the double skin can be sealed to trap air between the inner and outer skin. This column of trapped air can be heated by the sun and create an insulating layer of warm air, which can prevent heatloss. This can facilitate active heating in thermoregulation of the building.

During the hot humid summers the shafts created by the double skin in the center courtyard act as a solar chimey and use negative pressure to draw out hot air and create a cool current for the visitors of the building even when there is almost no wind.

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The New Public Center

Unrolls...

were created from overlaying the Kajima development Corporation Building on a wine box template. The unrolls were then placed on the site to determine the form of the massing. The body of the unroll became the massing, the voids became courtyards and the flaps became canopies. two separate buildings were formed to house the program for a new community centre that would bring a new context to a once tainted site near parker center downtown Los Angelos, using remnants of the existing mundane building facade to give a new perspective to a new beginning and returning program to the people.

Kajima Developement Corporation Building

Rollover overlayed with KDC building Pattern

Toxic Ground..

resides where the old Parker center used to stand The ground use to house a controversal building that has a tainted history of authority abuse, and prejudice. A new community complex is proposed to rewrite the history and to give back the site to the people.

Voids...

of the unrolls become public outdoor areas that are shaded by the canopies and can serve as venues for entertainment. When the void spaces appear inside the building, they become sitting areas for the residents to gather and mingle. The buildings function as their own, but are connected by sitting areas that spill outside of the buildings

Canopies...

Created from the unfold flaps create a porous shading panels over the building and the ground below. Planters and landscape conditions are created below to mirror the canopies above, which create sheltered outdoor spaces. These exterior spaces extend towards one another from both buildings to suggest circualtion from one building to another. The canopies alternate from open and closed configeration in the facades to create moments of privacy or dramatic openings depending on the program. In the interior the same porous language is continued on the stairs.

South Elevation

North Elevation

WestElevation

East Elevation

Offsetted Terraces that invites the public into the Complex

Shaded Outdoor Sitting Areas

Spaces...

created by the unrolls fold into one another to cause the guest to weave back and forth to circulate through the buildings. The floors fold up or down as a suggestion towards the initial folding strategies to create the original form. As one floor plate alternate in bending up or down they create dynamic spaces that have multiple elevations. The mullions imitate the unroll pattern and facilitate support for the structural weight of the floor plates.

Unfolded Staircases Interior Sitting Areas Created by Unroll Void Spaces

Flow Garden

Utah Elementary Highschool

Felicitas and Gonzalaz

Mendez Highschool

The Site...

located in Boyle heights is wrapped around E 1st St, Anderson Street and the Saint Bernardino Freeway. The LA river and railway system running parralel to the site isolating Boyle heights from L.A. City. Boyle heights was previously predominantly inhabited by Japanese descendants, however in 1942 following the events of World Word II they were forced to relocate by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Some of the issues that are specific to Boyle Heights include having coal as it’s primary fuel source, which is not only bad for the environment, but finite in source. The droughts in Boyle Heights are even more impactful, because the water reserve is smaller due to higher expenses. There is also a history of gang violence , which worries parents of young children and in general isolates people instead of buidling a sense of community. This housing project addresses these issues through their designs.

Anderson Street

Pecan Rec Center

Saint Benardino Fwy Site

E 1st street L.A River Art District

Enclose Fill

Flip Mirror

A Safe Space...

is produced by: enclosing a central garden, filling an octagonal shape with mass, flipping a portion out to provide access for circulation, and finally mirroring the mass to close off the garden. The units are stacked ontop of another to form high protective walls that provide privacy and safety for the residence. The roof is angled to maximized surface area from the south , where solar panel shingling is used on the south and east face of the roof and skirting of the building, where the solar energy is strongest in order to produce clean energy. A staircase spills onto the corner of Anderson and East street to allow access to the second floor as well as provide public seating.

West

A Complex...

that facilitates building a community and solving the specific problems of the residents. Ideals of safety, clean energy , water filtration and a sense of community are all implemented throughout the design. Located on a corner lot a playful staircase that gives back to the public as a sitting area spills out to the corner of E1st Street and Anderson Street located in Boyle Heights, CA. A memorial for the Japanese people that were relocated in 1942 is placed right in the center of the staircase as a reminder of the difficult past

1. Entrance to lvl 2

2. Public drinking fountain

3 Bedroom Unit

Main Entrance to Lvl 2

4. 1 Bedroom Unit

Public Drinking Fountain

5. Central Garden

6. Reading Area

3 Bedroom Unit

1 Bedroom Unit

7. Electrical Generation gym

Central Garden

8. 2 Bedroom Unit

9/ Floating Lounge

10. Entrance to Lvl 2

Reading Area Electric Generating Gym

2 Bedroom Unit

11. Entrance/Exit to Lvl 1

Floating Lounge

Entrance/ Exit to Lvl 2

Entrance/Exit to Lvl 1

A Resident...

of this complex can experience activies that are private, with the other residence and with the neighborhood. The design takes in to account all of these aspects and implements them into the design.There is opportunities for mingling with people from the neighborhood at the public drinking fountain or with just the residents in the various social terraces and platforms throughout the complex to facilitate social behavior and building a sense of community. There are also designs uch as the private garden lot or sitting area that isolate the resident if they need an opportunity to get away from their apartment but still want privacy or intimacy.

Circulation...

flows around the center garden to provide a path that allows people to engage with other residents on their journey and increase the chances to build relationships and a sense of community amongst the complex. The curves and wood deck along the center of the middle of the complex emphasize the natural elements of the central garden, where nature is allowed to grow up into the complex tin an integrated fusion between garden and home.

In Addition...

to clean energy implementations to the design , the complex also considers a water filtration system beneath the central garden , where rain water is filtered and seperated into unfiltered water for irrigation of the garden and clean filtered water to the public drinking fountain to provide both the residents and neighborhood cleaning water. The octagonal form of the building also allows for sighlines from anywhere in the complex to keep an eye on traffic and each other to build a sense of community and a sense of security.

Section B (North View): Sightlines Diagram,

Section A (North View): Water Filtration Diagram

The Topic of Formalism..

was discussed in this studio as a conversation about current conventions in architecture. Does architecture always rely on an alibi for decisions? For example must be always implement a concrete rule set to create form? Does form have to follow function? Does form have to be only a decorated shed or a duck? We looked at Object Orientated Ontology by Graham Harman as an example of how form could be generated by the context of itself as an alibi for itself and took our own projects as an opportunity to discover the answer to: When does an object become Architecture?

Plastic Objects...

were used to reconstruct the image of a whale that was killed by plastic pollution. The objects, primarily composed of plastic toys highlights the uncomfortable truth of our destructive patterns being passed onto the children ,that are supposed to symbolize innocence. This cycle of destruction continues as grotesque images of littered plastic changes to the environment become the new norm. The image was designed to be seen anamoprhically from the front, to allow visitors to what would become a college campus as a reminder to it’s staff, students and visitors to acknowledge this harsh truth and to implement environmental sustainability in all aspects of design and innovation. There was different scales of objects ranging from minature doll house food to full size plastic knives and forks. Large objects were used for structure and adding mass, where small objects were used for more refined details of areas of importance such as the find and face

A Shear Moment When

Drawing The Objects...

they were initially as abstracted as little as possible. Every detail was translated into a drawing to resemble as closely as possisble to the original objects. This was to attempt to generate form from the context alone, which in this case was the image of the whale originally used to create the model with assorted plastic objects. From there the objects were cut into plans and sections to reveal spaces that would house the program of a college campus. Where objects were too small, multiple objects were unified to create large enough space to house programs. Other times objects were used as projection lines to inform decisions for furniture and partition walls. This created organic feeling spaces that often resembled the internal organ of occupying the whale carcass. The normal conventions of architecture had to be unlearnt as instinctively it was very difficult to let go and not influence the design with ideas of circualtion, space, and pre-existing rule sets. Instead we use the model as a type of analog form generator to see if we can create architecture from context alone.

Reference Photo

Architecture begins... as early as putting objects together in a way where gravity must be considered. At a primitive level our brain instinctually consider structure and identifies strategies for how to make objects support themselves individually or collectively. As the project progressed and evolved, architectural decisions had to be made to make abstractions within the spaces created by the objects. So is the context of something as simple as a narrative with an image depicting it enough to produce an alibi for design? This project claims forms can be generated from a model that began as something more of an art peice that exists strictly within the context of itself. As times goes on, conventions become stale and can become hinderence to new ideas. This project is a thought excercise to create a dicussion for trying different things to see new results in design. The newest trend of using AI to generate design is increasingly popular and valid tool for moving on from an architectural rut we are facing However it is not the only way to generate new designs. We can think of the process in this project as an analog way of creating objects by reconstructing image. The image could play a role similar to a parameter in AI scripts. Either way it seems like as human beings whether its through AI or manually crafting a model to generate form, it appears as a species we are seeking for something ne wand something refreshing and that begins with expanding the mind on how we think.

Metropolis Park

The Site Resides..

in L.A.P.D park, located downtown LA, where there are large skycrapers and the hustle and bussle of an urban setting. This energetic and chaotic world of a city can help inspire design for the park itself. The city plan was used to form a grid that would provide a compositional strategy for the park

The Grid...

acts as a guide to determine where different parts of the program would be placed within the park.

First...

The bathrooms, which were also the focus of the park were placed on areas where the grid intersected.

Second...

shells were placed around the bathrooms to fill out the park, but also provide access to the bathrooms.

The Remaining... program elements were placed with respect to either access of the grid, and all of the structures were rotated to provide a more playful feeling to the park surrounding a datum through the center of the park. This datum would eventually become the circulation.

The Circulation...

is inspired by freeways that have roundabouts, multiple lanes and different ramps thoughout a city. As guests found their ways into the park, they would experience the combination of feeling like they were in a city, but also walking as giants through a freeway like circulation that allowed access to any of the areas along the way.