Yuan Feng Portfolio

NAME

Yuan Feng

ADDRESS

16 Maine Ave. Natick, MA 01760 United States

CONTACT

fengy7@gmail.com 774.287.2344

YUAN FENG

SELECTED WORKS

Curriculum Vitae

Table of Contents

Academic Education

Experience

Honors

2010 - 2015 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Bachelor of Architecture Teaching Assistant Architecture Design I Charette Team Leader Worked with a group of students during a 2-day charette to produce a scheme for the Hyde Museum in New York Hyde Exhibition Fabrication Team Fabricated and assembled centerpiece and display cases

2012 - 2013

Founder’s Award of Excellence Awarded to 1% of the student body by faculty nomination Faculty Award in Architecture Awarded annually to up to 5 students from each year Rensselaer Leadership Award Merit-based scholarship Dean’s List

2011

Choi + Shine Architects Internship 46 Pleasant St. Karaoke Club + Restaurant - Construction documents, consultant correspondence, and specifications 220 California St. Duplex - Schematic design and client correspondence Twisted Siblings Undergraduate research project with Prof. Anthony Titus documenting gallery exhibitions and curation strategies

2014

2011

2011

2011 - 2013, 2015 2010 - 2015 2010 - 2015

Professional Experience

Technical

References

Drawing + Modeling Revit, AutoCAD, Vectorworks, Maya, Rhino, Grasshopper Visualisation Maxwell, Mental Ray, V-Ray, Adobe Creative Suite Fabrication Laser Cutter, CNC Mill, 3D Printer Language English (native) Mandarin Chinese (fluent) French (conversational) Chris Perry, Assistant Professor, Head of Graduate Studies perryc3@rpi.edu Anthony Titus, Assistant Professor anthonytitus1@gmail.com Jin Choi + Thomas Shine, AIA, RIBA jchoi@choishine.com

2011 - 2015

Waste-land Landfill Appliances for the Cultivation of New Territories

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Light Mass Performance Hall in Amman, Jordan

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Hegemony as Heterotopia Museum for Forged Art

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The Ark + The Anchor

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Case Study: Moller House

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Performative Ground

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Altered Landscapes Photography from USA Road Trip 2015

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WASTE-LAND

Landfill Appliances for the Cultivation of New Territories ARCH4920 Final Project Design Studio ADVISOR: Chris Perry

Landscapes are constantly subjected to systematic quantification of resources, geopolitical potential, etc. ‘Landscape’ and ‘territory’ become inextricable from each other, and consequently, no landscape is neutral. The landfill is selected as a counter-site to the 20th century industrial paradigm; it possesses a latent potentiality to actively address the real sites of society outside of itself.

Freshkills Landfill was closed in 2001 following pressure from the EPA and local government. This project proposes the reopening of the landfill, accepting its reality as part of post-industrial society, while rewiring its processes.

A taxonomy of landfill appliances ‘farm’ the landfill, passively extracting landfill gas to be converted to electricity, cultivating algae in the nutrient-rich leachate to be incubated into biofuel. These appliances are contemporary reappropriations of industrial machinery, repurposed with a new sense of sustainability in mind. We can understand the overt applications of these appliances as tools for ordering and maintaining the landfill as coupled with a withdrawn capacity to deterritorialize or reterritorialize the sites in which they are deployed.

Above: View of Landfill Appliances

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Left (Top): View of Landfill from Barge Left (Bottom): View of Port + Factory from Gantry Crane Below: Site Plan of Strategies for Mapping Landfill Appliances

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Above: Landfill Appliances Model

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Left: Site Model Right: Site Model (Detail)

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Above: Boundary Mechanisms Analysis

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LIGHT MASS

Performance Hall in Amman, Jordan ARCH4300 Design Development ADVISORS: Mark Mistur, Lonn Combs

In collaboration with Will Pyatt

The premise of the Design Development comprehensive studio is for students to select a published unbuilt project to develop further, conceptually and technically. The selected project was Delugan Meissl’s King Abdullah II, a competition entry for a performance hall.

Light Mass concerns itself with the creation of a geometrically massive yet perceptually lightweight volume, achieved through the material differentiation of building volume from plinth. During the day, the lifted mass appears heavy and grounded, but during the night, light is projected through the perforated surface of its underside, revealing interior spaces. Separated from its plinth, the opaque building volume acquires a light, lofty character.

Above: Aerial View at Night

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Above (Left to Right): Material Diagram, Structure Diagram, Circulation Diagrams Left: View from Promenade (Day and Night) Right: Site Plan 13

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Left: View of Atrium Right (Above): Section (Longitudinal) Right (Below): Section (Transverse)

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Left: View from Concert Hall Right: Ground Floor Plan

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HEGEMONY AS HETEROTOPIA Museum for Forged Art

ARCH4780 Architecture Design 6 ADVISOR: Kyle Stover

Completed during a semester of travel and study abroad at Tongji University in China, the studio engaged the contemporary phenomenon of the knockoff product. Foregoing the view of knockoffs as inferior products, emulation and reappropriation are received as a design methodology. The premise of this studio eschews the cult of originality in favor of a radically direct eclecticism.

The museum is conceived as a miniaturization of Foucault’s heterotopia, in which the aesthetics and ideologies of various architects are conflated within a single space, condensing time and geography.

At the center of the museum is Ledoux’s Spherical House, with the dome of Nero’s Domus Aurea above, and a Roman amphitheater below. These elements are framed by the atrium walls of Kahn’s Exeter Library. The exterior wall is a suspended poche space from which figures are carved out, producing voids for potential inhabitation. The museum lies within the grid of Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette, organized under the open plan of the MIT Media Lab.

Above: Exterior View

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Previous Page: View into Galleries Left (Above): Third Floor Plan Left (Below): Section through Atrium and Galleries Right: View into Atrium

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THE ARK + THE ANCHOR ARCH2210 Architecture Design 1 ADVISOR: Anthony Titus

The site is the planet Mars and the intent is to develop a speculative scenario for the terraformation of the planet. The project is developed through a narrative approach, problematizing the reduced gravity of Mars as an opportunity for a new understanding of tectonics.

A series of drawings and models analyzing the forces latent in the landscape of the planet are transposed into two vessels for inhabitation. Sent from Earth, these vessels impact the ground, fragmenting and reconfiguring themselves and the landscape as they negotiate the sudden force of impact and the gradual forces that influence the movement of the ground.

Above: Site Plan, Landform Analysis

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Left: Elevation and Plans Right: Model of Vessels

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Left: Elevations Right: Sections

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CASE STUDY:

MOLLER HOUSE

ARCH2230 Architecture Design 3 ADVISOR: Florencia Vetcher

Based off of orthographic drawings and photographs, one of Adolf Loos’ last projects, the Moller House, was reconstructed digitally and studied diagramatically. The exterior of the house reveals little of the interior. Inside, Loos defines a sequence of elaborate relationships between spaces and their occupants. Tight, winding staircases and mezzanines introduce a theatricality into the privacy of the home, directing the movement and vision of its inhabitants.

Above: Model, First Floor

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Left (Above): Axonometrics of First & Second Floors Left (Below): Sectional Diagrams Right: Model, Ground Floor

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PERFORMATIVE GROUND ARCH2200 Design Studio ADVISOR: Serban Ionescu

A simple module is selected, occupying the volume of 3 in. x 3 in. x 6 in. The module is repeated, subjected to deformations in the forms of cuts, offsets, scale changes, etc. These mutations again proliferate, producing variation and unintended spatial consequences.

Model-making is treated as a generative process as opposed to the construction of a preconceived vision. This mode of working completes a loop in which no model is a ‘final model’. Although transformed, the formal operations at work in each model are visible in the next.

Above: Model, Modular Aggregation

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Left (Above): Modular Aggregation Left (Below): Sectional Model, Modular Aggregation Right: Model, Volumetric Inversion

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ALTERED LANDSCAPES Photography from USA Road Trip 2015

Following graduation, I embarked on a road trip around the United States. I was particularly interested in landscapes that had in some way been altered by human activity, which in the more remote parts of the country, are often very subtle, though nonetheless distinctive.

Though at times destructive, these altered landscapes are more often than not compelling in the relationships they reveal between people and the land that provides them with their livelihood.

Take for example the gypsum dunes of the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. As an active dunefield, it is perhaps the most mobile ‘monument’ in the United States, expanding and migrating based on wind and topography. Visitors rent sleds at the visitor center - the desert reimagined as somewhere between the beach and a snowcovered landscape.

These landscapes often occupy a grey area between pristine nature and man-made artifact. The expanse of the Petrified Forest National Park is dotted with petrified wood, excavated mostly in the 19th century, power-washed and cut to reveal the interior of colored quartz, and now preserved and exhibited in this partially refined state.

Picnic Area, White Sands National Monument, NM

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Great Salt Lake, Antelope Island State Park, UT

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Carhenge, Alliance, NE Petrified Wood, Petrified Forest National Park, AZ

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Shoreline Discoloration, Hoover Dam, AZ Train Transporting Coal, Sandhills, NE

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Agricultural Fields, Pendleton, OR Rock Formations, Valley of Fire State Park Park, NV

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NAME

Yuan Feng

ADDRESS

16 Maine Ave. Natick, MA 01760 United States

CONTACT

fengy7@gmail.com 774.287.2344