The Asian American International Film Festival began in 1978 and this year marks its 47th anniversary. The festival is committed to showcasing independent Asian, Asian diaspora and Pacific Islander cinema. Additionally, AAIFF uses film and media as a tool for social change by supporting diversity and inclusion in the media arts.
This year, I worked within the Creative Team as a Graphic Designer to ideate, design, and revise our 86-page program book featuring over 100 films for print and web. This required an eye for detail to maintain visual consistency across the book, organization and multi-tasking skills to manage the content for each section of the book, and strong communication skills to coordinate between the programming and copyediting teams for all of the visual and copy content.
A Canyon of Public Space
Hong Kong
Architectural Design:
A public library & performing arts venue
Hong Kong’s public spaces consist of enormous parks and recreation facilities. Other semi-public spaces include multi-story, racecourses and exhibition centres. These interventions function at an intense urban and commercial scale, making it difficult for the human scale to find its place.
This library design aims to break this conventional scale by inhabiting the abundance of smaller, underused, or leftover sites in the city. The design makes use of the unique spatial qualities of the stairs in the steep topography of Ship Street by carving into the ground embedding the main library space.
This design also aims to break the convention of a one for all type of public space by creating an unprecedented network of public indoor spaces for Hong Kong, while serving the city at a community and human scale. Each library would have their own unique sites and artistic theme, beginning with the performing arts in this iteration.
Area 5 Johnston St & Wan Chai Rd Split
Site map of Wan Chai,
7 Wan Chai Gap Rd Playground
Wan Chai Sports Ground
Victoria Park
Causeway Bay Sports Ground
South China Stadium
Happy Valley Racecourse & Recreation
Muslim Cemetery
Morrison Hill Swimming Pool
Causeway Bay
Tin Hau
Hong Kong Cemetery
6 Stone Nullah Lane Garden
Kennedy Rd Sitting-Out Area
Stubb’s Rd Children’s Playground
Below Canal Rd Flyover @ Wan Chai Wet Market
Hong Kong Island, HK
6 Stone Nullah Ln Garden
Canad Rd
@ Wan Chai
Ground floor plan
Over Water
Leslie Street Spit Toronto, Canada
Architectural Design: An artist residency & sauna
The Leslie Street Spit is an artificial landform located in Lake Ontario on Toronto’s waterfront. The landscape is comprised primarly of building demolition material and has over the years been reclaimed by nature. Wetlands and grasslands have developed and the site is now a bird migration hotspot.
This project is an exploration of the unique and ever-changing qualities of water on the site at the tip of the park. The architecture aims to put the human body at the edge of various bodies of water to both frame and enhance the water’s characteristics, centering a haptic experience of the landscape.
The building includes an artist residence and studio space, a cafe, a floating sauna and amenities, and storage for bikes and canoes. Informally, the building provides spaces for gathering, rest, and reflection at areas such as the rock garden, the boardwalk, the firepits, and the rooftop.
Site plan
Short section Cafe
Building plan & section
Structural axonometric
Floating sauna
The Commons
Rome, Italy
Architectural Design: A sloping piazza & museum
In collaboration with Nilojan Jegatheeswaran
Commons: land or resources belonging to or affecting the whole of a community
This underused park in the heart of Rome features retaining walls along the majority of the site edge, preventing access to and from significant surrounding monuments. Rather than dividing, we asked how the retaining wall could function as an armature, a piece of infrastructure to support a new public space. This new public space, surrounded by the historic giants of the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, the remnants of the Temple of Claudio, and the Circus Maximus, would act as a valley does between mountains, pooling people to its centre.
The design extends itself from the existing wall while impersonating it in dimension and material. Its function however is the opposite. Rather than retaining earth and restricting access, this new wall retains public space. The building frames a sloping piazza within, and its interior is comprised of public programming including a library, cafe, market, lecture spaces and classrooms.
Design Eight Five Two
Hong Kong
2018 & 2019
Professional Experience
Architectural Designer:
Hotel interiors & facade
Food & beverage
Retail
At Design Eight Five Two (DEFT), I had the opportunity to design for a variety of interesting scales and programs including: hotels, private apartment renovations, co-living apartments, restaurants, storefronts, and a shopping mall renovation.
Most notably, my design proposal featuring custom furniture pieces was selected by a popular Hong Kong hotel chain for their interior renovation and visual rebranding. The furniture was designed to sit as an art-piece in its closed form. When expanded, each piece was designed to meet the needs of a different set of users while accommodating for Hong Kong’s smaller room sizes.
Sketchbook Excerpts
Hong Kong China Macau
The Philippines Canada Italy
Illustration:
A series of excerpts from my travel sketchbooks
A collection of sketchbook pages documenting the various places I’ve worked and studied in over the years. The majority of the work comes from my time at studying in Italy. Other places featured include Toronto, New York City, Macau, and Hong Kong.
Drawing from life gives me a very visceral feeling of immersion. I enjoy the process of committing a place to memory through my hands and am consistently experimenting with new ways to capture my feelings and everyday experiences.
San Xiang Lai Fen
Cambridge, Canada
Animation:
A set of stills from a 2D animated short film
A collection of stills from an animated short exploring the process of making the Chinese noodle dish known as ‘san xiang lai fen.’
This short was initially conceived of as a project to experiment with animation and video editing software. However, as the process continued, my technical explorations evolved to include inquiries into the ritual of cooking and the ways it shapes our day to day movements and perceptions.
