2025 Selected Architecture Works_Grace Yuan by YUAN GRACE

PORTFOLIO.

YUAN GRACE

Architecture Student, NUS 2002.05.17 | 23YO 8053 7496 grace.yzx1705@gmail.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/grace-yuan-zi-xin/

ABOUT ME

From my formative years in architecture, I have charted a path shaped by curiosity and a deep reverence for learning. My journey began with a focus on mastering architectural conventions and adhering to established standards. However, this grounding evolved when my professor challenged me to “think outside the box.” I began to recognize that boundaries and conventions, while valuable, were also constructs to be questioned.

As I matured academically through fixed pedagogies, I found inspiration beyond design studios; Literature and writing emerged as unexpected yet invaluable sources of creativity, pushing me to incorporate broader influences into my designs. This blend of theoretical insights and practical application has led to a keen interest in ‘architecture for problem-solving’. For me, this process is not merely about aesthetics but about mediating diverse forces;context, materials, and user needs, into cohesive and meaningful spaces.

Currently, as a Master’s student in Architecture with a strong interests on research-driven design, I believe in challenging the status quo by synthesizing diverse considerations: cultural, economical and social factors into built projects. Inspired by Anna Tsing’s ‘Staying with Trouble’. There is virtue in confronting uncomfortable truths and inconvenient realities, as the strength of any proposal should be judged on its merits, not my personal biases or prejudices. Rather than placing personal goals at the forefront, my work is rooted in a deep commitment to probing any assigned briefs.

PROJECT: DECARBONIZED TOKYO

Nishiokubo Park Factory | Hearth Garden Sento

THE VALLEY

Stitching flows of Urban Thresholds

BLOOMING ECLIPSE

Reduction of Glare through Polarization

PRIMITIVE DWELLING

Private Rooms & Living Scapes

THE AVANT-GARDE

School of Performing Arts

BALANCED REALMS

Revitalizing Commmunity Spaces & Fostering Commercial Balance

PROJECT: DECARBONIZED TOKYO

Nishiokubo Park Factory | Hearth Garden Sento

NUS Architecture | Options Research Studio II

Studio Sho Yutaka

This project began with a focused inquiry into paper-based disposables—specifically those used in food and retail settings in Shin-Okubo. While often overlooked in urban waste discourse, these fibre-based materials emerged as a significant and recurring component of the local waste stream. Field observations revealed a key inconsistency: cardboard is treated as a recyclable material, while paper cutlery, cups, and soiled packaging are classified as combustibles. Despite their shared composition—cellulose-based fibres—these materials are subjected to divergent fates due to contamination by food and liquids, rendering them incompatible with conventional recycling protocols. This discrepancy became the entry point for a broader investigation into the possibilities of material recovery outside of energy-intensive incineration. Rather than treatingcontaminatedpaperwasteasanendpoint,theinquiryexploredhowitmight be reprocessed, transformed, and reintegrated into a regenerative urban system.

Through low-energy processes like biogas generation and fungal composting, paper waste is decomposed into green electricity and organic fertilizer, reducing the emissions and energy loss of conventional waste treatment. This green energy, in turn, powers an MFP (Moulded Fibre Product) line that recycles the same disposables into new cutlery and packaging closing the product to waste loop. To root the system within the neighbourhood, waste heat and CO2 byproducts are redirected to power a public sento, the Hearth Garden, offering warmth, restoration, and civic participation. Waste becomes fuel; fuel becomes care.

Fertilizer produced on-site becomes a social and ecological currency—distributed to schools, NGOs, and local communities to regreen streets, parks, and rooftops across Tokyo. As these Park Factories multiply across green nodes, they seed a wider ecological movement: a city where waste flows nourish public spaces, where infrastructure breathes, and where the acts of discarding and growing become one and the same. This is a vision of decarbonization through intimacy, where care, not combustion, powers the city’s future.

NISHIOKUBO -PARK FACTORY

5th STOREY

4th STOREY

+15.0m

3rd STOREY

+10.0m

2nd STOREY

+5.0m

1st STOREY

+0.0m

BASEMENT

- 5.0m

SENTO BATH

BIOGAS BURNER

DIGESTATE TANK

PUMP

WIND TUNNEL

HEARTH-GARDEN SENTO

ATMOSPHERIC - THERMO-SPATIAL

SECTIONAL PERSPECTIVE B - B

SCALE 1:50

By transforming discarded fibre-based disposables into green energy and fertilizer, the facility powers not only a closed-loop production system, but the regreening of its surrounding park and the heating of a public sento. Through thermal morphology, it reduces reliance on machines—letting form guide energy, and architecture hold heat. Rooted in tradition, the sento becomes a cultural commons

NISHIOKUBO PARK

2nd

THERMAL MORPHOLOGIES

This exploration began with an investigation into structures that interact intensely with heat—particularly traditional kilns, which are designed to both retain high internal temperatures and ensure continuous ventilation. By analyzing their spatial logic. These systems down into their core principles and elemental geometries, focusing on how form and material guide the movement, containment, and release

NOBORIGAMA

'CLIMBING KILNS'

Heat Stack Effect: Hot Gas naturally rise and rounded ceilings guide and direct the flow of gas into subsequent chambers

ANAGAMA

'CAVE KILNS'

Venturi Effect: Inducing AIr Flow through fluctuating size of Apertures.

SUMIGAMA

'CHARCOAL KILNS'

Stratifying Thermal Zones: Through Convection

HOVEL OVEN

'Updraught Oven'

Stratifying Thermal Zones: Layering, Nesting & Shells

PLANS, SECTIONS

BASIC GEOMETRIES

PROJECT: DECARBONIZED TOKYO

WASTE MANAGEMENT IN SHIN-OKUBO

By: Jolin Koh Miao Lin & Yuan Zi Xin Grace

Our research began with a striking observation: photographs taken by I-AUD students depicting piles of discarded waste lining the streets of Shin-Okubo. This prompted an inquiry into how waste is managed in a context defined by high density and cultural diversity. We asked: how do public perceptions of waste shape both formal and informal management practices, and what are the implications for sustainability and material recovery? At the institutional level, Tokyo’s waste system is governed by rigid categorisation and scheduled collection, where the majority of waste—particularly plastic and soiled paper products—is incinerated and ultimately deposited in the Tokyo Bay landfill. Only a narrow subset of materials, such as PET bottles, are recycled and reintroduced into the consumption cycle. This linear system is energy-intensive and contributes significantly to the city’s carbon emissions.

Fieldwork in Shin-Okubo revealed that while residents and businesses generally adhere to disposal protocols, disposables such as plastic bags, PET bottles, cardboard, and paper cutlery are routinely discarded after single use. Despite occasional informal reuse, particularly in market areas, most materials are treated as waste once their function ends. These findings suggest that waste is predominantly viewed as an inconvenience—something to be eliminated, regardless of potential value. In response, we propose a decentralised recycling station that operates as both an infrastructural and communal space—one that makes waste processing visible, participatory, and integrated into everyday life. By reframing waste as a resource rather than a terminal output, the project supports a transition toward a circular, community-embedded model of environmental stewardship in Shin-Okubo.

CULTURE: LOCALS

CULTURE: IMMIGRANTS

ECOLOGY

THE VALLEY

Stitching flows of Urban Thresholds

NUS Architecture | Design 5

Unit 3: Urban Voids | Studio Jacqueline Yeo

Capitalism’s drive for profit has eroded the concept of free spaces, as privatization and commercialization restrict public access and superseded the idea of shared, accessible urban thresholds. This underscores the importance of urban thresholds which mark the transition realms suspended between public and private spaces governed by fixed programmes. These transformative thresholds offering a sense of freedom, occupancy and usage for a myriad of users. Urban Thresholds are private yet public, personalized yet polyvalent, and ultimately accessible for everyone.

However, the mere provision of such spaces does not guarantee their effectiveness. Many of such thresholds remain impoverished, with minimal occupancy and usage. They often exist as isolated pockets, scattered and disconnected even when in relative proximity. Not only are the thresholds spatially univiting, they exist as siloed nodes in Tanjong Pagar Plaza. The latter exacerbates disconnection of the from the existing flow of thresholds running along the Duxton Plain Park. Therefore the Valley Seek to stitch and channel the existing flow of thresholds into focused areas of intervention where the flow is severed or discontinued.

Inspired and informed by the natural and soft tectonics of Duxton Plain Park where the flow is most prominent, series of intervention resembling a valley, aim to extend the ‘valley effect’ that characterize the tectonics, and states of behaviour it induces. The focused intervention seek to amalgamate formerly impoverished urban thresholds within Tanjong Pagar Plaza. Drawing in the flow that consists of diverse demography,the intervention, in conjunction with others , rejuvenate and diffuse concentrate of silver populace with diversity.

Child Care Centre

The site is Part of Vanda Miss Joaqium Park, focused on the lushed terrain. Spatially, the site is composed of dispersed circulatory paths, staggered at different heights (due to the undulating topography) with few disperesed thresholds. There are no hard edges and therefore no boundaries that defines the spaces.

Shop Extensions

This is an ancillary area serving Tanjong Pagar Palza and Food market. The site consists of: THe road that serve the Plaza’s carpark, the refuse room. Loading points of adjacent buildingsa nd the fire access way. The site is spatially composed of 2 rigid pedestrian paths with no thresholds. The space is fully defined by harsh edges.

BLOOMING ECLIPSE

Reduction of Glare through Polarization

NUS Architecture | Design 4

Unit 2: Performative Perforations | Studio Tan Beng Kiang

By: Angeline Ong & Yuan Grace

This study focuses on the design of a facade for the classroom blocks E, F, and G at Nan Hua High School, with the goal of mitigating solar glare, reducing solar heat gain, and improving overall thermal comfort.

The project draws inspiration from the RMIT Design Hub facade by Sean Godsell Architects, particularly the use of frosted glass panels to diffuse light, and aims to optimize visual comfort and mitigate glare through the diffusion of light.

The design process involves prototyping and testing different ways of diffusing light using various kinetic motions, materials, and layering methods, in which we have settled the use of polarizing films to diffuse light and control opacity, based on their effectiveness in reducing glare while still allowing visible light to pass through.

The final design comprises a double-skin facade system consisting of outer modular panels with fixed and rotating discs, and an inner layer of sliding doors and louvers, The design incorporates circular motifs and utilizes a “circle packing” script on Grasshopper to maximize the number of discs that can be packed into a single panel.

It also aims to create a shared identity among students through interactive modules displayed in the classroom and along the corridors. The modules consist of discs decorated with cellophane and polarizing film, allowing for creative expression and manipulation of light transmission. Students can place these modules along the corridor and decorate the space outside their classrooms.

PRIMITIVE DWELLING

Private Rooms & Living Scape

NUS Architecture | Design 3

Unit 1: Cuboid Expositions | Studio Pan Yi Cheng

Formally, respective studios set out to interrogate a series of probes, to draw out dichotomous spatial qualities: Open vs Close, Big vs Small, Seen vs Unseen, Accessible, and Inaccessible which choreograph a prevailing spatial motif/ language. The probe that corresponds to the scheme, suggests a pair of opposing spaces, possessing dichotomous qualities; a siloed solid interpreted as an enclosed, inaccessible, unseen, and small ‘private room’, diagonally position from the opposite element; ascending terrains of seen, open, accessible and big quality, leading up to the former room.

What are the definitions of Private rooms and Terrains in terms of inhabitation then and now? Do they possess any potential to transform our conventional living models? What kind of conversations do they provoke?

Caves serve as the most primitive form of dwelling where humans adeptly assimilate to the landscape by interpreting the vairous hints of convex, and concave surfaces and scale, the topography is according to inhabitants’ subjective and objective senses of comfortability and functionality. Caves, primarily consisting of seemingly random undulations, ironically are provocative and unrestricted milieus. Opposite of a cave formed by natural processes, descending deep into the earth, the aggregated dwelling rises up as an artificial nest, but nonetheless possesses the qualities of a primitive cave that supports perceived/preferred modes of anthropometric occupancy and habitations.

Relative to the cave of free spirits and encourage place-making. The private rooms, when aggregated throughtout the building, are anchored at regular intervals and are predictable and unyielding. Regardless of any external influences, the private rooms (bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms) continue to host programmes and functions necessary to modern living and by conventional standards, regardless of the subjective preferences of those who inhabited them.

THE AVANT-GARDE

School of Performing Arts

Singapore Polytechnic | Final Year Project Pedagogy: Defamiliarization | Tutor Dennis Goh

Embracing Sou Fujimoto’s design methodology, the process begins with a deliberate defamiliarization, questioning fundamental aspects of architectural spaces. Fujimoto, influenced by a childhood immersed in nature, seamlessly connects natural elements with architecture, a motif pervading his designs. Musashino Library, for instance, derives its form from the functional metaphor of ‘strolability,’ echoing a controlled emulation of forest phenomena.

In translating this methodology to the project’s context, the abundant greenery of the site prompted a profound exploration of functional metaphors, resulting in distinct identifiers like ‘improvisation,’ ‘limitless,’ and ‘strolability.’ These intangibles, akin to the sought-after qualities within a forest, became pivotal. Transforming them into tangible architectural elements, diagrams are utilized as form-finding mediums. This endeavor not only explored their integration into the design but also catalyzed the introduction of additional architectural strategies, fortifying the inherent resemblances between the school and the natural environment.

Transitioning to the rationale behind the program, Kampong Glam’s historical significance juxtaposed against Singapore’s rapid modernization underscores the need for cultural preservation. Efforts to conserve the district’s heritage, amidst modernization, present a dynamic dialogue between tradition and contemporary expression, the proposed educational space becomes a conduit for reintroducing traditional forms in an avant-garde context, thereby embodying the spirit of Sou Fujimoto’s design

BALANCED REALMS

Revitalizing Commmunity Spaces & Fostering Commercial Balance

NUS Architecture | AR3223 Introduction to Urbanism

Urban Gallery | Tutor Matthew Goh

By: Nellie Leong & Yuan Grace

The constructivist architectural movement, born from early twentieth-century art, diverged from traditional design principles by prioritizing utilitarian aims and propagandist ideals. However, its emphasis on conveying messages and symbols over strict functionality led to many unrealized projects perceived as propaganda art.

Tatlin’s Tower, an ambitious project embodying collectivism in socialist Russia, remained unrealized due to its perceived role as propaganda art. Similarly, the Tanjong Pagar HDB Block’s void decks, once envisioned as communal spaces, succumbed to privatization, transforming into areas residents must now pay to access.

In response, our prototype counters commercialization by formalizing a Social Dining Hall. Inspired by constructivist principles, it composes geometrical forms into a suprematist-conceptual collage. The Hawker program, serving as the central kitchen, contrasts with existing shops, symbolizing an opposing force against commercialization.

Differentiated geometries for communal programs like Cooking stations and Dining Areas challenge commercial uniformity, promoting organic unity and community well-being. Expressing privacy levels in white, grey, and black, the 2D Suprematist collage transforms into a 3D architectural intervention, incorporating truss structures inspired by constructivist architecture.

Elevated elements like Resting pods create a negotiable ground for existing shops and Hawker stores, fostering co-existence and negotiation. Our prototype revitalizes informal spaces, promoting social activities and the communal spirit, balancing residents’ needs with commercial interests. Inspired by constructivist ideals, it envisions dynamic hubs for collective well-being, social engagement, and harmonious coexistence against commercialization pressures.

In essence, our prototype revitalizes informal spaces to promote social activities among residents, reviving the communal spirit reminiscent of void decks. Concurrently, it guarantees the visibility of existing shop fronts despite the implementation. This strategy strives to strike a harmonious balance between the residents’ needs and the commercial interests of shop owners amidst the increasing tide of commercialization.

A diverse array of seating options, including upright, inclined, and lying positions, seamlessly integrates and enhances the former qualities of resting areas, transforming them into vibrant and engaging social spaces.

In addition to the resting pods, public seating is freely accessible to all, with no obligation to purchase any food items from existing stalls or the central kitchen.

In response to the needs of existing shop owners, they have the option to extend their current stalls, ensuring that their storefronts remain prominent to pedestrians even with the implementation of the prototype.

Similar to void decks, residents are encouraged to come together and engage in communal cooking, fostering interaction and community connection.

The space provides an opportunity for young beginners and amateurs to acquire hawking skills. The food items are priced more affordably compared to those at existing stalls.