AAD_SU21_085

Wan-Hsuan Kung

Columbia GSAPP 2021

An Anthropocentric

Commentary

Reciprocity

UPDAT[A]

Fall 2020

Spring 2021

Page 03

Page 22

2

Naturally Wild Summer 2021

Page 40

Reciprocity Fall 2020 Critic: Phu Hoang Partner: Sarah Yue Shi

The project explores reciprocal relationships in affordable housing for senior immigrants in Flushing.

An interface between the private and communal life of seniors, kitchens serve as social infrastructure that connects seniors with the larger community. Community kitchens pair different cooking rituals with informal programs of collective cooking, gardening, small business activities, and childcare. Unit kitchens could be opened up and expanded into the communal realm.

The project takes place above commercial spaces, incorporating existing structure and circulations. Through purchasing air right from the adjacent site, it cantilevers out to create south-facing units with abundant sunlight.

Taking on a policy initiative to bring together surrounding rooftops, the project expands horizontally to create community gardens with commercial, foodcourt, and promenade that benefit the community as a whole.

The building is organized structurally, socially, and environmentally around multiple shafts adjoining kitchens. The shafts collect and utilize entropy from kitchens to condition space. This prototype could be applied at various sites to maximize energy efficiency at a planetary scale.

3

The porject onseted with the qestion: What defines informal urbanism in Flusing Queens? Through a parallel research of urban space in Guangzhou China, and Flusing Queens, we discovered there are latent symbiotic relationships interconnects different entities.

Space and capital are two interdependent components underpinning the metropolis’ conundrum concerning forays against public space by private entities. In Guangzhou, where regula- tion remains vague, merchants with limited economic power promote business by expanding their commercial space to the sidewalk. The regulatory climate in Flushing, Queens leaves small business owners without proper instruments to promote social bonds, forcing them to seek exposure through accessory signs, which trespasses the boundaries of public space. Signage in Flushing is similar to sidewalk activities in Guangzhou. They are both anti-typological -- not only for their detachment from institutional control but also for their symbiosis, which occurs in the absence of a top-down framework.

This framework is perceived as the cornerstone of the modern economic system.

4

3 6

7

4

2

Guangzhou, China

8 1

1. BUSY MALL The direct translation from its Chinese name is New Oriental (新东 方) - Mall (商场). New Oriental (新东方) is an eye catching name that reminds people who has lived in Mainland China of the well known language school conglomerate, which had pioneered language training bussiness model and dominated the Chinese market trhoughout the early 2000s.

4. BUSY MALL BUSINESS CENTER On the side panel of Busy Mall’s signage, it shows: Chen Cai Education Center (成才教育 中心), which belongs to Busy Mall Business Center. One may start to seriously wonder: Maybe Busy Mall and Zoni are owned by the same company?

6. IRRELEVANT ADVERTISEMENT SIGN Advertising signs are camouflage among accessory signs to avoid fine (See.14).

2. ZONI LANGUAGE CENTERS Zoni Language Centers is an independent company and has no affliation with its neighbor (Busy Mall) whatsoever, even though their accessory signs share the same language. Turns out it is Zoni who has compromised its original color palate (See. 3), which meant to resemble US flag to match that of Busy Mall.

5. FA-GUO-SAN CANDY STORE What makes this Candy Store peculiar is the yellow paint around its Chinese character. It is possible that they scraped out the paint to avoid the visual competition.

7. DRIVING SCHOOL & INSURANCE Example of signage adjacency derived from service affiliation.

1. NOODLE SHOP ON STEP Shopkeepers use steps that are not normally used by pedestrians to expand their business outside.

MUTUALISTIC

Flushing, Queens

COMMENSAL

5

2. FOOD TRICYCLE What makes citizens access food easier in food tricycle. It’s size and flexibility help vendor to make and sell food everywhere, even on the parking spot.

3,4. TOY STALL & PACKING BOX STALL Two stalls sell toys and packing box, having their stalls adajcent to each other.

8. XINHUA BOOKSTORE & PREMIUM PHARMACY Premium Pharmacy found a “parent” logo (Xinhua Bookstore) that shares the same color scheme and co-existed on the same signage panel.

5. MUTUALISM DINING AREA For the occupation of sidewalk, different activities will eventually compromise with each other to achieve a state of symbiosis. In the picture, the same business in the night market in Guangzhou shares the same dining area.

2

3 2

5

4

5

13

12 11

9

10

10. TUNG REN TANG Tung Ren Tang Pharmacy allowed multiple entities to live under the same hood. This can arguably be categorized as Mutualism as well.

11. H2 PHARMACY CORP Similar to the situation shown in 10.

12. MAN HOLDING ACCESSORY SIGN Man crossing the boundary of public space by holding the accessory sign in the middle of the sidewalk.

13. Advertising Sign According to NYC Zooning Regulation, advertising Signage is not allowed in C-4 District.

PARASITIC

COMPETITION

9. HONG KONG FOOD COURT 9. Hong Kong Food Court occupying a building previously called Hong Kong Plaza, and taking advantage of the ex-owner's dilapidated signage that is still erecting on the rooftop.

6. INFORMAL SEWING SERVICE Residents in old-fashioned houses put sewing machines on the sidewalk illegally to provide you with cheap sewing services for nearby residents.

7. INFORMAL LIVINGROOM ON SIDEWALK Due to the vague understanding of the public and private space of the Chinese and the limited living space, the indoor space cannot meet the needs of residents. Some residents have to move part of their living space to public space.

8. INFORMAL FAMILY DINING TABLE

10. INFORMAL WAITING AREA Self-employed telecommunications service stores, due to the limited indoor space, can only shift their waiting area outside to occupy the sidewalk.

11. BRIGHT COLOR FOOD STALL Bright color food stall helps owners to attract more business on the street.

9. INFORMAL STUDYING ROOM

11

9

7 6 8 10

6

Throughout the research we found that foreign born senior Chinese immigrants are prone to psychological distress caused by migratory grief. The cultural, financial, and language barriers are the primary factors that lead to ostracism which prevent them from integrating into social fabric. As a result, many of them are living alone or once lived with their family but moved back to Flushing because of the feeling of social and cultural alienation in other neighborhoods.

In our design, we are bringing together both living and “working” experience for seniors. We define work as social engagements that help cultivate bonds between seniors and the rest of the community.

Through gardening, childcare and commercial activities, they could actively participate in society through interactions with other groups.

Redefining “Work” Antidote to Social Isolation - Allowing Elderly to Become Active Participants in Community

At an urban scale, reciprocity is fulfilled through exchanges of interest between multiple parties. Examples can be found in the formal agreement between private entities and the city, such as the Privately Owned Public Space, and Inclusionary Housing Program, in both cases, the owner agrees to sacrifice a portion of property in exchange for higher FAR. Such mutualistic relationships also exist among private entities in informal agreements. For instance, artists paint on a wall that belongs to a restaurant for free, in exchange for publicity.

Exchange of Interest Private Entity - City

7

Exchange of Interest Among Private Entities

Kitchen can be seen as an interface between the private and communal life of seniors, between daily cooking rituals and commercial activities. It is a social infrastructure that facilitates these connections.

ral / Cent

Communal Society

Ergonomic

Social Role

Repurposed

Western

Medieval

15th Century

1920s (Frankfurt Kitchen)

Eastern

Pre-Medieal

Medieval - 19th Century

Great Leap Forward

Ergonomic

Cen tral /

S ocial Role

We studied the evolution of western and eastern kitchens focusing on three aspects: ergonomics, sociability, and thermal conditions.

Kitchen began in the form of a fireplace which was moved from the exterior to interior. We are interested in the duality of cooking and thermal conditioning in early kitchens in different forms in the east and the west; as well as the sociability in modern kitchens, whether as a place for family gathering in the West, or between families in communal kitchens in China.

Harth

Stove

Chimney

Stove (Basement)

Flute / Smoke Channel

Repurpo

sed Ent ro

Note: Graph Shown as Deviation from Designated Value

Wall

Entropy

8

py

Contemporary

Environmentally, the shafts collect waste heat from kitchen appliances through stack effect and repurpose this otherwise wasted entropy for better uses. The recaptured heat is used for space heating in winter, and is used to pre-heat water in warm seasons. By recapturing this energy, we could reduce energy consumption by 20%. This prototype could be applied to future housing developments to maximize energy efficiency and reduce electricity consumption at a planetary scale.

9

Besides environmental functions, these collective kitchens serve as social infrastructure that connects seniors with the larger community.

These kitchen spaces pair different cooking rituals with social programs that create opportunities of interactions within and beyond the senior’s community, such as babysitting, small business activities, gardening, and collective cooking.

This taxonomy of the shaft volumes shows how different formal qualities of the volumes creates different conditions for the kitchen’s social, ergonomic, and thermal performance, which in turn creates opportunities for different paired programs.

10

11

12

13

The kitchen counter top in the corridor that speaks toward both day-care area in the day and apartment units at night.

14

Collective kitchen that is rented out as a commercial kitchen next to an edible garden during the day transforms to a community space for seniors at night.

15

Outdoor space occupied and invigorated by vendors in day can be overseen by seniors from surrounding openings, formed “the eyes that keep street safe” and return to community uses at night

16

Taking on a policy initiative to bring together surrounding rooftops, the project expands horizontally to create community gardens that benefit the neighborhood as a whole. The rooftop could be accessed from both our project and the small businesses in the block. It offers a place where the community could garden, or grow and sell their produce, together with mini plazas with small vendor’s shops, children’s playground, and outdoor seatings.

Together, the project weaves together the horizontal and vertical, the exterior and the interior, to form a landscape that serves and engages different parties of the neighborhood.

17

18

19

20

21

UPDAT[A] A Short Film Spring 2021 Critic: Michael Bell Individual Work - Is charging station a false proposition?

- What does it mean to be a truck dirver in 2030?

- What is a truck stop?

- Will you ask your self-driving car to help you get grocery?

- Will there be traffic in 10 years?

- From stage to screen, from glass to interface. Drivers do not react to immediate vision, just like how movie actors don’t perform in front of spectators.

- Smooth vs Striated. Which space does AI belong to?

- Is there a conceptual side of machine learning?

- Is there other means to smooth out “Duck Curve” without centralized battery storage facility?

- Will EVs become decentraliszed storage network?

- What about the pressing conflict between building solar farms and preserving ecological integrity?

- What about rare earth mining and environmental concern?

- Do we need to humanize objects in order to develop a relationship?

- How will melting arctic change the global trade route?

- What is original in the digital age when the conventionally defined “original” is produced in digital space?

22

23

Data Input LAYER 3 Machine Vision

UPDATE(A) INT./EXT. COMPUTER VISION1 A screen showing the system frantically detecting and labeling everything surrounds the semi truck.

SYSTEM -- Engage. Engage. Engage -Balck Screen (3s), CUT TO:

LAYER 2 Lidar Sensor

INT. TESLA SEMI - I-15 - BORDER OF CALIFORNIA AND NEVADA - DAY CONTINUE WITH SYSTEM ALERT PAUL’S (DRIVER/PROTAGONIST) POV

LAYER 1 City / Infrastructure

1. A.I. Hegemony The lvl 5 automation will need to be combining multi-layer data input, with a coexistence of lidar, machine vision, infrastructural network, to understand the full image.

API (Application Programming Interface) is probably more important than AI.

PAUL Startled. Awoken by the system alert as the visual attention tracker failed to detect conscious human being’s attendance, only to realize that he is still stuck in the same traffic from half an hour ago.

PAUL Why did you wake me up? We are still on the highway!

24

SYSTEM We are within 2 miles from Exit 26B.

LV3

LV4

Nevada State Law requires human attendance in all vehicles while entering and exiting freeway, with the exception applied to vehicles capable of and subscribed to Level 5 Autopilot Package. And it’s under our UPDATA’s policy that --

LV5

Above: Traffic Caused by Automation Incoherency

PT B

PT B

HOME

2020

HOME

2030

Double Traffic if Point B Does Not Provide Parking.

2. Future Traffic The scenario is based on the premises of having a hodgepodge of level 3, 4, and 5 Automation sharing the same road. It is known that level 3 automation (conditional self driving with driver) is indeed dangerous and prone to causing accident, as it requires human constantly monitor the system and be able to take control of it at any time.

Traffic may still be prevalent due to the incoherence of automation level.

PAUL (irritated, interrupting) -- Alright, Alright, Stop.

PAUL lowers the window. Even with all the cars piled up in a 3 lanes freeway, you can still discern the sound of deer strolling across wildlife overpass miles ahead. It’s a muted hectic bustle.

If it’s during the old days, PAUL would lean on the rubber trim. But since the one seater took over the market, truck drivers are constrained by the emptiness around them.

25

Paul looks into the side mirror on screen. He can tell from the opaque electrochromic glass that nearly a third of the vehicles around him are Lv.5.

They are either empty or closed off for privacy reasons.

Some people like to leave the sunroof untinted, like the one to the left of PAUL. Clearly they forget that trucks can be the “highrise” amidst the endless horizontality.

ZOOM IN TO SIDE MIRROR UNTIL FULL SCREEN 3. Policy Hybridity may also apply to regulation.

Human attendance my be omitted depend on hiearchy of roads. For example, freeway is less complex and capricious compare to local route, hence is safe for lower level automation to perform without human presence.

Entering and exiting the freeway is comparable to take off and landing of an airplane.

EXT. CONTINUED Camera slowly cruising back, traveling through traffic toward the end of the trailer.

Camera turns and faces the blue logo printed on the white trailer door, which is supposed to say UPDATA. A white plastic bag caught by the top hinge of the right hand door covered a portion of letter A, which is sufficient to trick AI to perceive the word as “UPDATE”.

26

Subscription Commercial

$

Subscription Non-Commercial Insurance Cost

SUPERIMPOSE: UPDATE (#Film Title)

Market Share Commercial Market Share Non-Commercial

FADE TO:

Disposable Income Generated

INT. SEMI TRUCK - FREEWAY EXIT - DAY

Potential Saving

PAUL’S POV OVER THE LIVE FEED ON SCREEN

Lv 3

Lv 4

Lv 5 Level of Automation

4. Once a Subscriber, Always a Subscriber Innovation is continuous and it exists in the smooth space.

ANCHOR -- The Senate has voted to pass the Auto-Drive Bill over the weekend in a vote of 78 yays to 22 nays in response to the tragic happened at the Coachella Valley Music and Art Festival last October, meaning that companies will soon be required to hire attending drivers on board of the vehicles even with the subscription to full automation package --- And it is anticipated that most of the companies will downgrade their package to level 4 or even level 3.

Perpetual Licensing Model

Subscription Model

Intel and Tesla’s share 27

price has slumped 5% and 9% respectively during the market open, as over 80% of premium package subscribers are commercial clients -EXT. STATION - DAY Close up against the bottom edge of the right hand door.

Door opened, and closed. Paul walked away. The casted aluminum charging post is now blinking in red.

MATCH CUT TO: A water bottle under a faucet.

EXT. RESERVOIR - CONT’D

5. Inside Out Jacque Tati’s Play Time - a scene showing the protagonist asked to be waited in the lobby. What strikes is the cut that contrast the tranquil interior and buzzing exterior (mostly from automobile). The glass panel erased the barrier between int and ext visually, but reinforced it acoustically.

Autopilot together have turned this relationship inside out. In a highway traffic jam, acoustic barrier become dispensable, as outside is as quiet as interior. AI allowed us to shift attention away from immediate surroundings to the point that drivers are seeing the asphalt through interface more than transparent, brittle, tangible surface.

Camera centers on a glass capsule that rooms variegated tropical plants. A transparent OLED display embedded within the glass panel wrapped the cell with Ads hovering around the bright yellow shower curtain peaks out of luscious vegetation. Ads: - Grid decentralization is stripping away your job 28

- Arctic World Awaits - Save your money, save our planet Paul stepped into the room without a glimpse of the screen. As he closed the door behind, the electrochromic glass panel switched to translucent grey tone.

CUT TO:

6. Spaciously Claustrophobic To some extent, TESLA’s Semi is quite impersonal. It’s as sleek and high tech as a jet cockpit, but by centering the seat they seal off driver’s direct contact with “out side world” - all interaction happens on interface - two screens.

As if it is really an airplane hovering 30,000 ft above ground, as if the air outside is too cold to touch.

INT. SHOWER CELL - CONT’D A yellow vinyl curtain amidst vegetation. Background plays the same radio channel Paul listens to on the truck.

CUT TO: EXT/INT. DINER - VENDING MACHINE - DAY

7. UPDATE (Title) Update, in other words, constant adaptation, is necessary amidst fluid, erratic environment full of dynamic forces.

Yet architecture at its core is nothing but against this.

Close up shot at Cricket Cereal, the only item left on a seemingly endless powder coated shelf packed with yellow dividers as the camera gradually zooms out.

Paul rolls up the shelves, 29

arised hygroscopic planters incubating cabbages and baby tomatoes under grow lights.

When We Talk About Gas Station

When We Talk About Charging “Station”

It’s a vending wall protruding out of arid soil. The dining area located right behind it, which is sheltered along with cacti and succulents by merely a 24 mm thick corrugated metal sheet.

Paul is sitting on a stool with a stainless steel seat capped with rammed-earth base support underneath, eavesdropping on the conversation between two guys from afar.

MALE So how was your interview?

Any news?

8. Anywhere, Everywhere - What We Talk About When We Talk About Charging Station Gas stations carry the quality of being ritual, to which fueling a vehicle through a pump cannot be done without one’s existence in the place. Gas refined product from crude oil that is owned by highly capitalized conglomerates. In that sense, gas is not only physical, but also original.

Electric gird, on the other hand, as the outcome of mass production, is ubiquitous. The notion of original/aura disappears as charging can literally happen anytime anywhere along the grid. It is not tied to an “original.” The flow of electricity is as, if not more important than that of water.

FEMALE Not a word since that personality test.

MALE Personality Test? Can’t believe they are still doing that, should’ve made it illegal a decade ago.

30

FEMALE How about you? Weren’t you in construction? Canada is looking for people, they are scrambling to build new ports and cities along the arctic.

MALE Ugh. I can’t imagine looking at the midnight sun for three months straight when the weather is warm.

EXT. STATION - DAY

CUT TO:

Camera rolls toward left. Passing a mobile/nomad community consists of recreational vehicles and oversized vans serves as restaurants and “storefronts.”

Camera stops in front of Paul’s semi truck.

9. Spatial Continuity As technology becomes more personal than ever, the facade of a product will keep embracing a minimalist core (being user friendly). One noticeable outcome is that innovation has pushed everything toward seamlessness space, time, and form...as the notion of being in a place and what is perceived as a place has been translated to bespoke packaging on top of esoteric nested systems.

MUSIC FADE IN -TOP / AERIAL VIEW Camera zooms out, unveils a grid formed by charging posts adjacent to a solar farm.

31

Parking line markers and diesel trucks pop up on the ground. As the camera keeps zooming out, it appears to be the graphic on Paul’s T-Shirt.

CUT TO: EXT. FREEWAY - NIGHT FRONTAL VIEW Arctic Shortcut - New Trade Routes

10. North Bound Climate change is covertly reshaping the global trade.

A melting arctic is already opening up routes for cruises and will certainly impose a geopolitical paradigm shift. But why does it matter to the trucking industry?

Traveling through Canada’s arctic coastline will likely reduce U.S. cross country long-haul trucking between east and west coast, by discouraging company choosing Marine-Ground option for a cargo ship departing from Northern China or Korea.

Truck cruising on freeway with headlights on. Vehicles overtake once in a while, varying in speed.

PAUL disappeared from the cockpit.

Cockpit disappeared from the tractor.

FADE TO BLACK.

11. A Collective Storage This point harks back to some of my early research that focused on balancing the renewable energy’s supply and demand through implementing the notion of battery into architecture. However, with the increasing fleet size of electric vehicles, they could collectively stabilize the grid. This notion of decentralization also applies to the final scene of the film - when the camera cruising through an array of mobile community (or nomads), they are dissolving the centralized/capitalized entity, which in this case is the old truck stop, by offering various functions.

CLOSING CREDITS. THE END

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

[Naturally] Wild Summer 2021 Critic: Antonio Torres, Michael Loverich Individual Work So what are we talking about when we talk about the ecosystem? And what defines nature?

To some extent, I would argue, even the biological creatures sitting in the nursery pot in plant stores are not natural - that we need to create a suitable environment for each plant. If it’s too dark, buy some grow light; too dry, add a humidifier; too wet, increase temperature and ventilation.

In this sense, nothing is truly natural, or I would say, no species is truly synthetic on my site even though they are completely manufactured.

Urban space has been seens as an enclosed system. Similar to how our culture obscures the image behind slaughterhouses by romanticizing meat and poultry as harmless graphics, human waste is abstracted into pipes that disappear beneath toilet bowls. The reality of the start and the end of the cycle become equally mysterious. But the system is never closed, and out of our control in some way. It’s indeed naturally wild.

Especially in Manhattan, with a combined sewer system, the stormwater runoff meets the sanitary sewer in the same pipe. The steam that weaves beneath the asphalt had to burst out of the manhole to release pressure.

There is a complex interplay between urban infrastructure and ecology.

40

The project functions as a water treatment facility, a carbon storage tank, and bioplastic production plant that coexist on the site in a symbiotic relationship.

At the final state, algae biomass is harvested using bio-flocculation through the fungal cultivation, and stored on site, to be used as raw material for bioplastic.

It channels the waste water from the surrounding site to an anaerobic digestion tank, which breaks down the organic waste into methane and carbon dioxide.

Methane is then conveyed to a generator that converts it into heat electricity and more carbon dioxide. The heat is distributed throughout the site to control the temperature, and the CO2 is collected to be fed into algae growing bioreactor in the cave and larger growing network above the surface.

41

As algae grows it releases oxygen into air pockets below the topsoil, allowing the surface to swell and pucker.

At the same time, the excessive CO2 formed into a synthetic shell that mostly consists of calcium carbonate. structurally reinforced the surrounding.

42

Porosity plays an important role in this project: It not only intakes waste water from underground sewage pipes, but also allows runoff to fall into the body. It weaves in the steam pipe to keep the temperature stable, but also converges the heat it produces into the same pipe.

43

44

45