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2025 Portfolio - Lancelot Li

email: leanceloot@gmail.com

tel: 213-610-5896

linkedin: linkedin.com/in/lancelot-li-design

What’s Included

(enhanced)

Nested Vistas

Pursuit of Happyness

Wave

Residential Design at Changzhou Historic Town

2022 Personal Project

The Wave transforms a row of retiring apartments into a modern commerical complex of rental housing and a shopping center. Through personal experience and memories of the comminity and the grand canal, I focused on offering solutions to the unsatisfied demand for temporary living, parking, and a unified dinning/shopping experience.

The Grand Canal is the guiding star for my design. Through the past years, water quality has been improved to a level suitable for close interactions. I decided to utilize the view of the improved water way as well as the greenery nearby. Jiangnan is to China as Venice to Italy; as a city of Jiangnan, Changzhou could bring back the living-by-water habit with mordern architectures. To highlight the relationship of life and water way, I use wave to form the facade and name the project.

Changzhou has a long history of culture and architecture, and Qingguo Valley, which sits right next to the site, is one of the best preserved symbol. Adjacent to the Qingguo influence circle, The Wave aim for extending the water town traveling experience, and showcase a possibilty of inhertating and expanding the traditions under the modern context--ancient towns should not be crudely restored and transformed into a shopping streets.

ANCIENT TOWN

RESIDENTIAL

Qingguo Lane was first built in Ming Dynasty with a history more than 400 years. It includes many traditional architectural forms in a small area.

Old structures were wore out, and no longer fit the modern life style. Stone bridges like this one has been removed in the past years.

Qingguo Alley is a pearl of my home town--Changzhou, which sits in the center of city. Due to the location, the area is much smaller than a typical ancient town--expansion is unlikely to happen with all the new roads and buildings. Disregard its scale, Qingguo Alley concentrates all the cultural elements essential to all water towns (ancient towns). Qingguo was the historical home to many influencial people of the city, from poets, to revolutionists, to educationists, the small alley is a mojor symbol of the city.

In recent years, Changzhou government achieved some success in transforming the alley, mainly through building an entrance with mordern material (glass and steel) to exhibite the reflections on the canal, as well as maintainence of the historical buildings. The areas has become popular tourist attraction that remains genuine in style. Its success inspires me to extend that combination of of old buildings and mordern material, while featuring the beauty of water town, to my site that is just a block away.

Qingguo were home to many famous educators, such as “father of Pinyin” Zhou Youguang, and female rights activist Shi Liang.

With the idea “restore/rebuild as it was”, local government successfully transformed the alley which brought considerable tourists. The nearby hotels and parking can longer satisfy the demands.

crowded parking

Design Process

The design of the apartment is inspired by the fluidity of water. The traditional architectural style of Jiangnan Water Town pays great attention to environmental factors, so I hope to show the feeling of waves in the architectural form.

Original site: Old apartments by the canal

Entrance & decorative wall: Local building format

Lifted ground floor

20 pillars in symmetry

Long rectangular cube: Lower in height (21m)

Water side platform: A new relationship with the canal

Irregular windows: Water reflections

lifted, travel to roof

Glass lift lobby: Divides 2 sections

Wave shape exterior wall

Circular skylight: Traditional philosophy

Design details

Third floor rental apartments/supermarket

Second floor rental apartments/supermarket Rooftop garden/bar area

First floor public park /temporary exhibitions

Basement open dining area, waterbrone platform

Entrance

The Wave in different lighting and angles. The low height and lifted first floor allaws a continuation of water town esthetic, while adding light and wind to the narrow street.

Side wall

This design features wave shaped facade, a glass atrium, and a black-and-white gable. These mordern structure merge with traditional design philosophies, blends into the surrounding community.

Lifted

A Cantilever Living/Dining/Researching Complex near RISD regenerative garden

2023 RISD Project

Buildings on a sloped site should embrace the slops: the climbing in circulation, the air and lights its extra vertical space brings. The slope was a gathering place where students lean and relax, with this lifted design, the gathering function is kept--and omproved! People can enjoy the shadow underneath, while the residents get well lit living spaces. Ceneral to this deisgn, two occupiable columns creates a intuitive circulation while minimize the area taken from the ground floor.

The towers locate at the north half of the cantilever, make the south side extra light and spatious.

The height of the cantilever creates a comfortable space leisure activity--shaded from sun, while still having sufficient light from the sloped side.

plan (interior)

Diaganl circulation connects the public dining tower and lab tower, allows quick navigation while creating a semi-public space that encrourages the residents to leave their rooms and hang out.

Three concrete ‘steps’ allows residents enter the towers easily from both sides of the block, while maintaining the functions of reading, chatting, and chilling under shade. plan (base)

1/4” model (section1)

Big windows opening at ends of corridors aim to guide the circulation and turn each dead end into a welcoming resting spot.

model (detail angles)

The occupiable columns enables purity of cantilever structure.

1/8” model (top)

1/4” model (section2)

Lifted - enhenced

A projection mapping project: AI image generation. Touchdesigner

2024 RISD Project

Artificial intellegence with its ability to interpret text prompt and visual inspiration, sure will become a strong tool for architects to explore initial ideas, or imagine the possibilities of evolves and changes to an original design. I experimented projection mapping technique, a method that connects generative AI to the physical realm, and projected my own visions of the afterlives of architecture designs.

1: Cutout projection object

2: Simplify into color blocks for AI interpret

3: Generation; adjusting prompt, reference image, intensity

Different AI models can be tuned for varied level of controls in term of style and compositions. To generate images that illustrate my ideas, I tuned text prompts and feed many images of each styles

Touchdesigner workflow

Live testing & Ducumenting

Set up a controlled enviroment

Building and base are animated individually, creating numerous combination of my imagined possibilities of this design

Nested Vistas

Urban hideout filling the gap of high-rise buildings

2024 personal project

This project locates on Nathan Road, Hongkong, the area with the highest population and high-rising building density. People living and working in the downtown areas are constantly surrounded by concretes forest where “nature” is isolated. Building an actual garden in this busy district might be impossible, but how about recreating the idea of “garden” within a small cafe? How to make a space perceived to be larger and closer to nature? Through investigation on traditional Chinese gardens, I came up with my answer.

Using spactial design principles from Chinese garden designs, this cafe grants access to a peaceful hideout through a series of thresholds and apertures: seeing the city through framings, emersing your view with garden plants and esthetics, travel between narrow corridors and open plans, viewing curated scenes through wall openings and screens. Layers of close-up and distant views nested together inside.

Lion Rock

Forest part at north part of HK. Highrising apartment buildings extend right to its its foot.

Mong Kok

Everage 130,000 people per km², Mong Kok is one of the most densely populated area in HK. Neon light signboards are a key character of the street scene.

Iconic commerical buildings sits at its sides. The night secne is spectacular.

Victorian Harbor

Site location in Hong Kong city

SPACE TYPE VARIATION II VARIATION I

Spiral stairs: space saving, create a narrow space experience in contrast with the open floor plan

Large round window frames the sunset between skyscrapers

2F: main dining area, washroom, indoor garden

1F: dining, kitch, bar, storage

thresholds

apertures

Pursuit of Happyness

A neigborhood-friendly, high volume homeless shelter complex

2023 Personal Project

Homelessness is a longstanding social issue in the Los Angeles region. The situation got even worse since the pendamic, as more people became unemployed. With increasing number of unhoused individuals, the city is in need of more beds and shelters. This shelter complex responds to the basic need, but also explores ways to alleviate people out of their poverty trap.

Intrinsic causes, such as unwelling to work, is identified to be the cutting point. Homeless population vary in their ability to work, but to begin with, to create a supportive commnity that brings people at the edge back, can be helpful to encourge the healthy individuals to get retrained and earn their living.

Inspired by the natures geometry miracle, the honey comb, I hope to combine modular living units into a spacially efficient, self-supported community that provides variety support, from education, to career, to mental health. Tthe modern design with 3 floor height means to demonstrate the ability for welfare facility to move out of skid row and become a neigborhood friendly site, which is not exclusive to the homeless ones.

CENTRAL LA KOREAN TOWN

JEFFERSON PARK

LA Skid Row: Statistics and Facts

The homeless population of Skid Row is now estimated at 8,000. Twenty years ago, most of them lived within a 20-block area. Now, the pavements of nearly 60 city blocks are occupied by tents and shabby constructions.

Approximately 72% of the total homeless population in the Los Angeles area remains unsheltered, much higher than the national average of 35%. As a result, this area contains roughly a quarter of all unsheltered homeless people in the nation.

Most homeless shelters and other facilities locate in the Skid Row area due to historical reasons, which led to high concentration of homeless population in downtown LA. In order to provide shelters for more, new shelters are needeed in locations other than the Skid Row.

LA county has the largest percentage of unsheltered homelessness in the US. Need for more beds stays high.

SKID ROW

LINCOLN HEIGHTS

BOYLE HEIGHTS

STATE

Most homeless people in LA is among working ages. Getting people back to self-sufficent can reduce homelessness.

MONTEREY PARK

Current Interim Housing LA City Map

Social welfare facilities are unevenly distributed across LA. Some homeless do not have access due to immobility.

WHAT CAUSES HOMELESSNESS

Homelessness is created by individual, societal reasons--each stage causes different issues and lead to various needs.

honeycomb structure

Bees live in highly organized, effecient communities. Every bees work hard, contribute to the greater good. This symbology is used to inspire the homeless to earn their living, start in the supportive shelter community.

robust structure

FORMATION

clear out original area

four-storey meets the surrounding building heights

elevate first floor for easy access & honey comb units as exterior walls

empty out cneter area

elevator, escalator, stairways

structural columns

irregular window openings

DESIGN DETAILS

The honeycomb structure is achieved by combining hundreds of individual living units. The non-residential areas, such as dining, meeting, educating, and socializing spaces spreads among the repetitions, having irregular window openings which indicate the functions and brings abundant light inside.

The lifted first floor makes the complex easier to access, and more welcoming for the neigborhood to provide leisure and career support for more than the current homeless ones. A central courtyard allows relation, also provide place for food giveaway events.