Selected Works Spring 2025
Selected Works Spring 2024
Selected Works Spring 2024
J. Livy Li
J. Livy Li
J. Livy Li
A
Circular Aquaeconomy | Fall 2024
Critics: Anupama Kundoo, Gavin Hogben
This project examines the codependencies of Versova koliwada and its surrounding mangrove swamp in which dense urbanity has been suffocating the mangroves, in turn driving out the fish for whom mangroves create a primary food chain and the fishermen who increasingly must rely on deep sea excursions. The mangrove, then, is a keystone species of both the local ecosystem and economy that needs to be protected. The project proposes both a multi-year rehabilitation campaign and a gateway to the mangroves. Drawing on the koliwada’s strong culinary culture, the project takes over an underutilized dock in north Versova to combine a communal culinary space with an educational facility complete with a boat repair station and a mangrove nursery.
Material Forest | Spring 2024
Critic: Amina Blacksher
Partner:
Qananii Tolera
This project is an urban design proposal for the Meadowlands in Secaucus, NJ with a focus on amphibiosity. We approached our analysis by considering humans, plants, and water as intertwining elements. By analyzing projected sea level rise and charting where plant types were, we came up with a proposal of construction and deconstruction. In our chosen site, we would start planting a forest of flood-resilient trees.
The scheme slowly relocates inhabitants on the western half of our site into more climate-resilient housing built into the marshes on the east, first using trees from the forest and then using the deconstructed homes, turning the site into a material forest both raw and repurposed.
123 Quinnipiac Street | Fall 2023
Critics: Andrei Harwell, Alan Plattus Team: Omar Martinez, Sombo Sisay, Yue Zeng
This project was done alongside Yale Law and School of Management students for Columbus House, a Connecticut-based nonprofit providing homeless services. Our clients wanted to replace a defunct emergency shelter in Wallingford, CT with a larger low-income housing project providing for their clients transitioning out of homelessness as well as the broader community.
We prioritize spaces that can be useful for clients while doubling as larger community gathering points. Our scheme proposes a shared exterior courtyard, intimate communal spaces, and public programs on the ground floor that serve not only the residents but the larger community in downtown Wallingford. Acknowledging the need for more family-sized transitional housing, the plan is designed with more studios and 1-bedrooms (so as to make the numbers competitive for LIHTC) that can be easily renovated into 2 or 3-bedroom units.
Checkerboard
Library | Fall 2023
Critic:
Abigail Chang
This project is an intervention of the Fair Haven Branch Library sits between a public school and grocery store. The community context shows demand for childcare, food security, and educational resources, three things that exist in situ. My project, then, aims to weave these three elements through the site, creating a mat “gallery district” of alternating exterior and interior spaces.
Using a grid derived from the existing library footprint, exterior spaces are typified into “crop rows”, “forest”, and “garden” while interior spaces are for learning, cooking, and eating. Brick is reused (and replicated) from the original building. By allowing spaces of human nurture and spaces of plant life surround each other, the project provides pockets of stillness; spaces in between time where garden and library alike serve as rooms in a larger enfilade. Zooming out to the neighborhood scale, the same one way one might stop by the “forest” to read after visiting the library or the communal kitchen after visiting the “crop rows”, community members can stop by the project after picking up their kids from school, or come by to cook with groceries from next door.
A House for Two Teachers | Spring 2023
Critics: Beka Sturges, Ming Thompson
Team:
Byron Cai, Jess Chen, Dan Kelly, Ilha Niohuru, Tony Wang
The Jim Vlock Building Project of 2023 sees us partnering with the Friends Center for Children’s housing initiative. This is a home for two families (single moms and their children) on a site zoned for a single-family dwelling; it will be the first of five on this larger parcel.
We believe strongly that although the parameters of this project necessitate a shared house, that each family should have a right to privacy and comfort to a degree that allows a separation between work and home. We’ve approached this proposal with a “hub and spoke” method where each family has a private wing with individual living spaces and differing views, joined together by a larger communal kitchen and lounge. As the gateway into a community to be built over the next few years, we’ve positioned our house as a low, inconspicuous building that serves almost as a wall along the community driveway.
Coastal Resilience | Fall 2024
Critic: Alan Plattus
Team: Blue Jo, Kurt Huckleberry, Stormy Hall
As part of the Envision Resilience Challenge, our team tackled the waterfront of Portland, Maine. We had a three-pronged approach: transportation, island development, and tackling the Maine State Pier.
Our research showed increasing sea level rise and king tide events. In the next ten years, king tides are expected to happen up to sixty times a year, which means that for two months of the year the ferry pier will be completely unusable for locals who live on the island and depend on the ferry system for their commutes.
To deal with that, we propose modifications to the pier, turning the currently unused Maine State Pier building into a seafood market with raised floor and accessible rooftop that accounts for floods. We also propose a softscape floodable park in what currently is a parking lot next to the water. In addition, we envision an expanded transportation network that stitches together existing ferries, buses, and trains systems under a singular payment system (the Lobster Card!), recentering the transportation onto the waterfront. Finally, Peaks Island can be further developed as a camp destination, supporting the existing lobstermen population and expanding tourism from just the downtown core to even the far side of Peaks Island.
Portland Metro Transit System
Explore Casco Bay with the lobster
