Ren's Portfolio 2013

Nine Ren Luo’s Portfolio

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INDEX

Ren Luo

Prologue

Birth day: 03/12/1985 Birth Place: China Email: luoren@vip.163.com

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Academic Flash-back: Greenpoint Art Institue(Mid-term proposal), GSAPP, Columbia University

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Voids as Solid (Greenpoint Art Institute) GSAPP, NewYork

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The Big Box GSAPP, New York

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The Megalith BArch, China

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Flash-back: Shadow’s Calibrator, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College

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Practice The Gap Lab.C. Architecture, Chongqing

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The Peace Screen AshtonPorter Architects (RIBA), London

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The Rotating Tower Lab.C. Architecture, Chongqing

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The Factory Vector Architects, Beijing

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Tu Lou METAMODE, London

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Supplementary Projects’ List

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Cover: Ruins of Jiaohe City, Turfan Basin, West China, photo by Ren Luo Back: Concrete Piece by Donald Judd, Marfa, Texas, photo by Ren Luo

Education: 2003-2008 Bachelor of Architecture (Five Years’) Chongqing University Faculty of Urban Planning and Architecture 2008-2009 Master of Architecture (AVATAR) University College London Bartlett School of Architecture 2011-2013 Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design(MSAAD) Columbia University GSAPP

Practice: 2007 Zhubo Design Group Co. LTD Shenzhen China 2009-2010 Ashton Porter Architects (RIBA) London United Kingdom 2010 Lab.C.Architecture Chongqing China 2010-2011 Vector Architects Beijing China 2012 Lab.C. Architecture (as studio vice-director) Chongqing China

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Prologue This will kill that.

- Victor Hugo, ‘Notre-Dame de Paris’, Chapter II. The legacy of Renaissance seems already been exhausted in the dawn of 19th century. The new Industrial Revolution undermined it and challenged architects’ stereotype. Yet a whole new age thus begun. Instead of hesitating around, Le Corbusier encouraged designers to hug this new wave. His manifesto has since became the very foundation of modern architecture, despite all those attacks, misreadings, distortion and scribble which happened on it. ‘This’ (books) did not really kill ‘that’ (architecture), quite on contrary, architecture has ever since been tightly connected with the thrive of publishing industry. By time, when Bauhaus started to change modern architecture, the Great Depression was on its height. Now, history seems circles back. A new crisis on architecture takes place at the very time of the Economic Melt-down. And this time it choose digital information technologies to be its new companion in the place of books. Compare to architecture, digital technologies are way too powerful in terms of social influence: ‘Occupied Wall Street’ and ‘Arabian Spring’ are best and latest events to proof this. It literally subverse human’s social behaviors- one achievement that Modernism architects really wished to get. Twitter and Facebook are piazzas of our time; urban spaces on the other hand, seem only as products of virtual world. Architecture chooses to digitalize itself as the strategy to respond. Now university students could easily design Gaudi-style buildings with a laptop. As the world goes virtual, so does architecture. As contemporary architectural designs are actually more like a productive water line, some might clam that this strategy does lead architecture into its new height and thrive even in this still lasting depression.

Being promoted by studio chief Doctor Chu Dongzhu and me, Lab.C. Talk is an irregularly scheduled open academic saloon.

It’s aim is to transform this professional design studio into an local exchange platform for ideas and theories. We hope that this event, sponsored by Lab.C.Architecture, could become a tradition which encourages studio members and outside participants engaging diverse perspectives in-and-outside architecture.

Hence beside architects, local intellectuals and artists are invited and welcomed to attend for lectures or conversations. So far, during the first half year of 2012, three events has been successfully held: my lecture under the title ‘A Methodology’ ; freeconversation regarding to Wang Shu’s winning of 2012 Pritzker Prize ; a local art critic was invited to have a speech on the topic of contemporary Chinese art history under title ‘The Great Leap Forward: art movement in 1985’. We expect in near future our concerns could extend to the fields of movies and cultural studies. The event itself, on the other hand, is a mechanism to stimulate this studio by linking it back to local context.

However, the crisis is lying inside this ‘prosperity’.

The inherent territory of this discipline is now being took away while architects are still intoxicated by architecture’s contribution to urban lives. Besides social networks mentioned above, electronic visual applicants- etc.

LED advertisement boards- are now more powerful in this ambitious Consumerism world. Robert Venturi once announced that architecture could be an advertisement board. Yet today it seems that advertisement is architecture, or to some extent, architecture is no more. The information itself, rather than the container of information as Vector Hugo’s book, is killing architecture by ranking urban spaces as second level of our reality. In the PIXAR animation sci-fi movie ‘WALL-E’, a scene portraits this possibility: human who being soaked in information turbo will not pay any attention to the world outside screens until having equipments’ malfunction. Even architecture itself went this way by broadcast itself in public mass medias. Nowadays some students are in the danger to hold the belief that reading magazines and websites are equal to that of visiting buildings on site. Selected photographs are taken as sufficient materials to criticize works of architecture. Thus the the rule of Perspective on architecture, which was ironically sabotaged by Modernism pioneers, is now resurrecting in a more secret way.

We have witnessed the world’s dramatic changes in last two decades: the economical prosperity (or bubbles) since nineteen-nineties and its massive melting down since the year of 2009. Architecture is now confronting double crises both culturally and economically. It is now the time to go back into the discipline searching for its origins.

It is now to recall its abstractions and put which in the sun light. The tangible qualities of materials and forms should be back to the center as designer’s concerns. Stereotypes regarding to urban interpretations should also be dumped and re-evaluated. It is vital to liberate the power of physical experiences instead of going total virtual.

On one hand architecture is indeed the respond to time, while a delicate distance should be kept to protect the discipline at the same time. The gap, which is generated within this distance, makes architecture emerging as a part of our reality:‘Sein’ as Martin Heidegger might put into words. (continues on page 6)

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Sections: Young Architect’s Forum 3.17. 2012 Southwest Nationality University Chengdu, Sichuan Province 3 China

Despite the fact that the booming has already lasted for thirty years, however, Chinese architects, on the other hand, just start to gain global attention in the very last few years. Since early 20th century, Chinese architects have been searching for ‘proper’ language to link modern architecture to Chinese tradition. The very first generation Chinese architects, who mostly accepted their education abroad, struggled to combine Chinese visual elements with western techniques. Since that, this almost Eclecticism approach effected Chinese architectural practice for more than half century. After the founding of Communist nation since 1949, Chinese architects stopped to adopt Western architectural ideas, turning to learn from Soviet Russian style. However, thirty years after the reopening of China, architects there have already became active part of the world’s architecture conversations, pushing Chinese contemporary architectural design to a whole new level. The event that Chinese architect Wang Shu won the 2012’s Pritzker Prize, though controversial as it is, will certainly be a mile stone in history. So what is contemporary Chinese architecture really looks like? How it comes to its current place and where it might navigate to? This research we carried on is to answer these questions and map all the important pinpoints in the development of Chinese modern architectural typologies and theories.

The research’s theoretical basis is Professor Kenneth Frampton’s course ‘World’s Architecture: Critical Regionalism’ in Columbia University. Sixteen students were chosen to be reorganized into eight teams in order to investigate eight different countries’ contemporary architectural histories in last twenty years. My team mate, Doctor Zhang Xiaochun from Tongji University in Shanghai and also as editor of ‘Time Architecture’, is an expert in Chinese modern architectural history since late nineteenth century. This enhanced our research to extend the view back to our target’s origins. The fruits of this monts’ investigation were a twelve thousands’ words essay and a three-hours’ oral presentation. They together portrait pictures of both local and foreign architect’s works in this country. The sophisticated relationships among these diverse style practices are exposed for possible further study. It is our honor that 2012 Pritzker Prize winner Wang Shu also attended our final presentation and joned our discuss with Professor Frampton.

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2012 Pritzker Prize Winner Wang Shu (middle) , Professor Kenneth Frampton (right) and me (left) at my presentation on contemporary Chinese architecture researchs 12.3. 2011 Columbia University 5

Robert Smithson’s in-door art piece ‘Non-site: Line of Wreckage’ explored the relationship of abstract and context by showing the viewers a glimpse of an industrial antiques. The artiest transported shattered concrete blocks from the site to gallery in a carefully manufactured metal ‘cage’. The ‘alien’ materials remind viewers of that their own presence in this gallery as well as the real site’s absence. The dramatic contrast between the randomness of those wrecked concrete pieces and the cage’s orthodoxy creates tension to render the emergences of time, space and materials. Donald Judd’s concrete volumes in the middle of Texas’ desert, in another way, express similar theme. Unlike Smithson who transported tangible world to virtual space, Judd threw abstraction into the reality. This strategy violates the usual rules to present a Minimalism art piece: always in a white and formless room. Yet this method, again, highlights the work’s existence along with its environment. The art works’ delicate ‘unfitness’ to its context gift abstractive characters to themselves while merging time and space into its presentation: a quality that architecture should have. Yet, at the same time, architecture might never be so as ‘pure’ as art works. For a architectural project is meant to insert deeply into complicated issues like economy, eco-preservation, even politics.

This fate determines the discipline’s evolvement with complexities and contradictions, as Robert Venturi pointed out. While understanding and accepting those above as inseparable parts in project, an architect is asked to surpass them as well. For the complexities itself is usually the enemy of abstraction: a ‘window’ is a functional component in terms of program; while for designers it is the mutation of the surfaces acting as virtual path between two spaces.

We architecture students were often too easy to be satisfied with academic events in universities. One who has any doubt about our schedule just need to take a glance at galore of posters in the loby of any architectural school. Yet is it enough for us to accept our education instead of discovering it? Is it possible that we ask ourselves questions rather than waiting for tutor’s offering? A group of students, under my efforts of union, were bored by gestures of waiting, and decided to make our own move. We wished to invite intellectuals whom we interested in come to school for lectures. Some of them were that far never on school’s official list of visiting guests. Besides, we also hope to hold more than one conversation among students of different years’ so that we could encourage them to join in and create our own academic saloon.

We invited six speakers in total for three lectures. There were not only architects, but also philosopher, architectural periodical chief editor, socialist and independent artist. Together their speechs dedicated perspectives that our school by far could not give us. The conflicts of these different disciplines brought students to the very frontier of architecture with other fields. With two other lectures (one was from students who were impact by their internship experiences; another was held at China’s acclaimed Sichuan Fine Art Institute as a free talk between two schools) these events really open a window between university and the streets of real world. The last but not the least, is our acts in academic behaviors. We believe this ‘Breaking Cocoon Operation’, as architect Feng Guochuan named, was ideologically important for all students in this faculty. It was expected to break school’s single-side supremacy on architectural academic behaviors and brought fresh air inside the system.

The portfolio here acts as a documentary device. As the its title has shown, the booklet itself is the ninth project beside other eight inside. It threads those designs with my exploration on topics mentioned in this prologue. Speaking in terms of both style and program, these projects are not really coherent with one another. But together they act as pinpoints to navigate in my past professional experiences. I do hope this portfolio could be an sufficient evidence to show my capacity on architectural designs and practices. Here I wish to thank all the studios I have worked in. I could not finish this booklet without their permissions to use pictures from those projects. I also wish to express my gratitude to my tutors and friends for their guidances as well as helps.

Ren Luo summer, 2012

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Inter-school forum between Chongqing University and Sichuan Fineart institute 2008 Chongqing 7 China

Academic

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Flash-back: Greenpoint Art Institue (Mid-term proposal) GSAPP, Columbia University

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Flash-back: Greenpoint Art Institue (Mid-term proposal) GSAPP, Columbia University

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VOIDS AS SOLID (Greenpoint Art Institute) Steven Holl & Garrick Ambrose 2011 FALL GSAPP Columbia University

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This studio’s project is composed by two phases:

first, materials’ experiments in first three weeks without acknowledging of building’s program; then architectural design based on selected site and conditions. The experiments here are not for searching certain constructing materials, nor merely as tools to shape some spectacle spaces. They are, to some extent, systematic methodologies to encourage architects break Stereotypes. The fruits of this process might not directly become the prototypes of the final architectural works, nevertheless stimulate ideas to move on, as catalyze in chemical reaction, which only influence yet never intervene. Architects have to read their works after finishing the research, in order to make conclusion inspiring the next step’s thinking. Without the need to consider program and any other technique problems, architects could put spatial experiences at the very center of their researches, which is, as the matter of fact, the core of this design studio.

Materials Experiments: In the very first place, plaster came into our views, a material which own splendid capability of form shaping, stability, as well as elegant visual effects in light. The beauty of plaster does not exclusively dwell on ridged geometries it shapes, but the possibility to transform into any nonlinear forms before its solidification. A waterproof fabrics is fixed inside the mould, shaping a cone-like space with one opening on its top. Plaster, after being poured into the mould, crush this ‘cone’ with the help from its weight and gravity. The tensions between these materials sculpture a cube which owns a nonlinear interior space. Light is saturated in this ‘hall’, diffusely reflected back and forth on these fluid-like surface, creating unexpected spatial experience. Then, we stretched our focus onto another target. This glass fiber cloth is soft and opaque before being processed. After being soaked by resin, it transforms into transparent and stable solid. This character gift glass fiber similar sculptural capability to that of plaster. Yet its lightness and transmittance distinguish it to the latter one. A cluster of this glass fiber ‘tower’ could shape a unique space where light penetrate through all objects while reflect surrounding images on them. A beauty of ambiguity is thus installed.

Two major summaries were made afterwards: (1) The two materials’ sensitivity to light create divisive visual effects. Plaster reflects light diffusively yet itself is opaque, while resin processed glass fiber is light transmitting and translucent; plaster is used to construct spaces under the methods of undercutting and carving, glass fiber on the other hand do it by being raised up as objects defining boundaries. In the end, we have two entirely different systems above, both of which are selfsustain and deformable. They will be examined further more so that they could be merged into the final design.

(2) The experiments uncovered the conflicts between orthogonal and diagonal systems. The first experiment create a diagonal mass inside an orthogonal geometry. The fabrics in the mould resist the invasion of the plaster by prevent it forming a complete cube, as the nonlinear diagonal entity defy the occupation of orthogonal forces. The tension that being created by this conflict stretched and crushed fabrics, undermine the system’s stability. The space, in the end, is outside the region of traditional architectural concepts. What will happen if we combine this narration with the glass fiber system? Could we merge a sculptural system with a carving one? Could a design own both features at the same time?

Architectural Design: The program is an art gallery at New York City’s Greenpoint. The community is now in the process of transforming into a residential and art district via an industrial relic. The new art institute should be more than a container for art works, but as a cultural center provoking local urban events. We realized that, right after the beginning, the control of circulation is crucial for this building. It is because on one hand circulation can be used to organize behaviors inside the gallery, and also could be the tool to introduce outdoor urban life into this public facility. Therefore the building is divided into two parts: orthogonal spaces as main exhibition rooms (stable, rational and simple), alone with the diagonal ones as circulations (dynamic, nonlinear and complicated)- a ‘solid’ of art and ‘voids’ for movement. They coincide the two systems in our experiments, making it possible to apply those experimental outcomes into architectural design. As the building’s main volume is a cube- the solid- with single side length of one hundred feet, we insert glass fiber cylinders- the voids- into it as the main circulation. Carrying natural light and visitors at the same time, these voids start from south entrance at ground floor, thrusting through all major exhibition spaces, ending up at rooftop. It is a caged ‘beast’ which break holes on the solid’s surfaces as entrances and balconies. An auditorium grows out from this complex, facing towards Manhattan Island for the spectacular views. A diamond shape oxidative metal facade contains this illuminating complex, keeping the building’s morphological intact as a cube in the day light- in another word, preserving it as the solid for art. After getting dark, the facade fades out visually, leaving the voids, which being illuminated, spiral up to the sky. The roles played by ‘voids’ and ‘solids’ are now inverted. Due to its independent nature, the circulation could still be in operation after the gallery closed. It makes this building being a twenty-four-hour extension of vertical urban territory. The switch of the two modes above allow viewers to re-read and misread the building, liberating the beauty of ambiguity and uncertainty.

Materials’ Experiment

The work was selected for archiving by Columbia Unibversity.

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Building Prototype Research

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View on Greenpoint Avenue (towards East River and Manhattan)

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View on West Street (main entrance)

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Second Floor

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Third Floor

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Forth Floor

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Second Floor

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Master plan

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Section B-B

Ground Floor plan

Section A-A

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THE BIG BOX Kersten Geers & Andrea Zanderigo & Bass Princen 2011 SUMMER GSAPP Columbia University

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This is the first in a series of investigations on architectural strategies for banal buildings of a significant scale. Today, a great number of buildings do not require an intricate development of the plan in order to be either socially viable or economically interesting. If the plan and its potential complexity cases its failure, it seems that as soon as the plan and complexity of its use turns irrelevant, the lever to argue for Architecture is most certainly gone.

The battle for architecture and it necessity is fought on the fields of housing and public building: there where the plan matters. Contrarily, a great part of the contemporary building production happens in the fringes of this universe. A great number of buildings are pragmatic clothing for a not too specifically defined content. In many cases any attempt to make architecture, starting from the sheer pragmatism of this content becomes wishful thinking.

Still, when the scale of the building appears significant in relation to its context, the stakes are too high to let go. Architecture in there instances can not be too ambitious, but has to be smart. It can not be too sophisticated, but it has to be intelligent. It should not ever attempt to be a complete architecture, but it should position itself on the one hand servant to the content it does not grasp, still it should be fundamental enough not to be overlooked, to make sense on its own right. More important however, is the question of what should be its frame of reference, what should be its ambition. What are the defining principles of the big box?

In the early nineteen seventies, and in the better part of the second phase of his architectural production, Robert Venturi experimented with a set of graphical principles disguised as the pragmatic answer to the phenomenology of been seen (and recognized). Despite the (pop art inspired) pseudo irony, and games of representation, many of the strategies and implicit principles still seem valuable. This is not surprise, as in the continuation of architecture of complexity and contradiction, the notion of continuation, or (to a certain extent) architecture detached from its function, is the key. Architecture without content uses the function or content of a certain building as the alibi for its existence. Function/ content is the catalyst but not its quintessence. Venturi’s categorization of ‘boxes’ in ducks and decorated sheds appears old fashioned in our over wired society where context and address is destined

by GPS and webspace. More disturbingly, it makes an unnecessary connection between the container and the contained.

Fascinatingly, in parts of his own production (e.g. Lewis Thomas laboratories) we get a glimpse of what is possible when this all too forced argument is put aside: we see a building in search of principles that do not have to communicate- an exercise in the architecture of the perimeter.

Architecture without content starts here and wants to investigate the possible architectural strategies left to us when we accept the limits of our field of operation. This pragmatic architecture is not a new architecture and probably finds its roots both in Europe architecture before orthodox functionalism, (sheds, halls and palaces) and in the pragmatic architecture of the big scale container building as developed in the realm of North American Corporate buildings in the sixties and seventies. In this first installment, the latter is the focus. In an attempt to distill possible strategies for architecture of the box, we looked briefly at the architecture of corporate envelopes. The studio investigated the possibility for a vocabulary to be used for big boxes in the city. The projects are proposals for specific machines for the even covered field. They are presented as portraits of possible buildings. Incomplete as it is, it shows a catalogue of potential tools, possible strategies, to deal with the indifference, scale, economy and pragmatism of the big box.

Even though we attempt to accumulate formal knowledge through trail and error only, this series can not hide behind indifference. Each of the projects needs to be an exercise in economy of means, but more importantly a search for a valid set of principles. If the success of the project cannot be evaluated in a mastered complexity, economy of the plan or a promenade of any kind, how can we judge its relevance? Then again, how do we judge the pyramids, or the success of a palazzo? Scale cannot be the only criterium.

- Kersten Geers, 2011 The work was selected for archiving by Columbia Unibversity.

IBM Pilot Head Office, Portsmouth, UK, Norman Foster 32

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Auto Sale, Queens, New York, Ren Luo North View 34

Auto Sale, Queens, New York, Ren Luo South View 35

THE MEGALITH 2007 SPRING BArch COURSE Chongqing University

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In his work ‘Holzwege’, Martin Heidegger

explores the relationships among architecture, the earth and the air. Being rendered by the design of its structure and form, the building, to Heidegger’s perspective, reveals the solidness of the earth beneath it as well as the lightness of the air around it by translating its own heaviness into visual languages. It’s travertines, at the same time, make light presence by reflecting it into human eyes. Heidegger pointed out that the essence of art works is to uncover to human the presence of both itself and the world. But what if, instead of standing on an empty ground as the temple mentioned above, the building is drown by irritated consumers and countless commercial advertisement boards, then how is it possible for one building to emerge? The original cultural center, which stood at this site, was totally overwhelmed by its environment, with its ground floor lending to dressing stores and KFC. Culture in this downtown area, if any, is Consumerism itself. Being applied by the former administrators of this public facility, the strategy, which asked the facility to submit its Cynicism position to the city, didi not help. Cultural and art events nowadays are confront with the threat to become components of kitsch aesthetics. They have to be able to keep distance from the mainstream opinions for their own safety, while still interact with them. This design is a research to this issue: is it possible, again, that one building could approach such position with its form and spaces?

The building, unlike commercial advertisement boards floating around, is a solid ‘rock’. It’s character of abstraction differ it from the environment, while revealing it. The tranquil geometry is an oasis, an asylum for fragile non-commercial art events. With all the auditoriums in its central area, the building could liberate circulations in the outer ring, using which to carve a transparent tube. As audiences walk up alone, the building uncover its own interior secret to the city. Visual connection between events inside and outside is hence established, yet they are still separated by the tangible form of the building. A grand stairway in front of the building, as a strategy to digest the height change of the site, thrust into the building, becoming an indoor landscape which provides opportunity to introduce urban events into this temple of art as well. The building thus keeps this delicate distance from its cultural environment: playful and determined at the same time.

Section Perspective (The yellow parts stand for service spaces)

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View at west side

Current site condition

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First Floor (gym, box office, shop)

Emergency Corridor

Second Floor (cinema auditoriums, cafe)

300 seats Theatre Auditorium

Observation Deck

Cinema Auditorium

Forth Floor (rehearse room, sky deck) Main Entrance

Box Office

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Flash-back: Shadow Cllibrator 42 Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London

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Practice

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THE GAP Cruise Terminal Chongqing, China

Ren Luo LAB.C. Architecture 2012 On Going 46

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In the Three Gorges area, becoming ‘Qian Fu’ was once very common career choice for local young men. The job requires people forming group to pull boats upstream with ropes on their shoulders. For centuries’ time this had been the best way to guarantee the smooth of Yangtze River’s waterway transportation, before steam power ship was introduced. After such long time spam, rocks by riverside are carved by Qian Fu’s ropes into stunning shapes. These so-called ‘Qian Fu Rocks’ are therefore evidences of human power and symbols of strength in local culture. This powerful image is extracted by us and fused into the design as well.

Yangtze River has

been considered as the aorta of Chinese inland waterway transportation. Citys in the river basin area, including Shanghai, generate almost half this country’s wealth, while inhabiting half of its population.

However, the fierce competitions being revoked by new traffic methods such as airlines, highways as well as the latest rival high speed trains, eventually kill waterway passenger transport business. Luckely playing as the departure point of Three Gorges’ tour, Chongqing becomes one of the few cities along this river which still needs new terminal complex, in order to house its own ambition in the business: providing the most luxuries experiences on 150 meter’s long five-star cruises.

View of the northern facade (riverside)

The idea is to transform this traffic facility into both an urban gateway and a playground. The ‘gap’ of the box contains a undulant landscape within, which eventually acts as a rised urban platform for broader views and various behaviors. Cruise passengers could access to this open space after security check and before boarding. By doing this, the building distinguishes itself from those with already standardized spacial experiences nowadays. A organic shaped volume is erected on the south side, as vertical traffic tunnel well as structural mainstay. The covering red waved penetrated metal boards turn the gap into a theatric Richard Serra style sculpture park after sunset.

The strong differences between the white orthogonal box and the red diagonal void make this building an un-missable landmark.Mean while, our co-operator- a nation-owned harbor design institution- provides their solution to Yangtze River’s dramatic annual water level changes. They propose a moveable escalator system as the pathway to link the terminal building and the pontoons. In order to satisfy this unique technology, architects have to design a massive concrete box inside the building which stores all escalators within during flooding season. Hence the whole complex is composed by two distinct parts: an immovable terminal building and a moveable boarding system which suits any changes from the irritated river.

Master Plan

(providing by Chongqing Survey & Design Institute) The escalators in their unfolding statues

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The escalators in their folding statues

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View of the ‘Gap’

Richard Serra’s work at Dia Beacon, New York

View of the southern facade (main entrance from the city)

The Ground Floor Plan (left) The Second Floor Plan (right low) The Third Floor Plan (right up)

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THE PEACE SCREEN Office New York, USA

Andrew Porter, Abigail Ashton, Ren Luo Ashton Porter Architects (RIBA) 2009 Honorable Mention 52

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A shabby three-floor building stands at the cross of New York city’s Lafayette Street and Bleecker Street. Despite its shapelessness, the building has a sound nick name: Peace Pentagon. It was, in nineteen sixties when anti-war protests swiped all over United States, the very operation center of peace movement in this country. Several organizations, which planned some of the most important protest march in New York during those days, established their commander bases in the offices of this tiny property. Even today, the building is still housing handful peace or charity organizations. Yet the building’s contemporary conditions could not afford their operations very well.

Therefore an expansion plan was on schedule. But the functional utility is not the only primary concern here. As the age of Hippies had passed away, peace movement gained public attention no more. Peace organizations’ efforts on this issue are overlooked and forgotten. The new building has to be a new place to remind public about this fact, and re-introduce these social groups back to the city.

The program by the client, as what we proposed, requires to expand office space into four floors and leave the ground floor for rent. The outer skin of this building cantilevers from the main volume, forming a in-between space containing a circulation through all floors: from the auditorium in B1 floor to the sky bar on the rooftop. This circulation works not only as a transport system, but also (even most of all) as a gallery to introduce peace movement history to public visitors. As when visitors walk up, montages come back and forth between peace movement’s past (recorded on those posters and photos which are exhibited on the glass curtain) and now (the working scene behind the transparent glass wall). In the end, they have a nice view of New York’s streets after getting to the roof. The whole building, in a way, is a living showcase of peace movement, inviting the city come inside. The outer skin itself comprises of vertical louvers. Each louver is angled according to particular geometry defined by various locations of the site. When being approached from the Lafayette Street, the skin seems totally transparent, allowing visual penetration into office spaces; while being seen from Bleecker Street, the building is a solid metal volume, preventing visual connections between in and out. This unique experience, whose effects depends on the directions and speed of one’s movement, gift this building a beauty of ambiguity, interacting with its urban environment. The material of the skin comes from Tucson of Arizona, where countless B-52 aircraft are cut into pieces for sale after a treatment with former USSR in Cold War. We propose to keep these material as the color it was so that, the skin itself clearly evokes people’s memories about the famous war machine. The metaphor becomes clear and ironic when the dead bodies of the powerful bombers accommodate peace movements inside. The outer skin becomes the second layer screen to raise public attention to wars, by being a living 54 monument in the heart of New York.

View from west of Bleecker Street

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Current Building

View from west of Lafayette Street

Site Plan

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THE ROTATING TOWER Office Chongqing, China

Dongzhu Chu, Ren Luo LAB.C. Architecture 2012 On Going 58

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The 146 meter-tall office tower is located at central Chongqing, a metropolis with more than seven million urban residences in southwest China. However the location does not really gift this project that many advantages. The site is separated from downtown by one busy single driveway, which blocks people in central commercial area away from the site. Besides, high-dense urban environment is another drawback for this project, obstructing visual contacts between the future building and the rest of the city. Rigorous local building codes, narrow site area, as well as the client’s restrict budget control make this project even more difficult than usual. Architectural design have to be a strategy to answer all above, while still retains its abstraction and simplicity.

After studying its urban conditions, we divide the tower into four parts according to various visual requirements on different height. Then they are rotated towards diverse directions so that each part could share its best possible view, instead of being blocked by surrounding buildings.

The rotating also allows the building twist its main facade- a glass curtain- against the central commercial area. This gesture gives the project a positive attitude regarding to its relationship with the city.

The last, not the least, is that these transformations produce several open platforms on different heights, expanding urban space into vertical direction while elevating the building’s spatial qualities at the same time. Hence the project becomes a installment to activate urban behaviors in this congest urban area, introducing street events into the monotonous skyscraper spaces. By restricting the use of glass curtain skin and guaranteeing the simplicity of the structure, we control the building’s building budget to meet client’s requirements. In the end the design changed the developers’ prejudges toward this project, itself becoming their target for the future marketing.

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View from downtown area (east)

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Master Plan

Standard plan of 5th-13th floors

Standard plan of 14th-17th floors

Sky Bar on 33rd floor

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Section

View from west

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THE FACTORY Urban Complex Wuhan, China

Gong Dong, Chien-Ho Hsu Vector Architects 2011 Under Construction 64

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Photos of the construction site in 2012 View from south, includes one super tall office tower

The metropolis Wuhan in central China decided to build itself a whole new city, in order to support its government’s ambitious development project on electronic production industry. The new city, named literally as the ‘Future City’, will be a gigantic factory with R&D facilities, production water lines, and all levels of residential buildings for people from high-end CEO to ordinary workers. Vector Architecture won the competition and was put in charge to make more specific urban design under the main planning proposal earlier. The part I took part in is the center piece of the whole town, including nine office towers (one of which is the tallest in the whole project), one hotel, and shopping center to serve the town as its commercial center.The idea is to hang all major architectural volumes overhead, leaving the ground for pedestrian. The first two floors’ volumes are all small and easy to approach while upper ones function as large spaces for shopping areas. Expected open platforms appears on different height, together they merge into a street in the air. The project is now under construction.

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Street view, the close one is the super tall office tower

South elevation

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TU LOU Museum Guangdong Province, China

Christine Hawley, Andrew Porter, Abigail Ashton METAMODE 2009 1st Prize winner 70

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Tu Lou in Fujian Province, southeastern China. Each building usually houses a Hakka clan. It contains independent family apartment rooms on its ‘ring’. All corridors as well as public spaces are in the inner circle. A temple for ancestors usually stands at the very center of the whole structure. It might has one square for ceremonies and festivals.

As one of the biggest colonies of Hakka people in China,

Heyuan city decided to build a museum to memorize and exhibit Hakka history. METAMODE won the competition of designing the new city park including a urban planning exhibition center, municipal library and the museum. The form of this building takes reference from Tu Lou (‘earth building’), which is the iconic vernacular architecture of Hakka people. A Tu Lou was built to accommodate one Hakka clan, with heavy exterior walls to prevent outside intruders while keeping interior space totally open to family members. This unique spatial arrangement coincidences modern museum’s requirements, for the exhibition spaces of which are usually isolated from outside world due to the reason of selections’ protection and tourists’ interests. An atrium stretches from the ground floor to rooftop, provides a open space inside, allowing fresh air and natural light entering into the center of building. In this very space, one circulation climbs up to link all floors and create a ‘story line’ leading visitors switch their perspectives between the dim gallery in-door and bright out-door spaces. Outside the main volume is a facade made by penetrated metal board, with diverse scales windows on it. Each one of these windows is facing a certain direction of Hakka colony in the world, with its scale indicating the size of population. This makes the museum becoming the very visual center of Hakka people, emphasizing Heyuan as one important Hakka city in southern China. Although won the first prize after two rounds competition, the project was never being build due to political as well as finical reasons.

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Staircase & Elevators

Rooftop

2nd Floor

1st Floor

Ground Floor and Entrance Terrace

Lower Terrace

Basement

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Vanke’s Dongli Island commercial facilities Tianjin China 2011 Chien-Ho Hsu, Ren Luo Vector Architects

Planning and conceptual architectural design for Southern Sichuan Province Infant Normal School Longchang County, Sichuan Province China 2012 Dongzhu Chu, Ren Luo Lab.C. Architecture

Exhibition Complex for Yuxi Urban Planning Bureau Yuxi, Yunnan Province China 2012 Dongzhu Chu, Ren Luo Lab.C. Architecture

Planning of Shenzhen Logistic Center for Agricultural Products Shenzhen, Guangdong Province China 2007 Guochuan Feng Zhubo Design Group CO., LTD

Maowen Industrial Park Ma’anshan, Anhui Province China 2007 Guochuan Feng, Ren Luo Zhubo Design Group CO., LTD

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