A new form of civic space that integrates the use of biodegradable, printed sand, designed to accelerate the effects of weathering and environmental enmeshment in the built environment. Usually, these effects happen slowly relative to human perception and are, therefore, rarely appreciated. Designing these effects to happen more quickly might in terms, allow the building inhabitants to more frequently thinking about the interconnectedness of our building with their environment and broader ideas of ecology.
Creating ‘permanent’ brick structural walls that host panels, capping stones, and areas of 3d printed stone. These areas are slopped to create slow water run-off so that it neither pools nor flows too quickly down. It traps seeds in its many ridges blown by the prevailing wind to create non-determinate plant growth.
These printed areas are to the north of the building. This is so the vegetation does not burn in the sun, nor does any water evaporate too quickly.
It begins to imagine how we might integrate biomaterials into our built environment, imagining them as degrading and being replaced.
It creates new biospatial conditions where, through accelerating weathering, we make these effects visible to humans, creating potential moments of consciousness of ecological thought.
Using Houdini to creates new biospatial conditions where, through accelerating weathering, we make these effects visible to humans, creating potential moments of consciousness of ecological thought
■ Site Impressions
■ Structural Topology of Site Remains T ZONE
The Bologana building shows the oldest surviving structures on the site, and the cornerstones on the site serve as point foundations to help restore the former buildings.
GRID SIZE: 24'5 X 24'5
GRID SIZE: 6'1 X6'1
■ Generation Sequence
Enduring Structure
Hierachy Division
The environmental accelerators surround you.
They can be roofs, they can be walls, they can spontaneously form a space and you can observe how nature shapes architecture.
These printed areas are to the north of the building. This is so the vegetation does not burn in the sun, nor does any water evaporate too quickly.
The brick is arranged to create high walls to the south to create solar shading across the site.
It begins to imagine how we might integrate biomaterials into our built
built environment, imagining them as degrading and being replaced.
Self-Sustaining Micro Ecological Island
Island Planning
Spring2024
Critic:MarionWeiss_ARCH704
Location:GovernorsIsland,NY
Team:WeiWang,SiyuGao
It is trying to create Artificial Climates based on the Agile Conservatory, toward a new botanic infrastructure to address rising temperatures and worsening weather events.
The legacy of conservatories as cultural destinations showcasing botanical marvels is at a critical juncture. With rising temperatures and worsening weather events, climate-adaptive transparent structures are evolving into fully living and breathing systems that passively regulate indoor climates, significantly enhancing their relevance to plant research. The urgency of botanical studies related to climate change has never been more pressing.
The goal is to create a new "Conservatory and Climate Center" that combines elements of a cultural conservatory and a climate laboratory. This center will not only expand research on weather-sensitive collections but also serve as a retreat and research hub for workshops and conferences on climate change and botanic life.
Located next to the emerging climate center on the eastern side of Governors Island, the conservatory research center will become a landmark destination. Accessible only by boat and ferry, it has the potential to establish a resilient island edge and test new architectural designs at the water's edge, addressing contemporary risks such as rising water levels.
The unique cap and intricate radial gills exemplify structural efficiency and aesthetic elegance. Additionally, its tendency to grow in clusters suggests interesting possibilities for composition and spatial organization.
The Oosterschelde Barrier
Focus on its massive scale, modular composition, integration of movable gates, and the balance between human intervention and natural processes. Extract the structural lines and architectural language from the dam.
Chanterelle mushrooms
Governor Island
Governors Island was primarily used for military purposes until the 20th century, with an expansion in 1910.
Divide
The island was split into two parts: one for public use with parks and public conservatories, and the other as a private island for botanical research. A new waterway was opened, creating new transportation options.
Governor Island
In 2016, Governors Island completed the construction of a new park called "The Hills," enhancing its recreational offerings and attracting more visitors.
The materials excavated from digging the waterway will be reused to create new hills, in preparation for rising future sea levels.
Future conservatories' agile structures can be tuned to adapt to temperature, humidity, sunlight levels, and other temporal environmental factors.
To cater to the diverse climate zones within the greenhouse, a strategic division into three distinct forms has been implemented.
Longwood Gardens
Elevation Zones
■ Self-sustaining circulatory mechanisms on islands
Water System PROGRAM ANALYSIS
Integrate
Type A
The herbaceous plants are cultivated using a hanging method, with the roof's cap being adjustable to rotate based on the sunlight requirements of the plants inside the greenhouse. Rainwater collection systems are distributed along the eaves and the central roof, with the collected rainwater flowing into the greenhouse through pipelines.
Type B
The herbaceous plants are cultivated using soil-based methods, with a stable roof. High-transparency glass is used to ensure an ample supply of natural light. The primary focus is on cultivating herbaceous plants that are native to the local climate. The greenhouse is equipped with a rainwater collection system.
Type C
The herbaceous plants are grown hydroponically, with the structure able to switch between open and closed states. Each arm has a cylindrical hydroponic container and a solar panel. This conversion depends on temperature variations as well as the angle of sunlight and can be used for algal nocturnal luminescence demonstrations.
Type A+B+C underground research center
Just as Chanterelle mushrooms form clusters in their natural environment, the individual modular greenhouses will be arranged in groups across the island, creating a cohesive and efficient research ecosystem. Each greenhouse unit will offer a unique space for researchers to conduct experiments, study soil properties, and receive materials for their studies. This modular approach not only optimizes space but also encourages collaboration and knowledge sharing among researchers, fostering a dynamic and productive research environment.
The bridge serves as the vital link between the public and private islands situated in the northern and southern parts. It stands as the exclusive route, other than by boat, connecting the public areas to the research island, providing a means to control visitor access effectively. Additionally, the bridge's connection to the dam's walkway area offers visitors breathtaking views of the greenhouse and coastline, enhancing their experience with the serene beauty of the surroundings.
BUFFERED SANCTUARY
Urban Housing
Fall 2022
Critic:KristinaManis_ARCH601
Location:30FlatbushAvenue,Brooklyn,NY
Individual Work
The harsh concrete triangle of the site is overwhelmed by the complex intersections around it, making it difficult for people to stay. In contrast, there are several 'buffers' around the site that provide unique 'quiet' spaces, which can envelop the resting crowd.
My project strives to provide buffers that create sanctuary-style housing amidst the harsh chaos of this site. These buffers are spatially and hierarchically interspersed throughout the site, providing a soft and comfortable environment, especially for children who are sensitive to their surroundings.
By analyzing the various existing buffers around the site and testing materials with buffering effects, I established different categories of buffers to redefine the relationship between the programmatic elements of the building.
The buffer system takes its morphological inspiration from the intersections around the site that separate and connect different spatial parts of the building. It provides a comfortable rhythm for circulation throughout the site. It continues to extend different forms of buffer bubbles to guarantee people's stay, while transforming into a flexible buffer layer to intersperse and wrap the units and the whole building at different scales. The interior and exterior are integrated with the buffer system.
■ Buffer System
Share Balcony Entrance
Balcony Entrance
Intersection Buffer Layer b Out Hang Unit Woven panels
Intersection Buffer Layer Out Hang Unit Woven panels
The "New Theater" design, inspired by the film "Birdman", seeks to embrace the complex dynamism and authenticity of theatrical arts. A pivotal element of our vision is the use of glass tubes with mass timbers CLT as a primary building material. This choice reflects the project's themes of transparency, interconnectedness, and multifaceted experiences.
The glass tubes, akin to the continuous, meandering circulation in the theater, serve as a visual and spatial conduit, connecting spaces and people, while revealing the theater's inner workings to the city. Like the camera in "Birdman", these transparent structures invite public engagement, offering glimpses into the theater's off-stage activities and the intricacies of performance creation. The inherent fluidity of the glass tube design also facilitates the seamless integration of public and private spaces, resonating with the project's objective of exploring new cultural and spatial alignments in urban architecture. In essence, the glass tubes and CLT system become a medium for embodying and materializing the dynamic creativity both on and off the stage.
Like the unblinking eye of dividing yet inviting. Through secrets of artistry to those
Typical Floor Assembly
Typical Stepping Seating Assembly
Typical Wood Facade Panel Assembly
Typical Stepping Seating Assembly
Glass Tube Facade Assembly
Ground Floor Assembly
Ground Floor Assembly
of Birdman's camera, the theater's soul is sheathed in glass — transparent barriers that meander, Through these lucid walls, the offstage ballet of creation and complexity unfolds, whispering those who wander close, blending partition with open arms to the unfolding spectacle within.
DORMANT VIGOUR
CallowhillMarketplace
Spring2022
Critic:AnnetteFierro_ARCH502
Location:Callowhill,Philadephia,PA
Individual Work
As the sunlight flows through the site over time, it always casts an eternal shadow under the viaduct. Approaching these shadows, darkness, coldness, dampness and danger come to the fore. In these shadows, plants and garbage lushly twist with each other occupying the site. Some spores are just attached, some are growing vigorously and taking root, some are decomposing the trunk of the tree, and some are entering the decay stage.
Old things are forgotten here and gradually decay, but new natural forces decompose, climb and penetrate in these things in a never-ending life cycle. If there is any energy lying dormant in the darkness of silence waiting for a moment to explode and sweep away. When you listen carefully, it is as if the mushrooms are stretching and breathing freely after a night of rain. In the interweaving of night and dawn, the mushrooms multiply, working to reproduce both in darkness and in light as they, "voiceless," "inherit the earth."
In the damp shadowed zone of the site, which is poised to grow, a wildly growing marketplace fantasy is born. It has a cyclical vitality in all dimensions. Some parts carry out sensitive ingredients through precise steps and will, underground, grow as roots protected by humidity and shadows. Some parts are like shelf mushrooms interspersed throughout the viaduct, intertwined with the vitality of natural growth and shopping atmosphere. Some parts carry the gathering carnival and spore spreading stage. The leaf collection, composting area and the spore collection area are both decay and a renewal circle.
The project is about cycles of time, where the cultivation of mushrooms acts as metaphor but also literal agent to capture and hyperbolize agents of nature on our site.
■ Element Exchange Prototype A
■ Element Exchange Prototype B
■ Callowhill Information Collage
1FACTOR
2FACTORS OVERLAPE
4FACTORS OVERLAPE
4FACTORS OVERLAPE + UNDER VIADUCT
3FACTORS OVERLAPE
Collage — a new translation of the environment around the callowhill community viaduct expressed by four influencing factors
Factors: 1.Shadow 2.Humidity
3.Plants 4.Cold spots
Exchange — The rules of different exchange archetypes reshape the properties and communication of goods and agents within the site
The second floor of the supermarket already receives sunlight from the roof skylight, allowing people to walk through the Viaduct Park, the dispersed vending units and picking zones add to the experience of being in an organic, self-circulating supermarket, and the openings in the roof allow for the incorporation of the different parts of the Philadelphia landscape that surrounds the Viaduct.
■ LEVEL 2
Entrance 01 Lobby 02
Planting Monomers 03
Vendor monomers 04
Water storage Canopy 05
Water distribution channels 06
Viaduct Garden 07 purification area 08
Visitor picking area 09
Processing and baling area 10
Restaurant 11
Market modular draws water from the roof — the dual identity of natural agent and commodity agent is transformed
■ LEVEL 1
The first floor of the supermarket is covered by a canopy, and under the ample shade created by the roof, mainly planted with clusters of monoliths. Customers enter the entire semiopen mall through the entrance pool, and are able to feel how each functional area of the mall forms a self-circulating system.
OVER AND UNDER
Extension for The Penn Museum
Fall 2021
Critic:RyanPalider_ARCH501
Location:PMA,Philadephia,PA
Individual Work
Museums are institution that seek to fosters an open exchange of information and ideas with the public. The traditional physical expression of these institutions arelimited in the ways in which they can foster an open interaction between the museum and public space.
“Over and under” seeks to rethink the ways a museum engages with and shapes public space. This is done by interweaving a series of roofs with three “bridges” that filters visitors through the building and links them to the river beyond. The three bridges act a hub that moves people through the building and the site while simultaneously allowing the many spaces of the museum to flow under, through and around the “bridges” like the Schuylkillriver flows beneath the many bridges of Philadelphia.
To produce a more ambiguous relationship between interior-v-exterior and gallery spacev-public space a porous system of walls, columns, and glass are used to allows one space dissolve into another. By integrating these space making devices with the oversized roofs and “bridges “Over and under” creates a museum like no other. A fluid and open system with a free and comfortable atmosphere, that encourages public engagement
ON THE LINE
Critic:RyanPalider_ARCH501
Location:MeyersonHall,Philadephia,PA
Team:MingChen,JieYang,MaxwellLent,SiyuGao
Individualpart:allthefabricationandcontanier4
The pavilion can be thought of as an analytique in three dimensions. This homogenity is achieved by the careful wrapping of a continuous line through space, which results in a smooth flow surface to edge, interior to the exterior.
In this spatial weave, there are certain instances where the elements pull away to reveal hidden spaces, courtyards or alcoves. This allows for the obsever to engage in multiple ways, inviting them to crawl, crouch, lean on or sit against the pieces. Moreover, this weaving of elements informs an implied grid thatasserts itself as the line-system tackles the ground-instead of just disappearing into it, the lines hit the ground plane and strech out beyound the bounds of the pailion. The two systems- the tectonic and the projectivecompete againston another for prominence in the visual fabric,each attempting to obscure the otherand intentionally providing mis-readings of depth and figure-ground relationships.
This project reimagines the unrealized architectural legacy of the "Hotel Sphinx," blending Elia Zenghelis and Eleni Gigantes's bold 1989 competition entry with modern Virtual Reality (VR) technology. Leveraging the Unity game engine and Meta Quest 2 platform, we create an artistic aesthetic space characterized by oil-paintlike colors and rich, layered textures. that allows users to actively interact with the virtual space. This experience brings to life the grandeur of the original vision, transforming it into a multi-sensory exploration of urban and natural coexistence.
The VR experience integrates interaction design scripts in C#, audio, and visual effects, enhancing the immersive encounter with dynamic soundscapes and visually striking environments inspired by Zoe Zenghelis’s artistic theories. Each layer of interaction— whether through sound, light, or user-triggered events—evokes the project's vibrancy and grandeur, offering users a firsthand connection to its architectural scale and materiality.
The project also explores advanced storytelling and data visualization techniques within Unity, presenting the narrative of the Hotel Sphinx as a cinematic journey. Spaces unfold sequentially, leading to a crescendo at the Head, the crown jewel of the design. By merging modern technology with sustainability principles and artistic innovation, the Hotel Sphinx invites users to reimagine their relationship with city, nature, and architecture through a fully immersive virtual experience.
Elevator
The Center for the Human Family
Remixed Reality
Founder: Heidi Hardin
Role:ArchitecturalDrafter/RendererVolunteeratThinkRound, Inc.
Location: SanFrancisco,CA
Think Round, Inc. was founded in 2004 by Heidi Hardin to address social and environmental challenges in San Francisco’s underserved Southeast Sector, including educational inequality, lack of community cohesion, and environmental neglect.
The project employs collaborative design methods, integrating multimedia art installations, environmental education, and community engagement to foster cultural understanding, personal transformation, and environmental stewardship.
Key steps include developing The Human Family Tree/A Walk Through Paradise, an immersive multimedia installation combining painting, music, and storytelling to celebrate shared human experiences; establishing Think Round Fine Arts as a gallery for community-driven exhibitions and workshops; and creating interactive programs focused on healing, sustainability, and inclusivity.
The final spatial effects feature vibrant, sensory-rich environments that encourage reflection, dialogue, and connection through sound, light, and cultural narratives. These spaces successfully address the initial problems by empowering individuals and communities to explore their identities, heal collectively, and contribute to sustainable living, embodying Think Round’s ethos: “Earth is home. Humans are family.
Self Guided Tour
End Back to Lobby
Screen Room VR Station
Healing Room
Immersive Exhibition Interactive Feature Garden Bar
DEPLOYABLE STRUCTURE
Spring2023
Critic:MohamadAlKhayer_ARCH602
Location:PMA,Philadephia,PA
GroupWork
The inspiration for the final project comes from observing the deployable structure hanging in the lobby. We found that all of the hanging structures are like exquisite sculptures, but they do not interact with the occupied space or the people in the space. Therefore, based on these considerations, the overall form of our project is composed of polygons and several well shaped deployable structures, especially at the bottom of the structure, where different shaped well shaped structures unfold in different directions to psychologically form a gathering space with virtual boundaries. It is like become the part of interior ceiling design, where people gather below it, when they look up they can see different forms of centripetal geometric patterns that change as the deployable structure unfolds and contracts.
Today, we want to create a place with uniqueness, a mixed-use area that experience. Echoing people's needs, being locally relevant and engaging. Create proposal is much like a "WAKA" which is a "sailing ship" that brings people together
■ Site Context
■ Facade Detail
■ Spatial Organization
■ Program Processing
Vessel of Sylvia Park
July2020-Oct2020
SylviaPark
matches the place and the population that uses it to provide a human Create places that transcend the local community in a meaningful way. My together for common goals, trade, communication, navigation and occupation.
Processing
■ Render
■ Hand Drawing
floor plan
Ground
HOLLY COURT
June2023-July2023
Location:Woodlifflake,NewJersey,US
This residential remodeling project focuses on enhancing the family's connection to the outdoors while preserving the original layout of their Woodcliff Lake home. The main feature is the addition of a semi-open outdoor deck connected to the living room. This new deck allows the family to enjoy beautiful views and natural light from both inside and outside the home, ensuring that the home's character is maintained while introducing new functional outdoor space.
