UCL_MARCH_APPLICATION_SUYANGMENG

SUYANG MENG

Feb. 2019 - Mar. 2022

Apply for MArch Architectural Design [TMHARCSDES01], The Bartlett School of Architecture

Bachelor of Design in Architecture, University of Sydney,

Design for 'Leftovers'

01

The Spears to Hooks

Memorial Fishing Center for Euro Women Fall 2021|Individual work|Barangaroo, Sydney

02

“The place had been built and occupied may be and may eventually be the leftover.”

The Mutation Field

hidden door on the side of the bridge foot, and I was shocked by the unconscious space of the large infrastructure, which is hardly considered a place for living, as it is almost a ‘trash space’ with noise, traffic and even can not be regarded as a house. After that day, I discovered more and more activities taking places, such as farmers with their small trucks selling fresh vegetables, old people with portable chess tables playing chess, and homeless people brushing teethes outside their “bridge foot house.”

“The place had been built and occupied may be and may eventually be the leftover.” This recognition became more powerful and impressive as I grew up and traveled cross-regionally. Rather than regarding the space as a material construction, I always try to envision how a void can be revived to bring the ‘leftover unconsciousness” to be realized, empowered and reactivated.

03

My journal of space making started from a casual discovery of the flyover bridge along my daily routine as a child. The bridge is my hometown’s landmark for its huge supporting columns and long-distance span. However, one day when I came back late, I found someone walking into a 05

The Townhub

Colonial Townhall Renovation for New Democracy Summer 2022|Individual work|Townhall, Sydney

04

The Grounds Creeper

Social House & Infrastructure System for Miner Community Spring 2022|Individual work|Chuquicamata, Chile

The Urban Oasis

Public Aquatic Center with Spiritual Water Experience Spring 2021|Core Studio|Pyrmont, Sydney

Other Works

The last Nuclear Bomb Memorial Spring 2022|Individual work|Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan 06

Artwork, Drawings, Photography, Apparatus & Video Spring 2019-Spring 2022| Sydney

Spears to Hooks

-------Goat island--Barangaroo, Sydney , July 2022, Indivdual work-------

The seascape between Barangaroo and Goat Island has waitness the prosperous and the decline of Euro people, together with the industrial construction of Sydney Harbour. The gesture of Euro women flying in the thin Caneo fishing to raising their family and community has long forgotten. Through the study into Euro women and men's fishing tools, the story is renarrated, through the cross-reading between what is natural and orinigal, and marine and industrial.

"EURO WOMEN"

Eora women were the main food providers for their families, and the staple food source of the coastal people around Sydney was fish. Unlike men, who stood motionless in the shore and speared fish with multi-pronged spears, or fish-gigs callarr and mooting), the women fished from their bark canoes (nowie) with lines and hooks. They made their fishing lines (carr-e-jun) by twisting together two strands of fibre from kurrajong trees, cabbage trees or flax plants.

"BARRANGAROO"

Barangaroo was a leader of her community, remembered through the generations as a defender of her culture and tradition.

There were ominous implications too: future alliances with these food-bearing whites meant that women would lose their control over the food supply. Barangaroo must have observed the way the whites dealt with Eora men, not women. Living with them, relying on their food,

Shared Destiny

Large shell middens and numerous rock engravings indicate occupation dating back some 6,000 years; the broader area is occupied for at least 14,500 years prior to European colonisation.

Local Eora women paddling their canoes to catch fish and collect shellfish made the first economic use of the Barangaroo area.

The Goat island which at the otherside of the Barangaroo coastline has experienced a similar destiny of being colonized by the European and has been a place for Sydney Harbour Millers

The site began to flourish as maritime and industrial activities grew. In the 1820s, the first wharves are constructed to support the colony’s colourful trade of sandalwood, cedar and turtle shell, as well as the whaling and sealing industries.

During The Great Depression, workers would walk from wharf to wharf in search of a job, often failing to find one.

With shipping facilities moving to Port Botany, what was then East Darling Harbour becomes Australia’s most important waterfront renewal project in decades

With shipping facilities moving to Port Botany, what was then East Darling Harbour becomes Australia’s most important waterfront renewal project in decades

We celebrate our harbours and coastlines in poetry, prose and art, in sculptures by the sea. But where in Sydney Harbour, our paradise of waters, are the great Eora fisherwomen remembered?

Plainly meant dependence on men, white and black.

The EURO WOMAN LEADER & the famous aboriginal cultural FORESHORE named after her

The LEFT-OVER force at the point of colonial

Barrangaroo

Melmel(Goat Island)

"After a traditional cremation ceremony with her fishing gear,

Bennelong spread his wife’s ashes in Governor Phillip's garden, the present day Circular Quay..."

The Fishing Hooks

She refused to go to Sydney Cove to visit the governor with Bennelong, who went anyway. "

"In a fit of rage, Barangaroo broke one of his fishing spears."

The Fishing Spear

The women sometimes use the gig, and always carry one in each canoe, to strike large fish which may be hooked, and thereby facilitate the capture. But generally speaking, this instrument is appropriate to the men, who are never seen fishing with the line, and would indeed consider it as a degradation of their preeminenc

Site Analysis

From turban shell to shell fish-hookthe manufacturing sequence as recorded in the archaeological record; specimens from Captain Cooks Landing Place, Kurnell Peninsula (Area BB4) and Bass Point.

-----In 1791, Barangaroo died shortly after giving birth to Bennelong's child.

-----In 1791, Barangaroo died shortly after giving birth to Bennelong's child.

Interpretation of Cultural Simbols

The two language abstacted from the aboriginal fishing tools are interpreted into spatial arrangement. The linear and spiral communicate and intertwin with each others to form different spaces of fishing, collecting, drying and sharing. The poetic contents in the lost gesture is recalled through the sequence of space and random of views and activities along the space, and evokes new gestures.

Axometric Drawing of moments

The Collecting place with a stock in the middle recalls the gesture of Euro women who skimmed the waters in their simple bark canoes with fires lit on clay pads for warmth and cooking.

Physical Model ---1:50 Moment

The steel handrail and the reaching out platform cutting into the original ship route build a communication between the Sydney proud ferry and the original aboriginal activity. Sharing the similar form with a jetty or whalf, it silently asking about the start and the end point of Sydney Harbour, a place with thousands year of history.

Physical Model ---1:50 Moment

The Fishing areas are half open and flucturate with the tide and waves, with linear arrangement to create a nembodied experience as walking on a caneo. The timber double roof structure imitate the weaving fishing nets and allows a

The Mutation Field

-------The Semipalatinsk Test Site, Kazakhstan , May 2022, Indivdual work-------

"The Last Nuclear Bomb Memorial"----as a generation borned in a peaceful period, nuclear war is always far away from ours dailylife. Therefore is more scary to know the stockpile of nuclear weapons is still raising as we raised up. The project is to bring the far away threats to our daily life recognization, by realizing how the area and people which still influenced by the nuclear war and left over by the worldwide mass medium survived today. Architecture, no longer as a simbol of pure words, is regarded as a intricate experience associated with body, memory and our genes.

An image from the first Soviet test of a thermonuclear device on 12 August 1953. It released about 25 times as much energy as the US bomb dropped at Hiroshima, Japan.Credit: Lebedev Physics Inst.

Test Site Radiation Mapping

The past century has witnessed the nuclear race and the closest moment for human beings to destroy themselves. The increasing protest to ban nuclear bomb test do not help to stop the rising number of the stockpile. However, the "sword of Diamox” gradually appears to be history since people forget to look up during a long period of peace and also because of the nature of forgettery. The truth is, the threat never really be eliminated. And the danger of selfdestructive is buried in our subconsciousness.

To bring the issue back to consciousness, the Semipalatinsk Test Site, which is the first nuclear bomb test site of the Soviets is selected, due to its specular status where humans and the chronic damage of nuclear radiation stay together for decades. The native residents who were ignored during the period of hundreds of times of nuclear tests had no choice but to stay with the radiation which caused an apparent rise in genetic mutation. The memory of the site is an epitome of the destiny of the rest of the world. The residents’ diseased tissue has a subtle and intrinsic coincidence with the outcast facility and ruins of the building on the site, which suggests an interrelationship between the body and the building, the collective memory, and the forgotten subconsciousness.

Between 1949 and 1989, the Semipalatinsk Test Site was one of the primary locations for Soviet above and below ground nuclear testing. The first Soviet nuclear weapons test, codenamed Pervaya molniya or First Lighting, took place at Semipalatinsk on 29 August 1949. In total, 456 nuclear tests, including 340 underground and 116 atmospheric tests, were conducted at Semipalatinsk Test Site facilities.

Since its closure, the Semipalatinsk Test Site has become the best-researched atomic testing site in the world, and the only one in the world open to the public year-round.

"The Polygon" Semipalatinsk Test Site

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Site a b c d e f g h i j

"The Mutation Field"

My body is everywhere: the bomb which destroys my house also damage my body, in so far as the house was already an indication of my body.

"The Mutation Field"

A 2008 study by Kazakh and Japanese doctors found that the population surrounding Semipalatinsk received more than 500 mSv of radiation in one exposure – doses similar to those of the Hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the equivalent of about 25,000 chest x-rays.

Analytical Typology alphebet

Spatial Typology Study

The Byzantine Dome, Asian House and other 10 architecture types are chosen from worldwide and are extracted and simplified to its basic form. Then they are decontrusted to the recognizable gestalt elements for further alteration. Thus, an ALPHABET of simpliest architecture elements carrying collective memory is formed. Those mundane architecture are growing into the 'Monster' with fimilarity and uncanny. (Just as uncanny-valley effect works)

Spatial Mutation Study

There are three types of DNA Mutations: base substitutions, deletions and insertions. Here the same logics of mutation are applied to those basic architecture elements. Just like the malformed organ limbs, while in the same time also appear like the amusement park facilities, thoses genes start to owns a spatial potency of being scaring or funny-----a strange field of DUALITY

"Boundary"

"Puncture" "Split" "Indicate"

"Organ" Clusters

Sections through the circumference

The ring of whole journey through the field are formed by changing spatial experience. The sections which are made every 20 degre of the axials through the center of the circle indicate the richness of spatial quality and the adventural atmosphere.

"Cover" "Gestalt"

Render 1

Render 2

Render 3

The Townhub

-------The Townhall, Sydney , October 2022, Indivdual work-------

Sydney Townhall, a typical western colonial government building with its left-over interior which no longer holds any official function, is reimagined under the post-colonial urban context. To keep its value of memorial, he new democracy center 'Townhub' is build upon the exisiting facade as a dialoge between official and casual, regularity and mass, old and new, inside and outside. A force between the opposites are reimagined and designed as a 'fusion' through the discovery of a iconic colonial-style townhall's facade. To read a facade as a duality of 'interface' and 'container', the renovation of the building provide two ways of reading the new democracy: A interface to empower, and a container to activate.

townhall building attaching at the back of the existing townhall Vestibule

The orginal entrys of the south and north share a recognizable features of the columns which arranged in a rhythm of 2/3a, 2/3a, and 2/3a.

The interior waiting hall is covered by the wall with arch windows, identified as a 'container' to allow casual activities to be hold.

A Rhythm of Solemnity

The force and fusion continues at the skyline of the townhall, by raising and reforming the gable roof and indicating a relationship between the new townhall building , the old one and the street scape. A manifesto iregular roof remian a sense of memorial and evoke a willing to change, express and move on.

The enclosed interior of the original townhall prevents puclic to come into practice their politic life

Reimage the facade as a fusion of the 'interface' for icon and 'container' for civil activity

Facade as Interface

New squares replace the old side entry, with the foyar becomes a back of stage, highlighted by the overly new arch facede on the interior side

Formal Analytical Innovation

The new steel wall with arches thrive into the existing facade of the exterior then to the interior wall of the hall, therefore bring the exterior sense to the interior space

Facade as Container

The entry cut into the ground to identify a new square and the steel arch walls cut out a cube from the existing building. New walls reidentify the interior space division and provide a read to the existing wall as an element in the room

By creating a facade cross the building through the short axial, it forms an interior streetscape and introduce more pass-by to walk in.

The irrigular steel plate cut the Vestibule makes a new 'vestibule' inside, while swirls the large iconic staircase, insert a exterior element to the interior.

The exterior element--'democracy staircase' punch through the vestibule hall. On the one hand, highlight its character as waiting space, on the other, bring a direction of movements and platform of performance

The new wall close up a volumn from the existing building and diminish the old structure within. The space turn out to be a theater as an apparture to observe both interior and exterior while it self becomes a void undefined,

The exterior element--'democracy staircase' punch through the vestibule hall. On the one hand, highlight its character as waiting space, on the other, bring a direction of movements and platform of performance

Facade as Fusion Twist

Merge

The repetive old pattern of arches continues its solemnity on the new, while the angle the new 'facade' cut into the old makes a

Wrap

New squares replace the old side entry, with the foyar becomes a back of stage, highlighted by the overly new arch facede on the interior side

Slip

The corridor 'slips' as if it is squashed and pushed through the interior facade and exterior force to find a way out.

The original spatial feature like arches and split walls 'twist' under the force of punching in volumn, and represent them selves on the new steel materials.

Facade as Interface vs Facade as Container

The facade of the building is explored to becomes a base structure to holds the new volumns which punch through the surface. Therefore a dual read of 'facade' and 'container' is spatialized.

Lift from streetscape, the fusion between the new volumn and the old space becomes contained by each others.

Level 3 Plan Facade as Fusion

Massing model shows the relationship between the current site and the surrounding building

Massing model shows the 'force' and 'fusion between the new blocks and existing volumns

The force and fusion continues at the skyline of the townhall, by raising and reforming the gable roof and indicating a relationship between the new townhall building , the old one and the street scape. A manifesto iregular roof remian a sense of memorial and evoke a willing to change, express and move on.

A Manifesto Roof of the new Democracy

Exterior Render

The roof punched through the existing roof becomes a 'protest board' to project the voice of new democracy

The new gesture to panetrate but keep the completeness of the 'inner facade' provide a way of reading the 'solemnity' as well as invert the inside as outside.

Interior Render

The Grounds Creeper

-------Chuquicamata, Antofagasta, Chile , July 2022, Indivdual work-------

As the metal fuels the clean tech boom, companies race to mine the Atacama Region. Fragile ecosystems, scarce water resources, and ancient ways of life are at stake.The project is to create a linear community to respect and empower the unconsicous female community as the 'Left-over' part of the miners family, of their daily effort to keep the balance between industry and local sustainability. The gesture of 'creeping' on the contour of the mines indicates the hardness and struggling effort under the big fact of significant mining industry.

Venacular house and Landscape

The design will work both on the social impact and living pattern of the miner workers and their family members, while also exploring the possibility of interpreting the venacular architecture language with modern strategy, to achieve the interaction and coherence of architecture with the pre-existing values of the place, and finally trying to call people’s attention to the potentials of weaving the patrimonial, the industrial and the post-modern social context together to create a lively oasis, in the background of post-modern crisis.

Chile mining sector participation in the gross domestic product(GDP) in Chile from 2010 to 2020

Sun filter wall Wind-protected by the mountain Retaining wall &terrace argriculture

The co-pattern of architecture and landscape

Double Shading Adjustable shading Local Quincha wall

Acatama Mine Distribution

Water Remiedial System Interated into Design

Restoration of Terraces Topography for Future

Shaft mining or shaft sinking is the action of excavating a mine shaft from the top down, where there is initially no access to the bottom. Here the above ground level is converted into a safeguard tower to monitor and keep the safety of the community

Featured Landscape Design for Community

The Mining Conveyor is the main transportation system used in Chuiscamata to move the crashed cooper from the underground level to the ground. Here the world largest conveyor belt system is adapeted to transport the life supplies from exterior to the lower community and the local products back.

Traditional Quincha Materials mud, cane brava, reed, guayaquil, chanta, eucalyptus, tiles, calamine,

Venacular Technique

Recycled Industrial Materials

Concrete, Steel frame, Glass

Industrial Streamline

The Urban Oasis

-------26 Wattle Bay, Pyrmont , Sydney, June 2021, Indivdual work-------

The urban oasis project aims to explore the techinical iaspect with the consideration of structural innovation and sustainable application. This public swimming facility built on a 4,930m2 quarry locating at Pyrmont, a post industrial area on the side of Sydney CBD, is designed to weave the cultural and history of the water once appearing and now left over at the site. Through the expression of curved folded plate roof and organized roaming circulation, the differnt scales and atmosphere of various pools celebrate a playful memorial public place for citizens and visitors.

Visual sketching of the exterior and interior structure performance

A Post Industrial ‘Threshold’ Among

Several Districts

The sandstone quarry waitness the changes of coatline, the degrating of natural water, and increse of industrial buildings and transportation

Natural Oasis---Industrial Dain

The Axial of Time

Recall the Gesture of Mining the Quarry

As a pre quarry, the site is still protuctable but the gesture of mining is forgotten together with the glory of industry. To bring to gesture back but turn the current half-abandoned site into a natural Oasis, the quality and texture of sandstone is involved with the new waved like roof structure to create a special water experience

Urban Attraction---Local Reactivition

The Axial of Space

History of water on the blackwattle bay as a reference to different water experience

Physical Model For the Load Testing

Before Test: My Expectation and Reason

I will expect the tension failure on the joint between roof and wall as it will always resist highest tension compared to other joints. Or bending failure along latitude direction in the middle because of the overloading.Because the bending moments happen along longtitude is always higher than the one along latitude direction

Finally resist more then 18kg before it failed...

Loading Test Process

Moment before Failure

1. Failure starts from the joint between two plate at the edge from roof to wall in the first bay

2. The second roof plate on the first bay start to break on the middle

3. The plate on the second bay adjacent to first bay start to break along the longitude direction

4. The joints between other roof members start to fail and the whole structure collapse.

All happen within 2 seconds.

Results

A spreding of failure can be easily told from this model test, because when the first member starts failing and no longer resist load, the load will be too high for remaining bays so they quickly start to fail one by one.

What we can learn from this test is that

1.the plywood panel is very good at resist and deliever the force along its surface. And good at deal with the

2. The fold plate structure is really efficient to resist vertical point load over it

3, With the strength of plate members, when the structure is overloading, the joints might be the first to fail because of the tention force.

Conclusion: Therefore it is really important to consider a strong connection on joints on the real state.

Handmade Structural Model

Renderings

Pool Typology Skechings

Structural Diagram[Poetic Intention & Performance]

1. 21mm corrugated roof sheeting

2. 75mmx150mm timber purlin with R3.1 insulation sheeting

3.150mm R3.1 insulation sheeting

4. 21mm clt panel

6. 220X70mm curved timber ribs bolted to Glulam beam by 12mm steel plate

7. 495x100mm Glulam

8. 1.8m high breezeway glass louver for cross ventilation 9. 150mmx50mm CLT wall frame

3600mmx2100mmx50mm double

bottom wall plate with

Final Models

The innovated folded plate change the roof shape from the original straight line to curve line, while remain the original roof structure and structural mechanisim. The exposed curved timber ribs in the interior increase the sense of nature and also cast light pattern when sunlight go through the triangular skylight. The white metal roof sheet keep the purity of 'waving water' on the exterior and the view from the cliff.

The reaching out roof with large rounded window provide a halfsheltered place for people to stay, watch and enjoy. The interior structure language extend to the exterior, with different water scape to create a harmony but various experience.

BODY-SLOPE INTERACTION

Apparatus(First- year work)

Body--Angle---Emotion

Bury-Forget-Cure

[Bury-Forget-Cure] is an art work of the gesture using cotton ball to cover a stone memorial of the orginal owner-----Euro people.

Art-work(Second- year work)

Body--Angle---Emotion

BODY-SLOPE INTERACTION

Thie Apparatus explore the relationship between the body and ground, gesture and feeling. By analyzing the skeleton angle of body when people going up and down the slope, as well as the facial expression showing the emotion of stuggling up slope and relaxing down the slope, a bamboo ectoskeleton is made to help people balance the body angle to help them forward or avoid danger. When the body-ground angle changes, user see differents color which will influent their emotion directly.

Apparatus(First- year work)

MULTIFUNCTIONAL APPARATUS BODY-SLOPE INTERACTION

MULTIFUNCTIONAL APPARATUS BODY-SLOPE INTERACTION

SID:480163570

This apparatus aims to build an interaction between user’s body and the slope. Walking up or down a slope, people always change their body angle and the angle between body and ground without awar ness. This also cause an influence on emoton. During the mapping of the site I noticed people had differ ent facial expressions(be frozen or sad when going up the slope, be happy or relax when going down the slope). In the Part 1 of apparatus different colors will be reflected by the mirror to help users re alize the angle between their bodies and ground are changing,while also change their emotion(red to encourage them go up the slope, blue to calm them down when going down the slope) in a reasonable way. Besides ‘passing on a message’ from ground to the body, the Part 2 of apparatus also let body re ply to the ground depending on different people. When children wearing part 2 it will make their body straight to keep them walking slowly down the slope to reduce the danger. When adults wearing it, it will help them bend the body to walk up the slope. The apparatus are made to a standard as a ‘product’. Every joints and elements are carefully packaged to ensure it is strong and durable.

MULTIFUNCTIONAL APPARATUS BODY-SLOPE INTERACTION

Massing-Function-Form

An Intimate Coversation

Art-work(Second- year work)

This apparatus aims to build an interaction between user’s body and the slope. Walking up or down a slope, people always change their body angle and the angle between body and ground without awarness. This also cause an influence on emoton. During the mapping of the site noticed people had different facial expressions(be frozen or sad when going up the slope, be happy or relax when going down the slope). In the Part 1 of apparatus different colors will be reflected by the mirror to help users realize the angle between their bodies and ground are changing,while also change their emotion(red to encourage them go up the slope, blue to calm them down when going down the slope) in a reasonable way. Besides ‘passing on a message’ from ground to the body, the Part 2 of apparatus also let body re

ply to the ground depending on different people. When children wearing part 2 it will make their body straight to keep them walking slowly down the slope to reduce the danger. When adults wearing it, it will help them bend the body to walk up the slope. The apparatus are made to a standard as a ‘product’. Every joints and elements are carefully packaged to ensure it is strong and durable.

This apparatus aims to build an interaction between user’s body and the slope. Walking up or down a slope, people always change their body angle and the angle between body and ground without awarness. This also cause an influence on emoton. During the mapping of the site noticed people had different facial expressions(be frozen or sad when going up the slope, be happy or relax when going down the slope). In the Part 1 of apparatus different colors will be reflected by the mirror to help users realize the angle between their bodies and ground are changing,while also change their emotion(red to encourage them go up the slope, blue to calm them down when going down the slope) in a reasonable way. Besides ‘passing on a message’ from ground to the body, the Part 2 of apparatus also let body reply to the ground depending on different people. When children wearing part 2 it will make their body straight to keep them walking slowly down the slope to reduce the danger. When adults wearing it, it will help them bend the body to walk up the slope. The apparatus are made to a standard as a ‘product’.

Massing Study(Work produce)

Thie Apparatus explore the relationship between the body and ground, gesture and feeling. By analyse the skeleton angle of body when people going up and down the slope, as well as the facial expression showing the emotion of stuggling up slope and relaxing down the slope, a bamboo ectoskeleton is made to help people balance the body angle to help them forward or avoid danger. A bomboomade small cart is also connected to the skeleton with a mirror and a gradient color sheet. When the body-ground angle changes, user see differents color which will influent their emotion directly.

joints and elements are carefully packaged to ensure it is strong and durable.

Wine-Cotton-Rose

Influence by Gaston Bachelard’s 'surrationalism', and Neil Leach’s ‘The Dark Side of the Domus’ I focus on the threshold and mainly interior public place of the house. The series will guide you from the doorway to the cellar at the back of the house, through several thresholds and everyday situations. Though overlapping the images of the same place from different positions, the images of different places with similar compositions, and the texture with the scene, not only the understanding of the essence of the domestic place is revealed, but also the uncertainty and unfamiliarity of the space are expressed.

Art-work(Second- year work)

House-Memory-Dream

This work is about how the space recording and forgeting. Innovated by Monoha and Gutai art, the whole process explore the essence of materials, and the human actions and memory recorded by materials. The first action is to fill the cup with cutton. The first three cup is about pouring 1/4, 1/2 and 1 cup of wine into the cups filled with cutton ball. While the other three are about having 1/4, 1/2,or 1 cup of wine in the cups then fill the cotton in and then try to pour the wine out. The cotton records the instant moment of "pour in" and "pour out".

Innovative Photography(Third- year work)

Roughness-Friction-Smoothness

A Hand-made copier of the paved road surface, as a initial diagram to explore the roughness and smoothness of physical texture and body feeling, Interpretation to explore the contradictory and intertransition between the roughness and smoothness through geometry, color and drawing techiniques

Art-work(First- year work)