Gigapixel - Layout Studies

“The proposed project is not for a definitive park, but for a method thatcombining programmatic instability with architectural specificity - will eventually generate a park.”

OMA, Parc de la Villette

Our approach is to rethink the relationship between storing, consuming, transporting, and designing, which leads us to reconsider the “Big Box” or warehouse typologies common for stores like Home Depot and Fulfillment Centers like Amazon.

these typologies have always been organized around efficiency and consumerism. A series of standard classification systems are established to manage categorizable materials and products.

This all seems reasonable to organize materials and systems are standardized, however as we shift to a Circular Economy with upcycled materials, the “efficiency” model is not enough.

When the inventories can’t fall into predetermined categories, how will they influence the spatial organization? Materials that come from the demolition of buildings, construction waste, and landfills are considered non-standard materials that become the changing inventory being updated regularly. They open new possible spatial layouts for us to rethink the “traditional” warehouses, material sourcing, labor practices, and consumer economies.

Instead of space planned and fixed in advance of material inventories, we REVERSE the logic and customize layouts depending on the changing inventory of upcycled materials.

Here’s an example showing how a building can be vertually deconstructed and reconstructed as “assembly”.

These are some demos as inspiration for people who are new to our interface. It shows some examples from our in-house designers.

3D Models: Shuang Feng, Tianze Wu

Animation Produced by: Tianze Wu

By making specific real-world rules, for example, clearances for forklifts or robots to move around the space, adding origin information to each piece, or applying construction rules, such as certain pieces are too weak to be wall elements, not enough support, etc). People can have a deeper relationship between the digital and physical material world in our digital interface.

The monitors serves as a directory map of the store layout.

At this station, the robots are working on the customer’s order. The customers can witness his/her order from design to built.

3D Models: Tianze Wu

Animation Produced by: Tianze Wu

“CDA+: Containers of Bigness. The project narrative imagines a merger between New York University and a contemporary College of Design and Art to create a standalone school and campus ‘mega-building’ situated within a ‘superblock’ in the historic urban NYU campus in Manhattan. The program, College of Design and Art Plus or CDA+ is a vehicle to explore architecture as urbanism. At approximately half a million gross square feet of area, the program consists of twenty art and design oriented academic programs with shared support spaces including larger scale galleries, library and auditoria, as well as housing, administrative and support spaces. The plus (+) portion of the program will be established by each studio section toengage issues of culture, activism, equty, and inclusion..”

The project started with researching the community around the site. Realizing there is only one current community center, a Recreation Center is added as a plus program to the design of College of Design and Art.

The project aimed at creating a line that’s off the New York city grid, which draws people’s attention to the architecture and therefore promotes community acativity. The zig-zagged blocks of the projects creates vertical spaces for students to enjoy outdoor life. These vertical spaces also encourages students to walk among programs instead of using elevators, it promotes a healty social and physical environment.

SCI-Arc, 2GA, Fall 2020.

Instructor: Russell Thomsen, Peter Trummer, Devyn Weiser

“This semester the studio will work on the space of work. The Vitra campus in Weil am Rhein, DE will be a test site to design a ‘Working Space’ that anticipates a return, taking into account the changing nature of work. We will take on the Vitra company as a ‘meta’ narrative to reconsider the way we work today, from the architectural scale of buildings to the role of furniture.”

- Course Syllabus

In this project, I’ve been developing a home-offices building, in which homogeneous spaces reside in heterogeneous spaces. People can live and work in the building at the same time. My initial approach to this project was selecting heterogeneous elements from the Vitra Campus.

First of all, I chose Frank Gehry’s Vitra Design Museum Gallery and separated it into two geometries, then recombined them in different ways to form new home-offices.

The project follows two overarching typologyMat Building and Raumplan.

In the middle the home offices are lifted so that the courtyards are actually connected to each other.

In terms of structure, the material for the first floor is concrete block support and the second floor is concrete waffle slab. The wall system for the second floor is light steel gauge framing. Then on the outside, the facade is composed of brick, which serves as a natural cooling system and controls the amount of light coming into the building.

The idea behind the arrangement of space is to have the exterior different from the interior. What you see outside does not represent the inside. When we are looking at the geometries from the exterior, how the interior is booleaned or separated can be very different from the imagination.

There is a path going through some of the courtyards. People can use the path as a shortcut to travel to other places on the campus. People can use the circulation to walk onto the roof and use the roof as a working or resting place.

Burton Tech

Project Architect: Ali Jeevanjee

Poonam Sharma

Project Team: Ali Jeevanjee

Poonam Sharma

Aashna Singh

Tianze Wu

Corinth

Project Architect: Ali Jeevanjee

Poonam Sharma

Project Team: Ali Jeevanjee

Tianze Wu