Being an industrial and transportation center between the Midwest and the Northeast, Cleveland, Ohio is rich in railways in both historical and current day contexts. RTA Redline, the rapid transit connecting the Airport with Downtown Cleveland, crosses right next to the site.
While normal hotels often claim to make the guests “feel like home”, they offer minimal communal space, triggering less exploration or interaction from visitors who hide in their own spaces.
Proposal
At a narrow and long site on the slope of a railway trench, this proposal pays its tribute to the railway system once extensive and now still an important infrastructure for the site neighborhood, with the roofs inspired by crossties and linear-distributed spaces.
The design proposes different layers and “pockets” of interaction and privacy. The guests can enjoy their stay in private courtyard suites but share communal spaces with other guests or interact with the locals at the public eatery.
Site Information
Ohio City is a diverse and lively neighborhood outside Downtown Cleveland. The RTA Redline light rail connects the neighborhood with the Downtown one stop away, attracting tourists to the neighborhood. The Greenway trail brings recreational connections to the project site.
Strategy
Privacy: play with the linear site’s elevation change to create programs interactive with street level, the Greenway level, and neither.
Semi-roofed courtyards offer private an outdoor space for each unit, some include jacuzzi.
Spaces for public interaction on the site: cafe, plaza, ramp linking up the Greenway and the street.
Roof inspired by rail and crossties, offering direct sunlight to interiors.
Design Concept Sketch
Site & Project Cross Section
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Distribution of Mechanical Rooms Access and Egress Program Diagram
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Kitchen-Dinning
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Guest Room Plan (First Floor), post-semester revised
Second Floor Plan
Ground Floor Plan
General Plan drawings largely by J.R. Hernandez Brito
Envelop designed jointly, drawings largely by J.R. Hernandez Brito
LPC Headquarters
Semester: Fall 2023
Location: West Village, Manhattan, NY
Type: Civic Center
Tutors: Rami Abou-Khalil (SOM) & Ivi Diamantopoulou (New Affiliates)
Historic mid-rise vernacular brick architecture composed the urban fabric of Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. The NYC Landmark Preservation Commission (LPC) directs the neighborhood’s development as a certified Historic District since 1969.
The Northern Dispensary is a neo-Georgian structure built on a triangular lot in 1831 serving medical assistance to the area of now the West Village. The Dispensary, the adjacent Christopher Park, and Stonewall Inn, form an iconic civic site in the neighborhood. The Northern Dispensary building itself was set to be converted into a new LPC headquarters, with expansion.
Proposal
This design seeks to bring a more monumental and civic architecture that frames the craftsmanship of local buildings and LPC’s core policy of historical façade preservation.
While preserving the original building, the proposal creates new opportunities for engagements with minimally invasive intervention avoiding reduction to the existing façade except for a few key needed interactions, turning the historic building into a living exhibit.
by Y. Wang, unless specifically noted.
Render by D. Anderson
Strategy
Encasement: wraps a new facade around the original building, turning it into an artifact, parallel to how LPC typically treats historical buildings.
Engagement: Surrounds the original building with circulations, creating experiences of viewing the original building from previously impossible perspectives.
Boston is a metropolitan depending on its mass transportation system. Before Covid, MBTA’s average ridership on weekdays is about 1.2 million, with around 55% of it contributed by subway and another 10% by commuter rails.
However, many neighborhoods in the urban areas are not in close reach of the subway systems, some are residential and some business districts, while the bus systems often get affected by vehicle traffic on rush hours.
The MBTA subway system also has a main flop as the lines congest only in Downtown Boston, which no longer fit with the urban development of the de-centralized Greater Boston.
Proposal
The MBTA system needs a subway line to connect the densely populated areas outside the traditional Downtown, in order to lift the pressure of the existing transfer stations and improve the efficiency of commuting from one sub-center to another or from one suburban neighborhood to another without a long and inefficient ride via Downtown.
This proposal presents a new ring line (“Yellow Line”) interconnecting urban centers and sub-centers, as well as an extended Blue Line extending into areas currently without subway.
More than 10,000 refugees was settled in Central New York between 2014 and 2024, most of whom fled from violence and war and made a new home in the region. These people bring diverse cultures and are key for the region to combat population loss.
When the refugees come to America, they face an entirely new world for their survival: they don’t have homes, jobs, nor money; they don’t speak English well; they don’t know their new environment; and they don’t share the same culture with the local residents. The newcomers have huge difficulties starting their new lives.
In his book “Arrival City”, journalist Doug Saunders emphasizes the autonomy, quality, and scene of community of an “arrival city” for immigrants. While offering shelters for individuals and families, arrival city also has to ensure the engagement of the arrivers with each other as well as the local community.
Proposal
This design is an expandable project in northern Syracuse welcoming the newcomers with modular housing units adjustable according to the residents’ family situations and shared functional spaces to create the sense of belonging to the community for the residents. Spaces for interactions encourage residents to take care of each other while interacting with the locals to fit in with the new environment.
ROOFTOP TERRACE (FUTURE FLOOR EXPANSION)
Strategy
Minimize private space to force residents to shared spaces, boosting social interactions and forming a community. Interaction spaces attract local people and have interactions with the residents, helping them to fit in the new environment.
Flexible housing units can be modified according to the needs of the residents. Every unit gets its own bathroom and storage. The extruded columns leave the structural possibility of future expansion.
Cross and Long Section
If These Walls Could Talk
Semester: Fall 2024
Exhibition Installation
Theme: Residential / Housing
Tutor: Marcos Parga (MAPAa)
Collaborator: E. Sykes
#Living #CommunityEngagement #Private-Public
Statement
Traditionally, home is a private space where the resident can escape from the outside world. After closing the door and shutting the window curtain, one can enjoy the peacefulness alone or only with loved ones. Nowadays, home is no longer a space of isolation. People are always connected with the outside world with their electronic devices; social media and news feeds can reach everyone within a blink, even inside a locked bathroom.
The high density of urban residential space creates more opportunities for people to interact with what’s outside their homes, and young generations breaking away from traditional family living style are increasingly desiring to live in interactive conditions to experience more diverse living environments. However, isolation is still the main theme of nowadays housing typologies, unmatched with this new trend of living interactively. Most builders use walls to only separate rooms, over-worshipping privacy and “self” instead of interaction between spaces.
Domestic boundary utilities (walls, windows, doors, fences, etc.) should be studied by architects in the new urban demographic context to utilize their rich potential. The exploration of these “devices” accelerates the opportunity for versatile purposes; where a wall is rather a device reciprocal between two physical spaces, or doors and windows can no longer serve just as circulation devices but are interactive utilities between spaces... thus, adhering to the media of “linking up” spaces and offer the opportunities for interaction between physically decided spaces in the era of communication.
home is no longer a space of isolation due to technology
integrating spaces by disrupting domesticated boundaries
Ambiguiting Interior Boundaries
Challenging Access Limits
Utilizing Funiture
Window as Table
Half-Door as Window
Shelves as Ladder
Disrupting Envelop
Shelves as Wall
Through Floor and Ceiling
Mezzanine Hide-Out
Everyday Mechanics
Exhibition, Nov 20 ~ Dec 17, 2025
Slocum Hall, Syracuse University
Everyday Mechanics installation protrays “thematic rooms” proposed by students that aim to eschew linear narriative and delve into the complexities of daily life in the domestic space.
The proposals provide multiple entry points into alternative ways of understanding and contruct lives in common. The “rooms” examine the domestic from different perspectives, offering insights into the future of collective living.
When squeezed together, the collection of “rooms” becomes more than a sum of individual interests. They are structurally and programatically interdependent, and collectivelly reveal a larger statement: “Housing Needs to Change!”
Baynard House, a database and mechanical center in Central London across the River Thames from the Tate Modern, is uninventing and hidden. Its invisibility and darkness barrier people from interacting with the site, despite surrounded by multiple population (tourism) hotspots.
This design changes the formerly isolated and flat building designed for the machine into an iconic and dynamic building that serves the community as well as draws tourists from nearby hotspots.
Proposal
The design aims to create dialogues between the public, Tate Modern and the surrounding areas through arts (exhibition, education) and circulation. The new Baynard, as an Arts Center, will also artists to resident and work in the Center amid the housing unaffordability in London.
The proposal incorporates current elements into design strategies as critiques and inspirations. As an example, the dark interior is planned to be utilized for digital exhibit spaces, whilst other features may get altered. The boring and uninviting building will be converted into an interesting and attractive space to be a new beacon in Central London.
Render production by R. Viego and N. Rotolo
ToSouthBank/Waterloo
Site
The Baynard House sits in a dense area surrounded by population hotspots. Specifically, between the Blackfriars Station and the St. Paul’s Cathedral -- Millennium Bridge -- Tate Modern tourist belt, and next to the City of London School.
The existing Baynard House building humbly sitting on the shore of Thames River across Tate Modern, below the St. Paul’s Cathedral in this picture.
Paul’s
To Holborn
Picture taken by Y.Wang in Blackfriars Station, Feb 2023. The red frame indicates the Baynard House.
Strategy
Link up the Thames Walk on the south and the street on the north to be the new programs’ main axis, as a critique to the current winding passage
Convert the elevated courtyard into a street-level roofed atrium for public access and holding large events; the beginning of the main axis
Add artist shophouses with galleries, workshops, and living spaces above.
A series of vertical spatial compression and expansion throughout the Main Axis, creating a diversity of spaces and feelings walking through from one end to another.
South: Thames Walk
Dark Room for digital exhibition (designed by V. Riego) (designed by Y.Wang) The dark Main Atrium
Cafe & Blackfriars connection, Main Atrium (designed by Y.Wang)
View across River Thames in evening
Render by V. Riego and N. Rotolo Draft and photography by Y. Wang
Baynard Center at Night pencil sketch by Y. Wang, negative photo
Baynard Center Long Section post-semester production by Y. Wang
Bookstore Daylight Study & Detachable Model
Internship: Atelier Tao+C
Time: summer 2024
Project: DishBooks (bookstore)
Supervisor: Liu Tao, Cai Chunyan
DishBooks is a modern bookstore located in the old city district of Wenzhou, eastern China. It also offers a space for cooking lovers to interact with each other.
After joining the team during the schematic design stage of the project. I contributed on daylight studies (via ClimateStudio) and producing a detachable study model for the team to better understand the site condition and design’s impact to the shop’s interior. The software study reflexed the skill I developed from school and the model challenged me on precision and flexibility.
The project is set to begin construction in mid 2025.
Symphony Hall 3D-Printed Models
Internship: Pfeiffer (Perkins Eastman NYC)
Time: summer 2022
Project: Wuxi Taihu-Bay International Culture and Arts Center
Supervisor: Alberto Cavallero
It was my great honor and fortune to work in Pfeiffer (a Perkins Eastman affiliate) during the schematic design phase of the 1-million-sqft Wuxi Simphony Hall project in China.
I was given challenging tasks by the design principle to create 3D-printing models of the site and the main smphony hall, as these models could be useful tools for the development of the design.
In five weeks, I created models of the project in different scales, levels of accuracy, complexity, and production details while turning thousands of scratch pieces into printable objects. I was honored to be the first in the office to frequently use 3D printing technology and had senior designers coming to express their curiosity on this new method of producing physical models, encourging me to push myself for further explorations.
