UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA & ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION
CANDIDATE FOR MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE & ARB/RIBA PART 2
01 AI'S PARADOX OF (DIS)EMBODIMENT
02 DUNHUANG MURAL: CELESTIAL DANCE
03 TOWARDS A PHYGITAL FUTURE
04 IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN
05 UNDER THE DOME
06 BIM EXPERIMENT: RITTENHOUSE HIGHRISE
07 PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Date: 2024-25 (Ongoing Thesis)
Sector: Artificial Intelligence Research & Concept Design
Software: Blender, Rhino, Grasshopper, Dreambooth, Latent Diffusion
Model (LDM) w Stable Diffusion API, ChatGPT, RunwayML, Tripo.AI
How should we expect AI, a disembodied entity, to understand the tangible, the tacit, and the nuances of spatial occupation?
In the age of AI, what scope is left for humans to be "creative", and how might new approaches to architecture be conceived?
This project interrogates the architectural implications of AI’s disembodied cognition within a post-human framework. Oscillating between digital technologies and traditional design practices, the artist aims to provoke new architectural discourses around (dis)embodiment in an era of hyper machine fixation.
The project positions AI as an errant co-author: one whose perceptual failures reveal deeper truths about our bodily relationship with the built environment. Through a series of anthropometric performances and speculative reconstructions of inhabitation, critique the ontological dissonance between data-driven logics and corporeal reality. AI’s “visual dyslexia” that manifests in distorted anatomies, fractured architectural thresholds, and perspectival incoherence are embraced not as defects, but as provocations that rupture anthropocentric assumptions about space, function, and occupation.
An Anthropometric Performance
Challenging the Threshold Between Body and Architecture
Capturing the Latent Space
Redefining Spatial Occupation and Embodiment in the Eyes of AI
Frederick Kiesler describes such exploration as correalism, “the continual interaction between human and their natural and technological environments”. To experience such connection with space, used my own body as an anthropometric tool to measure, perceive, and inhabit the architectural spaces. then used the photograph series to construct my own curated AI model, testing how AI interprets embodiment, and capturing its interesting anomalies in between.
Inspired by Rem Koolhaas’s theory on technology-driven architecture, I mapped out the human body in relation to the spatial “body” it resides in. Here I use the term “body” both literally and metaphorically: the human body with which we perceive the world (where agency is attributed to the observer, creator and the architect), and the architectural bodies of space which we occupy.
Solidifying Spatial Occupation in Extended Time
Mapping Body Distortions and Anomalies Perceived by AI
Exposing the Spatial Tension Between Occupants and Architectural Forms
A Palimpest of Movement Across the Latent Space
In AI research, “latent space” is used to describe “A lower-dimensional, abstract representation of data”; however, redefine it as the immaterialized realm between the human and the non-human, where spatial occupation and bodily interactions are encoded into a virtual archive of infinite spatial arrangements and architectural mutations. propose a collaborative pipeline to visualize the seams in the latent space, encouraging architects to not fear, but embrace the errors and unpredictability of AI. Retracing the steps of engagement and interaction between bodies, and capturing each seam in extended time, I highlight the warps, distortions, and blurred seams that existed only in the digital latent space. With this process, I invite architects to explore collaborative dynamics between human intuition and machine algorithyms.
What remains of architecture and spatial experience when “presence” itself becomes abstracted?
And where, within this terrain, might humans situate ourselves?
Using AI as a new form of perception and design, explored collaborative methodologies between architects and the machine, harnessing AI anomalies and errors as sources of unexpected human creativity. With a series of experiments oscillating between different design practices, scrutinized the duality of the “body” by introducing latency as a third dimension. By destabilizing the presumed neutrality of algorithmic systems, the project redefines architecture as a site of ontological negotiation, where intuition, error, and ambiguity are reclaimed as generative forces. As the environmental, biological, and digital systems converge, the project prompts viewers to reflect on the questions: How can architecture respond when its foundational referent—the body—is no longer legible to its tools? What remains of spatial experience when “presence” becomes abstracted? And where, within this machinic terrain, might we resituate ourselves as humans?
Date: 2022-2023 (Internship, Teamwork)
Association: Harvard University Chinese Art Media Lab
Role: Video Editor, Researcher, Visual Post-Production
Software: Adobe PR/AE, openFrameworks
Using Dunhuang murals and machine learning, we reconstructed the celestial dance of Tang Buddhists from the holy lands.
The exhibition invites audiences to step into the imagined lands of an ancient Dunhuang, and immerse in this fantastical journey fueled by dance.
Date: 2023-24
Site: Paris, France / Concept Design
Sector: Culture & Exhibition Curation Design
Software: Unreal Engine, Blender, Rhino, Grasshopper, Adobe Suite
How can we renovate a monumental city, and give it the correct infrastructure to refrain from it becoming anachronistic ruins?
Technology is the answer. But what is the question?
This project focuses on creating a new methodology that could transition architectural relics to new social interfaces through technological visions. aim to develop a paradigm that can be used to agitate the existing cultural monuments, and give agency to potential speculations. By critiquing Avant Garde projects of the 1960s and recent Parisian renovations, the project seeks to critique architecture's "future of the past", so as to discover a "future of the present". argue that technologies need to be inserted into the transition as both an apparatus and a social mechanism, to find balance between designing the city as a hyperinfrastructural machine and a visionary speculation.
Despite these Avant Garde experiments, such bold belief in a hypertechnological future did not come back after the 1960s. Later architectural and urban theories may hint at a promise of that; but architects today have almost stopped trying to put them next to the physical reality of a city in relation to its context. Today, technological connectivity becomes key, where the blurring of the physical and digital enables us to explore more architectural opportunities than ever before. To critique this gap, selected Paris as my city of research, as it primarily renovates through preservation. By dissecting the city into layers of physicality, Paris reveals its juxtapositions and overlaps between monumental and infrastructural domains. It is urgent that we identify the approaches to renovating a city that has always been monumental, and give it the infrastructure that it needs in order to refrain from becoming a city of anachronistic ruins.
Date: 2021 - 2022
Site: Thames River & South Bank, London, UK
Sector: Education & Sustainability
Software: Rhino, Grasshopper, Enscape, VRay, Adobe Suite
An average person takes 15 breaths/minute, and each of those breaths is a gift from algae. You are living in their atmosphere.
Thames Beach was once a popular public beach in the 70s. However, it was closed down due to water pollution concerns.
A Human-Algae Co-Dependant Biosphere
Three-Layer ETFE Cushion w Waterproofing, 3x0.25mm
Primary Geodesic Steel Frame, S32205, Ø400mm
Algae Tubes Inside Air Cavity, Ø80mm
Secondary Tube Support Ring, Steel Cable, Ø10mm
Thermal Insulation, 150mm
Waterproofing Membrane, EPDM 3mm
Algae Tubes Inside Air Cavity, Ø80mm
Three-Layer UV-Treated ETFE, 3x0.25mm
Facade Bracket, 2x100mm steel flats
Steel RHS with traveller, 200mm
Floor Creed Finish, 50mm
Reinforced Concrete Slab, C30 120mm
Steel Form Deck, 1.2mm Galvanized, 50mm
Base Plate Assembly, Steel Plate, 50mm
Date: Spring 2020 (Teamwork of 3)
Site: Clark Park, Philadelphia, USA
Sector: Civic & Community
Software: Rhino, V-Ray, Adobe Suite
From historical to contemporary Philadelphia, modern problems are not limited by modern solutions.
The same vault shelters the same community, but closer than ever.
In the roof arcade, we found the geometry of a series of tilting, lengthening ellipses, where the short axis remains constant but the long axis lengthens. We took this geometry and experimented with a series of double-layered structures, and employed the scheme on our site. The surfaces are all elliptical and rythmatic, creating complex form and spatial qualities for various functions, such as gatherings, sports, and climbing playscapes.
Date: Spring 2021
Site: Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, USA
Sector: Office & Workplace
Software: Revit, Rhino, Adobe Suite
The Rittenhouse Highrise is a hypothetical project of an office building in downtown Philadelphia. The site is located in a popular neighborhood with many tourist attractions nearby. Therefore, I've decided to design an open rooftop patio looking towards the commercial complex, and reserve a free space on the ground floor for flexible sunlight and outdoor gathering opportunities.
The design is an experiment on BIM and a research on the structure of standard office buildings. By adopting a double skin facade with solar shading and using a slanted roof to collect extra rainwater, aspired to make the highrise a sustainable and eco-friendly building that helps reduce the emission of greenhouse gas automatically and economically.
Date: 2020-2024 (Teamwork)
Association: Tesla Inc., Foster+Partners, Trace Architecture
Office, AIM Architecture (Some Projects Under NDA)
Stages: Stage 0-4 (Strategic Definition - Technical Design)
Responsibilities: Research, Concept Design, Visualization, Rapid Prototyping, Illustration, Interdisciplinary Communication
