“Pulses” 2020-2026 Yizhou Jin
I am an interior designer who aims to change how people interact with the environment through my designs. I approach design as a celebration of the mundane, finding poetry in materials that often goes unnoticed. As a fledging designer, I plan to learn from different perspectives of the world, exploring more possibilities and deeper meanings for his designs to cater towards a more diverse audience. In this portfolio, I have curated my works throughout my student life as themes consisted of different types of works, all relating to different meanings of “pulse”.
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Rhythm (Page 6-19) - “Anti Convention” (3D Sculpture)
Page 6-7
- The Savoy Ballroom Reimagination (Project)
Page 8-13
- RE:Connect (Project)
Page 14-17
- Photography
Page 18-19
Emotions (Page 20-31) - “Cherish” (Mix Media Textile)
Page 21
- “Disintegration” (3D Sculpture)
Page 22-23
- Tangle (Project)
Page 24-29
- Photography (Photoshop Edited)
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Overloading (Page 32-48) - “Attraction” (3D Sculpture)
Page 32-33
- Framework Commons (Project)
Page 34-37
- “Divergence” (3D Sculpture)
Page 38-39
- “Starship” (Light Fixture Deisgn)
Page 40
- “Synthesized Comb” (3D Sculpture)
Page 41
- (Project)
Page 42-43
- The Nest Society (Project)
Page 44-47
- Kaleidoscope (Photoshoped Photography)
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Page 48
Rhythm /ˈriTHəm/ Rhythm explores the pulse that connects space, form, and perception. It is the repetition of elements in light and material, building coherence within circulation. Through photography, digital renderings, and sculptural forms, rhythm refers to not only physical apperances, but also rhythms of our daily rituals. The idea to illustrate movement & daily circulation through these works is the ultimate message. Keywords: Color, Repitition, Routine
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“Anti-convention” Origami Sculpture 22” x 11” x 12”
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Personal Work 2020
Anti-convention -
Continued
This piece was constructed with uniquely shaped cardstock papers scored and folded with basic origami principals. It elucidates duality by juxtaposing two colours. Containing different characteristics of patterning, the sculpture is not completely orderless. This sculpture can be imagined into a decoration or a modern structure after modification. Rhythm emerges not from strict uniformity, but from the measured variation between each folded element, creating a balance between order and irregularity.
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Exterior Rendering, Savoy Ballroom Reimagined
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Sketchup, D5 Render
Color,Jazz,Dance
The Savoy Ballrooom Reimagined, Harlem, NY
Instructor: Michael Morris Spring 2025
This semester-long project seeks to understand how 1900s Harlem’s nightlife embodies cultural expression, resilience, and community identity through spacial design as well as color usage. It explores how music, particularly jazz, blues, and hip-hop has shaped the atmosphere of this area. This project takes shape as a reimagined Savoy Ballroom, a famous place for nightlife in the 1900s, unfortunately demolished in 1959.
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The Savoy Ballroom Reimagined - Continued - Physical Model
Midterm Process
Compiling Studies into a form of Installation
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Midterm Process
Compiling Studies into a form of Installation
For my midterm project, this installation builds on the research of my earlier color studies from Joseph Albers, combined with my own research on Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s Marionettes, and my interpretation of Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie-Woogie. This piece acted as an abstraction of a model for the final design, translating my understanding of twentieth-century Broadway’s glamour, rhythm, and vibrant social life into spatial form.
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The Savoy Ballroom Reimagined - Continued - Final Design Through a semester of color studies, collage, precedent research, and model making, I reimagined Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom as a contemporary space for dance, play, and community.The space features a colorful transparent facade that is inspired by the Leban Dance notation, which spread across the entire extreior of the building. My design explores how color, light, sound, and movement shape spatial experience, honoring the Savoy’s African American cultural legacy while creating opportunities for connection.
Ballroom Area
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Day
Night
Jazz Cafe/Bar
Ballroom Area
Rooftop Garden
Second Floor
Interior Plan
Exterior Rendering at Night
Roof
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Section 03/
Interior Section, RE:Connect Sketchup,Rhino,D5 Render
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š×Ěŕɢ ûřĚďij
RE:Connect
Senior Drop-In Care Center, Brooklyn, NY Re:connect is an intergenerational community center that brings older adults and younger generations together through art, technology, recreation, and shared learning. The project addresses social isolation and the digital divide by creating spaces for reciprocal exchange, where users can learn, teach, create, and interact across generations. Organized around a central social core, the building combines intuitive circulation with varied communal programs to support independence, participation, and a stronger sense of belonging.
Instructor: Carly Cannell Fall 2025
Concept Sketches D5 Rendering of Interior
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RE:Connect - Continued
Cirluative Illustration of The Beacon
Plan of The Beacon The Beacon addresses RE:Connect’s circulation challenge by organizing the compact interior around a central stair that connects movement, rest, and social interaction. Designed around the daily rhythms of older adults, its gentle ascent and expanded landings encourage a measured pace, creating places to pause, orient, and engage with programs on each floor. Integrated handrail lighting, changes in ceiling height, and framed windows provide intuitive wayfinding cues, establishing the stair as both the building’s vertical spine and a shared space for everyday connection.
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Developed through a research-intensive semester, RE:Connect explores how circulation can shape the experience of a compact interior. My proposal centers on creating clear, intuitive routes within a constrained footprint, using movement to organize the space, connect its different areas, and ease the sense of confinement.
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Photography Spring 2025 Instructor: Dexter Lopez
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Emotions /ɪˈmoʊ.ʃənz/
Emotions traces the invisible undercurrent that shapes how we experience space, form, and material. Every design carries a psychological pulse — a feeling embedded within proportion, light, and texture. Through designs, photography, and sculptures, this section investigates how empathy, tension, and serenity can be constructed visually. Keywords: Unruliness, Vulnerability, Serenity
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Textile Mixed Media 10” x 10” Fall 2021
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“Disintegration” Found Object Sculpture 20” x 24” x 5” Personal Work 2022 This curation brings together an abstract sculpture from 2020 and a photograph taken in 2025 to explore the emotional undercurrents shaping our relationship with nature. The sculpture presents two readings - from above, a fish that appears to fade and shift in color, and from the side, a cityscape of uneven heights.
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This duality evokes tension and vulnerability, suggesting how human expansion quietly corrupts and displaces wildlife. Its abstraction constructs emotion through form, proportion, and instability rather than direct representation. The accompanying photograph of two fish in a body of water introduces a contrasting emotional register. Captured four years later, the image reflects a calmer, observational perspective, emphasizing empathy and serenity. The fish appear suspended in a fragile balance, reinforcing the quiet life that exists beyond human intervention. Photography Spring 2025
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Top Perspective of Tangle
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Rendered in D5
Tangle
Instructor: Virginia Black Spring 2026
Adaptive Reuse / Community + Commercial Interior Richmond, British Columbia, Canada This project begins with the question of what an aging commercial plaza can become when it is no longer treated only as a place of consumption. Located in Richmond, British Columbia, the proposal reimagines an inward-facing plaza as an intergenerational social interior - a place where eating, learning, resting, playing, and gathering overlap throughout the day. Tangle reimagines Pacific Plaza by asking a simple question: What if circulation became the reason to visit?
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Tangle - Continued - Planning and Concept The Menu Infrastructure of Dependency
Digital Compliance
Device ownership
INTERGENERATIONAL EXCHANGE
Government portals
Care for the Elders
Broadband access
DIGITAL LITERACY
LIVING EXPERIENCE
What does access actually mean? Entry, understanding, participation, control?
ACCESS & INFRASTRUCTURE
What is an institution supposed to do? Protect, regulate, serve, or control?
Tech complexity
What social values are encoded into digital systems?
Authentication requirements
The “menu” in the project is not a literal restaurant menu, but a public signup system that allows occupants to create their own programs, gatherings, and workshops. Inspired by Canadian-Cantonese plaza culture in Richmond, the idea comes from how immigrant community spaces are often activated informally through participation. Mahjong groups, karaoke nights, and community events frequently emerge through collective use of space rather than centralized control.
Compliance guidelines
Site Context
WHO CAN CROSS THE DIGITAL THRESHOLD INDEPENDENTLY?
SOCIAL & PHYSICAL BARRIERS
Coordinators
Policies
Reporting standards
AGING
Visual decline
ADMINISTRATIVE + BUREAUCRATIC SYSTEMS
Assessment Tools
Medicaid policy
Telehealth platforms
Memory challenges
Funding contracts DATA SURVEILLANCE
CODED REGULATION
Cognitive decline
Social isolation Low tech exposure
Who defines the rules of access? Language barriers
Dependency on Mediation
Mobility limitations
Trust Instability Fraud Vulnerability
Client Diagram Study
Pacific Plaza is organized around a 3-story parking volume at its center, with retail forming around as a “C” shape. The building operates as a hollowed mass, where the interior is dedicated to infrastructure and the perimeter to commercial occupation. Tangle seeks to reclaim this neglected center and transform it into a vibrant circulatory experience. Instead of separating programs by age or function, the project uses flexible spaces, shared circulation, and changing daily activities to create moments of encounter between different generations. The building becomes less like a fixed mall, but more Structure Analysis
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like a living menu - constantly adapting to the people who occupy it.
Third Floor
Health Station Residence Short-Term Relax Zone Office & Admin Hygiene Station WC
Second Floor
Relax Zone Makerspace Lessons offered by occupants Public Library/ Digital Learning Lab Multipurpose Space for Events, Gatherings WC
Base Floor
Game Rooms Lounge Fitness Area Cafeteria WC
The third floor serves as the project’s supportive and restorative layerm combining short-term residdence, health services, and administrative functions within a quieter environment. Spaces for rest, hygiene, and wellness are integrated with communal circulation to maintain dignity and social connection while providing occupants with stability, care and privacy.
The second floor focuses on learning, exchange, and quieter community interaction. Programs set in this area encourage knowledge-sharing between generations, allowing occupants to both teach and learn through flexible communal spaces. Occupant-led workshops and shared resources support intergenerational exchange, where different skills, experiences, and forms of knowledge can be passed between users.
The base floor acts as a communal hub that encourages informal interaction between generations. The layout ty, gathering, and prolonged occupation, Instead of separating users by age or activity, the floor encourages through flexible social environments that support both active participation and casual lingering.
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Tangle - Continued
The planting palette draws from vegetation commonly associated with Pacific Northwest, grounding the project within the climate and ecological identity of Richmond. Sword ferns create a dense, grounding layer of greenery while astilbe introduces softer seasonal textures that bring warmth and visual delicacy to gathering spaces.
Section Perspective
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Final Book
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Emotions are not isolated events but patterns formed through repetition and perception. By translating everyday experiences into abstract visual systems, the collection invites viewers to sense emotion as something spatial, layered, and continuously unfolding. Ordinary moments, textures, and fragments from everyday environments are abstracted, layered, and reassembled.
Photography Spring 2025 Instructor: Dexter Lopez
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Overloading /ˌoʊvərˈloʊdɪŋ/ Overloading is the tension between visual saturation and structural clarity. It examines how accumulation and density can generate new forms of order. Through combined imagery and geometries, chaos becomes a system of control built from excess. This theme seeks balance within noise, tracing how patterns emerge when the eye is overwhelmed, and how perception reorganizes complexity into rhythm. Keywords: Visual Indeterminacy, Excess, Systematic Compilation
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“Attraction” Found Objects Mix Media 20” x 6” x 12” Personal Work 2020
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Top Perspective of Central Sculpture Rendered in Enscape
Framework Commons 2 W 13th st, Manhattan, NY
12th Floor Programs Bedroom (Single, Avg.)- 90.42 sq. ft Bedrooms (All) - 675.12 sq. ft Bathrooms (BTH) - 229.17 sq. ft Installation reaching 11th floor - 177.19 sq. ft Elevators - 95 sq. ft Stairs - 97 sq. ft GYM - 243.00 sq. ft Open Public Space - 1226.11sq. ft Multifunctional Stairs (12th floor) - 119.44 sq. ft Kitchen - 253.60 sq. ft Dining Area - 490.32 sq. ft
11th Floor Programs Framework Commons is a modular co-working and living environment designed
Workshop - 426.39 sq. ft Working Area - 575.78 sq. ft
to support the full range of needs for industrial designers. The project is rooted
Printing & Storage (P&S) - 127.53 sq. ft
in the idea that productivity thrives through both collaboration and privacy,
Bathrooms (BTH) - 64.59 sq. ft
and that an effective work environment must offer choice rather than prescribe
Open Public Space - 2185.03 sq. ft
behavior. The space encourages proximity and exchange among residents while acknowledging the necessity of retreat, focus, and rest. The design takes advantage of a double-height space for a mood-setting installment.
Instructor: Sasha Topolnytska Fall 2022
Elevators - 95 sq. ft Stairs - 97 sq. ft Photo Studio - 243.00 sq. ft Multifunctional Stairs (11th floor) - 244.73 sq. ft Computer Lab - 250.13 sq. ft Working Studio - 430.31 sq. ft
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Framwork Commons - Continued At the core of the design are large movable containers that accommodate daily activities such as working, eating, resting, and meeting while allowing privacy. Their ability to shift and reconfigure allows the environment to continuously adapt to changing group sizes and modes of use. A motor engine is suspended from the second floor, positioned as both a functional artifact and a spatial focal point. Hung deliberately in open view, the engine reveals its mechanical complexity.
Normal Arrangements
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Presentation/Class Arrangements
Reflected Ceiling Plan
Architectural voids and fluid circulation were considered in effect to encourage a flexible, open yet interconnected spacial functions. At the center, an open staircase integrated with stepped seating connects the double-height spaces, creating a transitional area that doubles as a place for informal gatherings, performances, and social interaction.
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“Divergence” Recycled Materials 20” x 15” x 13” Personal Work 2024
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This 3D sculpture is constructed from old piano components collected from local markets, giving discarded materials a renewed presence and meaning. The composition rises gradually and then diverges forward in a uniform, radiating motion, translating sound into physical form. Rather than relying on glue or external fasteners, the parts are assembled through their existing forms and mechanical characteristics, allowing each component to retain its original identity. At first glance, the assembly appears visually saturated, with overlapping parts competing for attention, creating a sense of inof intricacy and disorder that gradually reveals an underlying rhythm and harmony.
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“Starship” Sheet Metal Instructor: Christopher Logan Fall 2024
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“Synthesized Comb” Star Anis Personal Work 2023
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Fractured Commons 2 W 13th st, Manhattan, NY
Shattered Commons is an experimental interior design project that explores the transformation of abstract sculptural forms into inhabitable spaces. Drawing from my earlier explorations in sculpture-making, the project challenges conventional spatial organization through fragmented geometry, intersecting planes, and contrasting voids. Within this seemingly chaotic composition, spaces for communal gathering, private dwelling, and social interaction emerge, establishing a dialogue between sculptural expression and architectural functionality.
Instructor: Sasha Topolnytska Fall 2022
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Sketch Concept As a conceptual predecessor to Framework Commons, the project marks an early exploration of how unconventional spatial arrangements can accommodate human activity and encourage collective experiences. Through fragmented geometry and intersecting forms, it examines the potential of sculptural abstraction to create meaningful and inhabitable environments. While Shattered Commons approaches architecture primarily through abstraction and geometric experimentation, its investigation into the relationship between form, circulation, and occupation would later evolve into the more socially driven and adaptable spatial framework of Framework Commons.
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The Nest Society
Public Space Redesign, Canal St, NY
The Nest Society is imagined as a space made for the community and operated by the community. Its program provides shared access to daily hygiene, leisure, and comfort, addressing essential needs through collective infrastructure rather than individual ownership. By concentrating these functions within a single site, the project embraces density as a social resource.
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The Nest Society - Continued Situated within the former First National Bank of the City of New York on Canal Street, The Nest Society reimagines the existing building as a communityoriented environment that brings essential daily services and temporary accommodation under one roof. The first floor serves as an accessible social hub, combining a shared laundromat with communal gathering spaces that encourage interaction; the second floor introduces a triple-height theatre for performances, and community events, alongside a public bathhouse that provide access to essential hygiene services; the third floor accommodates sleeping pods, offering compact and private spaces for rest within the larger communal setting; finally, the fourth-floor garden provides an open environment for relaxation, greenery, and social exchange. Together, these programs establish a self-supporting communal ecosystem.
Rainwater Collection Sysem Diagram The large central tube is designed to capture, slow, and reuse rainwater within the urban environment. The project reduces runoff, mitigates flooding, and eases pressure on municipal sewer systems. Beyond technical performance, it treats stormwater as a visible and educational resource, revealing natural water cycles within the city.
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Sketch Concept
Fourth Floor
Third Floor
Second Floor
Site Section Perspective
First Floor
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Kaleidoscope Spring 2025 Instructor: Dexter Lopez