Design + Research + Engage: Portfolio

DESIGN + RESEARC H

PORTFOLIO YIZHOU VIOLA TAN

Sel ec t ed W o rk s 2 021 - 2023

C o llage Inspired by Gu y De bord, The Na k ed City (1957)

01 | TENANT POWER

03 | PARKS AND REC

05 | DESIGN-PLAY KIT

Data Analysis + Visualization Page 1-6

Urban Sensing + Machine Learning Page 12-15

Interactive Device Page 20-24

10 | CITYSCAPE

Data Analysis + UI/UX Design Page 16-19

09 | IMPLIED CORNERS

Urban Design + Stakeholder Engagement Page 7-11

08 | WEST END VISION

04 | HOUSING REC SYSTEM

06 | PLAN MY CITY

02 | COMMON GROUND

07 | HOMEOWNERSHIP HACK

CONTENT

01 | TENANT POWER Data Analysis + Visualization Cambridge, MA | Summer 2022 VIA Learning Lab Research PI: Dr. Eric Robsky Huntley MIT Summer Research Program RISD Somerson Sustainability Innovation Fund (SSIF) In Massachusetts and across the United States, housing is increasingly owned by large, corporate landlords who tend to file more eviction notices on their tenants than small, individual landlords. These corporate landlords create limited liability companies to conceal their real identities and minimize their liability, while making housing precarious for tenants. This project approaches limited liability company deduplication through the analysis of property tax assessment data, and business filing records in Massachusetts.

...and it’s not just forced removals!

Evictions cause tremendous harm...

Homelessness School Turnover

Job Loss

Informal Evictions

Threat of Eviction

Serial Filings

Aside from the formal, judicial evictions, broader eviction practices include informal evictions, forcing tenants out pre-trial, and exits post-filing but pre-judgment.

Landlords use the threat of an official eviction to pressure tenants while avoiding costly evictions. This causes emotional distress and amplifies power imbalance.

Landlords file eviction filings repeatedly on the same tenant without the intention to actually remove them, as a means to collect rent and fees, including late fees.

According to existing literature, large owners are more likely to conduct serial eviction filings.

Future Housing Instability

Emotional Distress

Owner Rent Collection

Massachusetts Eviction Filing Yearly Average 2000

-2018

Late Fees

?

?

owned by

owned by

Limited Liability Companies Arm’s Length Transaction Standardization and routinization in how they treat tenants.

By Census Tract Data Source: Eviction Tracking System: Version 2.0. Princeton: Princeton University, 2020. www.evictionlab.org

Large Corporate Owners

Corporate landlords create LLCs to conceal their real identities and minimize their liability, while making housing precarious for tenants.

owned by

Parcel

list address

Corporate Entity work in

Motivations and Rationale for Serial Filings

Address

list address

Corporate Individual

Invisible Connection Visible Connection If choose not to move; however many tenants are unaware that they cannot be legally removed at this point.

Notice to Quit Landlord needs to prove that tenant has received the notice.

Non-Payment: 14 days

Going through a full eviction process is costly and time-consuming, motivating landlords to pressure tenants with serial filings and threats of evictions without the actual intent to evict.

Higher fees discourage filings. MA has a medium filing fee, slightly above national average ($115).

Summons and Complaint Form

File ($120-$180)

Court

Tenancy-At-Will: Lease 30 days (follows lease)

If not tenant’s fault: stay up to 6-12 months

Execution

Counterclaims etc.

File

Legal Eviction Process in Massachusetts

Data Sources

Trial

Other

Answer

This project approaches LLC deduplication through the data analysis, with the hope that this information will empower tenants and enable multi-building campaigns against large landlords.

Dismissal Stay of Execution

- Which court - Deadline to file answer - Date + Location of Trial

Identifying Corporate Landlord Networks

Appeal

Settlement Landlord

Court

Eviction

Tenant

Source

Dataset Name

Description

Retrieved

MassGIS Data: Property Tax Parcels

L3_Assess

Tax assessment data with parcel geometries.

06/2022

MA Secretary of Common Wealth

Corp_Data

Business registration data - corporations.

04/2022

MA Secretary of Common Wealth

Corp_Individual

Business registration data - corporate individuals.

04/2022

Filter by Use Code

Formatting

dlo rd Ne two rks

101-109: Residential 013, 031: Mixed-Use

Lan

Parcel Corporate Entity Corporation Address *

Normalize addresses for matching

*size: num of corporations registered at this address

Co rpo rate

Python

Data Preprocessing

Methodology | Identifying Corporate Landlord Networks in Massachusetts

tts ssa chu se

Individual Deduplication Deduplicate among each database

Ma

PyArango

# Corporate Entities = 30 # Parcels = 309

Python

Deduplication

Example Corporation Cluster: D. Realty

Matching

ArangoDB

Parcel Corporation Cluster Ownership Relations

Nodes L3_Assess Corp_Data Corp_Individual

Edges

L3_Assess

Rhino3D

Geo2Corp Corp2Indiv

QGIS 3D

Geo-based Visualization

Graph Database System

Match attributes to deduplicate entities

Mapping parcels, corporation clusters, and ownership relationships.

Parcel Corporation Individual

Graph Visualization in ArangoDB

Corp_Data

Corp_Individual_Dedupe

Corp_Individual

_id

string

_id

string

_id

string

_id

string

PropID

string

DataID

string

DataID

string

DataID

string

LocID

string

FEIN

string

Name

string

Title

string

PropAddr

string

EntityType

string

Addr

string

Name

string

Units

int

EntityName

string

BusAddr

string

Owner1

string

EntityAddr

string

ResAddr

string

OwnerAddr

string

AgentName

string

TotalVal

int

AgentAddr

string

FY

int

LS_Date

int

LS_Price

int

Deduplication of Corporate Individuals

Entity Relationship Diagram To investigate the relationship and deduplicate between land parcels, corporations, and corporate individuals, I matched attributes from different datasets following this diagram.

Matched Attributes Resulting Matches

3

Eviction Filing Rate

3 /2 10 3

2 9/

23

2 8/

Corporate Ownership Rate

3

Census Tract 704

7/

6 Joint Eviction Filings

Parcel Corporation Individual

4 Joint Eviction Filings

Street Retail Inc.

8 Joint Eviction Filings

SRI Assembly Row B8 LLC

333 Great River Rd, Somerville 445 Artisan Way, Somerville 449 Canal St, Somerville 301 Assembly Row, Somerville

0-0.001 0.001-0.01 0.01-0.02 0.02-0.05 0.02-0.08

y = 2.0438x - 0.0384

3

Grep Atlantic LLC

Columbia Point (Tract 909)

Census Tract 8012

2 6/

7

Greystar Management Services LP

Shawmut (Tract 704) Mission Hill (Tract 808)

Census Tract 808

2 5/

6

West End + Downtown

Census Tract 8115

23

5

6

Town Boundary Major Road

Census Tract 909

3

4

5

6 Joint Eviction Filings

Zooming into the Greater Boston Area...

R-value = 0.569 R² = 0.324 Std. Error = 0.177 P-Value Intercept = 9E-10 P-value X variable = 8E-99 Observations = 1139

4/

23

3

4

Hyannis, Barnstable, MA

Census Tract Boundaries

0-0.01 0.01-0.05 0.05-0.1 0.1-1 1-7

2 3/

2/

23

2

1/

/2

Data Unavailable

2

1-6.208

/2

0.05-1

12

2

3

Data Source: Eviction Tracking System: Version 2.0. Princeton: Princeton University, 2020. www.evictionlab.org

0.008-0.05

2

0.001-0.008

11

3

1

Eviction Filings per Residential/Mixed-Use Parcel Yearly Average 2000-2018

0-0.001

/2 10

3 /2 10 3

2 9/

3

3

23

2 8/

7/

2 6/

2 5/

23

3

New Bedford, MA

0

2

8

Fall River, MA

Street Retail Inc. Cluster Monthly Eviction Filings

1

7

Worchester, MA

4/

23

2 3/

2/

23

2

1/

/2

Data Unavailable

2

McKnight, Springfield, MA (Tract 8012)

0.02-0.08

/2

0.02-0.05

12

0.01-0.02

0

2

0.001-0.01

11

South Holyoke, Holyoke, MA (Tract 8115)

/2 10

Census Tract Boundaries

0-0.001

Greystar Management Cluster Monthly Eviction Filings

* owned by large owner (parcel>=7) residential parcels

Corporate Ownership Rate 2021*

Corporate Ownership and Eviction Filings: The Intersections I conducted GIS and regression analysis on the per-parcel rates of corporate ownership and eviction filings by census tract in Massachusetts. Originally aimed at identifying major evictors, data limitations redirected the study to compare historical evictions (20002018) with 2021’s corporate ownership rates. This highlights areas that might have experienced gentrification and displacement over the past 20 years, suggesting locations where eviction patterns could have potentially aligned with, or even contribute to, shifts in property ownership.

Co Pu nce bli ptu c En al R ga ep ge re me se nt nta wi tion th the of Da ta

Identifying Major Evictors in Somerville, MA I also investigated details of Somerville eviction filings from Oct. 2022 to Oct. 2023, along with previously identified connections between corporate entities, to identify major evictors in Somerville. The eviction filing data was manually collected from court records.

Web Interface Design To disseminate this data and information to activists and tenants for effective collaboration and advocacy, we worked on iterating a website, tenantpower.org. Here is my version of the design.

Target Audiences

Goals

Information they value

Key Stakeholders (Somerville as example)

Community Action Agency of Somerville

Interaction Workflow

Somerville Community Corporation

Somerville Office of Housing Stability

Community Installation (Work in Progress)

Supported by RISD Somerson Sustainability Innovation Fund

I also initiated a collaboration with the Community Action Agency of Somerville to create a community installation at Connexion in East Somerville, using Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) with addressable LEDs to highlight properties in Somerville that belongs to the same corporate landlord network. Planning to launch in February 2024.

Collaborators

Community Action Agency of Somerville

Somerville Community Corporation

Connexion United Methodist Church

Prototyping Corporate Network I Portfolio

Corporate Network II Portfolio

Search by Address

Detailed Landlord Info

PCBs with Addressable LEDs

Prototype Circuit (Addressable LEDs + Buttons)

Prototype PCB Layout

Prototype Circuit Realized

Keyboard Control (To Enable Searching by Address)

Buttons for 10 Largest Portfolios in Somerville

Button Iteration I

Button Iteration II

Corporate Network III Portfolio

02 | COMMON GROUND Urban Design + Stakeholder Engagement Advanced Architecture Studio | Spring 2023 Instructor: W. Gavin Robb What can we do as Somerville rapidly gentrifies, causing communities to be pushed out? Imagine if we could turn Gilman Square into a central point of connection – a place where Somerville residents can unite, support each other, and access essential resources. Imagine Gilman Square to be a multi-resource, multilingual community center, a hub that empowers through connection, a space for tenant organizing and a physical anchor for information transparency.

Stakeholder Engagement Process

Questions

I co-facilitated a community engagement process with 11 other students in our class to undertstand the needs, challenges and powers at play in Gilman Square, involving 10 stakeholder interviews and 3 community panels. Then, I incorporated Natural Language Processing techniques, Large Language Models, and data visualization to map the themes discussed in these interviews and panel discussions on the Power Framework.

10 Stakeholder Interviews

3 Community Panels

The 12 students in our class conducted 10 1-2 hour virtual interviews with community organizations, elected officials, and residents.

We also facilitated 3 panels with 20+ stakeholders discussing topics including community spaces and equitable neighborhoods.

Desktop Research + Design Iterations

Class Collaboration Individual Work

Interview Transripts

Insights

Speech-to-text technology employed.

Somerville history, policies, community anchors, spatial possibilities, etc.

I experimented with the data to explore how to easily index into and visualize these valuable interview insights.

Large Language Model (LLM) Research Document We collectively wrote a 167-page document to summarize findings and envision the future of Gilman.

Use GPT to summarize more abstract ideas and themes in the text.

Iterative Analytical Process Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) Model

Designer Filter and integrate.

Extract explicit topics and keywords through the python library Gensim.

Theme Visualizer

Transportation Access

Urban Typology

I used D3.js to visualize the themes of focus emerged in our interviews.

Power + Resource Mapping The Power Framework[1] is a tool for informing and planning strategic action to reshape power in the social sector. It can be used to reveal the barriers and opportunities for achieving deeper solidarity, and to map a path to system-wide change[2]. With the help of language processing technologies, I mapped the ideas, resources and policies discussed in the stakeholder engagement process onto this framework to be shared and discussed in larger community conversations.

[1] Adapted from the Gender at Work Framework, developed by Aruna Rao and Srilatha Batliwala (2012).

[2] Sheila McKechnie Foundation. Rep. It’s All About Power: A Guide to Thinking Differently about Power for Solidarity in Social Change. City of London, 2022.

Design Emphasis based on Research Head Start Classrooms SHC Office Community Kitchen

“The goal of designing community space should be to create a supportive gathering point that helps people feel empowered.”

Flexible Classrooms

‘When you change the “my rent is so high“ conversation to “all of my neighbors have rents that are too high”, you create consciousness that it’s a systemic problem subject to systemic solutions.’

Iterative Design Process

Ground Floor Plan

Conceptual Collage

“Trying to bring services/ resources to people can help

fulfill the needs of people rather than asking them to figure it out.”

Connection to City Hall In the elevation, you can see that the site will not only be able to host its own support services and take advantage of the T, but it also connects the city to the City Hall on the upper side of the hill. Altogether, Gilman Square becomes a face for the services available in Somerville, and help people find a way to what they need.

Affordable Co-Housing On the residential floors, we have mainly co-housing units with shared kitchen amenities and dining areas, accompanied by a few two bedroom units. The co-housing model is designed to further facilitate connections among residents, and create a sense of community.

Spatial Buffer Zones A spatial hierarchy or a series of buffer zones are created on both sides of the green path that transitions from the outdoor path to an unenclosed but sheltered zone, through glass enclosure to an indoor space that receives sunlight from a light well above, and finally to more private rooms.

Moments of Connection Overall, the project aims to create different scales and speeds of encounter, and maximize people’s chances to connect.

03 | PARKS AND REC Urban Sensing + Machine Learning Personal Work | Summer 2023 Advisor: Dr. Waishan Qiu Published on International Journal of Geo-Information: Identifying Urban Park Events through Computer VisionAssisted Categorization of Publicly-Available Imagery Understanding park events and their categorization offers pivotal insights into urban parks and their integral roles in cities. The objective of this study is to explore the efficacy of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) in categorizing park events through images. Utilizing image and event category data from the New York City Parks Events Listing database, we trained a CNN model with the aim of enhancing the efficiency of park event categorization.

Art

Greenthumb

Sports

Education

Film & Theatre

Festivals

Family

Games

Nature

Volunteering

History & Culture

Community

Research Framework | Dataset + Model Training New York City Parks Events Listing Database

Dataset Preprocessing

Model Training & Comparison

11,060 Event Images Nature, Fitness, Outdoor Fitness, Seniors, Hiking, Strength Training / Weightlifting, Walking

True Label Co-Occurance Matrix Model Input Model Output

Non-Photographic Imagery (Logos, Posters etc.)

HOG+SVM Baseline

VGG16

Include Photographic Imagery

114 Categories

ResNet50

Reorganized 114 event categories into 12 major categories based on existing literature.

ResNet18

*Preprocessing VGG16 Model Training & Validation Loss Curves

Feature Extraction Fine-Tuning

GoogLeNet

Loss

Art

CNN Models

GreenThumb Festivals Volunteering

Film/Theatre Sports

C-Tran

Family History/Culture

From Scratch

SOTA Approach Nature

Epochs

Education

Games

Community

Training Dataset | Event Areas

Training Dataset | Mapping Event Distributions (Selected Categories) Van Cortlandt Park

Pelham Bay Park

Central Park

Flushing Meadows Corona Park

Art

Festivals

Film

Sports

Family

History & Culture

Nature

Education

Prospect Park

LaTourette Park

Marine Park

Freshkills Park

New York City Parks

Park Event Categorization Model

Convolutional Neural Networks: VGG16 Mode*

Number of Images per Label Exclude

Model Training Parameters and Performances

*mean Average Precision

Model

Transfer Learning Mode

Batch Size

Learning Rate

Epochs

Accuracy

mAP*

HOG+SVM

From Scratch

-

-

-

0.861

0.345

Feature Extraction

64

0.0002

80

0.844

0.462

Fine Tuning

64

0.0002

80

0.854

0.564

Feature Extraction

64

0.0002

100

0.823

0.360

0.620

VGG16 ResNet50 ResNet18 GoogLeNet C-Tran

Fine Tuning

64

0.0002

70

0.876

Feature Extraction

32

0.0002

20

0.809

0.291

Fine Tuning

32

0.0001

10

0.870

0.601

Feature Extraction

64

0.0002

80

0.857

0.551

Fine Tuning

64

0.0002

60

0.876

0.602

From Scratch

1

0.00001

40

-

0.200

ResNet50 Fine-Tuning Classification Result

Normalized Confusion Matrices

(X axis = predicted classes; Y axis = true classes)

Accuracy and mean Average Precision Curves

Accuracy

True Classes

Co-Occurrence Matrix

Predicted Classes

Epochs

Model Application on Social Media Imagery

Art

Greenthumb

Sports

Education

Exploring the model’s application on unlabeled images, I obtained 1,063 social media images through the Flickr API with “New York City park events“, “New York City park activities“, and keywords alike. Then, I applied the trained ResNet50 model on these images, and visualized the multi-label classification results on the map on the right.

Film

Festivals

Family

Games

Nature

Volunteering

History & Culture

Community

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

Sports Event & Facility Mismatch

Artwork

2018

Cross comparison between park events and facilities indicates two major parks for sports events have no sports facilities. Such findings can inform planners to support sports events with additional facilities or draw insights from the success of these parks.

tourism=artwork OR artwork_type=sculpture

Gallery

Art

tourism=gallery OR amenity=arts_centre

Garden

GreenThumb

leisure=garden

Market Place amenity=marketplace

Festivals

Recreation Ground landuse=recreation_ ground

Volunteering

Public Seating leisure=outdoor_seating

Film/Theatre

Theatre / Stage amenity=cinema OR amenity=theatre

251 34 23 8

Sports

Sports Facility

1

sport = *

Sports Field

Family

sport = *

Sp

ort

sE

ve

Playground

nts

History/Culture

leisure=playground

Nature

leisure=picnic_table OR amenity=bbq

Picnic Site

Monument

Wave Hill

Union Square Park

historic=monument

Education Memorial historic=memorial

Games

Water Body natural=water

Facility Event Temporal Distribution & Correlation with Facilities Regression and Chi-Square analyses were conducted to determine correlation between events and related facilities to inform planning of physical spaces.

3000 1000

So

Tourist Viewpoint leisure=nature_reserve OR tourism=viewpoint

Op

5000

R² = 0.3 R² = 0.2 R² = 0.1 Chi-Square P<0.05

Point Area

ort

sF ac

ilit

ce: ur

Community

Dat a

Sp

en

Str ee t

Map

Community Center amenity=community_ centre

ies

04 | HOUSING REC SYSTEM Data Analysis + UI/UX Design Personal Work | Fall 2023 Advisor: Jieyu Zhou The cumbersome nature of social service applications is especially evident on affordable housing lotteries. For homeownership, this entails a complicated homebuying process and a bunch of hardto-understand legal documents; for rentals, a tiring process of searching among separate web pages of different developments.

Even worse, many in Boston have given up on the lottery system because it’s so hard to get a place near their job. This project proposes a recommendation system to help.

Team Members: Viola Tan (ideation/research/system design/GIS) Xuechen Li (research/system design) Zheng Fang (programming/visualization)

Supporting Member: Yuxin Yang (research)

Affordable Housing in Boston: Background & Challenges

Primary User Painpoint: Location “I gave up on the lottery because I was never able to get a place near my job.”

“Proximity to job is definitely the first thing I consider when finding a place.“

“Applicants often indicate they would accept housing in many towns, but then reject offers from communities that are far away from their current location.“ Boston Resident 1

Application Process

Boston Resident 2

Reccommendation System Design Framework Merge Sources of Available Affordable Housing Units Python

QGIS

Geocode

Updated Biweekly

On-Demand

QGIS

Cluster Units

Recommend Clusters to User based on Need

Gather Relevant Data on Unit/Locations Python

K-Means Clustering

GIS

Data Sources We merged multiple data sources by the names of developments to integrate information.

Developments with Affordable Units

MassHousing Name of Development Address Project-Based Subsidy ? # Total Units

Green Line Orange Line Red Line Blue Line Silver Line

# Elder Units # Accessible Units # 0-1 Bedroom # 2-3 Bedroom # 4+ Bedroom

Housing Navigator MA Name of Development Address Include Accessible Units ?

Rent Based on Income ?

Waitlist Status

MOH Housing Inventory Name of Development Neighborhood Zip Code # Total Units # Income-Restricted Units Include Senior Units ?

Section 8 ?

Schools Num Schools in Neighborhood

Display Recommendations with Transportation Tips HERE Transit API

Mapbox

Resident / Frontend

User Interaction + Computational Logic Unit Type

Rent + Income Restriction

Need & Preferences

Desired Unit Type(s)

Desired Rent Range

Job Location (Neighborhood)

SRO Studio 1BR

2BR 3BR 4BR+

Tenant-Based Subsidy ?

List Priorities

Income + Household Size

Bicycle Friendliness Public Transit Accessibility Walkability Proximity to Schools Proximity to Job Location Immediate Availability

Disability ?

Senior (Age 62+) ?

Unit Type

Target Rent Range: Desired Rent Range + Tenant-Based Subsidy + Project-Based Subsidy

Rent+Income Restriction

K-Means Clustering

Affordable Housing Unit 82

Rent

SRO Studio 1BR

2BR 3BR 4BR+

Set Rent Based on Income Project-Based Subsidy ?

Accessible Unit ?

Senior Unit ?

Section 8

MRVP

Income Restriction (AMI)

COLOR: Public Transit HEIGHT: Walkability

Bike Friendliness Public Transit Accessibility Walkability Neighborhood Accessibility to Schools Latitude Longitude Immediate Availability:

Neighborhood Num Schools Distance to Nearest T Stop

1=First Come First Serve 2=Application Open 3=Waitlist Open 4=Waitlist Closed

Information Overlay for Affordable Housing Units

K-Means Clustering

Bicycle Friendliness

Public Transit Accessibility

Walkability

Neighborhood Num Schools

Latitude, Longitude

Immediate Availability

Tr a

ns

it

Walkability

We conducted k-means clustering on 7 dimensions to cluser development projects that contain income-restricted housing units. These clusters are updated on a biweekly basis to ensure timeliness. When residents enter their needs, the system will recommend rental housing for them to apply for, from the cluster closest to residents’ input.

cle

Frie

bl

ic

Bicy

ndli

Pu

Unit / Backend

Unit Type(s)

Bicycle Friendliness

nes

s

Recommendations for User 1 Household

Recommending based on:

User 1 Household

User 2 Household

User 3 Household

• 2BR-3BR • 100% AMI • Wheelchair

• Studio-1BR • 60% AMI • Senior

• 4BR • 80% AMI • Section 8 Voucher

Priorities: 1. Public Transit 2. Proximity to Schools 3. Proximity to Job

Priorities: 1. Walkability 2. Immediate Availability 3. Public Transit

Priorities: 1. Proximity to Schools 2. Public Transit 3. Immediate Availability

1. Public Transit 2. Proximity to Schools 3. Proximity to Job

Clusters of Filtered Units

User 2 Household

User 1 Household

Elbow Method

• 2BR-3BR • 100% AMI • Wheelchair Accessible

Developments in Recommended Cluster

Most Recommended Apartment

Job Location

Most Reconmmended: (based on highest public transit access)

Hemenway Apartments

User 3 Household

Apartment Features • Smoke-Free Community • Studio, 1, and 2 Bedroom Units • Utilities Included • Fully Applianced Kitchens • On-Site Laundry Facility • Trash Chutes • Elevators • Intercom System • Part-time Resident Services Coordinator • Professional On-Site Management • 24-Hour Emergency Maintenance

05 | DESIGN-PLAY KIT Interactive Device | Providence, RI Student Organization Work | Spring 2023 Funded by RISD Center for Student Involvement

The objective of this collaborative project between Architecture for All and ONE Neighborhood Builders is to develop a prototype converting abandoned retail stores into affordable housing sites, using 533 Elmwood Ave, Providence, RI as an example site. Meanwhile, the incorporation of digital tools in a public event engage people outside of architecture to join the reimagination of these abandoned sites.

By Student Organization Architecture for All: Viola Tan (President, ideation/programming) Betty Ng, Jacky Yao (Outreach Leads, outreach) Jasmine Lee (physical device design) Jane Xu, Nhat Nguyen, Alexander Carroll (manufacture)

Owner & Renter Monthly Costs State of RI

$2,500

582 SMITHFIELD AVE

30% of certain income levels

$2,200 $1,846

$2,000 $1,500

4,840 SF

5,026 SF

Renters

(Median Single Family)

$1,557

$500 Owners

Home Price Increase

2021

$907

$1,000

$0

Cost Burdened Households: 26,178

35%

47%

=8,487 Owner Households

=17,691 Renter Households

2016

62%

Increase

$300,000

$185,683

$561

Private Renter RI Min. Sector Household Wage Wage Income

$0

Data Source: HousingWorksRI, Local Housing Facts (Providence, RI), Available Online: https://www.housingworksri.org/Portals/0/Providence%20HFB22.pdf?ver=6410vNljA3QEcEmfSHKkzA%3d%3d

942 MINERAL SPRING AVE

10 PUTNAM PIKE

Opportunity for Adaptive Reuse: Abandoned Retail Stores into Affordable Housing 615 PAWTUCKET AVE

1895 SMITH ST

1158 N MAIN ST

Due to reasons such as historical retail overexpansion, the rise of E-commerce, COVID-driven economic recession and demographic shifts, retail stores are being abandoned and up for sale in Providence and its neighboring areas. Meanwhile, the housing affordability gap is large and still increasing. The objective of this project is to develop a prototype converting abandoned retail stores into affordable housing sites, using 533 Elmwood Ave, Providence, RI as an example site.

Parking Space Many of these retail stores have their own parking spaces on the circumference. This presents an opportunity to expand the building footprint, as well as simply providing parking for residents.

533 ELMWOOD AVE

Site Challenges Due to the retail nature, stores often have deep structures. This presents challenges for residential rooms to accessing natural light.

City Boundary Road

Proximity to Major Roads Stores locate on commercial corridors, offering a convenient location and access to public transportation.

Railway Commercial Corridor Water Retail Sites for Sale

Proximity to Points of Interest Similarly, stores are in proximity to other points of interest, such as restaurants, other retail stores and facilities.

52 RIVER AVE Oppurtunities and Challenges of Adaptive Reuse

Housing Design Workshop: A Community Collaboration

161-175 MANTON AVE 5,631 SF

5,754 SF

I led the student organization Architecture for All to collaborate with a community nonprofit, ONE Neighborhood Builders, and organize a housing design workshop open to the RISD community as well as the general public. We aim to re-introduce architecture as an accessible and tangible discipline through the interactive workshop, as well as raise awareness to housing advocacy.

1031 PLAINFIELD ST

520 ELMWOOD AVE 533 ELMWOOD AVE

10,838 SF

190 GANSETT AVE

3,500 SF

6,400 SF

13,905 SF Site Research: Retail Properties for Sale (in and near Providence, RI, as of August 2023)

Organizational Diagram

Housing Design Workshop!

That sounds fun.

Sunlight, air...

Did you find the feedbacks helpful in understanding space? Which ones?

Seems like the board is the house!

Some courtyards are always good.

These wood blocks represent rooms in a building! Feel free to experiment.

...

Cool!

Your level of experience with architecture?

Oh no, it takes a minute to go to the bathroom! Let me go back and fix that.

What do you think makes a good space?

0. Poster

1. Entry Survey

2. Legend

3. Interactive Tiles

4. Display Screen

Has this experience changed your idea of architecture?

5. Exit Survey

Video Camera

Collects real-time data from the board.

Mini Projector

Projects the calculated circulation paths back onto the board.

4. Display Screen 1. Entry Survey

Courtyard Key Paths* Other Paths Key Destinations*

3. Interactive Tiles

5. Exit Survey

Other Destinations

2. Legend *Paths and destinations used for the calculation of circulation time. See next page.

Circulation Time

Radiation

Circulation Paths

Many potential participants with non-architectural backgrounds identified circulation time as a key indicator of design quality.

Considering the structure’s depth, access to natural light is also vital.

This is simulated with Ladybug’s Incident Radiation module.

Circulation paths are derived from the tile arrangement and projected onto the board. This projection complements the ‘Circulation Time’ metrics on the screen, helping users visualize how program arrangements affect residents’ movements in the building.

Design Workshop Setup Participants place color-coded wood tiles, representing programs following the legend below, on a 1” grid pegboard, and receive feedbacks including simulated circulation and radiation.

A. Bedroom

B. Courtyard

C. Studio Apt.

D. Lounge

E. Bathroom

F. Gym

G. Reception

H. Office

I. Living Room

J. Mailroom

12’*12’,12’*16’

6’*18’, 18’*21’

20’*24’

16’*24’, 32’*40’

6’*8’, 8’*8’

12’*16’, 24’*32’

12’*20’

8’*8’, 8’*16’

16’*16’,16’*20’

8’*16’

Key Circulation Path Entry > Reception > Mailroom > Living Room > Bathroom > Bedroom > Lounge

Visual Feedback II: Circulation Time

Circulation Network

User Reconfiguration Based on Feedbacks

Network connecting all nodes.

Programmatic Nodes Each room (block) as a different node.

Radiance Analysis and Visualization

Visual Feedback I: Natural Light

Interactive Design Tiles

Digitally Reconstructed Building Envelope Overall structure with features suchs as fixed window openings and courtyard(s) as detected by the camera.

Input

Video Streaming of Game Board

Color Detection Algorithm

User Interface: Interactive Tiles

Computational Logic Diagram

Technical Realization The technical components are programmed in Grasshopper, following the computational logic described above.

Housing Design Workshop Participants exploring and shaping architectural concepts for affordable housing using the interactive tiles on April 23rd, 2023, in the Providence-Washington Building of RISD. The event gained ~40 attendance and was well-received according to participant feedback.

Claire’s Design

Ashley and Lexi’s Design

Code Excerpts

EK’s Design Video Recognition and Translation to GH Geometry

Simulation of Circulation

Circulation

Facility

Capacity

Capacity

Capacity

Circulation

Natural Light

Facility

Natural Light

Facility

Natural Light

Circulation

06 | PLAN MY CITY UI/UX Design | Providence, RI | Fall 2022 Computation, Technology and Culture Interdisciplinary Critique Concentration Degree Project | Instructor: Minkyoung Kim Brown University Breakthrough Lab Scholarly Award

PlanMyCity is a central information hub for ongoing urban development projects, allowing community members to access design updates, provide online feedback, and be informed about upcoming meetings, surveys, and other ways to be engaged. I interviewed urban planners, community organizers, and residents to gain their insights on improving this process.

Typical Community Engagement in Urban Planning First Community Meeting

On-site Interviews

First Survey

Second Community Meeting

Urban Planner/Designer

Third Community Meeting

Resident

Goals: - obtain feedback from diverse communities - engage local stakeholders - maintain a continuous arc of engagement and transparency

Want to get as much engagement as possible, not just people in power.

Second Survey

- busy schedules might limit abilities to engage in in-person meetings or create gaps of engagement - desire for information on proposed changes before giving comments - desire to expand on comments and provide more information than just selecting a category

Frequent project handovers between contracts disrupt continuity and complicate communication.

Fragmentation of information across standalone project websites creates difficulty.

Proposed Digital Tools Public Survey

Community Meeting

Digital Information Hub

Digital survey that can be easily taken on phone. Distributed through QR codes on site and through nonprofits.

In-person meetings between the community, the planners, and other stakeholders to expand discussion.

A website that archives urban design projects, past participation data, and ways to be engaged.

07 | HOMEOWNERSHIP HACK Financial Hack for Housing Affordability | Fall 2023 Overall Winner, Ivory Innovations Hack-A-House In collaboration with Sharon Wang, July Qi In charge of ADU design and policy research.

Problem: Mortgage Affordability at Historical Lows Housing Affordability Index

Source: The State of the Nation’s Housing 2023 - Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard University

A creative and feasible solution to the housing affordability crisis: Purchase Assist Bridge Loan combined with ADU development. We seek to lend primary mortgage to home buyers with stable income and good credit scores, whose income requirement is not (yet) met by conventional loan standards. Then, we help fund and build a prefab ADU in their backyard and help rent it out. The rental income qualifies homeowner for conventional loan terms, and they refinances us out.

Our Solution: Purchase Assist Bridge Loan combined with prefab ADU development.

Step 1: Lend

Step 2: Build

Step 3: Lease

Lend primary mortgage Obtain ADU Permit (1-3 Lease ADU to tenant. to home buyers: months). Install a prefab ADUs are usually easily (A) “Purchase Assist ADU on lot. rented out due to price Mortgage” and point and livability, (B) ADU Construction Loan.

Step 4: Refinance

With a lease agreement in place, after 12 months of rental payments, the homeowner qualifies for conventional loan and repays us back in full.

Standardized Components and Materials

Asphalt Shingles 1’-6”*3’

Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) 4’*8’

Standardized Vinyl Windows 3’-6”*2’

Vinyl Siding 1’*12’

Prefab ADU Feasibility with Truck Sizes

Financial Feasibility 1. This works because the spread between Yield on Cost and cap rate of single family homes is large due to prefab cost savings.

Spread between Yield-on-Cost and Cap Rate

2-story ADU with a footprint of 24’*12’ can fit on a standardized 26 foot truck

1-story ADU with a footprint of 64’*15.5’ can fit on a standardized semi-trailer truck

2. The Borrower benefits from the creation of rental income and the property value increase of the ADU.

08 | WEST END VISION Urban Analysis + Design | Providence, RI Urban Ecologies Studio | Fall 2021 Instructor: Manuel Cordero Alvarado

We conducted analysis of the Providence West End area focusing on the tension between existing community context and the stress caused by ongoing development, and designed for community solidarity in response.

Envisioning Space Through Opposite Lenses In collab. with Ella Matsudaira, Megan Holzrichter, SJ Kim This analysis explores the tension between those that view the space as an opportunity for profit and those who view it as a space to inhabit. This tension between the landowner and the occupant can be seen in the chaos and disorder of the opposing views of each drawing. The colored glasses are tools to help filter out one of these contrasting views at a time to focus on how one group may see the space over the other.

Genius Loci In collaboration with Yingkai Xiong The model criticizes the conception of the site as a cleared void. Embodied by real estate developers, this view devours the existing natural and social context and construction of the site. The casted resin visualizes the legal maximum developable space (profit) on vacant lots within the site.

Urban Food Cycle In collaboration with Crescent Feng We designed an affordable, mixed-use housing project based upon the adaptive reuse of an abandoned factory, creating a full food-waste cycle for the public to experience.

The sequential experience mimics the process of food being grown, processed, cooked, eaten, and composted.

Residents make a living through operating the community gardens and food market, components of the sequential experience. The project challenges the traditional conception of cooking as a behind-the-scene action.

Section: Across the Food Cycle

09 | IMPLIED CORNERS: A PUBLIC LIBRARY Architectural Design Architectural Design Studio Remote | Spring 2021 Instructor: Silvia Acosta

Implied Corners at Different Scales

In challenging the traditional concept of the corner as the most stable element in architecture, not meant for program usage, this project explores how corners can be both dissolved and inhabited. Dissolved Corners suggest movement through implied intersections while creating experiences of expansion and contraction. Inhabited Corners fold in and create destinations to be occupied and programmed.

Dissolve

Inhabit

Plan: Implied Corners

1st Floor

2nd Floor

Plan: Expand/Contract

Section: Implied Corners

3rd Floor

From an inviting entry point to glass corners introducing light and view into the building, Implied Corners create places of stasis at different scales.

10 | CITYSCAPE: A HOUSING DEVELOPMENT BOARD GAME This game explores the use of analog simulation in encouraging conversations and thinking around development and densification, highlighting challenges and power imbalances that shaped the housing landscape today. The game serves as an educational tool and a platform for argumentation, allowing players to envision and debate potential solutions to housing inequality.

Player Actions

Player’s Residence

Market-Rate Housing

Affordable Housing

School

“Renter in Downtown“

“Homeowner in Rich Suburb“

“Homeowner in Lower-Income Suburb“

1

2

Card contains: • Initial status • Goal • Actions

3

Subway

Identity Cards

Policy Cards Decision Making 1 A governor is elected every 3 rounds among residents.

2

Every resident can suggest policies to the governor, but with different success rates. This rule highlights how participatory politics can often exclude underrepresented voices, leading to outcomes that disproportionately impact renters and lower-income residents.

3 Developer cannot vote but can fund candidates’ campaigns, resulting in them being able to say “no” to certain policies like affordable housing.

Player Goals Gingertown Resident Redford Resident Blueburg Resident • Earn $6 • Live in a neighborhood with a school

Play-Testing Sessions Developer • Earn $60

Governor • Get re-elected • Help every resident win • Not run out of public money

Game Board Initial Status

• Draw 1 Policy Card • Play 1 Policy Card ?

Player’s Jobs

Player’s Turn Orders

Board Game Design Thesis Seminar: Creative Process Providence, RI | Fall 2023 Instructor: Lafayette Cruise

Pieces

• Receive rent, pay tax • Build/Buy/Raise rent ?

• Suggest Policy ?

• Receive salary • Pay property tax/rent • Move ?

• Try to change job ?

• Suggest Policy ? ?: Optional Action Suggest Policy Success: Governor has to play suggested policy card next round

Money

THANK YOU!

YIZHOU VIOLA TAN

y t a n02 @ ri s d . ed u | 401 . 2 15. 3873