Installation affiliated to art school student Exhibition Tale of The Abandoned
Winter 2023, 123 Bowery, New York
*The installation is a team effort.
Proposal: 敬一, 海狸
Installation Design: Zixiao Huang
Material and Fabrication: 敬一, Zixiao Huang, Beatrix, Danyu Li, Rovi, Rachel Guan
Exhibition Curators:
敬一；海狸；龙虾长者；Lavender Wang；Zixiao Huang；Beatrix；Danyu Li；Veronica Zhao；Jona Xu；Adam Chen；Cindy Wang；Chanel Hu；Olivia Hang；Emily Wang；Rovi；Ross Zhou；Briza Liu；Yueming Wei；Tianyi Li；Rachel Guan；Max Guo；Emma Yao；Tico Chen；叶子；Sally Chen；胡馨尹；Fengyi Wang；Lucas Fan；張庭瑜；Landy Gong；猹猹；Christal Lyu；千叶；Martina Liu；Christine Xu
Volunteers：
小狗；Taojie ZhangCarol Zhu；Cheryl Huang；Stephanie Zhu；Erika Xiang；Zhiyuan Liu；海若
Special Thanks to：Amy Jiang; Ivy Haoying Huang
By the end of each art school’s semester, there are piles after piles of student artworks thrown out into the trash, taken into the dumpster to be buried, burned, destroted. The Catchers collected more than a hundred of these pieces from the previous fall and spring semesters, some stright from the bins, others right before the works were collectively disposed by the art schools in which they are created.
Some pieces were never intentionally “abandoned”, and we hope to find their creators through this exhibition; others we obtained consent from the artists for them to be displayed and their stories to be told. But the *Tale of the Abandoned* wants to convey more than just about the stories of the salvaged works; we hope to shine light on the concept of “abandonment” itself, to invite our dear audience to join us in the contemplation of abandonement: How and why does it come about? When do we notice what we abandon, and when do we not? When we abandon something, where does it go? Can we ever truly abandon anything at all? …
The list of questions go on, and we want you to add on to it. (Photo: JY, Landy, Wendy, Zixiao, Rovi)
Among the collected artworks, those lacking proper authorization face constraints preventing their exhibition due to legal and ethical considerations. Consequently, these unauthorized pieces undergo a two-step process for temporary display. Initially, they are discreetly veiled with black canvas and strategically placed on the wall. Subsequently, they are suspended in a blurred version at another location. This approach preserves their recognizability and aids artists in locating their works. Upon the artist's identification and permission, the concealed artworks on the wall could be unveiled and officially exhibited.
Functioning as both a spatial divider and a blurred archive hanger, the installation occupies the central space within the gallery. The design reconciles geometric aesthetics and structural stability, and it negotiates the zigzagged counterweights and streamlined hangers, thereby uniting multiple axes to reframe the exhibition space and enhance the overall visitor experience.
Reinterpreting Archive for Elephants
Spring 2023, Surin, Thailand
Located in Ta Klang Village, Surin, Thailand, the project centers on the strong bonding relationship between local people and the elephants that have grown up as part of their families. The villagers maintain a peaceful elephant graveyard with over 100 resting places for deceased elephants, where the tombs recognize and commemorate their bonds with humans. However, the current graveyard’s significance is limited by its atomized structure and individual connections between each mahout and their elephants. Thus, the project aims to reinterpret the graveyard into an archive space for elephants, where the village’s collective memory can be etched.
The design is inspired by the elephant footprint, where each elephant’s death is honored by weaving its memory into the ground. The ground keeps track of the elephant footprints, which are collected to form an archive of the village’s history. The formless and chaotic nature of elephant marks become a repository for memories and stories, and over time, the space leaves a trace of elephants that complete the design.
The space serves as an archive, a garden, a forest underground, and a place for elephants, humans, and other non-human animals, where the stages of grief are respected, and the place of remembrance is defined and fortified with the energies of life. The project transforms the elephant graveyard into a space of archive and commemoration for the elephants’ bonds with humans and their collective memories.
The Graveyard Project combines local beliefs, cultures, and poetic beauty to tell a story and convey emotions of an ancient graveyard. The same holes dug out to bury elephants are where seeds are planted waiting to be reborn as trees. The elephant’s footprints are reinterpreted as a large archive. This Graveyard is unique with a simple architecture, reflecting the simplicity of an elephant grave. As the community has to excavate many elephant graves for the burial rituals, the project takes into account the use of local materials such as laterite, as an effort to maximize resource efficiency. Most importantly, this project reminds humans to rethink their role in nature and to respect the environment, the indigenous heritage and history with humble architecture.
Partner: Junjie Fu
Mass Effects: Reinhabiting Thickness
Fall 2022, Long Island City, New York
The project is trying to achieve an overall thickness in relation to space and society by rethinking the current professional structure of the mental health treatment system. There’s a significant gap between privately run offices and institutional facilities in mental health care practice. Though an independent psychiatrist could provide private and personalized treatment plans for the patients, which a mental health hospital lacks, the psychiatrist still needs labs and equipment for professional research, and the patients are being referred and referred if the mental situation gets worse or as simple as needing a special examination. Moreover, nowadays private psychiatrists are facing more problems like unfriendly neighbors in a general office building, long-term lease insecurity, and the existing office setting which were not ideal for psychotherapies.
Therefore, this project tries to explore the possibility of combining these two systems together architecturally and socially. The complex has an outpatient wing consisted of private offices and talk rooms and an inpatient wing for mainly patient wards. The two parts of the project are connected by shared programs, like labs and meeting rooms, and public spaces. Private practitioners can do their research and attend professional meetings next door, the hospital can gain external knowledge and help at hand, and the community can come and learn about mental health and how mental health problems are treated. Therefore, by thickening the gap, however, the two systems can work more seamlessly and efficiently.
By making a lot of rooms without ever having a truly enclosed space, as the walls are always held a bit apart, the spatial condition is one of a thickened porosity that on the one hand works through a kind of diffusion of solid elements, the walls, but does so in a way that the relation between mass and space and space to space creates a kind of overall density. The mass in the project is being both atomized and distributed, like the idea of a colloidal suspension in chemistry where one element is diffused into another without dissolving. Having created this condition what are its benefits for the project as relating to both the program, the building’s performance, and the experience of users, the project managed to generate a sense of privacy or intimacy while still maintaining a connection to light, exteriority, and the larger spatial assemblage.
Proxy Landscape: A Performative Narration of the History of Brooklyn Bridge Park
Summer 2022, Brooklyn, New York
Transforming from a dilapidated industrial port to a prosperous public park, the land under Brooklyn Bridge Park adapted new identities to accommodate global changes. However, if we see through the spatial development that has been constructed to maximize economic and real estate value, it reveals an overlooked yet significant component, the timber piles, who have been supporting the existence of the landscape. Therefore, the undervalued piles are a proxy for the capital structure that obscures them from above.
As the proxy relationship is embodied in the negotiation between valued and undervalued objects, we want to first identify the current system of value. Value exists persistently, yet it sustains, evolves and is presented through different modalities. Human society tends to quantify the value of a piece of land using a monetary system, whose algorithm often depicts the common and ignores the particular. In contrast, if we perceive lands with ecological perspectives, where the value is embodied through the energy flow in nature driven by multi-species, the image of a land becomes more comprehensive with values superimposed and exchanged dynamically. Therefore, our projection is to challenge the predominant interest of short-term economic benefits, reimagining the human-constructed landscape of Brooklyn Bridge Park with long-term value of ecological regeneration.
Acknowledging climate change is reconfiguring the condition of earth surfaces, we want to identify Brooklyn Bridge Park as a waterfront surface that is already exposed, preparing for conceivable submergence and projecting its future reformation to a new seabed. Start with the historical research and end with strategic method reacting to climate crisis, the installation explores the role of architecture and landscape in preserving existing values, facilitating value transformation, and unveiling obscured values through local political competition, urbanism evolvement, global shipping industry fluctuation, and climate change that define a post-industrial waterfront.
Partner: Sixuan Chen
Video: Brooklyn Bridge Park: Shifts of Value from 1814 to 2016
High-Rise Development Composite
Fall 2021, Los Angeles, California
The Coral Core is an integrated yet segregated tower-cluster skyscraper as a controversial composite of core and wall as structural elements and tower and slab as architectural typologies in Downtown LA. This 960’ tall project is an office-led commercial complex for local and international investors, workers, and visitors to experience the vast economical and cultural environment in the greater Los Angeles Area.
The design focuses on deconstructing a rigid traditional tower core into individual elements based on their functions and affinity to each other and reconstructing the pieces within a certain perimeter delicately to achieve a more flexible and breathable group of cores and walls. The new web structure redefines the core, traditionally lacking flexibility due to the high concentration of function units, as a 3-D porous archipelago that creates and divides spaces according to the intended uses. In plan, the elevator unit and egress system are scattered throughout the whole building to provide area-based services and connected by thickened structural walls that provide enclosed spaces, like the restrooms, MEP shafts, and private rooms. In elevation, each elevator-egress combo naturally generates a mini tower that ends at different heights, and the walls between the mini tower cores are punched into holes with a geometrical rhythm based on the adjacenting towers.
The envelope of the project follows the core skeleton in a subtle way. From the bottom to the top, it starts to peel off when the towers are starting to connect with each other and ends around the nearest tower at the top of core, compositing roof gardens at each tower and the leftover spaces between towers. Following the placement of the cores, the envelope emphasizes and reinforces the views to Los Angeles cityscape.
The United States Supreme Court Monument
Fall 2021, Washington, D.C.
Dualism, Twins, Yin and Yang, such pairing relationships exist in every corner of our lives, either oppose or support each other, or both in different ways. We admit their existence, yet it’s hard to remain neutral. Every time we made a choice, a judgment, or a decision, we picked aside. But the real significance behind the contrast and conflict is the resilient equilibrium that holds everything all together and the effort we made to achieve it.
245 years ago, with the signing of the Declaration of Independence, The United States was born, followed by hundreds of years of debating between the two major voices, now known as the Publicans and Democrats. No matter how the names of the parties change, no matter how the brands of the politics shift subtly between them, and no matter how the domestic and international situation fluctuates, they led the American people through the dark days, overcame the challenges, and made glorious achievements. The two pillars structure, working with another pair, cabinets, and parliaments, represent the order that respects human rights, democracy, and liberty.
A primary goal for architecture is to geometrically symbolize the great achievement in human history. The Monument is designed to be an iconic supreme courtroom and gallery used for both judicial administrative affairs and education in the center of the eclipse in front of the White House, in Washington, DC. It utilizes the primitive forms, sphere, cube, and pyramid, to symbolize the pure virtue of justice, and at the same time salute to the Separation of Powers structure. The project design process goes through several layers of selection, during which the three primary forms are arranged in different ways to emphasize different meanings. The final selection might not be the final presentation, but it reveals the balance in the current situation, just like what has been done in the White House in the past hundreds of years.
Buddhism Temple Compound
Spring 2019, Putuo Mountain, Zhejiang
Throughout history, humans built great ideal cities both in imagination and reality to fulfill their dream of a perfect world. In the Western ideal city aspiration, people employ the purest virtue, idealist proportions, and more efficient programs to achieve the idealistic community in the forms of castles, plants, and even complete cities. In Eastern Buddhist cosmology, a similar attempt has also been practiced in the past thousands of years. Even though Buddhism explores the idealization in a spiritual way that organizes the harmonic unity between the human mind and the outside world through meditation and religious rules, it goes without saying that the pursuance for the ultimate perfection in both ideologies speaks to each other. The similarity between the two derives a new modern ideal city with a form of rational geometry and proportion spiritually bonded by the notion of Buddhism
Thanks to the advance of technology, any requirement of perfect geometric shape and precise proportion calculations could be done by programming effortlessly. At the same time, the new technique about parametric form-finding gives the new possibility for the next embodiment of a Buddhist temple, since Buddhism embraces technology from all aspects like the ways of spreading of the sutra, training monks, and linking ancient philosophical thoughts to the latest technological advancement, including architecture.
In Buddhism, the universe consists of millions of smaller universes, and each one of them constitutes a state of being. A perfect universe? It is not a world, not a city, but one’s self, as the Sumeru Mountain enters a mustard seed.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles Reimagination
Fall 2017, Los Angeles, California
MOCA is an icon in Los Angeles, a cultural leader that sets an example by putting art and artists first. Our Proposal offers a set of design solutions that elevates the museum experience while upholding MOCA's philosophies and values and remaning respectful to Arata Isozaki's existing architecture.
Located at an epicenter of arts and culture, MOCA should be able to adapt to contemporary conditions and desires in order to maintain relevance on Grand Avenue. Our solution is to create an experience that engages guests both inside and outside the museum, offering desirable spaces for gathering, appreciating art, and shopping before returning to the main plaza to enjoy a nice sit-down meal or cup of coffee.
Good experiences foster good memories. We aim to activate MOCA with opportunities to curate different experiences for museum guests, special events, residents and people work around the Grand Avenue plaza. The ideas for the reimagination of MOCA's plaza are adaptable to different types of venues.
Partners: Andreina De Abreu, Aroutin Alexandry, Hung-ming Chen, Sarah Castro, Andrew Fabry, Thomas Gin Jr., Jessi Jacobwitz, Nick Miuccio, Kaitlyn Tokash, and Celine Wang. (alphabetical order)
At the Grand Avenue entrance, the ticket booth, northwest wall, and tucked away ADA lift will be removed in order to accommodate a new accessible ramp to the elevated plaza level. This proposal opens pedestrain sight lines to the exciting new plaza space and creates a more direct approach from the sidewalk on Grand Ave. The proposed addition of three flag poles and corresponding banners facing Grand Ave. further publicizes the museum and denotes any ongoing exhibitions. To make the museum-going experience more inclusive, an elevator alongside the "Glass Box" allows guests to move conveniently between Grand Ave., the lower courtyard, and the elevated main plaza.
We propose the removal of the glass canopy and insertion of a "glass box" facing Grand Ave. and overlooking the lower courtyard. The glass box designates a clear entrance into the museum as its curvy glass facade stands out from its hard sandstone surroundings while respecting the geometry of Isozaki's signature "Marilyn Monroe" curve. This space will serve as an orientation area for arriving visitors and thus will require some furnishings (an information desk and seating). A new elevator with three stops (a new catwalk which connects to the upper plaza level, the Grand Ave. entrance level, and the lower courtyard level) allows for an equal and inclusive experience for everyone. The roof of the glass box includes the system of the greenscreen canopies of the main plaza (welded aluminum supporting a trellis). In order to limit the amount of solar gain, the glass can be treated in various ways, from UV coatings to ceramic frit patterns. Moreover, the glass box could be an unconditional exterior space if needed to satisfy Title 24 requirements. Alternatively, passive ventilation design techniques could be incorporated into the wall section and roof as required, as could localized heating and cooling.
To transform the plaza into a more inviting urban space, we softened the existing barren hard-scape by introducing some much needed vegetation and shade that would offer visitors a more desirable and comfortable outdoor experience. Our proposal suggests the removal of the current Nancy Rubins sculpture to allow for the addition of six, 4' x 4' x 3' white oak planters complete with corresponding trees and 18" white oak cubic seats.
Along the perimeter of the plaza will be new joint bench/planters (also of white oak) populated with low-maintenance succulents a "greenscreen wall" on which vines can grow. This greenscreen wall is comprised of a welded aluminum primary structure (3" x 3" tubes spaced 8' o.c. with 1" x 2" members spanning between, powder coated to match the existing metal finishes) that supports a trellis for the vines to climb. This same trellis system continues onto the two canopies (2" x 8" aluminum tubes spaced 8" o.c.) which cantilevers out at a distance of 20' and 12' and are connected to the structure of the existing buildings with steel knife plates and tension rods as structurally necessary.
Converting the gift shop into a full restaurant would provide the rather uninhabited plaza with a genuine programmatic destination that draws in visitors. This conversion requires installing requisite hookups for a full kitchen as well as opening up the current gift shop facade to accommodate the inclusion of two bi-fold garage doors, intermingling the restaurant and plaza experiences. Interior layout and furnishings are to be determined by the eventual occupant but should ideally maintain design consistency with the other finishes in the project.
Free-hand sketch: Credit to Haeun Kim from ACCD
Swapping the café with the bookstore results in a more appropriately sized gift shop that is strategically located directly across from the Museum exit in the lower courtyard. We are introducing tiered hardwood seating adjacent to the bookstore along the northeast wall, providing visitors with a lounging/waiting area in between the museum exit and the bookstore. The new bookstore will be entered through the glass facade shared with that of the Glass Box, while utilizing the existing HVAC of the current café. Switching the bookstore with the café necessitates the replacement of existing furnishings with shelving and display tables consistent with the new program. Bookstore T.I. cost per retail design/management of the bookstore.
To bring the traditional lobby in line with the contemporary feel of the rest of our proposal, the existing check-in counter will be replaced with a new reading/waiting area complete with hardwood bookshelves and seating. This space is delineated by a new drop ceiling which conceals a shelf of LED lights. With the removal of the counter, the existing coat-check closet will need to be reshaped. We're also proposing the replacement of the existing handicap-lift with a ramp that runs behind the new reading area.
Observatory Houses
Summer 2017, Roccscalegna, Italy
There are slices in space where our terrestrial habitation is confronted with the canopy of infinite dreams. We may occasionally experience this while sitting in a well positioned chair and gazing through a carefully placed window. The threshold between the location of our bodies and the inhabitation of our minds is mediated by physical conditions of Architecture. Material organizations that capture our entire consciousness in the dreamlike inhabitation of one instant, completely disaffected by anything beyond the space of perception, focused and acutely alert to the complete world held in our mind.
The new observatory houses built upon Roccascalegna, an ancient fortress, provide a fantastic experience for people who are fascinated with the stars. Each entrant is required to design an observatory complex consisted of 5 observatory cabins, three observatory apartments, two observatory houses, one observatory villa, and a sky lounge.
Partner: Shucong Wang
Center of Art and Architecture Los Angeles
Spring 2017, Los Angeles, California
Bricks shall wail the name of nature when they are born; Mother Earth preserves protects and attracts everything she has ever created. The means she uses to unite and link all things exist in the subtle whisper of Architecture. The wheel of history erects and demolishes everything, while the next nirvana always happens on the intact and perfect ground.
Landform buildings connect architecture and landscape together to define a new era of architecture, in terms of the way people communicate with architecture and the harmony between architecture and landscape. In DTLA, a museum called CALA - Center for Architecture & Urbanism Los Angeles is proposed to show the culture of Los Angeles. The site is a sloped hillside located South of California Plaza named Angel’s Knoll in Downtown Los Angeles. It is famous for having Angel’s Fight known as a cultural interest and being featured in the movie 500 Days of Summer. The special site condition creates a great challenge for the design but also is advantageous for landscape manipulation.
The design integrates two important cultures of downtown Los Angeles: the intersecting freeways and the four basic architecture-culture typologies around the site. Combined with the special treatment for the site and material selection, the museum becomes an epitome of this City of Angels.
Apartments
Fall 2016, Los Angeles, California
By intersecting slabs carrying different programs suggested by the city grid, a housing complex is formed with very atrium dimensions at the intersection. The main North-South slab is the residential slab and the two East-West Slabs are offices and libraries from the North one to the South one respectively. With retail spaces on the ground floor and four distinct areas cut by the slabs, the working-living environment is created.
The house and the city. Emergent living typologies (Whole to Part).
An investigation of housing types and typologies, their spatial and formal inherent qualities, and their implications as generators of a synthetic design process that reacts to the urban fabric of the city through the development of a mid-scale multifamily housing complex in Los Angeles.
Two different models were made with opaque and clear acrylic to show facade and circulation respectively.
The house and the Neighborhood. Aggregate systems (Part to Whole).
Fall 2016, Location Undefined
With discernible spatial and organizational logics, volumes are to exhibit adaptive qualities and also display the versatility required to inhabit, define, and/or enclose a variety of spatial conditions. Using the volumes, a small-scale multifamily housing complex through an explicit investigation of aggregate systems and organization - here it is a ruamplan - is designed.
Form Finding Structure
Spring 2016, Los Angeles, California
The Glade Theater is an outdoor public amphitheater with lawn seating for 5000 spectators, sitting beneath the historic Buena Vista Bridge on North Broadway. The bandshell and stage structure will serve as an iconic visual anchor at the north end of the new L.A. State Historic Park.
Los Angeles is deemed as a concrete jungle, the under-construction zone of the L.A. State Historic Park is more like a Glade. As its name goes, the equilibriums between the city and architecture, and architecture and people are explored. A forest could have an empty space inside as a glade; a glade could also have a forest in itself. It is all about scales. When we are entering a city or a building, is there a city or a building to some degree entering us? Like the project Glade represents itself by winding through a context, in the meantime, it creates the same context inside, providing more possibilities and variations for both its artists and audience.
Material and Tectonic Practice
Spring 2016, Los Angeles, California
The Gears is a simple execution and group project aiming to develop an intimate understanding of the differences between stereotomic mass and tectonic surfaces.
An object with an organic form made by Isamu Noguchi was molded with silica gal and cast into a resin replica. Then a bigger scale model was made with selected material and method to show the stereotomic mass and tectonic surfaces.
Partner: Yidan Hu
Sculpture by Isamu Noguchi
Alabaster, 10 1/4” x 18 3/4” x 18 3/4”
https://www.noguchi.org/artworks/collection/view/leda-2/
Single Family Residential
Fall 2015, Santa Monica, California
The Geode House is a residential project constructed at a traffic circle in Santa Monica at the intersection of 26th Street and Washington Avenue.
Conceptually the design of the house focuses on the interplay between chunk and fragmentary elements in the symbolization of architecture. Externally, it has 4 main moon-shaped plates arranged spirally forming a rough double helix, with long, widely-opened strip windows at the upper part of each plate; internally, all exposed surfaces are covered with geometric fragmentary except the floor which is provided for people to walk on. Just like the amethyst geode, which is a kind of natural crystal with rock appearance and crystal fragmentary inside, the Geode House explored the balance between big and small, integration and pieces, and order and chaos.
The Geode House is designed for a local gemologist. Thank the rich geology study value of the Santa Monica Mountains and Bay; the Geode House stands as an academic inspiration for anyone who has an occupation related to geology because of its mysterious light system and designed rock-shaped furniture and study platform.
Work at Architectscripta Architecture Workshop in Athens
Summer 2015, Athens, Greece
The “Glitch” Project is primarily based on the outcomes of daily technical or mechanical device failures which, surprisingly have an aesthetic and artistic value that architects can use to generate new forms and functions in their designs.
A simple ring with holes on it.
By duplicating and recording snapshots as the ring moves, a complex system is formed.
