amy hu
portfolio
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contents 1 burial & reimagination 2 layers & interpretation 3 double negative 4 information & integration 5 tension & suspension 6 narrative & nature 7 practice & theory 8 projection & hybridization 9 introspection & interaction
amy hu 879 Cleveland Street Oakland, CA 94606 510.329.0131 amylilyhu@gmail.com w w w . a m y l i l y. h u
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burial & reimagination
diagram: burial at the mercadillo
rio del segura cultural center advanced studio in spain, summer ’12 professor alejandro salazar-jasbon Guardamar del Segura, Spanish for Guardian of the Sea, is a buried city. Highrises and streets lined with shops bury the city’s agricultural roots. The nearby river, Rio Segura, has become a ruin, no longer serving its original purpose. The Rio del Segura Center for Culture intervenes in the abandoned riverbed of the Rio Segura, returning river to a source of leisure, farming, manufacturing, and research. “Burial” as an operative strategy creates spaces and experiences that both honor history and respond to present and future needs. The structures that house the Vertical Farming Institute are lifted above the ground, a new method of agriculture that “buries” the old. The crops are sold above the farm in the open air mercado nuevo, the New Market. Pedestrian paths and the Eco Hotel rooms are beneath the farm so that locals and tourists alike experience the river totally through immersion in the sands of the riverbed. Perched at the mouth of the river is a building shared between the Coastal Dune and Tide Studies Institute and the Tradicional Arts Collective. The structure bridges the gap between the people and the northern dunes, as well as the gap of knowledge in the traditional arts of Guardamar. Proposed research focuses on the impact of rising sea levels on coastal communities, making the Center the new Guardian of the Sea.
the microcosm of the weekly mercadillo showcases the intricate, brutal dance of burial: market setup is buried by the flood of people midday, and evidence of people is buried by cleanup
rio del segura: its two forms
diagram: plan pushing intersecting dodging pulling
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human needs & desires collide with nature, mutually altering each others’ trajectories forever, translated into plan and section 1
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diagram: section
collage: site as the river flows past the dunes to the sea, the water grows bluer and swifter. in the other direction, the river runs into the land, the water is slowed and diverted. the riverbed grows green with plants that wave in the wind.
section: grounded pulled up pulled up & pushed down buried
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guardamar del segura
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vertical farm section
sectional perspective
vertical farm plan 0
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center for coastal dune studies section
center for coastal dune studies plan 0
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mercadillo nuevo, above the vertical farm pedestrian walkways and bike paths, buried below
traditional community olive oil press and exchange eco-hotel, within the riverbed
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layers & interpretation literary collage people and environmental design, spring ’09 professor nicholas de monchaux
landscape scale
Using Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities as a textual map, the project uses type, collage, and excavation to explore concepts of iteration, order, and the meaning of words in architecture. Calvino describes Despina, a skyscraper-filled city of desire, as caught between two deserts. Layers of images and text suggest connections between separate parts, while lines and shadow imply height and mass. Together, the collage embodies Despina at an urban scale. Zoomed out, Despina is situated between deserts of water and land, nestled within a valley. The collage is a basis for the book model: by using the pages of the book to build Despina’s valley, the literary collage takes on a new level of meaning while retaining its imaginary character.
urban scale
despina carved into a book
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double negative process: space-making upper division studio, fall ’10 professor lisa iwamoto, asst. professor kyle steinfeld “[The double negative is an] attack on the figure/ ground dialect....[A] resultant lesson is how it may offer a way [of] thinking about architecture which is able to engender new inter-connectivities between space-making, program, and site.” —Craig Scott, Space Other Space As the conceptual beginnings of a project in Potrero Hill, a neighborhood in San Francisco, spatial relationships are explored through the double negative. The model’s materiality—folded paper— suggests a relationship between joints, bends, and direct adjacencies. The two voids are defined as topographic and demographic. The void-paths “push” from the bottom corners toward the center, and then “pull” upwards to the top corners, embodying the slope of the hills. That their paths end and begin in opposite corners signify the contrast in demographics on each side of the hill. The intersection of the two subtractive voids opens a third, new space for opportunities.
space
path 1
path 2
intersection
invisible
solid & void sections
to downtown
potrero hill library
Potrero Hill is a residential neighborhood in San Francisco caught in the push and pull of conflicting urbanisms. On the South Slope are two housing projects, a sharp contrast to the affluence on the North Slope, where gentrification has not slowed since the dot-com boom. The re-designed Potrero Hill Public Library serves as a beacon of information and integration for both the North and South Slopes. As a space for breaking down the barriers between rich and poor, the solidity of the infill lot is broken down with “pushes” into the facade, creating occupiable voids. The skylit bookstacks form a central void, the core of the building. The boundaries of the bookstacks are “pulled” inward to create solid spaces within the void. Offset floors between the reading areas and the bookstacks make interior views as important as the San Francisco skyline to the North. Descending from the basement cafe is a variegated landscape of steps. The nature of the steps encourages meandering. Undulations and changes in step width form lower spaces for private gathering and higher spaces for spectating. Directly outside of the cafe, the steps align, making a public amphitheater for community events. The steps, in concert with the library, provides both the North and South Slopes of Potrero Hill with a shared public source of information and a means to unite.
connecticut street
upper division studio, fall ’10 professor lisa iwamoto, asst. professor kyle steinfeld
arkansas street
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information & integration
site plan
20th street
existing library
to housing projects
downtown
south slope
north slope
housing projects
process: push & pull
industrial areas
pushing and pulling planes within solids forms a third condition. these new spaces become a means of access, a connector between solid and void.
diagram: site push and pull: north & south, consumption & industry, affluence & poverty
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diagram: the library 1
1 pushes into solid -> void 2 circulation around core of books 3 darkness & light
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4 step landscape 5 ramp & sidewalk access 6 quick access
7 lower spaces 8 upper spaces 9 public amphitheater
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basement & steps
street level
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section through bookstacks 0
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fourth level
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tension & suspension floating steel chair introduction to construction, spring ’12 professor dana buntrock steel angles
bracing pattern
Group project with Christina Flores, Naomi Vollmers, and Bree Wattonville. The project seeks to create an object that showcases steel’s material and structural qualities. Steel “wings” in truss formation counteract the tension of the wire, “elevating” the seat from heavy and grounded to light and airy. As a group member, I led the iterative design effort to select the appropriate steel profiles, bracing pattern, wing formation, and material of the seat. Steel are used for the four anchoring vertical parts because they have two sides, to which the wings and wire are bolted. The steel’s lightness in profile is in contrast to its immense strength.
wing formation
steel meets wood
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narrative & nature the edge of the bay documentary photography, spring ’12 professor cris benton My photographic exploration of South San Francisco Bay led, inevitably, to the edge, where the water meets the land. What began as a simple fascination with textures, shapes, and colors grew into a desire to understand patterns in the landscape. The South Bay offers basic geometries bounded by straight edges and curved lines made infinitely variable by specific site conditions—both natural and man-made, past and present—creating complex combinations out of water from the bay, former salt flats, vegetation, man-made structures, and land. The repeating geometries reveal a code in the landscape: straight lines signify human intervention, while curved lines usually mean the edge is, or at least was, natural. Colors range from cool, serene blues from still, unagitated water, to neon bright oranges and yellows that signal the presence of life. As time and seasons change, so too does our relationship with the edge.
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practice & theory santa lucia preserve residence september ’12 - present turnbull griffin haesloop architects Schematic design experience with Eric Haesloop, FAIA; Mary Griffin, FAIA; and Jule Tsai. Sited on a gently sloping grassy hillside, this private residence is a welcoming retreat on the Santa Lucia Preserve in Carmel, California. Three pavilions are united in a U-shape, creating a protected courtyard on the north. The roofs of each pavilion sweep toward the sky, a gesture outwards that connects the house with the surrounding nature. An expansive window wall opens up views to the Oak-studded hills to the south. As part of the design team, my responsibilities were in graphics and modeling: representing the project in renderings, drawings, and physical models. The models were used for material testing and sun studies, the results of which informed project drawings.
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detail
projection & hybridization spatial exploration introduction to hand drawing, fall ’09 professor paz gutierrez Design and project, in two dimensions, a hybrid of the human body and architecture. The process of abstraction, from the Latin abstrahere (ab(s)- “away” + trahere “draw”), elevates architectural drawing from mere measure and geometry to the realm of imagined realities. The human body, typically subsumed by the building in drawings, is hybridized with an architectural detail. Abstraction of the human hand is achieved through isolation and a kinetics study; this “imposes a temporal dimension on the hand, rendering its meaning neither arbitrary nor pre-determined. Synthesis transforms the hand into an architectural object with three dimensions. Unfolding the hybrid abstracts the object further by returning to the second dimension. The juxtaposition of the corporeal and the architectural returns the hand to the banister, and the banister to the hand.
hand kinetics
section through hybrid
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introspection & interaction east asian academic building advanced studio, fall ’11 professor renee chow Design a 50,000 sf. academic building on the UC Berkeley campus to hold the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, and the Institute of East Asian Studies. The project is a 50,000 sf. academic building on the UC Berkeley campus to hold the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, and the Institute of East Asian Studies. It embodies the notion that academic buildings are places for both introspection and interaction. Introspective observation begins a visual dialogue and fosters interaction between the two departments that call this building home. The courtyard typology turns the attention inwards and strengthens the connection between the two departments. The central atrium is not a single space, but a set of overlapping voids creating by the rotation of the floorplates. Such interlocking of atrium and floor space creates horizontal and diagonal sight lines for spectating. Circulation within the building borders the atrium, allowing for visual connection between the floors. At the top of each stairway is a landing, which serves as the threshold before an open lounge space. Adjacent to these informal gathering spaces are enclosed classrooms and offices. The organization of classroom-lounge cluster is a smaller-scale manifestation of the atrium-floor relationship. site plan
process: twists U twist J twist split twist re-shape courtyard + atrium
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site: through the trees, looking south
process: paths access is hierarchical: space compresses vertically from open and public to closed and private. gaps between twisting floorplates connect floors and are open for gathering. skyways provide access to the adjacent Dwinelle Hall.
process: ground the topography slopes such that excavation of the ground forms an in-between area easily navigable by pedestrians. the mass of the building “floats” above this not-ground, not-building space. in cutting away the solid edges and insides of the building, double-height spaces are opened and the “ground” begins to float within.
process: use and light tension between the uses of the two departments translates into a rift in the building, the two sides united by a skylit atrium. in the split scheme, programs are separate but connected by interlocked, offset floors. in the integrated scheme, programs are mixed on each side but organized vertically by size.
uc berkeley campus
open gathering spaces classroom cluster lounges
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ground level
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second level
diagram: circulation
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