ANTHONY SHUNG YIU KO AA Diploma, RIBA Part II
+447899680264 anthonyzsyko@gmail.com www.anthonyzsyko.viewbook.com
CONTENT Year 4
NEO-CHINATOWN Diploma 5 (Cristina Díaz Moreno, Efrén Ga Grinda, Benjamin Reynolds
Year 3
THE INSTITUTION OF UN-NATURAL FICTIONS Intermediate 13 (Miraj Ahmed, Martin Jameson
Year 2
SLAUGHTERHOUSE OF SPECTACLE Intermediate 8 (Francisco González de Canales,Nuria Alvarez Lombardero)
Personal
Photography Installations
Neo - Chinatown Fourth Year Project
Diploma 5 (Cristina Díaz Moreno, Efrén Ga Grinda, Benjamin Reynolds) Ultra-rich children of Chinese business magnates, known as the Fuerdai, are moving to Arcadia, a sleepy Los Angeles suburb to escape government scrutiny. In Neo-Chinatown, wealth is king and social hierarchy is denoted by spending power. As a space for appearance, the 120 metre tower dominates the suburban landscape, wrapped around an atrium, creating a space of appearance, choreographed to highlight their near-ritualistic flaunting of wealth and spending of riches. Tucked behind a lattice façade, their private and anonymous world of flaunting and oneupmanship fosters a competitive atmosphere, created by vulgar displays of their new money and cars. The constantly shifting internal geometry of vehicular ramps, garden paths, and platforms as one ascends up NeoChinatown creates an interiorised and exclusive public space for an arriving generation of Chinese immigrants, whose self-referential image obsession and promotion creates a new form of publicness. The exclusive and private nature of Neo-Chinatown forms an alternative kind of publicness where the flaunting of wealth and participation of conspicuous consumption and leisure creates a space where social hierarchy of this emerging public can be defined based on the immensity of their newfound wealth.
Neo-Chinatown, at 120 metres, is far taller than the rest of the surrounding suburban context, Neo-Chinatown also creates a bold statement of arrival of this new wave of Chinese immigrants. Concealed behind a secondary outer ornamental lattice façade, and a dense structural lattice, these immigrants value privacy amongst themselves above all, yet their outward flaunting of is concealed but carefully curated to the outside world to create the image of wealth by which they wish to be perceived. Neo-Chinatown looks to take its cue from manufactured cultural products such as Hollywood and looks to promote this almost vulgar display of wealth as the focus of the public space. Programmatically, Neo-Chinatown consists of a super car club, high end luxury retail, showhomes and an office for DeLeon Realty, and a pedestrian garden path. Wrapped within the system of ramps, each programme is designed in an almost processional way, looking to typologies such as the Super Car Clubs in China or their high end retail stores where a choreographed sequence of events makes up the participation in these ‘rituals of appearance’. Structurally, the structural privacy lattice supports the perimeter columns, with bracing in between the perimeter and inner columns using contemporary interpretations of the Chinese duogong construction system, with the largest cantilevers breaking the base form to create counter cantilevers and exterior sky gardens, wrapped by the ornamental outer lattice. The architecture, procedurally designed as a series of programmed ramps which were pulled into the atrium at certain curated moments such as the payment at the end of a luxury retail spree, or the super car club main arrival hall, creates a space which enforces these moments of flaunting.
These new millionaires are starting to buy homes in cities like Arcadia, California, which have established Chinese communities as a result of the second wave of immigration that moved to the suburbs due to Chinatown’s poor reputation. The places of Chinese gathering and appealing factors for the potential homebuyer, such as language schools, markets, shops, and restaurants are mapped out. Two Chinese members at the highest level of local office are looking to welcome the tear down of local homes and redevelopment to bring in more immigrants. Studying the typologies of the Super Car Club and the high end luxury retail experience, elements for design are extracted, highlighting the framing of certain luxury activities, high visibility between the spaces, and hierachically charged spatial organisations. Further design moves are influenced by the typology of the drive-in, as something integral to both the culture of Los Angeles and the nouveau riche of China, understanding the variety of ways a car can be an active participant of an activity.
At Mao’s communist takeover, daily life revolved around the public square, but the flood of capitalism and rapid urbanisation led to the destruction of these public spaces, and “to get rich is glorious� became ingrained into the Chinese mind-set. Today we see one judged not as speakers of great things and doers of great deeds, but rather owners of luxury brands. Chinatown, created by waves of Chinese immigration from poor immigrants and those escaping from violence functioned as a replacement for the public square for Chinese immigrants around which daily revolved, but it evolved from a residential enclave to a tourist attraction with liberal use of Chinese iconography associated with the imperial family to decorate their restaurants, markets, nail salons, and banks. This is seen in their online culture which utilises the same system as online cosmetic retailers in order to promote their own images of wealth flaunting online to the maximum number of users possible and increase their own exposure.
The Institution of Un-Natural Fictions Third Year Project
Intermediate 13, Miraj Ahmed & Martin Jameson Science has disregarded fiction as ‘fantasies of imagination’. It has, however, been used as a research catalyst for some of the most extraordinary scientific exploits of the past century. The project looks to disrupt the gradual evolution of the Natural History Museum with a ‘sudden cataclysmic event’, altering the function of the institution. The ‘sudden cataclysmic event’ of the Institution of Un-Natural Fictions, a re-interpretation of the iconic Waterhouse buliding’s architecture, materiality, and construction method, in order to create a new landscape above, an abstraction of the site. This landscape above the Natural History Museum which acts as a space for the exchange of ideas and the making of fictions, inspired by the artefacts below in order to act as a inspirational catalyst for research conducted below. The lattice towers create a vertical link between the Natural History Museum and the Institution of Un-Natural Fictions. The sudden cataclysmic event of the lattice towers excavates into the site. The two institutions are informed and drive each other in their research. The common aim is to speculate on natural history, with their contrasting methods being the scientific speculation or fictional speculation. The two modes of thinking are both speculative and credible. The elevated landscape acts as a space above Albertopolis for the making of fictions and exchange of ideas.
The project proposes ‘sudden cataclysmic event’ of the Institution of Un-Natural Fictions, a re-interpretation of the iconic Waterhouse buliding’s architecture, materiality, and construction method, in order to create a new landscape above, an abstraction of the site. The two institutions are informed and drive each other in their research. The common aim is to speculate on natural history, with their contrasting methods being the scientific speculation or fictional speculation. The two modes of thinking are both speculative and credible.
Standardised Component 1:25 Component Rotation 1:50
Iteration 4: Component Lattice Design
In order to construct a full rotation of the spiral ramp, consisting of 12 component pieces. In order to turn it into a double helix, this spiral ramp must be rotated 180°.
Continuing this idea of the component structural system from the previous design iteration, the ramp and lattice continue to work together as a composite system. However, in this iteration, terracotta is now utilized to play a structural role. In order to do this, rather than using steel and iron frameworks, faced with terracotta, the terracotta itself becomes the formwork into which reinforced concrete can be poured to make it a structural element. These can then be rotated and combined to form a double helix lattice structure. The ramp is supported on both sides by the lattice, the exterior half as dense but double in thickness, and the interior half in thickness but double in density, doubling up as a hand rail.
Iteration 4: Construction Sequence 1:100 The component piece is design to be rotated and lifted by 562.5mm in order to construct one spiral. In order to construct the overall double helix diagrid spiral, this process must be rotated 180° in order to have the full double helix.
Manufacture Process: Ramp Stage 1: Extrusion
Stage 2: Surface Treatment
Stage 3: Kiln
Clay is processed and put through an extrusion machine in order to create an ornamental form.
The surface of the unbaked terracotta is combed in order to give it a texture in order to prevent people from slipping when it is used as a ramp.
The extruded form is placed on a formwork of firebrick in custom made in order to allow for the terracotta to have the required for for it to become part of the ramp.
Manufacture Process: Ramp Stage 4: Preparing for Cast
Abstraction of Fan Vaulting 1:250 The language of the fan vault is abstracted in order to create the depicted form. Acting as an ornamental capping to the double helix lattice as well as a structure, leading on to a framework that structurally holds up the platform, suspended between the double helix lattices. This typology of the abstracted fan vault goes on to create various other forms within the proposed platform.
The three components are put together, this time on a pre-made wooden formwork again built to act as a support for the casting process. The nodes are for the latticework are inserted at this stage.
Stage 5: Iron Rebar Iron rebar is placed in as a reinforcement for
order the
to act concrete.
Stage 3: Casting Concrete Concrete is cast, using the terracotta as a formwork. This allows for the entire ramp to act as a single structural element, with terracotta playing a structural role.
Slaughterhouse of Spectacle Second Year Project
Intermediate 8 (Francisco Canales, Nuria Alvarez Lombardero) The proposal is a block which re-integrates the production and consumption of beef, and bridges the divide between the contrasting urban and rural conditions to create a boutique dining experience within the Buenos Aires city grid. Within the block the two programmes are connected via spatial and visual connections.
Robin Hood Gardens: A Portrait Independent Installation/Photo Series A temporary installation designed to utilise the flowing natural light in to the Smithson’s Robin Hood Gardens housing estate in London before it’s demolition. As a record to the residents of the site, reguarly portrayed poorly by the Conservative government as drug addicts and vandals. This portrait series looked to depict the true nature of the residents, welcoming of the project and keen to join the process as part of a commemoration of the estate’s legacy.
Monumental America Independent Photography Series Throughout a three week long trip following the West Coast and accross to the South, the notion of monumentality was studied. Through the visits of culturally significant institutions ranging in scale, from the urban scale Seattle Central Library to the domestic scale for the Eames House, the documentation of these spaces looked to capture moments in which their significance could be understood, but also looked to capture delicate moments within these these ‘monuments’ to contemporary architecture.
To Build A Time Machine Independent Installation/Film Series Curious of the similiar rotating mechanism of both a bicycle and the Super 8 cameras and old film projectors, this installation/film series utilised a bicycle as a device for making films of London, in this case particularly South Kensington. The bicycle was then altered, mimicking the mechanisms of a projector, and converted in to a machine for viewing the film, which had been reduced down to negatives and when observed through a viewport, depcted an abstracted film of the site.