Pit in my Stomach
Haven.
Year: 2024
Course: DES 202
Instructor: Riley Baechler
Location: UBC
Haven is a performance stage project conceptualized in Vancouver’s Grandview park, a contested site regularly used by an diverse community. Based on the imagery of curled wings and possessing a circular stage without defined audience and spectator, Haven is intended to convey a kind of performance absent from the park--one of reflection and sensory respite.
Winding, twisting and oblique entrances becomes transitional space, where one has time to meander and reflect before entering the main performance space, becoming part of the performance.
The form itself is minimal and designed with passive solar heating and ventilation in mind. Although closed air roofs are not allowed in Vancouver Parks, Haven offers shelter from the sun, the rain, and the world with its overlapping form.
creative process
Haven began as an apparatus designed to measure the angle of the head in respect to the neck. and forms of the object.
The movements of the apparatus during phone scrolling was diagrammed.
The visual language of the diagram was reinterpreted into a physical object of sticks and skins.
1. apparatus
2. diagram 3. object
4. haven.
Circulation Paths Egress Points
Two different types of chipboard were used to emphasize the textural differences between grass and path. The forms were 3D printed then treated into a porcelain-like materiality that highlights the purity and tranquility of the project.
02
LINKED PLAY
Year: 2023
Course: DES 201
Instructor: Autumn Riggan
Location: UBC
As a final studio project, I redesigned a 10 by 14 meter square located on Granville island’s Ron Basford park. Centered around the ecological goal of supporting the water movement of the site through materiality and planting and the social goal of connecting visitors to local history, this colourful playground evokes Granville island’s industrial past while supporting ecology through bioswales, gabions, native plantings. Though the project began as a four person group project, conception of the design to the final renders were completed by me, with input from peers and instructors.
context map
The steep slope of the site, while limiting, also offered opportunity for risky play, important for development. Soft, non-toxic and native planting as well as grass near elevated areas ensured safety. The slope also provides those seated on the northernmost chains a great view of False Creek South, making the a place for not only play but also conversation, relaxation, and thought across all ages.
site plan
With my groupmates, we mapped the contrasting materialities of an seemingly industrial Granville Island vs the postindustrial, residential False Creek South. This concept helped inspire our project goals and guided the design of my final individual project, located on Ron Basford park (below).
north elevation
Chains were chosen as the base form as it allows Island’s industrial past. By emerging from the ground, it is as if Granville Island’s history is rising to the present, renewed. freedom of play for children and
model photos
60
Richmond East Precedent Study
Year: 2024
Course: DES 301
Instructor: Tania Gutierrez-Monroy
Location: UBC
60 Richmond Street East is an 85-unit cooperative built in 2010, designed to house tenants that required relocation due to the nearby Regent Park redevelopment. Employed in the hospitality industry, most residents are members of a local union called Unite Now.
With training spaces and a shared restaurant owned collectively by the residents, 60 Richmond aims to create a new form of urban living; one where one is an extension of the natural environment, rather than as a machine invented to modify and temper it. In this three person group project with Rita Troinikova and Ethan Lou, I was in charge of creating the plans, elevations, and diagrams.
The architects sought to create a distinctive urban character through form, using the concept of carving out voids from a solid block to develop a building that was unique on its corner lot. The voids become balconies and shared common spaces, especially effective in its hollow, center shaft that allows ventilation and natural light.
Due to the nature of its tenants and the intention behind its creation, Richmond 60 East has a remarkable amount of 3-4 bedroom units, which is unusual for large scale housing projects.
Floor Plans
One Bedroom Unit
Two Bedroom Unit
Houses students, seasonal workers, couples
Houses couples, single parents
parti diagram
Floor Plans
Floor
Floor
Of all floors, the sixth was the most interesting, with its walkway and shared garden. The garden, tended to by the residents, provides fresh produce to the shared restaurant, whose food waste in turn fertilizes the gardens-- an urban permaculture.
KITCHEN GARDEN
GARDEN
RESTAURANT / KITCHEN
Pit in my Stomach 04
Year: 2024
Course: DES 211
Instructor: Riley Baechler
Location: UBC
I explored digital fabrication in Pit in my Stomach, completed with my partner, Lily Zhang. We were asked to digitally fabricate an abstracted an abstracted human organ of choice and design a set of instructions that could be used to recreate the fabrication. In this group project, I created the 3d Rhino model that we waffled, the main concept, and made the entirety of the instructions, while my partner handled lasercutting and file formatting.
Our end result is a work that strives to depict the visceral experience of anxiety through a matryoshka-inspired design, where smaller stomachs within larger ones depict the overwhelming sensations of shrinking and compression one experiences under pressure—until the stomach feels no different from a crumpled pit. Each stomach layer is made out of increasingly fragile material (beginning with acrylic to chipboard to paper), representing the increasing feeling of fragility as fear and anxiety sets in.
05 Travel Sketches
Year: 2024
Location: China (Beijing, Chengdu), France (Paris), Italy (Rome), Czech Republic (Prague, Brno), Austria (Vienna)
Last summer, I had the amazing opportunity to travel to China and afterwards participate in a study abroad trip in Europe. I took this chance to fill up my sketchbook with architecture so drastically different and to practice sketching with speed, accuracy, and intention.
All drawings were completed within 10-30 minutes of sketching and drawn in-situ with micron pens.
It was fascinating to see the western architectural paradigm manifest in the many ornate religious spaces present in European architecture. I attempted to depict the scale and depth of these spaces, but nothing triumphed being there in person.
Ashley Huang