Benjamin Han Portfolio
B.Arch, Rhode Island School of Design
Education
Rhode Island School of Design Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch) Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) 2015-2020 ETH Zurich Exchange student 2018-2018
Work
Grimwood Architecture and Urban Design - Vancouver, BC Architectural Intern May - August 2018 Constructed architectural diagrams, prepared presentation sheets and templates. Co-managed the firm’s social media. Rhode Island School of Design - Providence, RI Teaching Assistant Seminar: Theories of Modern Architecture January - May 2018 Primary assistant in an architecture theory seminar taught by professor Ruth Lo. Responsibilities included facilitating reading discussions, meeting with students to discuss topics, grading weekly responses. Atelier FCJZ - Beijing, China Intern assistant May - June 2015 Assisted in model making for residential projects. Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI Digital Fabrication Monitor January - May 2018 Supervised the use of laser cutter machines.
Leadership
American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) Secretary, Rhode Island School of Design Inkblot Magazine Student Art Director, Western Academy of Beijing RISD STEAM (STEM + Arts) Contributor
Benjamin Han
Benjamin Han is a student of architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. He is interested in drawing, representation, and architecture as a mediator between objects and territories.
(1) Archive of the city in collaboration with Derek Le
A developer, anxious about the rapid deterioration of the world, commissions an architect to preserve historical inventions into buildings. The architect responds with a typology of building based on the simple freestanding element of the wall. The walls are punctured with openings, fixed with platforms and ramps, then occupied with machines performing a task associated to an invention. For as long as the buildings stand, the developer is assured, the inventions will carry into the future.
The project and its associated site of the LA river are two enduring, artificial infrastructures. The wall buildings, oriented along the Jefferson grid of the surrounding houses, take their foundation on the bank of the concrete river.
A camera with a fixed lens commemorate the invention of photography by documenting and archiving change in the city. Periodically, photo samples are projected onto a screen to be presented back into the city.
A printing press re-enacts the process of distributing knowledge. Several rows of seating face a podium. Equipped with a writing device, the podium sends signals down to the printing machine intended to mass-process the text into books.
A transformer intercepts the city’s electricity grid. Intensities of residential electricity use, indicated by a change in resistance, is converted into a sheet of notational music to be played by a music machine.
A series of conveyor belts reflect on the consumption of materials by sending discarded glass through a perpetual cycle of crushing and refining. Periodically, a secondary mechanism activates a furnace to melt the glass into new bottles.
(2) wind/unwind
The scroll is a ceremonial object - presenting it requires a gradual unrolling and revealing of its contents. This project celebrates the unrolling act of the scroll. A strip of newspaper is wound and unwound to transform an object between a brooch and a neck piece.
Drawing from the design of kites, five pieces of copper are soldered together to form the frame of the scroll. A cylinder and lever create the mechanism for the scroll to wind and unwind.
(3) Dwelling over/across This project begins with an act of unbuilding. The site, once a desolated parking lot, is excavated to be returned to the bay of the river and form a wetland. Five rows of housing then gently sit over the landscape on piles. Three walkways and lookout points extend over the river to attract the curious visitor to this park/ housing-hybrid of the city.
Located at the centre of a small town, Olneyville, the site is a forgotten convergence point for a number of infrastructures of the greater city. The project reconnects the two nearby ecotones of the Woonasquatucket River greenway, adds 50 family units to the core of the town, and provide park and outdoor space to the rest of the city.
The project is divided into rows of housing and landscape. Abundant spacing between each row allow for sunlight and ventilation to enter units, alliviating the discomfort of hot summers and cold winters (cross ventillation). The ends of each row are capped by retail space on the street and residential common rooms by the river’s edge.
A series of walkways extend to the south end of the site where pavilions, an open lawn and a boardwalk create a public space that can be experienced both as a passageway and a destination.
Water Treatment
Stage 1: primary anaerobic process
Stage 2: processing via open tanks
Vegetation On-Site porous block pavement green roof wetland + bioswales
vegetated area
Total Vegetated Area: 90% Stormwater Managed Onsite: 79%
Stage 3: clarifying and reuse
Engineered Soil Air, Moisture, Root Barrier 8” R34.4 Mineral Wool Insulation
Timber Cladding 6” R25.8 Mineral Wool Insulation Triple Argon LowE High Solar Gain Window
Continuous Air Barrier 8” CLT Wall Panel
In line with the structural language of piles, cross-laminated timber is used for the construction of the housing. With these construction materials, the building is projected to emit less than half the carbon of a conventional steel frame construction in a 50-year life cycle.
(4) House of performance in collaboration with Karin Hostettler
The marketplace is a collective social space. Exchange, dialogue and spontaneous interactions mark the daily lives of merchants and buyers in the marketplace. This project uses the social potential of the marketplace as a starting point to revitalize a onefloor public venue in the centre of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
The project stems from two crucial points in the city, The existing Kariakoo Market and the DDC social hall. A mapping reveals the failures of the two points of the city. The market building fails to accommodate the vibrancy of a bustling marketplace which instead spill out into every street corner, while a social hall remains desolated due to its lack of presence on the street.
Villa VPRO, an office building by MVRDV, uses a folding and puncturing of floor plates to create a continuous multiprogram interior. Smaller interventions then the necessary spatial separations for the specific programs of the office. The result is a building simultaneously a continuous landscape and a collection of individual rooms.
Conditions of the streets represented in different moments of the building.
The Portcullis House subway station (Michael Hopkins) combines structure, circulation, and infrastructure in a dramatic descend between two subway platforms.
Exploded axonometric of structure, platform and circulation.
Ground floor plan
Intermediary floor plan
(5) Ascending Library
This project investigates a single cut line and a series of vertical shifts as two elements structuring a library. The project is driven by iterative model making, beginning with cutting, displacing and stacking, and ending with an extraction of the walls from the cut lines.
(6) Misc
bhan01@risd.edu