benjamin-han.com
Benjamin Han Portfolio hbenjaminhan@gmail.com
Benjamin Han hbenjaminhan@gmail.com
I am a designer driven by architecture’s grounded telling of stories. In 2020, I graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a
benjamin-han.com
I dedicate my practice to building and revising ecological ideas. Currently, I am seeking an Intern Architect or Junior Designer position.
Bachelor of Architecture and Bachelor of Fine Arts, receiving the Wilbur E. Yoder Award for Excellence in Architectural Technology.
Education
Rhode Island School of Design, RISD
Skills, Awards, Exhibitions
Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch) 2020 Bachelor of Fine Arts, 2019
Work Experience
Grimwood Architecture
Designer
Full design involvement in the preliminary phase of a residential
Digital Software: Revit, AutoCAD, Rhino,
and Urban Design
August - August 2020
project. Work included iterating massing ideas, precedent and
Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, V-Ray, SketchUp,
material studies, consolidating information into diagrams, formatting
Microsoft Office, Blender
drawing and presentration sheets.
Mediums: Modelmaking in Metal, Wood, Paper Materials and Foam, Bookbinding and Graphic
Freelance Architectural
Freelance Designer
Designer for an accessible dwelling unit proposal. Work included all
Designer
May - August 2019
aspects of schematic design, drawing iterations, researching and
Design
complying to California residential building code. Undergraduate President, American Institute of Grimwood Architecture
Architectural Intern
Translated technical drawings into architectural diagrams,
and Urban Design
May - August 2018
built scale models in plywood and museum board, formatted
Architecture Students RISD Chapter
presentation sheets. In addition, I collaborated over email with an
Wilbur E. Yoder Award for Excellence in
architectural renderer to produce renderings.
Architectural Technology
RISD Architecture
Teaching Assistant
Teaching assistant for Architectural Analysis Studio. Developed
Graduation Honors
Department
February - May 2020
drawing ideas with students, lead weekly check-ins, assisted
Provost, Rhode Island School of Design
students with conceptual and technical research.
RISD Special Collections
Rare Books Assistant
Handled and retrieved rare books for patrons, assisted with summer
Architecture Department Undergraduate
Library
June - August 2019
library exhibitions.
Senior Shows
RISD Architecture
Teaching Assistant
Teaching assistant for Modern Architecture Seminar.. Lead weekly
Department
February - May 2018
reading discussions alongside instructor, met with individual
Group show (Curator), Providence, Rhode January 7–February 6, 2020
students to provide feedback for writing assignments. {re}position Atelier FCJZ
Office Assistant
Assisted with office bookkeeping. Assisted with model-building for
Group show, Gelman Gallery, Providence,
May - June 2015
a residential project.
Rhode Island, January 24–March 1, 2020
[1] Dismantling Usefulness: representations of degrowth and ecological resurgence
Through speculative fiction, this thesis presents two grounded truths of the present: we are perpetually caught in irreversible disturbances with our environment, and we urgently need to imagine a set of productive frictions to make possible a future of collaborative resurgence. We—humans and our machine constituents—irreversibly disturb our environment. We have enlisted systems and pipelines to disentangle landscapes, creating alienated resources from fine-tuned natural relationships. The end of ecology is a contemporary manufactured project.
Machine of the botanist
Machine of the metallurgist
Responding to the climate crisis and our abuse and denial, my thesis projects into a future to examine our contradictory acts and highlight opportunities for collaborative resurgence ahead. Writing a speculative narrative, I invented two characters springing from my research interests. Mycelium, the fungi network we associate with mold, decay, and decomposition, is a mediator between life, death, and regenerMachine of dismantling
ation; a producer of collaborations between life and environment. Mycelium offers the conceptual grounding for my thesis, and Machine is its foil. Machine is an ally and enemy of human civilizations, an accomplice of modernity and modernization, a construct associated with productivity, efficiency, and simplified ecologies. In the thesis, Machine is tasked with dismantling its manufactured permanence on the environment.
Post-evacuation flooded habitats
Machine of re-excavation
Within the narrative, a small community is left to fend for itself in a Vancouver ravaged by climate disaster. They enlist new typologies of machines to reconcile with the landscape in front of them, harbouring the hope that when machines are liberated from capital, they can and will generate humane worlds, new assemblages of de-centered technology and environment, a future of capital degrowth and coexistence. Machine of re-excavation unearthing a pipeline
Machine of the forager
Machine of the flour miller
Machine of the botanist
Privatization of high-elevation lakes and habitats
Migration: informal settlements along Trans-Canada Highway
[2] Woonsocket Office Building
A dual-headquarter building for two competing coffee companies, “The Roasted Providence” and “Spicy Bean Rhode Island”. The programs and systems of this building are simultaneously integrated and separated. an undulating glass corridor divide the two competing companies, but the glass enables both companies to eavesdrop on one another whenever possible. No sound can pass through the two offices, but simple switches in the HVAC system allow both companies to sample the smell of the brewing from one another. Construction methods of this dual-office include CLT floors, walls, and framing, raised floor systems, a mix of wall, shading, and glazing systems. Collaborators: Ka Hyun Kim, Alex Wong, Irene Li
[3] Dwelling Over / Across
This housing project begins with an act of unbuilding. The site, a desolated urban parking lot, is demolished and returned to the bay of the river to form a wetland. Five rows of housing units then sit elevated on piles, allowing a wasteland landscape to regain its ecosystem. Three walkways extend over the river to entice the curious visitor from the other side to explore the hybrid environment of this new project built on the idea of unbuilding.
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
porus block pavement
vegetated area
wetland + bioswales Stage 3: calrifying and reuse
Stage 2: processing via open tanks
Stage 1: primary anaerobic process
The systems and treatment facilities of the housing project become spectacles of public curiosity. On-site water treatment, housed in three shelters separating the multiple stages of water processing, are embedded into the ground as material continuations of the language of the project across the site. Visitors enter the shelter of final water clarifying to observe the release of water back into the river.
green roof
Total Vegetated Area: 90% Stormwater Managed Onsite: 79%
[4] Archive of the City
A developer, anxious about the rapid deterioration of the world, commissions an architect to preserve historically significant inventions into architecture. The architect responds with a proposal based on the typology of the freestanding structural wall. The walls are punctured with openings, fixed with platforms and ramps, occupied with machines performing a task associated to a relic invention. For as long as these structures stand the developer is assured that the inventions and their impressions on humanity will carry into the future.
The LA river is an enduring, artificial infrastructure. This project speculates how mechanical inventions, significant to modernity, can be housed alongside the river within concrete wall-like museum buildings. Four inventions are chosen to highlight the tectonics of each and the overall fragility of modernity. Collaborator: Yunchao Le
Drawing from Colin Rowe’s writing on Transparency, the buildings are conceptualized at first as seemingly opaque parallel walls, which are then punctured with openings, platforms and extrusions to signify the mechanical functions and programs behind.
Power Transformer
Printing Press / Sacred Texts
Telescopic Camera
Glass Furnace / Production Plant
[5] Library of Small Amenities
There is no singular narrative to this library, only small programs and small spaces created from the single-core unfolding tower typology. Small spaces bleed into one another across floors. Small programs divide into chapters and volumes throughout the building. The library overwhelms in diversity of spaces but not in vastness, suggesting a new model of revitalizing downtown Providence.
[6] - re-in-un-de exhibition
Exhibition of the work of six students, curated based on architectural prefixes.. Collaborators: Aaron Teves, Jake Lefeber, Katharine Solien, Reishan Mcintosh, Yunchao Le
[7] - Market Noise
Noise, animation, and openess define marketplaces across the globe. This architecture does not provide a clean slate for program; rather, it uses structural loudness to animate a hypothetical market with trade, bartering and performance.
Noise, animation, and openess define marketplaces across the globe. This architecture does not provide a clean slate for program; rather, it uses structural loudness to animate a hypothetical market with trade, bartering and performance.
Drawing from Villa VPRO (a building of informal rooms) and Portcullis House underground station (an infrastructure of structural celebration), the building uses diagonal occupied trusses to extend the busy market streets of Kariakoo Dar Es Salaam into a continuous 5 floor market building.
Collaborator: Karin Hostettler
[0] Grimwood Architecture Samples
Project team: Thomas Grimwood Mauricio Trigos Rob MacPherson
A North Vancouver 8-unit residential project. Assisted with iterating siding dimensions, materials, spacing. Shadowed project architect to layout design development drawings.
Diagrams and sections drawn to convey projects to a broader audience. Diagrams on the bottom row were used to present the project in front of a design panel hearing.
[0] Micro-Living
Schematic design for an accessible dwelling unit in Los Angeles County, California. Freelance work done for a private client. Total square footage: 800sqft. Requirements: 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom.
Contact Info:
Website
LinkedIn:
hbenjaminhan@gmail.com
www.benjamin-han.com
www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-han
Thank you for your consideration!