Work
BIN FU
BIN FU College of Architecture, University of Houston 2007-2012 E-mail: bin_fu06@yahoo.com Phone: 281-744-5966
CONTENTS Urban Planning Rio De Janeiro Housing + Area Development Project
Hotel Design Seattle Eco-Hotel
Public Gathering Space Houston Third Ward District Exhibition & Community Center
Recycling Center New York: Gansevoort Penninsula Recycling Center & Educational Center
Industrial Design New York Public Seatng/Bench Design
Exhibition Installation Ryan Middle School & Third Ward District History Exhibition
MARACANA MANGUERIA Rio De Janeiro, Brazil Housing Development + Area Urban Planing
“To seek "causes" of poverty in this way is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes.” ― Jane Jacobs
THE FAVELA LIFESTYLE
Favela is the generally used term for a shanty town in Brazil. This was the place where former slaves with no land ownership and no options for work lived. Over the years, many freed black slaves moved in. Favelas are associated with extreme poverty. Brazil's favelas can be seen as the result of the unequal distribution of wealth in the country. Police have little or no control in many favelas. Drug use and sale are highly concentrated in these areas run by local gangs in each highly populated favela. The poor population grew at a rapid pace as well as the modern favelas that house them in the end of last century.
inspiration Even though Favela is not a pleasant and stable environment to live. But as a very unique urban case, Favela still has its successful operating system that is worth learning by us. Within the city, Favelas are isolated from the rest of the city, which forced it to become a very self-sustained community.
housing commercial infrastructure
The site I chose to work on is located right next to the Favela, I was very interested in bringing this Self-Sustained Community idea to my urban project, which later became the major concept that influenced the overall design strategy of my project.
1 PLATFORM SPACE over RAILROAD that brings in INFRASTRUCTURE & HOUSING PROGRAMS.
There are a large railroad system and a subway system taking up a large area of the site, so I decided to do a large elevated platform space over the railroad to minimize the project footprint. And this platform would absorb all the surrounding programs in like retails, metro station. The platform is divided into three levels: housing and parkscape occupies the top level; office, commercial space occupies the mid-level; transportation hub occurs on the bottom level. By punching various sizes of openings through the platform, it allows to bring the sunlight in. Housing buildings on the top level are varied from the heights and types of housing, which provides a wide range of options for people to choose from. The elevated self-sustained community space provides people an opportunity to take a great look at the rest of city. People that live inside the community have everything that they need within reach, but the train and subway on the bottom level are always ready to take them to experience the other parts of the city.
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Varying the Volumes of the Platform PUSHING &LIFTING the sufaces.
housing
retails
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Housing Commercials
m by PULLING,
Filling all the PROGRAMS in.
parkscape
car lane subway
commercial & retail
Transportation Hub
metro station housing
Housing programs are all placed on the very top level of the elevated field in order to provide the people living there a good view towards the surroundings. The platform has an irregular shape from the top view to respond to different site conditions. The community can be accessed from all sides. All levels of the platform are connected through ramps, stairs and elevators. In order to provide a very pleasant living environment, other recreational programs are plugged in like outdoor theater and soccer field. People that live on the top level has direct access to the transportation hub without having to go through unnecessary programs. The platform also functions as a bridge that connects the two sides of the railroad, which will activate more movements on that direction. The project is located very close to the 2016 Olympic site in Rio De Janeiro, which allows it has a great potential to become another monumental gathering spot for people from all over the world.
Commercial & Transportation hub
Housing & Parkscape
Eco-Hotel Seattle, WA United States Hotel Design + Public Communication
The project site is located in Seattle. It's currently occupied by a single-story building and the roof functions as a parking lot. I was assigned to design a small-scale hotel on this site. The hotel needs to have two styles of units. And a wild card program also needs to be added into the design as a major attraction of the hotel.
site plan
building footprint
block
street/circulation
green space
Ground Level Floor Plan
Top Level Floor Plan
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major street entrance
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Street Level Floor Plan 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
suite small room fire stairs elevator lobby office gallery
The regular hotel rooms, including three sizes: suites, large rooms and small rooms, are located inside the "L" shape bar. And the Japanese Capsule style units are located on top of the lobby. As the hotel sits on the ground that is one floor height lower than the street level, I put the lobby at the second floor of the hotel instead of the ground level so that people have direct access to the hotel from the major street. The design started with a cube that was relatively same volume as the surrounding buildings. By carving out the space from the cube, it creates an interesting space inside the cube. The central space becomes a courtyard that allows peoples to see each other from their rooms. The wildcard program I put into the design is called "Digital Graffiti". The inner skin of the design is mostly made out of either clear glass or frosted glass, which gives a good amount of transparency to each room. In order to encourage the communication between people that stay at the hotel, each room is installed with a LED display screen that imitates "twitter" idea. Through these screens, people in different rooms will be able to communicate with each other by texting and sketching.
3rd WARD EXHIBITION SPACE Houston, TX United States Third Ward District Exhibition&Community Center
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The site is relatively small. T required parking is set up fi which restricts the footprint of building design.
This project is to design a s space become a major gath cant gathering place inside the Third Ward, the people o
The first, the
PRIVATE
PUBLIC
2 Required programs: PUBLIC (lobby, exhibiton hall) vs. PRIVATE (faculty offices, archive storages)
3 The exhibition hall becomes the connecton piece that links the public space and private space together.
space that is going to be used by both people outside and inside the Third Ward. I want to make this hering space for the Third Ward. The site faces the Emancipation Park, which is one is the most signifiTHIRD WARD. So my idea was to design this exhibition space as a continuity of the park, the culture of of Third Ward.
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Ground Level 18
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1. 3 1/4” CONCRETE 11. CONCRETE FOUNDATION SLAB 2. LIFETOP LAWN 12. STYROFOAM INSULAMEDIA TION 3. WATER TRACK 13. 1 1/5” X6” STUCTURAL 4. PLANTS MULLIONS 5. 8”X8” WIDE FLANGE 14. 1 1/5” X3” MULLIONS 6. W12 WIDE FLANGE 15. CEILING TILE 7. BATT INSULATION 16. W6 C-BEAM 8. ALUMINUM LOUVERS 17. SHEAR STUD 18. REINFORCING MESH 9. STEEL STUD 10. CEDAR RAIN SCREEN
Roof Level
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Exhibition Level 1 Exhibition
Space 2 Classroom 3 Major Staircase 4 Fire Stairs 5 Elevator 6 Restroom 7 Mechanical Room 8 Storage
south elevation
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cross elevation
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Recycling Center New York: Gansevoort Penninsula, United States Recycling Center & Educational Center
The site is currently occupied by an existi cational center and parkscape space into Three out of four sides of the site are surr of the city. I created an artificial terraced landscape a more private program: recycling center. T existing recycling center is merged into th the faculties. The two parts of the building
1 Site Perimeter & Maximum Building Footprint
6 An INTERLOCK piece filled with programs of LOBBY, CLASSROOMS, LECTURE HALL & OUTDOOR CAFETERIA becomes the connecting piece of two major massing.
2 Extruding Site
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Gallery Space: G races for people also helps to sepa and private space
ing recycling center. The goal of this project is to renovate the existing recycling center and incorporate a eduo the site. rounded by water. There are both bike lane and car lane on the only side that the site is connected to the rest
as the major parkscape on the site, which helps to separate the educational center and public space from the The educational center and gallery space are sitting on top of the elevated landscape. On the other side, the he new designed linear-shape building filled with other programs of administration offices and workspace for g are connected by lecture hall and major circulations.
Ground is raised as Terto gather and relax. It arate the public space e of the design.
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Spliting to 2 Major sets of Programs: Re- Merging the existing transfer station by cycling Transfer Station VS. Community EXTENDING. Education Center
8 Offices(Recycling Transfer Station & Community Education Center combined) (YELLOW) Transfer Station (Pink)
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5 Diagnal circulation cuts through to open up the view of water to the street.
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Interlock Connecting Piece (LOBBY, Sloping the roof to reduce excessive CLASSROOMS, LECTURE HALL & volumes. OUTDOOR CAFETERIA) Inserting the car circulation in.
frosted glass
copper panel
concrete slab concrete slab
LEVEL II
2" metal deck
bar joists
12"x12" H beam
30" depth concrete beam
double T system
LEVEL IV 12"x12" concrete column
DETAIL WALL ASSEMBLY
Longitudinal Section
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LEVEL III 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Office Space Recycling Center Lecture Hall Lobby Gallery Parkscape ADA Ramp Elevator Fire stairs
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Bench Design New York: Gansevoort Penninsula, United States Public Seating/Bench Design
PROBLEMS that we see from traditional seating 1. Seating is an individual object. 2. People that sit down get their views blocked by people standing or walking in front of them. 3. When people sit down, as they are positioned on the same line, it is more difficult to communicate with each other when there are more than 2 people. QUESTION: How to create a PUBLIC SURFACE that serves a more efficient seating and a great gathering/ hang out place for people?
Creating MULTI-LEVEL seating helps solving problems.
MULTILEVEL seating breaks the orthogonal relationship between ground line and vertical building facade.
view from outside
This project makes me think about the relationship between the vertical wall and horizontal ground line. In most of the cases in our life, wall is perpendicular to the ground line. In this project, by designing the public bench as part of the building wall system, this fixed relationship changed, and the space underneath the bench becomes partially occupiable, which has potential to provide more useful and rental space like a sitting area. Large clerestory window punching through the wall allows people inside to see outside.
view from inside
Exhibition Installation Third Ward, Houton, TX, United States Ryan Middle School & Third Ward District History Exhibition
As a very unique area in Houston, Third Ward District has a very rich cultural history. It is mainly occupied by African Americans. The Ryan Middle School within the Third Ward asked us to design a exhibition that shows the history of the school, the architecture and the district. Our team was very honored to get to work on such a meaningful exhibition. The exhibition was set up in an old woodshop at the middle school. During the process of design and installing, I was amazed by the richness of the history of the district. Knowing different cultures is always important for people who study and work in any design field. As a collaboration project between architecture students and graphic communication students, I got to learn a lot about graphic design, presentations and typefaces and understand better on how to work in a team. The exhibition got lots of positive feedbacks. The school and people coming to the exhibition were very happy with what we had done for the exhibition. We did a good job on accomplishing the goal of the exhibition: bringing the people inside the Third Ward back to these precious history and let people outside the Third War get to know the history.
Display Wall for Students' Art Works