Caroline Chao Portfolio - 2018

CAROLINE CHAO SELECTED WORKS Master of Architecture I | Harvard Graduate School of Design

WO R K S FAC A D E TOW E R L I B R A RY O F L I G HT BUR(BANK) GARDEN FROM WITHIN CONTINUOUS TYPOGRAPH Harvard Graduate School of Design

G A R D E N L A B O R ATO R I E S M A P P I N G DA N G E R

University of Pennsylvania

FAC A D E FA B R I C U R B A N L O B BY

Professional Experience

D E TA I L S + D I AG R A M S

FAC A D E TOW E R Harvard Graduate School of Design | Fall 2016 | Core III Nominated for publication in GSD Platform 10 Exhibited in Chair’s Office Exhibition 2016-2018 “Façade Tower” rethinks the concept of a tower as a façade system in and of itself. In the context of Doha, Qatar, walls, rooms, and programs create buffers and layers between themselves and the extreme outside environment. The number and thickness of façade “layers” differs by orientation to the sun – the south and west become deeper, with thicker layers, while in the north, the outermost layer is a more traditional façade system. Each layer comprises of rooms, programs, and structure, all acting collectively and in concert with one another to protect from the sun and heat.

The relative “opaqueness” of program defines itself as a buffer to other more porous programs that they may protect. This opaqueness and porosity register themselves externally on the façade and internally in plan. They work both functionally and climatically, as well as experientially. Within the tower, various user types have diverse experiences of the façade’s opacity and porosity based on program.

A catalogue of facade configurations is designed specifically for the programs of service, public, hotel, and artist studio. The number and thickness of façade “layers” differ by orientation to the sun – the south and west become deeper, with thicker layers, while in the north, the outermost layer is a more traditional façade system. Each layer comprises of rooms, programs, and structure, all acting collectively to protect from the sun and heat.

ENTRY EXPERIENCE

THEATER LEVEL PLAN

GALLERY LEVEL PLAN

ENLARGED INTERIOR SECTION

DETAIL WALL SECTION

L I B R A RY O F L I G HT Harvard Graduate School of Design | Spring 2016 | Core II Nominated for publication in GSD Platform 9 The Library of Light proposes a rare books library adjacent to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts along the Boston Fenway. The Library of Light has two main goals: first, to create interior atmospheres and reading rooms, and second, to protect the rare books from external factors such as light, circulation, and foot traffic.

The library’s plan diagram uses itself - the periphery “walls” to protect or contain the rare books located in the center. In this design, the bleed of interior and exterior walls of the facade peel inside to become interior partitions. This filleted plan allows for the nesting of program within program, or a controlled interact between diverse programs.

PERSPECTIVE FROM PARK

The Library of Light uses the relationship of center and periphery as the conceptual underpinning for the library.

Spaces in the center intrinsically receive less light, inhabitant circulation, and exposure to the exterior environment. This relationship is further emphasized by using specific forms - fillets and curved “atmospheres� to simulaneously carve out rooms and protect the centrally-located rare books from surrounding circulation and light.

BUR(BANK) Harvard Graduate School of Design | Fall 2017 | Studio Option This project contains several distinct projects in dialogue with one another. At the level of the site, we feel a kind of relaxation or reassurance. Los Angeles intersections often have at least one corner strip mall, a thin block of mass set back from the street for parking and covered with signage and billboards.

Relief takes on a variety of meanings at different scales. A perfect square is broken by the streets at an intersection, resulting in massing fragments whose reading oscillates between a continuous whole and self-similar parts. Small tweaks in material and color applied to things like asphalt, traffic lights, and curb cuts bring a typically disparate set of urban elements into a calm conversation with one another. Blankness creates a sense of relief.

At the building scale, this bank physicalizes the feeling of a bank, attempting

The relatively blank exterior facade allows slight registrations of these

to recapture the emotional experience of banking despite a conspicuous

elements visible as breaks, slits, holes, or reliefs. The exterior becomes an

absence of the typical uses/programs that it has historically contained.

impression of the interior. These breaks and holes in turn become spatial elements that create the grandeur and monumentality of a bank on the

While the monumentality, heaviness, and material permanence of a bank have

interior - a kind of “inside out� classical facade. Instead of facing the street,

historically existed to attract depositors, today it is merely a symbol of safety,

facade elements of column, entablature, capital, are interiorized.

officiality - the creation of an atmosphere. It is a grand and empty shell that houses the feeling of security. We find relief in the feeling of safety and security surrounding our money. However, the typology of a grand and monumental bank does not fit within a Burbank landscape. Burbank banks are storefronts within strip malls, suburban drive-thrus, or freestanding mat buildings.

Because banks in Burbank exist as storefronts, strip malls, and drive-thrus, mvonumentality therefore reflects into its interior while retaining a blank exterior. The layout is hollowed out to create a “ballroom-like” interior space, with all program attached and reciprocally connected to the building’s facade. A different type of relief appears here, as a kind of sculptural or baas relief.

Bank I is built from a series of distinct facades. Each facade becomes a relief, all program contained within the facade.

Different sizes of primitive forms (square, circle) are abstracted into bank program “types.” Office, entry, elevator, atm, washer/ dryer unit, column, pilaster, safety deposit box.

INTERIOR ABSTRACTION

GARDEN FROM WITHIN Harvard Graduate School of Design | Spring 2015 | Core II The design of a Botanical Club in the heart of Bay Village in Boston proposes a romantic garden within a terraced sixstory building. The concept is based on the inherent dichotomy of the experience of a botanical garden and the art and study of botany. While we often expect botanical gardens to be varied, romantic, and eclectic, the study of botany and collection of plants requries hyper-organization, and can begin to catalogue or even arrange the world. This Botanical Club houses a varied, open, and romantic garden, as well as a more compressed, cellular series of spaces to house aspects of the art and study of botany.

FLOOR PLANS 1-2, 4

This project also includes programmatic and experiential “atmospheres� - terrarium spaces that let the users experience different botanical environments, including polar, tropical, and desert atmospheres.

THIRD FLOOR PLAN

The placement and orientation of the building is strategically placed in order to connect to surrounding green spaces within the Bay Village neighborhood. The main entrance takes advantage of a nearby plaza and serves as an extension of the park into an exterior, and finally interior garden within the building.

CONTINUOUS TYPOGRAPH Harvard Graduate School of Design | Fall 2015 | Core I Nominated for publication in GSD Platform 9 The design of the student dormitory building draws its logic and spatial planning from the concept of “nodes.” Each “node,” located at each of the four corners of the building, represents a spatial and organizational center of the project. These nodes forms centers of densely packed rooms, as well as atrium common spaces that open up to floor levels above and/or below. In exploring the formal possibilities of representing various nodal configurations, I explored typography and letterform as a method of departure. The final form is based on the layering of three rotated “A’s” and uses the typographical form to connect each circular node with linear connectors.

TOP FLOOR PLAN

Visible in section, each node is connected to another with a series of passageway ramps the building’s nodes remain constant, with four floors consistently stacked within each corner.

The ramped passageways transition between them, creating slippage in terms of density and height variation. This collection of ramps also creates an organizational language for the dorm rooms; each room steps up sectionally as the user ascends the circulation ramps.

The circulation passageways form a continuous loop throughout the entire building. This continuous circulation allows users to access all floors of the building from a single ramp.

G A R D E N L A B O R ATO R I E S Harvard Graduate School of Design | Fall 2015 | Core I This project studies the effect of air movement on both the interior and exterior of a series of connected laboratories, seeking to answer several questions. If air movement is a crucial factor of a building’s function, how can we design to maximize its functionality, in addition to physically representing exactly how air movement affects both the interior and exterior of the building? Furthermore, can this air ventilation functionality drive how we experience a space, design the indoor-outdoor relationship, or spatially plan the interior? With concerns such as contamination, odors, and ventilation in the design of a laboratory, air movement must be critically addressed within the design. These laboratories are comprised of combinations of three modular components, whose shapes are based on a particular air function: exhaust, intake, or neutral.

When combined, these modules form the building.

This project questions, as well as presents alternate possibilities for designing systems beyond the conventional louver. Here, the “louver” becomes both a physical architecturalization of air movement, as well as a method of funneling and controlling air directionality. This 3-dimensionalization produces an expressive and experiential component to the air intake and exhaust mechanism. These “louvers” also have spatial implications: they not only become a part of the interior space, but they define its boundaries.

STATE A SITE PLAN

STATE B SITE PLAN

In addition to addressing the effects of air movement on the building interior, we must also consider and design toward the consequences of air intake and exhaust on the building exterior. Set in a garden, these labs introduce the possibility of designing the landscape in a way that mitigates the adverse effects of intake and exhaust in traditional HVAC systems.

M A P P I N G DA N G E R Harvard Graduate School of Design | Fall 2015 | Core I Collaboration with Christina Hefferan, Taylor Halamka Published in GSD Platform 9 This map aims to explore the dichotomy of safety and danger in three dimensional form. Site is represented as two discs that are punctured and bolstered by formal aggregates of data sets. One face of this artifact graphically annotates the location of open spaces in the Cambridge and Boston area, and is punctured by dowels noting the location of hospitals. This disc segments a three dimensional mesh which represents population density. The mesh recedes into the disc at moments of pure isolation that are located beyond a walking distance to the hospitals, eliminating the underlying surface, and signifying true danger.

PROJECTED TOPOGRAPHIES

FAC A D E FA B R I C University of Pennsylvania | Fall 2012 Extracting the weaving patterns of a specific fabric, I drew from the qualities of layering, depth variation, and scale shift of pattern to develop the design of a small sunscreen. Using basswood and essentially no adhesive, the sunscreen design abstracts the concept of weaving as a method of construction, drawing its strength from intersecting members of varying depths. This sunscreen later became the seed for the design of a facade.

Plain-weave scale shifts in selected fabric

Study of plain-weave composition

Sketch showing extracted weave intersection lines

14” x 14” sunscreen model, basswood

Combining my analysis of the fabric and sunscreen with new analysis of site and program, I designed a facade for a five-story building in Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia. Using a generic module influenced by the sunscreen design, I developed four module types based on program, comfort, and viewing needs. Together, like a patchwork quilt, these modules form the composition of the facade.

U R B A N L O B BY The Austin Residences - San Francisco, CA | Edmonds Lee Architects Role included design and consultant coordination, detail design, material selection This multi-family residential project is a new construction in the Pacific Heights neighborhood in San Francisco. Simple and elegant finishes, fixtures, and interior layout contribute to a natural and holistic interior experience.

Above renderings by ATChain

EX T ER IOR & C URTA I NWALL 706 Mission Residences - San Francisco, CA | Handel Architects Personally led the exterior and curtain wall design and documentation from 80% SD thru 100% DD of a new 510’ luxury condo tower and restoration of adjacent historic building in San Francisco’s financial district. Role included consultant coordination (structural, landscape, mechanical, waterproofing, historic, window washing), details and documentation, and various design decisions. Exterior wall air intake diagrams and details were necessary to both solve the stringent air intake requirements in San Francisco and convey the method of intake to the client, team, consultants, and contractors.

Left: Renderings of 706 Mission; Above: Diagram of air intake; Right: Section detail of exterior wall air intake