cherry yang | portfolio Rhode Island School of Design B.Arch | BFA
00resume 01self-sufficient living 02Providence Library 03Volumetric Light 04Suspension 05Printmaking 06Egg Tool
CHERRYyang
00Resume
EDUCATION Rhode Island School of Design, RISD Class of 2020 | Providence, RI, USA Bachelor of Architecture Bachelor of Fine Arts Cumulative GPA : 3.849/4.00 Honors Roll
St Cuthbert’s College
International Baccalaureate Diploma Auckland, NZ 2008-2014 Final GPA: 4.00+ NZQA Scholarship Awards (Physics, History, Calculus, Art History): National top 3%
SKILLS 3D Software: SketchUp, Rhino, V-Ray, Thea 2D Software: AutoCAD, Revit, ArchGIS Programming: Grasshopper, Processing P3 Adobe Suite: Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom, Photoshop Microsoft Suite: Word, PowerPoint, Excel and document design Model Making: Lasercutting, 3D printing, wood, cardstock, CNC Hand: Drawing, drafting, woodworking, intaglio, watercolour, oil Special Skills: Excellent written and communication skills, conversational Mandarin
AWARDS & HONOURS Finalist Ken Roberts Delineation Competition Student Hand | 2017 Scholarship Award Winner Rome: Maps and Stories | 2017 1st Place National James Wallace Secondary School Art Awards | 2014 Runner Up Regional Eden Arts Young Artists Awards, Auckland Runner-up | 2014
STUDIO EXPERIENCE Friedrich St.Florian Architects | Architectural Intern | Providence, January 2018
+ Design and solve details of a continued project of American Farm Museum & Education Center + Create drawings: plans, sections, axonometric diagrams, perspectives and interior renderings.
Maps & Stories in Rome | Student Artist | Rome, Summer 2017
+ Scholarship for 3-week study abroad in Rome, analysing city spatially and historically. + Experiment with analytical means of representation to communicate multi-layered information.
City+Data STEAM | Student Designer | RISD, 2017
+ STEAM (STEM combined with arts and design) sponsored intensive workshop. + Culminate in a gallery show, investigating the nature of big data and its representation of the city.
Microsoft Inclusive Design, ID-2519 | Student Designer | RISD, 2016
+ Collaborated in team of four to brainstorm, research, ideate, and optimise navigation tool. + Presented concepts and prototypes to members of Microsoft’s Industrial Design and Design Strategy teams.
iLLumix Studio | Designer, Photographer, Founder | Auckland, NZ, 2014-2015
+ Designed layouts of iPhone apps & websites, posters, flyers, brochures as well as provide social media content. + Clients include: National Institute of Health Innovation, YouthLaw, Synergy NZ.
WORK EXPERIENCE Architecture Department | RISD, Fall 2016 - present
+ Teaching Assistant for core studio Architectural Design | Spring 2018 + Teaching Assistant for Architectural Projection | Fall 2017 + Woodshop Monitor | Fall 2016
Office of International Student Services | Front of House staff | RISD, present
+ Provide services to international students seeking information about immigration and visa status.
LEADERSHIP & ENGAGEMENT AIAS Undergraduate President | RISD, Fall 2017
+ Spearhead student committee to initiate and market events to Architecture student body. + Lead weekly meetings with structured agendas to roll out monthly community events.
Senior International Orientation Leader | Providence, RI, USA, Fall 2017
+ Provide incoming undergraduate community with knowledge and skills to transition into the US. + Work with other SIOLs to organise and lead training programmes for Orientation Leaders. + Train cross-cultural competency and communication skills.
01self-sufficient living Urban Ecologies with Critic Laura Briggs // Fall 2017 What does it mean to create affordable housing in the 21st-century? This residential village rests in Olneyville, Providence, at the busy intersection of Manton Avenue and Hartford Avenue. The site is one block West of the commercial centre of Olneyville Square, and a few blocks away from the rest of residential Olneyville. Now more than ever, it is crucial to find viable methods of creating sustainable, self-sufficient housing to both respect the environment and empower the residential community. The project focuses on three methods of sustainable living: energy collection, water reuse, and collective food farming. To prevent isolation from the rest of Olneyville, the project draws its grain from its immediate surrounding street grids, acting as an active urban threshold between busy streets to connect the commercial to the residential areas. The housing units are not isolated from the grid; indeed, it arises out of the grain of the city, such that it fosters both independence and interdependence in our self-sufficient village.
Drawing from the immediate street grid of Hartford Avenue and Manton Avenue, I investigated the forces of the sidewalk. Perpendicular streets of Delaine Street and Arnold Street pushed furthest into the site, creating the main thoroughfare through the area. The responsiveness of the site to the adjacent street pushed the grain of the site futher upwards, eventually creating a sectional slope with higher units further North, and lower units down towards the river and Hartford Avenue.
Process Models and Diagrams
The street grid is brought into the site at the ground level, as an urban threshold connecting Hartford Avenue and Manford Avenue. Along the grain of the street, public programmes are placed to foster a greater sense of community while adding to the economy of the village; farmer markets, recycling centres, distribution centre, second hand clothing store, child daycare and cafes.
Site Plan
Ground Plan
How do you bring a large, urban street grid into the privacy of the single unit? The non-regular grid of the street is brought into the unit at a 45 degree angle through the common living areas first (the living room and kitchen). As users continue into the unit, the grid rotates back to an orthogonal one, giving regularity as you move into areas of rest (bedroom). The project incorporates Living Machines throughout its 150 units. Between each set of 4 units, next to or near the vertical circulation towers, are the first stages of the Living Machines. Shared tanks further the idea of interdependence and communal sharing of facilities and resources.
Unit Plan & Plan Cut on 5th floor
1/16" = 1' model
Unit Section Perspective
Section perspective through units. Structure includes steel square Vierendeel trusses and full thermal insulation of enclosure as well as of the steel structure itself.
The shared Living Machines between units connect to later stages of filtration at grade. This allows for water to be reused and recycled back into the system, allowing for a self-suffiicient system.
Living Machine
Section perspective close-up of later stages of filtration at grade and openings through the building for public access.
Pedestrian bridges act as urban connections across the river, allowing a porous circulation to run with the grain of the streets and carry people into the site through Manton Ave, and across to Hartford on the other side. Opportunities for rest and reflection of the human relationship to the water are placed along the river, in such a way that the boundary of the water to land alternates between hard edge and soft edge. The
Relationship to River
Living Machine, placed under the porches of the cafes on the Northern bank (left in this render), are strategically placed opposite these sites of sitting so that citizens and residents of Olneyville are able to reflect on our collective water consumption and invite them to join in celebration of the Living Machine filtering water for reuse, leading to a healthier, cleaner environment.
The community garden which begins at the street level for full public access and lies next to the distribution center and farmer's market is then lifted onto the green roofs of the residential building. Each layer of roof terrace contains planters which allow for planting of basic vegetables and trees for shading.
Community Garden
02providence library Architectural Design with Prof. James Barnes // Spring 2017 The life of a city can found along its sidewalks. This Providence library aspires to be an extension of the street. It responds to our site by facing Dorrance St (a main street), the green space along the river, and the on-ramp of the future pedestrian bridge. The generous facade invites pedestrians towards the library, who may pass through the public plaza with its food trucks and perforance spaces. The curtain wall is a mediator between the street exterior life and the library interior life. The sidewalk, public plaza, and ground are maintained at an equal plane, so that the curtain facade merely acts as a breathing membrane, rather than a divider. Those within the enclosure gaze back out onto the street, such that the street and the library have a mutual relationship.
Pedestrian Traffic Vehicular Traffic
Site Analysis
Successive floors recede into its private back corner at Friendship and Orange, and consequently the entire building becomes a large scale staircase that gradually retreats into a quiet space. The corner egress stairs respond to the corners of the site, which are given attention by the diagonal cut through the plot. The experiential stairs connecting the receding floor plates further this idea of the extension of the street.
Retreating into Corner of Repose
1/16"=1' Site Model
Extension of the Street
1/8"=1' Section Model
03volumetric light, tangible shadows Architectural Analysis with Assistant Prof. Aaron Forrest // Spring 2017 A hand-drawn x-ray section oblique drawing of the Convent of La Tourette in Eveux, France, by Le Corbusier, focusing on the structures that control the way natural light pours into the interior space. Rather than simply rendering lighting conditions within the space, the structures and apertures which allow the light to pass through are emphasised by manipulating lineweights and extrapolating construction lines.
Materialising light. La Tourette is filled with direct parallel light (sun) freed and yet restricted to a strange parameter of entering the structure only at right angles to each facade, without diffusion. In the top analysis, light is given solid form the moment it passes the aperture and into the building, halting once it reaches any physical boundary (walls, floors, stairs, columns). In the center analysis, the light carves out the structure that it reaches -- the parts of the building struck by direct light. The bottom final analysis are the remainders of La Tourette, left in darkness. Created using Rhino3D.
​​ section imposed on a plan. Two floors of the south wing A are taken to explicitly examine the way light finds its way through Le Corb's carefully designed mullions and brise soleils, falling onto the various different parts of the interior (walls, floor, desks & columns here). Tones of grey show where the light is traveling through space, while the white of the paper demonstrates where the light reaches its destination, illuminating the structure. Medium: graphite poweder Size: 48"x60" Selected as finalist in KRob Delineation Competition, Student Hand category.
04suspension Making of Design Principles with Assistant Prof. Carl Lostritto // Fall 2016
The first series of our Making of Design Principles allowed us to study a drop of ink in water and its spatial movement over time. The ink’s dynamic character is seemingly random at first glance, but with repeated trials presents predictable behaviour.
The quality of the line: by solely using lines in Rhinoceros modeling software with consistent line weights and shade, I reconstructed the ink characteristics.
Model condition of ink around a frame. No extra structure supports allowed; essentially, this means that no part of the model should exist solely for structural purposes.
The drawing reference is removed, as is the tension support from the paper. Bristol paper and string only. A language was invented to allow for sweeping bristol forms.
The final representation of the ink condition removed any support from the frame. The entire model had to serve both the purpose of creating the space and movement of the ink, as well as providing the structural support. No element should be present solely for structural purposes. Language from the previous 2D frame iterations was carried through to this final model.
05Printmaking Intro to Intaglio with Valeria Herrera // Wintersession 2018 To the left is a triptych etching, incorporating stenciling and chine colle. The subject matter depicts a surreal microcosm, where people and daily things exist side by side. On the next page are two prints of Providence in an alternate universe. The city is transformed such that the small parts of our daily going-abouts become larger-than-life, while the ordinary citizen goes about their days in miniature buildings.
Providence: Exit down the Manhole Print: 12"x12" 5-plate plexi on Stonehenge paper
Providence: Exit down the Manhole v.2 Print: 12"x12" Single plate plexi on Stonehenge paper
06 egg tool Foundation Studies, Spatial Dynamics with Senior Critic Deborah Coolidge // Fall 2015
The limitations of this project were to create a tool that could pick up an egg, crack it, and whisk it. A bowl was provided but I wanted to create a system that could achieve all three steps. My final design was based off a teapot with layered systems.
thank contact you. Cherry Xinlan Yang 401.286.4726 cyang03@risd.edu 2 College St, #1978 Providence, RI 02903