Chunyu Ma's Architecture Portfolio

PORTFOLIO

University of Pennsylvania

Chunyu Ma

Special acknowledgements to Maya Alam, Andrew Lucia, Jonas Coersmeier, Simmon Kim and Danielle Willems

UNDUSTRIAL

TYPOLOGY

Incubator LOCATION

The Inglewood Oild Field

Los Angeles

BUILDING AREA

100000 Ft2

PROJECT DATE

Octber, 2022

TEAMMATE:

Zihua Mo

Homunculi are full scale architectures, albeit small in size. They are not models or prototypes – they work at their native size and tectonic material reality. They are equipped to act, to sense, and to react. Together with other actors, these homunculi will participate in a performance - an interchange of presentation and observation. They will form images and impressions of each other, defined by their spatial relationships, their environments, and their innate properties. These impressions will serve as the foundation for a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN)a tool which enables the artificial generation of images, typically born from the collaboration between a human curator and an AI synthesizer. In our case, we will share the agency of curation with our homunculi, allowing them to capture and collect data in ways which may seem unnatural or unintuitive to a human-centric perspective. Our homunculi may veil or occlude themselves, move to avoid each other's gaze, or produce atmospheres or natures which impede their capacity to house transmissible data. The result of this cooperative exercise will be images and animations which represent compound beings - artifacts resulting from the collision of the Human and the Synthetic.

It is a heavy irrigation machine, the upper part is metal skin, and the bottom part is made of concrete. The entire interior is supported by a metal skeleton in which various mechanical devices, such as fans, compressors, internal motor, and pump are installed. Because its weight is concentrated at the bottom, it may start to rock when it is subjected to traction. Its function is automatic irrigation, which will greatly enhance efficiency in the context of the industrial age, and the random swing design makes it unique.

The second homunculi is the ROLLER. It is a seeding machine with a natural plant cover. The sphere is made of transparent plastic and has a very light mass. Its internal rolling mechanism enables it to roll continuously while the sowing mechanism ejects the seeds to complete its work. It also has a certain amount of liquid nutrients inside that will flow out during the rolling process to record its trajectory.

ROCKER ROLLER

HOMUNCULI PHYSICAL MODEL

ROCKER

INTERACTION

Interaction

Paired Homunculi

ROLLER

THE INGLEWOOD OIL FIELD SOWING

MAKING

The overall plan is to build four laboratory buildings here, where they are the incubators of new types of environments and also create mutated creatures. These new environments and creatures will affect the whole oil field.

THE MANIMAL

THE MANIMAL

The first one is an incubator for animals, called The Manimal. It inherits the concept of homunculi, a building that moves, with a technological façade that expresses its experimental function, and the cooperation and contrast between machines and nature is the style we want to show, and the concept we want to explore. As the mutated animals mature, the building will topple over and a larger world will welcome them. This rendering shows the building as it falls, and the cesspool inside it pours out, affecting the existing environment. It will be a beautiful encounter as the mutated animals arrive in a whole new environment.

The second one is an incubator for plants, called “The Putant”. It has three cultivation spaces where plants will be cultivated into new types. Furthermore, the building can shake like the rocker, and during the movement, due to the openness of the incubator, the seeds of these mutated plants will be scattered in the oil field and then grow spontaneously, creating a new environment.

THE PUTANT

THE PUTANT

All kinds of plants can be seen growing freely in the cultivation space, where technology and nature cooperate with each other. The new environment will not be confined to this building, but will be spread to a broader range.

The third one is an incubator for fungus, called The Fungle. It is a spherical laboratory building. In the interior space, animal corpses will be processed and used as raw material for the cultivation of new fungal species.

THE FUNGLE

THE FUNGLE

The Fungle is also a building in motion, as it is a sphere, it will slowly roll on the ground, with internal shock absorbers to keep it in a stable motion. During the rolling process, the cultivated new fungus will be ejected onto the ground. After that they will grow at will and become part of the new environment.

The fourth one is an incubator for insects, called The Outsect, which is a multifunctional experi-mental building that looks like a giant airship.

THE OUTSECT

THE OUTSECT

Its experimental center is used to breed various types of insects in a crossbreeding process, and new types of insects that do not cause harm can fly out of the building freely once they mature. In addition to the breeding function, The Outsect also has the function of spraying water and nutrient solution to meet the growth of various new environments in the area. The Outsect is equipped with industrial equipment that can absorb water from the air for liquefaction and animal excrement for conversion. All in all, it is a new multifunctional building.

IN SEARCH OF THE PAST

Museum LOCATION

University of Pennsylvania

BUILDING AREA

13000 Ft2

PROJECT DATE

Octber, 2020

The issues of decolonization and the repatriation of artifacts are hotly debated in this era, and it is important for museum programs to know what they mean. If there are no longer artifacts in the museum, does the existence of the exhibition space still make sense?

The current museum extension confronts this question with a design solution that redefines the connotation of museum exhibition space. The purpose of a museum's exhibition space is to allow people to feel the presence of artifacts, so it does not have to be filled with physical artifacts. The space designed for this project aims to make people feel the presence of the artifacts through images, projections, and sound in many ways. In this way, the presence of the artifacts will be reflected through the emptiness. In such a space one traces the history of the artifacts and feels their fascination. In addition, this project also redesigned the courtyard, which can provide a place for people to rest and communicate, while echoing with the whole building, together creating an excellent humanistic place.

MATERIAL DISTRIBUTION UNROLLED ELEVATION

When elevations are spread out in a vertical form, they can provide a lot of inspiration for spatial design, and it is a wonderful spatial experience to feel the formation of 3d space in a 2D plan that reflects the relationship between reality and imagination. At the same time, unrolled elvation has a strong design logic, combining aesthetics and rational concepts. In this project, this design approach contributes creatively to the design of the museum's interior space.

MATERIAL TEXTURE

STREET ELEVATION

THE EXTENSION OF LIGHT

Market-Station LOCATION

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

35000 Ft2

March, 2021

This studio session will treat the typology of cities and urban market stations as assemblages that exist in the space between categories, defying categorization at the intersection of geometry and society. Thus, architectural objects are composed of distributed elements and events through temporal collections of materials, data, qualities and experiences. Considered in this way, the market station as an urban condition can be seen as a condensation of different qualities, social/cultural/economic realities and spatial/material moments that often intersect, collide, mix and disperse. Here, the residues of the past persist as artifacts whose echoing persistence produces an overarching sense of integrated identity and character.

Collecting and cataloging will play an initial role in this workshop, but not as a means to reach a particular truth or set of facts. Rather, these collections will serve as a way to decouple our ingrained preconceptions about the system and its images, to find the space where quantity gives way to quality; to defy categorization in order to dispel assumptions about identity in a potential state that is neither: between categories. Images will play a central role in this investigation-as material, mediator, and model.

The design project starts from the study of light, and the relationship between architecture and light is always complex but full of fun. The design inspiration from collection and research guides the generation of the assemblage. With the intervention of light, these assemblages exhibit many rich textures that speak to the different relationships between architecture and light and shadow. From these concepts, the creation of architectural forms and the design of interior spaces are gradually completed with a deeper consideration of light and shadow.

SWATCHES

HYBRID ASSEMBLAGES

PRIMITIVES

HYBRID ASSEMBLAGES

MASSING DEVELOPMENT

BUILDING SECTION

STREET ELEVATION

TERRACED WAVES

TYPOLOGY

Residential Apartments LOCATION

Brooklyn, NYC

BUILDING AREA

42000 Ft2

PROJECT DATE

September, 2021

With the completion of the BQX and NYC ferry system, the public transportation system around this community will become well developed and the density of pedestrian activity will increase significantly. At the same time, it seems that the configuration of the recreational infrastructure around the site has room for improvement because of future hyper density. Therefore, the building's public common spaces are dedicated to enriching the residents' sports experience, and the renovated part of BQE has become a skate park, combined with some children's playgrounds, dance studios, indoor courts, and other spaces to bring a new vitality to the whole community. At the same time, the building adopts a combination of terrace housing and tower housing across the BQE, creating a residential community that meets the needs of many people. From a façade design perspective, the building seeks to blend in with the existing architecture, creating a natural transition in the overall façade, but also creating a new urban corridor.

SITE PLAN

The overall public space also extends to the BQE, and this type of recreational infrastructure also provides good leisure and entertainment opportunities for the surrounding neighborhood, and it will create a new urban corridor.

For the whole building, I designed it with a combination of tower and terrace building types. On the other side of BQE, the tower housing is integrated here with the Terrace housing, and the atrium space in between allows better access to sunlight.

For the cluster development. A Cluster plan and section that shows a certain spatial organization of the terrace housing. It offers luxurious family housing there, and of course people who love sports are very welcome. It contains a variety of room types to meet the needs of different people.The overall building section shows many rich spatial textures, which speak to the different relationships between residential space and public common space in the building. In addition, the skate park in the renovated part of the BQE also shows a clear vein that connects to the new building, while meeting the needs of the whole community for recreational space and creating a new urban corridor.

For the façade design, the same language of the architectural massing form are used in the design process. In addition, the façade design intentionally strengthens the connection with exsiting building so that the two parts are naturally connected.The drawing shows the relationship between various types of spaces and the relationship between the primary and the secondary system.

The diagram of the façade design are very helpful to analyze the conversion relationship between 2d and 3d. The interplay of virtual and real becomes the main design concept for the primary and secondary systems, and the same design language brings unity to the overall building while having a vivid façade.

With the gradual completion of them, the public transportation network required for hyperdensity is coming to fruition, however, the recreational facilities around the site are not sufficient for such a density of people.

So for the Public common space, Its main function is to provide recreational space for residents, such as a skate park, children's playgrounds, indoor court and dance studios.

They are located in the middle part of the whole building and most of them are centralized areas, which are easy to reach for the residents and also provide a nice place to communicate in the building.

INTERLOCK

TYPOLOGY

Museum LOCATION

Brooklyn, NYC

BUILDING AREA

25000 Ft2

PROJECT DATE

March, 2022

TEAMMATE:

Junyi Zhou

We were ready to use the relationship between the river and the other side for the block design, so there were two buildings, and we analyzed a series of iteration to finally plan our massing with a grid and puzzle.

We had three main porgrams and we planned them to be evenly and logically distributed in two buildings, in line with the flow of people and in harmony in plan and three-dimensional views.

As we explore Long Island City, we found that there were a lot of artistic place in the area, as we shown in the mapping drawing. Therefore, it is very suitable for the design of a museum complex with the theme of data.

It will have a strong connection to the surrounding buildings while becoming a vibrant community. .This is our site render, which shows our specific massing and landscape design.

A part of the data system, the data space can be displayed and visited by people. They are usually hidden and out of sight. But with the rapid development of the electronic age, the physical presence of data storage space and data machines must become closer and closer to people. Such architectural spaces are not only designed for people, but also for machines. Combining the two, then, means that the architectural space is designed for both people and machines, and that they can live together in harmony in one space, establishing a special connection. Their relationship is intertwined and connected.

whole structure very well.

Solid to Void

Integrate a diamond grid system with blended curves to create massing, landscape, and discrete moments to reflect the relationship of Part and Whole, solid and void.

For the space experience, we consider architectural spaces are not only designed for people, but also for machines, which means a part of the data system, the space can be displayed and visited by people. Combining these elements is important in our design process, so that they can live together in harmony and establish a special bond. Their relationship is intertwined and connected. For the plan, these display walls are made up of servers, we can also see the diamond grid and curves help form the space organization.

For the chunk render, the concept of our spatial design is to use a multi-story atrium space to reflect the relationship between solid and void. Actually, they are outdoor spaces. And they can be used as display space, leisure space, machine storage space, or as a cooling system.

PORTFOLIO

University of Pennsylvania

Chunyu Ma

Special acknowledgements to Maya Alam, Andrew Lucia, Jonas Coersmeier, Simmon Kim and Danielle Willems