RE: VISIONS _ Design Portfolio _ Danning Niu

RE:VISIONS DESIGN PORTFOLIO WITH A FOCUS ON ADAPTIVE REUSE

DANNING NIU 2022

RE:VISIONS

Preface Adaptive Reuse - From A Croissant to Buildings

Whether operating on a croissant or a building, adaptive reuse raises important questions about the relationship between the existing and the new.

How do we make present the past to design for the future?

Host Structure: A Croissant

Operation: To Peel

Exterior Shell: Crust

Interior Structure: Bread

Operation: To Wrap

Operation: To Wrap Cheese & Ham Around the Bread

Exterior Shell: Restored

New Structure: An Imitation of the Host Structure

Adaptive Reuse Operation Exercise, Diagrams Co-drawn with Ashley Chen

DANNING NIU Yale School of Architecture M Architecture I (Candidate)

Rhode Island School of Design BFA Interior Studies - Adaptive Reuse

Brown University

BA East Asian Studies Email

danning.niu@yale.edu

Phone

201-245-7055

Website

danningniu.com

Contents 1

1/14’’ : 1’

Projection Mapping Installation

2 Outside-In

1-4 5-10

Adaptive Reuse, Art-ful Interventions

3

The Future Machi of Craft

11-16

4

Fly Me to Edo

17-20

5

Crafting the City

21-24

6

Nostalgic Landscapes

25-28

7

The New Field

29-36

Adaptive Reuse, Reimagining the Old Hokuriku Bank

VR Visualization

Site-specific Installation

Gouache and Indian Ink on Stonehenge

Adaptive-Reuse, Multi-generational Housing & Co-Living Space Design

8 Enclosure

37-38

9 Loop

39-40

Interlude Part I Being Inside

41-48

Part II

10

Forms of Change

49-50

11

Outside the Box

51-52

Design for Reflection Rooms

Transitional Housing Design

On the Event of Love

Graphic Design

Illustration

1/14” : 1’

1

1 operating on a new scale

1/14’’:1’

1

1/14’’:1’, Projection Mapping Installation

1

Projection Mapping Installation

2

1/14” : 1’

1

1 1/14’’:1’

operating on a new scale

Projection Mapping Installation Site / CIT Lobby, RISD, Providence, RI Studio / Senior Seminar & Senior Show, Spring 2019 Instructor / Liliane Wong Team / Bryant Lui, Liqiong Huo, Kelly He, Diana Lin, Danielle Williams, Ashley Chen, Emily Brenner, Jenny Lu, Mengxi Zhang, Lana Yuan, Abdullah Moussa, Ika Zhao, & Andrea Zhu Role / Coordination, Concept Development, Prototyping, Fabrication, Branding, & Video Editing 1/14”: 1’ is a non-standard scale, denoting an unconventional correspondence between design and the world and a unique relationship between each of the 14 seniors and the cohort.

Merging fabrication and projection mapping technology, we explored new approaches to exhibition design in a space of limited footage. The dimisension of the volumes are derived from the architectural elements on site. Digital design archives are mapped upon the geometries, forming a kaleidoscopic digital landscape that activates an underwhelming space.

3

1/14’’:1’, Projection Off, Light Effect

1/14’’:1’, Isometric View, Plan, & Section

1

Projection Mapping Installation

1/14’’:1’, Projection Mapping

4

Outside-in

2

2 exploring interiority

Outside-in Adaptive Reuse & Design for the Arts Site / Hilles Library, Harvard University, Boston, MA Studio / Art-ful Interventions, Fall 2019 Instructor / David De Celis This project reimagines Harvard’s Hilles Library, which currently serves as Harvard’s Student Organization Center as a new nexus of arts, education, and community engagement. The proposal calls for new programs, i.e., art residences, public galleries, visual and performing arts studios, work areas, community dining spaces, public program classrooms, and retail. The intention was to bridge celebrate the Arts in the city and bridge together the architecture, the campus, and the urban context.

Interiority is a valuable concept for exploring new ways of space-making. Outside-in’s programmatic and architectural reconfigurations seek to pull energy into the space and let the architecture grow inward. The major architectural adaptation takes advantage of the existing courtyard.

The inserted structure engages with the existing building minimally and turns the outdoor space into a skylightcovered atrium at the center of the various programs and circulations.

5

New Courtyard at Hilles Library

2

Adaptive Reuse

6

Outside-in

2

Strategy of Intervention - Interiority 1. Turn the outdoor courtyard into an interior space 2. Allow public access to the courtyard 3. Introduce community + cultural programs 4. Make the courtyard the most public part of the building 5. Connect the building to the urban context

Operations 1. Balcony Extensions 2. Secondary Walls 3. Skylight

7

Urban Interiority

2

skylight wooden cladding roof structure

Adaptive Reuse

wood cladding separation from the common circulation

HALLWAY GALLERY

divider shelf

LOUNGE

RESIDENTIAL UNIT moveable panels

outer moveable panel colored glass panel wood frame planter

FLOOR 4

planter inner moveable panel wood frame gypsum board

wood cladding

extension

connection to concrete slab

cork flooring

cork flooring

wood flooring

acoustic wood cladding

inner moveable panel wood frame gypsum board

STAIRCASE

STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS

outer moveable panel colored glass panel wood frame wood cladding

extension

FLOOR 3

HALLWAY GALLERY

connection to concrete slab

cork flooring

acoustic wood cladding

HALLWAY GALLERY

STAIRCASE

FLOOR2

STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS

cork flooring

acoustic wood cladding

COURTYARD

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

FLOOR 1

HALLWAY GALLERY

bench

porcelain tiling

S E C T I O N D E TA I L 1

2

3

4

5

wood flooring

8

Partial Section 0

porcelain tiling

10 FT

Outside-in

2

Between the Old & the New Driven by the idea that the spectacle of art will serve as a unifying gesture for a diverse community, the design operations turn the previously underused balconies into hallway galleries. The new structure features a system of double-layered movable panels, which can be composed flexibly to display works of different scales. The sides of the panels facing the courtyard are made from colored glass, which adds visual interest to the interior space.

Courtyard Model

9

2

Adaptive Reuse

First Floor, Public Programs -> Courtyard -> Gallery

Fourth Floor, Hallway Gallery + Community Space

10

The Future Machi of Craft

3

11

3 the past revitalized

The Future Machi

Exterior View of the Old Hokuriku Bank Building and the New Residency Buildin

3

Adaptive Reuse

of Craft

ng Complex

12

The Future Machi of Craft

3

3 The Future Machi of Craft the past revitalized

Adaptive Reuse & Heritage Revitalization Site / Inami, Nanto, Japan Studio / Reimagining the Old Hokuriku, Spring 2020 Instructor / Wolfgang Rudolf *This project was for a collaborative initiative by Taketombo, RISD, and the Government of Nanto City.

As rural Japan continues to age and decline, local governments face challenges maintaining public facilities and services with sufficient resources. Many properties with historical value are in danger of survival. The Old Hokuriku Bank (later converted into the Inami Art Museum) is one of them. In November 2018, the Nanto government announced the plan to either sell or demolish the Old Hokuriku Bank (later the Inami Art Museum) building due to the high maintenance expenses of the aging structure.

Located at the center of the historic Yokamachi Street, the tall, light-colored concrete building in the neo-classical style was erected in 1924 during the Taisho Period. The building simultaneously stands out against and blends in with the vernacular, low-rise, dark wooden machiya houses lining Yokamachi Street.

To this day, these traditional houses continue to serve as homes and workspaces for artisans continuing Inami’s legendary art of woodcarving.

To extend the life of the Old Hokuriku Bank, this proposal introduces a Designer-In-Residency program into the existing building complex. The residency program aims to encourage young designers around the world to live in the Japanese countryside and learn about traditional crafts. The town of Inami is known for the virtuoso of its woodcarvers. The craft has a rich history and was declared a Japanese Heritage in 2018.

However, at present, the interest of the younger generation to inherit the tradition has waned significantly, and the demand for the traditional wood architectural components has also dwindled. The circumstances present a need to preserve the traditional craft and revitalize the artisan town’s value.

New Exhibition space/Gift Shop/Community Space in the Old Hokuriku B

The new design is inspired by the machiya typology and tries to recreate the lively experience of walking down the Yokamachi Street with everything happening around you.

13

Note_“Machi” is the Japanese word for ‘‘town’’

Concept Diagram. Recreating the Yokamachi Experience

3

Adaptive Reuse

Bank Building

14

The Future Machi of Craft

3

15

Strategy of Intervention - Historic Shell

Strategy of Intervention - Fragmentation

The host, Old Hokuriku Bank Building, is preserved as a shell.

The interior walls are covered by wooden shelves and panels that show consistency in color and materiality with the exterior cladding of the new studio/residential buildings. The additions are either free-standing or reversible to respect the host structure. The design of the wooden structures evokes the form of shitami-ita, the traditional Japanese battened clapboard, which can be found on the exterior design of many local houses. Introducing an element that is typically used for the exterior into the building emphasizes the connection between the host and the context and creates a more public experience in the interior.

The post-war structures at the back of the bank are converted in to an complex of 2-storey high buildings. The volumes are staggered to generate a porous plan and a rhythmic sequence.

The gaps between the building allow people to access the building complex from different direction and can be populated by movable furniture to accommodate small gatherings. The composition of the bridges and walkways on the residential floor evoke the existing atrium in the bank building and create a visual connection in plan and section. The logic of fragmentation also continues in the treatment of the roof structures.

First Floor Central Walkway Flanked By Work Spaces

Open Space Between Community Kitchen and Workshop II

3

6 3

1 8

5

4

2

Plan, First Floor

18 17

16

15

9 19 14

13

12 11

10

Adaptive Reuse

7

1 Old Hokuriku Bank/Exhibition space/Gift Shop/ Community Space 2 Meeting Room 3 Multimedia Classroom 4 Workshop Area I 5 Workshop Area II 6 Digital Lab 7 Bathrooms & Elevator 8 Communal Kitchen

9 Old Hokuriku Bank Mezzanine 10 Medium Residential Unit 11-16 Small Residential Units 17 Bathrooms 18 Living Room & Elevator 19 Indoor Garden

Plan, Second Floor

Design

Elevation A-A

Section B-B

Evoking the machiya typology, work areas are allocated to the first floor and the residential units to the second. A fully accessible indoor walkway is at the center, flanked by the meeting rooms, workshops, digital labs on both sides. The alternating landings and ramps lead the visitor from the bank building to a community kitchen at the end of the journey.

16

Fly Me to Edo

4

4 the past reconstructed

Fly Me to Edo

17

4

VR Visualization

18

Fly Me to Edo

4

4 Fly Me to Edo the past reconstructed

VR Visualziation Independent Project/RISD Museum Andrew W. Mellon Internship, 2019 Online Publication / risdmuseum.org/art-design/

projects-publications/articles/fly-me-edo

What is it like to walk inside a print? How can we reconstruct a world seen in the eyes of the artists from centuries ago for today’s audience? The project is an experimention with new approaches to visualization, spatialization and interactive exhibition design. Turning the 2D image into a 3D digital collage, I took the audience on a virtual reality exploration of the Kanzeon Raijin Gate in Edo, Japan, as seen in an 1820s print

by Keisan Eisen in the RISD Museum Asian Print Collection.

19

Digital Collage & QR Codes of VR Perspectives

The Kinryuzan Sensoji Temple was the heart of Edo culture.

Dedicated to the bodhisattva Kannon, it was not only a venerable site for the Buddhist religion, but also a hub of urban life, commerce, and entertainment where different groups of people mingled. The site was also a popular subject in Japanese ukiyo-e prints. I wanted to create for the audience an experience of the site through the eyes of the artists. Along with the print from the RISD Museum collection, I collaged around 20 other woodblock prints from the Edo Period that depicted the Kinryuzan Sensoji Temple area. Piecing together the different perspectives, I constructed a 3-dimensional digital model that shows the entire sequence of spaces that one would go through to visit the temple. Scan the QR code, let’s fly to Edo together.

4

VR Visualization

3D Perspectival View of the Kaminari-mon

In Front of the Kaminari-mon at the Kinryuzan Sensoji Temple

20

Crafting the City

5

21

5 an ode to the living traditions

Crafting the City

Crafting the City, Paper Cutouts Displayed At the Kattanine Fondouk

5

Site-specific Installation

22

Crafting the City

5

5 Crafting the City an ode to the living traditions

Site-specific Installation Site / Kattanine Fondouk, Fes Medina, Morocco Studio / Morocco: Crafting the City, Winter 2018 *This project was the culmination of a month of cultural exchange program sponsored by the Ministry of Handicrafts, Solidarity and Social Economy of Morocco and RISD. Laundry hanging, drying, and billowing over the sea of rooftops in Fes Medina. This mundane but emotive scene gave form to the site-specific installation. Not to romanticize the practice, I considered sunning the laundry also a tradition - one that persists between the gaps of modernization, and one that’s gradually lost in the city that I came from. In the States, you barely see anyone sun their laundry in public, given the convenience of dry cleaners and concerns of privacy. In Shanghai, the older generation still observe the practice on beautiful sunny days, believing that the sun-kissed sheets welcome sweeter dreams. The installation was an ode to all these living traditions. The crisp white paper cutouts were hung against the backdrop of Fes Medina. The designs of the patterns were inspired by the traditiomal Moroccan crafts, zouaq painting and zellige, and the elaborate urban fabric that enwraps the site.

23

Urban Fabric, Fes Medina, Morocco

5

Site-specific Installation

Crafting the City, Installation On the Rooftop of the Kattanine Fondouk

24

Nostalgic Landscape

6

6 return to a distant homeland

25

Before the Ink-wash

Nostalgic Landsca

Gouache and Indian Ink on Stonehenge

ape

6

26

Nostalgic Landscape

6

6 Nostalgic Landscape return to a distant homeland

Gouache and Indian Ink on Stonehenge, 2017 Through this painting, I explored ‘nostalgia’ as an affect that refers to not only the memories and soft emotions of missing homeland or the lived place, but also a cultural feeling, enlightenment or sense of identity. Vice versa, the disillusionment from nostalgia and the realization of the nonexistent past can potentially pose challenges to one’s present identity.

27

After the ink-wash

The painting captures a perculiar sense of melancholy I felt during my return to China in 2017, after studying in the States for three years. It depicts the rapeseed terrace fields in Wuyuan, located in the Jiangxi Province. Despite my intellectual registration of the beauty of the panoramic landscape, I felt emotionally displaced upon the visit. The homeland which I had such an intense emotional affinity with while an ocean way suddenly felt very distant and unfamiliar. The bright colors of the original painting were

6

Gouache and Indian Ink on Stonehenge

thus “tainted” or “distanced” by the black ink. The inkwash embodies my inherent fear and bewilderment at the disconnection from the culture which I was raised in and thought I had an inherent connection to. It also bears my wistful aspiration of connecting to a past through nostalgic, historical imagination.

discrepancy between the lives of the urban and the rural in contemporary China. In a nation of rapid moderrnization, industrialization, capitalist development, and urbanization, how we negotiate the relationship between the past and the present and between the cities and the countryside remains an important question.

Living all my life in the city, my personal incapability to comprehend or appreciate the return also reflects the ultimate

28

The New Field

7

7 how do we live together?

The New Field Adaptive-Reuse, Multi-generational Housing & Co-Living Space Design Site/60K Street, Boston, MA Studio/Intro to Interior Architecture III, Fall 2018 Instructor/Janet Stegman The host structure is a 1912 industrial building located in South Boston. With recent upgrades of amenities and infrastructure, the area is now a desirable residential neighborhood. The project turns the existing building in to a housing complex. The user group I am targeting is restaurant people. The demanding restaurant hours present a perennial challenge of work-life balance for chefs, especially those with children. Meanwhile, apprentices often have difficulties finding affordable housing within an easy commute. The new programs I’m proposing bridge life, work, and eating. The new design accommodate both multi-generational housing and co-living between individuals. There are restaurants on the first floor, a test kitchen, an open office space, and a children’s playroom on the second, and community gardens on the rooftop. The new programming aims at providing a better work-life balance for working professions who operate on intense schedules.

The intervention respects the column grid of the existing structure but calls for the removal of some parts of the facades and the floor slabs. The original entity is divided into four buildings that have their independent circulation paths.

The circulation path follows a spiral form; and the pedestrian experience evokes that of climbing up a mountain. Along the circulation path, there are vegetation and land designated for urban farming. The produce can supply either the individual households or the restaurants. The ultimate result is a more porous spatial design that allows for more interesting and free ways of encounter.

29

Concept Diagrams, Roads Over Mountains & Terrace Farming

7

Adaptive Reuse

Before and After

30

The New Field

7

31

New Circulation Path

7

Adaptive Reuse

Rooftop -Community Garden

Floor 4 -2 Multigenerational Units (6 people ea.)

-2 Medium Family Units (3 people ea.)

-1 Co-living Unit (4 singles)

Floor 3 -2 Multigenerational Units (6 people ea.)

-2 Medium Family Units (3 people ea.)

-1 Co-living Unit (4 singles)

Floor 2 & 2.5 -2 Multigenerational Units (6 people ea.)

-1 Co-living Unit (5 singles) -Test Kitchen -Open Office Area -Children’s Playroom

Floor 1 -4 Restaurant/Retail Areas -Indoor/Outdoor Dining -Vegetation -Community Garden

Plans

32

The New Field

7

33

East Elevation

7

Adaptive Reuse

34

The New Field 7

35

Section

7

Adaptive Reuse

36

Enclosure

8

8 for a spiritual retreat

Enclosure

Adaptive Reuse, Design for Reflection Rooms Site / Fleet Library, RISD, Providence, RI Charette 2019/ 5-day Design Competition Team / Team / Kelly He, Mary Iorio, Serafima Kovalevskaya, Guijiadong Lin, Wesley Sanders, Priyanka Marupudi, & Qing Shi Role / Design Development, Drawing, Modelmaking, & Fabrication

37

Whether it be a prayer mat, a meditation rug, or simply a carpet in your bedroom, the extra surface defines a space that transcends the common experience. It provides opportunities for a connection to a higher being, introspection, and mindfulness. Borrowing from a formal vocabulary that is both sacred and mundane, we designed a flexible and ergonomic structure that provides a sense of enclosure for spiritual activities on campus. The horizontal cuts create a malleable structure and visual calmness. The diffused lights along the interior of the curve can be adjusted under different activity settings and create an immersive, tranquil atmosphere.

8

Design for Reflection Rooms

Half-scale Model with Ambient Light

38

Loop

9

9 for a restart in life

Loop

Adaptive Reuse, Transitional Housing Design Site / Whitestone Life Center, Providence, RI Studio / Intro to Interior Architecture II, Spring 2017 Instructor / Elizabeth Debs Team / Ziying Peng & Liqiong Huo, Role/Design development, Drawing, Modelmaking, Rendering & Fabrication

39

Whitestone Life Center is a non profit that provides transitional housing for homeless men. Our team undertook the challenge to redesign the shared residency, which is critical to the men’s rehabilitation process. Our design features a piece of furniture called ‘Loop.’ Enwrapping the beds, the simple structure offers the residents a sense of privacy. The residents can customize the design by hanging shelves and hooks.

Supported on wheels, the structure can be moved around to create various configurations. With its flexibility, the design can be easily applied to other rooms at the facility.

9

Transitional Housing Design

New Design of the Shared Residency & Half-scale Model

40

Interlude

things on my mind

Interlude

41

Things On My Mind

42

Interlude

Interlude Part I

Being Inside Brown|RISD Dual Degree Capstone Project 2020 Advisor / Elizabeth Debs Full Presentation / www.behance.net/gallery/101168909/Danning-Niu-2020

Adaptive reuse and intervention are not limited to the field of architecture; I’d also like to think of them as strategies and metaphors of coming in between the multiple dimensions of our life. Weaving together the narratives is a way of apprehending and communicating the realities and rendering them anew.

The global pandemic has put many of us within the confines of four walls. A strange time collapsed into a narrow world. Numbers, rules, policies are changing within minutes, exposing structural problems that should’ve not come at such a huge cost. There are so many larger, grander things to be concerned about, and for a while I felt I was in a vacuum and day-to-day life became dull.

So I decided to make a small-scale intervention into the condition of being inside, by embracing the immediate environment and embarking on an imaginary voyage within my four walls. This ritual has allowed me to wander inside, to process some of the unarticulated feelings and visions and it has connected me in the most unexpected ways to the ideas that have been on my mind across time and space. And it regrounded me, and restored in me the clarity and empathy, that allowed me to think without losing sight of the immediate.

Here, I’d like to share with you some of my meditations on being inside.

43

A voyage from bed to bed ...

“I want to live!” ...

And why after all these years, the walls still reflect their echoes.

It seems like they are neither passé or resolved, still bitter, and poignant that even today they pierce through my waking dreams. ...

Some beds trap you and then eat you. ...

Some beds are yours, and only yours. ...

I wandered inside, which is outside, which is inside. ...

But perhaps I forgot that age and growth is like an onion, a bigger ring surrounds a smaller one, when you are 23, you are also 22, 21, 20, 19…. ...

Full Presentation QR Code

Being Inside

44

Interlude

Interlude Part II

On the Event of Love Catastrophic but Extraordinary Soft/hard ground, toner transfer, & aquatint etching, blue ink on cream Rives BFK

“A totally contingent encounter but the result can be that your whole life changes. Nothing is the same as they say. You even spontaneously perceive your entire past life as leading towards this unique moment, you know, the illusion of love is ‘oh my God, I was waiting all my life for you.’” - Slavoj Žižek, Big Think, 2014 Yet, in the contemporary world, which Žižek also laments, we are often offered the love without the fall - a safe experience without the dramatic rewriting of one’s personal histories.

I, too, find this fear of unpredicability sad.

Working on this series of intaglio prints was my endeavor to comprehend and heal from the catastrophic but extraordinary event of love. In deconstructing what love is and trying to articulate the inarticulable, the indents and marks reinscribed pain and loss with poetic meditations. The process shined a new light on not only love but also all the contigent encounters and offered me courage and hope to embrace them as significant events in life.

45

On the Event of Love

Choking the Night, Choked By the Night

46

Interlude

Still, in silence, they decided to hug vanity and each other.

black on

I tried to prove to you how the world is not and while you turned my world and

Deconstructed Love

47

white off.

On the Event of Love

Amputation

Souvenirs of Innocence. Yet, you don’t smoke, so I have nothing to collect. 0/4213.

48

Forms of Change

10

10 towards an open future

Forms of Change

Graphic Design Calendar Design for Shanghai Industrial Co., Ltd, 2017 geometric iterations based on the company’s logo

49

10

Graphic Design

50

Outside the Box

11

11 always transcending boundaries

Outside the Box

Illustration Self-portraits, 2015

51

11

Illustration

52

COLOPHONE All titles and text in this portfolio are set in DIN 2014 Narrow.

All designs and visuals are independent works by Danning Niu, unless otherwise indicated as group projects in which case individual contributions are identified.

I

Adaptive Reuse

RE:VISIONS To Reuse To Reflect To Rethink To Reverse To Reclaim To Reimagine To Remember To Reconfigure To Reconceptualize ...

DANNING NIU 2022

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