Danny Pang | University of Waterloo School of Architecture Portfolio | Fall 2023

彭澤嵐 ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN WORK SHOWCASE

SEPTEMBER 2023 ISSUE NO. 01

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published by danny pang

SELECTED WORKS

THE LIMEN: rumenating between extremes, discovery by means of lingering

photograph taken on my grandpa’s old digital camera

render from Museum of Emotions competition entry, ‘Consonance, Dissonance, and the Limen’

TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 03

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A Little About Me & My Work

Curriculum Vitae

Learn about my passions as an architecture student as I explain my design process in spatial explorations !

See what skills and assets I bring to the table with my previous work and academic experiences .

ACADEMIC & PERSONAL WORKS 06

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Dissonance, Consonance & The Limen

Metamorphic Skin: A Palimpsestic Canopy

Competition entry to the annual Museum of Emotions Design Contest held by Buildner.

Proposal for a community centre adaptive re-use of the Waterloo Regional Police Station in Waterloo, Ontario.

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Difficult Landscapes

Signs of Life: Moments of Vertigo in Remembering

A reinterprative site of Remembrance for the Century Manor Asylum for the Insane in Hamilton, Ontario.

A selection of photographs and reflections that embody a process of mourning, ambivalence, and discovery.

PROFESSIONAL SAMPLES 06

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The Green Door (Design Eight Five Two)

Poietic Veil Tilburg, Is It Alive? (PBSI)

Photographs of completed hidden bar & restaurant design in Central, Hong Kong.

Sculptural installation at the TextielMuseum in Tilburg in collaboration with Iris Van Herpen and DELFT University.

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a little about me and my work

Centered around a mission to re-inform social injustices and issues of sustainability within our built environment, my work explores responsive architectural strategies with the intention of creating change at an experiential and paradigmatic scale.

In effect, the work I create is not constrained by the hierarchal nature or limitations of specific architectural types or scale. Rather, my work is an informed deduction of a design process that was inspired by :

As a discipline for my creative process, my approach always seeks to ground itself in a meticulous consideration and skepticism of both readily knowable and concealed truths.

This praxis of consideration pertains but is not limited to the physical constraints and opportunities of site conditions; the cadence of care and compassion in political and social exchanges, the sensitivity of historical knowledge to the wake of restoration; and finally the experimental sensibility of a non-stagnant creative expression.

1. a deep fascination with responsive architectures acting at both human and non-human scales and 2. an understanding of humankind as a part of a homogeneity of life and energy exchnage in the transactional reactions of spontaneity.

The following selection of works extend through a various set of disciplines ranging from small scale explorations of architectural skins in “semi-living” systems and criticisms of existing urban fabrics, to large scale community development projects focused on restoring demographic engagement in misused urban spaces.

MY CHINESE NAME IS:

彭 PANG

澤 CHAK

A WORD FROM MICHAEL KOUTSOULIAS AT

STUDIO K ARCHITECTS

嵐 LAMM

To whom it may concern, I am pleased to provide a reference for Danny Pang , who worked as an architectural intern at Studio K Architects from January to April 2022.

At Studio K , Danny was placed on several projects under my supervision ranging from low-rise residential developments to high-rise mixed-use complexes within the Greater Toronto Area. His tasks involved generating working and schematic drawings using Revit and AutoCAD, conducting feasibility studies for building setbacks and parking requirements through site analyses, and creating concept visualizations using Enscape. Danny also participated in client debriefs by taking meeting minutes for important design discussion points.

Danny’s time here at Studio K demonstrated his strong capacity to be a quick problem solver, developing program related skills in BIM, taking on design challenges with a keenness to learn, and communicating well with his colleagues to generate efficient and effective workflows. The skills Danny has acquired and improved over his four months at the studio will allow him to put his best foot forward in his continued education and future internships.

Sincerely , Michael Koutsoulias

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curriculum vitae

CURRICULUM VITAE EDUCATION

DISTINCTIONS

University of Waterloo School of Architecture

President’s Scholarship Recipient

Program: Bachelor of Architectural Studies Location: Cambridge, Ontario Duration: 2020 - Present

Entrance scholarship awarded in 2020 for maintaining a grade average of 90-94.9%

St. Robert Catholic High School

Excellent Academic Standing

Program: International Baccalaureate Diploma Location: Markham, Ontario Duration: 2016 - 2020

Awarded for maintaining a grade average above 80%.

Achieved in 2020 and ongoing

TECHNICAL SKILLS Adobe Creative Suite

Computer-Aided Design

Experienced with Adobe Software such as Illustrator, Indesign, Photoshop, Lightroom, and Acrobat

Trained in Rhino, AutoCad, and Revit for digital drawing applications such as architectural drafting and modelling

Microsoft Office

Hand-Drafting and Model Making

Proficient with presentation and document setup and navigation through Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook

Experienced with drafting and making models for academic and professional architectural representations

Rendering

Language Proficiency

Experienced with rendering tools such as V-Ray, Lumion, and Enscape for generating architectural and graphic visualizations

Native proficiency in English Professional Working Proficiency in Cantonese

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render of speakeasy project at Design Eight Five Two

WORK EXPERIENCE Design Intern @ Philip Beesley Studio Inc. Location: Toronto, Ontario Date: July 2023 At PBSI, I worked alongside engineers, designers, and artists to produce and assemble parts for a sculptural installation that will be exhibited at Delft University. The work involves the digital fabrication of computer designed components that attach and react with a number of separate components. In it’s completion, the entire piece resembles that of an interactive pavilion that responds to its immediate environment in a responsive architectural system.

Architectural Intern @ Design Eight Five Two (DEFT) Location: Hong Kong, SAR Date: September 2022 At DEFT, I worked with interior designers, architects, and graphic designers to produce creative concept design packages for new urban spaces. The scope of the work ranges from small-scale interior designs of retail spaces to large-scale civic designs for social housing complexes and institutional buildings. At the studio, I helped to assemble mood boards and material palettes for concept packages; designed and visualized interior and exterior spaces using Vray and Rhino as drawing and rendering tools; and participated in client meetings to consult on design and planning decisions.

Design Assistant @ Studio K Architects Location: Markham, Ontario Date: January 2022 At Studio K, I engaged myself in cooperative design work and meetings with colleagues and clients to generate meaningful images for residential planning and civic developments. I was given the opportunity to utilize many of my rendering and drawing skills through my usage of Enscape, Revit, and AutoCad to develop visuzalizations and architectural drawings.

Salesperson @ MIFI INC. Location: Markham, Ontario Date: June 2021 At MIFI, I developed problem solving skills by working through and resolving customer issues with electronic products, as well as developed strong management and leadership skills through the maintainance of store stock and new-recruit employee training.

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entrance of the hall of consonance

consonance, dissonance, and the limen

Topic: Entry to Museum of Emotions Competition Distinction: Shortlisted Project Site: Unknown snowy landscape Date: August 2023 As part of a series of annual architecture competitions held by Buildner, the Museum of Emotions competition tasks individuals with using architecture as a tool to bring out different emotions. They ask designers to create a museum that includes two separate exhibition halls that bring out contrasting emotions – one inducing negative emotions, and the other inducing positive emotions - with participants being free to choose the specific emotions they incite with their designs.

The purpose of this design challenge is to use architecture as the primary tool to create emotional states, through consideration of the scales of the spaces, the journey through the space, colour, lighting, and material choice.

CONSONANCE , DISSONANCE , & THE LIM 6

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limen noun / li·men

a threshold below which a stimulus is not perceived or is not distinguished from another.

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consonance, dissonance, and the limen

For my museum, I decided to explore consonance and dissonance as core dispositions for the atmospheric quality of each gallery - with consonance exhibiting traits of harmony, concord, rest, and purity; and dissonance exhibiting opposite traits of obscurity, disagreement, restlessness, and corruption. By manipulating the size, spacing, and sequence of materialistically and geometricly similar building components, including walls, columns, entryways, skylights, chairs, and pools, conditions of order and chaos may be generated with a level of architectural precision. Likewise, a condition of liminal transition between the two gallery halls may also be simulated through a similar process of spatial manipulation, such as with juxtaposing elements of familiar repititious objects against non-familiar physical anomalies.

What is created in its ensemble is a continuous flow of emotional extremeties and the possibility to exist between such states, in the limen.

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consonance, dissonance, and the limen

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consonance noun / con·so·nance agreement or compatibility between opinions or actions.

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dissonance noun / dis·so·nance a tension or clash resulting from the combination of two disharmonious or unsuitable elements.

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consonance, dissonance, and the limen

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METAMORPHIC SKIN: A PALIMPSESTIC CANOP proposed site plan

Topic: Adaptive Reuse + Arts Reboot Site: Waterloo Regional Police Station Date: December 2021

The urban fabric of Waterloo, Ontario is in constant flux, and a growing urgency to address heritage buildings within the city indicates an additional need to reinform scars that might have been left behind. The current Central Division of the Waterloo Regional Police, built upon an extended history of a flawed incarceration system, is at the forefront of the city’s envisionment for a re-skinning. However, a large amount of discourse is placed on whether developers should tear the old station down, forgetting a long torturous past; or if they should acknowledge this fact of history while work towards re-adapting the building into Waterloo’s newly evolved urban context?

This arts-reboot community centre project chooses to do the latter. By preserving a majority of the station’s existing shell, as well as by erecting a new canopied structure in the courtyard space between the old county jailyard and the registry theatre, new public circulation and site connectivity to the surrounding buildings is created within an otherwise disengaged urban context. The new addition to the site also serves to draw pedestrians away from the surrounding buildings and towards a new central entrace at the core of the site, eliminating heirarchical ideas of “front” or “back” entrances.

Furthermore, the frame-like canopies a-top the new buildings were inspired by the existingstructural grid of the old police station, which in turn also informed the structure of the new courtyard space as well as their programatic divisions and allocations. In effect, the centre serves the Kitchener community by creating a new vision of their cultural identity, voided of colonial heirarchical structures, yet respectful of its heritage in disurbing historicism.

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metamorphic skin

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metamorphic skin: a palimsestic architecture

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basement

ground floor

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second floor

third floor

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circulation

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frederick street elevation

artist studio

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open office

section bb

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difficult landscapes

DIFFICULT LANDSCAPES Key Programs:

Topic: Lanscape + Restoration

1. Century Manor Tunnel 2. Gallery 3. Discovery Centre 4. Theatre 5. Studios

Site: Century Manor, Hamilton, Ontario Date: August 2022

“Like the dark and grotesque corners of human memory: Sigmund Freud, no less, likened the clearing away of pathogenic psychical material layer by layer with the technique of excavating a buried city and the layers of time, material and meaning it contains. The memory of the city, of its ruins and spaces serves as a kind of magical architectural notepad that can contain an unlimited number of letters, the traces of which remain even after they have been deleted. Freud argued that human memory functions similarily. It is able to absorb ever new impressions and nevertheless creates permanent, but also changeable, memory traces of them. We must think of space as a four-dimensional palimpsest.”

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- Peter Reichel in Difficult Places: Landscapes of Rememberance aerial view of century manor redevelopment

Century Manor, the last remaining part of the Hamilton Asylum for the Insane, closed to the public in 1995 — but it is becoming one of the busiest trespass tourism destinations in southern Ontario. How should one design for the reactivation of a misued site when its history exists in disturbing turbulence? This landscape project chooses to embrace the scar of its past by uncovering the buried memories of its footprints and by giving new purpose to its abandoned spaces.

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tree palette

difficult landscapes

1. Trembling Aspen 2. American Beech 3. Sugar Maple 4. Black Walnut 5. Eastern White Pine 6. Sugar Pine

Difficult Places: Landscapes of Rememberance

by Sinai

a sequence of events

This project was largely inspired by the embodied sensibilities of German landscape architecture practice Sinai. Details of their notable landscaping and restoration works informed not only the approach to my historic research, but also my hyperawareness and acute sensitivety to new design implementations.

ground cover 1. Canadian Columbine 2. Blue-eyed Grass 3. Cardinal Flower 4. Croneflowers 5. Butterfly weed 6. False Indigo

1. Pre-Existence (The Barton Building) 2. Present State (demolition remanence) 3. Resurrection (recovered footprint) 4. Reclamation (nature’s retake)

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section aa

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B

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proposed site plan

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recovery of existing structure + facade

transitional material: new brick screen

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difficult landscapes

steel-mullioned glass roof

double-skinned brick screen facade

re-erected solid brick walls

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section bb

difficult landscapes

disocvery centre

artist studio

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gallery

theatre

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signs of life

SIGNS OF LIFE:

MOMENTS OF VERTIGO IN REMEMBERING Topic: Photography + Research Writing Date: September 2023

Cathy Caruth, author of ‘Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History’ , describes the brain as a structure of belated responses. She states that our brains process our experiences of events with a certain latency due to our tendency to go through multiple unconscious cycles of recollection - namely compulsive repetition - before those memories can be applied in relevance to a host of other memories. She calls this connection between distinct recollections a chain of meaning and suggests that it is through compulsive repetition, that we eventually rationalize the events of our past.

However, Caruth also suggests that it is because of these cycles of repetition, that our memories sometimes lose accuracy. Like Caruth, Freud’s theory for trauma suggests that when it comes to remembering the past, we are not recalling the event itself. Rather, we are remembering the last time we remembered. Caruth explains that the precision of our recollection inversely serves to preclude meaning from the events of our past. In simpler terms, Caruth suggests that the more consciously you can recall and rationalize a past event, the less accurate that memory is.

We can similarly understand the function of trauma through these insights.

Trauma exists in the unconscious mind and is unassimilable into our rational chain of meaning because we choose to avoid adjacently repeating those experiences. It is likewise that we might visit certain spaces or be exposed to specific atmospheres that cause us to react irrationally without explanation.

Trauma is thus, a gap in our memory. There is a quote from Micheal Herr in ‘Dispatches’ that encapsulates this sentiment:

“…it took the war to teach it, that you were as responsible for everything you saw as you were for everything did. The problem was that you didn’t always know what you were seeing until later, maybe years later, that a lot it never made it in at all, it just stayed in your eyes.”

What does it mean to cry at photos of scenes I’ve never lived?

The following images of abstracted scenes were captured by my grandpa on his digital camera. He purchased the camera in 2007, and took pictures with it for a span of 14 years before his untimely passing in 2021. There are 384 pictures on the camera. 14 years, 384 pictures.

I received the camera from my grandma in the August of 2023. The following image compositions and reflections are a deep examination of personal and collective identity, and the notion of belonging through the lens of sympathy.

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signs of life

belonging in the lens of sympathy belonging noun 1. an affinity for a place or situation

identity noun 1. the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.

2. a close similarity or affinity.

affinity noun 1. a spontaneous or natural liking or sympathy for someone or something

sympathy noun 1. feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune.

2. understanding between people; common feeling.

vertigo noun 1. a sensation of whirling and loss of balance, associated particularly with looking down from a great height, or caused by disease affecting the inner ear or the vestibular nerve; giddiness.

The term belonging is derived from the Old English word balangian which itself was derived from the ProtoGermanic word *langōną, meaning to desire or long for.

Contemporarily, the word belonging is used to define someone’s affinity to a place or situation, which itself is not too dissimilar from the contemporary definition of identity which refers to a close similarity or affinity. Likewise, these definitions would suggest that the two terms are intrinsically related; that your identity might be informed by the subjects you deem worthy of belonging; or vice versa, that your sense of belonging is informed by your identity.

But what does it mean when you don’t feel like you belong?

Are you then devoid of an identity?

I struggle to argue in favour of our prescriptive usage of belonging, because we are socially conditioned to believe that having an affinity towards a certain person, place, or thing is an entirely pure transaction. But according to the Oxford dictionary, an affinity is a spontaneous or natural liking, or it is sympathy for someone or something. Sympathy.

There’s so much weight to this word. Sympathy is defined as an understanding between people, A common feeling.

Below is quote from Ocean Vuong’s ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous:

“The time, while pruning a basket of green beans over the sink, you said, out of nowhere, “I’m not a monster. I’m a mother.” What do we mean when we say survivor? Maybe a survivor is the last one to come home, the final monarch that lands on a branch already weighted with ghosts. The morning closed in around us. I put down the book. The heads of the green beans went on snapping. They thunked in the steel sink like fingers. “You’re not a monster,” I said. But I lied. What I really wanted to say was that a monster is not such a terrible thing to be. From the Latin root monstrum, a divine messenger of catastrophe, then adapted by the Old French to mean an animal of myriad origins: centaur, griffin, satyr. To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once.”

Sympathy is complicated. One should assume that “belonging” has the capacity to be just as so. When I speak of my grandpa, I speak in the language of vertigo – vibrating between sentiments of joy and fulfillment, and of pain and anguish. When I look at his pictures, I ruminate between fondness and guilt.

This is who I am. This is where I belong.

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signs of life

process: reading pictures, noticing signs of life

FOR MYSELF

FOR US

FOR OTHERS

selection

abstraction

contemplation

composition

display

introspection

In a 2005 conversation with Daniel Birnhaum, Photographer Wolfgang Tillmans tells the interviewer:

“You are free to use your eyes and attribute value to things the way you want. The eyes are a great subversive tool because they technically don’t underlie any control, they are free when used freely.”

When I began this project, I was unsure of how I’d respond to my grandpa’s pictures. There was certainly an intriguing narrative to be made of the 14 years of his life captured in 384 photographs, but that was never quite the point. As I’ve stated before, trauma is a gap in our memory. After someone’s death, attempting to formulate an accurate interpretation of their life becomes entirely irrational, and likewise remains unassimilable to our chain of meaning. This was evident when I eventually looked through the pictures one by one, and inexplicably had a visceral response to some of them. But I wanted to focus on these images specifically. I chose 64 photos that urged me to ruminate in a tempered state of vertigo - of having familiarity with certain people or places without ever encountering them directly; of feeling fondness for my grandpa’s imprints over myself and others despite feeling an equal guilt for the familial obligations he had to me; and of discovering cadences of identity that I only noticed recently through all the noise of abstracted pixels on a camera screen. Selecting these pictures and composing them intuitively was my way of understanding my grandpa. But more than that, it was to understand myself.

I decided to abstract the images before sharing them with others. On most of the images, the faces are cropped out of frame. Those that weren’t were picked intentionally due to their indistinguishable blurriness. This decision was made in part due to my desire to protect the identity of my family, but also to open a new mode for various forms of recognition. At the surface level, there is an exercise for viewers to recognize my family perhaps in what the people wore, the gestures of their hands and feet, their relationships with others, or their specific possessions. But I think more introspectively, I am inviting the viewer to recognize aspects of themself in the abstracted images.

Maybe then can we say we understand each other. Maybe then we might truly feel seen.

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in vulnerability, we extend an olive branch

To belong is not singly defined. It can be as uncomfortable as it is natural, and as lonely as it is inviting. These are all true, but one thing remains consistent. To Belong is entirely vulnerable.

A final quote from Ocean Vuong:

“You once told me that the human eye is god’s loneliest creation. How so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing. The eye, alone in its socket, doesn’t even know there’s another one, just like it, an inch away, just as hungry, as empty. Opening the front door to the first snowfall of my life, you whispered, “Look.”

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photograph by Xu Lian Leon

the green door

THE GREEN DOOR Firm: Design Eight Five Two Topic: Bar & Restaurant Scope: Interior Design, Branding, Graphics Site: Central, Hong Kong, SAR

The following speakeasy concept design situates itself in the dense urban jungle of Hong Kong’s Central District. The space aims to mount the aesthetic thresholds of contemporary media in the face of prohibition era sensibilities of vulgarity, mystique, and seduction. The transported atmosphere of the space from street level urbanity thus, translates to a sense of displacement, retro-fit, and the underground.

Completion Date: June 2023

Design Team: HK Peter Lampard Ploy Taechahamaphant Kenny Chan Danny Pang MNL Ken Logro FORM Oscar Chan Cheryl Lau Wendy Chan

Role and Responsibilities: Schematic Design material palettes mood boards interior design furniture design floor plans & renders

material palette

Design Development furniture millworks interior construction drawings

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The custom artworks were inspired by a number of monotone collages by Anthony Gerace, whose work focuses on defined portaiture obscured by geometric grid blocks. In effect, the works provide a semblance of subject through the easily recognizable female figures; yet their identities remain unknown.

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the green door

custom artworks designed by Ken Logro The artworks are placed behind an image treatment of fluted glass, and sit at the back walls of the bar where the booth seating is. They are gently lit by upward-facing warm leds, that provide a dynamic atmosphere to the space. See the following page for reference.

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the green door

photographs of the constructed project by Xu Lian Leon

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A plaster vaulted ceiling was created to mimic the atmosphere of an old tavern, while contemporary furniture elements such as two-toned lounge chairs and polished wood dining tables with brass finishes balance the periodic suggestions of the space. What is created is a temporal limbo where individuals might experience a sense of transportation upon arrival and entry.

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the green door

photographs of the constructed space by Xu Lian Leon

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Firm: Philip Beesley Studio Inc. Topic: Exhbition + Sculptural Installation Site: TextielMuseum, Tilburg, Netherlands Completion Date: 2023

Role and Responsibilities:

render by Lisa Jiang and Kevan Cress

poietic veil tilburg, is it alive?

Design Development component design and prototyping component fabrication digital modelling

Poietic Veil Tilburg is an immerive installation at the TextielMuseum in Tilburg that features an interactive, suspended veil that looms over the Iris Van Herpen dress, Lucid; and is lit by the projections of a new image casting system, titled Living Shadows. The Poietic Veil, a lace-like structure with responsive components, invites visitors to interact with its parts to see how it reacts and dynamically changes. This suspended installation was conceptualized and created in collaboration with students at TU Delft, and is part of a series of immersive exhibitions titled ‘Is It Alive?’ The exhibition will be available to visitors beginning from October 15th, 2023 to April 27th, 2024.

Poietic Veil Tilburg raises some important questions: What might living cities look like? How can the cities that we wish to design for resilience in the face of changing conditions be represented? In envisioning a novel urban landscape capable of efficiently managing temperature fluctuations—shedding heat, cooling down, and quickly regaining warmth—it might resemble a hybrid forest. In this vision, buildings take on the characteristics of dense layers of ivy-like filters and incorporate multiple overlapping layers of porous openings.

POIETIC VEIL TILBURG, IS IT ALIVE?

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600mm Sargasso Cloud

look 2 from the lucid collection by iris van herpen "Is It Alive?" presents the creations of Philip Beesley and Iris van Herpen in conjunction with Tanja Smeets' 2016 artwork "Nebula and the Soft Machine," as well as two interactive pieces by Bart Hess from his 2016 series, "STIMULUS cord reflexes." At the heart of this exhibition, the focal point is the recently introduced installation "I am Storm" by Studio Drift, characterized by self-sustaining structures fashioned from woven fabric.

poietic veil tilburg, is it alive?

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Crenellation Waffle

Sphere Garland

X-Plate Cloud

Hexacone Field

Actuated Space Truss

450mm Sargasso Cloud

plan distinguishing the zones of the poietic veil and the lucid dress

poietic veil tilburg, is it alive?

photograph of the garland dressing prototype by Kevan Cress

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render by Ryan Leung Living Shadows breathes life into what appears lifeless. It employs real-time projections to craft an alternate realm that enhances the tangible shadows within a sculpted environment. Within this virtual shadow realm dwell creatures, unshackled as 'living shadows.' This offers an exploration of how these typically static elements might behave if granted the freedom to move and engage with their surroundings. Inhabitants of the virtual realm contribute to shaping the character of the sculpture's stationary physical components, thus influencing a visitor's ability to connect with and understand the sculpture.

This projection technology has the potential to infuse traditional exhibition spaces and programming with vitality through a sleek, compact intervention that materializes as animated shadows that hug the walls and floors of the installation space.

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garland render

garland assembly plan

sphere garland component 48

fabrication

poietic veil tilburg, is it alive?

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production images

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living shado

再见

email for contact: danny.pang10@gmail.com call me @ +1 647-921-8850

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