Harvard
Tsinghua · B. A. 2017 - 2021
PORTFOLIO OF SEAN ZHANG
Distillery program overlapping with public program by becoming the roof and defining activity below.
Architectural elements and building requirements integrate into monolithic roof object.
This project involves the design of a bourbon distillery in Lanesville, Boston. Economic forces prevent many of today’s craft distilleries from inhabiting the idyllic landscapes of the past. Tradition and authenticity remain steeped in bourbon’s product image yet large footprints are increasingly unsustainable for small businesses. In response, public programs are playing an increasingly important role.
This project explores the typology of the roof, and how it may provide a possibility of layering dramatically different programs, scales and micro-climate conditions.
The south side of the site faces back of house of autobody shops, convenient stores, and warehouses. The north side sits alongside a commercial train track and faces an arboretum. Inserting a pure distillery factory into the site tends to further separate the block/mound from neighborhood fabric.
Re-tying these industrial scaled activities with neighborhood communal event spaces would require the public space be advanced by this alienated factory object. Lifting the bourbon factory and integrating the mechanical equipment into the ceiling, the roof becomes an integrated entity which serves the ground floor public free plan. Ceiling height and ceiling conditions would be the factor that defines spatial separation, control heat and humidity, provide shading and sheltering for the public space.
Each step of the distillery experiences different weight, temperature, humidity... The modules separate them into individual structures.
The continues flow of material links the modules together. From loading to exiting the building for bottling.
Center Service
The flow forms a loop for bourbon to exit. Secondary service spaces in the middle serve the distilling process.
Free Ground Floor
The positive shape of the lifted distillery carves out a negative space for the ground floor public.
Material Flow Diagram Plan
Uninterrupted factory flow is taking place on the outer ring, as the lab space, boiler room, shafts... are in the center serving the distillery process.
Material Flow Diagram Section
The different height of machines and operation method informs different height of the roof and relation with the floor slab.
With the doors and curtains opened this space could hold large events and make the ground floor experienced in its entirety.
The center of the ground floor free plan is a twenty-four-foot space. Above being the secondary service area that holds the labs and office spaces.
This image shows an exhibition being held.
All curtains and doors around the center space and outer ring module spaces could be closed.
Subdividing the ground floor into seven individual spaces (or any amount between one and seven) of different sizes.
This image shows the center space holding a lecture.
Different ceiling heights and ceiling conditions indicate the distillery program happening above head. The ceiling becomes an annotation of the factory process, providing a chance for the public to learn the bourbon production.
This image shows the column still extruding down from the ceiling, a circular flow around the first floor would provide a distillery tour.
The ground floor is the extension of the city fabric. Parameter doors could be opened and let the ground floor become open air. Larger events such as performances could then take place under the shelter.
This image shows a stage being temporarily set up in the middle of the free plan.
Double Facade Detail
The polycarbonate and elevation pipes form a double facade that helps adjust micro-climate. Opening the windows in summer, air flow takes away solar radiation. Closing the double facade in the winter could help form a buffer zone and keep the building warm.
In winter times, the double facade closes to become a buffer zone, where solar radiation is accumulated. The chimneys blow excessive heat from the factories to other spaces.
The double facade opens to exchange air and extract hot air from the factory spaces. The chimneys act to also extract air from the center service and office spaces.
With each distillery space and working space needing different temperature and humidity, several zones are formed, supported by separate HVAC systems.
Tracing
The project looks at Sao Paulo’s mass number of vacant infrastructures. Responding to the governments newest urban planning policies of encouraging buildings in the central requalification zone to be renovated and devote private property to be publicly used, new connections would be made, and boundaries would be blurred.
The project explores the cross-scale reconnections across vacant buildings and public infrastructure within Sao Paulo’s oldest central promenade area. A new urban core act as infrastructure to connect the metro station with the promenade and new collective spaces in the once vacant buildings. A stepped urban terrace connecting the ground floors in the street block would integrate the abandoned ground floor retail spaces. And an urban core would act as vertical public circulation, connecting the metro with newly redeveloped public spaces in the vacant buildings.
Having buildings that have outlived their programs multiple times. The spaces do not point to specific programs, but rather their scale for housing activities. My intervention aims to edit the old buildings while providing appropriate scale for the new needs. The spaces would continue to not have designated programs but purely defined by collective use or individual use. They are open ended for future alterations.
Looking at São Paulo’s topography, it is at a scale able to be redefined, and gain new character through interventions. This map shows precedent studies being analyzed through infrastructure, street, and building scale, it tries to understand the sectional relationship of São Paulo. Central
As one of the oldest parts of São Paulo, the promenade is currently being considered for renovation by the government. New programs such as offices, and residential units would reoccupy the vast number of vacant buildings in downtown. Asking for more amenity and recreational spaces.
Looking at the current use of the block through the previous map of street front interactive-ness. The first floor of half of the block is opened to the street for retail, with half of these retails closed after the pandemics. The project imagines the devotion of private properties for public uses trying to further open up the ground floor of these buildings to become a single space.
The plan shows the existing structure grid and core of each building. Located on an undulated topography, the ground floors are on different levels. Demolishing the separational walls and providing new circulation for the vacant building and metro station. The new ground floor would be a flexible space, with different overhead conditions. Connected with stepped terraces. The cores are free standing, in the free plan.
São Bento station being São Paulo’s busiest metro station, connects 10 exits from the underground. Making the station not only a transportation system, but also connector for the surrounding blocks, it is also a cultural hotspot for performances, especially hip-hop music.
The infrastructural functions and need for collective gathering space, is the driving force of the urban terrace. Extracting and extending the vital energy from underground and making it flow into the promenade area. This intends to form a hub of collective public programs amongst the retrofitted vacant spaces in the street block linked together by the urban core.
The connected ground floor and the tower acting as public circulation to revitalize vacant building in the back.
The urban core connects the underground ramps, ground floor terrace levels, and varies upper floor bridges.
The tower acts as an infrastructure in conversation with the Metro ventilation tower stand beside it. With water tanks and solar panels, it is an infrastructure for the rest of the block.
The tower is an open-ended system, with bridges being added as collective spaces are redeveloped from the surrounding vacant buildings.
The tower connects the surrounding public floors of the redeveloped vacant buildings. By providing necessary facilities and recreational spaces, such as bathrooms, food stalls, lounge, gardens, etc. the tower becomes a facility tower for public activities.
Urban Core as Infrastructure Tower
Urban Core as Urban Circulation
Urban Core as Facility Tower
[a] 13th Floor Plan
[b] 6th Floor Plan
[c] 4th Floor Plan
[d] 2nd Floor Plan
GSD · CORE 4 · INSTRUCTOR: ELIZABETH WITTAKER
COLLABORATION: YVONNE GU · SPRING 2023
Taking on a block scale office park, containing four buildings and their surface parking lots. The task is to convert these structures to housing, through thoughtful removal and addition. These buildings are located north of the city in Chelsea, MA, on the periphery of the urban core.
Problems of domestic space can’t be simplified to mere housing questions, because architectural projects could be a place of reflection and create opportunities to reveal the relationships among housing programs of human beings, their contextual environment, and habitats of the other natural elements, which in turn increase the living quality of human beings as well. We need to keep in mind that our strategies would require a much wider shift into apprehending the building no longer as a commodity, whose form is determined by its market value, but as an infrastructure defined by its functional/social and ecological value (e.g. sustainable building code, environmental effects,etc.). Such a shift is not just a matter of architecture but a broader socio-ecological reformation that would challenge the current economic and political regime.
In this project, we propose a typology of housing with variations of domestic spaces. Making use of the existing columns of the original building, we investigate the transformation of columns into multi-functional columns, structural walls and poches with different widths and water-related functions. The column-transformed poches create various spaces, layouts, and programs for residents, which can be applied into other neighborhoods of the region.
Structural Retrofitting Facility Reorganization Scale Redefining for Programs
The columns become inhabitable poches for water facilities. Popping out of the façade, the rainwater flows down the terrace, and becomes surface streams in the courtyard. As sewage water is led by the back of these poches, grey water is managed and help irrigate the new softscape in the courtyard.
With office buildings usually coupled with large areas of hardscape parking, there is a need for it to be transformed into a softscape to be more living friendly. With gutters carved into the asphalt, continues surface water flows led by the poches crack the asphalt gradually, allowing plants to take over. As infiltrating grey water from below ground provides a stable water source.
Rainwater System
Sewer System
[1] Fragment Model. 1/2’’=1’
[2] Site Model. 1/32’’=1’
[3] Site Model. 1/32’’=1’
[4] Massing Model. 1/32’’=1’
[5] Massing Model. 1/32’’=1’
[6] Site Study Model. 1/32’’=1’
[7] Tectonic Study Model. 1/4’’=1’
[8] Concept Model. 1/24’’=1’
Grey Water
Water Systems Integrated Within Column
Structural Retrofiting of Column Spatial Prototypes
Working as a prototype to deal with varies needs of living conditions, four poche prototypes were set up, each accommodating a different living typology. Among these four, the thickened column all ways play a role of becoming structural reinforcement, spatial poche and wet cores.
Addressing the communal living conditions of studios. The building is filled with one person studio units, with the shared amenities shifting on each floor. Starting as conventional units, the second floor holds all the facilities within the rooms, leaving only the corridors to become private storage places. As the poche shrinks when moving up the building, study places, kitchens and bathrooms are respectively moved out from the units on each floor, with them becoming publicly shared facilities.
The apartment flat building. Addressing the living and dwelling relation within multi-bed apartment flats. The shifting parameter of the column swells on the 2nd floor, inhabiting shared living spaces, with the left-over bedrooms as private spaces. On the 3rd floor, the poche draws an axis which divides the shared and private into quadrants. As on the top floor, a pure free space is only loosely defined by the shifting furniture, and the boundary between space definition is softened.
The apartment flat building. Addressing the living and dwelling relation within multi-bed apartment flats. The shifting parameter of the column swells on the 2nd floor, inhabiting shared living spaces, with the left-over bedrooms as private spaces. On the 3rd floor, the poche draws an axis which divides the shared and private into quadrants. As on the top floor, a pure free space is only loosely defined by the shifting furniture, and the boundary between space definition is softened.
Long Stay Hotel, 80 Everett Fragment Model 1/2’’=1’
With the columns becoming an inhabitable poche for facilities, the newly distributed wet cores become the driving point of unit separations.
With the poche being the largest, a shared bathroom is fitted into the wet core, also defining a wet zone in the middle of the hotel room.
The wet core is limited to putting washers and dryers within. With a thickened solid wet core in the middle, the two hotel suites are separated with a door to be connected with each other.
With the top floor columns to be the original size, only pipes and vents are attached to it. Nothing but columns stand permanently. With curtains as a soft boundary, the wet zone in the middle continues to divide the hotel suite into two parts.
GSD · CORE 2 PROJECT 1 · INSTRUCTOR: JEFFRY BURCHARD SPRING 2022
Boston’s North End community wishes to create a vibrant multi-purpose neighborhood amenity at the site of the DeFilippo Playground. The City, cognizant of the site’s current use as a recreational area and always challenged by its municipal budget, has created a program that includes interior (climate controlled) and exterior recreational spaces.
The project cooperates with the misalignment and irregularity of the sites form and context. Situated on a hill, the southern side of the site is visually enclosed by historical Italian neighborhoods, where Italian feast and parades pass through these blocks, and large events take place.
The northern side sits beside the tourist visiting “Freedom Trial” and has an unblocked view towards downtown Boston. Detached to the immersed sensation which the lower hillside provides, the north hilltop acts partially as an observer. Placing the site against a bigger scale of the modern city and the value of this neighborhood’s historical heritage.
Intermediating with how the lower level interacts with the neighborhood through misalignment and extension of street activities. The higher level connects these fragments through an infrastructure like city walk/ playground. Drawing a connection between “fragments” and “whole”.
The lower level, programs fully interact with the micro scale of the neighborhood, being fully immersed in the neighborhood activities itself.
[a] Basketball Court [b] Pickleball Court [c] Playground [d] Snack Bar [e] Stage [f] Doggy Park [g] Fountains [h] Skateboard slopes [i] Seating
Linking the various neighborhood programs, the City Walk bleeds into the leftover spaces. Together with the path itself, a continues playground is formed.
GSD · CORE 2 · PROJECT 2 INSTRUCTOR: JEFFRY
BURCHARDSPRING 2022
The project is situated in the relatively lower income part of Boston. Being a people’s palace, it acts as a mixed-use neighborhood activity center. The center has food centers, workshops, exhibition galleries and leisure spaces, including community library, water features and workout spaces.
The building changes scale. With the outside acting more as an object, it is responding problems of larger scale: Image for the urban scale, connection for the building scale, instalation for the neighborhood scale. As the inside responde to more individual scales of specific program, and be whatever shape there program indicates them to be.
The activity center acts as the extension of the neighborhood, with the floor plates being a generic ramp, spiraling from the ground floor all the way to the top. It passes through all kinds of public activities, including food hall, library, gallery, workshops, leisure spaces, gyms... with the more private and uninterrupted parts of these programs hanging from the ramps, they cluster into an interactive atrium space.
The generic ramp raps around to form both the circulation and different program spaces. As the atrium pop outs are more uninterrupted extensions of those programs needing spaces with special form and requirements.
GSD · CORE 1 PROJECT 3 · INSTRUCTOR: IMAN FAYYAD
COLLABORATION: KALEB SWANSON · FALL 2021
FACULTY NOMINATED WORK FOR GSD PUBLICATION
This project encompass the design of an artist residency situated within and between two existing residences. This combination of domestic and institutional programs will generate a small institution for creative practice, collective engagement, and living.
One should consider what is already exceptional within the ordinary as a generative approach to imagining a specific relationship between the domestic and the institutional.
The project is a residency for ceramic artists located in Cambridge, Boston.
With the original site buildings back-to-back, we exploited the representational flexibility of brick to produce a sidedness to the new structure, creating a relationship between resolution, (chunkiness and smoothness) with program.
Materiality is frequently cited as a defining limitation of an architectural type. A binary threshold that’s largely true of prototypical Cambridge and Somerville triple-deckers with wood siding and lightweight timber frame. However, with the introduction of brick as a largely foreign material to the type, the programmatic, formal and tectonic bounds of the triple-decker can be changed additively and produce a new, more communal focus for the typology.
[1] Ceramic Making Classroom
[2] Classroom
[3] Washroom
[4] Kiln
[5] Drying Space
[6] Multiple Purpose
[7] Kitchen
[8] Bedroom
[9] Livingroom
[1] Sculpting Studio
[2] Painting Studio
[3] Washroom
[4] Photography Studio
[5] Study
[6] Mixed-Media Art Studio
[7] Bedroom
The cone which synchronizes the connection of the two buildings grow as the floor rises. On the ground floor where it is the smallest, a gathering place invites the neighbours to path through or dwell.
The artifacts or remnants of the transformation is shown, with misaligned center points from the roof skylight to the spiral stairs and looking to below space. It shows how the smoothness absorbs the changing volume of the chunky.
The program of the neighbourhood side residential building transforms from residency to working space as the floors ascend to meet the needs of the artists, where the building is shifted to produce a more connected relation with the prior building.
While the interior of the more public one is reorganized and greatly effected by the residential one, relocating its interior axis according to the connection point. The exterior conceals the shifting tectonics, only producing a polished, smooth institution like look.
TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY
· INSTRUCTOR: CHUNWEI FANG
FALL 2020
Tea
Built in a dilapidated courtyard at the entrance of Yu’an Village, the tea house is an opportunity to reconnect the daily activities of the village. As a tea room, it functions both in serving and making tea. Translating the traditional Huizhou architecture through lights and shadows, transparency and solidity, and at the same time confronts people’s destruction and misunderstanding of traditional culture since the Cultural Revolution.
The questions being raised in this project are: what does modernization mean when modernization meets locality? How can it get in touch with the mountains, the tea trees that wither and turn green year after year, and the continuous “life”-”culture” relationship that grows from here?
GSD · CONSTRUCTION SYSTEM · INSTRUCTOR: YASMIN VOBIS
COLLABORATION: IVANA BOGDAN · FALL 2022
The Ricola Kräuterzentrum factory designed by Herzog & de Meuron is a prefabricated rammed earth building which responses to its climate conditions and local construction tradition. The building is considered “primitive” in its material and construction method. With a prefabricated concrete column beam system behind the walls supporting the span of the ceiling, the earth walls purely act as enclosure, and provide large thermal massing to guarantee constant indoor climates.
Typical detail of how the rammed earth wall is connected with the pre-casted concrete column grid system. The rammed earth facade is composed by pre-fabricated blocks using leveling and concrete ring beams to layer on to each other.
A Mixture of earth, sand and rockite composes the rammed earth wall.
seanzhang@gsd.harvard.edu
(Tshinghua Thesis Exhibition, Spring 2021)
SEAN ZHANG