Echo Ma_Portfolio by echom07

ECHO MA

Selected Works 2020-24

Master of Architecture

University of Pennsylvania | Weitzman School of Design

ECHO MA

EDUCATION

Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania

Master of Architecture

2020 August - 2023 May

Bard College

Bachelor of Arts in Studio Arts 2016 - 2020

Design Discovery, Harvard University GSD

Architecture Major 2018 Summer

SKILLS

Softwares / Architecture:

Languages:

Mandarin, English

CERTIFICATION

LEED Green Associate

NCARB Architecture Licensure (in progress)

Project Management (PASS) Practice Management (PASS)

INTERESTS

Rock climbing, Skydiving, BASE jumping, Speed flying, Skiing

EMPLOYMENT

Architectural Designer

Barker Rinker Seacat Architecture

yuexinma24@gmail.com 845-389-3119

274 Holman Way, Golden, CO

Facilitate project development through various phases, including Programing and Analysis, SD, DD, CD, and Bidding.

Architectural Design Extern

Curtis + Ginsburg Architects

3D printing, physical model making, making a bathroom detail standard for future projects.

Graduate Teaching Assistant

University of Pennsylvania School of Design

Assisting studio instructor Daniel Markiewicz to teach 501 studio.

Architectural Design Intern

CANNO Design

Participating in different phases of several projects, site survey, drew construction documents and permit sets, model making, rendering, 3D printing.

Drawing Tutor

Bard Prison Initiative (BPI)

Tutoring drawing to inmates at the Eastern NY Correctional Facility via BPI.

Architectural Design Intern

CROX 阔合

Researching for design projects, assisting design director and project architects with design ideas, making physical and digital models.

AWARDS

Volume Zero Competition Top 50 Entries

2023.08 - Current Denver, CO

2022 Fall Philadelphia, PA

2022

Dales Travel Fellowship 2022

Drawing of the Year 2021 Competition Shortlist 2021

Will M. Mehlhorn Scholarship 2021

Schenk-Woodman Competition Honorable Mention 2021

Bard College Dean’s Honor List 2018

PUBLICATIONS / EXHIBITION

Penn Design’s PressingMatter10&11 2020-2021 “DissolvingandDilating”,“Flaneur-scape”,“DispersiveCentralization” Flesh, Published in Bard Papers 2018

Keegan Ales “Day of the Dead” Exhibition 2018 Kingston, NY

2019 Summer Shanghai 2020 Spring Napanoch, NY

2023 Winter New York, NY

2021 Summer Philadelphia, PA

DISSOLVING AND DILATING

ARENOVATEDRESIDENTIALPROJECT

13 John Street, Manhattan, NY | Fall 2021

ALPINE ARCHITECTURE

DELEUZIAN ARCHITECTURAL APPROACH IN THE ALPINE ENVIRONMENT

Mont Blanc, France | Spring 2023

EMBEDDED TOXICITY

RECYCLED ARTIST IN RESIDENCY PROGRAM

7333 Milnor Street, Philadelphia, PA | Spring 2022

VIBRANT MATTER

BATTERY STORAGE SYSTEM

58 Dace Rd, Bow, London, United Kingdom | Fall 2022 PROFESSIONAL

DISSOLVING AND DILATING

A RENOVATED RESIDENTIAL PROJECT

13 John Street, Manhattan, NY

Instructor: Hina Jamella

2021 Fall

“Manhattan is the 20th century’s Rosetta Stone” (OMA), populated by multifarious human behaviors and architectural phenomena. This affordable housing project for the Corbin building proposes a “dissolving” strategy, which attempts to reconcile the plurality of Manhattan’s components and fuse its barriers. The new grafts into the old, the exterior intersects with the interior, and the private merges with the public. The “dissolving” proposal seeks reconciliation with the extant milieu, horizontally and vertically, and the Corbin Building’s dissolving feature is accentuated by carving it into the ground. Thus, a 130 feet deep public diving pool and a vertical mushroom farm are proposed to be the public common space. The public diving pool incorporates synergistically with other artificial reef projects surrounding the NYC-Long Island area, with the added feature of localizing to the Corbin building, a central location in downtown Manhattan that brings reef conservation to the vicinity of busy urban dwellers. In addition to the diving pool’s contribution to Blue Urbanism Enterprises, it also forms a self-sustaining economic and environmental cycle with the mushroom farm and residential units. The Corbin building renders the residents’ and city dwellers’ mundane urban life into a continuous experience of spectacle and of multitudinous integration.

Massing Diagram

Public Common Space

Circulation Diagram

Balcony Diagram

Building Volume

Contributing to Blue Urbanism, the coral reef ecosystem aids conservation efforts against the catastrophic challenges faced in the oceans, namely, the ocean acidification and coral bleaching that threaten the extinction of coral reefs in the wild within the next thirty to fifty years. The corals’ high sensitivity to air and water quality can, in turn, be used in this project to monitor the residential building’s indoor health.

Units interrelationship showing shared balcony

Interrelationship study of turkey tail mushroom

Typical floor plan

As one of the tactics that actualize the “dissolving concept,” the integration of the exterior and interior spaces also blends the boundary between the private and public spaces.

Balcony view

ALPINE ARCHITECTURE

AN INDEPENDENT RESEARCH OF DELEUZIAN ARCHITECTURAL APPROACH IN THE ALPINE ENVIRONMENT

Mont Blanc Massif

Thesis Advisor: Laia Mogas-Soldevila 2023 Spring

Through investigating Mont Blanc massif in the Alps and Deleuzian architectural approach from The Fold, this project proposes three checkpoints along the decent route of Mont Blanc massif, intending to integrate Deleuzian theory with the geograpical condition of Alpine region in architectural expression.

I argue that the way mountains exist, move, or transform, from tectonic plates’ movements at a macro-scale to the arrangement of crystals for metamorphic rocks at a micro-scale, is acting in the same way as Baroque cathedrals may “fold”. The mountain fold is structural, formal, gestural, compositional, and textural. It is as much a hardly perceivable tectonic shift as the veins in a piece of a marble. It is operating behind a system, or an operational function, as Deleuze may call it, that is constantly generating new marks of “fold” that could be detected in the massif, the glacier, the rocks, the river, or any other components of the mountain.

The proposed AlpineArchitecture folds the mountaineering journey into the architectural experience and then returns it back to the topographical fold of the mountain. As much as the alpine architecture is a formal continuation of the mountain folds, it is also a mental landscape of the folds.

My project suggests mountaineering expeditions as an introspective itinerary, as every second of it should be experienced indistinguishably. While the climbing routes of Mont Blanc have many shelters and huts that accommodate mountaineers and climbers on their way to ascend the summit, there is barely any accommodation designed to serve people on their way of descending. My project will propose three checkpoints for the descent route of Mont Blanc. Through remapping the descent route and designing architectures on it, this project intends to construct a narrative for the barely documented mountain descent in contrast to the well-fabricated ascent stories.

Checkpoint 1

3300 m

An initial celebratory ritual

Checkpoint 2

Resting and social place with 2700 m

Arrival of safe zone. A secondary of victory.

Checkpoint 3

2700 m

Mountaineering Museum. of stories and memories of expeditions.

ritual after the summit. with medical facility.

secondary celebration

Museum. An archive of mountain

NW–SE section through the southern Mont Blanc and Aiguilles Rouges massifs.

EMBEDDED TOXICITY

RECYCLED ARTIST IN RESIDENCY PROGRAM

7333 Milnor Street, Philadelphia, PA

Collaborated with Natalie Perri

Instructor: Simon Kim

2022 Spring

How do humans coexist with the toxic pollutants that are omnipresent in our living environment?

This question has twofold importance: first, it implies a synthetic habitat between the habitable and the inhabitable; second, it suggests a potential alternative protagonist of architecture that is not human. As pollution is becoming an increasingly prevalent and hardly reversible reality, toxicity is turning into the new normal of life. However, a space that is toxic to humans might be beneficiary to certain microorganisms. Embedded Toxicity proposes a synthetic habitat of the green and the toxic, with construction wastes extracted from the superfund site the project locates at and from the Delaware River adjacent to the site. While the green garden space stands as the major program that hosts the artists’ studio, the toxic space occupies the negative space left over by the green space. Trash compost pits are distributed within the toxic zone, releasing toxic gases that are then consumed by microorganisms such as methanotrophs. These dichotomic programs create the dynamic forces between the eroded and the purified, the degenerated and the uncorrupted, the toxic and the green.

Embedded Toxicity constitutes a two-fold experience between the monumentality and the spectacle. Drawing inspirations from the sculptor Richard Serra and the painter Julie Mehretu, this project conceives an inner wonder within the sunk box that is drastically different from the wholistic experience viewers gain from the outside. Filled with toxic gases, trash piles, vegetation, and crops, the inner sphere is occupied by various characters, marks, and objects.

Landfill Studio

The Green Zone

The Toxic Zone

Air Gap between the Toxic Zone and the Green Zone

Smoke Stack

Space Frame Roofing

Typ. Concrete Wall Assembly

Corten Steel Panels

Biosphere Green Spaces Exterior Apertures

Nested Studio Space

Space Frame (Top) Brace Frame (Base)

Smoke Stack

Exploded Diagram showing the structural and the cladding system

The major structural support is a structural frame system that supports both the roof and the studio space, enabling the interior space to be column-free.

GREEN ZONE(LEFT)

The green zone features artists’ studios and provides access to the studio space. Artist studios are supported by the structural frame, being embedded between the green zone and the toxic zone. A green and healthy habitat is intended to provide an ideal environment for the artists to create artworks.

TOXIC ZONE(RIGHT)

Collecting waste from the superfund site and extracting pollutants from the Delaware river, the toxic zone serves to process those waste and pollutants. Toxic gasses will be released while the wastes are processed, and the gasses will then be collected by the extraction well located underground. In addition, parts of the toxic gasses, such as methane, released from the toxic zone, will be consumed by microbes like methanotrophic bacteria. Although the toxic zone is highly hazardous for humans, people can still access it with hazmat suits and appropriate protective equipment.

VIBRANT MATTER

BATTERY STORAGE SYSTEM

58 Dace Rd, Bow, London, United Kingdom

Collaborated with Yiran Zhao

Instructor: Barry Wark

2022 Fall

As a result of post-industrial development, nature and human artifacts are commonly regarded as distinct parts. The project intends to challenge this common recognition by introducing ambiguity that blurs the boundary between the built and the natural environment. Adopting a holistic perspective, our project integrates machines, energy, environment, and all biospherical matters by creating an architectural space that mimics the dynamic of the global ecology.

The base structure of this project is composed of a permanent framework that serves as the building envelope, structural and mechanical support, circulation, and public activities. As a public utility, the building serves as a battery storage plant. Large-scale batteries are encased in cubic modules, which are stacked and inserted into the base structure. The building also exposes the energy storage modules to the weather and other bio-spherical matters through the openings and gaps on the envelope. In contrast to the base structure, the modules can be moved and transferred by the cranes from the ships on the canal frequently when there is a demand, so they are relatively fresh and shiny metal compared to the ruined and rusted material around them. The ambiguity of the environment is stressed not only through the geometries of the two systems but also the material variations.

The battery modules spatially indicate a continuity that navigate people throughout their experience within the building. Through these visual and spatial indicators, the urban dwellers witness and reflect on what they perceive on a daily basis, which experience enhances their awareness of power and energy in the ecology.

The initial model studies dictate the overall building geometry, which are not only visual manifestations of ecological aesthetics, but also operational functions that serve specific purposes, such as window openings, landscape, and corridors.

The project adopts multiple urban strategies to stitch the building into its urban context, including redefining the waterline, reshaping the existing landscape, and introducing a bridge.The site, thus, could be accessed and experienced at different spatial locations.

Aerial Perspective

Intending to manifest mechanical expression, language that integrates of the battery cases where ecological

manifest ecological aesthetics through expression, Vibrant Matter develops a geometric integrates the mechanical structure and details cases into the dynamic architectural space ecological matters grow.

As a critical component of the project, the river offers transportation means for the batteries, which are shipped to the site, and it can be experienced both under the bridge and through the bridge.

Facade detail