Architecture Portfolio Goric Wong by Goric Wong

GORIC HO CHING WONG PORTFOLIO

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Contents

Lithuania Science Center Spring 2017 05

Spec Home Fall 2015 15

A School for the 21st Century Learner

Spring 2016 23

Berkeley Art Museum Spring 2015 29

Department of Ecology, UChicago

Fall 2014

Nature // Artifice “Green Environment” Lithuania Science Center

B.Arch Thesis Project Studio Spring 2017 Advisors: Michael Young + Melissa Shin Partner: Kenny Wu Special Guest: Wolf Prix

A friction exists between the two subjects in contemporary society. In the field of art, there are artists who work with the decay of natural material, and in science, genetic engineering problematizes the natural and the artificial. Artifice has been in a constant state of tension with nature in various disciplines. This project specifically focuses on resolving the aesthetic tension and unstable assumption regarding the two in architecture. Satellite imagery has been the way for humans to evaluate the earth. We started the project by producing a series of aerial manipulations as a generative technique, in order to redefine the site, which is an island in the center of Kaunas, Lithuania that is intended to house a new Science Center. The operations in this project also investigate the relationships between human perception and computational data that is filtered and flattened.

Lithuania Science Center

Thesis Statements: Disciplinary This thesis aims to productively mine the tension between nature and artifice, by questioning the perceptions of the two within a given environment. The project mobilizes the relative authenticity of pre-existing entities on the site, an island in Kaunas, Lithuania. These entities include trees and other vegetation on the island. We redefine the site by using the manipulation of aerial imagery as a generative technique. This is a process of defamiliarization in which realistic renditions of the site are transformed into colored pixels within a rasterized image. Ordering systems are imposed onto the array of colors and patterns, so they are no longer identifiable as representations of trees or grass, but rather as different patches of color. Therefore, these operations investigate the relationships between human perception and computational data that is filtered and flattened. We produced a series of drawings that contain a dense amount of abstract information in order to re-read the island. The embedded geometries in these drawings are used to generate rudimentary massing. The posture of these masses imitates that inherent to natural objects. Their skin is comprised of distorted colored pixels extracted from the original satellite imagery in order to question the aesthetic value of nature. The landscape strategy involves populating certain areas of the island with patches of various colors on to the ground in conjunction with the original landscape, to make people question whether they are occupying a natural or an artificial ground. Non-Disciplinary This project for the Science Island in Kaunas, Lithuania strives to mine the tension between nature and artifice within a given environment, by questioning the value and identity of natural elements on the site. Sublime qualities are cultivated in the project. The work re-reads the island productively through rigorous manipulations of its satellite imagery into a series of drawings with a high density of abstract information. We began by questioning the assumed dichotomy between nature and artifice which is central to definitions of ecologically aware or sustainable architecture. By redefining the site through manipulations of aerial imagery and pixel displacement, we attempt to remove the authenticity of pre-existing entities on the site including trees and other vegetation. Ordering systems are imposed onto the array of resultant colors and patterns, so they are no longer identifiable as representations of trees or grass, but rather as different patches of color. Nature and artifice exist in a redefined state of tension, the project serves as a vision for the future of â&#x20AC;&#x153;green environmentsâ&#x20AC;?.

Lithuania Science Center

AMIGAA: Positions Spec Home

4A Design Studio Fall 2015 Instructor: Ramiro Diaz-Granados

This is the final design studio in the core sequence, it introduces independent thinking and integrative design through a small scale project, a spec house. The pedagogy is based on culminating all previous core studios and encourage the take on a disciplinary position on the role of mass, interiority, ground, aperture, or surface articularion (AMIGAA), or pissibly relations across all five. The development of this project specifically explores the awareness and issue of the center, and begins with aggregations of geometric primitives. The center can be legible, figural, conceptual, delusional, etc, and it can affect the default condition of a single family home. In this case, the center is clear and functional. The center of this spec house is where the circulation braches out, residents would enter right at the center and have the options of which stairs to take to get to the corresponding programs. With using simple bar shapes to create openings to the massing, the process resulted in some interesting figurations, and that became the language of the apertures. Skin articulation was introduced as vectors, and reading of the house started to get fuzzy. The vectors became dominant and they have to be relied on, in order to read the geometry of the house. The idea of apertures here is to have punched-in windows, and the shapes transform from the exterior to the interior, and this operation also dealt with the idea of exterior becoming interior.

Spec Home

Education Model: Connectivism A School for the 21st Century Learner 4B Vertical Design Studio Spring 2016 Instructor: Michael Rotondi

Education Model Connectivism is about learning through nodes. It sees the structure of knowledge as a network, and learning as pattern recognition. All subject matters are believed to be connected, so by learning about one thing, you are learning a little bit about another at the same time. Connectivism supports the idea of people learning through contact. With the method of stacking, creating high density aggregation, and overlapping spaces, students from different age groups and backgrounds will more likely to make incidental contact and learn about each others.

A School for the 21st Century Learner

Laboratory (Exploring) Exploration is the main idea of how the architecture is laid out. The circulation is filtered with high density of overlapping classrooms, and the laboratory space is located on the side of the aggregation, so one has to go through a filtration of classrooms to get the it. The idea of lab space is to conduct experimental study, of what one has learned throughout the day from classes or bumping into other students. Shop (Making) Connectivism supports the idea of people learning through contact. The idea of shop is to conduct study with physical contact, and have students to experience handson learning. This is a space for students to produce physical production to represent their learnings and idea. Library (Thinking) The idea of Library is to serve as a preparation for the Open Forum. Students can conduct researching and references collecting in the Library, for any idea that they might want to bring up during the Open Forum, and so they can have more productive arguments or conversations. Forum (Exchanging) This is where the students would gather and bring up ideas to have conversations or debates. It is the center point of all the exchanges that would have already been happening around the school in the hallways or overlapping classrooms spaces. Students here can either participate in debates or just listen and gain knowledge from different perspectives. This is where the students can speak out about their opinions to a broader audience, comparing to may be just like one on one conversation in the hallway.

A School for the 21st Century Learner

Dynamic Architectural Systems Berkeley Art Museum

3B Design Studio Spring 2015 Instructor: Russell Thomsen Partner: Michael Shih

The 3B Studio aims to explore a disciplinary interest in part to whole relationships, inconsistent multiples, difference (heterogeneity) and strangeness. We explored the aggregation, intersection, accumulation and transformation of multiple volumes to form larger, more â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;difficultâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; wholes. The studio resisted the smooth continuities of parametric as well as the collage of the Post-Modern, and instead persued projects that are legible as both parts and wholes simultaneously. My partner and I have started off with two objects that possess very different characteristics of soft edges and hard edges. We unified the geometries by utilizing the techniques of boolean splitting the objects together. We applied default patterning to the surfaces where it was booleaned and embedded them with these glitches that happened within the computer in the process of booleaning, and showed a relationship of script and accident. Most of these glitches eventually became openings to bring in natural light.

Berkeley Art Museum

Field Operations

Department of Ecology, UChicago 3A Design Studio Fall 2014 Instructor: John Enright Partner: Jong Joo Kim

The first studio of the third year core studio sequence locates the idea of architecture at the intersection of various systems of information: from technical to cultural, from visual to tactile. We consider the uses of precedent and antecedent in their work, while the main investigation examines the particular impact of structure and material systems on site and building form, and the capacity to use transformation as a methodological tool to guide a rigorous approach to decision making. Often times, the word “structure” can have multiple meanings in architectural parlance, and so a few points as to the use of the word is important. Firstly, the most literal use of the term pertains to the parts, materials and elements of an object that serve in the stability of the object from the natural forces that it is placed in. Obviously walls, columns and beams are examples of this, and in combination can be understood as a “structural system.” We are not resolving the structure of an idealized, a priori form. Rather, we are viewing structure as a primary layer for giving shape to an abstract system of geometry that emerges when multiple systems collapse onto each other. For this project structure will be the primary organizational system by which these layers are concatenated. The structural resolution of a building will not be thought of as merely the most feasible way of supporting an idealized form. Rather, structure will be an organizational system rich with spatial content that collapses building performance with effect. This project aims to produce aggregated surface modules, and eventually they come together and make whole of a piece of architecture. The proportions and sizes of these surface modules started to get afftected by programatic properties, and the result can relate to Palladian and Modern precedents, like the Villa Capra and Villa Savoye.

Department of Ecology, UChicago

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