hannah zhengxi cao works 2008-2011 3rd year student at virginia tech CAUS 2019 cureton dr. urbana, il 61801 tel:(217) 721-8959 email: hannahzcao@gmail.com
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urban lab and observatory
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water shed observatory
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water room
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warren r. kark annual 3rd year competition
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room and a garden
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test cell addition
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foundation design
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other
URBAN LAB AND OBSERVATORY cincinnati, ohio spring 2011
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This project is a first attempt at reading and responding to an urban place. Straddled between the city center and the freeway fringes, the 400ft long site requires a transformation that will help bridge the dramatic change in urban condition. The Urban Lab and Observatory (ULO) calls for a mixed use space that includes gallery/exhibition spaces, an auditorium, offices, studios and apartments for temporary visiting artist. The basis for this project arose from the site visit to Cincinnati. Once there, the city reveals its underlying patterns, relationships, extents, and urban issues. The street condition as well as the day/ night transformation of the city became the focal points that drove the rest of the design. The ULO becomes both a microcosm that reinterprets the city street as well as a bridge that connects the corners of the site. The condition in which buildings change from mass in the day to the source of light at night challenges the ULO to use light as a material which highlights this transformation.
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The first six levels of the building are public spaces linked through a series of ramps that allow for the gradual transition from street to the building’s interior. Underground, offices and studios are highlighted with skylights that become lit paths at night for the plaza above. The ramps which wrap the building are thin concrete slabs, emphasized by the ribs that stand perpendicular to their slope. The apartments on top four floors interlace to occupy more than one floor. In addition, a roof garden runs through the complex serving as a space were residents can build community as well as maintain a close tie to the city around them.
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Cellular Decking Wide Flange Dropped Ceiling Wire Mesh Panels Runners/Sheet-Metal Tees Double Pane Insulating Glass Structural Aluminum Mullion Raceway for Electric and Communication Wires Base Mullion Surface of Concrete Ramp
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WATERSHED OBSERVATORY bryson city, north carolina fall 2010
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This project began from the larger scale of how to move between public and the private spaces. On the next scale, the library of water became a point of departure as a space that mediates the combination of private (visiting scientists) and public (locals). Simplifying the program into its essential qualities, a deeper exploration and questioning of layered space arose. The old building typology has the quality of ‘brick by brick’. The new building typology speaks more to layers and skins. Has, or can, the space within the building become a layer within the wall? This building emerged as an attempt to create a framework were unplanned discoveries could be made and in hopes of exploring ideas that are larger than the project that was initially assigned.
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water creates the path
water cleansing of existing lower foliage
path creates the water
water opens opportunity for new growth
PRESENCE_QUESTION OF CONTROL
ABSENCE_QUESTION OF SCALE
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FIELDWORK: Using your body as a measure, measure water
“We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.� -T.S. Eliot
what is visible and what is alluded
TRANSITION_QUESTION OF THRESHOLD
The initial fieldwork calls for the creation of a relationship between place and the human scale. This relationship is physical, but also it must address the sense of time. The immediate and the implied is once again a question that must be asked. From the experience of visiting Bryson City, North Carolina, views of (and aversion to) water were challenged. The experience became a conviction that the power of the river cannot be something ignored or isolated. This assignment then became a point of departure for the next project in the form of three 2:03 questions; the question of control, the question of scale, and the question of threshold.
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Initial sketching questioned the interaction between public and private and how to move between the two. Designating the library as a point of mergence, the two other spaces became the “walls” which enclosed the building. With this new view on what a room might be, a deeper exploration of what a “layered” building began. Both in horizontal movement and vertical movement, spaces are found within the distance between solid objects. The “Library of Water” set the framework for questioning the vertical layered space and how water might flow through it. The public and private “walls” question the horizontal movement.
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These two study models explored the idea of layered space. Light shown through these spaces were indicators of possible paths of movement. In both cases visibility changes from being completely blockaded to virtually open views. Thus, movement is essential in experiencing the true potential of each space. The two studies also show the difference in what occurs to layered panels (top images) and layered screens (bottom montage). The use of layered space then become the mode in which movement is guided and views are captured throughout the building.
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Visitors approach from the south side of the site. They are greeted with a field of concrete panels. These panels create outdoor gathering rooms and act as thermal mass. The field continues into a long gallery space (rendered in top middle). The light is filtered through the roofing system (detailed in top right) which allows for low, angled light to reach the interior while blocking direct overhead light. The gallery space leads to the double story library. Here, scientist and visitors are able to access the river on a floating dock (detailed on bottom right) that lowers into a channel cut into the side of the hill slope (modeled on bottom left).
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WATER ROOM fall 2010
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The river is an unreliable element for water. At times if fills the space and at others its presence is completely absent. How, then, can a space be designed to speak to both circumstances? As a response to the river’s dramatic changes, the building was designed to have a stronger tie to rain and light/shadow. There are similar qualities between water and light’s constantly changing presence. A place of meditation also calls for a focus, a stripping down, and a gracefulness. The water channel which cuts through the center of the building as well as the reveal between the two walls act as a visual focus for visitors to the subject of water. The ceiling acts as a filterer of light, allowing for visitor to experience an immediate sense quality of water, regardless of the actual presence of water. Placing the building such that the flood line would be able to leave marks on the building, like the section of a tree, allows the building to speak to the quality of water and time in the changing of seasons.
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This architectural framing strives to start a conversation between light and water. The building allows for the two to meet and work together in defining the space. Light slips into the room through the frames and the reveal, giving a sense of time as the sun moves. The beams of the roof also act as gutters that guide rain water to create a curtain that defines the edges of the space. Both walls and ceiling create angles that work together in creating an illusion that gives a sense of depth. Encountering the rain water basin first, visitors then take steps that follow running water down to the space. The steps become seats where visitors are encouraged to linger on as they meditate and watch water and light.
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1715’
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WARREN R. KARK ANNUAL 3RD YEAR COMPETITION western united states fall 2010 [first place group project]
The third year competition is a ten day challenge to pause and survey the past two and a half years in the School of Architecture + Design. This project asks students to reach back to moments in their various modes of development and study, from structures to foundational design studio, and not merely repeat, but carry forward 4:00 and extend the conversations. PROMPT: Issues surrounding wildfire are complex. Often when debated, issues of public safety, private property, and natural systems collide. It is within this context that the Museum of Wildfire is developed. It serves as both the site of focused policy discussion, and as a public space where exhibits and archived media will explore the phenomena of wildland fire and the complexities of wildfire. Though the issue of wildfire and infrastructure are usually presented as “contradictory desires”, personal experience has rendered me a different perspective on the topic. This competition became an opportunity to address and correct the skewed views of fire that Western America currently has. This framework grew and informed itself throughout the whole design process. The use of prairie grass and the garden became a necessary mediator between the “wild” and the “tamed”. The building hopes to influence people’s perception of the nature of fire and to become a landmark within its region.
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Lookout Tower Exhibition Space Restrooms Library of Wildfire Courtyard Offices/Conference Room Amphitheater Prairie Grass Terraces
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A fire will inevitably occur. The plains of the west are parched, and the prairie grass rustles drily in the wind. On the slopes of the surrounding mountains, the trees stand like tinder against the bright sky. If the fire doesn’t come this season, it will come the next, after another year of growing has added to the amount of combustible material. The longer the wait, the more dangerous and uncontrollable the resulting wildfire will be. The whole landscape is poised to burst into flame and it waits in fragile anticipation for a spark, irrelevant of the small town too close by. The town, afraid for their homes and live, forcibly suppresses the fire every year, preventing it from exhausting the excess fuel. But the fire will eventually ignite, and when it does, it will not be a natural disaster - it will be a man-made one. The proposal for the museum of wildfire is an intervention in this landscape, a mediator between the western desire to control and the laws of nature. The building will be the origin of the flame that will purge the landscape. Once a year, people will gather to set fire to the prairie grass that has been sculpted into terraces for this very ritual. As the revelers progress up the ground floors of the museum and up through the tower, they will watch as the fire moves further out into the prairie. The controlled lines of the terraces eventually fade into the ground and the fire becomes wildfire, set free to naturally consume the surrounding prairie and forest as it ought. Spaces, subtly indicated by the lines of the terraces, will be completely revealed as the fire burns them clean. In these spaces and throughout the museum, the burning brush festival will continue though the night, until either the glow from the fire fades or the sun rises to light the ashes.
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A ROOM AND A GARDEN blacksburg, virginia fall 2009
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“A great building, in my opinions, must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed, and in the end must be unmeasurable. The only way you can build, the only way you can get the building into being, is through the measurable. You must follow the laws of nature and use quantities of brick, methods of construction, and engineering, but in the end, when the building becomes part of living, it evokes unmeasurable qualities, and the spirit of its existence takes over.� -Louis I. Kahn
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The room and garden stems from a previous project exploring the detail condition of a corner. Show on this page are images of a 16”x16” cube constructed from triple plied plywood and joint work. The thickness of the panels allows for edges that seem to disappear into each other and a dramatic lighting condition when peering into the hole. This edge condition from the cube is translated into the room displaying twenty-one 16”x16” cubes. Reveals between the walls frames the garden that surrounds the room and brings in light to illuminate the display area. The form of the room arouse from seven triangles that differ in height and length, changing in response to their differing surrounding conditions.
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TEST CELL ADDITION blacksburg, virginia spring 2010
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This project asks for the addition to the existing test-cell building located at the Research + Demonstration Facility, approx. 1 mile from the Virginia Tech campus. The land is available for the construction of building prototypes for testing in an exterior environment. The addition is to provide a place for students to make, assemble, test, and exhibit large scale Architectural inquiries. Running with the slope of the land, the two new wings bracket the existing building perpendicularly. The entrance wing steps up with the land to meet the building on the West while the enclosed wing used for large constructions digs into the slope on the East side. Metal beams on the East wing also function as rain gutters that dig into the earth to create a terraced garden display area at the back end of the site. In this way, the building responds to the land, and the land has also responded to the building.
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FOUNDATION DESIGN fall 2008-spring 2009
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Course Description: Introduction to the discipline of architecture. Focus on basic elements of design, addressed visually, conceptually, and haptically. Studies undertaken in two and three dimensions using various materials and tools. Inquiry into the process of design, discovering, through experiment, methods of working that develop aesthetic judgment and means of self-evaluation. Emphasis on intellectual discipline, dialogue, assertion of interest, and a self-motivated search for critical issues.
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TOP: An investigation of part to whole through the use of rubber bands and skewers. How can connections be made? How does the structural qualities of both come together to define the thing? BOTTOM: Make two perpendicular vertical cuts on one 4”x4”x16” wood block. Rotate all four wood pieces 180˚ to create a new object.The cut lines are planned, but the form that results has a quality that design could not completely anticipate. Can the lines we draw allow unforeseen content to arise?
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TOP: “You leave everything open, everything distinct and separate... you just want to study, jotting down whatever you’ve understood on the instant. Everyday you understand a bit more, but you hate summing things up: as if finally it ought to be possible to express everything on a single day and in a few succinct sentences, for good and all.” -Carlo Scarpa BOTTOM: An exploration of the transformation of a flat sheet using paper and thread. What porosity is needed to change the focus off the positive to the negative of the material?
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First Year Design Competition Brief: Construct twoness using one sheet of bristol board, no more, no less. We play because we are unsure of the outcome and because we enjoy the unpredictability and beauty in the unfolding of the moment. Though play and seriousness are at odds in everyday life, they are intertwined in architecture and design. Through this play, simplicity is created by means of a long and complicated process. From this, one finds that twoness is not a quantity, it is quality.
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OTHER
The objective of this independent study was to explore the possibilities and potentials of combining screen-printing and ceramics. Materials include red and white clay, underglazes, glaze, silkscreen, plaster molds, 8:00 and other tools for forming clay. Experimentation started with simple one layer silk screened designs on rolled clay that was then draped over a plaster mold. Plaster molds are created by pouring ceramic plaster onto a cloth that has been streched over a wooden frame. Underglazes need to be air dried to the consistency of peanut butter in order for the pulls on the screen to come out sucessfully. The poppy prints was an attempt at two layer screen prints. This process posed a challenge in trying to register the two layers. The size of the prints would shrink while drying, producing a gap between the two layers. To mediate this issue, the overlap area between the layers was increased to lessen the chances of gaps. Exploration was also done in regards to implementing prints on the interior and surface of a vessel. For both, the prints had to applied to a flat clay surface before the slab was draped or molded into a volumetric form. Careful control over the drying process was required since the slabs of clay tend to separate from each other as they dried. Overall, this independent study has been extremely helpful in bringing up questions that need to be asked in order for the process of screen printing on clay to be successful.
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