Selected Works

Ingrid Lao / / ingrid.lao@gmail.com / / 808-220-1566

Studio Reassembled at Taubman College

with Academic Innovation Team at Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning, Ann Arbor Category: Higher Education, Space Planning Role: SD, DD

The project brief called for a new 1,500 sq. ft. pilot studio environment at the Taubman College in fall of 2024. Pivoting from the traditional space-intensive individual desk setup, our design proposed flexible co-working areas around a central “living room,” dedicated digital and analog maker spaces, faculty and staff consultant stations, and a cafe. The plan would be anchored by 3 custom-designed playful “pavilions” of roughly 250 sq. ft. each that would play a crucial role in setting the tone and suggesting new and unexpected programmatic uses for the space. The pilot studio would foster improved teamwork and learning conditions, and align with the latest standards in professional work environments.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Iboh3FwGS4

Radical Women at Hammer Museum

with Sebastian Clough, Los Angeles

Category: Exhibition Design

Role: DD, CD

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 presented the first survey of radical and feminist art practices in Latin America and among Latina artists in the United States. The Hammer Museum sought an external exhibition designer to fully conceive the design and layout of 15,000 sq. ft. of gallery space throughout two galleries. Custom wall panels and furniture elements were designed to break up the expansive gallery space into nine exhibition sections while accommodating a wide range of media, including silent video, video with sound, large-scale sculptural works, and interactive works. My role entailed regular presentations to the museum curatorial and operations teams throughout design development, as well as the production of all final plans and construction documents.

Exhibition Design at Fowler Museum at UCLA

with Exhibition Team at Fowler Museum, Los Angeles

Category: Exhibition Design

Role: SD, DD, CD, CA

As the architectural designer at the Fowler Museum, I worked alongside the Director of Exhibitions and Graphic Designer to fully conceive and build exhibit environments throughout four galleries of rotating exhibits. Design work included wall and object plans, look and feel, integration of interactives, and custom display and furniture elements. Construction administration required oversight of the in-house team as well as external contractors for more complex fabrication elements. Regular presentations to curators and museum leadership ensured that designs matched the narrative and tone of exhibition content. Shown here are four full-scale exhibitions that I worked on through all phases from conceptual design to installation.

“Enduring Splendor: Jewelry of India’s Thar Desert”

“African-Print Fashion Now! A Story of Taste, Globalization, and Style”

Exhibition mood boards and mockups

Photo:

Photo:

Exhibition Design at Fowler Museum at UCLA, cont.

“Axé Bahia: The Power of Art in an Afro-Brazilian Metropolis”

“How to Make the Universe Right: The Art of Priests and Shamans from Vietnam and Southern China”

with MILLIØNS Architecture, Los Angeles

Category: Residential Role: SD, DD

A client with a ranch-style home wanted to explore options for connecting an existing guest wing with the main house. We proposed a hallway with french windows opening up to the pool area and ending in a breakfast nook adjoining the kitchen. The existing covered carpark would be demolished and rebuilt on the opposite side of the house. We explored options for exposing roof beams in the living room and for renovating the interior to provide a more open and functional floorplan. My role included site visits and the creation of asbuilts, door and window schedules, design drawings, and consulting with the city on setback and other zoning issues.

En Pointe at SCI-Arc Gallery

with murmur, Los Angeles

Category: Installation, Material Research

Role: CD, CA

Inspired by the hypostyle hall, En Pointe was an architectural installation consisting of a group of columns poised on bladelike fulcrums defining dynamic spaces below. To achieve a balanced state, the mass and silhouette of each column was eccentrically distributed to stabilize its adjacent columns. While unstable individually, the columns entered a state of poise when grouped. Materially, the project explored the potential of lightweight approaches to columnar construction. Using formed metal panels produced without molds or an internal frame, the project might be classified somewhere between the surface-active structure of Felix Candela and the section-active structure of Mies van der Rohe. I contributed to all construction phases, including the translation of complex 3-d geometries into 2-d cut sheets, adjusting for bump forming tolerances, and on-site installation.

Guggenheim Helsinki

with Steven Christensen Architecture, Los Angeles

Category: Urban, Cultural

Role: SD

The project reaches out to its context via two new pedestrian axes, connecting the Olympia Deck to the city and adjacent park to the waterfront via a new elevated bridge. In recognition of the urban significance of this new pedestrian crossroads, the proposal elevates exhibition spaces from the ground plane and locates them within a large, top-lit cloud. Below, public spaces are organized within a vibrant and accessible Civic Plateau, with views toward the city and harbor. Recognizing the role of the dome throughout Western history as a signifier of civic space, the project questions the

The project uses Gehry Partners’ Beekman Tower in New York City as the basis for further exploration. While the method of construction is unitized, from afar the Beekman is characterized by a series of continuous undulations, described by the firm as “Bernini folds,” rippling along its length. Partially informed by Rene Thom’s cusp and catastrophe theories, the project defines three additional line types (cusp, soft line, fold) in addition to Gehry’s existing two (seam, pleat) to inform the manipulation of metal panels. These initial studies allowed us to deploy line in a strategic way, achieving complex specular effects through a systematic approach. The result is a highly multivalent curtain wall that invokes a range of different readings depending on viewing angle and lighting conditions.

Sculpted Void

The project begins with the historic Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong as a precedent of bottom-up density, and where void space is fashioned out of interstice as masses increasingly push up against one another. Sculpted Void considers how void might instead take on an operative role and consciously sculpt itself within the mass. The project redefines the modular unit to include void space, which can then be reconfigured to accommodate a gradient of private to public: private balconies, shared courtyards, and public circulation. While from the exterior the project appears as a dense mass with little apparent hierarchy, it is punctured both horizontally and vertically by an intricate network of interior circulation in a contemporary take on the Kowloon Walled City. The project conceives a new part to whole, not established in terms of a classical hierarchy, but rooted instead in the productive dichotomies of mass and void, private and public, porous and monolithic.

Stabile House

The Stabile House is defined by a series of dichotomies. Programmatically, the house consists of two private L’s looking outwards to the landscape on the ground floor, and a public donut looking inwards upon itself on the top floor. Representationally, the house in plan consists of completely regular, Modernist bays, with cruciform columns reminiscent of those in Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion. But seen in elevation, these same columns thicken and arch as they reach up to the ceiling to become beams: custom-fabricated, continuous portal frames that speak to a much more contemporary take on steel construction. Taking its name in reference to Alexander Calder’s large-scale, stationary sculptures, or stabiles, the Stabile House calls its occupants’ attention to the contradictory nature of steel: its perception as heavy and rigid in contrast with its capacity for formmaking and expression.

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