Portfolio. 2024 ed. by ChenJie Hu

CHENJIE HU

Bachelor Candidate arch.

Polimi / EPFL

Chinese 23.04.2004

EDUCATION

2024-2025 Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne EPFL

Exchange Programme in Architecture Lausanne, Switzerland

- selected 1 out of 74

- Swiss-European Mobility Scholarship

2022-2025 Politecnico di Milano Polimi

BSc in Architectural Design (Progettazione dell’Architettura) Milan, Italy

- Average: 29.52/30

- DSU Full Scholarship (three years)

CONTACT WORK EXPERIENCE

chenjie.hu@mail.polimi.it letsmailhhu@gmail.com

Qur Pré-Fontaine, 52

Crissier, Switzerland

1023

+(39)324 286 95 99

+(86)151 210 45 323

07.2024-09.2024 Intern Architect at a-Fact Milan, Italy

10.2023-Present Private History of Architecture Tutor Milan, Italy

07.2023-Present Architectural Intern Editor at Studio JiangShan Remote

LANGUAGES

Chinese_native English_IELTS 8.0

Italian_intermediate B1

French_elementary A2

softwares

rhino, Grasshopper, autocad, adobe (photoshop, illustrator, indesign and premier), V-ray, Enscape, Cinema 4D, Revit, QGIS, ClimateStudio

skills team-working, public speaking, hand-drawing, model-making

COMPETENCES CURRICULUM

HOUSE FOR ...?

BSc4 2024, POLIMI - Ingrid Paoletti, Andrea Rebecchi

w/ Tomoko Shiba, Jiahao Wang, Mian Wei, Fergal Kidd

LEGALIZE! REORGANIZE! Spatial and Economic Justice for Urban Youth and Communities

BSc5 2024, EPFL - Charlotte Malterre-Barthes

w/ Hafsa Boudhir, Lisa Brenner

HARMONIZED DISCORDANCE

Competition 2023, Finalist

w/ Jiahao Wang, Shichen Wang, Jingbo Meng

CARTOGRAPHY: Oslo City Study

BSc5 2024, EPFL - Bárbara Maçães Costa

w/ Pietro Trentini

VIGENTINA URBAN ANALYSIS

BSc2 2023, POLIMI - Marco Facchinetti

w/ Idil Ciftci, Sia Chandok, Ozge Eyupoglu

CLUSTERNEST: Hostel in Lisbon

BSc4 2023, POLIMI - Antonio Da Silva, Eleonora Bruschi

w/ Kunjal Saple, Sergali Shugyla, Tina Chernolutckaia

HOUSE FOR...? (30/30)

Milan, Italy

This project explores the relationship between materiality and architecture. The primary objective was to design a multifunctional workshop space situated in Parco Romana, Milan. The project aimed to establish a dialogue between two contrasting urban morphologies, using a longitudinal building form as both a dividing and connecting, physical and conceptual architectural element. The dynamic use of space, facilitated by sliding and rotatable doors, allows the workshop space to be flexibly reconfigured

Wood, chosen for its natural warmth and structural capacity, is paired with polycarbonate panels, with circular skylights punctuating the roof, introducing a unique interplay of light and texture into the space. The material investigation extended beyond aesthetics to include environmental and social considerations, informed by research into life cycles, sustainability, and cultural significance. The development of 1:20 structural details emphasize structural clarity, enabling iterative design refinement and construction precision.

Aerial View

Functional Diagram

South Elevation

Longitudinal Section

Diagram of Use

LEGALIZE! REORGANIZE!

Spatial and Economic Justice for Urban Youth and Communities

Voluntary negligence, racial and economic discrimination, lack of maintenance, and absence of infrastructures are some of the real culprits of the multiple-faceted intensifying warfare against modernist mass housing.

However, these estates cumulate many qualities beyond their fetished modernist designs: affordable, dense, and efficient housing blocks with good circulation and inherent plastic attributes. They are also just homes to people who hope to live in peace, hosting, at times, communities with strong ties that organized to defend their districts—despite suffering policing, prejudice, and discrimination.

We explored how dense urban forms respond to housing needs and the politicization of this architecture. There is an urgent need to revert punitive narratives to address aging modernist estates as precious housing stock and homes to humans and non-humans and think collectively about engaging urban design strategies—on the site of Le Mirail.

Toulouse, France Historical Diagnosis

By clearly articulate and answer these questions: Who do we serve? What do the actors we serve need?, this project envisions a narrative shift in Tripod Le Messager through political change and cannabis legalization, furthermore integrating marginalized communities and the youth of Le Miral, into the broader economy and society. With the founding of a Zone Franche Urbaine in the area of La Reynerie and a diverse program for Le Messager, new pathways for economic empowerment, social reintegration, inclusion and a strong community are being proposed.

Coursive, 13th floor. Community Space

HARMONIZED DISCORDANCE

The typology of the building is based on the merging and subdivision of individual basic forms. In this case, starting from the prototype of the courtyard and cloister, a new figurative unity is proposed. The newly-built intervention is made exclusively of one material, white concrete. This structure forms a single organism in which all the elements combine into an indivisible whole. With minimalist approach, we try to restore the spatial prototype of the monastery so that the spirit of which can remain in space.

Consequently, the order of formation becomes a quest for unity, a cohesive and integrated form. The figurative character attempts to engage the visitors with the ruins. Even with coherence of material, it is easy to decode the ordering system and detect elements that make up the overall building. With this new unity, the community function is carried within the space. The original church becomes the new performance space, cloister turns into large collective public space, the exhibition hall is interspersed in the monastery.

Contrasts with the clear, concise and ordered exterior appearance, the interior is less corresponded with exact original space division, instead, it starts from the configuration of the current ruins itself, which emphasizes the height difference.

Inner space explores the possibility of intriguing circulation with the approach of terraces, mezzanines and ramps, offering juxtaposition of the program, and from which the visitors can view the ruins at a new aspect.

Monastery of Pelayos, Madrid, Spain

Performance Area

Exploded Axonometry

Conceptual Sketches

Aerial View

Floor 1 Corridor

Workshops

Cloister

Community Hub

Performance Area

CARTOGRAPHY: Oslo City Study

Oslo, Norway

i. Territory

The complete and synchronic image visible in the map of Oslo is the result of the constructions of its various generations. The city’s earliest traces are medieval, still visible today as ruins at the base of the Ekeberg hill, where Oslo was founded in 1049. These traces reveal a physiocratic system of production tied to natural resources. The primary aesthetic forms in the territory were monasteries with inner gardens that controlled farms and churches such as the Cathedral of Saint Hallvard. The only connection to the inland region was the Alna River. In 1624, after a fire destroyed the medieval city, Oslo was rebuilt westwards, in the shape of a grid with clear Renaissance inspiration, north of the Akershus fortress. This grid became the urban nucleus and the territory developed futher along a series of branches connecting the various inland farms to the Akershus fortress and the new harbor being constructed. The city structure mirrored the productive system, primarily based on trade. The city’s axis of development shifted towards the Akerselva River, the main connection to the forests inland for timber trade.

This level within the palimpsest is significant because the farms and roads connecting them to the central grid trace a spine for all subsequent urban development, offering insights into the current morphology. Oslo’s suburbs grew around these same farms, so that today’s neighborhoods retain their old names. At the ends of these roads, churches, chapels, and cemeteries were built, mimicking the grid-like urban and road systems of these suburban areas. The grids of cemeteries, mapped across the city, represent the entire suburban development system. During industrial development, the urban compass and primary axis shifted again, moving from the Akerselva River. As Oslo became the capital, the Alna River regained importance as the most efficient transportation system for industries, connecting the inland region to the harbour. Around the river, the city’s main railway was built, reinforcing this axis and connection. The synchronic coexistence of all these forms, eras, and generations constitutes the structure and understanding of Oslo’s urban fabric.

Territorial generations: Monasteries along the Alna and a grid on the Akerselva.

-PROFESSOR: Barbara Macaes Costa

ii. Object

Is there a greater solitude than that of an Egyptian mummy cataloged in foggy London, lying in the shadowless world of fluorescent light? Everything stolen from the depths of the earth demands the return of the magic of history. Objects can be reborn and find their place in their new context.

—Sverre Fehn, “Three Museums”

There is something sublime in decomposition. It expresses both the transience of a being and its vitality, otherwise impossible to notice. In the object analyzed—the Økern Nursing Home, built by Fehn in 1955—this dialectic is intentionally expressed. On one hand, a strong rational grid of walls and pillars imposes itself on the terrain, hosting small cabins where elderly residents live. On the other hand, these same structures open through large windows to the surrounding garden, allowing nature to enter and establish a dialectical relationship between the rational and the irrational, the unplanned.

The building develops on a single floor, organized around two cloisters separated by common rooms and restaurants. The references abound, but one connection stands out: the relationship between this single building and the surrounding territory and productive systems. In a suburban area bordering the industrial part of the city, Fehn mimics the structures of medieval Oslo convents. All the cells face the garden or the external landscape, enclosed by rows of trees. In this space, each inhabitant’s vitality is expressed through the personalization of their private space.

CARTOGRAPHY:OSLO

-PROFESSOR: Barbara Macaes Costa

2.3 The Public City

Typology

VIGENTINA URBAN ANALYSIS (30/30)

Morphology

Private Ownership

Accessibility Ownership

Understanding the City

Accessible

Inaccessible

Semi-Accessible

(Accessible to the public at certain hours and days)

Accessible

Inaccessible

Semi-Accessible

(Accessible to the public at certain hours and days)

Public Ownership

Private Ownership

Typological Analysis of the block existing from Pavia Masera The Public City, Analysis of the Public Layout Linear Apartment Blocks

Public Layout

Apartment

Accessible Inaccessible

Semi-Accessible (Accessible to the public at certain hours and days)

Public Layout

Piazza dell’Assunta Piazzale Madonna di Fatima

Railroad Network

Public

Layout

Piazza dell’Assunta Piazzale Madonna di Fatima

URBAN PLANNING STUDIO 2223

Docenti: Facchinetti Marco Fedeli Valeria

Streets Green Areas

Sidewalks

Railroads in Beruto’s and Current Plan

Railroads in Pavia Masera, Albertini and Milano 53’s Plan

Bench Areas

Streets Green Areas

Streets

Piazza dell’Assunta

Sidewalks Bench Areas

Piazzale Madonna di Fatima

Bus Stop Shelters Squares Street Lights

Currently, the unused railroad infrastructure seen in Pavia Masera, Albertini, and Milano 53’s Plan is getting removed by the FS Italiane Group. This of Olympic Village for the Milan The aim is redeveloping the seven

Green Areas

Sidewalks Bench Areas

Bus Stop Shelters Squares Street Lights

Bus Stop Shelters

Squares

Map1.2- Hu Chenjie Idil Ciftci Ozge Eyupoglu Sia Chandok

Map 2.1 Reading the City

Street Lights

Understanding the Rules

The Public Networks

Bus 95: Rogoredo FS M3 - Q.re Barona

Tram 24: Vigentino - P.za Fontana

Bus 34: Via Toffetti - Q.re Fatima Bus

Bus 95: Rogoredo FS M3 - Q.re Barona

Tram 24: Vigentino - P.za Fontana

Bus 34: Via Toffetti - Q.re Fatima

Bus 99 and Bus 222 serve to connect the densely populated areas of the region to the outskirts of the city.

Bus 99 and Bus 222 serve to connect densely populated areas of the region outskirts of the city.

VIGENTINA URBAN ANALYSIS. BSc2, POLIMI. -PROFESSOR:

Bus 65: P.za Abbiategrasso M2 - P.ta Romana M3

Bus 99: Vigentino - Noverasco

Tram 24 and Bus N24 connect the region to the center of the city.

Bus 222: Q.re Vigentino - Pieve E. Stazione FS

Bus N24: Vigentino - Duomo

Tram 24 and Bus N24 connect the region center of the city.

Bus 65, Bus 95, and Bus 34 serve as horizontal connections to the regions surrounding Vigentina.

Bus 65, Bus 95, and Bus 34 serve as connections to the regions surrounding

Morphology

Density

Commercial Buildings, Public Facilities

(Buildings

Open Residential Building Patterns

(Buildings

Commercial and Service Patterns

(Buildings with gated perimeters that separate them from residential areas and streets)

Ofﬁce Building Patterns

(Detached buildings with gated perimeters and often with parking lots)

Open Spaces with Public Function Patterns

(Open, public spaces surrounding Pompeo Leoni via Ripamonti and connecting it to the surrounding, differing morphologies) Student Housing Building

Analysis of Networks

Parks existing

4.3: Small Scale Detailed Areas

Updated Parco Alessandrina Ravizza Centrality Nature, Community, Sport

Updated Parco Alessandrina Ravizza Centrality

4.3: Small Scale Detailed Areas

Updated Parco Alessandrina Ravizza Centrality

Scalo Porta Romana Centrality

4.3: Small Scale Detailed Areas

Updated Parco Alessandrina Ravizza

4.3: Small Scale Detailed Areas

Monti Sabini, Antegnati, Amidani and A. Sforza

Updated Parco Alessandrina Ravizza Centrality

Monti Sabini, Antegnati, Amidani and A. Sforza

Scalo Porta Romana Centrality

Scalo Porta Romana Centrality Monti Sabini, Antegnati, Amidani and A. Sforza

Scalo Porta Romana Centrality

Monti Sabini, Antegnati, Amidani and A. Sforza

CLUSTERNEST: Hostel In Lisbon Lisbon, Portugal

Located in Lisbon’s historic Largo do Cabeço da Bola, the Erasmus Hostel ClusterNest addresses the severe housing shortage students face in the city. Designed for both short-term and long-term stays, the project transforms a vacant plot into a vibrant student living space.

The design respects vernacular Portuguese architecture, featuring pitched roofs and a harmonious interplay of heights, solids, and voids. Drawing inspiration from the dialectic relationship between forms and spaces, the architecture creates dynamic cavities for communal and private living.

Outdoor balconies serve as architectural promenades, enhancing circulation and accessibility while fostering social interaction. By integrating functional design with historical sensitivity, the ClusterNest revitalizes its surroundings, offering a thoughtful blend of modern student living within a rich architectural heritage.