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contacts / bio
Jeanie Fan e: jeanie.fan@utexas.edu / t: 510.900.9833 For more information and latest projects, visit www.mostlyarchitecture.com Jeanie recently received her Master of Architecture degree at The University of Texas at Austin. Prior to her graduate study, she worked for seven years in an award-winning architecture firm in the Bay Area, Swatt | Miers Architects. As a Project Captain at the office, Jeanie managed projects from beginning to end—contributed during schematic design, produced construction documents, and oversaw project construction administration. Projects she led or participated in subsequently won significant awards. During her time at Swatt | Miers, she also designed two monographs that represented the firm’s work. Her latest book design project is the world-renowned historian Anthony Alofsin’s new book, Dream Home: What You Need to Know Before You Buy. During her time at UT Austin, besides studying architecture, Jeanie contributed extensively to the University’s graphic and identify development. She was a graphic designer hired through the University’s Office of Sustainability, however her work was not limited to one department; various organizations in the University sought for her design contributions. Her work dotted campus and school publications. Jeanie has a wide range of interest in the arts and design. While Architecture is her profession, she sees herself as a curious explorer and seeker of knowledge and wisdom—values in the beautiful and the ugly, the theoretical and the practical, the extraordinary and the mundane.
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Austin Seed Bank
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Topographic studies
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Nectorium | Nectarium
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mapping
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building analysis
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sliced frames
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contents
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Austin seed bank
Austin, Texas Fall 2010 When the financial market crashed, banks on Wall Street were closing, a new type of bank emerged, seed banks. Social and economic shifts make people become more aware of the diminishing of natural resources. As biodiversity decreases at alarming rates, preservations to save and protect what remains become increasing important. More importantly, this multi-faceted social and cultural issue takes more than one solutions to address. The seed bank needs to be more than a storage, or a museum with displays that people only visit occasionally. The seed bank needs to be a new cultural center that nurture and promote a new kind of awareness and life style. The project started without a site. As the point of departure, I turned to packaging design as my initial research. Seeds will be circulated to and from the Seed Bank everyday, because seeds can’t just be stored eternally, they needs to be regerminated every few years to keep
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austin seed bank
1-6/ Packaging design research study models and ketch design models. 7/ Context Site Plan. 8/ Site Plan.
the genes alive. So how would the seeds be transported? And how would this seed bank’s package identify itself, furthermore, identify the city it is in, and the citizens it represent? As my packaging design research develop in parallel with the site selection, the final choice of project site informed and directed my decision. The wedge shape packaging (structurally sturdy and assist the procedure of replanting as it entire package with seeds could be pushed into the ground) and slope-site led me to the development of the terracing ramps. The entire “roof” of the seed bank is habitable. And seed storage, cleaning and sorting laboratory, library, auditorium, and public “great room” are all located semi-underground. The solidity and “grounded-ness” of the seed bank draw on some of the traditional monumentalities of financial institutions. The idea of the “buried treasure,” the “safedeposit box,” and the “secured
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9/ Building Floor Plans. 10-12/ Presentation Massing Model. The consistency of using one material for the entire model, emphasizes coherence of building to site.
vault� are all messaged embedded in this buried building. Under the terrace-roofs are glass curtain walls, filled with packages of seeds. The pattern changes depending on season, as seeds come and leave the bank, and whatever patterns they create, they serve as a screen that filters life and culture between the seed bank and its community.
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13/ South Elevation. From the Austin Botanical Garden entrance, the seed bank is only visible as a low landscape wall. 14/ North Elevation, with open field from across main road. Location for farm’s market and festivals on weekends and holidays.
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15/ East Elevation. 16-19/ Section models and close-ups.
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20/ Dramatized perspective study. 21, 22/ Section and elevation material studies. 23-25/ Exterior and interior perspective studies.
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Conceptual studies
Topographic studies
Graduate Studio Fall 2010 This exercise explores the techniques of representing landform in drawing and model. The challenge is less about accuracy, but more about representation and conceptual understanding. A piece of local topography is first selected and drawn as-is. Then it is sliced and diced, mirrored and reflected, stretched and compressed‌ any kind of free transformation was utilized to explore the characteristics of the landform. The last steps was picking a landscape term at random, and represent that in the manipulated landform. The term I chose was revetment, commonly defined as “a facing of masonry or the like, especially for protecting an embankment.â€? The term was represented by sliding strips of rock-representing material into the alternating slots of a section model. The simple act highlighted the non-structural characteristic of revetment. As simple as this exercise may seem, the lesson was valuable for
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Topographic studies
1/ Drawings 22” x 44”, Hand drafting: pencil and ink on paper. 2/ Transformed landform models. 3-5/ Drawing and model of revetment.
all future project reference. First, contours/topographies are manmade abstractions; there are no “contour lines” in nature. Making lines on paper may mean very different things in reality. Second, section topo-models read a lot smoother than pancake topomodels; choose wisely depending on what one wants to represent and emphasize.
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Design Proposal Story Boards
Nectorium | nectarium
Graduate Adv. Studio Fall 2011 Technological and scientific advancements in the post War World II society and globalization have led to a dominant contemporary attitude that everything is attainable, everything has to be instantaneous, and everything can be acquired. We are brought up to believe that our needs and demands can be infinite, and we have rights not only to acquire our every whim, but also demand it in a snap of fingers. To ask us to wait, or to consume only for necessity, is almost unthinkable. Under this premise, I propose a spiritual space for the 21st century to revolve around the idea of The Forbidden, articulated and experienced in the form of a conservatory with a botanical garden. The idea that something at the heart of the project needs to be sought and cannot be acquired will augment the visitors’ desire and awareness. The experience will inspire and awaken them to speculate on their lives of abundant desires and conquests, and reflect
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on their daily transgressions. The project consists of a Nectorium and a Nectarium, hypothetically located on the southeast coast of the Greek island Thassos, across from an ancient white marble quarry. The Nectorium is a conservatory, a temple for safe-keeping The Forbidden, which is a collection of nectar
from native flowering plants curated in the botanical garden, the Nectarium. Nectar is a sweet liquid secreted by flowering plants to attract pollinators. Humans consume a derivative of nectar processed by bees – honey. Nectar, the desired drink of the Olympian Gods, is forbidden to humans. Completely exploiting the nature of human curiosity and mythological fantasies, the temple and garden invite
nectorium | Nectarium
1/ Design Proposal Story Boards, originally presented in a PowerPoint slide show. 2/ Looking up from aroma chamber in the Nectorium.
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3/ Location maps and landscape plans. Drawing credit: Dimitra Theochari.
Thassos Island in Greece
Aliki Peninsula on Thassos Island
4, 5/ Site diagrams. 6/ Nectorium Site Plan. 7/ Nectorium Floor Plans and circulation diagram.
visitors to desire The Forbidden, to seek it, and to enjoy its aroma, but prohibit visitors from obtaining it. The white-marble Nectorium sits on the brow of a cleared white-marble hilltop in a walled compound, adjacent to the productive land of the Nectarium, terraced and cultivated with the precision and decisiveness exercised when mining a quarry. The temple takes the abstracted form of ancient Roman amphorae. Each chimneylike ‘cell’ in the structure creates a stack effect that draws aromas up from the nectar stored in the sunken nectar-well. In the nectarwells, visitors can sit and enjoy the aromas. Next to the temple is a polished, articulated marble mount in place of the existing pinnacle, reemphasizing the dipole relationship of garden and temple, nature and man-made object, landscape and architecture, and the growing ambiguity of the two.
Project site plan, planting pattern for spring and summer shown in green.
Project site plan, planting pattern for fall and winter shown in green.
Initial Site Analysis
Triangulated relationship among 1. Garden, 2. Conservatory, and 3. Ancient Quarry.
Project Landscape Design: Dimitra Theochari.
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nectorium | Nectarium
Circulation 1
Entry from Nectarium
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Visitor Center & Offices
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Entry Path
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Marble Mount
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Temple Podium Level
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Reflecting Pool
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Nectar Chamber Level
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Grand Stairs and Path to ocean
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Nectorium Site Plan and Floor Plans with circulation diagram.
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8/ Nectorium and reflection pool on a mid spring morning. 9/ Form study research and models, page 22-23 bottom. 10/ Nectorium aerial view at sunrise.
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11/ Nectorium interior view and experience; visitors walking by nectarwell. 12/ Nectorium interior view and experience; visitors enjoying the fragrance of nectar in aroma chamber.
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Page 26-27 13/ View along conservatory entry path, looking south-west. 14/ Nectorium East-West Section. 15/ Nectorium at dusk. 16/ Nectorium West Elevation.
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nectorium | Nectarium
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17/ Ceremonial procession back to Nectorium after nectar gathering at sunrise. Ceremony occurs at change of seasons. 18-20/ Design model; card boards and museum board, 3D-printed Nectorium building mass.
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nectorium | Nectarium
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21/ Experience and atmosphere in Nectarium--the botanical garden. Drawing Contribution: Dimitra Theochari. 22/ Nectarium terraces and Nectorium beyond. Drawing Contribution: Dimitra Theochari. 23/ Design Sketch. Drawing credit: Dimitra Theochari.
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Analytical studies
Mapping Graduate Studio Fall 2010 This composition is mapping the experience of my first site visit at the LBJ Wildflower Center. It was a preparation to one of our studio projects. The Wildflower Center was manicured; almost any direction one turns on the trail is a perfectly framed view. It was not “wild” as its name implied; it was rather picturesque. Under the broad Texas sky with spotty clouds, it reminded me of Monet’s “Field of Poppies” paintings. Part of our visit was a guided tour with one of the senior researcher at the Center, thus the visit was also extremely informative. The Wildflower Center is manicured with Control-Burn; it keeps the plant growths cycles in check and prevents wild fires in the Texas climate. The Wildflower Center is also an outdoor laboratory for the various ecological studies. Phytoremediation was one of the top studies on the researchers’ agendas.
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Analytical studies
Building analysis: Moriyama house
indoor space but continues from indoors to garden and alleyways.”
Graduate Theory I Fall 2010
I made a small booklet of diagrams on the Moriyama House. One of the strengths of the project is how I decided to make the booklet the actual width of the Moriyama House assembly. During my research, article after article praised the house’s thin walls, but all they presented was a number. And if any drawings were shown, they were much too small to read. When a read holds the booklet in hand, the thinness of the walls is instantaneously tangible.
This is a small analytical project on the Moriyama House in the suburb of Tokyo Japan, designed by Ryue Nishizawa. In a very broad sense, the Moriyama House relates itself to the Japanese tradition of the minimalism. Ten cuboids with different floor areas and height are freely distributed across a stretch of the lot. The 85 mm (less than 3-1/2”) thick load-bearing walls of these cuboids are extremely thin even by Japanese standards. Within the wall assembly is a layer of steel plates, making large window openings possible. Circulations in the Moriyama House are completely transparent. While cares are taken into avoid direct facing windows and doors, residents of the house and their surrounding neighbors can easily see each other’s activities. As a result of the disjointed spaces, even the basic daily ritual of taking a bath has become more pronounced, and visible. Nishizawa explained that his attempt is to “create living spaces typical of Tokyo, where life is not enclosed solely within the
The Moriyama House has very thin walls, and the best way to emphasize that thinness is to show it. Thus, I made the width of my diagram booklet the thickness of the walls. Sample pages from the booklet shown on the right.
1/ Finished booklet photographed. 2-4/ Diagrams from booklet.
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building analysis
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Design Proposal Story Boards I Challenging Spatial Conditions as the Design Premise
Sliced frames
Graduate Adv. Studio Spring 2012 Prologue Both architecture and culinary arts have commonly relied on 2-dimensional materials for representation. Everyday, we are often bombarded by advertisements of food. Recipes, digital or printed, are often accompanied by an image of the prepared food, as a testimony to the written instruction. Restaurant promotions, supermarket flyers, cookware advertisements…all inundated with beautiful images of food, even when the enterprises have a weak or indirect connection to the delivery of the food presented. And in architecture, as Robin Evans reminds us, “Architects do not make buildings; they make drawings of buildings.” Architects express and communicate ideas and visions with drawings and images. While that seem necessary and unavoidable for unbuilt environments, architects also rely on 2-dimensional images— often intentionally composed and manipulated just as food
advertisements are staged—to tell and receive stories of built spaces and environments. Countless publications fill architects’ visual fields with fantastic images. But we must remember, drawings and images are visions; they do not transcend the actual experience, for both culinary arts and architecture. The final deliverable of both professions are, after all, not flat! We do not eat a poster of a Big Mac, or live in a drawing of a house.
culinary arts
So when given a chance to design a culinary school from scratch—a marriage of the two professions, what form will it take? How will the professions, now under the influence of each other, re-interpret the 2-dimensional plane?
culinary arts : Dutch painting : architecture
Culinary Arts and Architecture had come together previously to challenge the 2-dimensional plane. It could be seen in still life paintings of the Dutch Golden Age, where the subjects were often food, and the artists meticulously painted the objects and the environment they were in to create the optical illusion that the objects exist in three-dimension. However, this is not a viable strategy for a culinary school, when an actual space is the deliverable.
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2D Representation
2D Representation
Food as Subject
culinary arts
Subject Coming Alive
architecture
Spatial Depth Implied
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Space Flattening
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Sliced frames
1, 2/ Proposal story boards and diagrams.
Design Proposal Story Boards II Time as the Organization Culinary arts
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The Proposition My proposal for this culinary school calls for a new reconciliation between the 2-dimensional representations and 3-dimensional actualities of the professions. I propose the two professions to challenge the 2-dimensional plane inversely, base on the premise of the Dutch paintings. In this project, the culinary arts activate the flat, fixed plane by introducing motion; kitchens are opened up for maximum transparency and exposure. The artifacts and activities associate with food— the subjects of this still life—are no longer static and they occupy spaces. On the other hand, the architecture, operating from the opposite direction, strives to compress its 3-dimensional volume to the bare minimum, as if it is trying to return back into a drawing. The architecture takes an ideological opposition to the Dutch still life painting, in another word, the backdrop, the stage, for this still life painting wants to be flat, look flat.
Time Organizing Activities
Time Organizing Structure
To restate, what becomes 2-dimensional in the paintings returns to 3-dimensional in the composition of the culinary school, and what appears to be
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3/ View of Culinary School from East 1st Street as it passes under Highway I-35. 4/ Site Plan.
3-dimensional in the paintings strive to be 2-dimensional in the spatial organization of the culinary school. The Strategy After I have identified my “ingredients”—motion and space, I set out to develop a set of “instructions” for my recipe for the “making” of the culinary school. Naturally, at the intersection of this proposed spatial expansion and contraction, a fourth dimension is materialized—the dimension of time. Time allows me to unify and organize the two professions in a school setting; one sets the motion, the other takes the form— one follows a time table, the other sets the time table; both operate in the unit of time. The program is organized on a “1-second” grid, base on a 3’-8” increment that is derived from average human walking speed. Furthermore, the program is sliced into autonomous volumes, composed within narrow steel structural frames, “shrink wrap” to the minimum dimensions required for the purpose of training kitchens and classrooms. The mostly lateral movement among the food storage, the prep sink, the cook station, and the worktable
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sliced frames
5/ Site analysis.
is accentuated in this linear plan, enabling me to compress the architectural volumes, further emphasizes the “flatness” of my composition. The sliced frames are deliberately pulled apart, connected only by glass bridges, to reveal the “thin” spaces. Window mullions and floor tiles follow the 1-second grid; hope to inspire students to discover rhythms in their own movement in and out of the kitchen. This time-grid organizes the entire site; it reads in seconds in plan, hours in elevations, and months in the landscape with seasonal planting.
Landscaping Concept: Espalier fruit trees in line with Frames.
The Site This isn’t just a school building; this project is an artistic adventure, a new typology of still life painting at a very large scale. This isn’t just about training new chefs; this is about enhancing and enriching local cultures. So when looking
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6/ Lower Level Plan: (a) Demonstration Room, (b) Lecture Hall, (c) “Wet” Pantry and Storage, (d) Class Rooms, (e) “Dry” Pantry and Storage, (f ) Faculty Lounge and Locker, (g) Wine Room, and (h) Bakery. 7/ Second Level Plan: (i) Restaurant Outdoor Seating, (j) Restaurant Pantry, (k) Library and Student Lounge, (m) Cooking Classroom, (n) Reception, (o) Pastry Classroom, (p) Faculty Lounge and Office, (q) Brise Soleil. a
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Enlarged Classroom Plans on page 37 8/ Enlarged Kitchen Classroom Plans. Top: Cooking Classroom. Bottom: Pastry Classroom.
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for a site to support my endeavor, I needed to look no further, I chose Austin. Austonians, with their love for outdoor-living and their appreciation for unconventional public art, I believe, will find this project resonates with their local cultural values. The site for the building is located at the southeast edge of downtown, a block east of the Convention Center; bounded on the west by nearby high-rises and immediately on the east by one of the city’s arteries, Highway I-35. The site is also at a critical threshold between the East and West of Austin. The culinary school will service as a connector that unifies the socially and economically divided city, providing a ‘common ground’ for prosperity. After all, who can say no to good food?! In addition, the culinary school will be visible from I-35 as people drive to and from the city; it is the gatekeeper to the city, a landmark to the city, the Eiffel Tower of Austin.
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9/ Upper Level Plan: (r) Restaurant, (s) Restaurant Kitchen, (t) Mechanical Spaces Above Classrooms, (u) Faculty Lounge Terrace, (v) Brise Soleil 10/ Design Model, South Facade.
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11/ Massing model diagram. 12/ Massing model on site. Page 40-41 13/ Demonstration Kitchen interior during a weekend open house. 14/ North Elevation, showing first frame with suspended glass box for restaurant. 15/ View looking through classrooms in frame; the expansive glass walls reflect every aspect of the city back onto the building dynamic layers. 16/ Entry Frame Elevation.
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sliced frames
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17/ South Facade facing Rainy Street. Sliced Frames wrap in perforated metal, further emphasizes the lightness of the structure. 18/ North-South Section Perspective.