Portfolio 2015 Winter - Wenjie cao

Wenjie Cao, 756310, Year 1, Studio C

Phase A, Studio 8, Scott Woods

Master of Architecture

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(250/300 dpi, PDF)

Gallery 1

In Phrase A, four galleries are designed to forward the understanding of the particular artworks as well as the interview of their artists, in which they also revel in the artists processes, ideologies etc. They are examples that move away from

traditional ‘white-wall’ models, where the architecture responses to the art it houses. The focus shifts to embrace and interpret: the artwork itself and wider theoretical, conceptual, and contextual discourses.

Wenjie Cao, 756310, Year 1, Studio C

Phase A, Studio 8, Scott Woods

Master of Architecture

Section of Gallery 1

Spatial Sequence of Gallery 1

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(250/300 dpi, PDF)

Gallery 1 is designed for the show A Drone Opera, curated by Matthew Sleeth. The show is about the natural character of drone and the vulnerability of its victim. In the gallery, audience are surrounded by the light and the drone, and they are hanging in

the air, by creating a spatial sequence to experience and changing the design of audience seat so that they feel more exposed and vulnerable. The intention is to enhance audience’s understanding about the show as well as the gallery space.

Wenjie Cao, 756310, Year 1, Studio C

Phase B, Studio 8, Scott Woods

In Phrase B, four museums are designed around the isolate ‘architectural characteristic’ mentioned by Odile Decq, the Inside-out. As the “New Museum Ecology”, it still requires further discussion. Questions are raised in this stage such as

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why museums should be inside-out, how architects turn inside of architecture out artistry and what is inside when inside is out?

The design of four museums is the process how I position the answer critically and iteratively.

Wenjie Cao, 756310, Year 1, Studio C

Phase B, Studio 8, Scott Woods

Museum 1 is a transformation of the NMOC. It is located at the centre of the Tienanmen Square, where everything is about hierarchy and political power. In order to revel and rebel to the bigness here, the museum is cut into three pieces and piled up.

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The elevators and galleries inside are exposed in the atrium. They are related to each other with gearwheels so that visitors have to request the elevators competitively like politics whom should wait for opportunities or manipulate others to achieve their purpose.

Wenjie Cao, 756310, Year 1, Studio C

Phase B, Studio 8, Scott Woods

Museum 2 is the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan. It is about the question how visual transparency differ from the physical one. The minimum of spatial elements are used to form space, only directional walls, which remain two

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typical spaces in museums, the corridors and huge empty spaces.

The exhibition is no longer limited in the box space. Physical transparency is completely different from the visual one, because it can be felt, experienced and re-evaluated truly and really.

Wenjie Cao, 756310, Year 1, Studio C

Phase B, Studio 8, Scott Woods

Master of Architecture

(From top to bottom) Museum 4 Section Diagram of Arrangement Storage and Exhibition

Museum 4 is about the question how to remain the inside in when we try to push it out. The gallery will only rise when they walk close to them. The collections become larger nowadays so it is important to keep them easy to find and to compare to each

other. The exhibition in each generation and places are located in their categories. Visitor will search the collections like they are in a library, and They can easily compare collections in the same area or at the same time by just crossing the rising gallery.

Wenjie Cao, 756310, Year 1, Studio C

Phase C, Studio 8, Scott Woods

Master of Architecture

(From top to bottom) Diagrams of Changed Daily Routine Ever-changing Commercial Complex Commercial Architecture, Delicious Architecture (Pictures in Next Page) Images Captured in Video Project

Architects turn museums inside-out because it makes museums more approachable and attractive to the public. Like the shopping windows, they are designed for attracting and seducing people.

The world is designed for the future of shopping, in which the

boundary of shopping and working is blurred. In the modular of the commercial structure, all kinds of services with varied architectural styles can be found. The working environment and shopping places are mixed together. The way to work and the

Wenjie Cao, 756310, Year 1, Studio C

Phase C, Studio 8, Scott Woods

shops along it will refresh every day, so that it makes our way to work full of surprise and self-motivation.

People work for money so that they can purchase products and entertainment. They are actually consuming themselves.

Master of Architecture

My intention in this work is to forewarn the horrors which architecture was laying in store as existing models for people to choose or manipulate, and it might become the helper of consumerism and other kinds of social control.