Portfolio | Katie Lau

Page 1

PORT KATIE LAU 2013 - 2016

FOLIO


architecture BOUNDED PROCESSION Public Library, London

SET URBANISMS Speculation on Generic Typologies

THE VILLAGE & THE BAR Troy Brewery, Cincinnati, Ohio

JOURNEY OF THE SENSES Mausoleum

THE SHELL & THE VOID Art Center, Columbus, Ohio

1 2 3 4 5


6

analysis

THE CITY & THE GARDEN Travel, Formal Analysis & Research, The United Kingdom

fine art Exploration in Joinery Still Life Reinterpretation Series


1 KATIE

LAU


BOUNDED PROCESSION PUBLIC LIBRARY, LONDON Autumn 2015, Murphy Studio, 15 Weeks James E. Gui Design Competition Finalist & Honorable Mention Awardee (3 out of 80)

This project aims to connect to its site at street level and at the scale of the city, as a whole. The building is experienced both as a continuation of the surrounding neighborhoods and as a monument. Christopher Wren churches intersperse the London skyline, acting as monuments and points of organization within the city. In reference to this precedent, I thematically incorporated processions, thresholds, and pavilions into my project. A series of thresholds and pavilions dictate circulation throughout my project. The main procession of the library moves through thresholds as a series of gateways, ending in the “altar” of the library: the rare books room, a protected space, wrapped in the thick, concrete walls of the threshold. Pavilions signal destination spaces in the skyline and, on the interior, allow for light into or views out of the building. Every pavilion can be occupied in some sense: the auditorium, the rare books room, the skylight of the great hall, and the roof garden pavilions, which formally, act as objects in a garden. Pavilions are simultaneously grand steeples and occupiable objects, depending on the visitors’ point of view.

KAT I E L A U

2


THRESHOLDS & CIRCULATION Circulation is either held within or between thresholds. The datum of the thresholds emphasizes the theme of procession.

THRESHOLDS & PAVILIONS Pavilions are organized in relation to the thresholds.

GARDENS & PROGRAMMED SPACE Programmed spaces are contained by thresholds. Gardens create horizontal thresholds that allow visitors to experience the pavilions as objects in a garden.

Axes & Directionality

3 KATIE

LAU

Balanced Masses

Axes Organize Pavilions

Axes Organize Thresholds


The Skyline: The pavilions’ repeated, scalloped form creates a skyline that references the iconic bell towers and steeples of London’s skyline. Like steeples in the city, these pavilions reach out of the “fabric” of the library and create destination spaces. SITE PLAN

The Site: On the site, my library responds to two axes: one through the center of the orthogonal portion of the site, and another resulting from the compression of the riverfront by existing buildings. This compression funnels pedestrians into the site and regulates views out of the site. KAT I E L A U

4


VIEW FROM EXHIBITION SPACE

5 KATIE

LAU

ROOF GARDEN Pavilions are experienced as objects in a garden.


SECTION PERSPECTIVE

KAT I E L A U

6


NORTH ELEVATION

VIEW FROM SOUTH END OF SITE MODEL

NORTH ELEVATION

7 KATIE

LAU

SOUTH ELEVATION


SECTION_01

SECTION_02

PLAN_02_CUT @ 6M

SECTION_03

KAT I E L A U

8


9 KATIE

LAU


SET URBANISMS SPECULATION ON GENERIC TYPOLOGIES Spring 2016, Kochar & Kimbrell Honors Research Studio, 15 weeks A collaborative project with Andrew Miller & Kayla Eland

Rem Koolhaas describes the contemporary city as generic and stripped of identity at a scale that produces homogeneity. This commodification of architecture, quickly rendered generic, is not actually quite so. Every American city is filled with generic objects such as the suburban house, chain restaurant, big-box container and office building, but each city produces this generic-ness with a hyper-specificity, shown either in a surface strategy, in an articulation of façade, or in the building’s relationship to left over spaces and context. It is precisely within this generic and hyper-specific dialogue that our speculation of an architectural project lies. Our counterargument to the existing urban condition is to evaluate the nature of these generic typologies, and their role in bringing life to the city -- introducing specificity instead of homogeneity. The generic city is liberated and can reconfigure itself as a radical insert, which fully embraces its generic contents through hyper-specific configurations. These sets of configurations fill what were sedated spaces with moments of hyper-interest, constantly echoing hallucinations of the normal. Our project began with a preliminary exploration of the seemingly monotonous urban fabric (pages 11 & 12). We focused on the hyper-specificities within banal typologies, through the lens of existing urban speculations. Each of the projects that we co-opted proposes a kind of “ideal” urban space, which can be either utopian or dystopian. By repopulating these critical urban proposals with the architecture of the everyday, we move the focus away from the spectacular and the exception, to the fabric and background building, projecting new possibilities for urbanity that push the boundaries of what belongs to “architecture”. Moving forward, we created our own urban sets out of these generic pieces. Our position offers genres of extreme urban experiences that could liven up any American city. The relationship between programs trapped inside dumb boxes and hyper-specific facades is manipulated to create new ways of thinking about architectural urbanism. The Catalog (Left) Hyper-specific facade treatments are applied to the generic base form of everyday typologies.

These scenarios produce qualities that act as potential urban DNA. Whole sets can be inserted into existing cities or pieced together to create entirely new cities.

KAT I E L A U

10


Continuous Monument, Monumental Fabric Katie Lau

A Simple Heart, Continuous Supermarket Andrew Miller

Parc de la Villette, Industrial Farm Kayla Eland

Campo Marzio, Normative Urban Fabric Andrew Miller

Our PRELIMINARY RESEARCH into the nature of generic typologies is comprised of thirteen co-opted projects: Piranesi’s “Campo Marzio”, Archizoom’s “No Stop City”, Dogma’s “A Simple Heart”, Krier’s “Atlantis”, Ungers’ “Berlin Green Archipelago”, Tschumi’s “Parc de la Villette”, OMA’s “Parc de la Villette”, Koolhaas’ “Downtown Athletic Club”, Dogma’s “Field of Walls”, Superstudio’s “Continuous Monument”, Mies van der Rohe’s gas station, Constant’s “New Babylon”, and Dogma’s “Stop City”. A sample of this research is shown on pages 11 & 12. Captions note the primary author of each model and drawing.

NEW BABYLON: AN ENDLESS INTERIOR, KATIE LAU As a possible interior of the “Continuous Monument” or “New Babylon”, a continuous supermarket comments on both utopias and capitalism. Like “New Babylon”, this endless interior has every amenity for life and survival, provided by the production spaces below. At the same time, citizens are spending their lives endlessly consuming and purchasing goods. Maybe the experience of having everything provided doesn’t produce creativity, but instead, banality or paralysis: the results of endlessly meaningless choices.

11 KATIE

LAU


Miesian Gas Station Katie Lau

Parc de la Villette, The Functional Folly Kayla Eland

No Stop City, Continuous Supermarket Andrew Miller

Atlantis, A Pile-Up Andrew Miller

STOP CITY LEVITTOWN, KATIE LAU A homogeneous suburb, like Levittown, needs access to amenities: a town square, with shopping and services. In most suburbs, these town centers or shopping plazas are just as generic as the fabric around them. They create a false image of urban space, without making any real connection to the fabric. Visitors, more often than not, must drive from driveway to parking lot, and their experience at the shopping plaza is the same as at any other. This insertion into Dogma’s “Stop City” comments on the hollowness of the town center image and on the inherent, wasted, blown-out space.

KAT I E L A U

12


In our FINAL PROJECT, we categorized the generic, yet hyper-specific, urban artifacts by their embedded qualities of romance, horror, comedy, and tragedy. These hyper-specific qualities act as new staging sets to produce genres, informing image exaggerations and spatial transformations of the generic base model. The speculative configurations portray different characteristics, spatial organizations and historical references to produce varied sets of spaces.

ROMANCE

PASTORAL ROMANCE, KATIE LAU

This set embodies the duality of the pastoral picturesque. Half of the site functions as a false European town square, with facades that wrap domino frame shopping malls. The parking lot of this elevated “town” offers a view over a man-made landscape, dotted with suburban house follies. Some of these follies display the romantic idea of a “traditional” home, while other take on the romantic notion of LA modernism and minimalism.

13 KATIE

LAU

HORROR

HYPER-DENSITY, ANDREW MILLER

This iteration of horror reads as an exaggeration of a current urban condition -- corporations, housed in dumb-box downtowns and surrounded by a sea of parking lots. By pushing this trope to the limit, we see its faults magnified.


COMEDY

TRAGEDY

ENFILADE, CONCEPT: ANDREW MILLER, MODEL: KATIE LAU

The city as museum has a long history, including Sixtus V’ Plan for Rome, Von Klenze’s Munich, Haussman’s Paris, and Schinkel’s Berlin. This Enfilade rearranges this idea to feature the already existing parts of cities. By creating an enfilade, in which each room houses a typology, the generic is elevated to an object worth studying.

Warehouse model (right), shown as a piece of a constructed city

FIELD OF FURNITURE, KATIE LAU

The hyper-specific expression of generic buildings is limited to the façade. Interior experiences are the same between different fast food restaurants, different gas stations, etc. This set eliminates the hyper-specific wrapper, leaving of field of furniture. Parking lot furniture transitions into furniture typical of offices, suburban homes, fast food restaurants, and grocery stores. The parking lot continues into the interior of these buildings.

CONTEMPORARY RUINS: THE WAREHOUSE, KATIE LAU

This set positions “tragedy” in relation to the contemporary ruin: the factory warehouse. Visitors enter into a large, enclosed box and find a dead urban space. One half of the interior is a monumental surface of supermarkets and monotonous apartments. The other half is a blown out space emphasizing a singular object.

KAT I E L A U

14


The Datum of the Bar: Masses envelop the bar, allowing views between different programs. The bar organizes the atomized masses.

15 KATIE

LAU


THE VILLAGE & THE BAR TROY BREWERY, CINCINNATI, OHIO Autumn 2014, Snyder Studio, 6 Weeks Concrete Masonry Association Design Competition Third Place in Best Design (out of 80)

The Troy Brewery is sited in Cincinnati, Ohio’s historic Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, an area rediscovering its German brewing roots. My brewery responds to the neighborhood through pavilionized masses that imitate the surrounding row houses. The building is organized by two bars, the beer hall, and the production hall. The production hall linearly holds the entire brewing process. An undulating roof moves through the building, causing the mass of additional programs to break down along the street edge. From the exterior, the pavilions give the appearance of isolated spaces at the scale of their surroundings, but internally the program is tightly interlocked in plan and section.

KAT I E L A U

16


17 KATIE

LAU


Circulation and view permeate through the mass of the building and create a grid with the bars of program.

Interior spaces are sectionally organized in response to the roof’s movement.

WEST ELEVATION The brewery facade references a traditional Over-the-Rhine row house through masonry materials, gridded fenestration and an undulating roof that meets the facade like a cornice. KAT I E L A U

18


The Exterior Room: The tiled roof is supported by a Glu-Lam wood grid. The wood grid extends beyond the tiles to create the sense of an exterior room in the beer garten, while allowing natural light in.

Experiencing the Bar: Views between the production bar and public spaces tie the brewery together sectionally.

19 KATIE

LAU


PLAN_01

PLAN_02

The project is spatially interlocked in plan by multipurpose spaces that bring public and private programs together. In the evenings, the loading dock doubles as a covered exterior space for the special event hall. The path from the main entry to the beer hall offers views of the beer garten, loading docks, storage space, special event space, and the production line.

KAT I E L A U

20


21 KATIE

LAU


JOURNEY OF THE SENSES MAUSOLEUM Autumn 2013, Kimbrell Studio, 5 Weeks

The mausoleum project creates a meditative space where people can visit a family grave, as well as individual graves. My project focuses on the sensory experiences of light and sound, and how those elements circulate individuals through the site. Water moves alongside circulation space, and heavily flowing water audibly signals destination spaces. Visitors interact with water through sight, sound, and touch. Water also represents life and death; visitors cross over streams to reach burial spaces. From entry to destination, visitors move from darkness to light. A sun-screen creates intermediately lit spaces along guests’ circulation path.

KAT I E L A U

22


23 KATIE

LAU


1. Entry is marked by

5. Visitors view tombs

flowing water. Visitors

from across a stream.

enter into a dark space, hear the sound of the

4. Light screens and flow-

water and see light filtering

ing water run alongside

from upper levels of the

the stairs, marking the

mausoleum.

path up to the destination

6

spaces.

2. The lowest level of the building is bordered by

6. The uppermost level

still water, which collects

is filled with filtered light.

the water flowing down throughout the mausoleum.

There is a basin at hip-

5

height that visitors can

7

dip their fingers in as they

4

walk past.

3. Visitors must step over

3

a stream to enter the spaces housing tombs.

7. The family tomb receives direct sunlight and is adjacent to flowing

2

water.

1

Circulation through experiences of light, sound, and touch

KAT I E L A U

24


25 KATIE

LAU


THE SHELL & THE VOID ART CENTER, COLUMBUS, OH Autumn 2014, Balliet Studio, 6 Weeks

In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Wexner Center on Ohio State’s campus and the opening of Les Wexner’s Transfigurations exhibition, this studio aimed to design an art center to hold part of the collection. The art center sits adjacent to the Columbus College of Art and Designs’ campus and the Columbus Museum of Art. In addition to 25 pieces from the Wexner collection, the project contains apartments for working artists, classrooms, studios, offices, and a café. I chose to display Giacometti sculptures and Dubuffet paintings, focusing on tactile and volumetric artwork. My project is organized around conical forms that cut through normative geometries. This art center is formed by volumetric voids within a normalized shell and the resulting poche.

KAT I E L A U

26


Conical Forms: Principle programs such as entry, theater, and gallery are housed within the conical voids. Voids connect interior to exterior, and connect the two normative masses. Visitors must move through the voids to circulate the building, which connect all major programs. The normative geometries deflect in reaction to the conical forms acting upon them. The double-layered surfaces of the voids create poche and interstitial spaces. The poche plays multiple spatial roles throughout the project, acting as rooms, circulation spaces, or structural and support spaces.

PLAN02_70'-0"

PLAN01_4'-0"

27 KATIE

LAU


SECTION

KAT I E L A U

28


Spaces created by form and poche 1

1 The interior of the void is open to above 2 The interior of the void is open to below 3 Poche 4 Space outside of the voids

2

5 Occupiable Roof

5 3 4

Conical forms acting upon normative geometries

ELEVATION FROM BROAD STREET

29 KATIE

LAU


A 3D printed massing model shows the effect of the conical forms on the normative geometries they are nested within. A paper model explores the layering of the conical forms and the resulting poche.

KAT I E L A U

30


PLAN_01

31 KATIE

BROAD STREET

LAU


PLAN_02

KAT I E L A U

32


A map of our United Kingdom travel itinerary. Major stops include: London, Bath, The Cotswolds, Birmingham, Liverpool, The Peak District, York, and Norwich.

33 KATIE

LAU


THE CITY & THE GARDEN FORMAL ANALYSIS, THE UNITED KINGDOM Summer 2016, Architecture Research Travel Grant, 3 Weeks Independent study collaboration with Andrew Miller

This project explores the English garden and city as influential generators of one another and seeks to analyze useful relationships in organization and formal themes between the two. Landscape architects established strategies of English garden design that were more concerned with experience of place, than overall order. These motifs focus on the path, the view, and the individual person’s relationship to their environment. An exploration of the connections between English gardens and cities reveals the garden’s impact on urban design in the formal organization of parks, streets, and public spaces. These borrowed rules and relationships were implemented by architects and urban planners in methods that both helped and hurt the city. Interventions in city fabric and Utopian new towns conveyed varying ideas about urbanism. Some of these city interventions, projects, and towns have created vibrant neighborhoods and parks, while others have created sprawl and perpetuated fear of the city. Undeniably, landscape, architecture, and city planning have intertwined to create distinct experiential qualities that resonate across the British built environment. Ideas established in English garden design still impact modern day British cities.

KAT I E L A U

34


Andrew and I studied gardens and cities through the lens of various motifs, which are expanded upon below. These motifs provided us with a framework for documenting and comparing our findings.

PICTURESQUE

The picturesque movement is a crystallization of the natural conditions that occur in English landscape and urbanism. The picturesque garden is an exaggerated collection of these moments. Farm, village, and infrastructure are repurposed as garden follies.

PROCESSION

Narrative processions unfold along paths. The English garden relies on the path to deliver its narrative argument, position views, and reveal information. The city, similarly, relies on the path to create hierarchy, display monuments and landmarks, and to create identity through sequence. Circulation in urban spaces is as much a design element as nodes or edges, and in fact, makes the proper experience of these elements possible.

MAN & ENVIRONMENT

The English garden represents the relationship between civilization and nature. The English view of mans relationship to environment affects each design decision in the garden, acting as a cultural undercurrent that connects centuries of work through a consistent motif. As visitors proceed through a garden, their relationship to the “world” around them evolves. Experience leads to understanding, as narrative themes play out.

LAYERING

Layering is used to reinforce philosophical ideas by creating depth, framing spaces and views, and obscuring elements to be later revealed. Layering is thematically appropriate in English design for its ability to emphasize ambiguity and create multiplicity of view.

FALSE APPEARANCE

False appearance, like layering, is used to create situations that reinforce key English design themes. False appearances idealize form or organization, hide paths or objects, and create decoys. This initial appearance adds fantasy, surprise, and emphasis to moments when true connections, forms, and organizations are revealed.

ROOM & INTERSTICE

Interplay between rooms and poche is a recurrent theme in the English garden, whether rigid or ambiguous, the formal arrangement harkens back to the original English garden, the cloister. Collections of garden rooms and the paths between them resemble urban compositions, comprised of street and square.

CULTURAL MEMORY

England’s built environment is layered and self-referential. The reuse of site, space, and structure has taken on more than practical consideration, informing English design through meaningful connection to place. Symbolic forms are re-appropriated physically and ideologically to the contemporary mindset.

PLURALITY

The English garden is comprised of individual moments, views, and experiences that reveal a larger whole, representative of pluralistic ideas about government and landownership. In contrast to Baroque styles, in which concatenation forces each detail to be subservient to the central order, English romanticism allows multiplicity and the emergence of the architectural object.

PART TO WHOLE

Romantic and picturesque styles emphasis cubic masses, and allow for autonomy of parts. The styles’ struggle for visual freedom is expressed in the freedom of the object. A complex whole is broken down into differentiated pieces, which perform on their own as individual formal experiences, but relate back to the argument of the whole.

35 KATIE

LAU


city

Pages 40-42 show examples of my diagrammatic exploration of parallels between English cities and garden organization.

MILTON ABBAS

WELWYN GARDEN CITY

BEDFORD PARK

The development is an early transition between formalism and picturesque. While cottages are formally organized, they follow the natural curve of the ravine, turning the church into a revealed folly.

Visitors enter Welwyn through a forest, scattered with low-density housing. Cresting a hill, the city center is revealed through the use of a crescent on the edge of the linear garden.

Designed as a railroad suburb, Bedford Park’s train station opens up to the town’s main green, immediately signifying the hybrid intent behind the neighborhood planning. Street hierarchy organizes way-finding. All streets lead to town, except one central street, which connects to the farm.

Forest Housing Town

PICTURESQUE

PROCESSION

MAN & ENVIRONMENT

Fragmentation

CASTLE HOWARD Castle Howard and its gardens represent a shift from classicism to romanticism. This design breaks away from formal, central axes, and reinterprets the grand entrance of a French garden as a series of follies that guide a procession to the entry gate. On the grounds, follies and moments reveal their perfect geometric alignments. Each object is allowed to break free from Baroque blending. Several estate villages once existed on the property, which also functioned as living pastoral follies.

The Grotto, darkness signals the descent, light signals a view towards rebirth and the ascent

STOURHEAD Stourhead relies on procession and vista to tell its allegorical narrative. Elevation, smell, temperature and texture play into scenes along the procession to signal meaning in spaces like the grotto and Temple of Apollo.

IFORD MANOR An English garden engulfs an Italianate garden. At this transformative division, walls, architectural features, and hardscape dissolve into meadow, fragment, and ruin. This garden is comprised of multiple types of landscapes: the Italianate garden, the English garden, the forest, and the pastoral vista. The design emphasizes intricate connections between different environments.

garden KAT I E L A U

36


city LONDON

HOUSING

POUNDBURY

London is a richly layered city, built upon multiple ground planes--some ancient, some infrastructural. The city is always expanding, enveloping neighborhoods, gardens, and monuments. Movement through London happens in three dimensions. Planar and sectional changes reveal significant textural changes, which helps define urban rooms.

Planners and architects use the false appearance strategy in village, suburb, and housing planning. False appearances manipulate scale and density. At Port Sunlight, multifamily homes are disguised as single mansions, allowing for grandeur that would be out of reach for an individual family. Blaise Hamlet’s over scaled chimneys and unnecessary thatched roofs play into Picturesque nostalgia.

Poundbury’s urban blocks create rooms that play different experiential and functional roles in the town organization. Interstitial spaces are varied, and transitions between private/public and square/street are considered. The project strives to create varied spaces and urban identity.

Borough Market, space slips from street, to covered market, to river front

Service Served Street

Port Sunlight

Large Medium Small

Blaise Hamlet

LAYERING

FALSE APPEARANCE

ROOM & INTERSTICE

Egypt Promenade

Field

Cheshire

Room Interstice

Not Visible

THE HILL GARDEN Layers of vegetation frame the scene of the garden like a stage set. These layers hide the true extent of the garden so that it can be later revealed along visitors’ procession. From, later, enlightened positions, visitors understand the nuances of their previously obscured view.

37 KATIE

LAU

BIDDULPH GRANGE The Cheshire Cottage acts as a wrapper for the interior of an Egyptian temple. This interior space acts as a transition between three different worlds: the “Cheshire forest”, the “promenade”, and “Egypt”. Mystery and fear turn to surprise and delight as guests explore these connections and come to understand the cottage as a node.

SISSINGHURST Throughout the garden, textures and changing ground conditions signal shifts in axes, and transitions between “rooms”. Architectural plantings suggest walls that compress and expand space. Rooms are defined through voids, and materials, and mirrored objects.


ARCHITECTURAL FOLLY

REGENT’S PARK

The picturesque style expands design possibilities and freedom without abandoning tradition. Rational, neoclassical elements are ruined, fragmented, or misordered, but maintain their references to morality and enlightenment. History is observed but is available for reinterpretation. This translation occurs in city monuments and civic spaces and in garden follies.

Regent’s Park is an asymmetrical form carved from the city streets. The park connects to its surroundings with multiple, equal entrances, denying any particular lot a point of privilege. Nash’s plan exemplifies the transition of picturesque planning from private gardens to public spaces. Unlike many private gardens, the entirety of the park is not experienced in a linear procession. The park lacks true destinations. Its edges are lined, non-hierarchically, with density and program, leaving the central green space to be occupied freely.

St. George’s, Bloomsbury, alignment of tower and nave varies between East and West approach, axis of the tower intersects temple to create Latin Cross

CULTURAL MEMORY Sissinghurst

PLURALITY

BLANDFORD FORUM

The main market street expands and contracts to create public spaces. Small urban rooms branch off from the larger market, acting as smaller market spaces. The rooms are unconnected to one another but remain a part of this larger system.

PART TO WHOLE

Cloister

Path To Path From

THE ENGLISH GARDEN The English garden combines the cultural memories of the medieval cloistered garden with the English ramble and the experience of the natural English landscape. The cloister garden emphasizes choreographed procession and functional division into “rooms”. The English landscape is gentle and accessible via its historic walking paths. The picturesque garden creates images of wandering through natural landscapes and spontaneously placed architectural fragments.

ROUSHAM Rousham references the ambiguity of ancient Greek urbanism, lacking a clear hierarchy and direct connectors between monuments. Throughout the garden, individuals view follies at a distance and later, experience views from these same follies. Viewers understand the path they have traveled and the loose organization of the garden from the combination of these paired perspectives.

CHISWICK GARDEN Chiswick’s grounds hold a collection of individual formal pieces inside a net of wandering, informal paths. These loosely connected fragments force individuals to constantly realignment themselves to new axes and destinations.

garden KAT I E L A U

38


STILL LIFE OIL PAINTING ON CANVAS Painting 1 Course February, 2016

39 KATIE

LAU


EXPLORATION IN JOINERY TABLE MADE FROM WOOD, ALUMINUM, AND ABS PLASTIC Wood and Metal Sculpture Course November 2015

George Nakashima’s furniture celebrates the natural forms of wood and elegant, emphatic joinery. Observing his work, I became interested in the joint. This table is a contemporary study of the possibilities of the joint in forms that hyperbolically resemble Nakashima’s work. The two types of joints that I use are in contrast. The slabs of aluminum, inserted forcefully into the wood, require that the wood is altered and carved away to accommodate the metal. Digitally, specifically sculpted ABS plastic molds to the shape of the wooden legs, allowing them to nest unchanged, inside.

Plastic

Plastic

Aluminum

Plastic

KAT I E L A U

40


REINTERPRETATION SERIES OIL PAINTING ON CANVAS Painting 1 Course March, 2016

For this series, I first studied the masterwork of Edward Hopper’s Morning Sun and recreated it, attempting to mimic Hopper’s style of brush stroke and use of color. The second and third paintings of this series are reinterpretations of Morning Sun. Hopper’s works frequently address themes of loneliness in American urbanism. He depicts empty streets, isolated figures, and landscapes stamped with the marks of industrialism. This anti-urban distrust of the city was a widespread response to rapid changes in the 20th-century American city. At the time that Hopper produced Morning Sun, post-war American cities were experiencing White Flight and the proliferation of sprawling Levittowns. Resources were pulling away from cities. The physical and mental repercussions of this fear of cities still impact our built environment. I chose to reinterpret Morning Sun, inserting myself in the position of the woman, because, as an architecture student, the relationship between architecture and the city is one of the most pervasive issues that I face. Every generation of architects must contemplate the state of the city, and decide how passively or actively to respond.

Recreation of Edward Hopper’s Morning Sun by Katie Lau

41 KATIE

LAU


Second Interpretation

Third Interpretation

KAT I E L A U

42


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.