P O R TFO L I O
MICHAEL CHUN WONG Master of Architecture (prof) Victoria University of Wellington
Bachelor of Architectural Studies Unitec Institute of Technology
CONTENT
OVERLAPPING PERSPECTIVE
1
THE FOLDING FRAGMENT
2
LAMBTON SKY
3
DISTILLING HOME
4
MDH HOUSING
5
UN/FORMING
6
1
2 4
3
5
6
01 OVERLAPPING PERSPECTIVE Master of Architecture Thesis
All urban sites around the world have their own unique, evolving historical identity. However, this identity can often become obscured, or even lost, over time due to the progressive changes that occur to the transforming urban context. An urban site’s evolution may include newly reclaimed land, conflicting grid alignments as new roads are added, new buildings being constructed that fail to reaffirm site identity in relation to existing conditions and historic buildings that become re-purposed with a subsequent loss of their original architectural identity. The site selected for this design research investigation is Queens Wharf in Wellington. Located in the heart of New Zealand’s capital city, where land meets sea at the centre line of the city’s skyline, Queens Wharf occupies one of the most important sites in the capital. However, the principal problem of this site is its lack of coherent place identity. This problem has arisen in relation to five main factors: 1) Very large, anonymous new metal shed buildings have been added in poor relationships with historic masonry and timber ones; 2)Heritage buildings have been repurposed, and their interior programmes are no longer represented by their architectural facades; 3) Enormous, contemporary, and very unattractive buildings such as the TSB Arena house programmes that change throughout the year, preventing the exterior architecture from providing identity to what is happening within; 4) A confluence of conflicting grids has developed over time at this site; and 5) Queens Wharf’s important location at the edge of city and sea near the centreline of the city’s skyline provides a significant opportunity for this site to act as a visual gateway to the capital city, but this opportunity remains unfulfilled. The thesis proposes that architecture can play an essential role in establishing place identity for Queens Wharf by: 1) To implicate historic architectural features into new architectural interventions – so that the historic buildings are fundamentally important to understanding the new and vice versa – by integrating the new and the old in ways that present all the stages of the site’s evolution as important chapters in its overall tale; 2) Exposing interior programmes to the outside to establish architectural identity through programmatic visibility; 3) Establishing new architectural interventions as 'pivots' to help make sense of conflicting grid alignments; 4) Arranging architectural interventions as a framing device and an important liminal threshold between the opposing conditions of land and sea.
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01. land reclamation timeline after Wellington's major earthquake in 1850. 02. the newly added hoist room of the Wellington Museum and the stacked containers echo the industrial identity of the building. 03. oriel window element on the southeastern side of the Wharf Office building. 04. historic level luffing crane (left) and tripod crane (right) on the research site.
05
shed 7 + bond store
shed 6
shed 5 + shed 3
queens wharf retail centre
05. pivotal points that affect the change of urban grids relating to the research site. 06. existing building identification on Queens Wharf.
shed 1
queens wharf events centre
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07. preliminary design planing experiment. 08. mechanical parts of the historic cranes. 09. initial concept sketches of masterplan design.
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ay Jervois Qu
Cus t
om h ou
se Q uay
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10. experimental frame view with top section perspective cut. 11. aerial view of experimental 3D model. 12. sectional perspective of experiment model.
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13. a framed view was captured looking down one of the new intervention service core vertical elements.
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14. Perspective view of the new intervention of indoor sports centre, looking from the harbour towards the city.
Hotel Block B
Indoor Sports Centre
Hotel Block A
Shed 5 Restaurant
Shed 3 Dockside Restaurant
Shed 7 Academy of Fine Arts
New Event Centre Bond Store Wellington Musem
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15. view of master plan of Developed Design. Red font represents existing building; orange font represents new architectural intervention. 16. 3D model of Hotel Block A. 17. 3D model of Hotel Block B
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Indoor Rock Climbing and Kayaking facility
Block B Hotel
Indoor Sports Centre 19
18. view from top of hotel floor to the ground. 19. developed plan indicating proposed Block B Hotel, Indoor Rock Climbing, Kayaking Facility, and Indoor Sports Centre.
02 THE FOLDING FRAGMENT
Master of Architecture Studio Works
Tourism is one of New Zealand's largest industries. According to the interactive map which is made up from Trip Advisor's Top things to do, Te Papa museum in Wellington is New Zealand's number one attraction. The current building has a size of 36,000 square metres of floor space, extruding height of 6 floors; using approximately 80,000 cubic metres of concrete; turns out to be a dominant massive architecture in Wellington's skyline. This massive architecture has enclosed most of its inner exquisiteness viewing from the harbour and Wellington's central. This attractiveness than contains inside Te Papa are being gradually lost through the view from the harbour. This thesis looks at one such site, Te Papa National Museum in Wellington. Strategically located south west of the Lambton Harbour; attention are drawn from the east part of the harbour. The location of the museum is also on a less competitive area, becoming more eye-catching; compare to the business districts area in Thordon where surrounding by multi-storey office buildings. The thesis argues that re-designing the building according to the original programme and site, bringing the design into a landmark building for Wellington and New Zealand. And also becoming part of the iconic Wellington skyline viewing from the harbour. The thesis proposes that this can be achieved incorporating and reinforcing natural features of the site into the architectural design; 'curating' special characteristics around the site; signify the beauty of the enclosed walls of the existing museum; encourage contemporary architecture to coexist as an on-going narrative of the site; incorporating symbolic and phenomenological directions; applying architecture elements that are eyecatching that transforms the building into 'signature' of the skyline. Overall the aim of the thesis is to produce a piece of elegant architecture work that stands out in the Wellington's Skyline and also becoming a landmark in Wellington and New Zealand.
01
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01. site concentration point. 02. site reclaimed area map. 03. site traffic concentration map.
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04. aerial perspective of new intervention viewed from the harbour towards the city.
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05. developed floor plan view of new intervention. 06. sectional perspective view.
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07. developed new intervention's site plan. 08. view from ground floor towards the lift core. 09. view for the harbour towards the museum space.
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10. "hero shots" viewed from the waterfront towards Wellington city.
03 LAMBTON SKY
Master of Architecture Studio Works
Having a hotel located in the heart of the capital city welcomes more tourist population and also enhance the tourism industry as well as the country’s economy. The scope of this project is to design a hotel on a chosen site, Lambton Quay. The idea of the design is to allow public entertainment from the southern part of the city region to be spread to Lambton Quay area. The idea of Casino will also be incorporate into the design. The new intervention is first impressed by the shifting tectonic plates of Wellington, which is formed by shifting hotel floors. Entertainment areas such as casinos, cinema and retails will be placed on the lower level of the new intervention. The lobby of the hotel is located 73 meters above ground where guest and public could experience the view on such height. Apart from that, hotel guest can also enjoy the privilege of the Sky-park and pool, and the roof top garden which located 163 meters in height. This bring the hotel to a next level of the tallest hotel skyscraper in New Zealand.
01
01. proposed site location 02. chronology concept stage physical model 03. proposed street elevation for new intervention
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04. sectional cut on Lambton Quay. 05. construction drawings of different sections of the proposed hotel building
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06. perspetive view from Lambton Quay. 07. perspetive view from Featherston Street. 08. perspective view from under the hotel tower.
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04 DISTILLING HOME (ORGANISE & CHAOS)
Master of Architecture Studio Works
Geometric order and chaos are the basic component of the composition of architectural and urban structures. In general, geometric order is a result of design and planning, and chaos is created by self-organising processes (Rubinowicz, 2000). In this assignment, my aspect of distilling a home is organise and chaos. The idea has been taken from the living room of a house. A living room is like a mind in a human body. It drives the atmosphere in the house. It can be total silent in daytime when the occupants are out for work and everything comes alive during the evening. The form and space of the final house model has been incorporate with the aspect of organise and chaos. The organise part of the house shows that the form has aligned to the grid whereas the form of the other side of the house has moved away from the aligned grid into different orientation, hence it implement chaos.
01
01. chronology concept model 1. 02. chronology concept model 2. 03. final developed model.
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05 MEDIUM DENSITY HOUSING DESIGN
Bachelor of Architecture
Design Studio Works
The aim of this project is to develop a suitable medium density housing for the given site focused on Countdown Point Chevalier and the car park behind. The concept of the design derives from the Italian word “Piazza�. The term is roughly equivalent to a plaza or a part of a city. As we know that Pt. Chevalier is currently a small suburb and in the future it will highly develop into an urban town. Population will also increase. In order to create a comfortable medium density development, a Piazza style arrangement is likely more desirable than normal block arrangement. The center plaza can be access by 4 different directions. The new intervention is designed the way that everyone could enjoy the center public space or they could make use of the route to get to center part of the busy Pt. Chevalier town.
INT
PO RD
RD
IER
IA
AL EV
HU
CH CARRINGTON RD
01
01. location plan of the selected site. 02. (huia road) street elevation. 03. (point chevalier road) street elevation.
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04. huia road perspective view. 05. point chevalier road perspective view. 06. new intervention's centre courtyard design. 07. aerial view of centre courtyard.
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06 Un/Forming
Bachelor of Architecture
Design Studio Works
This design experiments on how the activity of the atrium in a building can evoke and communicate with the outcome of the new intervention. The human activity and movement in the atrium throughout the whole day has become the conceptual driver for the design.
01
01. developed stage of the "unforming" ideas at the atrium. 02. how programs are communicated into the site. 03. conceptual idea of the site, atrium.
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M i c h a e l Wo n g
A r c h i t e c t u r e + Po r t f o l i o