Michelle Shu Meng Undergraduate Portfolio

Page 1

B.S Arch Undergraduate Portfolio

the Islands

Shu Meng

Georgia Tech


For the application of Master of Architecture I Professional Degree School of Architecture Yale University


01

A Parking Garage

02

A Photography Museum

03

A Community Center

04

A Machine

05

A Hotel



The parking garage is a ubiquitous building type found in downtown America. These stacked concrete slabs can span an entire city block as stand-alone utilitarian structures serving solely automobiles. It is one of the icons of modern urban life: utility, density, and convenience based on technology. But it’s dead. This poses the question: how could it be transformed into a lively public datum forming within the city?

01 A Parking Garage (2nd Year Studio)

the Parasite Architecture is not passive. It could be as active as parasitical.


Typical Strategy

Concept: the Parasitical relationship “By the fashions in everything from clothing to buildings, which give a reassuring illusion of cultural unity and vitality, we are encouraged to suppress the inherent difference and conform. But our culture is maintained at the expense of creativity that can emerge only from an imagination stirred by confrontation with every kind of experience and actuality.� ---Lebbeus Woods, Radical Reconstruction



Plan 01

Plan 02

Program The strategy to retrofit the half-empty parking garage is executed by introducing two types of public space: active space and passive space. The passive spaces are those where no direct activity happens, such as circulation cores, view platforms, entry lobbies, service space etc.

Plan 01


The aesthetic of collectivity is deceptive: underneath the mask of homogenization, people can celebrate the individuality in a place of intimate scale. Everyone,no matter who they are, has their own stage.

0

10 5

50 ft 20

The active space will host roller derby activities for the Dirty South Derby: Atlanta Roller girls and provide performance/exhibition venues in various scales.

Section

Plan 02



The microsecond the shutter blinks, the unseen becomes the seen, the unperceived dimension becomes the perceived, the usual becomes the unusual. In that microsecond, the moment of capture is forced to make its transformation into something visual, something no longer ephemeral. As a result, the fourth dimension is being depicted.

02 A Photography Museum (3rd Year Studio)

the Lapse

Time elapses, but the time captured in printed photos does not, and the time engraved in architecture does not.


Site Surrounded by apartment complexes,the site has great potential to form a strong connection between art and people. It strives to be not just a museum, but an institution containing artist studios and a lecture hall: a place not just to see, but to create. Its adjacency to Central Park and Atlanta’s lush urban green space sparked the idea of bringing outdoor nature indoors, celebrating one of the most frequently visited themes in photography: re-representing the usual as the unusual. Along with photographs featuring distorted nature, the surrounding green space would also be viewed in an unexpected fashion.

Urban Green Space NGO

Apartment Complex

Central Park


Program and Green Space

Restricted Access

Un-restricted Access

Separate Access

Massing Envelope

people going to the museum vs the general public

Offset 10’ from sidewalk

highlight programmatic difference

Bringing in Nature

indoor garden: abstract moment of nature green lawn: an informal park as a welcoming gesture to the neighborhood

Galleries for Professionals

To Nature 3 2 1 -1

To Nature To City

Lobby

View

inward and outward

Studio

Exhibition Lecture Cafe for studios

Programming

as galleries and as studios


04

03

05

*

07

06

01 09

00 Central Park 01 Inactive Storage 02 Loading Dock 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13

Lobby/Ticket Coat Room Restroom Lecture Hall (95 seats) Admin Office Outdoor Seating Cafe Studio Classroom Storage Exhibition Space for Studios Dark Room

14 15 16 17 *

Gallery A for Professionals Gallery B for Professionals Temporary Exhibition View Balcony Mechanical Room

02

08

00

Basement

Level One

Floor Plan

Floor Plan


10

11

11 05

14

05

*

*

12

13

15

16

17

Level Two

Level Three

Level Three

Floor Plan

Floor Plan

Reflective Ceiling Plan


65’-0” Roof

41’-0” Level 03

18’-6” Level 02

0’-0” Level 01 -9’-6” Basement


West Elevation

concrete steel reinforcement with anchor bolts isolation joint caulked and sealed

vapor retarder concrete slab sand gravel drainage base

rigid insulation piping

Detail-1

Longitudinal Section



DIDEROT: All right. Now what is memory? Where does that come from? D’ALEMBERT: From something organic which waxes and wanes, and sometimes disappears altogether. ---D’Alembert’s Dream I,by Denis Diderot, 1769

03 A Community Center (3rd Year Competition Studio Second Place)

the Canopy

Instead of being a narrative of encounter, composing a story, the canopy became an image, or several images. So iconic that the images will be engraved into one’s memory. Life does not rely on fiction, but on memory.


Site Analysis

02

03

05

04

07

08 01

Atlanta City Landmark

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08

01.Adjacency

02.Scale

Church Georgia Aquarium Georgia World Congress Center Centennial Olympic Park Georgia Dome Philips Arena CNN Headquarter Mercedes Benz Stadium

06


Early Massing Model: to explore formal gesture of connecting


Program Proposal Learn

Social

Book Stacks

Computer Lab

Study Area

Children’s Area

Classroom

Events Space

Learning Kitchen

Dining

Urban Farm

Bar

Library

Restaurant

Program Adjacency Secondary Traffic Route

Community

check point

study area

outdoor

outdoor

farm

kitchen

back of house

indoor indoor

book stacks

comp lab

bar

main dining

children area

City Public Main Traffic Route Learn

Program

Direct Connection

Public Access

Social

Outdoor

Visual Connection

Restricted Access

It is permeable and open: permeable by nature, open to street and open to the sky. It is not meant to be a narrative of people of different backgrounds crisscross, but by housing all programs under two related roofs and inter-relate each other vertically and horizontally, it becomes a visible image of living and learning together, under the canopy.


Site Plan


01-a

01-b

09

03

07-b

07-a

02-a

++

08 02-b

++

10-a

06

04

10-b

05

First Floor Plan 01-a 01-b 02-a 02-b 03

Loading dock Back of house Main kitchen Learning kitchen Urban farm

Ipe Wood Decking

04 05 06 07-a 07-b

Restaurant Bar Restroom Event space: auditorium Event space: outdoor

Stained Oak Flooring

08 09 10-a 10-b ++

Info desk Restroom Classroom: w/ movable partition Classroom: outdoor Mechanical room

Polished Concrete

Z

G


Zoysiz

Grass

12-d

12-c

11

12-a

12-b

12-c

12-c

12-e

12-i

12-h

12-g

12-f

Second Floor Plan 11 12-a 12-b 12-c 12-d

Catwalk Admin office Info desk Book stacks Computer lab

Limestone Gravel

12-e 12-f 12-g 12-h 12-i

Stone

Study area Study area: outdoor Bridge Children’s reading room Restroom

Pavers

Corrugated Metal Roof


Section 01

Section 02

Section 03




When we study how mud cracks or how soap bubbles aggregate, how glass is broken, or how hair gets entangled, we see the same thing over and over: matter finds form. We’ve learned that matter is inert and needs to be shaped by external agents, but the reverse is true: matter is a pure agent and actively shapes itself.

04 A Machine ( 4th Year Research Studio Partner: Ishrat Lopa )

Analogue Computing

Matter is not passive. Material is not passive. Matter forms! Material forms! ...on its own.


Inspired by Frei Otto’s early research of balloon stacking and packing to incarnate the

foam structure, we implemented similar methods by filling the interstices between intenselypacked balloons with plaster to explore the light-weight cancellous structure.

I. Plaster Machines | Phase 01: Cubic Machine (1’ x 1’ x 1’)

Process: pack, seal, cast, de-mold

Machine 1.1: Homogeneous Stacking

Machine 1.2: Homogeneous Packing

Machine 1.3: Heterogeneous Stacking

Machine 1.4: Heterogeneous packing


Machine 1.1~1.4 aim to understand the basic Node-Leg relationship and irregular polyhedral network: four-legged, six-legged node conditions.

Photo analysis of details

Sketch analysis of nodal-leg relations

Four-Legged Node Each volume as dodecahedron, with 12 pentagons, 20 4-Legged Nodes and 30 legs.

Six-Legged Node Each volume as hexahedron, with 6 quadrilaterals, 8 6-Legged Nodes and 12 legs.


Diagram Documentation: polygon-polyhedron relation


Photo analysis of polygons

Photo analysis of polyhedron

Fn = net force exerted on the balloon; As = area of the polygon; Ac = area of the cross-section of the leg and the node

regular distribution

regular distribution

irregular distribution

homogeneous forces

heterogeneous forces

heterogeneous forces


I. Plaster Machines | Phase 02: Hybrid Machine

Process 01.Pack in bag, stack in box

02.Add rigid support on the bag

03.Cast plaster and de-mold

Packing

Four-Legged Node

Transition

Five-Legged Node

Stacking

Six-Legged Node

In the hybrid machine, a new type of nodal-leg condition emerges: at where packed balloons and stacked balloons meet, the machine creates a five-legged node to transit from node.

Photo analysis of five-legged node

a four-legged node to a six-legged


Machine 2.1

Machine 2.2

Machine 2.3


Machine 2.4

Machine 2.5

Interior detail study of human activities based on Machine 2.4-2.5


After studying the plaster model, we scale up the existing machine to 1”=1/4’ and translate the material from plaster to wood, making the design more detailed and architectural.

II. Wood Machines | Phase 01: Construct Balloon Massing

Final Balloon Massing: elevation views on four sides

II. Wood Machines | Phase 02: Material Translation

balloon 01

balloon 02

balloon 03

the Node-Leg in wood w/triangular section connected by wires

balloon 04 the Node-Leg in plaster

In the new material, the leg becomes a rigid, solid entity (wood-stick) while the node is understood not as an object but as a moment of connecting the legs by a flexible joint (wire).

hot glue dot

double-twined wire

1/4”inch deep hole

After the stacking base is secured by a six-legged node, the translation officially starts from the top and progresses downward to meet the base: as negative space in-between balloons got filled with wood sticks, we popped the balloons.


Process photo: South elevation

01.

02.

03.

04.


Final product: Elevation view

West

South

North

East


Study on Context Engagement


Study on Human Scale and Activities



Proposed Site: High-line, NYC Since the studio is meant to explore a certain type of structural methodology called “analogue computing”, which is based on the idea that under a specific rule-directed procedure, materials can interact in a way that the elements can collaboratively “find form.” The major focus is in pursuit of the structure and its spatial quality with the idea that this structure doesn’t necessarily need to prescribe specific activities like other architecture does, but is more open-ended. Nevertheless, we’re speculating and in favor of a possible relation between the interior space and installation arts. It is this suggestion of such a possible relationship that helps us finally specify our site location at Chelsea, at the street corner of 21st Street NW and 10th Ave, so that the structure would cantilever over the High-line, fully exploring its structural potential.



Why do we travel?

What are we expecting from travel?

We do not travel merely in pursuit of enjoyment: the enjoyment of environment, of sensual pleasure, or of intellectual interest. We travel in pursuit of exploration: an encounter with anything we’re not familiar with, anything that is challenging yet enlightening.

05 A Hotel on Milos island, Greece (4th Year Studio)

the Departure

Each building we visit or live in is a station we stop by. Our temporary engagement with such a station shall be physical and more importantly, intellectual.


Inspiration

Photo taken at Thera, Greece (2014)

Casa Malaparte depicted in film Le MĂŠpris by Godard (1964)


Site Plan


Facade Design Iterations (based on two critical yet typical sides) This series of design iterations is meant to explore how to maintain each tower as a singular massing while not compromising the view from hotel rooms, especially where private activities happen. To experience the landscape through physical exhaustion, Option 11, 12, 13 start emphasizing the presence of physical ascent and descent. 00

01

04

05

06

09

10

11


1

02

03

6

07

08

1

12

13


N W

typical tower plan

E

S

Material 01 Material 02 Window glazing Wire mesh screen N

W

S

14 Final Scheme: Unrolled Exterior Elevation Roof Deck +104.00 Level 08 +91.67 Level 07 +79.33 Level 06 +67.00 Level 05 +54.67 Level 04 +42.33

Level 05 +54.67 Level 04 +42.33 Level 03 +30.00 Level 02 +17.67 Level 01 +5.33 Sea Level +0.00

E


People use the staircase to approach the sea or sky. The enjoyment of walking with the rhythm of shadow does not interfere with the view through the window hindered.

privacy of people who are resting in the room. Neither is their

Unrolled Section: cut through staircase, from roof deck to level one


Section 05

Section 04

Section 03

Section 02

Section 01

Plan 01

Plan 02

Plan 03

Program A

Check-In

B

Leisure

00 Entry Porch 01 Front desk / Office 02 Storage 03 04 05 06

Sauna Changing room / Shower Lounge / Tea room Therapy / Message

--Yoga studio / Fitness --Bar / Wine cellar --Library

C

D/E/F

Eat

07 08 09 --

Rest

Total 16 rooms.

Outdoor dining Outdoor terrace Stair to the cliff Indoor dining; Kitchen

10 Writing desk / Tea room 11 Bedroom 12 Bathroom w/shower,closet 13 Terrace by the sea


Section 05

Section 04

Section 03

Section 02

Plan 01 Plan 02 Plan 03 Section 01


A

West Elevation

East Elevation

B


C

D

E

F



Sittin’ in the mornin’ sun I’ll be sittin’ when the evenin’ come Watching the ships roll in And then I watch ‘em roll away again I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay Watching the tide roll away Ooo, I’m just sittin’ on the dock of the bay Wastin’ time I left my home in Georgia Headed for the ‘Frisco bay Cause I’ve had nothing to live for And look like nothin’s gonna come my way So I’m just gonna sit on the dock of the bay Watching the tide roll away Ooo, I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay Wastin’ time Look like nothing’s gonna change Everything still remains the same I can’t do what ten people tell me to do So I guess I’ll remain the same, yes Sittin’ here resting my bones And this loneliness won’t leave me alone It’s two thousand miles I roamed Just to make this dock my home

(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding


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