Minghao William Du Architecture Portfolio

MINGHAO WILLIAM DU

SOFTENING MODERNISM 1 EMPIRE STATE PLAZA ADAPTIVE REUSE Design IV, Spring 2022, Individual Work

B. ARCH, COOPER UNION IRWIN S. CHANIN SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE [ 2018-2023

RESILIENT URBAN SPINES

URBAN DESIGN FOR GOWANUS Design IV, Fall 2021, Individual Work

FROM REDLINING TO BLUE ZONING

URBAN PROTOTYPE FOR LIBERTY CITY Exhibition, Fall 2021, Collective Research & Individual Design

HI-LOW LA

LOW-RISE HOUSING DESIGN IN VENICE, CA Design III, Spring 2021, Individual Work

CONTEXTUALIZED MODULARITY

PAVILION DESIGN IN LOWER MANHATTAN Architectonic II, Spring 2019, Individual Work

FORMAL ANALYSIS

ON THREE CANONICAL ARCHITECTURES

MAISON JAOUL TECTONIC STUDY Building Technology, Fall 2020, Group Work

URBANIZING THE EARTH

LANDFORM URBANISM FOR LOESS PLATEAU Thesis Prep, Fall 2022 , Individual Work

SOFTENING MODERNISM

EMPIRE STATE PLAZA ADAPTIVE REUSE

DESIGN IV OPTION STUDIO . THE COOPER UNION . SPRING 2022

Professor: Stella Betts

Individual Work

The site of the studio - under interrogation - is Empire State Plaza in New York’s capital city of Albany. Conceived and designed by the then Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller and the architect Wallace Harrison, Empire Plaza was built in the late 60s and early 70s and is a paradigm of modernist urban planning that played out in this era’s other such government centers as Brasilia, Chandigarh, Boston, to name but a few.

Through a series of choreographed operations, this project aims to readapt Empire State Plaza by transforming its relationship to its larger urban context and infrastructural systems, rethinking its program and use, adapting its existing buildings to become carbon neutral and imaging the possibilities towards a new kind of public plaza for the people of Albany and the citizens of New York.

This project will also serve as a platform for the re-imagining of modernist planning, urbanism and architecture - from multiple points of view - that has often not served its contexts, stood as resistant energy intensive examples of the carbon age, is programmatically mono-cultural, and in many cases fallen victim to knee-jerk demolition without better replacements. To this end, this study will include the recycling, re-use and modification of existing buildings.

SOFTNESS RE-REPRESENTATION THE SITE

The project starts by using experimental representation to attack the bureaucratic image of empire state plaza. Via the technique of photogrammetry, the reality is first transcripted into points with spatial and colored information, and then converted into meshes. The interpolation of the mesh turns the reality into undulating surfaces, softening the boundary between empire plaza and surrounding context.

UNDULATING GROUND DE-MONUMENTALIZING THE PLAZA

The design strategy echoes the implied concept of softness and smoothness derived from the representation by transforming the plaza’s relationship to its larger urban context. The design conceptualizes the original parking plinth as a new ground for intervention and proposes to insert four horizontal buildings with atriums around them by excavating the plinth. The new structures would accommodate new civic programs and enhance the connection with the city.

CRITIQUE OF FLATNESS RE-SKIN THE PLINTH AND THE TOWER

The project reskins both the vertical and horizontal surfaces, respectively towers and plinth, through translucent materials, specifically ETFE and PTFE. Conceptually, this skin is an inhabitable zone; its varied thickness corresponds to different programs. The PTFE skin of the plinth drops to become the facade of the inserted building.

GOWANUS RESILIENT URBAN SPINES

DESIGN IV OPTION STUDIO . THE COOPER UNION . FALL 2021

Instructors: Susannah Drake, Nadege Giraudet

Individual Work

To connect Gowanus with the existing urban fabric and optimize density in relation to the neighborhood’s flood zone, my project proposes several resilient urban spines running from the watershed to the canal. These spines would be populated by adaptive housing, depaved boulevards with green infrastructure, and renovated industrial buildings.

This proposal transforms selected east-west running roads in Gowanus into depaved boulevards with permeable paving and rain gardens for improving pedestrian accessibility and stormwater management. These open streets would join two separate blocks into one block by creating a shared space undisrupted by cars. The blocks along the depaved boulevards would be densified through a zoning that allows roof and backyard ADU to boost the overall FAR by twenty to thirty percent. In the flood zone, these ADU modules would secure residents with extra spaces on the rooftop for domestic use, while the ground floors can be freed up for non-residential programs to generate potential rent for the property-owner and enhance pedestrian experience.

The ultimate ambition of this project is to rethink the relationship between natural patterns and urban structure in the future city. This project recognizes the value of public space as green infrastructure and proposes several design strategies integrating water infrastructure into public landscapes. The project also discovers new value, via adaptive reuse, in previously neglected spaces such as rooftops, backyards, and abandoned industrial buildings.

Circulation

Each spine comprised two open streets for pedestrians and one vehicle lane. The vehicle lane in the flood zone would be elevated to ensure the functioning of the city at all times.

Water System

The depaved boulevards significantly improve the storm water management by enhancing the water absorbing capacity via permeable paving. Water treatment facility and rain water tanks are integrated into the public landscape. Open Space

These open streets would transform the vehicle lanes into public space for communal & commericial use, and improve pedestrian accessibility to the waterfront. The industrial park became the destinations of the pedestrian experience.

Double Block Zoning

Transform selected east-west running roads into depaved open streets. These open streets would join two separate blocks into one block by creating a shared space undisrupted by car.

Density

Evacuate and secure the density on low ground and absorb density on high ground in the proposed urban spines through a zoning that encourages adaptive housing and high density development outside the flood zone.

DOUBLE-BLOCK SPINES URBAN CORRIDOR FOR PEOPLE AND WATER

The project proposes to transform the road between two selected blocks into open street with permeable paving for pedestrian, jointing two separate blocks into one super block by creating a shared space for people and green infrastructure. he blocks along the depaved boulevards would be densified through a zoning that allows roof and backyard ADU to boost the overall FAR by twenty to thirty percent.

NEW GROUND, NEW DENSITY ADAPTIVE ADU HOUSING STRATEGY

Instead of relying on large-scale development on the flood zone, the project addresses the density issue by developing a parasitic housing strategy that densified the proposed urban spines. These prefabricated housing modules can be deployed on the rooftop and backyard of the existing blocks to boost the FAR. The parasitic housing strategy also facilitates a decentralized real estate mode, which would benefit the small-scale property owners.

BACKYARD ADU Type A: 2B

BACKYARD ADU Type B: 2.5B

Rooftop ADU Type A: 1B

Rooftop ADU Type B: Studio

Existing Structure

Adaptive Reuse: 270 Nevins St

As the end points of the urban spines, renovated industrial buildings become a future destination attracting people to the Gowanus waterfront. Adaptive reuse strategies for these industrial buildings focus on public accessibility and green infrastructure.

1. Harbor

2. Public Terrace

3. Retail Module

4. Public Circulation

5. Food Court

6. Public Art

7. UV Treatment

8. Planted Filtration Swales

9. Water Tank

10. Planted Couryard

11. Settlement Tanks

12. Rain Garden

13. Planted Basins

14. Roof

Existing Structure

Adaptive Reuse 2: 300 Nevins St

The surgical insertion of public circulation and new programmatic volumes will transform industrial buildings into a waterfront hub at a manageable cost. This new water infrastructure will help manage stormwater from the watershed.

1. Water Tower

2. Rooftop Food Court

3. Retail Module

4. Office & Art Studio

5. Performance Module

6. Water Tank

7. Green House & Urban Farm

8. Open Roof

9. Public Circulation

10. Stair to Bridge

11. Bridge

12. Rain Garden

13. Planted Basins

14. Harbor

FROM REDLINING TO BLUE ZONING EQUITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISK, LIBERTY CITY, MIAMI 2100

EXHIBITION AT MCAD

Instructors: Susannah Drake, Rafi Segal Teammate: Olivia Serra

This project exposes the relationship between racial segregation in South Florida and the growing threat of sea level rise and flooding in Miami. By identifying future dry lands and anticipating possible climate gentrification, our proposal offers alternative models for community - based development and equity capture for the low income black neighborhoods of Liberty City.

Existing conditions at Liberty City with projections of future flood zone. Initiate development of blocks along a new public park that is designed to manage storm water.

Concentrated development to strengthen connection to surrounding areas. Development of new commercial corridor within the block.

Density added to fill out the block and create additional opportunity.

Density added to fill out the block and create additional opportunity.

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DESIGN

III . THE COOPER UNION . SPRING 2021

Instructors: Nima Javidi, Nader Tehrani Individual Work*

From history and economy of the city to the politics of space, almost every aspect of our social life is deeply registered in the urban housing typologies, affordability and blockmassing distributions. Therefore, thinking about housing in architecture should have the capacity to include the widest range of themes around domesticity; yet, for architecture as a discipline to have agency in finding spatial solutions to the problems of housing in our contemporary metropolis, it has to be precise in its conceptual, programmaic, material and structural means and methods.

This studio uses an opportunity of a current public housing competition, called Low Rise: Housing Ideas for Los Angeles as a portal to find access to an in-depth understanding of affordable housing in the city, aiming to envision and contribute innovative new possibilies.

*The studio required three students to design three housing typologies on the same block. Only the typology of the author is presented in detail and the other two typologies are included as context massing.

EXQUISITE CORPSE THREE HOUSING TYPOLOGIES FOR URBAN BLOCK

The project starts with the development of three different typologies, aiming to propose alternative ways to densify existing residential blocks. Each typology has its own formal and organizational agency, while constituting a larger urbanism by calibrating the relationship to each other.

BACKYARD TYPOLOGY

Massing credited to Anderw Song

MID-BLOCK TYPOLOGY

Massing credited to the author

CORNER TYPOLOGY

Massing credited to Tianyang Sun

A continuous U-shape building that swallows the public space into its linear courtyards.

A building turns the corner with modules gradually changing the facings.

A series of aggregated modules that can be deployed to the backyard as ADU.

GROUND FLOOR: POROSITY

The ground floor emphasizes the porosity. Only 1/3 of the building touches the ground, creating thresholds for people and landscape to flow in and out.

SECOND FLOOR: DENSITY

The second floor maximizes the density through an intelligent layout featured a service spine. The south and north facade created different spatial conditions.

THIRD FLOOR: GENERALITY

The third floor features larger terraces that incorporate generous outdoor spaces into the dwelling. The staggering of the terraces brings dynamic to the facade.

INTERLOCKED UNIT PART-TO-WHOLE RELATIONSHIP

Four types of apartment units are interlocked and overlapped in section to create different views and experiences for the residents. This aggregation is enabled by a flexible staircase system. To accommodate different types of families, each unit would have certain degree of freedom to be reconfigured.

This drawing attempts to invent a form of representation beyond the normative techniques by using two techniques: Zip Details and Flipflop Oblique.

CLT wall

ext > int

rain screen: perforated corrugated metal panel

3’’ cavity/ 1’’steel square pipe facade system

5/8’’ exterior gypsum sheating air/vapor barrier

3’’ perlite insulation

90mm 3-ply clt wall pane

CLT floor assembly: top > bot

2’’ gycrete finish floor

3’’ cellulous acoustic insulation protection membrane 5-ply CLT floor

assembly:

CONTEXTUALIZED MODULARITY

A PAVILION DESIGN IN LOWER MANHATTAN

Individual Work

This project focuses on the development of a geometric modular system that is capable of creating diverse spatial conditions and urban gestures to negotiate the irregularity of a site in Lower Manhattan. The design employs formal analysis to reconceptualize the irregular site as a Euclidian interface defined by two displacement grid systems, which offers a referential framework for the modular system to operate.

The modular system started with a pair of interlocked conic surfaces twisting between vertical and horizontal plane, and then moved to the development of a formal system that synthesizes structural logic and lighting effect in both cellular and cluster scale; a single conic module performs as a structural joint between verticality and horizontality via interlocked geometry, while its aggregation accommodates various spatial conditions ranching from darkness to light, compression to expansion, opening to enclosure.

The interaction between dual formal systems, contextual grids and curvilinear modules, registers a dialectical relation between site specificity and geometry autonomy and ultimately reinterprets the grid as a regulating matrix for digital geometry.

ARCHITECTONIC II . THE COOPER UNION . SPRING 2019

Instructors: Ted Baad, Elisa Iturbe, Benjamin Aranda, Tamar Zinguer

CONIC MODULES GEOMETRIC JOINT

The basic module is comprised of two pairs of interlocking conic surfaces trimmed off each other, creating a twist between a vertical and a horizontal plane through a geometric joint. The modular systems are based on several types of combination among modules; each creates different spatial conditions. The modular system reacts to the architectural spaces by converting between horizontal and vertical direction, articulating different vertical levels, diverting horizontal movement, and modulating lighting.

DARK ROOM AND LIGHT ROOM PHENOMENOLOGICAL DUALITY

A spatial journey among four rooms is composed, which begins with a small dark room transited people to the interior, moves up to a small exterior lightroom, then move down to a big interior dark room, and finally reaches a big light room with a different orientation. A core geometric module opens up the wall between the large dark room and the lightroom, negotiating the two directionalities of the building.

AGGREGATION CELLULAR AND CLUSTER

The modular system started with a pair of interlocked conic surfaces twisting between vertical and horizontal plane, and then moved to the development of a formal system that synthesizes structural logic and lighting effect in both cellular and cluster scale; a single conic module performs as a structural joint between verticality and horizontality via interlocked geometry, while its aggregation accommodates various spatial conditions.

J. Baker house is not only exemplary in its expression of Loos’s raumplan, but also employs a spatialsystem to employ voyeurism. A crossed load-bearing wall system sets up a four-square grid that is fundamentally conflicted in its linear and diagonal qualities.

FORMAL ANALYSIS

A STUDY ON THREE CANONICAL ARCHITECTURES

Instructors: Peter Eisenman, James Lowder, Elisa Iturbe, Guido Zuliani

Teammates: Tianyang Sun, Kyungmin Park, Marina Akopyan

Formal Analysis priviledges the linguistic coherence and rupture of architectural forms. Material, site, structure, programs are only analyzed if it has a significant relationship to its form. The sacrifice of a holistic diagonsis is in exchange for a deep reading into an invisible logic of composition that can be appropriated into new design work. This specific series focuses on three architects ranging from Early Modern to Post Modern: Loos, Stirling and Venturi & Scott Brown.

While all elements conforms to the orthogonal grid, a tension between the diagonal quadrant placed by the two volumes of skylight/ swimming pool directs the male gaze to trepass between walls and act diagonally.

ADOLF LOOS JOSEPHINE BAKER HOUSE

FLEXIBLE HORIZONTAL DATUM RAUMPLAN

DESIGN III . THE COOPER UNION . FALL 2020

James Striling showed an increasing interest in bricolaging modern language with historical motifs and actual remains during his three museum competitions in Germany in the 1970s. Duesseldorf Museum of Art is among them. In this rather intense composition, the forms can be either read as a promenade slicing through the block and the builing to make a central court, or four palladian volumes are polarized to favor the north/south pathway.

DUESSELDORF MUSEUM OF ART JAMES STILRING

THE POP-MONUMENT INTERPLAY BETWEEN SURFACE AND VOLUME

One could generalize the house into become either a continuous surface wrapper containing volumes, or a series of displaced planes dividing the interior. But one would soon find that neither tells the whole story. Continuing Stirling’s dillemma, the undecidable nature of whether it is a pure duck or a pure decorated shed is source of Venturi & Scott Brown’s complexity.

MAISON JAOUL TECTONIC STUDY

The brief of the class asks for a large-scale re-construction of a building detail precedent. The choice of Maisons Jaoul not only stems from our curiosity towards Le Corbusier’s post-war transition to the brutalist style, but also an interest of the centuries-long investigation of implement both the archaic and the modern technology on supporting a roof. The catalan vaults of Jaoul is a great specimen to contrast the toughness of brickwork and delicacy of steel cables.

1. reinforced concrete

2. vault in brick (6.5cm x 10.5cm x 2.2cm)

3. lime concrete

4. cinder inll

5. concrete gutter

6. external wall (22cm)

7. air gap (3.5mm)

8. plaster on relon wood boards (1cm)

Instructor: Samuel Anderson

Teammate: Tianyang Sun

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THESIS PREP . THE COOPER UNION . FALL 2022

Instructors: Hayley Eber, Nora Akawi, Michael Young

Advisors: Susannah Drake, Nader Tehrani

Individual Work

In the book Architecture Without Architect, Bernard Rudofsky introduces the reader to architecture produced not by specialists but by the spontaneous and continuing activity of a whole people with a common heritage. He recognized these vernacular architectures as an art form that has resulted from human intelligence applied to uniquely human modes of life. One of the most radical solutions in the field of vernacular shelter is the underground villages in the Chinese Loess Plateau. Loess is silt, transported and deposited by the wind. Because of its great softness and high porosity, it can be easily carved to form inhabitable spaces, which contribute to a variety of earthen settlements based on excavation rather than addition. Such inhabitable land does double duty, with rooms below and fields above, echoing to a special ritual of production and dwelling. Nowadays, these earthen communities in the Loess Plateau are facing challenges from environmental shift, population change, and unparalleled urbanization. Despite housing more than 10 million people, they have been largely excluded from the discourse of planning and public policy.

Identifying the missing middle ground between nostalgic conservation and bureaucratic master plan in current rural developments, the thesis sees the opportunity to transform the rural areas in Loess Plateau into unique and resilient habitats by reinterpreting indigenous building form and construction methods, aiming to explore alternative typology and urbanism outside the western paradigm. In particular, this thesis proposes to extract essential elements from vernacular earthen settlements to develop an adaptive landform urbanism that addresses future environmental and population conditions while critically preserving the local cultures in the Loess Plateau. In a broader sense, the thesis would speculate an alternative mode of development to ameliorate the rural-urban divide, which is responsible for the broadest form of social inequalities in China.

SETTLEMENT ANALYSIS SUNKEN COUTYARD CAVE HOUSE

Nowadays, the sunken courtyard cave house settlements in the Loess Plateau are decaying due to the exodus of young population, the low density of its type, the difficult calibration, and the desire for modern houses. This analysis uses Dingguanying Village as a case study, examining the evolution of building types and infrastructure over 20 years. Most of the vernacular sunken courtyard cave houses and the open ground above them are replaced by generic town houses.

Dingguanying Village: 2021 Condition

Dingguanying Village: 1998 Condition