Nicole Chiu Architectural and Design Portfolio 2014

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design portfolio 2014

Education

Design Internships

Rhode Island School of Design | 2010-Present Candidate for Bachelor of Architecture and Bachelor of Fine Arts

X-Act Ltd | Hong Kong | 2013 Interior design intern; my experience consisted of several onsite visits, conceptual sketches for upcoming projects and proposing spatial plans, several on site visits

Rhode Island School of Design Pre-College | 2009 A six-week summer program with a focus in Architecture, accompanied by three core design studios

MLA Architects Ltd. | Hong Kong | 2013 Architectural Intern; CAD, attended meetings for contractors, conceptualization of program KNA Design | Beverly Hills, CA | 2011 Intern; Making and designing project boards with existing proposals, Learning about material use, materiality, and material as a composition for interior spaces Modative Architecture | Los Angeles, CA | 2010 Intern; model making, CAD, on-site visits to realised projects, meetings, and interaction with clientel

Relevant Courses & other experience

Skills

Model and Wood Shop Assistant Technician | Providence | 2014-present Skilled in a range of hand woodworking tools as well as machinery such as the table saw and mold-making

Architectural Conceptual thinking and realisation, Model Making, Experiential and Drafted hand Drawings, hybrid renderings, AutoCAD, Rhino, Python, Laser Cutting, casting and form work construction.

Tooling Infrastructure/Adcanced Studio/RISD Fall 2013 Worked closely with generating our own material library as well as casting and pouring concrete and plaster 1:1 models.

Wheel Throwing | RISD Spring 2013 Focused on building techniques for wheel throwing. A particular interest in how to articulate forms on the wheel that could be come modulated and put togethers

Design Photoshop/Illustrator as diagrammatic and rendering tools, Typography, color theory Personal/Visual Arts Developing film using a dark room, wheel throwing, painting and differences in media such as gouache and watercolour, live model drawing.

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Trees are everywhere. ones.

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Dead trees, live trees, processed, even fake plastic

Whoever invented paper, well there is no feeling in it anymore. It usually comes in 5 lb paper pre-packaged 500 sheets with different levels of bleach for stiffness or eco-friendly “duller� paper, and also dont forget that rediculous brown paper that ends up being 5 times more expensive than the processed ones sold at Staples.

Their pulp beginnings are squeezed through human scale conveyers and are one continuous length until cut to factory presets. The arrangement of conveyer belts seems a little redundant, but what isnt wasteful these days?

What about that trash on the street? Mix it up with a little bit of structure and chemical reaction, there you have it. Stiff, raw, mushy, oatmeal.

paper(con)crete/machine Paper’s various upcycling capabilities from infill, to insulation and finally a possibility of building component made me wonder why papaercrete was not more widely used. Although its drawbacks are health hazards, it’s simplicity, sustainability and various ways of application make it an ideal building material. Blocks, Panels and any component are ultimately 60% lighter than those of concrete which take away the burden of manual transportation.

any pick up truck w/ tow hitch

secured lid so material does not escape metal tub used as mixing container

opening that allows for controlled flow

open form for drive pour

drive n’ pour tow mixer

building component: (I) The testing of papercrete materiality aided in determining the most efficient shape for the panel. As more material was added to counteract the hole that was taken away from the center, a fin shape was translated.

From the initial fin, and working within similar parameters, a family of modules was developed to accomodate different aggregations. Some movable, and some stationary.

The most difficult limitation of papercrete was such that it could not get wet (mold) thus being used primarily for interior partitions.

building component: (II) In response to the structural integrity and compressive strengths of the papercrete, an additional steel cage was proposed to isolate the papercrete layer from the rest of the structure, which could now become pure concrete.

As a means for a building component rather than strictly interior component, the concrete would not rot, and the papercrete panels could also be replaced, and independently installed via a spring mechanism.

This proposal was specifically to solve the problem of changing from an interior wall partition to a built construction component that could be a more permanent structure resilient to water.

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Wrinkled, faceted surface. You are stiff like a bleached collar from the 1920s, but absolutely not old fashioned. I remember when you were going to keep me warm in the winter, when I was going to put you up against my window to block the draft, after i vacuum sealed those edges shut.

There is something turrellian about you. the way during the day, you appear to be glowing from behind, and a warmth slips into the room, into the dark cracks, brick, and trim.

I am afraid to hinge open what pandoras box kept so hard to stay closed.

I am seduced.

And yet the mystery continues after sunset when your warmth dissapears into a blinding blue glare, the longer I keep my stare the more it eats away the space. Where did it go?

And then I blinked and it came back.

the twenty-four hour cycle The goal of this installation was to project indirect day-lighting into the space through the use of a flat pannel (which just exceeded the dimensions of the existing window behind). The slightly folded surface was an aesthetic decision in playing with the existing texture of the white coaated brick wall. it’s placement on the pole also gives opportunity for a hinging mechanism in which the pannel can also be a door-like aperture for the space, and user-controlled.

After the sun has set, light sensors on the pannel are activated (through absence of phenomena) and radiate blue diffuse artificial light by LED diodes.

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Rusted steel, piles of rubble, chainlink fence, an impenetrable site to the public a single light bulb shines over a high wall on Wyndham Road. The smell of music finds its way from the famous Lan Kwai Fong and everybody wants a drink.

There’s a place up the road that is quiet, it’s openings radiate warmth like a moon-kissed skyline in the middle of a sea. There builds curiousity for the beyond but infinitely approaching horizon.

central police station conceptual renderings of an old police station located in Central, Hong Kong.

In process of a bidding phase to reactivate the abandoned site, this space is meant to celebrate local artists as well as house a microbrewery with a rotating monthly mural.

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ss e m b l a g e People are often grouped by stereotpyes, that originate from a set of parameters. These parameters are assumed, distributed evenly, and result in monoculture. More often than not, the nuances of ones personality are overlooked and taken over by these cliches, the surface is rarely penetrated.

If we took an opposite approach and only made sense of the nuances, it would be obvious that they can come together in infinite assemblages.

vineyard A place so vast and disorienting, called for small niches to claim interiority and intimacy. These small modular tent-like structures occupy each side as a different kind of inhabitation as well as act as a seasonal farmers market.

Whether it be a bench, table, planter, or walkway, it’s limitations allow the person to weave through the structures as if they were through a vineyards labyrinth.

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From stone to building, building to rubble, rubble neglected a tear falls from the face open to the sky. Light particles find its ways through the cracks between the pores of the rubble, the stagnant rainwater that collects over time down there.

From inside I can make of the outside how my two eyes make of one picture.

My brain fills in the gaps which have been filled in front of me.

There is room to think.

design build Located in Pawtucket, RI a class collaboration of seventy students began with a design process that from twelve to six then finally one working proposal.

This process ranged in different tasks was addressing a site located along the banks of the Blackstone River. In this design build, I was a part of the the main design team who argued the refurbishing and reinhabitation of an unaddressed concrete slab that existed on the site.

there were times after the sun had set that we still had to continue construction.

A photo of the arbor at eighty percent completion lit by the headlights of a classmates pickup truck

arbor in its completed stages

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m b r y o n i c s Music, as said by Schopenhauer is the most successful way through which abstraction has been manifested by a being. It does not compare to any kind of pictorial art or represention to be visualized. It is not nihilistic.

In fact, it is like a tractor beam, it transports, transfigures, demateralizes and rebuilds the mind into an internal world, of which is unique through sensations.

And so, with the aid of music, we can see a once banal world through a film of internal ears. It helps us see the sun brighter or tunnels ominous, driving as precarious or safe between the belt and the clip that holds us down.

A looped song becomes meditative, in that such world is recreated, reheard, and reinterpreted every time whereas an album can infer an overall mood but is tweaked, pinched with each play.

But if you wish to see the world as it is, through your own objective subjective truth, then do not listen to anything at all, surely you can create a world of your own.

a world of its own From birth, the fetal position has a realm of inherent comfort. Our essential upbringing, genetic transfer, and initial nutrition was all acquired from this state.

Although unexplainable, this phenomena is recreated through an architecture that allows only the cocoon-like stature to artificially recreate this sensation.

Set to be deployable, a meditative state of mind is also encouraged through isolation from ones surroundings and recluse.

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u t s i d e i n If you have ever seen a child play with a toy, you will realize that (a) they immediately put it in their mouth, (b) they often throw things on the ground, but most importantly,(c) over time if the child is matured enough he will learn what it is meant for.

The only limitation toys have are their material. Not in the users sense but in the physical degradation over time. It is easy to play pretend and imagine how the toys can become animated; in the mind this power is endless, and is only unleashed at a controlled rate.

If we could access the other eighty percent which our consciousness hides from us, there is no end as to what kind of power we could have. design principles, fall 2011

tectonic operations Using found objects (with a maximum of two different materials), the goal was to create a structure which could not exceed the dimensions of a wine box, 9” x 9” x 12”. Because the bungee cord offers flexibility and a movable operation, it is able to adapt to it’s surrounding context.

The sphere itself is made up of many modules of tetrahedrons that were individually fabricated then woven together.

foreign operations Synthesizing a classmates foreign operation and evaluate the conflic​ ts to then create a-new. ​ In the combination of two materials, the most challenging part of the marriage was the arguing materials.

Where the cardboard tubes (adhered to the bungee cord) provided to be a durable tension-dependent module; the plastic cups allowing for linear and axial regularity. Taking the successful aspects, the new operation involved a joinery system that ultimately “locked” the tetrahedrons by using the plastic cups as the joint. The structure’s overall malleability reduced to a pivotal motion, however was still able to accomplish and resolve the structural integrity that the initial module had lacked.

architectonic operations In the final phase, the paper translation of the spatial operation was accomplished through a means of retaining the tensile properties within the original module. The main problem of the system, however, was it’s infinite proposal, thus resulting in an infinite system. The spatial complex was then accomplished was a dialated grid that spoke to horizontal, vertical axis as well as it’s relationship with ground and sky.

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center, open, pull soft mush, there are different ratios of compound to make porcelain. in a bucket and into the clay mixer the fresh slip is compressed into blocks awaiting throw. a methodological process: ball clay, throw, steady to center, open, pull.

with my hand as much of the process as the outcome, feeling into a finished piece each is careful not to extract too much water and compression is key.

fractaled window two of a series of twenty drawings about the obsession of spatial relations as well as decomposing and recomposing. vrevolving around the fusion of built and imagined space.

labyrinthal landscape A collapsed view of sketches that were based off of a reoccuring dream that dissolved ones sense of movement, self, and identity.