Wenqi Chen Work Samples
W E N Q I cellphone: (01) 702 580 3515 Wenqi.Chen@rice.edu C H E N e-mail:
CONTENT 1. COUPLING100 2. 24H URBAN COMPOUND 3. CIVIC BOUNDARIES 4. PUBLIC REALM 5. GRIDS TRANSITION 6. OLYMPIC VILLAGE HOUSING ON THE EIFFEL TOWER
COUPLING 100 Fall 2013 Arch 501 Professor Ron Witte
Floors in Perspective
Floors in Perspective
Floors in Perspective
24h Urban Compound Spring 2014 Arch 502 Professor Mark Wamble The studio required student to base on one case study, developing a new strategy by transplanting the case from its original context to the urban context in Houston. The West university district is a typical community in the city of Houston. The 24-hour compound in this district will be a center for the residents or guests to work out, take training courses, and have meetings and social activities. The program is flexible and the rooms or swimming pools should be changeable to fit different activities during day and night. I took the tube-like module from my case study–Vitra Haus by Herzog & de Mueron, making the tube self-folded and compressed at its two ends to create a new module. Therefore single-high, doublehigh and triple-high spaces are formed in one module, creating rich space experience. Within this module, indoor and outdoor programs, group and private activities could be reasonable placed. By arranging modules with different widths parallel on the site, I created a porous system in the urban grid of Houston, which connecting the residential and commercial sides on the two sides of the site effectively.
FROM
Moduel (Tube)
Self-Folded
AGGREGATION
Quenby Street
Fordham Street
Grouping
Connecting
SPACE SHIFTS FOR DAY/NIGHT PROGRAMS
Lake Street
Robinhood Street
Tangley Street
Plumb Street
CLUB LIFE (OUTDOOR)
CLUB LIFE (INDOOR) strength forum
leisure pool
club lounge
leisure pool
Kirby Drive
teaching pool Quenby Street
Robinhood Street
Tangley Street
Dunstan Road
Bolsover Street
aquatic performace
group meeting
changing
cafe sauna
club terrace
CASE STUDY
store delivery
dining
pool deck
SUPPORTIVE
multi-purpose
sauna
training deck
massage
club performace
massage classroom
Site Plan
Skewed
whirl pool
kids’ night out
whirl pool
meditation room
admin cooking storage laundry reservation
private meeting
VITRAHAUS, Herzog & de Meuron
MODULE continuous, outdoor detached, outdoor outdoor+indoor detached, indoor
INTERSECTED
detached, indoor
24
13
15
17
26
19 22
up
down
up
down
21 up
down
up
down
23
14
16
18
2nd FLOOR PLAN 13. laundry 14. storage 15. sauna 16. multi-purpose room 17. massage 18. massage 19. meditation room 20. dining 21. training deck
8 1
3
6
9
up
down
up
down up
2
down
up
4
up
5
GROUND LEVEL PLAN
7
10
11
12
1. store 2. delivery 3. classroom 4. strength forum 5. changing room 6. administration office 7. reservation 8. changing room 9. strength forum 10. drinking 11. cooking demonstration 12. kitchen
20
3rd FLOOR PLAN 22. leisure pool 23. leisure pool 24. whirling pool 25. whirling pool 26. teaching pool 27. semi-private teaching pool
25
27
TRANSVERSE SECTION
LONG SECTION
Diagrammatic Model
Final Model
CIVIC BOUNDARIES Fall 2014 Arch 503 Professor Carlos JimĂŠnez The scheme of Civic Boundaries project is based on the idea that the civic life should achieve smoothly transition between different institutions and should maintain the continuity with the urban condition. By looking at previous geometry strategies for civic building, the project innovated in articulate the existing of different institutions within one singular volume and coordinate their relationship at the same time. The combination of material and the formal language also create different reading in the context of 3300 Richmond Avenue.
Geometry & Program
2 2
6
2
2 3
4
5
1
8
7
Third Floor
17 9
13
10 12
11
Second Floor Site Plan
Ground Floor
Section
Rendering
West Elevation
South Elevation
PUBLIC REALM Fall 2014 Arch503 Professor Carlos Jiménez
Case Study: Lalìn Townhall, Mansilla+Tuñón Architects Lalín Town Hall Pontevedra, Spain. Mansilla+Tuñón Architects, 2004~2011 A503 . Fall 2014 . Rice School of Architecture . Wenqi Chen
GRIDS TRANSITION Spring 2015 arch 504 Professor Neyran Turan The common master framework I worked with other two fellows in the studio suggested a combination of two urban cultures: verticality and horizontality. Under the principle set up by the master frameowork, in order to make these two parts interact with each other in a positive way, the connection of the common master frame work is not enough. This project aimed the densification issue of the super blocks, developing a strategy in which two sets of grid used to determine the architecture on one block. A ground grid and a highrise grid (block grid) determined the orientation of middle rise buildings and highrise building respectively. Lower part the highrise transits its orientation with the growth of its height. By the transition and integration of the grids, the project made the horizontality in a highrise and the verticality in the middle rises possible.
BLOCK TYPOLOGY
SUPER BLOCK TYPOLOGY
SIMPLY COMBINATION
INTEGRATING VERTICALITY AND HORIZONTALITY
HIGHRISE HORIZONTALITY AND MIDDLERISE VERTICALITY
ORIENTATION
S
COMMON MASTER FRAMEWORK GRID
Site Plan
BLOCK GROUND LEVEL GRID FOR SOUTH FACING
TRANSITION OF GRIDS
TRANSITION LEVEL PLAN
2ND FLOOR
3RD FLOOR
GROUND LEVEL PLAN
TYPICAL HOUSING UNITS
INDOOR AREA: 2425 SF OUTDOOR AREA: 663 (+1538) SF TOTAL: 3088 (+1538) SF TOTAL UNITS: 57 UNITS
INDOOR AREA: 1035 SF OUTDOOR AREA: 75 SF TOTAL:1110 SF
INDOOR AREA: 835 SF OUTDOOR AREA: 75 SF TOTAL:910 SF
INDOOR AREA: 835 SF OUTDOOR AREA: 75 SF TOTAL:910 SF
TOTAL UNITS: 24 UNITS
TOTAL UNITS: 24 UNITS
TOTAL UNITS: 24 UNITS
INDOOR AREA: 1060 SF OUTDOOR AREA: 75 SF TOTAL:1135 SF
INDOOR AREA: 1730 SF OUTDOOR AREA: 150 SF TOTAL:1880 SF
TOTAL UNITS: 32 UNITS
TOTAL UNITS: 32 UNITS
LOWER LEVEL
UPPER LEVEL
LOWER LEVEL
INDOOR AREA: 4150 SF OUTDOOR AREA: 375 SF TOTAL: 4525 SF
INDOOR AREA: 2860 SF OUTDOOR AREA: 150 SF TOTAL: 3010 SF
TOTAL UNITS: 8 UNITS
TOTAL UNITS: 4 UNITS
UPPER LEVEL
MIDDLE RISE ROOF PLAN
A Tower on a Tower with a Tower Inside Olympic Village Housing on the Eiffel Tower
It is a symbol and infrastructure. Furthermore, how do you graft onto this sacrosanct object of French identity, considering the olympics last only a month, and are notorious for extravagantly over blown budgets, and questionable benefit to the host nation. Our project addresses each of these challenges with a keenness for simple solutions. We began by discerning something critical about the urban influence of the Eiffel Tower on the city of Paris. Because of Paris’ timid and sporadic relationship with tall buildings, the tower has a very strong orienting effect when it looms, peeks, or juts out into view in often unexpected, frequent and even distant places. We decided that our intervention would begin from the second platform and up, this way the tower could continue normal daily operations, make a clean separation between athletes andpublic, and maintain the incredible gravity defying spectacle one sees when arriving at the foot of the tower. We also decided early on that prefabrication, economy of materials, and cost would be a primary concern, but these are not restrictions, rather they are key assests to the spatial experience and social impact of our design. We designed a scaffolding space frame, forming a skeletal tube around the tower, and populated the tube with modular living units of typical stud wall construction. Early on we expressed a strong inclination to explore the verticality of the tower, and the space frame allowed us to surpass the seemingly implied height limit of the existing tower. Additionally, we chose to work with self contained modules as they would allow us to freely compose the facade of the building. We have also nearly eliminated the need for actively air conditioned spaces in the building, and the units could be reused long after the end of the olympics. In composing the facades we determined that the occupancy of each level would gradually increase as the tower rose, to allow much of the existing tower to remain exposed through the scaffolding until reaching the top, with our addition continuing upward. By making this series of simple decisions, our project allows the tower to exhibit itself to its occupants in a way that creates a uniquely rich spatial experience. By enveloping the tower, we created an immense room around the tower, both interior and exteriror. The Eiffel Tower rises up through the center, its gradually narrowing, rationalistic curves opposed to the regimented and relentless pattern of the scaffolding. It resembles the skeleton of some long extinct animal suspended in a natural history museum, and it would be a literal example of how “this will kill that,” apart from the fact that the existing tower is the literal foundation of our addition. The facade uses two color treatments for the unit siding. The brass colored siding traces and boosts the reading of the exisiting tower inside, and at night, will reflect the glow of the tower lights.The brass gradually transition to the dark grey which will help the diminish the weight and density of the top of the tower. At night these units will all but disappear except for any light coming from inside the unit. Therefore at night, the composition will support the tower’s role as a beacon to the city, with seemingly floating points of light above the tower.
From extremely close, the tower can be understood as the sum of its parts. But this reading of scale dissolves after moving only a short distance away
The full profile of the Eiffel Tower is also captive to a very small radius. The iconic image of the tower has a locality that only relates to this very small portion of Paris
Beyond that radius the tower can still be spotted frequently from all over the city, but rarely is it seen in its entirety, only from the second plaform and above
Although the tower is a cardinally oriented object, the spire, at a distance, flattens to a two dimensional shape, so assigning significance or orienting oneself by relationship to a particular facade becomes irrelevant.
The relationshop between the tower and the city at large becomes quite simple. The full profile of the tower is an international icon but only relates to a very small sector of the city. But from even kilometers away the tower remains a beacon, like the north star or orienting oneself by the position of the sun. If the tower is on your right or left, near or far, it can reveal quite a lot about your surroundings.
Using prefabricated units, we compose a tower that increases in opacity and occupancy as it grows. In doing so we expose as much of the existing tower inside
We leave the lower decks to operate normally, and draw a simple separation between the tourist public, and the athletic housing above
3rd public deck
2nd public deck
1st public deck
Existing power generation, water pumps
Teamwork with Eric Burnside
There is a partial thinning in density at the top deck to allow visitors to continue to visit the tower floor, as well as reveal the end of the existing tower, exposing the proportion that cotinues upward in cantilever
Vertical circulation is dispersed to prevent creating consolidated moments of continuous opacity on the facade
Shared programs area evenly dispersed throughout the tower. They form bands of glazing on the facade that are split into pieces and shift to break up the controlling rhythm of space created by the housing unit grid.
Precedents
METRICS Levels: 63 54 residential levels 9 Public levels 900 2BR units Gross area / unit :29.6 sqm Net area / unit: 21.6 sqm Gross Public area: approx. 4727 sqm Total Gross Area: 55,559 sqm
Two-thirds of new construction is connected directly to the existing tower. The remaining third is in cantilever
Existing tower subsumed by scaffolding space frame
Early stage structure/expansion/city relation studies
trocadero
beaugrenelle
ecole militaire
Transfer of vertical load vectors to the foundation
Passenger elevators. skip sto every 5 floors
montmarte
Passenger elevators. skip sto every 5 floors
Service elevator
SERVICE ELEVATOR
EGRESS STAIR A
0-200 m
Max. Distance - 31.45 m
PASSENGER ELEVATOR A
Separation - 34.84 m
Fire stair changes orientation to accomodate the profile of the tower
.2-1 km
Max. Distance - 39.65 m
PASSENGER ELEVATOR B
EGRESS STAIR B
1-4 km Exisiting express elevator to level Jules Verne
First athlete arrival checkpoint
4-8 km
200m
1km
4km
compound
8km
CIRCULATION DIAGRAM
EMERGENCY EGRESS PLAN 1.250
MEP SCHEME 1.750
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
384.3 m
380.2 m
PLAN +62
376.1 m
372.0 m
367.9 m 4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
PLAN +59
4.100
363.8 m
359.7 m
355.6 m
351.5 m 4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
347.4 m
1 4.100
1 4.100
2 4.100
339.2 m
3 4.100
4 4.100
4 4.100
5 4.100
343.3 m
2 4.100
3 4.100
5
335.1 m
331.0 m
4.100
6 4.100
6
326.9 m
7
322.8 m
8
318.7 m
DETAIL SECTION
4.100
7 4.100
4.100
8 4.100
4.100
9 4.100
9 4.100
10 4.100
10 4.100
11 4.100
314.6 m
310.5 m
11 306.4 m
4.100
12
PLAN +44
12 302.3 m
A
B
C
E
D
F
G
H
I
J
K
298.2 m
L
294.1 m
290.0 m
285.9 m
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
281.8 m
L
PLAN +37 277.7 m
273.6 m
269.5 m
PLAN 37
PLAN 62
265.4 m
261.3 m
257.2 m
253.1 m
249.0 m
244.9 m
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
240.8 m
4.100
TYPICAL WALL SECTION 236.7 m
232.6 m
228.5 m
224.4 m 4.100
N
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
TOWER CONNECTION DETAIL
4.100
220.3 m
1 4.100
1 216.2 m
4.100
2 4.100
2 4.100
3 4.100
3 4.100
4 4.100
SITE PLAN
212.1 m
4
208.0 m
5
203.9 m
6
199.8 m
7
195.7 m
4.100
5 4.100
4.100
6 4.100
4.100
7 4.100
4.100
8 4.100
8 4.100
9 4.100
10 183.4 m
4.100
11 4.100
PLAN +16
187.5 m
4.100
10 4.100
191.6 m
9
11 4.100
12
12
179.3 m
175.2 m
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
171.1 m
L
167.0 m
162.9 m
158.8 m
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
154.7 m
L
150.6 m
146.5 m
PLAN +5
142.4 m
PLAN 16
PLAN 59
138.3 m
134.2 m
130.1 m
126.0 m
121.65 m
116.5 m 4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
4.100
1
1 4.100
4.100
2
2 4.100
4.100
3
3 4.100
4.100
4
4 4.100
4.100
5
5 4.100
4.100
6
6 4.100
4.100
7
7 4.100
4.100
8
8 4.100
4.100
9
9 4.100
4.100
10
10 4.100
4.100
11
11 4.100
4.100
12
12
A
A
B
C
D
E
F
PLAN 5 N
ARRIVAL PLAN
N
G
H
I
J
K
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
L
PLAN 44
SECTION 1:2500
58.8 m
PLAN 0
scaffolding connector segment
600 mm
Metal mesh bodyrail
1100 mm
Existing tower structure Steel collar with pin joint connections
pipe section scaffolding - steel 50 cm di.
corrugated aluminum panel
Pipe section steel strut 50 cm di.
R250 mm rigid foam insulation O.S.B
Pipe section steel strut 25 cm di.
600 mm
rectangle tube section beam - steel 400 mm O.C.
I Section girder - steel
curtain wall - double laminated glass panel
1800 mm
Steel T section runner with multiple connection points
Steel unit mounting carriage. Welded to primary structure
spandrel beam w/ depth to allow penetration of scaffolding beam
Mounting carriage spanning support
Lateral scaffolding
Dark water
Supply water
Primary walkway support. Tapering steel beam in cantilever. Welded to primary structure
1000 mm
Steel Floor joists with cutouts for mechanical connections
poured terrazzo floor on steel deck aluminum soffet/slab edge panel pin joined lateral scaffold bracing 25 cm di. corrugated aluminum panel rigid foam insulation
LIVING UNIT DETAIL
O.S.B 50 x 100 mm steel stud rotating glass louver screen
sliding glass door
300 mm
insulative curtain
beam for connection of unit to primary structure
200 mm 155 mm
2677 mm
117 mm 200 mm
TYPICAL WALL SECTION 1:400
TOWER CONNECTION 1:500
8.2 m
4.1 m
4.1 m
4.1 m
4.1 m
4.1 m
4.1 m
4.1 m
8.2 m
322.8 m
318.7 m
314.6 m
310.5 m
306.4 m
302.3 m
298.2 m
294.1 m
1.55 m
0.5 m
7.7 m
DETAIL SECTION 1:400 MODEL PHOTO
0.5m
2.0 m
24.2 m
2.0 m
8.7 m