Qianzhen Li SELECTED WORKS
LI 李
乾
震
1. “bridging with water.”.........................................................................4 2. “the stitch”.................................................................................................12 3. “the social bubble”.............................................................................20 4. “living, under the same roof”....................................................24 5. “cuckoo’s nest”......................................................................................28 6. “doorway daybed’...............................................................................30 7. precedent analysis...........................................................................34
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“Bridging with water”
以水为桥
ICC COURTHOUSE
Syracuse NY USA Semester V-2023
Water, same as justice, is a global condition. This ICC Courthouse design emphasizes water as a critical element of the architectural subject while delivering the programs and functions of a courthouse. Looking at Morphosis’s Diamond Ranch High School as a precedent, this project echoes the decision to fold and unfold planes to generate structure that is coherent with the immediate natural landscape, making water to be part of the “unfolding,” and as a ligature for justice. Water, as a mean to preserve and deliver justice.
“movement” - concept model
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The project started out with an examination of the urban context. The UN secretariat building sits across the Hudson River while the site itself is on the Hallmark of New York’s Industrial past — Gantry State Park. The gantries here worked as an adaptor between land and water for the trains that sustained the city. The gantries then frames water as equally important to land, if not more so, which architecture rarely does. So a question was posed: how does one frame water as a subject?
iteration 1: movement
movement of train carriages as they go from water to land
iteration: landscape
iteration: roof condition
circulation path of different occupants
iteration 2: movement
form generation
“Edge Condtion” - concept diagram
“roof planes and volumes”
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The edge condition of the urban context was carefully studied and interpreted. The boundary is then blurred and extruded to create a porous form that allows water to coexist, to rise over this form, instead of being restrained and defined.
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“the stitch” ruinous park Florence, Italy Semester VI -2023
QIANZHEN LI photography, digital/physical modeling, digital/physical drawings JACOB COFFEY physical modeling, digital drawings KAREN VILLACIS physical modeling, digital drawings
Referencing Robert Smithson’s “Ruins in Reverse,” The Stitch comments on the frailty of constructions and denoting public structures as artifacts of how we occupy the grounds around us. The site is situated atop an abandoned mining facility, with its hillside structures and dock remaining prominent on site. Since the failure of the previous built environment remains standing, we sought to question structures through the lens of material and time.
By investigating the form (or lack thereof) of the rubble and debris, we identified and proposed repeatable shapes and volumes in these debris as the base for our model. Quickly noticing the disconnections between the plateaus and the process of working to stitch the virtual model to represent the real ground conditions brought forward the keyword “stitch,” or “bridge” in the circulation sense. 13
text1
Light vs. Structure Syracuse NY USA Semester I-2020
36cm x 100cm, Ink on paper
catwalk section
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Light vs. Structure Syracuse NY USA Semester I-2020
amphitheatre section (linework by Karen Villacis)
on material
Our proposed construction, since it ties in intimately with the previous structures, has been given form by the rubble (the geotextile that holds the back wall of the amphitheater), it has also given form to the rubble (cages of rubbles and debris held up together via steel Gabion cages). The ruins are also reinforced by our structure, tied in together. Yet if the ruins fall, the new structures will surely fail with them. catwalk elevation (linework by Karen Villacis)
17 dock elevation (linework by Karen Villacis)
on weathering
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Light vs. Structure Syracuse NY USA Semester I-2020
The design moves, consisting of two tectonic structures and two stereotomic excavations connects the plateaus - both in the circulation sense and granting the ability to experience the site in a more intimate manner and amplify the existing programs on the site.
19 plan (by Jacob Coffey)
“the social bubble”
a permanent neighborhood typology for a potentially semi-perminent pandemic Syracuse NY USA Semester V-2023
«we stumbled into this world, bare, unrefined and uncouth. it’s branches shaped us, nurtured us, taught us good manners and sheltered us, anchored us to the ground and we escape the nomadic nature of our existence escape the things we found and treasured, the people we gathered and left behind.»
Exploded Oblique
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Light vs. Structure Syracuse NY USA Semester I-2020
The 2020 global pandemic has altered the course everyday life, and one of which is one’s perception of private and public spaces. This residential proposal suggests a compromise between abiding by the government imposed policies and retaining some sovereignty over the social aspect of one’s dwelling, the “social bubble”, following New Zealand’s COVID policy for limited-exposure to the general public. The flexibility of spatial arrangement becomes imperative to a lot of spaces in a pandemic ridden society. In this residential proposal, the customizability of the communal space stems from the residents’ willingness to devote time and effort for expanding their personal space and cooperation with their neighbors. The issue with co-op housing under the context of COVID is their temporality. The proposal here, then, takes the temporality into a semi-permanent structure that invites the residents to take part in its ultimate fruition. As seen in many communal projects such as das Prinzessinnengarten, collective labor on communal gardens has yielded much success in bringing people together. The hope is to have the residents that live together, come together, and enjoy the fruit of their labor, together. This already-enclosed-courtyard from the buildings next to them, drawing the residents from the 3 buildings and allowing them to gather (or separate) in this collective structure, promotes interaction between the residents by offering them the choice of entering their private residence first, their communal family second. This is inspired by Riken Yamamoto’s reconceptualization of residential units in post-war Japane, becoming a family, or in this case, a community becomes an active decision, you “do”a community, or a family by entering the commons.
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“living,The under the same roof” Roof? Li a Qianzhen co-housing project
Understanding the friction produced by the public and private sphere of communal Syracuse NY USA housing, this co-housing project aimed to produce a radical reconfiguration, inspired by Semester III-2021 the Japanese “ie,” “nema,” “mise” organization or the Middle-Eastern Bazaars. Due to the unique terrain conditions of the site, this project reverts the public space from the Understanding the friction floor produced by roof the public private the sphere of communal ground to the whileand filtering private spaces from public through a series of housing, this co-housing project aimed produce a radical reconfiguration, inspired of usage for the spaces from vertical bands. Thetospaces will not only offer negotiation by the Japanese “ie,” “nema,” “mise” to organization and the Middle-Eastern public and public commercializing part of one’sBazaars. residence, hence the bazaar.
PUBLIC SPHERE COMMUNAL SPHERE POTENTIAL COMMERCIAL SPHERE PRIVATESPHERE
longitudinal section
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Due to the unique terrain conditions of the site, this project reverts the public space from the ground floor to the roof while filtering the private spaces from public through a series of vertical bands. The spaces will not only offer negotiation of usage for the spaces from public and public to commercializing part of one’s residence, hence the bazaar.
cross section
typical housing unit
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“cuckoo’s nest” a micro home project Syracuse NY USA Semester IV-2022 Group project with Tianyi Zheng, Adri Virag
In cuckoo’s nest, we were inspired by the materiality of Slocum hall renovation and Gordon Matta-Clark’s destructive methodology to create a parasitic home that sits in the First-Year-Studio rafters. The micro-home is encased in bamboo paneling referencing Slocum auditorium siding. Making use of perforated bamboo, cukoo’s nest is glazed where it punctures through the Slocum roof, allowing natrual light to stream through the openings.
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“doorway daybed” furniture study
Syracuse NY USA Semester V - 2023 Metalwork in collaboration with Ian Herrmann
We often talk about thresholds as interruptions of spaces, as transitional necessities, to introduce variance in spatial qualities. The plane manifests physically as the door closes and opens, but the plane of threshold never really changes, it remains static, framed by its jamp, its header and sill, and when the hinges come together, the plane is then materialized. In this examination, we assume the seperation plane to be no longer static, nor planar. Its two-dimensional existence elongated into the third. This project firsted started out with an examination of Hans Wegner’s folding chair, in which to sit down, one has to perform a serie of actions around the chair, a ritualistic routine. This project aims to do the same, creating rituals with a door frame.
BENDING
This playful installation has its predecessor in infant swings. The canvas unfolds into a daybed for the weary three-dimensional travelers to take a minute and rest in the in-between space.
WELDING
WEAVING
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Syracuse NY USA Semester I-2020
THE UNFOLDING OF JH-512 BY HANS WEGNER
frame construction
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The swing is collapsible and easy to install. The bed unfolds from the header, allowing the occupant to be sheltered with two pieces of riveted canvas. The construction of the doorway swing was entirely by hand, including the arcs in the metal tubing, which was bent using several rudimentary jigs constructed out of scrap metal.
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precedent analysis the house as neutral container for artefacts
During the examination of the Eames House, an increasingly obvious conclusion to draw was the house was treated as a container for the various human artefacts that the Eames couple produces on a daily basis. Not only for art, but almost ontological, to the documentation of care and devotion into their everyday abode.
Syracuse NY USA Semester V-2023
CASE STUDY HOUSE #8
PLAN & EASTERN ELEVATION W/ EUCALYPTUS TREES RAY & CHARLES EAMES 37
Ray Eames: “The way I saw painting was in terms of structure and color. Charles, as an architect, saw structure in terms of structure” The highly articulate structure of the house frames the content of the house in a concise yet organic manner, allowing the viewers to appreciate the house, the eucalyptus trees and the pots and chairs inside the house all without conflict.
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Syracuse
School of Architecture
LI 李
乾
震