CITY PATTERN UPDATE
Graduate Thesis 2022
Christy Yu
Graduate Thesis 2022 Provocations Positions Project
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Thesis Statement Today's architecture and built environments have inevitably been expressed in the city through the built-up historical and contemporary layers of construction, established circulation networks, structures, organizations of building typologies, and zoning issues. In turn, the way we inhabit and traverse our spaces is influenced by their interrelationship and alteration of the way we read many architectural symbols around us. The mundane and derelict environments surrounding us as a series of "concrete islands" can be partly traced from the consequences of bad infrastructure, reliance on the automobile, and ultimately a failure to revitalize or reuse historic buildings. The urban fabric, defined by
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its landmarks, infrastructures, networks, morphologies, and visual identity, becomes part of our psyche, both it's good and bad elements. Great opportunity for the improvement of our urban spaces lies in turning our attention to adaptive reuse. I am especially interested in historic buildings with iconic architecture, which have left a strong cultural identity and visual image on the surrounding neighborhoods and greater LA. One such space is the Old LA Hospital, which with its impressive Art Deco facade and oblique massing sat upon a hill in East LA, Boyle Heights, has been a beacon and shared symbol of LA architecture. It has become increasingly abandoned. How do we deconstruct and repair old spaces to
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reinforce social equity and accessibility while maintaining the presence and historical meaning of the facade of such an icon? This thesis is about the reinterpretation of one space through the dissociation of formal morphology and facade from the building's new adopted typology. This urban reuse project of old city infrastructure, revitalized by a new morphology and typology, recontextualizes the meaning of its use and predominant visual system through their conflict and inter-relationship.
In his book Concrete Island, Ballard introduced an area of derelict land segregated by several intersecting highways. "The island" is the name given by the main character to describe the challenge of traversing and escaping the median strip without access to a car. The segregated median strip amplified the difficulty of
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traveling and the isolation in nowadays cities. In my thesis, I question if a historic building, monumental in scale but left untouched and decaying, could also be read as a concrete island. I am interested in the discussion of how we deconstruct and repair old spaces to make new connections on a neighborhood scale. The 5 keywords would be Urban Renewal, Infrastructure, Continuity, Urban Network, and Walk-able. By looking into the precedents related to those five keywords and interrelationships between them, my thesis would explore the introduction of a new program and spatial relationship existing formal morphology and design vocabulary.
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Boeing 314 clipper flying boat
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Provocations
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Week 01 -Existing infrastructure vs Expansion The garden city movement is a radical vision of a utopian world created by urban expansion. ( figure 1.) This strategy of urban network reforms the interrelationship between the urban space and landscape by suggesting a centripetal relationship shaped by several small neighborhood groups. Abandoning the original urban network, this new city form depends on the mutual influence and support between each small zone. Conversely, both the high line(figure 2.) and old london bridge (figure 3.) were looking into a strategy which also reinforced the interconnection between different neighborhoods by bridging two sides using the existing infrastructures. Similarly, the urban renewal strategy I choose to support my thesis would involve into the current land form and reshape the urban pattern through investigating in the existing structures and building topolo-
gies. Unlike the Metabolism movement ( figure 5.) or modern city plan ( figure 6.), Peter Cook addressed a metamorphosed process of urban renew of an English Town, which poses a discussion of how the new changes and merges into the old in a time mattered display. By setting up a indispensable and interdependence between the old town structure and new massing, Lebbeus Woods also re-interpret the architectural elemants of existing structure and organize a new spatial relationship.
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1. Ebenezer Howard's vision for a 'Group of Slumless, Smokeless Cities' 2. The High Line ,NYC by Diller Scofidio + Renfro 3. Old London bridge
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4. “The Metamorphosis of an English Town… It Happened Cheek-By-Jowl,” 1970 (Detail). © Peter Cook 5. City in the AirArata Isozaki (Japanese architect, 1931-...Shinjuku, Tokyo, Kanto, Japan1960-1961 (creation) 6. Ville Radieuse by Le Corbusier
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Meta Institute Lebbeus Woods
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Week 02 As a unique example of oversized city expansion, the city of McAlester experienced serious spatial segregation. ( figure 1.) People of this city are only able to finish their daily routine path with the car. While the new Walmart centre is under construction at the left corner of the grid, the city centre loses its attraction to the citizen gradually and becomes a dead zone. Each area separated by the highway creates its own world by the definition of a differentiated destination. Coincidentally, the ancient forbidden city also shapes a series of segregated yards through gates and continuous walls.( figure 2.) The endless house by Kiesler, on the contrary, aim to provides a continous spatial experience to its user. In consideration of the occupancy and day light patterns, Kiesler sets up a space allowing ample light to reach every corner of the room. Unlike a conventional building, the endless house reinfored a multilink spatial qual-
ity through a flowing contious surface.( figure 3.) Incontast to Moscow Palace of Soviets which attract all sides of perspective to a centred view ( figure 4.), the Lingering Garden shows another strategy of a unique visiting experience, which uses different layers of framing. Extravaganting the depth of the space and coordinating the man-made nature with real nature and buildings, the lingering garden creates an experience of changing scenery as you walk around. ( figure 5.)
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1. City of McAlester 2. Forbidden city 3. Endless house by Friedrick Kiesler
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4. Moscow Palace of Soviets – Soviet architectural giant 5. Classical Gardens of Suzhou : The Lingering Garden
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Week 03 Figure one shows the separate small worlds in the forbidden city, where walls break the continuity of the space. Unconventionally, Wall House 2 uses the solid wall as a connection to the circulation movement on one side, while the other side of the building creates a series of stacked building in different colours. The different shapes of the window also indicate the difference of each massing which hold together by columns.( figure 2.) Figure 3 and 4 is the previous year's thesis design Kowloon Symphony by Di Liang, it references the original circulation of Kowloon city and create a shared community space. Through the movements of climbing in the skym floating above the ground and diving under the ground, Kowloon walled city's new proposal redines the boundries of architectural elements
and built an extroverted symphony with its past pattern. Figure 5 is a painting by Lesage, who went on to develop a unique, highly symmetrical style, drafting detailed patterns and monolithic constructions reminiscent of Egyptian and Oriental architectural forms. I am interested in his method of pattern selection by "surrendering to their impulse".
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1. Forbidden city 2. Wall House
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3. Kowloon Symphony by Di Liang 4. the model of original Kowloon walled city before its deconstruction
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painting by Lesage
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Week 04 From yesterday’s discussion on social equality, thabisile reminded me of the idea of opening the home to the houseless folks. And I think this idea also answers the question about beauty, which is shared through the soliditory, mutual help, as well as caring. By providing a place to support each other physically and mentally, we could extend the range of public space which is usually impeded by the ownership of property. I think the best way to learn history is understanding history through different perspectives. I always feel interested in historical stories based on a single person or a small group of people, which usually reveal the other side of the history we learned from the textbook. I think knowing the perspectives from people of different backgrounds not only demands us to learn the consequences, but also moral understanding of the vulnerability of individuals
and how lucky we are. The idea of paradise in the mankind scale could be an equal, affluent society in which everyone can access the opportunity to be successful. But I feel like more importantly on a personal scale would be peace, which should be a top priority. Paradise needs peace to be free and equal. One of my thesis discussions is how do we deconstruct and repair old spaces to reinforce social equity and accessibility, and I feel some of the existing buildings and urban infrastructures like highways are creating the gap between the group of people, even the original design is trying to connect them. The isolation of architecture indicates the vulnerability of us when we no more have the privilege of the resource.
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1. Houseless man sleeping on a bench 2. Photograph by Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times via Getty
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Concrete spikes under a road bridge
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Week 05 Louis Kahn elaborated the distinction between ‘served’ and ‘servant spaces' according to Scottish Castles which feature very thick walls. The space in the wall " break the planarity of the façade and bring the exterior inside".( figure 1.) By looking into the past year's thesis work, I found it interesting that previous years work already look into the architectural 1.
preservation by bricolage which recombine the architetural languages and relocate them into a new site. ( figure 2.) And the understanding behind their urban reuse and preservation as not everything is eternal but is provisional and forever shifting also indicated in Heena Patel's work of Amplified Preservation.
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1. Kahn’s sketches of castles 2.&3. Athenaeum by Devangi Kansagra 4. Amplified Preservation by Heena Patel
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“It’s architecture promotes a state of congestion on all possible levels, and exploits this congestion to inspire and support particular forms of social intercourse that together form a unique culture of congestion.” Rem Kolhaas addressed his idea of stacking a variety of unrelated functions within the same building in his article culture of congestion. Other precedents like Boeing314 flying boat ( figure 2.) and Proposal for a Dystopian Architecture ( figure 5.) also dicussed the diversity of reforming the exisiting spaces through the investigation of formal morphology and building typology. 1.
Meanwhile, other projects like endless house ( figure 1.) and Zagreb Free Zone ( figure 3.) argued the continuity of the spatial experience. By breaking into the existing system, Lebbeus Woods shows a tension between the built and unbuilt while the new space merge into the old in a unconventional way.
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1. Drawings of endless house by Friedrick Kiesler 2. Boeing 314A flying boat 3. Lebbeus Woods: Zagreb Free Zone
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Pierre-Antoine Marraud, Proposal for a Dystopian Architecture
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6. Simulateur de Voyage 7. Hotel Community 8. Grand magasin
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Positions
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Week 07 By setting up the project location in a pedestrian oriented district, la chinatown as the site, the proposal would reform the interrelationship between the urban space and existing building by suggesting a none centripetal relationship shaped by new section inside and a sharing underground space for new circulations. . Rather than abandoning the current ground urban network, the project is obligated by its original road system which influences the ground floor plan by looking at the entrances of the existing buildings. The predominant visual system would be original in the exterior, and a staggered layers effect inside buildings.
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1. Proposal for a Dystopian Architecture 2. Current chinatown market
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1.2. 570 N Hill St street food corner 3. Current chinatown market
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1. Sears building in Boyle height
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Lincoln Height Jail
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Week 08 The provocation of my thesis is that architecture can be understood as the subversion of an existing structure. Adaptive reuse becomes a theoretical discussion between old and new. An architecture composed of 2 elements, a historic veil and a foreign volume introduced for the sole purpose of subverting the former's cultural and functional meaning. This is achieved by treating the existing facade as a piece of paper, not to be altered in its material tectonics or arrangement of architectural symbols such as doors and windows, but to be peeled from its interior structure as a series of floating planes. The attitude of this retroactive and subtractive design is akin to performance art, vandalism, or political protest. New sectional relationships and design vocabulary would recontextualize the meaning of the building's former use. The new architec-
ture is also represented as a palimpsest of historical drawings, elevations, and details produced by the layering of the old and new.
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The 19-story, 1.5 million square foot, historic Art Deco builidng was one of the busiest public hospitals in the western United States. Howerver, after the Northridge earthquake, most of the space is unused out of the safety code concern. In my thesis, I question if a historic building, monumental in scale but left untouched and decaying, could also be read as a concrete island.
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Old LA hospital
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1. Old LA hospital 2. Section diagram 3. Axon diagram
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Week 09 The complex visaul painting from Ella Webb discussed the interrelationship between geology and topography through abstract compositions. The new proposal of old LA hospital interested in recontextualizing the meaning of the building's former use without altering the original facade. Similarly, the section drawings of the mountain question the potensional composition of the space. The Phipp Street project shows the tension between layers of the old and new. By setting up a double used stair, the unsable 1.
space on the upper part of the staircase become the sitting and storage area for the seoncd floor.
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For the Rebstockpark Competition project, Eisenman used several layers of different surfaces to generate a single building monolith, so that each building has a certain connection in form with its surroundings. The latent city also looks into the layering startegy which allows the building construction flowing several frames by creating a double-layered grid. In my project, a historic veil and a foreign volume could also be folded together and alter the original functional meaning. Through the expension of the gap between the inside building structure and facade which 2.
treated as a paper, the transation space amplifies the tension between the new structure frame and facade grid system.
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1. Phipp Street 2. REBSTOCKPARK MASTERPLAN concept diagram 3. Latent City
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Cae Lique Dolest Abo
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Latent City from Yanghua Wang
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Week 10 The L.A. County General Hospital has steel frames and white concrete facade. Originally designed for medical teaching, there is a auditorim for operation presentation on the 15th floor which is still under good condition.
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1. entrance hallway 2.&3. auditorium for medical presentation 4. construction photo
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The goldern lane project changes its functionality by removing interior ceilings and floors without altering the materilaity and form of the original facade. It also celebrates its original cast iron columns and brick walls through taking away the plaster board wall linings and horizontal surfaces. The new steel bridge and bookcase also respond to the existing material.
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1. entrance of golden lane 2. 3. 4. origianl cast iron columns
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Hyde park building is a mix use retail & residential project which create a part historical and fictional proposal through previous architectural style. Facade as an architectural archaology to form a repica building which still maintian its original thickness of the exterior wall. This ornate facade also allows the ample light enter to the interior room. The relocation of the window frames suggest a new floor system.
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Hyde park
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1. street rendering 2. section diagram 3. interior rendering
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1. original buildings 2. Section diagram 3. collage of the facade
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Project
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1. Section diagram 2. Axon diagram of the hospital site 3. Original facade
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Week 12 This proposal preseve almost all element of the original hospital. It reveals the original steel frame and inside of concrete facade which wer designed to interact with new functions. The new architecture is also represented as a palimpsest of historical drawings, elevations, and details produced by the layering of the old and new.
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1. Section diagram 2. Żnin sugar factory 3. Layers of facade
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Week 13
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1. Axon diagram of the outside 2. Axon diagram of the inside
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Credits Ballard, J. G., & Gaiman, N. (2018). Concrete island: (a novel). Picador/Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Beijing top tourist attractions City Travel Maps. Beijing maps - Top tourist attractions - Free, printable city street map - MapaPlan.com. (n.d.). Retrieved April 3, 2022, from https://www.mapaplan.com/ travel-map/beijing-china-city-top-tourist-attractions-printable-street-plan/beijing-top-tourist-attractions-map.htm City of McAlester,OK. (n.d.). Retrieved April 3, 2022, from https://www.cityofmcalester.com/ Cook, P. (1970). Archigram. Archigram. Country Life May 19, & Country Life. (2020, May 19). The medieval engineering strokes of genius that led to the building of old London Bridge. Country Life. Retrieved April 3, 2022, from https://www. countrylife.co.uk/architecture/the-medieval-engineering-marvels-that-led-to-the-creation-ofold-london-bridge-215363 Di, L. (2021, August 31). Kowloon Symphony. Grad Thesis 2021. Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https:// gradthesis.sciarc.edu/students/di-liang Echo, B. (n.d.). Groupwork. GROUPWORK. Retrieved April 4, 2022, from http://groupwork.uk.com/# Exhibition event - lebbeus woods: Zagreb Free Zone Revisited. The Cooper Union. (n.d.). Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://cooper.edu/architecture/archlog/2021-04-09/exhibition-event-lebbeus-woods-zagreb-free-zone-revisited
Fabrizi, M. (2021, February 22). Ella Webb's geological diagrams. SOCKS. Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://socks-studio.com/2017/12/08/ella-webbs-geological-diagrams/ González, M. F. (2019, March 8). The city in the air by Arata Isozaki. ArchDaily. Retrieved April 3, 2022, from https://www.archdaily.com/912738/ the-city-in-the-air-by-arata-isozaki The high line. DS+R. (n.d.). Retrieved April 3, 2022, from https://dsrny.com/project/the-high-line Howard's garden cities: Slumless and smokeless, but also funless and hopeless. Big Think. (2021, September 30). Retrieved April 3, 2022, from https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/234-slumless-smokeless-cities/ Kansagra, D. (2021, August 31). Athenaeum. Grad Thesis 2021. Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https:// gradthesis.sciarc.edu/students/devangi-kansagra Lucarelli, F. (2018, February 9). Pierre-Antoine Marraud, proposal for a dystopian architecture. SOCKS. Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://socks-studio. com/2012/10/21/pierre-antoine-marraud-proposal-for-a-dystopian-architecture/ Lucarelli, F., Says, K. M., says, G. M. L., says, C., says, F. L., & says, T. S. of A. (2020, May 17). Walls as rooms: British castles and Louis Kahn. SOCKS. Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://socks-studio. com/2012/04/06/walls-as-rooms-british-castlesand-louis-kahn/ Merin, G. (2013, August 11). Ad classics: Ville Radieuse / Le Corbusier. ArchDaily. Retrieved April
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3, 2022, from https://www.archdaily.com/411878/ ad-classics-ville-radieuse-le-corbusier Meta-Institutes. LEBBEUS WOODS. (2009, December 11). Retrieved April 3, 2022, from https:// lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/2009/08/01/meta-institutes/ Miller, J. R. (2021, May 14). La residents blast proposed homeless campsites at beaches, Parks. New York Post. Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https:// nypost.com/2021/05/14/la-residents-blast-proposed-homeless-sites-at-beaches-parks/ Mora, E., 5, E. M. on M., 6, E. M. on M., & *, N. (2014, March 4). Augustin Lesage's art. Art is a Way. Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://www.artisaway. com/art/painting/agustin-lesage/ Patel, H. (2021, September 10). Amplified Preservation. Grad Thesis 2021. Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://gradthesis.sciarc.edu/students/heena-patel Rebstockpark masterplan 1992. EISENMAN ARCHITECTS. (n.d.). Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://eisenmanarchitects.com/Rebstockpark-Masterplan-1992 Rebstockpark masterplan 1992. EISENMAN ARCHITECTS. (n.d.). Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://eisenmanarchitects.com/Rebstockpark-Masterplan-1992 Russia travel blog : all about Russia in English. RussiaTrek.org - site about Russia. (n.d.). Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://russiatrek.org/blog/ history/moscow-palace-of-soviets-soviet-architectural-giant/ Spencer, L. J. (2021, April 6). The Long Lost World of the luxury flying boat. Messy Nessy Chic. Re-
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trieved April 4, 2022, from https://www.messynessychic.com/2017/12/15/the-long-lost-worldof-the-luxury-flying-boat/ Sveiven, M. (2011, April 11). Ad classics: Endless house / Friedrick Kiesler. ArchDaily. Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://www.archdaily.com/126651/ ad-classics-endless-house-friedrick-kiesler Sveiven, M. (2012, February 6). Ad classics: Wall house 2 / John Hejduk, Thomas Muller/Van Raimann Architekten & Otonomo Architecten. ArchDaily. Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://www. archdaily.com/205541/ad-classics-wall-house2-john-hejduk Wikimedia Foundation. (2022, April 4). Kowloon Walled City. Wikipedia. Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_ Walled_City Wikimedia Foundation. (2022, March 1). Classical Gardens of Suzhou. Wikipedia. Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Gardens_of_Suzhou Żnin sugar factory / Bulak Projekt. . (n.d.). Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://www.gooood.cn/a-sugar-factory-znin-transformed-into-a-hotel-complex-bulak-projekt.htm