Shenyi Zhang Portfolio

The Loop whole in one

The Remedial Memory Community Center Common Housing Cohabitation With Corals Exhibition Center

Breathing Clouds Interactive Urban Park Museum Extension

life with tea Culture Community Center

The Healing Water Recreation Center

The Remedial Memory

Community Center with a market space for callowhill neighborhood

Our collective memory of the past can shape our perceptions of the future. “Remedial Memory” attempts to use the establishment of a market and community center to project a new future for the Callowhill community by reconnecting it to its rich history. For most of its early history Callowhill was the place where goods flowed into and out of the Philadelphia from.

Spring 2022

Studio 502

Callowhill, Philadelphia

Professor: Ryan Palider Individual Work

The project seeks to undermine the autonomy of the different programs by rethinking their relationship to the collective public spaces by interconnecting them with a series of catwalk. This empowers the users to define their own way of navigating the project and engaging with the diverse programmatic opportunities that await them.

Sarah McEneaney depicts Callowhill. Sarah McEneaney is a local artist that tells the collective history of Callowhill through her autobiographical painting of her lived experience. This abstracted color pallet connects the project to this collective memory.

Main Entrance.

Secondary Entrance.

Secondary Entrance.

Site Plan

Existing Park Entrance

Existing park entrance.

Museum

Working Studios

Center Stage

North Plaza

2nd Floor Plan

My proposal for the Callowhill market and community center seeks to create an open future by stacking a diverse set of programs between 3 levels of open public space that will foster a new collective experience. The 1st level of the project is an undulating landscape with gathering spaces, play spaces and a performance space. From this active landscape the public can slip into the market below or rise up into the other two levels through one of the three escalators or one of the three elevator cores.

The second level connects to the Reading Viaduct, a 3.5-mile-long public pace project the runs through the site. The 2nd level integrates itself with the viaduct to create a new urban public space that houses a performance stage, a food court, and a swimming pool. A series of figures that contain the: community center, artist studios, and Galleries, are suspended between the 2nd and 3rd level.

The rich selection of materials reflects the diversity of the site’s different cultural backgrounds, and to be more integrated with the other buildings around the area, many of the materials were constructed from the collection of discarded bricks from the neighborhood, which is both environmentally friendly and connected to the site itself. In order to create a more natural and inclusive environment, a large amount of greenery will be introduced to both the interior and semi-public space. More porous structures will take place from the building facade to the handrail system to ensure the interaction between different locations and creates a more lightweight design.

Urban green park entrance

Night view from the main entrance

Breathing Clouds

Interactive outdoor space designed for the elderly during the pandemic era

Breathing clouds explores a new outdoor space between the elderly which integrates the latest technology with a flexible boundary system to foster the use of urban green space and provides a safe and healthy environment for the elderly community. It includes a variety of features that allow seniors to safely spend time outside while also engaging in physically and mentally stimulating activities such as exercising, leisure chatting. The modular design enables it to be adaptive to different site conditions and creates a convenient and positive way of interaction that heals the fear and anxiety among the elderly.

Users could visually interact with each other without contact.

Design Details

Panel Detail

Interactive screen Algae filter system

• Facilitate air purification

• Carbon dioxide removal

• Self energy conversant

• Ensuring a fresh air

Users could help cultivating the algae by injecting fresh algae into the panels.

Translucent Polycarbonate panels

Movable partition

• Automatic context driven system

• Pedestrian Collision Warning

• Sliding system

Ceiling & Furniture Detail

•

Users could manage their destination by interacting with the screens.

Users could gain a more private experience with sound insulation panels.

Aluminum Structural frame

• rigid structure ensures the stability of panel movement.

Smart membranes

• Change of transparency with sunlight condition.

Light Strip

• Change with the density in one unit zone

• Flow of light movement direct movement

Audio playing

• Start automatically with entering of users

Height-adjustable Table

• Wheel chair friendly

• Flexible adjustment with sound senor

Led Light Column

• Change of color with touch sensors

• Indicate the density in one unit zone

Bench

• Change of color with touch sensors

• Underneath sanitation system

The Loop

Public common living space for music creators

The intention of this project is to boost the music tradition around the west part of Philadelphia and connect the local people with music creators and entrepreneurs. The idea is inspired that architecture is solidified music. The choice of geometric motif is based on the idea of an infinity loop, where there is no end and beginning of traveling through the space. The dialogue between the old bandstand studio and the new building was achieved by connecting the original playroom of the bandstand building and bond the new and the new music cultures together with the public music venue space.

Fall 2022 Studio 601 West, Philadelphia Professor: Scott Erdy Individual Work

The building remains the old original entrance connecting the bandstand studio. Users could also enter the new building from the other side by the escalator. The building proposes a continuous circulation from one side of the site to the other. Users could travel within the space by using the giant staircase. The grand staircase also serves as a vertical music hall for sharing the creators’ work. To main a level of privacy for the living experience, the living units are pushed to the two premiers, ensuring a quiet zone for resting. The middle hallway becomes a mixer of a creative working area and a common sharing area that is visually connected to the center’s semi-outdoor music venue plaza.

The truss structure strengthened the curved facade and stabilized the overall building load. The material choice includes semi-transparent marble panels that allow light into the living space while simultaneously creating a glowing effect during the dawn. This space is a destination for community gathering that brings liveness to the neighborhood. The windows grid system allows it to be operated towards different angles and directions as the need of users. The two sides of the building facade is designed with two different languages targeting two groups of music creators, from new pop music to old traditional jazz music creators. The other part of the building is mainly composed of orthogonal panels, which give a more uniform and ordered sequence for the jazz music creators. The angular division of the facade panel provides a dynamic coherence between the music and the creator’s living space.

Building Site Plan

Exploded Material Exploration

West view of the building north Plaza

3D print & laser cut chunk model

Cohabitation With Corals

Exhibition Center

Corals have a lot of connections with humans. Half a billion people rely on coral for food and other resources. While we take the benefits from corals, we disregard the potential harm that we bring to them. The rising sea level, increasing temperature, ocean acidification, and carbon dioxide emissions cause many corals to bleach and die. This project looks at creating a new mode of cohabitation between humans and corals by proposing an energy-conversant and environmentally friendly system.

Pratt interior design 4th year design studio

155 Water St Brooklyn NY Professor: Seth Embry Individual work

Digital Screens that is daylight responsive and can be adaptive to different modes to create an immersive underwater experiScreens and audios that imitate the underwater sound to evoke a more natrual setting.

INDOOR FARMING

Users could also interact with each other when planting.

Giant coral reefs that are made by the real bleached corals with touch sensors that could change the color of the surface.

Light mimic the underwater lighting condition and audios talking about the condition that is faced by the bleached corals.

Dead Coral Forest Entrance

The dome structure in the ground entrance point creates a feeling of immersion like underwater to prepare the users entering

Perspective views of overall spatial organization

Learning area

big coral tank

Typical floor plans & User Journey

Lucy, a student who loves underwater creatures, enters space. She enters the second level and is surrounded by many giant coral reefs. When she touches the coral reefs, the touch sensor starts to turn colorful, which indicates that they are being helped. Lucy starts to feel depressive as she can imagine herself like a hopeless coral waiting to bleach.

Lucy decides to dive into the big coral tank on the third level with 3D-printed coral reefs. She helps the lively corals to stay healthy by planting the 3D coral reefs in their bodies.

On the way up to the fourth level, lucy sits on the big stairs in front of the digital screen. She would like to learn more about corals and the steps she can take to help with their living conditions.

The light’s projections give her an immersive feeling, like an underwater setting.

When getting up to the final stage, the indoor farming located on the 6th floor, the whole space gives a different experience with the natural lights. She starts to feel positive and energetic when seeing the other people planting in the area.

3rd Floor Auditorium Learning Area

2nd Floor Interactive Coral Forest

Whole in One

Museum and education center as an extension of the Museum of Philadephia “Whole in one” creates an open and inviting museum experience by allowing the public to flow over, under, and through it like the Schuykill runs through the site. The massing is a system of boxes that overlap and intersect as they bridge between the two grand stairs. The hard edges and the rectilinear geometry of the tops, bottoms and edges of the boxes are softened by curvilinear geometries like pebbles smoothed by flowing water.

Fall 2021 Studio 501

640 Waterworks Dr, Philadelphia, PA 19130

Professor: Ryan Palider Individual Work

2nd floor plan

3rd floor plan

Life with Tea

Culture Center for the tea planters in West Bangel India

This project is aimed to design a tea culture center that addresses the issue related to poverty and poor living quality suffered by women tea planters in West Bengal India. The tea industry is one of the biggest industries for West Bengal in India. Among the tea planters in India, more than 53% of them are women and many of them are teenagers. Despite they work very long hours to make their livings their wages are very low. Due to the exportation culture of the tea industry in India, not many people familiar with the tea culture which could be learned and developed. Building the tea center can boost the development of tourism in tea gardens and help with the living and economic conditions for west Bengal tea planters.

Spring 2020

Darjeeling Tea Garden

West bangel Indian Individual work

Professor Weiyi Zhang

PLATFORM BRIDGE CONNECTING MUSUEM THIRD LEVEL

The outdoor bridge connects the museum with the tea factory building with two entrances from two sides of the site.

under bridge render

The design of the bridge is to create vision connections when traveling through different parts of the site.

PLATFORM BRIDGE CONNECTING MUSUEM THIRD LEVEL

The outdoor bridge connects the museum with the tea factory building with two entrances from two sides of the site.

under bridge render

The design of the bridge is to create vision connections when traveling through different parts of the site.

Center Public Plaza

Site Plan

The whole space is designed for both local people including students and families to visit and also tourists to learn about the tea culture in India. The visitors could also learn how to make tea for themselves to get to know more about tea culture. The main entrance is located at the visitor center. Visitors will be given useful tips for traveling to the tea garden. There will also be a resting space for visitors during their journey.

The Tea Factory is a building connecting one of the main walkway bridges. There are four floors in total including a big tea factory, an exhibition space, an open lecture space, and two tea-drinking rooms. The Tea Museum is aimed at providing the historical background of the tea culture in India for education purposes. There are five floors in total. The tea cafe is a three-story building located next to the visitor center, visitors could enjoy the fresh tea transported from the tea factories and spend their time resting at the place.

The interior space brings the users closer to nature. The curved form of the space is inspired by the tea mountains. The three-story tea factory with transparent glass facade allows viewers to observe the whole tea making process while walking through space. The

Tea Factory lobby

Visitor center lobby

The whole space is designed for both local people including students and families to visit and also tourists to learn about the tea culture in India. The visitors could also learn how to make tea for themselves to get to know more about tea culture. The main entrance is located at the visitor center. Visitors will be given useful tips for traveling to the tea garden. There will also be a resting space for visitors during their journey.

The Tea Factory is a building connecting one of the main walkway bridges. There are four floors in total including a big tea factory, an exhibition space, an open lecture space, and two tea-drinking rooms. The Tea Museum is aimed at providing the historical background of the tea culture in India for education purposes. There are five floors in total. The tea cafe is a three-story building located next to the visitor center, visitors could enjoy the fresh tea transported from the tea factories and spend their time resting at the place.

Visitor center lobby

The interior space brings the users closer to nature. The curved form of the space is inspired by the tea mountains. The three-story tea factory with transparent glass facade allows viewers to observe the whole tea making process while walking through space. The two-story tea displaying shelf makes them feel immersed inside the tea garden. The museum is unique for its ramp connecting the first to the third floor. The light coming from the top leads you to go up to explore the space. The materials chosen will be mainly concrete, metals, and wood as they are locally available.

Tea Factory lobby

Program Diagram

Aerial view rendering

The building sits next to the main highway to convenient traffic and tea transportation.

The Healing Water

Recreation Center for the black high school students in Gowanus, Brooklyn

This project focused on creating an inclusive and harmonious experience with water for the students in the black community in Brooklyn, NY. It proposes different interactions between the other conditions of the water. The project starts by looking at the historical background. Water was related to racial segregation in the US. During the 1920s, the gender segregation of public swimming pools brings about racial segregation. While water, at the same time, is a powerful tool to connect and bring people together. Thus, the project aims to create a social interaction space that heals the past bias between people and brings back harmony in the neighborhood.

Pratt interior design 4th year design studio

155 Water St Brooklyn NY Professor: Seth Embry Individual work

3rd floor - public bathing

1st floor - big swimming pool

4th floor - Indoor beach area

2nd floor - learning center & private bathing

Typical floorplans

Racial Segregation & Inclusive Water Landscape

Ghosted grid

The pavilion can be thought of as an analytical in three dimensions. This Homogeneity is achieved by the careful wrapping of a continuous line through the space, smooth flow from surface to edge, interior to exterior. This allows the observer to engage in multiple ways, inviting them to crawl, crouch, lean on or sit against the pieces. I was mostly in charge of designing and wood-making processes.

Fall 2021 Professor: Ryan Palider Group Work: Matiary Ravina & Wen

Round bench

DIS Copenhagen School

Summer 2018

Maple Wood

Individual Work

Designed to emphasize the harmonious relationship between two people when sitting together. The form of the back and bottom are inspired by the merged language of two separate seats placed next to each other.

table stool & organizer

Pratt Furniture Elective Spring 2019 Brass, Walnut & Oak Wood Individual Work

Inspired by the form of a sand clock, a wedge and tension joint with a brass strip were used. It could be served as a coffee table, stool, or book holder.

Oasis Central Sudirman

Mixed-use Urban Community

To create a vertical urban community, Oasis Central Sudirman will become a world-class beacon that reflects the beauty of Indonesia. Two commercial towers — the first which includes offices and hotel service apartments, and the second, which includes residences — are cloaked in an environmental enclosure that protects inhabitants from the sun while featuring an engaging motif inspired by Indonesian culture.

Program Used

3D: Rhino / Enscape / Revit

2D: Auto-CAD / Photoshop / Illustrator

The Healing Water

Recreation Center for the black high school students in Gowanus, Brooklyn

This project focused on creating an inclusive and harmonious experience with water for the students in the black community in Brooklyn, NY. It proposes different interactions between the other conditions of the water. The project starts by looking at the historical background. Water was related to racial segregation in the US. During the 1920s, the gender segregation of public swimming pools brings about racial segregation. While water, at the same time, is a powerful tool to connect and bring people together. Thus, the project aims to create a social interaction space that heals the past bias between people and brings back harmony in the neighborhood.

Program Used

3D: Rhino / Enscape / Revit

2D: Auto-CAD / Photoshop / Illustrator

Interior Lobby

Shanghai LJZ Zhangjiang Project

Mixed-use Working Place

To create a vertical Innovative multi-functional co working complex. The concept of continuous, interesting and full of vitality public space in all seasons. With the focus on personal experience, consistent architectural language. The design brings an vibrant underground network and high hyper connectivity efficient transport systm, green and intelligent low-carbon eco-block.

The site is located in Zhangjiang district in Shanghai, with the core of urban expansion, it will create an ideal financial space and a new human interface.

Program Used

3D: Rhino / Enscape / Revit

2D: Auto-CAD / Photoshop / Illustrator

Typical FLoor Plans

Ningbo Historical District Renovation

Mixed-use Commercial DIstrict

The renovation of an old historical district in the city of Ningbo, China. The aim is to build a commercial center for more public engagement. The site is located at the downtown of City of Ningbo (east of China). In order to reconnect and boost the tradition between the old and the new city, we remained some histortical elements within the site while also implementing some new programs to boost this new urban experience. I was working on the diagrams and help Photoshop some renderings. I have also worked on constructing the plan by Autocad.

Program Used

3D: Rhino / Sketchup / Enscape / Revit

2D: Auto-CAD / Photoshop / Illustrator

perspective diagram with programs

The diagram shows three main gathering space in the site. From left to right : the theater place, the main plaza place, and the underground plaza place.