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CONTENT Progress with Scenes: The Burning of the Lord's Ship, a Religious Factory Design Teamwork/ with He Zilu 2016.08-2016.09
Progress with Activity: Our Block and Blocks, a Down-up Pattern for City Renewal Competition: Teamwork/ with Yan Yanghui, Li Han, Luo Xun, Cheng Zhi, Li Lesheng Leading roll in research, concept, model, diagrams
Remaster: Individual Work
03 12
2015.04-2015.05(Competition) 2016.07-2016.08(Remaster)
Progress with Events: Transparent While Divided, a Student Center Design Individual Work 2015.12-2016.01
There is no architecture without action, no architecture without event, no architecture without program. Architecture Concepts, Bernard Tschumi
Progress with Relation: Clustered Family House, an Elders' House Design Individual Work 2016.11-2016.12
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Everything happening in the architecture can be considered as a composition of a series of continuous scenes. Scenes can imply many an aspect concerning architecture, function, volume, material, scale and so on. From this we learn that design can progress with the study of scenes.
PROGRESS WITH SCENE This architecture is built as a vessel of the traditional ritual usually taking place in Xiamen, Fujian, the southeast coast of China. People there believe in a god referred to as the Lord, who takes responsibility in protecting the local fisherman and taking away bad luck. To send the Lord back to his palace in heaven with the bad luck, people build up a grand ship for the Lord every five years and burn it on the sea, a way Chinese people believe that would send things to heaven. We distracted scenes from the ritual and realized them in the form of space.
The Burning of the Lord's Ship Ritual Hall and Factory Design Location: Xiamen, Fujian, China Acedemic Grade 5 Team Work/with He Zilu Research, Concept, Design of the Scenes &Modeling
2016.8-2016.9 Instructor: None
The Factory The ritual actually starts with the building of the ship. The timber is collected and blessed in the woods and then transported here. The timber would then be built into a grand ship, waiting for the day to come.
The Lord's Temple The temple where the statue of the Lord is worshiped. When the ceremony begins, the priests would have to welcome the Lord from his temple to the ship. It resembles the core meaning of the ritual.
The Ancestry Hall Chinese people believe in their ancestors. The honoring of the ancestors are always a part of any grand event and ceremony in China. The burning of the Lord's ship is no exception.
The Matsu Temple Matsu is one of the most worshiped Goddess in the Southeast coastal area of China. She is believed to have the power to pacify the ocean and bless all the fishing people on their journey. Honoring Matsu is also an indispensible part of the ceremony.
The Ritual: The Burning of the Lord's Ship The burning of the Lord’s Ship is a traditional ritual practiced in the east coastal region of China, especially in the Fujian Province. Being held once in three years, it enrolls nearly all the people in different categories living in the county or even the city. The ritual, formerly, was practiced mainly by the fishermen living in this area. After praying to the Matsu, they put the dead bodies washed to the shore into a boat and burn them on the sea water to pacify their wandering souls. Later, this simple ritual gets related to the provincial Lord’s religion. The Lord is believed to be a God coming to the land once in a while to carry away all the bad luck. People would build statues of the Lord made of wood or paper and burn them to burn away the misfortune. Later the two rituals were combined together into a grand carnival. People would build a ship, carrying all the statues, symbolizing the Lord, the gone and misfortune, and pass through the temple of the Lord, the Hall of ancestors and then the Matsu Temple. At the end of ritual, the ship would be burnt in the open water.
From the Woods
Beside the Factory
To the Sea
For the Heaven
The Ritual: The Four Scenes The ritual can be considered as an event with vivid scenes. And taking various elements, such as the location, the acticities, the functions, into consideration, the ritual generally falls into four major scenes. The first scene is called “from the woods”, the woods symbolizes the beginning, for either visitors or workers. Being completely different from the usual urbanized atmosphere, it helps the visitors adapt to the atmosphere. The woods is also where the timber required for building the ship comes from. The second scene is “beside the factory”, where the workers build up the ship and visitors and believers make statues and small parts needed for the ritual, standing for the daily participation. The third is “to the sea”. When the ship is finished and the time set, the ship would be moved over a long distance to get to the sea, during which process people would have the chance to give the tribute and prayers. And the last scene, the climax, is “for the heaven”, where the ship is burned and all the best wishes are sent to the heaven.
The Wood Construction The wood construction is the simplified version of the “Dou Gong�, the traditional Chinese construction that would allow the roof to stretch longer outwards. As traditional construction is still frequently practiced in Fujian Province, this form of construction is chosen to honor the tradition.
The Upper Level The upper level of the gallery is built for the believers or the visitors. It leads all the way from the forest to the building, crossing the trestle. Spots for resting are offered. While people are walking on this level, they are able to take the workers moving woods and other materials in their view without any direct access.
From the Woods
The Lower Level This level is built for the workers. Workers carry woods from the forest to the factory. They may rest on the way there, enjoying the outstanding view of the gulf.
Pilgrim's Path There is a path of pilgrim designed in the first box. After entering the building, visitors would have chances to view the factory, the Lord’s Temple and the studios for visitors from several different perspectives.
The Lord's Temple The temple in the first box is for the Lord, to whom the ship is built for. The temple is for viewing and also worshiping.
Beside the Factory
The studio for the believers is the most important part on the visitors’ path of the first box. People would help prepare the tribute for the ritual here while having the best view of the factory down below. Classrooms and libraries are also accessible for background information.
Studios
Factory The factory is located in the first below-the-sealevel box, with scaffolds and cranes and other functions like storage and recreation.
Ancestry Wall
The Auditorium
The wall of ancestry combines the function of an ancestry hall and a B u d d h i s m Te m p l e , as these two are often combined in this area. This is where people honor their ancestors and pray to the buddha. The form symbolizes the niche seen in both the hall and the temple.
The space of the auditorium comes after the traditional tea house in Fujian Province, and quite usually, a show o r o p e r a i s p ro v i d e d for entertainment. During the ritual, the auditorium would become the spectatory of the Honoring of the ancestors ceremony.
To the Sea
Stairs The stairs, perpendicular to the auditorium and walls, serve as the way to divide the auditorium into manageable sections, spectators may find their seats quickly. They also qualify as viewing spots to enjoy the view of the sea and the mountains.
Stage The stage is always a significant part of a C hi ne se traditional ceremony, both worldly and unworldly.
Matsu Temple The Matsu Temple locates above the arc of the third box, towering over the last step of the ritual, forming a solemnly atmosphere.
Spectatory The spectatory consists of two parts, the inbox part is constructed by wood and the outer part by concrete. They resembles each other.
Stairs
For the Heaven
The Stairs on the Square serve as a resting place on daily occasions. During the ritual, the water would fall into cascades.
Water Gate The Water Gate would open when the ritual begin, let the sea water in and flood the lower part of the building, forming the way for the ship.
Section 1-1 1:600
During the building of the ship
Section 1-1 1:600
During the ritual of burning the ship
Mainly, the ritual can be divided into four parts. The first is to light the lanterns, which symbolizes the arrival of the time to start. And then, the opening of the water gate and the rising of the ship from the factory. The workers would pull the ship to the second box where the honoring of the ancestors, namely the third action, takes place. After the ship pass through the third box where Matsu is worshiped, it’s finally burned, putting an end to the ritual.
Architecture can be considered as a consequence of a series of activities, a materialized reflection of the events. Usually the architecture are built for a long-lasting action, but they also deem the actions as still and stable. In reality, there are cases when the activities and events gradually change.
PROGRESS WITH ACTIVITY China is undergoing a process of a relentless development. Old city area constantly torn down and replaced according to plan, and the people who live there, even with their precious traditional lifestyle and techniques, are driven away. We can not deny the existence of the development, but the old town calls for a new pattern other than the top-down version, which can bring this shabby area into modernity while maintaining its population and activities, which lead us to a down-up pattern of renewal. Just as how the old city was originally built, the residents here should have the chance to design and build their block, which has been rendered easy by the prefabricating industry.
City Renewal Concept Location: Changsha, Hunan, China Teamwork(competition) Academic Grade 3 Main Concept 2015.4-2015.5(competition) Instructor: Xie Mingjing E-mail:210027@csu.edu.cn Individual Work(remaster) Academic Grade 5 Instructor: None 2016.7-2016.9(remaster)
Activity as Cornerstone: The site, just like other old city area in China, is about to make way for a bustling new block. The former residents, normally in this up-down pattern of city renewal, would have to move, and the local culture and unique lifestyle would go with them. We offer a down-up pattern which starts with the analysis of the local lifestyle and activities, and make them the conerstone of the renewal.
Residential: sleeping
Residential: chatting
Residential: working
Workshop: crafting
Workshop: storage
Workshop: learning
Store: food
Store: clothes
Store: books
Workshop: Learning
Store: Books
Workshop: Crafting
Residential: Working
Store: Clothes
Workshop: Storage
Residential: Chatting
Store: Food
Residential: Sleeping
Transformable Furniture Types:
function-exchanging
capacity-changing
room-saving
To cater to the needs of nine activities found in the old city, we developed nine types of furnitures. Every type has two forms and each of them can transform conveniently into the other. Three purposes are there to make the furnitures able to transform into different states. The core goal is to suit the characteristic of usage in the old town, where spaces are narrow, crowded and abject. The first kind saves space by being exchangeable between different functions. The second one is being able to be put away when not in use, making room for other possibilities. The third, however, concerns the varying number of people using the furniture. In one state, it's suitable for a limited number of users, and in the other, more people would be gathered around.
Units Types: Blocks are scaled at 3m*3m*3m, which, as is shown below, is the smallest standard scale to hold a diversiform of activities. Furnitures placed in blocks are deemed as the walls with functions. They work as bed, desk, presentation board or anything else neccessary. The small scale and the ability to transform of them would allow a single block to turn into a basic but versatile unit with at least one category of activities. When units are combined together, they form composite units with various possibilities, containing differentiated types of actions. In this way, a down-up formed complexion comes into being.
Basic Residential Unit
Developing Residential Unit
Composite Residential Unit
1m
1m
1m
Developing Workshop Unit
Composite Workshop Unit
Basic Store Unit
Developing Store Unit
Composite Store Unit
3m
Basic Workshop Unit
2m
I heard they are keeping these walls.
Place pillars
Fetch me more pillars!
Place beams
Gotta finish the foundation by tomorrow.
I could use a new room here.
Can we move in, like tomorrow?
Seal up the ends
Watch out! COMING WALL!
The shops are in business!
Place the walls
Construction: To make the down-up pattern possible, the building process must be pellucid and convenient as the people who would be performing the process may not possess such professional knoledge. There are only four items involved. The "log", which is a long square-section wood log, serve as pillars or beams. The "seal", with much resemblence but smaller in size, is used to seal up the end of the metal joint to prevent rosion. The "joint" is a special accessory that would connect logs and seals. And lastly, there is nails in the same scale. All these would be crafted in factories, and the users can easily assemble them after a short tutorial.
How was your date?
Let's have some fun!
I wonder if the clothes are dry?
The show is coming!
I'm learning everyday!
Let's dance!
This will be a masterpiece! Check -mate!
Block Development:
Like the old days! Ping-pong is so fun!
Any new books? Love this place!
Vegetables on sale!
The building of a block from units can be a long process. To realize the down-up patter n, the construction of the buildings are made easy. Using the prefabricating industry and the modular design, the block can be easily built up even by the most uneducated resident or worker. By choosing furnitures according to activities, even a man with no experience in designing houses can design his own home, workplace and so on. Even though the buildings are new, people can carry on their old doings.
Function, this word never satisfy my aspiration to describe what people would do in a specific space. Other than just a simple word, I prefer to imagine it as a kind of event, with more details in what, where and how.
PROGRESS WITH EVENT The site locates in a college campus. To cater to the need of the students, a place where they can hold activities, attend public lectures and go reading should come into being. Usually, these events would be separated into different rooms and blocked from each other so that different events happening in the building would not interfere with others. However, when it comes to the architecture built for youth, communication always calls for equal significance as the separation. This project tends to discover a way to divide the space into rooms while maintain the transparency among them.
Student Center Design Location: Changsha, Hunan, China Academic Grade 4 Individual Work Instructor: Song Ying E-mail: songfly@csu.edu.cn 2015.12-2016.01
SPACE TYPOLOGY: Traditional building has rooms gifted with different functions as the basic units, but rooms are usually divided with solid walls, which would block out nearly all sorts of communication. So the first step is to repeal this kind of method to divide spaces and remove all the partition. But no separation would lead to severe interference among all the diversed events. So a new method to divide spaces is conducted and the plain falls into different slopes. But then the flow lines would be long and inefficient. To solve this problem, gaps are added between different areas for events to form another kind of room. After all four steps, the space become transparent and divided at the same time.
ROOMED
UN-DIFFERENTIATED
RE-DIFFERENTIATED
RE-ROOMED
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1, Entrance 2, Reception 3, Restroom 4, Lecture Hall 5, Discussion 6, Reading 7, Cafe LECTURE HALL DISCIPLINE AND FUNCTION The gap alone would not suffice to divide a continuous and transparent space into clearly different rooms, diversed disciplinary manners need to be applied to different area so that different function would be dictinguished from each other. And the difference in the discipline is mainly expressed in the different ways the furnitures in these areas are designed. The discussion area are designed to be more active with the rise and fall of the wooden plane which serve as the desks and chairs. Meanwhile the order of the reading area is relatively simple and tranquil. So people would act according to the implying of the atmosphere.
DISCUSSION AREA
READING AREA
TECTONICS AND TRANSPARENCY 1
To realize the transparency that is desired in the architecture, the form of constrction was chosen with discreetness. On the elevation, steel support structure is used to hide the boundaries of the glass curtain wall from the interior view, and to minimize the visual existence from the exterior view. For the curtain wall, the glass itself and its supporting structires are clearly separated in the axial direction from each other so that the boundaries of the spaces are blurred. But to maintain the discrepancy of different areas, the rods to hold the fixtures are kept to form a forest-like interior space to tell different areas apart.
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1, covering 10mm 2, mineral wool insulation 20mm 3, asphalt waterproof coating 10mm 4, steel support structure 5, cast-in-place concrete 180mm 6, reinforcement d=12mm, spacing 120mm 7, cold formed steel deck 8, "H" section steel 120x200x10mm 9, stainless steel horizontal rod d=100mm 10, stainless steel vertical rod, d=50mm 11, stainless steel fixture 12, reinforcement fixture
If the core of architectural space is people, then we can safely draw the conclusion that the relation between spaces can be considered as the materialized version of interpersonal relations. No matter how vague it is, space relations resemble that of the people using the architecture.
PROGRESS WITH RELATION After the establishment of the republic, China went through a series of revolutionary eras. All of them lead to the current situation, a country with a rocketing economy and a bunch of social problems. Aging population, as one of the many, draws my attention. Due to the One-Child policy, the youth takes a much smaller part of the society. With the development of the medical system, the elders are enjoying a much longer expectation. So the pressure on the shoulders of the youth to take care of the elders is higher than any point in history. A pattern was lately raised that aged relatives gather to tend to each other, mitigating the burdens of the only children. This project tries to offer a specific solution to deal with the vague relationship of the relatives, being intimate and estranging at the same time.
Clustered Elders' House Location: Taoyuan, Hunan, China Individual Work Academic Grade 5 Instructor: Song Ying E-mail: songfly@csu.edu.cn 2016.11-2016.12
"The Big Family"
"The Small Families"
"The Left Alone"
"The Clustered Families"
Before 1982, there were no means of birth control in China. Believing in the benefits of big families, Chinese people back then raised too many children. In the early years, the national poverty resulted in the low rate of survival of the babies. But later, as the country developed, the population problem began to emerge.
In 1982, the Family Plan was legistrated and provoked. Parents in China are forced to have only one child. As the result, here came the age of the small families that are usually composed by three people. As the grandparents passed away, the small families split apart and hence rarely can we see the traditional big family.
When the time reached the 21st century, the influence of the opening and reforming finally reach its peak of influence. The grand urbanization began and the young generation flood into the big cities, leaving their parents in the rural area. The lack of caring for these elders became a main social issue.
After 2010, the policies become increasingly more beneficial to the elders living in the countryside. People get rich enough to build new houses, in which process, the former big family gather again. They all bear only one child and are left alone, so they have more than enough reason to tend to each other.
"SEPERATED" Basically the phase all the houses in the countryside are in. They are distinctly seperated from one another and share no activities, which is not suitable for elders.
"TRENCH" The first tactic to use the ring of cushion is to add a trench like space which connects the most private spaces, bedroom for instance, to the most public ones. The trench allow people to hide in when they seek tranquility and privacy, but when they are in the mood for conversation or other means of communication, they can have access to the public without efforts.
"INTEGRATED" It's rarely seen in China that families share one livingroom for public activities. Even though the families are in the same clan, privacy is still needed for their different interests.
"FLOAT" The method of "float"is to deal with the even vaguer relationship between two public spaces. In this case, interactions happen more often than that in the case of the "sideways", but still, in these two spaces, people conduct different activities. The two spaces are not accessible to each other directly, but the eye contact is wide and perfect.
"CLUSTERED" Modified from phase two. A ring of cushion is added to part public livingroom and private acti-vities and bedrooms. Elders can easily access each other with privacy.
"SIDEWAYS"
PRIVACY
CUSHION
PUBLICITY
The tactic of "sideways" is to create spaces between two public areas that contain activities that might interfere with each other. To avoid the arbitary method of separating them completely, an L-shaped cushion area is set to remove direct eye contact. Thus they still share the same garden. To add to the relation, a window is opened to allow occasional interaction.
Garage
Bathroom
Terrace
Bathroom
Workout Place
Family1
Guestroom
Bedroom
Study
Entrance
Kitchen
Storage
Terrace
Winter Hall Summer Hall Bathroom
Textile Studio
Family 2
Carpentry Studio
Family 3
Dockyard
Bedroom
Bedroom Bathroom
LAYOUT F1 1:150
LAYOUT F2 1:150
TECTONICS AND SCALE The site locates in the rural area in Hunan province, the central south part of China, where most residential houses are made of wood. People there mostly understand what a wooden house is composed of and how it would be built. For this reason, the form of construction was chosen to be a wooden one to cater to the expectation of the elders here, who has long got used to wooden houses instead of concrete ones. The elders are usually relatively short in height compared to the youth, so the scale in the building is adjusted to suit them, providing them with the opimal spacial experience.
steel handrail galvanized steel sheet t=0.5mm waterproof membrane rafter t=20mm sloping adjusting beam structural plywood t=20mm rigid insulation t=80mm structural plywood t=20mm
steel handrail rod
bolt steel side girder
steel support ashtree wood tread 20x300mm
suspension fixture
lauan plywood 30x500mm wax finish suspension beam
lauan plywood t=20mm wax finish concrete slab t=450mm rigid insulation t=40mm concrete slab t=60mm smashed stone layer t=60mm
a. Through the Entrance Window
b. Over the Terrace
b a Âą0.000
0.300
1.800