Song Zhang Portfolio 2021-2023

PORTFOLIO OF

SONG ZHANG

2024.1

SELECTED WORKS | 2021-2023

01

Instructor: Scott Erdy

Student Housing Complex Fall 2023

02

Instructor: Danielle Willems

Fairmount Waterworks Art Museum Fall 2022

03 Cybernetic

Instructor: Ezio Blasetti

Sustainable Data Center Spring 2023

Instructor: W. Jude Leblanc

“Asia Society” Art Museum Atlanta

04 Narrator Fall 2021

05

Historical Memorial of WengDing Village

Spring 2021

06 Chambers of Hallucination

Instructor: Danielle Willems

Interactive Installation Fall 2022

07

08

The Academic Village

01 Student Housing Complex

Instructor: Scott Erdy Individual Work

The Academic Village is a student housing project combining educational and public social programs. The project focuses on connecting the urban green space and regards the housing project as an architectural threshold to revitalize community life. In the master plan of the University of Virginia, lecture halls and student lodges sit along the vast lawn, which forms the “Academic Village” for educational interaction. Inspired by such a concept, the project reinterprets the lawn as a lively social gathering quadrangle for students and teachers. The tutor rooms circled around the sunken quadrangle, where students and teachers meet and the boundary blurred. Due to the increasing land value of West Philadelphia, the project also explores the opportunity to create a “Vertical Village” to accommodate additional educational programs. The cores and escalator in the building create a vertical loop that connects the student housing, tutor rooms, and other public social places. In conclusion, the Academic Village project merges historical inspiration with innovative design, creating a vibrant and adaptable space that fosters community engagement and educational interaction.

The Quadrangle and Vertical Loop

The project reimagines the lawn as a vibrant social hub, transforming it into a quadrangle where students and teachers gather and interact. Circled by the tutoring rooms, the sunken quadrangle creates a “horizontal loop” for ground circulation. In response to the rising land value in West Philadelphia, the project also investigates the possibility of building a “Vertical Village” to cater to expanding educational programs. By incorporating cores and escalators, the building also forms a “vertical loop” that seamlessly connects student housing, tutoring rooms, and various public social spaces.

Typical Floor Plan

Student

Faculty

Lecture Hall

Library

Lobby

Cross Section

Longitudinal

The lively social gathering quadrangle, a focal point of the design, is shaped by the columns and walls in a curvilinear form creating an inclusive and semi-public space for students and teachers. By offsetting and rotating the units, each residential unit possesses an outdoor balcony and access to natural light. The model, therefore, showcases the spatial relationships that encourage dynamic interactions and blurring of boundaries within this educational environment.

“Schools began with a man under a tree talking to others who did not

-- Louis I. Khan

tree who did not know he was a teacher not know they were students.”

Khan (1901-1974)

02

Reflective Dynamism

Fairmount Waterworks Art museum

Instructor: Danielle Willems

Individual Work

In terms of nowadays art museums, the space is often static and clumsy, which often falls into the same fallacy of linearity and interiority, one sees the end of the museum through the linear arch corridor, and the gallery spaces are normally placed on the two sides. So what if we break down such stereotypes of art museums and create spaces that flow on a trajectory of views?

View on a large scale speaks to the context. Views give shape to the overall geometry in the plan by orienting and protruding towards the existing boat house, waterworks, and art museum; View on a medium scale speaks to the landscape. The interior is intertwined with the exterior landscape and opens views from the ground level creating free circulation in and out; View on a small scale speaks to the interior. As views bounce and reflect back and forth in plan and section. It leads the flow of circulation, which finally shapes the space within.

Sectional Chunk

Exterior Perspective

Unrolled Elevation

03

Cybernetic Homeostasis

Sustainable Data Center

Instructor: Ezio Blasetti

Individual Work

From the early history of farming to industrialization, later decline, and nowadays revitalization, the history of Callow Hill was shaped by cutting-edge technology. Like a series of strata that form nowadays building environment, the site is embedded with the interconnections between humans, nature, and machines. The question to the future world is how we can reach a state of counterbalance, or homeostasis, which is the process by which systems (biological and mechanical) maintain equilibrium for optimal operation or survival.

The Cybernetic Homeostasis, therefore, aims to create spaces for both human and non-human (servers and machines) habitation. The overall geometry in the plan is shaped by the movement of pedestrians and vehicles, and the “nodes” create pausing points or gathering spaces for outside activities. Given the geometry, the roof formed an artificial valley to not only collect rainwater but also maximize southern exposure for the use of solar panels. The data center runs a system of homeostasis: the PV panels convert sunlight into electricity and power the servers, and water are reused for the cooling system.....

Exterior Perspective

04

Narrator

“Asia Society” Art Museum Atlanta

Instructor: W.Jude Leblanc

Individual Work

The “Asia Society” Art Museum Atlanta consists of three programmatic components: Media, art, and nature. Media includes a public library and a theater for performing arts, which engages with the city street and functions as a threshold from the outer business to the inner tranquility. For the art component, the main section of the art gallery is devoted to the work of Ai Weiwei. As a contemporary artist, Ai Weiwei is largely influenced by Marcel Duchamp’s life-scene readymade. With his unique Chinese cultural background, he uses art as a weapon to criticize social and political issues. The design, therefore, aims to create a narrative of Aiweiwei’s artwork spatially. Inspired from the Soviet Montage theory, the cross-reference of scenes and characters can also be viewed spatially as an alignment of artwork and nature. The design creates a promenade that rigorously crops the views of ascending trees and descending water, making the exhibition space a neutral threshold for the artworks. Overall, the art museum is a campus or a landscape of media, art, and nature, embedded and interweaved in the urban context.

Mapping and Program

Interweave in Plan and Section

The plan is rigorously rationalized to create a rhythm of circulation--ramps and stairs, but more importantly, a rhythm of pond and garden. As visitors follow the promenade of the art gallery, the changing views of the artworks and nature always lead them to see, feel, and think.

Section AA

1st Floor Plan

Section

Theater

Media

Nature

Art

Pond

Permanent Gallery

Garden

Rotating Gallery

Library

05

The Hearth

Historical Memorial of WengDing Village

Individual Work

Semper stated that throughout all phases of society, the hearth formed that sacred focus around which took order and shape. Likewise, the primitive hut in WengDing village also forms its socio-spatial order around the hearth. In Wa’s tradition, the master often seats closest to the most sacred ritual room and faces the hearth to welcome the visitors, while others sit around the hearth based on their social hierarchy. Until the destruction of the old village, the fire never died out in the hearth of Wa’s people. For them, the hearth is the heart of their daily life, the origin of their social hierarchy, and the soul of their religious ritual. However, when the fire raged through WengDing and brought this ancient village to destruction, I realized architecture could never beat against its transiency in time. What makes it eternal is never that thatched roof or wood columns, but its culture. When a civilization comes to an end, instead of pitying the past, we should document it not only through words but, more importantly, through space. Use architecture as a carrier to transcend its physical existence and to document the course of human culture.

New Village: The Spatial Organization of the houses is linear and decentralized

Old Village: The Spatial Organization of the houses is radial and centralized

Analysis of Wa House

The primitive hut in Weng Ding village forms its socio-spatial order around the Hearth. In Wa’s tradition, the master often sits closest to the most sacred ritual room and face to the Hearth to welcome the visitors; the male visitors sit at the upper area of the Hearth for reception and ritual ceremony; women and children sit at the lower area of the Hearth for preparing and having food.

Concept Diagram

Form Diagram

Birth

To the Forest

To the forest, we see our god of nature who gave birth to us. Silently lying on this earth, she nurtured and protected us unreservedly. We have nothing in return, but our sacred hearts and devout souls, so we ask our sons and daughters to come to see the reflection of our mother nature but also ourselves as her sons and daughters.

To the Village

To the village, we see our thatched-roof houses rebuilt on this earth of trauma. We’d been lost in the materialistic world: our food was sold as commodities; our houses were opened as tourist attractions; our rituals were performed as daily entertainment. Haunted by the fire of that night, we rebuild our houses and beliefs on the charcoal.

Seeking

To the Records

To the records, we look back to the history of our village. From the culture of primitivity to the invasion of modernity, it is a process of seeking for an equilibrium between the two societies, and we are all sea spray in the waves of history who witness, experience and live on with it, so we record them as media to remind and reflect.

To the Hearth

Laminated glass skylight

Long-straw thatched roof

Thatched roof

12”x6” wood beam

Plaster wall& wood cladding

12”x12” wood column Wood plank flooring

To the hearth, we trace back to the origin and circle around it. We not only mourn for our loss but also praise for our glory. Gazing on the fire, we imagine scenes flashed back to that tranquil village, where our fathers built it with their hands and sweats and told us we build forever, just like the flames on the hearth burning forever.

Concrete ground

Chambers of Hallucination

Interactive Installation

Instructor: Danielle Willems

Collaborator: Sahil Shah, Wenyi Zhang , Tianqi Han

Task: Design and Physical Modeling

This project is an investigation of the possibilities of hallucination in an architectural context. The overall geometry is based on three tunnels interlocking with each other and the solid members creating the hallucinated effects by means of several different applications of the mirrors, including the mirror reflecting the real world, the mirror reflecting the tunnel itself and creating the non-existing infinite space and the angled mirror reflecting single object to infinity. Integrating the weaving patterns created by the material of carbon fiber and the three-dimensional drawing patterns designed upon the planar surfaces of the overall geometries, this installation create an atmosphere of illusions so that a question of “whether it is real or fake” and “believe it or not” is thrown out to the audience. Overall, the idea of the installation is manifesting architectural hallucination versus real world. We focus on how the hallucinations could be developed in the interior void and finally how the façades could be ambiguously dizzy by means of the patterns.

Assembly of Apertures

Urban Loop

“NOMAS” Competition Detroit

Collaborator: GT NOMAS Design Team

Task: Modeling and Drawing

Located just outside of downtown Detroit, the former site of the Brewster-Douglas Homes seems destined to fail. Physically disconnected from the surrounding environment and its resources through the construction of the adjacent highways, a site rich in culture was abandoned. Previously known as the “Motor City,” Detroit is receiving recognition as the “Bike City” due to its implementation of Greenways-corridors of land intended to facilitate connections between places and people. Logistically, the existing Midtown Loop and Dequindre Cut would serve as points of connection for various modes of transportation, including bikes, scooters, people, animals, and natural resources. Ultimately, the architectural design proposal aims to weave itself into the city’s infrastructural plans for the future of Detroit in order to create a fixed connection between the NOMA Legacy Headquarters and everything it represents.

Entrance Bike Ramp

Living Room

Central Plaza

NOMA Legacy Museum

Education

Commercial

NOMA HEADQUARTERS

HOUSING studio 1bd 2bd townhouses

COMMERCIAL retail food pop-ups

PUBLIC II entrance wellness center education

PUBLIC I ramp system

Cistern Farmer’s Market + Local Business Highway

Education Center

Commercial Interior

PCAM Renovation

Professional Work Sample

Location: HDR Philadelphia

Collaborator: The HDR Team

Task: Assist with CD Drawing Set