Tai Shaw Portfolio
Personal Data Tai Shaw (b. 1993) is a student of architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her interest is in drawing, computational design, green urbanism, and the architect’s role in the broader community. Born in Taiwan but living in the US, she has an interest in how the design process can benefit from diverse cultural backgrounds. Apart from her studio work, she is also dedicated to community service and cultural discussions. Tai is interested in projecting and designing the future through drawing and studying the present.
Tai Shaw
tshaw02@risd.edu 1 980 406 1087 2 College st. #1459 Providence RI 02903
Education Providence, RI, USA Sep 2012 – Present Zurich, Switzerland Febr 2016- June 2016
Swiss Federal Technical Institute (ETH Zurich) Exchange Student
Charlotte, NC Sep 2009 – May 2012
Charlotte Latin School High School Diploma, Cum Laude
Work Experience Providence, RI, USA Sep 2015 - Present
Rhode Island School of Design BFA (2016) + B.Arch (2017) RISD Scholarship Program
RISD Architecture Teaching Assistant
Providence, RI, USA Sep 2015 - Present
RISD Architecture CAD Lab Student Manager
Taipei, Taiwan June 2015 - August 2015
Xrange Architectural Intern
Taipei, Taiwan June 2014 - August 2014 June2016-August 2016
Glorious Jewel Interior Inc. Interior Design Intern
Leadership Experience Sep 2016 - Present
RISD AIAS President
Oct2013 - Oct2014
Americorps Scholarship for Service
Sep2013 and Sep2014
Pre-orientation Service Experience Upperclassman Leader
Sep2014-Present
Community Service Club Club Leader
Skills
Digital Rhino 3D, Grass Hopper, Python, Adobe Creative Suite, Autocad, Google Sketchup, Microsoft Office, Rhino 3d, Maxwel Render, V-Ray For Rhino Windows And Mac OS. Digital Fabrication Makerbot, Zprinter, Laser Cutting. Analogue Drafting. Modeling, drawing, painting, print-making, woodworking, Glass Casting
Contents
Architecture
+/ Forest Clearings
From Mies to Ponta Del Gada
Praha- Eastopia
Content and Container
Computing Drawing:
Urban Design Principles:
Architectural Design:
Architectural Analysis: Richards Medical Center
Architecture of Air
Architecture as Viewing Machine
Inter- Motion
Convolving Corner (USPS)
Live/Work Hybrid Housing
Providence Exchange Station
Design Collaborations
Inter-Tent
Synthesis of Light
+/ Mass Timber From Mies To Ponta del Gada Fall 2016 RISD Critic: Aaron Forrest
Swiss architect Valerio Olgiati has famously stated that
all architects can be lumped into one of two categories: adders and dividers. Adders work tectonically, and form from a series of parts that accrue into an ordered whole. Dividers, on the other hand, work through the logic of stereotomy. The studio examines how the development of mass timber as building material can transform and develop new typologies and break the gap between additive thinking and divisive thinking.
The two components of the studio include a redesign of
Mies’s New National Gallery in Berlin in wood, which leads to a proposal for a community center in Ponta Del Gada, Portugal. The first component attempts to re-conceptualize a long span steel building through the tectonics of wood construction. The re-design then informs a new building type for Ponta Del Gada, where cedar forests have been harvested to create new economic benefits.
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Unversal Space The New National Gallery , Mies Van der Rohe, 1967.
Mies’s New National Gallery is at the
pinnacle of his achievement; a kind of universal space defined by complete emptiness in the center and four flying corners. The eight columns touch the edge of the gridded roof but also sit on a an invisible circle that subtly defines different areas of inside and out other than the span. In an early sketch, the plan suggests the center of the pavilion to be a kind of ambiguous and free space where anything can happen---a universal center.
1:500 Model Program
1:500 Model Structure
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Construct: Community Center Driven by the compact situation and the need for a long spanning programs (gym, media center, and series of classrooms), the construct is a seemingly homogeneous volume that is divided from within. Narrow walkways lead into the courtyard.
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Structural Framing: Varying Column Types
Structural Framing Model 1:50
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Structural Framing Axonometric
Driven by the notion of distribution
and the relationship between part versus whole (column, girder versus volumne) the Community Center of Wood is made to be a pouruous, open volume on a grid. Reiterating notions of distribution in the original steel girder grid, at the intersection of the gridlines, columns extend to the ground. The sense of openness, continuity and ambiguity between inside and out are defined by columns forming semi-enclusures at varying degrees of intensities.
Praha-Eastopia Architecture as Viewing Machine Spring 2016 ETH Zurich Critic: Marc Angelil Assistant : Matej Drasler Collaboration with Nanase Ikeda
“How does Architecture influence one’s behavior,
and vice versa?” We asked ourselves.
Our site is a parcel next to the 13 th century Convent
of st Agnes in the old town of Prague. Our project seeks to employ architecture as the viewing machine by influencing movement / behavior within space through a multitude of views.
The architecture of the convent surpassed its pro-
grammatic function in 1968, and serves as an exhibition space of the National Gallery of the Czech Republic. Our Program is a small archive, housing for visiting academics, and visitor’s space, which begins with this street view from the corner of Milosrdných street and Kozi, the node that is most visible and has the best vantage from the whole block.
Our "para scope" organizes space and program such
that there are a multiple ways of entering and exploring
Architecture as Viewing Machine
Archive Guest House
Liblary
Cafe/Book store
Criss crossing For the building to be motionless is the exception.: our pleasure comes from moving about so as to make the building move in turn, while we enjoye all these combinations of its parts. As they vary, the column turns, depths recede glide: a thousand visions escape. Paul Valery, the Method of Leonardo
Architecture as Viewing Machine
1. Adjacency
3. Corner/ Two Point
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Catalogue as Research
8. Shifting Horizons
The method of our
research and design process is the analysis of the relationship between plan and perspective; in other words, organization and perception. (This part is composed of church interior, the proposal interior, and streets scape ) In each analysis, we compared the atmospheric images taken in Prague during our visit, with vector analysis of vantage and vanishing 5. Sifting Vanishing Points
point, and the corresponding plans.
Left to RIght, Top to Bottom: Situation Model, Spatial Study Model, Final Presentation Model, Concrete Atmosphere Model.
Left to RIght, Top to Bottom: Site Plan, B1 Plan, Ground Plan, Long Section
Left to RIght, Top to Bottom: Site Plan, B1 Plan, Ground Plan, Long Section
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INTER - Motion Between Content and Container Fall 2015 RISD Critic: Emanuel Admassu Collaboration with Brandon Wang
The scales of movement range from urban scales
of vehicular transit, pedestrian movement, down to the smallest, unperceivable scale of particle movement.
These particles are specifically “neutrinos”, the
smallest particle that even makes up electrons of an atom. These particles also occur in outer space, capping the end of the scale spectrum we’re investigating. The program tackles the extreme scales of research facility combining an Astronomy Observatory and a Neutrino Research Lab. We took this sequencing--the search for refuge through moving--and constructed a narrative path of continuous programs.
The ground condition encourages the curious indi-
vidual to enter into this narrative, to either descend to the circulatory ramp of the underground facility, or ascend into the astronomy center and observation deck. The two extremes exist mutually, and create an array of in-between conditions.
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SECTION A
Computing Drawing The Convolving Corner Spring 2015 RISD Critic: Carl Lostritto
This Studio explores computer programming as a drawing and design medium. Through iterative drawings I examined the formation and aggregation of lines to form surfaces, and eventually defining a corner. The program is a 195,000 square foot storage facility for the US Postal Service, with a 1000 square foot post office embedded within its protruding corner. The Corner is defined by intersecting,non-parallel trajectories embodied by small wooden members pointing out from the long, continuous East facade. As the geometric focus of the building, where linear structural members intersect and converge, the Corner houses the main public program, including the retail space, mailboxes, and info kiosk.
“The corner is a seam where two non-parallel surfaces converge to intersect, yet begin to diverge as the paths continue.�
Left to Right Top to Bottom: Corner Building in Xray, Hand Drawn Study of forming Furrows through points, Circular Mutation studies, Corner formation Study
Left to Right: Exterior view of Corner from Across the River,
Left to Right, Section A Final, Section A Pen Plot Study, Plan Perspective, Structural Models of Column System.
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ION BSECTION B
20 FT
Left to Right: Section B Final, Interior Corner studies
Left to Right: Interior Corner studies, Exterior Corner Drawing
Urban Design Principles Live/Work Hybrid Housing Fall 2014 RISD Critic: Dongwoo Yim
This project hybridizes medical research
space, a Library, with residential units in a complex targeting medical students and researchers at the Spalding Rehabilitation Hospital in Charlestown, Boston.
Modular units derived from local typology
are aggregated to create intersecting shared spaces between the units, and enables intersection between residential and public programs.
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red Corridors Spaulding Rehabilitational Hospital + Largest Standing Rehabilitational Hospital in the US. + Home to 139 patients. + Home to Havard Medical PM&R Residecy Program with more than 400 students a year. Proposed- Hybrid Work/Live Library Housing + Public access Library +Extension of Spaulding Campus with Work/Live units for medical students and docors.
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Ground Plan
Left To Right, top to bottom: Massing Study, GL Plan, Typical Plan.
Modular Units One Bedrooms Studio
Built-in Circulation Volume 20’
20’
Duplex
Two Bedrooms
Four Bedrooms
Three Bedrooms
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45’ 45’
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6.5th Floor
Residential 9.5th Floor
10th Floor 9th Floor 8th Floor 7th Floor
8.5th Floor Work-Live Library
Residential
7.5th Floor 6.5th Floor
Left To Right, top to bottom: Unit Plan, Modular System, Typical Plan Zoomed In, Section through Typical Plan.
5- 9th Floors Research spaces, classrooms, work-live units
2-4th Floors (North): Lecture Hall and Reading Rooms
2-4th Floors (South): Communal spaces spersed among units.
Ground Floor: Public Library
Section B 1”=16’
Left To Right: Exploded Programmatic Axon,
Architectural Design Providence Exchange Station Prospect and Refuge Spring 2014 RISD Critic: Anne Clark
This design of a train station in Providence
seeks to define a public space for exchange as well as repose through the study of elements embodying prospect (entrance, kiosk, exhibition space) and refuge (seating, enclosure), and how they may guide a traveler.
The most crucial part of the work is the initial
establishment of the generative matrix, an aparatus for making and understanding space. Here the woven matrix is created from points of intersection and turning of pedestrians on the site.
Left To Right, Top to Bottom: Matrix Drawing , Matrix Model, Approximating Movement, Tectonic Studies, Final Model
Left To Right, Top to Bottom: GL Plan, B1 Plan, Interior Perpective, Section A, Section B.
Architecture Analysis Richards Medical Center Architecture of Air Spring 2014 RISD Critic: Chris Bardt
The twelve-week course was in depth analysis of Louis
Khan’s Richards Medical Research center from 1975. The iterations of drawing examine the relationship between the strict geometric order of a 3x3 grid system and the linear, strand like HVAC system.
Left to Right: Hand drafted Axon, Digital Axon
Left to Right: Hand drafted Axon, Digital Axon
Left to Right: Exploded Axon, Imagined Axon of Structure and Mechanical System
Inter-Tent Experimental Digital Media Installation Winter 2014 RISD Critic: Jonathan Hanhan Collaborator: Liz Holland, Sukeshi Dalmia
This installation creates an environment
for the individual to experience disturbance and solitude within an isolated tent where lighting and sound is controlled by someone else. By using Arduino and Processing we were able to simulate sounds and lighting conditions that references sounds from everyday digital products.
Left to Right: Exploded Axon of Tent, Construction process photos
Synthesis of Light Constructing Transience Fall 2015 RISD Critic: Jamie Carpenter, Stefanie Pender Collaborator: Felicia LeRoy
This collaboration constructs an experience
illuding to the way light refracts in water and in clouds. The structure captures phenomena and enable the visitor to walk through a space transformed by projections through distorted glass.
The process involved laser etching glass with
programmed drawings, slumping, distilling salt water on glass...etc, in order to generate a diverse range of projections.
Left to Right: Laser-etched Glass, Salt-distilled Glass, Ethced-Slumped Glass
Left to Right: Installation Diagrams, Snapshots
Left to Right: Installation Panorama
Thank you.