Selected Works 2019-2021_Tianyi Xie_RISD MLA II

S E L E C T E D

T I A N Y I

W O R K S

.

X I E

RISD MLAII

2021

TIANYI . XIE

CONTENTS

01

ON THE MARSH 2019 Fall Design Principle Studio

02

OPTICS | PERCEPTION | EXPERIENCE 2021 Spring Design Research Thesis

03

PHYTO PLANET 2020 Spring Site/Ecology/Design Studio

04

3.065 SECONDS 2020 Fall YAC Competition Hyperloop Desert

05

17

33

49

ON THE MARSH CUT FOR SEDIMENTATION A N D R E S I L I E N C E Rhode Island School of Design 2019 Fall Design Principle Studio Instructor: Colgate Searle Site: RISD Farm, Tillinghast Place, Barrington, Rhode Island

The studio focuses on the analysis of the structure, materiality, and thickness of the ground in RISD Farm. The first part of the design contains a material exploration of the site and context of freshwater, brackish water, salt water, and the soil and spatial condition. The landform was largely determined by the retreat of the iceberg and generates the vegetation change and directs the water flow. Studies are focused on site structure, thresholds, and transitions. I try to connect my personal tactile feelings of touching the ground to the soil condition and the natural process of infiltration and evaporation.

How could we bring the invisible changes happening underground to the public and help build an understanding for the fact that salt marsh are essential to resiliency and species diversity. How could we understand and express the ever-changing qualities on-farm, and let nature speaks for itself? The cuts on the ground could be the answer.

2 0 4 0 2 0 3 0 2 0 2 0

1 9 6 0

SITE

FLOOD MAP The site is located in Narragansett Bay. It’s consisted of a sand beach, salt marsh, young forest, and a large hay field. The tide is changing the landform every day and making it beautiful and dynamic for the visitors.

It’s working as a barrier for the community staying behind it.

TIDAL CHANGE SITE CONTEXT Vegetation coverage, desity, ground water flow and soil condition.

2020

2030

2040

SITE PLAN

TRANSITIONS AND SHRESHOLDS

Forest

Phragmites

Spartina

Sand Dune

20m

40m

80m

LANDFORM, SPACE AND SOIL CONDITION The soil contains sand, silt, sandy soil, and organic soil.

The organic soil is firm compared with silt and sand. with the help of plant roots, they could stay longer under the erosion of sea water.

TRANSITIONS - TOUCH OF FEET

THREE CUTS

Transition between forest and salt marsh

Transition between ditch and spartina

Transition between sand dune and sea

2 0 4 0

2 0 3 0

2 0 2 0

OPTICS | PERCEPTION | EXPERIENCE REGRENERATING AGRICULTURE THROUGH RAILWAY

Rhode Island School of Design 2021 Spring Design Research Thesis Instructor: Emily Vogler Site: Albany, Worcester and Dog Wood Farm, NY

I am studying how the experience of traveling by train could help improve the public’s understanding of the agricultural landscape and celebrate the local farm culture. It’s becoming increasingly important as unhealthy nationwide industrial agriculture is destroying local people’s health and the long-term capacity of sustainable production of food. In the discipline of landscape architecture, there is a necessity to reform our thinking to match the modern-day development in population growth, transportation, and mass production. There exists vast farmland and forests outside the city that we have never been in it but are closely connected with. They support our city life and provide the city with oxygen, energy, and food sources. How we experience these functional landscapes determines our attitudes towards cities and villages, which in turn determines how our cities develop and how they are connected. Most of the time we ride a vehicle and pass these landscapes quickly. We only experience linear narratives through the windows. Does this pure visual connection cause our misunderstanding and ignorance about non-urban landscapes?

In my thesis, I take advantage of the linear narrative experience of traveling by train and test methods by using media to record and analyze the existing agricultural landscape along the railway. Ultimately, my thesis project is to design a new railway itinerary to reconnect people to the local farm and build respect and understanding through participatory experiences.

"HOW COULD WE MAKE PEOPLE THINK ABOUT THE LANDSCAPE THEY HUDDLE THROUGH EVERY DAY?"

AMERICAN HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE

NATIVE AMERICAN

COLONIAL PLANTATION

INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE

HISTORY OF RAILWAY DEVELOPMENT IN AMERICA

The development of the American railroad system could date back to the mid-1820s. The “Golden age” comes between the 1880s and 1920s, sprawling from the eastern coast to the western. It’s gradually declining after the 1980s, for other modes of transportation, like automobiles and airplanes are rising. 1

ITINARARY My intention is to design several theme trips for the Amtrak company, based on the seasonality of the agricultural products. Each vegetable or fruit has its own seeding or cultivating time. The time range adds up to a year-long circle of experience that people could revisit.

One-day round trips can give people a chance to visit two farms each time.

Departure in the late morning and return in the afternoon back to the city will be a good time. People could stay at each farm for about 2-3 hours to spend time visiting the farm, engaging with the farming activities, climbing uphill, enjoy fresh vegetables and fruits.

LANDSCAPE AS LENSES People who are traveling are interested in the uniqueness, what is picturesque, what is different, what has a regional quality. When we travel across the country, we could tell that the uniform of space is bringing a sense of familiarity from the beginning to the destination.

The experiments are meant to deconstruct the landscape into different layers. So we could better understand how the manipulation of one of the layers could bring significant change to human vision.

10

Mushroom

6 Chicken

3 Farmer

5 9 Cow

8

7

2

4

SITE PLAN_DOG WOOD FARM 1. Station 2. Chicken farm 3. Vegetable field 4. Hay Field 5. Forest (mushroom) 6. Cow house 7. Farm market 8. Restaurant 9. Farm house 10. Overlook Tower 30m

60m

120m

1

CAMERA MOVEMENT FOR ATTENTION SHIFTING Based on studies of the camera shifts in film and the attention schema, I designed the stations as physical lenses to represent the shits and panning of the film camera. As people pass by, the canopy forms a window for people to see through. The windows are shrinking or enlarging, similar to the zoom technique in the film industry.

Static

Tilt

Pan

Push in

Whip Pan

Pull out

HIGHLIGHT ACTIVITIES AND FRAME VIEWS

PERSPECTIVE_FROM THE CABIN Viewed from the perspective of passengers that won’t necessarily get off the train, or people passing by the station riding other trains, the stops become a changing frame to help draw people’s attention to the farmhouses and farm activities.

Straw

Block

MATERIALITY_FARM WASTES

Tyres

Rubber granules

“WASTE WALLS” RENDERING The walls in the station are constructed with farm wastes. They could serve as walls to guide people’s visions, or serve as furniture for people to rest on, or serve as educational boards to inform people that the side products of agricultural production are harmful to the sustainability of the farm.

Using farm wastes on-site will help reduce the investment of constructing the station, and bring specificity to the site. The waste is collected and pressed into blocks before they are piled up as the structure of the stations.

P H Y T O P L A N E T Rhode Island School of Design 2020 Spring Site/Ecology/Design Studio Instructor: Courtney Goode Site: East Providence, Rhode Island Group work with Jun Jiang

Sustainable development of brownfields is an issue every post-industrial site faces. With a century of accumulated industrial contaminants underground, this site, located in Phillipsdale Historic District, Rhode Island, is seeking a new purpose and awakening. PHYTO PLANET is a phytoremediation nursery that produces remediation plants for the contaminated grounds within the Seekonk watershed area. It also reintroduces the ecological habitat with a historical context and economic development that connects to the remediation experience, building a community anchor and culture locals can engage with and be proud of in a way the industry had in the past.

As a self-cleaning and repurposing process, PHYTO PLANET not only brings a new future to this post-industrial site, it sets the standard for a landscape-- revealing its weakness and fragility, while also being fulfilling and engaging. Nursery plants target industrial contaminants created by similar regional industries. Thus, a new network between industrial sites is formed on a regional scale that shares the same remediator, thereby honoring the history of industrial mass production and translating it anew.

SITE LOCATION AND CONTEXT

Narragansett Bay

Active Industry

Private Golf Course SITE

de Is R ho

0.5mi

land

1mi

1.5mi

5 min

10 min

Blackstone Park

15 min Commercial

Active Industry

Private Golf Course

Elemantry School Public Park Site

Post-Industrail Site Active Industrail Site

DEVELOPMENT TIMELINE Surrounded by the Seekonk River and Omega Pond, industry took advantage of this location to develop along this waterfront area. The river gave the site great strategic positioning and abundant natural resources. It became an ideal location for settlement and commerce as well as ecological habitats. The site has a rich history of industry.

Including Richmond Chemical Works, the land has been through the build and demolish process of paper company and bleacheries for decades and then transformed into a wire company, which thrived for 80 years until it went bankrupt.

Another wire company took over for a decade but eventually closed due to pollution and economic concerns. The site has been vacant since 1994 and several contamination cleanup operations have taken place since then. In 2011, the Phillipsdale Historic District was recognized and protected by the state. Currently, the site is semi-closed to the public, with occasional fishermen near the Omega Pond Dam, and some dirt cart races held by nearby residents.

1000B.C.-1500

1630

Native American prosperity Roger Williams developed the land for colonists

1870

1890

Local Industry moved to waterfront area

Washburn Wire Company & Omega Pond built.

1972

2004

2020

2050

Land Reclamacation

Abandoned

Secondary Succession Stage

Phyto Planet

Contamination on site includes legacy left by wire companies, as well as water pollutants carried down the Seekonk River and by surface runoff. The major contaminant on site is fuel oil leakage from the wire companies. Monitoring wells indicate five locations of high petroleum hydrocarbons. One location near the old open hearth mill contains heavy metals such as copper, cadmium, lead, zinc, mercury and aluminum. Another location has a leakage of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB). The site overall has a light amount of toluene. The major contaminant for water is fecal coliform which comes from both the combined sewer outfalls located upstream along the Seekonk River; and the water treatment plant upstream on the Ten Mile River which flows into the Omega Pond.

1972

1890

2004

2020

CONTAMINANT ANALYSIS

ALUMINUM,CADMIUM FECAL COLIFORM DISSOLVED OXYGEN TOTAL PHOSPHOROUS

1

2

3

PCB TOLUENE

4

TOLUENE

5

GROUND SURFACE 1. Plastic Component 4. Granite 2. Concrete 5. Slag 3. Brick

PETROLEUM HYDROCARBONS

Crashed Slag HEAVY METAL

Slag Sandy Soil

PETROLEUM HYDROCARBONS

Landfill

Landfill+Slag In the early 1990s, slag from wire pr oduction w as used to c re ate a r u n o f f c o n t r ol b e r m i n r e p o n s e to violat ions c ite d by the CR MC. Th e CRMC stip ulat ed th at the 200’ c oastal buffe r must be al low ed t o reveg et ate na tur all y.

TOLUENE

Concrete Cap Organic Soil+Cap FECAL COLIFORM TOTAL NITROGEN DISSOLVED OXYGEN

Organic Soil PETROLEUM HYDROCARBONS

Oil Leakage Sandy Soil

T h e p av ed c a p a c t s a s a ba r r i e r to th e soils below, which con tain electric ash furnace dust as well as heavy-metal contaminated soil in the ELUR zones that has been removed, stabilized, and replaced. 3 inches of asphalt prevent disturbance of the area and volitilization of the dust.

DESIGN PRINCIPLE

Principle 1:Phytoremediation Nursery as Economic Driver

Four design principles are guiding our design. The major economic driver of the site would be the phytoremediation nursery, along with three major approaches: building dynamic landforms and creating different experiences for visitors; restoring wetland ecosystem and forming an ecological buffer zone between the neighborhood area and the Seekonk River; honoring the history by utilizing the residual slag as islands.

Collage is integral as a design tool to envision different approaches. It also can be seen as a metaphor for how the proposal is being approached in different levels of control and generated indeterminacy. We appreciate the opportunity each idea brings us and try to combine them into the final decision.

Principle 2:Phytoremediation Nursery as Economic Driver

Kayak Wetland

Wetland Conservation Zone

Principle 3:Call Out Slag as Historic Trace

Secondary Succession Nursery Museum

Slag City

Principle 4:Create Dynamic Landform Experience

Steel Adventure Park

Steel Adventure Park

PHYTO-MECHANISMS

Organic Contaminants Phytodegradation,Phytovolatilization

PHASING PLAN

Inorganic Contaminants Phytostabilization, Phytoextraction

Aqua Pollutants Infiltration, Stabilization

1st- 10th year Phase 1: Cleaning

10th-12th year Phase 2: Stabilization

12th-15th year Phase 3: Adaptation

15th- 20 year Phase 4: Operation

PLANT ARRANGEMENT TIMELINE Metals (Inorganic Contaminant) Fecal coliform (Aqua Pollutant) Petroleum Hydrocarbons - Oil Leakage Toluene (Organic Contaminant) Polychlorinated Biphenyl - PCB (Organic Contaminant)

Lesser Duckweed Compact Walter's Viburnum White Spirea Canadian Wild Rye European White Birch Osage Orange Austrian Pine Sunflower Canadian Wild Rye

Plant Palette & Phyto-Mechanisms There is a difference between the treatment for organic, inorganic and aqua pollutants.

Organic contaminants can be degraded and absorbed by plants. Inorganic pollutants need to be extracted and removed from the soil by cutting and burying or burning the plants. The depth of contamination in the soil determines the root depth of the remediation plant.

Specific contaminants will be treated with

Autumn Fern

unique plants that can remediate them efficiently. The timeline shows the amount of

Sideoats Grama

remediation reduced by the plants. Organic

Hydrangea

contaminants take a shorter time to be fully remediated. The plant chart not only shows

Boston Fern

the seasonal color changing but also indicates

Pot Mum Soft Rush Tall Fescue

the relative height of the plants that would grow. Among the plants, trees’ capacity for remediation is related to their ages. Their age increases their ability to remediate.

DETAILED TYPOLOGY

1.Edge Condition

2.Remediation planting

3.Community engagement

Parcel C

CIRCULATION & MASTER PLAN

Seekonk River

Parcel B

Visitor Circulation

Parcel A Major Trail Minor Trial Operation Zone Tree Planting Zone Operation Industry Open Plaza Industrial Facilities

Oprational Zone

Omega Pond

Vehicle Route Train Track

0 ft 125 ft 250 ft

500 ft

B

i

o

s

w

a

l

e

s

SITE TRANSECT

Transect B

Omega Pond

Aqua Planter

Preserved Oak Woodland

Trail Woodland

Woodland

Visitor Center

Bourne Ave.

Transect C

Omega Pond

Woodland

Stabilization Remediation

Planting Bed

Experimental Field

Austin Fern

Green House

Factory

Trail

Seekonk River

PERSPECTIVE – NURSERY PLANTING BEDS Focusing on the conditions and the opportunities presented by the site’s self-cleaning abilities and processes, regeneration of economic development, environmental rebuild, and public engagement, this proposal creates a new type of future for post-industrial sites.

3 . 0 6 5 SECONDS

YAC Competition Hyperloop Desert 2020 FALL Instructor: OSTAP RUDAKEVYCH Site: Nevada, Las Vegas Group work with Xindi Wang & Yuheng Wu

There is an insane fascination in the immense and dusty expanses surrounds by reddish rocks and swept by fierce winds. In the heart of the Nevada desert, a few kilometers away from Las Vegas, the first test center of Hyperloopthe futuristic means of transport that will connect cities and nations at a much higher speed than planes- has been created. The design proposals aim to shape the most recent dreams of innovation and speed through a set of iconic buildings located in the place where the history of mankind will be written. The new hyperloop campus will not be a mere building, but rather a monument to celebrate the ancient and always-renewed race towards the most heartfelt and irredeemable ambition of our species: speed.

THE PROMISE OF THE FUTURE

Distance 935m

Main Campus

Hyperloop Lab &Test Center

Distance (935m) / Speed (305m/s) = Time (3.065s)

Campus Circulation

Main Campus + Xeriscaping

Hyperloop Lab & Test Center

Arch 01 Arch 02 Arch 03 Arch 04

Campus Central Axis

This campus is a monument that records people’s endless pursuit of speed. With the development of science and technology, we can shuttle between cities at a faster speed, and the distance between cities has been relatively shortened. Speed, time, and distance can be expressed succinctly with a formula: distance equals speed multiplied by time.

After reaching the ideal speed, the train can pass through the entire building in only 3.065 seconds.

That simple formula is frequently used in the tests and thus becomes the core for this campus. We consider allowing architecture to develop along a line, like a ruler, measuring the limits of human speed and the boundaries of ambition.

Located in the desert of Las Vegas, this campus is a wonderful tourist attraction, a testing ground, a front line of technology, and a collider of ideas.

As the test progressed, different groups of people came to this school, and every arched building marked a staged success of the test. The starting point is a laboratory established in a harsh environment, but the end of this speed curve is infinity.

This campus will not only represent the spirit of the hyperloop but also present to people a new vision of lifestyle. We envision the campus as a showcase for future transportation methods.

People can take the direct capsule train to each part of the building, especially the observation deck on top of the first arch and the apartments distributed in the second arch. It defines the future transportation: from home to wherever you want to go without transfer. The latest technologies are applied in the building, including curved elevators, wastewater collection systems, and wind power generation systems. This is to express the greatest respect from the future campus to Las Vegas-” Nothing is impossible”.

SITE PLAN 100m

200m

400m

Section 1:2000

Elevation 1:2000

ARCH 03 WATER RECYCLE SYSTEM The campus adopts a series of passive energy-saving methods to adapt the extreme climate in the Nevada desert, including underground cooling system, solar energy, and water-saving and reuse system. Among the 5 Arches, Arch 03, as a water circulation system, mainly carries wastewater utilization and uses the intelligent control of water usage. As the energy center, Arch 04 uses the abundant solar energy in the desert to generate electricity and heat to supply clean energy to the campus.

ENERGY + WATER RECYCLE SYSTEM

ARCH 05+06 CONTROL & TEST SYSTEM

Museum Plan 1. Temporary Exhibition 2. Museum 3. Elevator Control Room 4. Welcome Center 5. Open Theatre 6. Arena 7. Outdoor Garden 8. Learning Center

Headquater Plan 1. Conference Room 2. Cafereria 3. Central Control Room 4. Engineer Office 5. Loading Zone 6. Laboratory 7. Senior Engineer Office