portfolio
digital tasting
thermae
intersection and sequence
folding
material studies
connectivity
crenshaw urban housing
hybridity
boyle heights civic center
models
plexi, blue foam, mdf,aluminum
serif table
furniture project
independent research thesis los angeles: linear city
field studies italy study abroad
CONTENTS
wine + wifi
WINE + WIFI
digital tasting @ villa olmo
wine + wifi
what how
wine + wi-fi digital tasting @ villa olmo
wine + wi-fi digital tasting
where why
wine bar + tasting as a historically significant part of italian culture; and internet cafe + hotspots as an integral part of modern society.
An architectural [REFRESH] project based in Como, Italy, this was a conceptual investigation that aimed to create a social gathering hub in a historic but under-used villa. As wine is such a large part of Italian culture and is invested in the cultivation of physical interaction, the inclusion of this culturally rooted tradition within the new digital realm allows locals and tourists to experience social interaction in a new, revitalized way. By integrating these two elements (wine and wifi), this “refresh” of socialization experiments with varying degrees of physical interaction mixed with the dynamic of digital social gathering.
Applied to the interior of Villa Olmo (a local landmark in the city of Como), this concept can be thought of as a physical manifestation of the ‘iPhone.’ Different rooms become nodes for different internet activities, such as blogging, gaming, online shopping, and emailing. The separation of these functions encourages people to physically engage with the villa by moving between the spaces and thus engage in a “digital tasting” of space and experience. User-induced manipulation of wall surfaces also create a physical connection between rooms, allowing for different circumstances to occur based on the varying activities occurring in each room. These shared thresholds start to define larger “neighborhoods” which blur the distinction between independent digital activities, and allows users of different rooms to engage with each other visually, audibly, and physically. Ultimately, this project reintegrates the physical and social aspect of human interaction into the impersonal digital realm, defining a new means of interaction.
programmatic strategy
wine
wi-fi
* historically significant part of italian culture * involves the senses of taste, touch, and smell
* integral part of a contemporary, global society * involves visual and aural senses
wi-fi digital tasting
wine + wi-fi digital tasting
trend of communications
wine + wi-fi digital tasting
digital tasting wine + wifi
trend of communications
physical communication revitalized social interaction physical communication revitalized social interaction
digital communication
+ wi-fi digital communication digital tasting wine + wi-fi digital tasting
social networking
entertainment
gaming
youtube
world of warcraft
communication
publishing
research
wine + wi-fi digital tasting
conceptual premise
skype
ne + wi-fi digital tasting problem
problem
blogger
digg
wine bar interface solution
solution
hardware
software
user
social networking
wine + wifi types of web use
entertainment
publishing
researching
wine + wi-fi digital tasting
varieties of wine
communication
red wines
gaming white wines
shopping + selling
sparkling wines
dessert wines
types of wine
wine + wi-fi digital tasting
service cores
wine + wifi
w
wine + wi-fi digital tasting
exhibition spaces
wine + wifi wine + wi-fi digital tasting
approaching the villa
+ wi-fi digital tasting
entrance
wine + wifi
wine + wi-fi digital tasting
digital tasting tour
wine + wi-fi digital tasting
taste: online shopping
wine + wifi
wine + wi-fi digital tasting
order drinks from the table screen
order drinks from bar counter
order drinks from your pod
social connectivity
wine + wifi
social connectivity
see what others ordering
update your facebook status
check email and fb from pods
change music/ lighting from table
skype with others from counter
chat or play with other pods
wine + wifi
what how
where
wine + wi-fi digital tasting @ villa olmo
INTERSECTION + SEQUENCE Water and Atmosphere: Thermae
thermae
site: Ex Fulda/ Historic city center “thermae” wellness spa
thermae
An exploration of “volumetric” courtyard intersections in response to the surrounding engagement of urban context, this project is a study of how these internal and external intersections create a sequential narrative of bath spaces. Linked by circulation light wells that slice through and create voids within the solid volumes, the baths each experientially vary in not only temperature, but also through different sectional overlaps. Formally, it is a reinterpretation of the urban “infill” language of the “open” courtyards behind palazzo facades. From a series of investigations, volumes of these elevations ultimately shift and open up in section to reveal a porosity that juxtaposes a monolithic exterior.
thermae PRIVATE
PUBLIC
LIGHT
DARK
INNER
OUTER
OPEN
ENCLOSED
INTERSECTION
site analysis + courtyard typology investigation
thermae
study models
cafe
rc u
la
ti o
main indoor pool
ci
main indoor pool
n
sp
in e
thermae
courtyard intersection study
thermae
cafe
kitchen dining
bath 1
entry
ground oor
thermae
bath reception
office
bath 2
storage
massage
ther
sauna
apy
tech
main indoor [30]
bath 3 A
B
below ground
below ground 1:200
first oor
first floor 1:200
thermae
indo or [ 22]
outdoor [22]
[35]
sauna
therapy
second oor
second floor 1:200
third oor
thermae
thermae
south elevation
thermae
section A
thermae
east elevation
thermae
section B
thermae
thermae
thermae
north elevation
thermae
west elevation
thermae
MATERIAL + PROCESS concrete// masonry// metal
folding // concrete
This project is an study of folding iterations, geometric casting experimentation, and solid void relationships that are created by intersecting folding ribbons. The use of folding techniques allows for a controlled process through which the “ribbon� can be manipulated in both direction and form.
material + process
folding // masonry The creation of an iterative patterning system interacts with the landscape by varied porosities. Studies of the module as an aggregated system allows for the structure to reect a textile-like quality, as different portions of patterning can be pieced together as a whole
material + process
folding // metal This folded metal skin system combines the folding techniques of the previous two: investigating the geometric folding of the masonry tile patterning, and how these geometric folds can provide for direction changes first explored in the concrete project. This iterative process and resultant system was ultimately one testing the true material capabilities of metal as a structural element.
material + process
URBAN CONNECTIVITY los angeles urban housing
connectivity
connectivity
This project was an exploration in creating urban connectivity in housing through the use of an interactive shifting grid. The plane of the ground oor is shifted topographically in accordance with the needs of the auxiliary program. The entire housing complex is connected as one surface, and at the same time segmented into different communities through the shifts on the grid. An exploration of a wood paneling system creates different ground layers and varies in densities to delineate green space and walkways. This also serves as a sustainable means of rainwater capture and thermal mass.
BOYLE HEIGHTS CIVIC CENTER hybrid collaborative learning center
hybridity
hybridity Located east of Los Angeles, Boyle Heights is one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods. With a large immigrant and Latino population, the site is extremely culturally and historically diverse. The hybrid Collaborative Learning Center program of this Community Center links its programs to the existing library and expansions upon existing community programs. The striated banding of programmatic and circulation elements not only creates a language of weaving between the Library and Civic Center, but also explore dynamic sectional relationships between programs. Through the exploration of programmatic banding, shifting sectional relationships, and a striated shear wall system, this project ultimately aimed to weave civic presence with the culturally evolving community.
TIFFANY CHEN DP1 PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM ADJACENCIES
LIBRARY Los Angeles Public Library (Benjamin Franklin Branch)
ADULT programs Computer classes Adult Literacy Program (ALP) Limited English Proficiency (LEP) Families for Literacy (FFL)
TEEN programs Online Resource Education Teen manga/ anime Teen web
HYBRID Collaborative Learning Center
Collaborative Learning Lab/ Classroom
Arts/ Multimedia Studio
COMMUNITY CIVIC CENTER
OFFICES Council Members Community Leaders Civic Employees Administrative
CLASSROOMS
EXTERIOR SPACE
CHILDRENS programs Storytime
Librarian Office Space Restrooms Book Storage Donation Center Small Exhibition
Intimate Performing Arts/ Amphitheater Space
SOCIAL HALL
Utility Space Restrooms Storage
LOBBY
COUNCIL CHAMBER
hybridity
COUNCIL CHAMBER
ante chamber
outdoor performance offce/ classroom/ utilit
classrooms
y spine
HYBRID LEARNING CENTER
SOCIAL HALL/ COUNCIL CHAMBER
hybridity
up to council
lobby
social hall
public sitting steps / up to council
collaborative classrooms
outdoor roof deck seminar/ lecture hall
library/resource
hybridity
undulating roof planes Shear Wall + Paneling
Horizontal + Vertical Planes
OM
S AS
CL
LL
HA
AL
S
OM
RO
FR
CI
R
NA
MI
SE
CE
FI
N.
OF
MI
R
I
D
P
E R
F
O
R
M
AD
Y B
SO
TE
AN
H
R
TE
EN
ME
L
CI
UN
CO
O TR
R
BE
AM
CH
PROGRAM + CIRCULATION
HVAC SYSTEM
hybridity
models
MODELS
models
+illustration +plexi +blue foam +mdf +aluminum +resin +plaster
models
models
models
1
models
2
models
3
models
4
models
1
models
2
models
3
models
4
models
models
models
models
models
models
models
models
models
models
models
ENVELOP
COURTYARD PENETRATION
models
CIRCULATION +CORE
LANDSCAPE +CIRCULATION
models
blue foam iteration 1
models
blue foam iteration 1 inverse
models
blue foam iteration 2
models
blue foam iteration 2 inverse
models
models
models
aluminum casting mold - mdf
models
models
aluminum cast - unpolished
models
aluminum cast - polished
models
models
models
models
aluminum + resin
models
foam board + illustration + plexi 1/16” = 1’ -0”
models
models
models
models
models
models
models
models
models
models
models
models
models
models
models
serif table
TIFFANY CHEN ARCH 481
SERIF TABLE TRANSVERSAL TABLE
serif table
TIFFANY CHEN
serif table
CHEN 81
VERSAL TABLE
connection detail
serif table
serif table
serif table
independent research
LINEAR CITY:
a morphology
Inspired by Reyner Banham’s “4 Ecologies of Los Angeles,” I was interested in investigating LA’s unconventional and perhaps lack of urban spatial form in the commonly accepted sense of “outward sprawl from a central nucleus.” As many have assumed that downtown LA will never qualify as the heart of the city, partly because Wilshire Boulevard already exists as a “linear downtown,” the geometries, nodes, solids, voids, and temporal dimensions of the city are all variables that ultimately make up the dynamic network of relationships that evolve and define it. Though Los Angeles is largely defined by major geographical or historical landmarks that correspond to the many nuclei it has generated over time, the evolution of the LA freeway system has also redefined transportation from an interstitiary element to a solid formal foundation of Los Angeles urban language. In my research I hope to diagram, map, and perhaps challenge the “unconventional” formal nature of LA by overlaying comparisons with other urban cities around the world. Can we break down the urban fabric of Los Angeles in the context of Wilshire Boulevard, to inform and extrapolate upon the relationships of the built environment and its interactivity with the temporal dimension of space and time?
image source: The Infrastructural City
independent research thesis Independent research project // summer 2010
independent research
URBAN FABRIC
Comparisons of urban fabrics around the world expose the inherent problem of scale as perhaps one of the most significant factors in determining whether a city is characteristically suburban and auto-oriented or more pedestrian-oriented. The traditional response in suburbia has been to internalize pedestrian areas, in the form of the mall. “Square One (home to the largest Walmart in the world)” as illustrated in the figure/ground of Mississagua, is a classic example of the surburban pedestrian public space (http://www.bricoleurbanism.org).
Copenhagen, on the other hand, is perhaps what many would consider the ultimate pedestrian city. Though the two cities could arguably have the same total “area” of pedestrian public space, it is ultimately the degree of integration into the urban fabric that defines the temporal character of the city. Various cities around the world all have different forms of the “urban grid,” and thus there is no perfect form of street fabric. However, as Los Angeles emerges from a quilt work of distinctive neighborhood fabrics stitched together by the Wilshire corridor, the morphological characteristics of each can perhaps begin to expose the possibilities of a more interconnected city fabric.
image source: http://www.bricoleurbanism.org
independent research
“As if to mimic Le Corbusier’s ideas of the linear city, Wilshire Boulevard suggests a city within a city on a linear trajectory. To live in it requires believing that having a true geographical center to the city is not really that important.” -Lane Barden The Infrastructural City
independent research
CASE STUDY Copenhagen
As one of the world’s great pedestrian cities Copenhagen is blessed with a narrow medieval street grid. However, in efforts to make the city even more pedestrian friendly, in the years since Copenhagen’s main street was turned into a pedestrian thoroughfare, city planners have reduced traffic and parking gradually, turned parking lots into public squares, kept scale dense and low, and honored the human scale.
“In Copenhagen, we have pioneered a method of systematically studying and recording people in the city—a study on what makes the city’s urban spaces work.” - Jan Gehl (Public Spaces—Public Life) image source: http://www.bricoleurbanism.org
independent research
SANTA MONICA
WESTWOOD
HOLLYWOOD
DOWNTOWN
independent research
? WILSHIRE A City within a City Wilshire Boulevard was the first traffic corridor to the ocean after the automobile became primary means of transportation. Though initially the street was residential, the amount of traffic using Wilshire gradually became more attractive for commerce and business. As Los Angeles developed, Wilshire became a city within a city on a linear trajectory. “Le Corbusier’s Linear City would come as no surprise to anyone living in this city” (Barden 160).
As his concept idealized the city along viaducts, parallel open spaces, and straight boulevards or corridors, “to live in it requires believing that having a true geographical center is not really that important” (Barden 160). With Wilshire Boulevard stringing together the dialogue between the city’s many distinct neighborhoods, it is perhaps these variable iterations of scale and proportion fundamental to the city block, which can ultimately enable the dissection of LA’s diverse spatial DNA.
independent research
2.45 miles/ 12,945 ft
2.41 miles/ 11,303 ft
2.72 miles/ 14,308 ft
2.9
independent research
2.9 miles/ 15, 325 ft
2.71 miles/ 14, 306 ft
2.58 miles/ 13,622 ft
2.64 miles/ 13,982 ft
independent research “Today, an almost continous layer of asphalt unifies the Grey Goo apparatus, voiding its foundational myth of arcadia�
independent research
As fundamental as the element of the city block, are the constructs that form upon the delineation of these grids. While the shiny towers of the “centralized” city nucei are indeed present along the stretches of Wilshire Boulevard, what then lies in the interstitiary spaces within the urban fabric? Not quite city, yet not exactly surburban, “Grey Goo,” is the massive territory between city centers and the “exburbs.” Endless and without clear structure, this “goo” is quite literally the grey concrete and asphalt that has seeped into the infrastructure of transportation throughways and city blocks.
As Wilshire transcends the shifting geometry of block proportion and distance, it also illustrates the graphic proliferation of “grey goo” in the “in-betweens” of defined neighborhood fabrics. With the quaint proportions of LA’s Westwood Village morphing into the corporate scale of Century City, the significant increase in buildable floor-area-ratio perhaps gives an indication of Grey Goo as “ the actual material apparatus necessary to sustain the shiny façade of the city center.”
independent research
METRIC: city block length
3 : 1 FAR
.75 : 1 FAR 3 : 1 FAR
3 : 1 FAR
3 : 1 FAR
Drivable sub-urban is: Very low density Floor-Area-Ratio of between 0.05 and 0.30
3 : 1 FAR
3 : 1 FAR
.75 : 1 FAR
.75 : 1 FAR
3 : 1 FAR
3 : 1 FAR
Walkable urban is: At least five times as dense as drivable sub-urban Floor-Area-Ratio of between 0.8 and upwards to 40.0
1.2
independent research
1 FAR
1 : 1 FAR
1.25 : 1 FAR
1 : 1 FAR
1 : 1 FAR
6 : 1 FAR
3 : 1 FAR
6 : 1 FAR
6 : 1 FAR
3 : 1 FAR
6 : 1 FAR
6 : 1 FAR
METRIC: Floor-Area-Ratio
independent research SANTA MONICA
190,230 sf GREY GOO
2.5 min
617 ft
1 min
338 ft if 0.2 miles ~ 3 min walk
GREY GOO
The material apparatus of this “grey” support system is monotonousasphalt, prefab homes, back offices, and old strip malls. As city blocks along Wilshire morph and fluctuate, it is the interstitiary spaces that suffer from the inevitable need of automobile and other support infrastructure. Scale becomes forgotten and as the walkable city block transforms to meet a more “metropolitan” fabric, the residual blocks in-between are left at the cost of their urban efficiency and pedestrian viability.
deurbanization of the mid 20th century, a formal and spatial deterioration of the city into the boundaries of suburbia, the linear organization of Wilshire Boulevard creates a contrastingly cyclic phenomenon, one not necessarily deteriorating but rather fluctuating in the ambiguity of fabric shifts. As distinct neighborhoods weave together, the lost identity of those spaces caught in-between are reflected in the urban architecture of the “goo.”
independent research Metric The morphological sequence of Wilshire boulevard ultimately embodies the narrative of the city’s temporal dimensions. As time exists as a function of distance, the fluctuation of scale and proportions along the boulevard, translates into the experience of place, journey, and destination. With the shifting of individual elements in this narrative, we can begin to grasp the fluctuating relationship of time and the true spatial qualities of an urban “grid system.” Perhaps development of green space or Copenhagen-inspired pedestrian space is most advantageous at these nodes of transition, where travel, time, and interactivity with the built environment are often forgotten. Whether green or built, it is an experiential “intention” that these abandoned spaces are missing. In reinterpreting Wilshire’s cyclical structure through scale, distance, and time, we can ultimately transform a linear city disjointed by aging strip malls into an urban rhythm of interactivity and informed spatial anomalies.
1542 ft 617 ft
6.5 min
2.5 min
METRIC: 2 minutes or a 1/4 mi walk = comfortable walkable distance
ITALIA USC school of architecture // study abroad 2011
field sketches
field sketches
field sketches
field sketches
field sketches
field sketches