WEIYI XIA DESIGN PORTFOLIO 2014-2016
about me I am an interior architecture designer who believes in working on simple but functional architecture and interior design projects with strong sculptural and poetic forms. They’re creative, user-focused and interesting. The consistent highlight of my design is surprising the users through every thoughtful detail as well as providing an excellent experience to them. I am not afraid to take a risk when it feels right. Being confident and modest, having an ambition, striving for excellence, being meticulous to each detail as well as keeping high efficiency have always been my working and living attitude.
resume EDUCATION Graduation May 2017
EXPERIENCE 2015.06-2015. 08 Zhejiang, China
2016.07-2016.08 Jiangsu, China
contact Email: weiyi.xia95@gmail.com Phone: 1(312)-623-7666 Website: www. weiyixia95.com
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), Chicago, IL Bachelor of Interior Architecture Merit Scholarship Recipient
2016.09-2017. 03 Chicago,IL
Architecture Design Intern | HUA YUE Architecture Design, Ltd Designed the renovation of the buildings’ facades of a industrial estate in Nanjing. Provided the design concepts. Produced 3D models and renderings for the project. Architecture Design Intern | Tus-Design Group Co., Ltd Designed the renovation of a local primary school’s dining hall. Created concept drawings, design drawings and detail drawings for the initial stage of design. Resource Technician | Media Center (SAIC) Worked alongside the coordinators to respond to various tasks about instructional resource and to maintain the classrooms, offices and facilities of the school.
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SKILLS Design
Softwares
Technical
Languages
Other
-Accurate and clean hand-drawing of architectural drawings -Hand-made precise, detailed and delicate models -Interior space design -Architecture design Proficient in: -AutoCAD -SketchUp -Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere, Dreamweaver) -MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook) -HTML Proficient in: -Laser cutting -3D printing -Digital Camera -Light kits -Assemble computers
-Handcrafting -Woodworking equipments -Basic hardware: scanning decives, audio-visual presentation equipments
-English -Chinese -Japanese (Beginning level) -Spanish (Beginning level) -Excellent organizing and arranging skills. -Adaptable, quick learner with excellent memory -High effectivity and efficiency
LIVE IN THE GAP A residence designed in the alley in Chicago.
4-10
ALONE WITH FRAMES A conceptual framework design of the library away from the noisy city on the Michigan lake.
10-15
PULLMAN FACTORY CULTURE CENTER The adaptive re-use of the abandoned Pullman Rail Car Factory.
16-26
CHICAGO DEEP SPACE MUSEUM A museum built underground in an abandoned deep hole in Chicago. DETAIL AND TECHNICAL DRAWINGS Digital and hand drawings of constructional and technical details.
27-32
33-49
LIVE IN THE GAP A residence designed in the alley in Chicago.
This project is about designing a residence for the scholars who will be invited by the Graham Foundation to live in Chicago for one year. During the whole year, these scholars from different fields and different countries will live together, communicate with each other and work on their own projects here. Therefore, how to motivate the social communication between them, as well as provide solo spaces for their personal living and working, is an important question to consider. ​
The inspiration is the limitation of the site, which is a long, linear and narrow alley. The limited linear space is perfect for a passing system from one end to the other end. This is the reason why the split-level individual rooms are arranged in a stair-stepping way. The large window of each room is facing the garden without any blocking view while the public space, such as the kitchen and the living room, is hidden behind and separated from the private space by the staircases. Therefore even when they are in their own rooms, they can still have the smooth message-passing system1 from the top to the bottom by using their rooftops. The rooftops in the sculptural form are also aesthetically pleasing. When it is raining, the rain lands on the rooftops and flows smoothly like a waterfall. The secret open garden in front of the residential building is isolated from the busy and noisy outside world. There is a vertical garden on both sides of the walls. And there is flowing water along the wall. Therefore, the plants, the sound of flowing water and the poetic, sculptural building all make the whole space close to nature, quiet and peacefulness.
DEARBORN ST.
SECTION 1/4”=1’-0”
Message-passing system: My concept is about providing an interesting and unusual message-passing system for the scholars to easily collect and transfer the potential common interests points at any time. They have no need to wait until they find an appropriate time to talk to others. And, they do not have to waste time on unnecessary greetings or the awkward situation of trying to find a topic to talk about when they are not familiar with each other at first. The sculptural form designed according to my main concept enables these scholars to write down their thoughts immediately and then put the notes into a round container. Then they can just throw it onto the rooftop outside the window. The round container will roll down the rooftop to stop outside the next person’s window. If he/she is interested in this content, he/she can add his/her thoughts onto it and pass it to the next person. Otherwise, he/she can just ignore it and pass it. In the end, the containers will be collected in a large container on the ground floor. These scholars can have a meeting together while there are already many valuable ideas and topics available for them to explore and develop. This system is not designed for replacing the normal ways of how people communicate. It is just a way that makes people willing to participate and provides more possibilities to them. It is an interesting highlight for the scholars to live in and experience this city.
Interior Perspective
Reflection of the words written on the inside of the solo room’s window and shown in reversed way
ALONE WITH FRAMES A conceptual framework design of the library away from the noisy city on the Michigan lake.
This library called “Alone with frames� is located on Lake Michigan. It is in the north of the end point of Navy Pier. It is a place for both escaping from the city to the nature as well as having the connection with where we live. Here, people get a chance to see this city through a new angle.
The main concept is about designing a calming library that is open to the nature as much as possible. It is a place for people to escape from the noisy and busy city life, be really close to the nature, and to relax and read here. There are perfect open views of the beautiful lake on the north, east and south direction. The rooftop garden provides an environment for people to closely enjoy the sunlight, the lake, the small pools and the green at the same time. The interior floor is designed to be smooth and reflective. The reflection of the wavy lake and the shimmering shadow of the roof garden’s pools, which have transparent bottoms, make the interior floor a continuation of the lake. The view on the west direction, which is the direction of the city, is partly blocked. But people are still able to overlook the beautiful skyline peacefully from the distance.
The abstract form is inspired by the directions, which the designer wants to show the viewers. The frameworks in triangular shape are overlapped so that the whole structure is actually facing several different angles. The openings and the enclosures are chosen on purpose to be presented to the viewers.
The long ramps is designed wraping around the main structure of the building. The whole rooftop becomes a large ramp of garden in air for people to rest and enjoy the sunlight, the wind and the beautiful view. There are plants and small pools on the roof garden. The transparent bottoms of the pools creates shimmering shadows on the reading room’s floor. The reflection on the floor shows a connection and continuation with the Lake Michigan. The large transparent curtain wall eliminates the barrier between the interior of the building and the lake as much as possible.
This library is an excellent position for viewing the firework shows in the Navy Pier.
PULLMAN FACTORY CULTURE CENTER The adaptive re-use of the abandoned Pullman Rail Car Factory.
Pullman is a stable middle class primarily African American community experiencing positive economic growth. This community was prosperous during the golden period when the Pullman Company manufactured railroad cars in the mid 19th century. But later, after the factory was closed, this community went downhill. In this project, the designer renovates part of the abandoned factory into a new culture center, where people can learn about the history, current situation and future possibilities about this community. Exhibition space, vertical garden, kitchen opened to the public, library and classrooms are included in the culture center for educational purpose.
The designer keeps all the traces of the original railroad car factory and adds a new structure that can cooperate with the existing space smoothly. The designer is inspired by the function and the form of the rail. Rail is the path that leads the train’s direction. The designer borrows this idea and designs the structure to be the form of tunnels that can clearly lead the visitors to move along with the expected circulation.
The sketch model of the two-stories structure. It clearly defines the circulation designed for the viewers to walk through the whole space. The circulation is: entrance- exhibition space- staircase- vertical garden- kitchen opens to the visitors for the education- small library- classrooms and lecture space.
Since the original ceiling of the factory is too high, an additional ceiling is necessary. The ceiling with long strips echoes the railway, goes through the space with leading intention, and covers both part of first floor and part of the second floor. The important exhibition space on the first floor is open to the ceiling. The sunlight shines through the skylights will lighten the exhibition space.
The form of the rail is long and continuous. Thereby, the elements of parallel long strips are used in the design as the walls and ceilings. Long strips can enhance the feeling that directs people to move forward along the circulation. Meanwhile, they can divide different spaces without totally blocking the view, which provides more connections between the different spaces. This form also provides amazing light and shadow effects under the light.
In this project, the concept design of the kiosk, the bookshelf, and the vertical garden are also included. The form design of these elements all follows the main concept inspired by the railway’s form, flexibility, and continuity.
kiosk design progress
The kiosk is wraped around by the long strips, which implies the form of the railway. Part of the strips also becomes a pergola.
This bookshelf is designed according to the inspiration of the railway. The form echoes the track. The vertical panels can be lift up and move to other positions, then put them down and fit right into the grooves. Therefore different kinds of books can be divided flexibly, like the railroad switch can flexibly adjust the tracks for leading the trains to the different direction.
The plants in the vertical garden are placed on the long-striped part. Along with the shelves, the extra water left after watering the plants will flow to the box and is collected for future reuse. The function of the railroad adjustment switch is the inspiration.
CHICAGO DEEP SPACE MUSEUM A museum built underground in an abandoned deep hole in Chicago.
This project is about designing a deep space museum in a 104ft. wide and 78ft. deep hole. In this project, the designer started with an image of the kaleidoscope pattern. The form and layout are inspired by this pattern. The challenge is to transfer this artistic layout into a reasonable and well-thought-out interior space layout for a museum. This museum is designed for showcasing 9 of the 90 artifacts and audio pieces that have been sent into space.
Instead of drawing light from the highest point in the sky, this project will explore the spatial structuring of a deep underground space where both natural and artificial lighting will be required to illuminate the artifacts and spaces. Both the natural lights and the artificial lights are necessary for illuminating the whole underground space. This project focuses on the vertical axis of space extending from the peak of the sky down to the depth of the earth. The main element the designer extracts from the kaleidoscope pattern is the four three-point stars. Four main supporting columns designed according to these four stars are set all the way from the bottom to the top that directly supports the rooftop. In order to bring more sunlight into this underground space, the rooftop is designed as a hollow structure. The center of this deep hole is left open so that the light can shine onto the lower levels. The circulation is designed for people to reach different facilities conveniently and reasonably.
The permanent exhibition is seperated from the temporary exhibition. The permanent exhibition space is in the dark side and lightened with artificial lighting while the temporary exhibition space has more natural light. The voids opened to below enable sunlight to shines through on the lower levels as much as possible. The landscape design is inspired by the elegant curved roof structure. The visitors are also able to approch the museum by water taxi.
a
b
a. One of the permanent exhibition space, which is dark enough for a large screen display exhibition. b. The cafeteria on the bottom floor has the shadow of the roof from the top. c. The transparent roof structure brings in as much sunlight as possible as well as be close to the nature around.
c
DETAIL AND TECHNICAL DRAWINGS Digital and hand drawings of constructional and technical details.
This project explores the craft and technical aspects of construction and building systems through the process of design, with particular emphasis on the simultaneity of systems that are critical to substantive architecture. The locus of the examinations is the renovation of the classroom space into a cafĂŠ.
A series of technical drawings the designer did for the internship.