WENLU GUO ARCHITECTURE PORTFOLIO
THE AVENUES RIYADH TOWERS SOM / 2023
CHARLOTTE GATEWAY SOM / 2022
DANCING ON THE EDGE
FUTURE GATEWAY
Deluma, Nate Hume, Ezio Blasetti / Fall 2018 04.
ARC701 Graduate Level Studio /Fall 2019 03. 05.
ARC701 Graduate Level Studio / Teammates: Yutian Tang, Tianjian Li / Prof. Ali Rahim, Brian
OTHERS
Garment
THE AVENUES RIYADH TOWERS
Designer at SOM
SD - 30% CD Phase /2023-2024
The first construction phase of The Avenues – Riyadh entails building a full-fledged mall, with parking lots, gardens, and internal roads. The project is anticipated to become a new retail icon in Saudi Arabia. The project will cover an area of 1.9 million sqm, and will feature a shopping mall with an area of 400,000 sqm and more than 1,300 stores, in addition to five towers with com -
mercial and residential facilities and four hotels: the Walford Astoria Hotel and Resort with 350 rooms, the Conrad Hotel and Resort with 400 rooms, the Hilton Garden Inn with 500 rooms, and the Hilton Canopy Bay with 150 rooms, which will also be the first hotel by the Canopy Bay brand in the Middle East.
Selected Material Sample
Typ. Floor Plan
Sky Garden Section
Facade
Interior
Canopy
Enlarged Plan
Enlarged Wall Section
Material Palette
Storefront Floor Plan
CHARLOTTE GATEWAY
North Carolina, USA
Designer at SOM
Planning Design Phase / April - June 2023
The critical goal for the site design is to seamlessly connect this transit infrastructure with the city grid. On Blocks A and B, this transition occurs in a signature public space: a skylit, 60 - foot wide public concourse that connects the transit hubs to the main entrance on Graham Street. This transition defines the “Gateway” to the city. Blocks A and B are each anchored by a clearly defined transit hub. On Bloack A, a bus
station accommodates local and regional buses; on Block B, a train station lays the groundwork for a dramatic increase in regional and national rail travel. Alongside the rail tracks, an elevated trail provides an exciting new public space for the city of Charlotte. The trail expands on Charlotte’s strategic mobility plan, unifying the efforts of the city and county to expand the bike and green network connectivity across the area.
Bird eye View
BLOCK C
BLOCK B
BLOCK A
TRAIL
CANOPY
structural support
Photovoltaic array
Prestressed steel cables
Light Rail Canopy Axon Transit Hub Program Axon
Light Rail / Trail View
DANCING ON THE EDGE
ARC701 - Individual Work/ Prof. Marcelo Spina, Georgina Huljich / FalL2019
The concept of the project is to challenge our notion of unit, whole, figure, and ground. By finding the potentials between the single part and the aggregated assemblage, the design experiment emphasized the way of aggregating and the relations between the part and the whole.
Located in Downtown Barcelona, Spain. The original site is next to the railway, close to Barcelona Zoo and two blocks away from the beach. The current site serves a twofold purpose. On the one hand, it is used as a gathering space independent of interaction with the context. Meanwhile, it functions as a public hotspot to reflect on the existing energetic urban environment. The main program is a mixeduse performing arts center, which will be the place to highlight
art, music, education as one of the major components of the city.
The overall form was inspired by the idea of overhang. It represents the silhouette of a dancer casting the shadow on the ground. The perforated metal skin creates a light-weight feeling to act as a threshold bridging between complex urban context and natural environment.
The idea of grounding architecture is what I explored. The elevated entrance, sunken plaza, and rooftop green space are the few moves that demonstrate what experience visitors can have when navigating through these key moments.
West View
Exhibition
Dinning
Education
Aggregation Study
Lobby / Thearter
Residentail
Thearter
Plaza
Site Plan Rooftop View
Longitudinal Section
Northeast View 1/16” Final Model
FUTURE GATEWAY
ARC701 / Teammates: Yutian Tang, Tianjian Li / Prof. Ali Rahim, Brian Deluma, Nate Hume, Ezio Blasetti / Fall 2018
Interior Legistic System View
The aim of JFK gateway project is to explore the possibilities of future cargo system with human occupied spaces. Our project tries to bring up the argument of the characteristic of l ogistic system in the future. Instead of hiding entire loges system, we proposed the concept of bringing the light into the interior space by penetrating through logistic system. Different depths for light accessibility and spatial hierarchy generate a series of different experience for people to explore.
Architectural language on the facade follows the same concept of interior atmosphere by designing a series of gaps created with various integrations of logistic systems to explore light effects.
Section Axon
First Floor
Ground Floor
Logistic system 5: Multi level belts
Logistic system 1: Belts
Logistic system 3: Central Spiral Transits
Logistic system 2: Hanging Shelves
Logistic system 4: Pill shape elevators
DRAGON ARMOUR
ARC742 Function of Fashion in Architecture / Teammates: Yangxunxun Zhou, Hang Zhang / Prof. Danielle Willems / Spring 2019
Fashion and architecture, what is the connection between these two disciplines nowadays? One possible solution is to dissolve garments into different layers and components, which corresponds to the characteristics of the human body and architecture.
3D print joint components and handmade macrame
serve as visual hints of architecture envelopes and structure elements. By breaking the barrier among architecture language, technology, and fashion, now we are facing a new era —— an era to think and work across diverse disciplines and cuttingedge technologies.
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