Xiaodi Chang Portfolio 2019-2022

PORTFOLIO OF XIAODI CHANG

Master of Architecture

University of California, Berkeley

Bachelor of Engineering

Central Academy of Fine Arts

PROLOGUE

Waking up in the log cabin in the desert of Arizona to the sound of a woodpecker pecking at the roof, I patted the wall gently, and the woodpecker immediately flew into the giant hollow cactus in the front of the door...

This view inspired me a lot that the architecture needs to get rid of the frames and grids to return to nature and humanity since it primarily derived from nature thousands of years before...

WANDERING IN PLOTS Theater Design 01

STUDIO PROJECT

A theatre design that focused on the ways to appreciate plays.

Time: Spring 2020

Site: Newark, New Jersey, United State

Tutor: Prof. Yufang Zhou, Lecturer Yanchen Liu

Individual Work

This project started from a play called <Same time, next year>, which contained six scenes across over twenty-five years, reflecting society's changes in the United States.

With the inspiration of this plot, I brought out multiple questions: How to define interior and exterior spaces in the theatre? Is the interior space autonomy ? How does the interior space shape people's experience and affect the relationships between audiences and actors?

Suppose I add a surface between the audience and the actor; for actors, the space beyond the stage can be defined

as "exterior," therefore, the building's exterior "no longer" exists. And can the space that audiences occupied be an extension of the stage?

The theater is divided into six viewing areas corresponding to six plot scenes. The audience enters the six viewing points layer by layer through different transition areas around the circular stage in the center. Through various spatial forms and viewing modes, the audience is gradually introduced into the plot and close the relationship between the audience and the actors.

1:100 Physical Model / Butter Board and PVC

Physical Model Plywood, formcorn, clipboard, plaster, acrylic paint

THEATRE FORMS ANALYSIS

The Proctor’s Theatre located in Newark, United State, nears by an old street which riches cultural atmosphere. Around the site, there are many temples and churches, on the north-west of the site there is a community college as well.

The Proctor’s Theatre, which opened on November 25, 1915, was one of the rare “double-decker” theatres. The roof spaces were commonly used as an additional place for leisuring served for patrons, especially for males. It was closed in 1968.

PLOT AND SPATIAL PROTOTYPE

Eight stories office faced the main street

Box-type stage on first floor, date unknown

Stage on second floor, well lit by large windows

Arena Stage Proscenium Stage End Stage

Flexible Stage Wondering

?

Doris and George meet at an inn and have an crush. They agree to meet once a year at the same place.

Doris, now as a knowledgable woman, asks for George's respect when he avoiding to afford the responsibility.

Doris returns into family and pragnant. George takes the task, and helps Doris to deliver the baby.

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Doris refuses George's proposal. And they promise to continue this relationship.

As a successful business woman, Doris facing the marriage crisis. George helps her solving the problem.

Doris as a college student, argues with George because of different political positions.

Scene 6 1977 Scene 5 1972 Scene 4

Through a gentle ramp, the audience enter the first space which is tall and narrow, separated from the stage by a thick wall, to create a sense of isolation.

The thickened wall creates a heaviness atmosphere. Through the gallery, audiance can peek into the stage. Seats are far away from the stage, and the performers.

The space enclosed by a curved wall. The audience can enjoy the performance while walking on the ramp to experience the ups and downs of the plot.

The spiral staircase leads up to the observation deck at the top, where the entire stage is viewed from top to bottom.

The audience can see the main stage and the secondary stage through two windows which serve the plot. The distance between the audience and the characters is gradually closed.

The space is very open, the audience can enter the performance area for watching without any physical block or height difference between the actors and the audience.

The inner space is centered on the circular floor's periphery is public space, opening to hall, temporary exhibition hall and public bookstore

Walking down the staircase from the secondary and actors dressing room, which

CUTAWAY VIEW

Staff Passage

Public Area

Secondary Entry

circular stage, surrounded by six spaces. The first the community. Restaurant, multifunctional bookstore form an independent traffic flow. secondary entrance, it will lead people to the office which forming a staff passage.

Passage for Public

GROUND FLOOR PLAN

1. Lobby & Box office

2. Rest area

3. Temporary exhibition hall

4. Book store

5. Cafe & Restrant

6. Storage

7. Kitchen

8. Lavatory

9. Waiting room & Exhibition area

10. Viewing area

UNDERGROUND FLOOR PLAN

SECOND FLOOR PLAN

1. Viewing area 2. Waiting area

1. Storage 2. Equipment room 3. Multi-function hall 4. Lavatory 5. Rest area 6. Restrant 7. Center-stage 8. Side-stage 9. Viewing area 10. Waiting room 11. Backstage 12.Dressing room 13. Administration office

Physical Model Plywood, formcorn, clipboard, plaster, acrylic paint

Opening up the homogeneous square-shaped crust, a space full of vitalities and possibilities arouse people's feelings.

When people enter this space, they will be marveled by this introverted energy. Curved walls are interweaving, growing autonomically without being controlled by the outer forms. They can be defined as inter but can also be external. There is no more boundary between "inside" and "outside." The space keeps showing its vigorous and energetic life while people wander alongside it...

OUTSIDE-IN

Residential Design

STUDIO PROJECT

A residential design that focusing on the relationship between facade and urban scenario.

Time: Fall 2022

Site: The Broadway, Oakland, CA

Tutor: Prof. Rudabeh Pakravan

Individual Work

The project started with a site visit in Oakland. The reflection on the window drew my attention. That is, the reflection blurs the boundary between inside and outside and sets the thickness of one single layer in terms of seeing the space on both sides through the reflection on the facade.

Façade is always seem as a boundary between inside and

outside. But in this project, I tried to break this boundary but also keep a sense of safety for the resident. Even though the exterior elevation is repetitive and rigid, but by taking advantages from this form, it also welcoming, by looking through the gap, by seeing these balconies and triangle gardens, people can take a glimpse of inside and let resident build connections with city.

FORM GENERATION

The Hausman building shows the idea of one leaner facade with identical openings leads to unpredictable domestic spaces.

Convered “reflection” to “projection”, as a spatial operation in the future design.

REPETITIVE FACADE VS DYNAMIC DOMESTIC SPACE

The inner side façade is distinguished from the exterior, which is not on a same plane, but consists of plenty of patios, gardens, entrances, different scales of windows to form a intimated society, and aim to bring people together.

Each unit is generated by a skylight. for every two units, and they also

skylight. And because of projecting, the domestic spaces are un-unified and have different depth which can fit in various functions. There is a niche share a small garden. And each shared entrence is connected by the courtyard.

OUTSIDE-IN

The façade follows a repetitive pattern. By projecting these openings onto the other side, it was created a depth and the ambiguity.

INSIDE-OUT

The reflection blurs the boundary between inside and outside and sets the thickness of one single layer.

03 FROM FRAME TO BODY

Seagram, from 1956 to the Present

STUDIO PROJECT

A spatial experiment based on researching and context reading.

Time: Fall 2019

Site: Seagrame Building, New York, USA

Tutor: Prof. Tao Han, Prof. Yi Fu

Individual Work

This project discusses the various possibilities presented by the Seagram Building after the intervention of female identity.

After World War II, the United States became the number one player in the capital world, and New York turned into the economic center of the whole world. The Seagram Building was marked as an architectural template and manifesto of the American corporate model to meet social needs of efficiency and intensification in the 1950s.

The Seagram Building was regarded as representing masculinity with a rigid grid. It is a purely male rational space that

achieved a lack of variation, which is present not only in the facade but also in the plan set a strict rule about how to explore the space inside.

With the drawbacks and loopholes revealed in capitalism, people are no longer willing to become working machines. The Seagram Building became the subject of controversy. Therefore, when introducing female roles in this Patriarchal world, when feminine intervenes in the Seagram Building, what interactions would happen between these two systems, and whether or not the spatial experience would be more random?

Female Roles Introduce into The Seagram Building

"In fact, there is no city anymore...it moves on like a forest...that's why we can no longer own the old city...it disappeared forever...the planned city, etc....we should consider the means... we must live in the jungle... maybe we can do this."

- Mies van der Rohe

The highly efficient spatial form has been continuously copied and developed under the background of the rapid development of the company system. People's ideology was gradually squeezed, and invisible or tangible grids dominated their behavior.

The City Built on Grids

Tati criticized modern architectures were cold, rational and dull due to there similar appearance. Everyone became actor because of the extensive used of glass, which let people lose their privacy, which let people lose their privacy and freedom.

MASCULINE SPACE

The grid extended to the exterior, the glass with its delicate mullions also ambiguous this boundary. I-beams are exposed outside and straight up to the sky, making this skyscraper looks like a colossus's skeleton standing above the city. The unbalanced scale of three elevations in the center led people to relate to the monuments of ancient Greek. People work inside it day and night to keep this giant "machine" running.

Hard Material

Interior floor extents to the plaza, large glass fits to the bronze frame.

Exposed Structure

I-beams expose outside the wal. Wall Joints also follow the pattern.

METHODS OF CHANGING THE SHAPE

(1) Rotate

Reflect views from different directions.

(2) Squeeze

Create wrinkles on artificial materials.

(3)

Stretch

Stretch material to create interior spaces.

Homogeneous Space

Elevator boxs layout symmetrically, the height of celling shows classical.

Analysis of Anish Kapoor's Works

Squeeze edge Squeeze angles

IMAGE: THE EXPLOSION OF SELF-AWARENESS

The Seagram Building's layout diverges from the center, layer by layer, from four elevator boxes to the glass window, and to the columns, then finally to the plaza. The floor and ceiling materials have no indoor and outdoor differences, which weakens the boundary between interior and outside. On the plaza, the frame extended to the entire site and formed the outer layer of the layout.

The individual gradually loses his identity because the frame shapes people's behavior into the same. The progressive spatial relationships are divided by highly transparent glass. Walking in the frame system, the individual gradually loses their direction, just as Tati criticized in his film "Playing Time": In this world composed of transparent and undifferentiated internal and external spaces, the differences between individuals are gradually eliminated.

Mirror, a material always related to female identities, could break this form. It can be interpreted in many different ways. Talking about the metaphor of the image inside the mirror is as interesting as the

derive of drawing that they all discussion about the truth of the reflection. The reflection in the mirror is between reality and fantasy, which could lead to people's imagination. In Chinese fairy tales, mirrors always symbolize the truth. People can use it to distinguish the monster dressed up as a human by seeing its reflection inside the mirror. In daily life, people consume the image in the mirror as themselves or even cheer themselves up in front of it, which could help them get to know their appearance and wake up their self-awareness. However, the mirror can also be deceiving. It is emblematic of narcissism, just like the magic mirror in Snow White.

Therefore, when the mirror intervenes in the Seagram Building, it will break the centralized layout, and individual characteristics can be reproduced, thus achieving a kind of entertainment, and people can interact with the space. However, when the mirror is twisted, it can also change the reflection inside it and mislead people's self-awareness. People will finally lose themselves in this new space with the continued reflection.

Mirror can reflect the objects which could enhance people's self-awareness. By stretching it, the mirror images are becoming illusories, which can also mislead people.

FRAME: TWISTED FRAME

In this world where efficiency decides everything, human nature is locked in a standardized cubic unit, and the cube is constantly shrinking...

Matthew Barney revealed his thoughts about the contrast between traditional and modern thinking of sexuality and the differences between female and male identities in <Cremaster I-V>. He generally explores the outline of gender, body, and capacity of the human being. In addition, "Twist" is the most common and basic movement of the body. By twisting, people can form various actions, from walking to backward somersault. And it also symbolized a sense of softness, elastic and mellow, which shaped a sharp contrast between "male" features.

Since the corporate system's rise in the 1950s, urban space

has been expanding and deriving in a fractal state. The city was divided into blocks, and the blocks were continued divided into smaller units by streets; skyscrapers rose from the bare ground. The rooms were also divided into homogeneous square space, and grids again covered glass windows...

People's living actions are completed in these small cubes, and their behavior is controlled by these frames. The ground floor of the Seagram Building is completely clean and open to the distinct, which creates the feeling of unsafe due to its large scale, and people pass by quickly to get into work. Therefore, I twisted grids, and the homogeneous space is broken, forming more directional spaces and barriers, which provides people a sense of security and makes them willing to stay to rest.

By extruding the frame, it can form into the walls, which can block the sight and offer people a sense of safety. Twisting the walls, they will interact with others to form the path or the space.

This shape is extracted from Anish Kapoor's work. By stretching and squeezing the hollow colum, it will be shaped into different forms.

WALK: THE PATH IS STILL IN CONTROL

When Hera angrily threw the cursed flute into the world, and satyr picked up the flute and played beautiful music to incur a murderous disaster, everything seemed to be under Hera's control...

This form came from the artwork by Anish Kapoor, which was named <Marsyas>. Marsyas is a character from ancient Greek mythology. Hera was jealous of his ability to play flute since she had been told that females were profligate to play the flute. Therefore, Hera set a trap and cursed him. This story is full of comparisons between males and females, which showed the females received control under Patriarchle in the past ages and revealed stereotypes of females, such as jealousy and scheming.

In the plan of Seagram Building, the characteristic of classical stylized central symmetry is greatly embodied. The four tall marble elevator boxes divide the space into three homogeneous corri -

dors in parallel. Passing through the narrow, tall, and homogeneous traffic space will remind people of monumental buildings.

With the rise of female identity, when this seemingly disorderly element breaks into an internal space of the Seagram building, can it damage the frame that controls the area?

The feminine element transforms this simple, direct, and easy-to-interpret rational space into a more secret and complex space with a potential control force to human behavior. By transforming the "vacant land" into a "greenhouse," the indoor space was originally based on technology and now presents a primitive and biological "landscape." The twisted shapes transform into paths, which manipulate people's behaviors, such as moving, stopping, bending, and crawling. Although these organic forms make the space no longer homogeneous, they subtly manipulate people's behaviors.

Residential Design 04

POOL HOUSE

STUDIO PROJECT

Form experiment and representation

Time: Fall 2021

Tutor: Prof. Raveevarn CHOKSOMBATCHAI

Individual work

This project is served for grandparents and the community, which combined a private dwelling and a public pool house. During this design process, my goal is to create a welcome gathering space for the users, and I also consider balancing the privacy and the accessibility between public and private spaces.

By exploring the intricacies of formal logic and programmatic

function. I created spaces that are private, and also serve a community larger than those living in this residential design.

Throughout this project, I paid more attention to the balance between private and public spaces and the different living styles of various generations. According to that, I tried to use different spatial experiences to distinguish these spaces by sharing the same module.

Physical Model

Duo-system

Mirroring

The form is generated from two operative words. One is a duo-system, the other is mirroring. The prescribed circle breaks the grid of the cube to create a contrast between straight lines and cures, and formed this module. The single module was then mirrored and translated across the vertical, horizontal.

Programmatically, the building takes advantage of topography to separate the private space and the public space. By embedding the dwelling into the site, the elders could directly access their house from the upper level, and the public could gather in the communal pool house underneath without interrupting each other.

Public Space

When mirroring these shapes, it can form a volume space in between, which can generate the public space used as a pool house.

By merging units, it can form a solid space, which be used as the private space for grandparents.

PHYSICAL MODEL AND PLAN

The procession from the ground to the 3rd floor is experienced through the flowing movement of a curved stair. The external stairs alongside swimming pools and the curve plane lead from a communal garden to an open-air pool on the third floor.

For grandparents they could directly enter their house from the north side of this building. There are no walls in the interior, but use built-in furniture to divide the space. By doing so, it can not only gain accessibility but also keep the space intact.

In function, the dining room takes the place of the traditional living room. Because of the generation gap and different living styles, the dining room and the kitchen become the most critical space for grandparents to interact with their family members. Therefore, the dining room becomes the main space for families gathering.

POST-95S’ NOMADISM DWELLING Sharing Apartment Design

STUDIO PROJECT

The congregate dwelling that suit for post-95 people.

Time: Fall 2020

Site: Fu Sui Jing Building, Beijing, China

Tutor: Prof. Yi Fu, Lecturer Wenqiang Han Individual Work

Fu Sui Jing Building, established in 1958 as a model for socialist housing, embodies people's determination to conquer old age from all angles. The eight-story height building was particularly eye-catching among Hutongs at that age, thus becoming a landmark. This housing that once marked people's good yearning for socialism declined when the Great Leap Forward ended, and its layout was no longer suitable for people's lives.

The post-1995 generation is "uninhibited." Prosperous life offers them opportunities to explore new things and experience different living styles. According to the survey, post-95s' employment attitude is considerably different from post-90s

and post-80s that their job-changing frequency is much higher than others. Under this circumstance, they always "roam" in cities, finding their value. Therefore, creating a very low-rent congregate dwelling will meet this living style. Functions rather than sleeping are extracted out of rooms and removed to the public space to reintegrate young people into community life.

So what will happen when post 95s meet this legacy from the old days? This socialist building, as the hallmark of its particular age, does contain the spirit of renovation, which also matched the post-1995 generation's characteristic. Nowadays, the Fu Sui Jing building has a great chance to glory again.

The eight-story height bulding was particularly eye-catching among the hutongs at that age and aside to theBuddist temple. Nowaday, the south side of the building is still retaining the original features.

1958.12

Established.

The building materials were Great Hall of the People’s surplus materials.

2020

The government forces the residents to move out the building by January, 2021.

1960

Model workers and their families who devoting themselves to establishing the country consisted the original residents in this socialist building.

The building had an equipment dinning hall to support the policy of ‘The Canteen’ (residents did production work together and eat without paying).

1960-1970

The Great Leap Forward Period came to the end due to the depression of economy and rural residents moved to the capital to seek opportunities. Some of them moved into the building.

2005

Due to the fire risk, the government shut down the building and planning to renovate it. However, there were few people did not willing to move out.

1976.7

Tangshan earthquack made residents build shelters in the courtyards. After that residents who live in Fu Sui Jing Building started set up the gas cooker in the corridors instead of using public kitchens on each floor.

According to the servy, young people who born after 1995 are more willing to try new things. 83% of them spend time and money on their interests. This analyize shows the relationship between young people's hobbies and the functions of cities due to the time them spend of a day excludes sleep and work hours.

ANALYSIS - CONCEPT FORMATION

According to the survey, the employment outlook of the post-95s youth has undergone tremendous changes. The professional counterpart rate and employment time for the first job are far shorter than other generations. Therefore, creating more chances for residents to interact with each other and with the city will help them finding out their position in the socity.

The dewelling model content a sharing-kitchen which can served two groups of residents. Each group involves four people who share a bathroom together. On the south side of the sleeping area is the public space belongs to each group of people.

ANALYSIS - FORM

The out wall is the main structure of the building which need to protect:

Art Studio

Three art studios are connected by the sairs and the space can serve at least four residents to use, who can be amateur artist, photographer, or art lover. With the opened studio, it can also hold the public exhibition to attract more residents to appreciate art works.

Green House

People who are intrested in gardening gathered in this area where offers the condition and equipments to growing plants. By sharing the same interests, it will help young people to expand their social circle.

THIRD FLOOR PLAN

FIFTH FLOOR PLAN

FLOOR

1. Art studio

2. Garden

Sharing kitchen

Gym

Lavatory

7.

12.

1. Reading room 2. Dinning hall

3.

4.

SEVENTH

PLAN

Fu Sui Jing Building will survive forever amonge and new generations towards the

amonge the city as a manifesto of both past generations the future of great possiblities...

Plum Blossom-Fun

Time: Summer 2018

Tutor: Prof. Yufang Zhou Group Work

Desert Light

Time: Summer 2019

Tutor: Prof. Pei Zhu, Aaron Betsky, Chris Larsh, Ryan Scavnicky, Yanchen Liu, Xi Zhang

Sensible Temperature

Time: Fall 2018

Tutor: Prof. Xiaokui Qiu, Assisant professor. Yu Yang

Individual Work

Body Structure

Time: Summer 2019

Tutor: Prof. Hongyan Cao