Selected Art and Design 2018-2022
# community engagement
# cultural identity
# social equity
“making Deaf sensories visible to the public through spatial design and community engagement”
Harvard Graduate School of Design | Fall 2020 Instructor Collaborator Sierra Bainbridge, Jeffrey Mansfield Shi Tang
The redesign of the Sign Language Corner at Hankou Riverside Park aims to make the marginalized group visible to the public. It is a DeafSpace that amplifies the sensories of Deaf users, a comfortable place for private and public gatherings that attracts all ages. The redesign celebrates Deaf Gain by enhancing the visual, tactile, and enclosure qualities that are outdated ever since the Sign Language Corner was established in 2006. It has the capacity to accommodate and encourage communications between Deaf and hearing people beyond the regular Deaf gatherings that are held every Tuesday and Friday with 200 to 400 participants.
“embrace,” a semi-sheltered space of transparent gathering
09/22
and rainy condition
ProSigner [a national Deaf rights promotion group and a volunteer group with one of the founders based in Wuhan]
other
a look into the entry of DeafSpace from “intimacy” that evokes curiousity and calmness
“openness” is an elevated open-view plaza that is dedicated to the sign language corner with a beautiful view to the river
drawing by Shi Tang
drawing by Shi Tang
at
“allure,” a playful place with water feature and meandering walk, with a Deaf inclusive cafe and an indoor event space
the intersection of “surprise” and “embrace,” here stands a community chalk board for communication and engagement drawing by Shi Tang
# community park
# parking transformation
# cultural identity
“a designated space for communal gathering and spontaneous activities for ALL in Pittsburgh”
Pennsylvania State University | Fall 2018
Instructors
Individual Project Kenneth Tamminga, Timothy Johnson
Currently a crumbling playground with one slide and collapsing parking lots acrosses the street from the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater, this overlooked spot is transformed into a cultural destination for the residents and tourists at the historic Strip District. The design intends to give back more green and communal space and to bring accessible performance to the neighborhood in two phases. It aims to gradually relocate the parking spaces as more parking facilities and public transportations are undergoing development.
entrance view for the theater spaceExisting Concerns
Proposed Greenway to River
Surrounding Land Use
Current Overview Theater /
Use
Commercial Use
Open Space
Residential Use
Key Species
Robinia ‘Purple Robe’
Black Locust
Populus tremuloides
Quaking Aspen
Larix laricina Larch
Carex pensylvanica
Pennsylvania Sedge
Arctostaphylos uva-ursi
Bearberry
Verbena ‘Tukana Scarlet Star‘
Tukana Scarlet Star Verbena
Rhaphiolepis indica
Indian Hawthorn
Nassella tenuissima
Mexican Feathergrass
Panicum virgatum
Switch Grass
Programs
Performance
Exhibition
Event
Relaxation
Bike Parking
Parking (Ph. 1)
Farmers Market
community events at the multi-use plaza
public transportation and accessibility
# climate change
# memorial landscape
# parking transformation
“let’s witness the city retreat through a memorial unbuilt of hardscape that was once above the water”
Collaborators
The Boston harbor is rising, salt waters will flow inland, flooding the city both episodically and chronically. The water will touch the fabric of the city, overwhelmingly comprised of hard materials, primarily asphalt. As a response to the inevitable water progress, this design takes the loss of land as an opportunity to unbuild hardscape for ecological remediation. The transformation of parking lots to urban ecology and, with time, to marine ecology, provides space for neighborhood learning and conversing around the emotional and physical processes of retreat under the threat of climate change.
Dane Carlson, Robert Pietrusko, Rosetta S. Elkin Lianliu Guo, Ciara Stein, Ying Zhang envision of the spreading of asphalt unbuilding across new shoreline
$50 million for 1 acre, sold 2019 $40 million for 0.33 acre, sold 2019
$218 million for 6.5 acre, sold 2019
will inundated with 4-5 ft SLR
will inundated with 9 ft SLR $17 million for 4.7 acre, sold 2017
Parking parcels that are held under land speculation will be inundated with sea level rise and the landownership will shift from private to state. Ceremonial Unbuilt is design a strategy that considers both the loss of private income from land value and the growth of public shoreline.
holes and cracking gabions and rafts
# machine-learning
# climage change
# social equity
“an imaginary future of street cooling with an artful, just, temporary, yet utilitarian experience”
Harvard Graduate School of Design | Spring 2021
Instructor
Individual Project Charles Waldheim
Sunset Boulevard represents an iconic streetscape of Los Angeles that is automobile-based and that is disproportionately impacting heat events across class and race. Poorer districts suffer from the scarsity of resource and maintenance for green canopy in an overwhelming built environment. Breathing Sideway is an imaginary desirable future for a more socially equitable and comfortable streetscape that does not necessarily ask for a dramatic change of the relocation of capital. The historic photos of Ed Ruscha’s Sunset Strip provide an archival fundament for the generative neural network, which studies and questions the existing fabric of city on its relationship to shade, depth, and movement. Machine learning proposes an urban landscape and shading stracture that could have happened from what have happened.
Shading Prosthetic for One-Story Building
Shading Prosthetic for Multi-Story Building
# wearable
# interactive technology
“art as a tool for cultural interrogation and to make body pain and health inequity visible to the public”
$ugar Pain is a wearable and performance art that intends to reveal the unequal relationship between diabetes, in-come, and the food industry in the USA. Diabetic patients with lower income are more vulnerable to the high sugar content in cheaper food. The inflatable wearable reflects the often neglected and invisible pain of Edema those diabetic patients face. Edema, usually refers to swollen ankles and feet but can involve the entire body, is a symptom of diabetes that occurs when specific tissue in the body gets filled with fluid. While visualizing the invisible pain as a growing prosthetic, this project connects retail price directly to such pain of diabetes through barcode scanning. Inspired by the blood glucose monitoring device that extracts blood from the fingertip, the portable scanner transmits barcodes. It calculates the ratio of price and sugar content to control the level of inflation of the prosthetics.
Harvard Graduate School of Design | Spring 2022
Instructor Collaborator Krzysztof Wodiczko Karen Kuo
Action 1:
Barcode Scanning
Action 2: Sugar Calculating
Action 3: Glove Growing
sugar per dollar would determine the duration of air pumping into the glove after the calculation
A Collection of Food Products with Common Options (usually cheaper) and Healthier (more expensive) Alternatives
a cheaper option for strawberry product
more expensive option
# planting design
# user experience
# representation
Snøhetta | Summer 2022 SupervisorsDarlene Montgomery, Jackie Martinez
Individual Task for Team Project
Instead of thinking plants through the categories of ecosystems and geography, this series of conceptual drawings dedicates plants as a complex of mood and spatial elements. It intends to create an unique interactive experience that is distinctive from the surrounding wetland park, which will remain untouchable for preservation. The planting palettes for themed spaces are curated for the specific user groups who visit here for a mental retreat from the urban environment.
“a proceeding experience of nature encounter from outdoor to indoor, from the native ecosystem to a fantasical dreamland”
Couples, Misty, Sensual
Elders, Tropical, Calming
Family, Fairytale, Energetic
Accessibility:
Outdoor Experience
Accessibility:
Accessibility:
Accessibility:
Accessibility:
Accessibility:
Accessibility:
Accessibility:
A TASTE OF AUTHENTIC CHINESE CUISINE
Special Set Menu by Chef Xiaoji Zhou
ABSOLUTE ICONIC Scrambled Asian Gallus Eggs, Andes Tomatoes from Organic Aztec Farm in Tenochtitlan, Mexico, and Freshly Chopped Chinese Scallion 墨西哥特奥蒂瓦坎有机农场安第斯西红柿烩亚洲鸡蛋 佐中国香葱
TREASURED BASIC Steamed Chinese Rice from Yangtze River Valley 香蒸长江白米饭
SWEET ADDICTION
Chinese Black Tea, Near East Cattle Milk from European Nomadic Farm, Raw Gupta Crystallized Sugar from Caribbean Plantation, and Brazilian Tapioca Pearls 中国茗品、欧洲游牧农场近东牛奶配巴西木薯珍珠 佐加勒比笈多生糖
Approximately 45 minutes per person Please look into the prints for more details
People often seek authentic taste and the traditional methods of cooking for solidarity and a sense of cultural belongingness. Nonetheless, cultures were constructed through time and are still forming. Consuming food is to take a sample test of how cultures were composed. CULTURE SAMPLE questions the relationship between culture and food that has a profound impact from colonialization and alienation.
xiaojizhou@gsd.harvard.edu / zhouxiaoji2003@gmail.com
