1 THE STAR
2 THE OCEAN
3 THE WIND
4 THE CLOUD
5 THE WAY HOME
6 THE UNDERGROUND
X i a o TA N
203-508-4984 xiao.tan@yale.edu
Yale School of Architecture
XiaoTAN
xiao.tan@yale.edu 203-508-4984 EDUCATION School of Architecture, Yale University Post-Professional Master of Architecture Candidate 2018 School of Architecture, Tianjin University Bachelor of Architecture École nationale supÊrieure d'architecture et de paysage de Bordeaux International Certificate of Landscape and Territoire Studies
Sep.2016- Present Sep.2010- Jul.2015 Sep.2013- Jul.2014
INTERNSHIP & EXPERIENCE Mecanoo, Delft, New York Office Working with the Netherland Railway on the new conceptual train proposal Trace Architecture Office, Beijing Leader of intern team, working on Huandao High School's preliminary design process Thinking of the terrain global, Bordeaux, ENSAP Land Art studio along the Bordeaux coast line with ERASMUS student ART BOX, vertical studio with Cardiff University International team work on a reanimation of a coal mine pit with public art activities President of Greenland Poetry Club One year experience of periodical editor and graphic designer Surveying and Mapping of JICHANG Garden Application material for the world culture heritage, China
Jul.2017- Aug.2017 Sep.2014- Dec.2014 Oct.2013 Feb.2011- Jul.2011 2011- 2013 Jun.2012- Aug.2013
HONORS Special Mention Recipient Recipient Recipient Recipient Nominee Recipient
UIA-HYP International student competition Unexpected city, There has been once glory National Undergraduate Scholarship Program The Grand of China Scholarship Council sponsored one year study in France National Scholarship Ranking 1/104 in architecture school Excellent Design Award of International exchange program Student award of exchange program of architecture school in China Beiyang Scholarship Ranking 4/104 in architecture school Far Eastern Architectual Young Talent Award Research Institute Award, Tianjin University
2014 2013 2013 2013 2013 2012 2012
PUBLICATIONS Library of Frames, Retrospecta 40 Supernatrual Lynn, Retrospecta 40 Could I walk you home, Eight University United Architectual Graduation Projects There has been glory, Urban Envirnment Design Caveline, Student Award of Exchange program of architecture school of China
2017 2016 2015 2014 2012
A STAR FOR EVERY ONE CHINA STARTS THE PROJECT OF STARRY SKY
Childhood living in Beijing, I have become accustomed to Beijing's smog and starless night. However, an exchange year in Bordeaux made me realize what the sky, the clouds, the stars actually are. The project of the starry sky came up to me when I saw that a DWutch designer, Daan Roosegaarde, buried copper coils to produce a weak electrostatic field that drawn down smog particles towards the ground. Instead of making through the scientific difficulties and financial problems of creating a large public area of clean air, why not let everyone wears a small device of an electric field to create a clean air hole for his own? It will be a star for everyone in a starless night.
After more than 20 years of an desperately ineffective environmental pollution control, the goverment of Beijing are finally carrying out a new national project: The Starry Sky. The “star” is a small device creates fields of static electricity of ions. Working similar to an electronic vacuum cleaner, it literally magnetizes the smog so it drops down to the ground. By carrying a star, you are free to enjoy a hole of 3 square meters of purified air exactly around you. “It's a similar principle to if you have a statically charged balloon that attracts your hair” explained the spokesman, “ The usage of this operational principle is also widely used on how we spray-paint metal onto the surface.” The star is our first best friend. It is there with you: the first day in school, first kiss in the rain, and first adventure in the forest. As we grow up into adults, the very best friend lost its aura, becoming an ordinary electronic device, which is always left alone against the apartment ceiling. It is not until the last of our days that we come to realize the silent star accompanies us a lifetime. It is time to let it go.
Design Period Location Partnership Tutor
The electricity of the star is provided by a human-battery contact lens, a microelectronic and nanoscale devices that capture energy from your eyes’ subtle movements. With the development of the technology, the contact lens battery is considered secure. It captures a few watts of power from the human body — a negligible amount that would probably have zero effect on your body, providing your air cleaning star with constant electricity. As the electricity of the star is provided by a humanbattery contact lens, the star will extinguish when the owner dies. Many people choose to let go the star to the sky when their lives have come to the ends.
Two weeks Beijing Individual None
Anintegrated circuit chip Chitosan resin shell Chain buckle Inner electric field shell Diodes Electrodes Fixed collar Tray pad
SEA OF FERTILITY A PORTRAIT OF WHAT MIAMI WAS, IS AND YET TO BE
Miami beach is an archipelago linked by roads. if you are the privileged, you could have your home on one of those islands, facing to right the sea, yet the experience of public of the archipelagos is crossing, especially on our site, Miami north beach, crossing through those small private islands to a larger “private island�, where huge block of hotels and residential towers domain the city, leaving the public with no place of public activities but a shaded path to directly heading to the beach. While the north beach is a place with no life between buildings, the richness of a city, what I found this awkward experience beautiful is the contrast of sneaking through the power of man and encounter the power of nature: the generosity of love that totally public : a huge horizontal open field, facing the sea, with clouds 10 times bigger than what we are used to. So what I want to create on the north site, is a new ground that gently heeling from the sea to the riverside, a massive public landscape as a continuity of the beach, where a cluster of residential towers is standing in. The space that the sloping ground created underneath provides huge potential for restaurants, retails and hostels.
As for the architectural language, Miami is a city all about the blue line, facing the sea. I am largely inspired by how Miamians capture their space by the boundaries and the openness and joyfulness of their architecture. I extract those spatial languages from Miami. These spatial fragments of Miami are of different scales, constructing and digesting the podium into a field of traces and wanderings, a sea of fertility. It celebrates the richness of city, connecting people to people.
The huge sand-grassland remains the sense of void with one linear fragment of small walls, guiding into the central series. The two edges of the podium are placed with program driven series, attracting people from the streets. The core of public space, spreading out as a sequence of amphitheaters and sculpture gardens, look directly into the core of the residential towers and hotels. The privileged residential towers are standing on a core of cinema and auditorium, back to each other, facing either the sea or the river. Reaching the riverside, the series of fragmented Miami are more embedded into a huge commercial volume underneath the public platform, where retails, boutique shops, restaurants, hostels are situated.
It is a game and a negotiation. A portrait of what Miami is, of mania and serenity, of diffused and coordinated, of intrusion and reconciliation.
Design Period Location Partnership Tutor
Eight weeks Miami Individual Emre Arolat, Gonca Pasolar, Kyle Dugdale
RESIDENTIAL BUILDING
SCULPTURE GARDEN AMPHITEATRE CINEMA
CONTINUOUS LANDSCAPE
RETAIL
HOSTELS
RESTAURANT MARKET BOUTIQUE SHOPS
CHAPEL -public core on the beach
HOSTELS -along the riverside
SCULPTURE GARDEN -along the beach
SHOPPING MALL -platform PAVILLION -level connection
MAZE -mobile changing room
AMPHITEATRE -landscape level MARKET -ground level
A MASSIVE CONTINOUS PUBLIC LANDSCAPE FROM THE BEACH TO THE RIVER
SUPERNATURAL LYNN A PROMISING FUTURE FOR POSTINDUSTRIAL CITY IN USA
The studio is assigned to address the everlasting question: what a city is. Before turning the design attention to the site, Lynn. we had eight weeks of a case study focusing on analytics of several iconic city planning along human history and personal experience of the place we grew up as a warm-up practice. And the urban quality that impressed us during the case studying session were encouraged to be further tested and developed in the urban design of Lynn.
Lynn, typical post-industrial city incredibly consumed by huge empty parking lots, empty streets and empty buildings, a city without an economic resource. The further investigation of the Lynn went on with the ongoing presidential election between Hilary and Trump. A concerto was ironically created, from which I had a better understanding of what a city is, and what America is.
We treasure the old Lynn when the city has a connection with its landscape, with mysteries, with the sea and the wind as a power system. There was harmony between the city and nature. We are going to retrieve this harmony yet we are not proposing to go back to the old Lynn. Facing the city is not getting any bigger, the challenge of sea level rise, and large disused public space, we are going to turn Lynn into a continuous “natural space” where architecture works together with wind power system, and we are proposing a tramway system to bring together the new city. In order to achieve this, our project embraces the notion of giving the current shoreline of Lynn back to its natural order over time and introducing key Architectural components and Landscape components. All of this will be connected by a new Tram line and Cycling Route that forms a loop and support the core of the city.
We see this as a new future Lynn – one in which the influence extends beyond the construction of buildings to embrace the manifestation of the city itself- a poetic, ecological, and transcendent Lynn.
Design Period Location Partnership Tutor
Eight weeks Lynn, MA Wangliyang Ed Mitchell, AniketShahane
A lagoon is created for retaining the flood water inside the loop of Route 1. It serves together with the train station plaza as the new center of the city.
Shaped like a floating boat, a new train station is built above the viaduct and connects both sides, encouraging people to climb up and enjoy the beautiful scenery on the rooftop.
Renovation of the existing unknown white bridge into a wind tower with identification. The new bridge is both a tram station on the lower level and a warm tunnel on the upper level.
Lynn, which used to be a city with legendaries and fantasies. We believe the new urban planning of the city could bring back those weird legends.
Industrial power plants changes into islands with wind follies and water tanks are turned into open-air swimming pools.
The new shoreline of Lynn is composed by a series of small islands that remediate the flooding and prompts new modes of entertaining and tourism.
The post-industrial image of Lynn is being replaced by a retroactive landscape, one that opens again our eyes to the nature of things, Popular traditions are revived. The city is once again the meeting place for the various social activities.
Currently, Lynn is inundated in a sea of asphalt. In reality, over time Nature will find its own way to slowly take over these “empty spaces�, and contribute to creating a poetic Lynn.
THROUGH THE CLOUDS AN ARCHITECTURE STUDIO IN SHANSHUI
The notion of "Wu", the void of infinity, is of great importance in Chinese understanding of Shanshui: an invisible and intangible imagination. In this project, I have been concentrating on the representation of Wu, a kingdom of imagination burning with its full brilliance in an architectural way. The project aims to be an experiment of transforming from the interpretation of Shanshui to the language of architectural experience. In Chinese Shanshui, what appears in the painting thus differs considerably from ordinary human vision, which is restricted by the position, angle, and scope of the eye and by the moment of seeing. The artist realizes his vision directly from his heart, where the entire universe dwells. As he paints, the artist arranges his mountains and water in accordance with a guiding principle of nature, and he frequently identifies himself with elements in the landscape or the entire landscape that forms the painting. Chinese develop their ways of perspective: The theory of the three farness. Three Farness is a narrower view of the landscape. In terms of artistic expression, the narrower view stresses the role of the observant human eye, which occupies a point in space and a moment in time, as a receptacle of all information outside it, adjacent to it, and within its scope of sensibility. The human mind filter, organize and interpret such information, which is modified by feelings and moods and visualized by the human hand with available tools and materials. By introducing the concept of "Rushi" and "Chushi" from Taoism and Confucius, I arrange the relationship between different characterized space in an architecture studio. Confucius' Rushi is “entering worldly affairs”, indicating “an action to participate in social change”; and Chushi is “withdrawing from worldly affairs”, indicating “a retreat to a spontaneous, natural, and personal life”.
The activities of an architecture studio are grouped into two aspects: a more socialized collaborative one, including model making, meeting rooms; and the other is the place of inner self-concentrating, including the design studio and tea house. I compress the space of social trivials into one intensified intersected space on one side of the wall and maximize the space of inner voice, having them suspended in the vast void as floating islands upon the silence of water.
Design Period Location Partnership Tutor
Eight weeks Tianjin, China Individual Tongtong Liu
Terscape indoor Reception Research collection Storeroom Kitchen Cafe Research collection Coat room Lavatory
自山前而窥山后， 谓之深远
自近山而望远山， 谓之平远
自山下而仰山颠， 谓之高远
Mudane: Transcedental: Reception Studio Coatroom Tea house Lavatory Patio Kichen Cafe Storeroom Model making Research collection Office Staff louge
THEATRE OF EMPTYNESS
Design Period Location Partnership Tutor
A WAY HOME COULD I WALK YOU HOME?
My graduation thesis is the first project after studying landscape design in France for one year. It was not until I have finished the whole project that I realized my thinking on architecture has already been changed during the exchanged year. Architects prefer purer radical solutions; they get inspirations from paintings, music, and literature. They are announcers, ambitious children. Landscape designer made prudent mild decisions; they listen to the voice of the land, sky, and wind. They are listeners, patient elders. One year of thinking as a landscape designer makes me have a global understanding of urban and rural, a deep comprehension on the role of architecture in a large region, what’s more, a much tender and sensitive attention to the real needs of the land and the people living here.
What is more, the acceleration of the tourist development casts a increasing commercialization. The rise of living cost has a strong impact on the living condition of the small business of the original arts and crafts, which were soon replaced by enormous homogeneous goods sold in the streets. The rising living cost also leads to the rising of rent, as the local people have to earn more to manage their daily balance living in a tourism city. The distinction of the local bookstores and arts and crafts shops comes to emerge. The new residents of the ancient city: students, craftsmen, and young artists, are about to confront theirs survive.
The main aim of the project is to conceive a proper living space of the new residents of Dali, "the young nomads ", reconsidering the combination of their life, the life of local residents and the renovation of the city. It is a project that aims to remain the original easy and tranquil lifestyle of Dali The high-quality living condition of Ancient under the circumstances of the unavoidable Dali has soon attracted more and more city commercialization. residents coming to live here. They fled away from the steel cold city, and return to the simple clam pastoral life. These urban escapers are mostly young students and craftsmen, who desire for a serene life of freedom for a time.These new residents enjoy the old part of the city: narrow and wind alleys, old courtyards with numerous flowers, the traditional houses in woods and bricks...They rent the old houses for open up small business like bookstore and craft making. Not only plenty of various artistic creations they are bringing but also a new trend of civic activities to Dali, which turns into the characteristics of Dali to attract tourists. While the new arrivals appreciate the old city, the local people are busy replacing their houses with identical brand new concrete houses. As the booming tourism of Dali in recent years, the financial condition of the local residents is much better than before. The first wish they want to accomplish is removing the old wood-brick houses and build a new one concrete one.
Eight weeks Dali, China Sunyu,Dongqi Xuzhen
The newly constructed houses are all identical and well placed cellularly.
The map illustrates a relocation of a bookshop in the late eight years in Ancient Dali city. The owner is a man from Beijing who has come to Dali more than ten years who has to move out of the old city because of the rapid increase of the rent.
ENCOUNTER OF LOCAL RESIDENCE AND URBAN ESCAPERS
WE LIVE IN THE FIELDS A SUSTAINABLE SUBURBAN GROWTH
Design Period Location Partnership Tutor
Eight weeks Bordeaux Huhongrui ENSAP
Proportion of the street's height to its width
Residential land per person
Neighborhood Space
Public activities
This is my first project of landscape design, it was conceived during my senior year study in The National Architecture and Landscape School of Bordeaux. The project is located in the Bordeaux region. It took us more than six weeks to get a deep understanding of the region through different aspects, starting from geological structure, climate, hydrology, soil, plants and animals to the history of the city, urban structure, housing prototype‌Once we had a global understanding of the land, we were free to choose the specific location of the site. I was strongly interested in how the morphological changes of the housing reflected a clear structure of urban expansion, so I chose Taillan as the site of the project, a satellite town where urban and rural met in the northeast of Bordeaux. The project seeks for a new example of how sustainable growth can be facilitated on the interface of urban sprawl and local agriculture.
The project aims to find a new morphology of the growing edge of urban to suburb. Considering the different demands of residents, a recombination of collective housing and large sharing gardens replace the individual villa with a courtyard surrounded. A two or three stories amalgamated dwelling would safe a considerably large area of land to natural prairie and farmland. Not only this continuity of nature will be eco-friendly to the whole suburb eco-system, but also it provides the residents with the feeling of living in the luxurious vast fields. On the other hand, the reinforcement of town center allows various rural public activities, such as face-to-face farm commerce, horse ranch, sharing gardens, which prevent the town from the ill-fate of limited sleeping satellite town of Bordeaux.
Proportion of the street's height to its width
Garden per person
Identification
Residential land per person
Neighborhood Space
Proportion of the street's height to its width
Garden per person
Public activities
Identification
Residential land per person
Neighborhood Space
Garden per person
Public activities
Identification
LIBRARY OF FRAMES RENOVATION OF NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY CHATHAM SQUARE BRANCH LIBRARY
My perception of the space of the branch library is through Framing. This is a work of a French artist Gilbert Garcin. A frame indicates a certain spectatorship between the person on this side and the life happening on the other side. A fame is a space of encounter, and this is what a branch library is about.
The library is constructed by a series of differentiate frames that captures the complexity of individual experiences. Facing east Broadway, the old volume provides larger public spaces with a general collection. As you can see the separation of the frames. Facing a more neighborhoods street, Henry street, the new volume holds more intimate community experiences with more specific collection, like children collection, Chinese When we were first introduced to Chatham collection etc. Square Branch Library, I am so intrigued by how packed this library is. Chatham Square is the most successful branch library in New York of all the Carnegie Libraries because it By looking at the interactions between is always used by the local residents. Children the city, the books and the people, the are everywhere. All the seats on the adult branch library is more than just a building, floor has also been taken by senior readers. but reflects upon the layers/strata of the Facing a busy commercial street, the neo neighborhood, its people and its history. classic faรงade is originally designed to stand out among the tenements. Now it kind of lost its identity due to the limited volume of the library. I could see a great potential on the roof terrace which offers a great open view for such a limited library, yet now it is only occupied by facilities. I also like the backyard of the building that provides natural lighting. However, the present backyard is totally abandoned and forbidden to entry. Therefore, my urban strategy is to take down the two tenements, extend the library to Henry street, while keeping the central courtyard. The two volumes are connected by the lighting well courtyard and linear passages, framing the backyard street when crossing. It is the moment you stand still, realizing the surrounding neighborhoods, the sound of parent fighting, the smell of the food, the fleeting bird passing the well. The neighborhoods are also looking into the library through this frame.
The branch library is no longer only about reading books, yet reading others, reading neighborhoods and reading the city.
Design Period Location Partnership Tutor
Eight weeks New York Individual Francine Houben
ABSURDITY AND REBELLION METRO: AN ENTRANCE TO THE PAST
I've always been fascinated by those subtle moments between sensitive interfaces: the startled pigeons fly into the sky the moment I climb the ladder to the last step and push up the attic baffle; the sunlight shines through the subway the moment the subway glides out of the ground... For me, the city is filled with delicate interfaces where I find magic in trivial and vulgar life.
What I want to retrieve is not a space in the form of the hutong, but a hutong-like place with a new architectural language constructed b y t h e s u b t l e , h o w e v e r co n s i d e ra b l y important, elements of the hutong. It is like a fragment of the hutong, a fragment of memory, loyal to the past but at the same time is the result of re-processed.
In this project, the sensitive interface is the A moment of the joyful human-scale public subway entrance. The subway entrance is a place. A moment of the feeling of the glorious door between the underground and ground, ancient Beijing. A moment of imagination. between the buried forgotten past and exposed mediocre present of a city. I choose the subway station of Beijing Financial street as the site of the project, where the Hutong are completely wept out by the fierce highrise blocks. Instead of confronted with a vast square, the station entrance is enclosed by the aggregated hutongs. They stand there, reminding you a lost friendly scale shelter, questioning you.
Metro station, as the most frequently used interfaces between underground and ground is given little attention. The moment of sensitive excitement when we are coming out of the dark underground and heading for the upper world is no longer treasured. Instead, we keep decorating the interior of subway stations with a variety of Chinese symbolic patterns, wishing these elements would somehow bring back the past of Beijing.
However, ironic as it is, when we take a walk through these memorial elements and get onto the ground, we are still confronted with an unrecognizable city scene: busy intersection, deserted square, concrete buildings and empty shopping malls.
Design Period Location Partnership Tutor
Two weeks Beijing, China Huhongrui Kong Yuhang
A large courtyard.
A bending tree.
An extremely narrow alley.
A narrower alley.
A tree at the end of the alley. A small courtyard.
Entrance steps.
A spacious alley.
A NEW INTERFACE BETWEEN THE UNDERGROUND AND THE WORKING CELLS
OTHER WORKS NATURE, ART AND LITERATURE
COSTUME DESIGN TWELFTH NIGHT
PANTHEON WALKING INTO THE EYE OF THE GOD
SEA PAVILLION RETURNING TO THE SPACE OF SITTING DOWN
HAINAN MIDDLE SCHOOL THE BEGINNING OF ADOLESCENT SELF-CONSCIENCE
Intern Period Location Office
Four months Beijing TAO
NEW NS CONCEPTUAL TRAIN A CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF SECTIONS
Intern Period Location Office
Two months Delft, NewYork Mecanoo
1 THE CALLIGRAPHY
2 THE OBJECTHOOD
3 THE INFINITY
4 THE THRESHOLD
5 THE TOUCH OF HAND
6 THE AURA
X i a o TA N
203-508-4984 xiao.tan@yale.edu
Yale School of Architecture