Portfolio.
Content Projects Blooming Day
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Slanting Threshold
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A.I. Art Exchange
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AM•USE•MENT
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Other Works REVIT Work Sample: HERE Apartment
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Case Study: Japan Pavilion
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Graphic Design: Work Samples
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Blooming Day
Mantua, a marginalized community located in West Philadelphia, has a long history of suffering from the city’s policymaking and planning. In the 1940s, it was identified as a “dangerous” zone by a discriminatory practice called Redlining. In the following years, Philadelphia Urban Renewal and University of Pennsylvania’s expansion, city’s infrastructure developments further prevented the residents in the neighborhood from thriving. However, in the last two decades, gentrification started to greatly influence the community. Many of the minority residents were forced to leave, and space was taken over by developers and university students. In the past year, under the impact of the pandemic, the situation intensified as the whole neighborhood fell into despair. We used a now-closed art studio in the neighborhood as an anchor point, designed an urban revival plan for a cultural hub, providing open public space, recreations, social services, and art-related activities. We intend it to be an amplifier to broadcast the energy of the existing art studio to the whole community; at the same time, help construct a better living environment, draw in more social and educational resources, and achieve cultural preservation.
Instructor: Bryony Roberts Partner: Jingyi Zhou Date: Spring 2021
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Blooming Day
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Blooming Day
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Blooming Day
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2. 1. Amphitheater is used for diverse activites and open to the whole neighborhood 2. The art studio is an extension of James Dupree’s work and spirit 3. Roof texture offers a visual explosion as well 4. Underground play area, openings covered with nets people can lie on
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Blooming Day
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2. 1. Rainwater collecting pool & playgrounds 2. Layered roofs w/ skylights & roof pathway 3. Adult recreation center lobby 4. Adult recreation center community kitchen & gathering rooms
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Blooming Day
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Slanting Threshold
Since the last half century, digital technology has greatly changed people’s lives. Not only it informs people a new way to look at the world, but also challenges our established concepts of reality. Media, electronics, information data have become the second nature of human beyond the existing reality. People are connected by the invisible flow of information. This realization has greatly changed human’s perception of the world. Nowadays, people switch back and forth between superficial and reality constantly, and it leads us to ask: what is in between? As digital technology continues to blend into reality and becomes an inevitable and inseparable part of life, a question has been raised to the users: does information data require any threshold or additional layers before it enters into the reality from a digital space? As a result, the architectural combination of a data center and a digital art museum could shine some light on the problem. This data center/museum hybridity will serve as a medium connecting the virtual reality and the existing reality. The data center would expose its complicated system of servers and mechanics to the public. The art museum would enlighten the public with machinic potential through artists’ creations. The in-between space thus becomes a bridge and a neutral ground for the visitors to establish their own definition of the threshold.
Instructor: Danielle Willems Partner: Jingyi Zhou Date: Spring 2020
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Slanting Threshold
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1. Site Plan: creating the visual pathway between this project and MoMA 2. Massing Manipulation: intersections become the shared corridor (threshold) 3. Program: Data Center + Threshold + Museum + Administration
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Slanting Threshold
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1. Site Plan: Establish visual connection between MoMA PS1 2. Entrance Lobby: Two program intersecting with each other 3. Museum Exhibition: Daylight shining through facade 4. Illuminated polycarbonate facade with passive cooling pool
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Slanting Threshold
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1. Roof Detail
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2. Water Circulation
Slanting Threshold
3. Facade Detail - Section
4. Facade Detail - Plan
5. Building Cross Section
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2. 1. View from East River in the day 2. View from East River in the night 3. Layers of the building mass 4. Exhibition space with daylight shine through polycarbonate facade
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Slanting Threshold
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A.I. Art Exchange
Although art has been treated in a commodity fashion in the past, the commodification of it has not accelerated until the 1980s. Artwork buyers have extended from collectors to investors. In the last 20 years, the overall art market has had a 2000% growth and in the last 40 years, the contemporary art market share went from less than 1% to almost 15%. This astonishing growth is associated with the increase of commodification of art-based practices, the rapid development of technology, and in the past decade, the technological making of art. In other words, the AI-generated artwork has made its way to the front stage. Through these AI creations, we witnessed the dissolution of individual authorship in the art world and changes in how people evaluate artwork. From this point on, art has moved away from the romantic idea of an individual genius artist’s product or creation, while accelerating the process of commodification of art, for it to be an asset and eligible to be bought in a global market. Our project wants to dichotomously explore and comment on this seemingly inevitable trend of commodified art by making an analogy of the past and the present. The once extravagant building should be viewed as a performative whole encapsulating the artificial intelligence print shop, the broker’s office, and the storage/gallery where each space has its own unique condition but is interconnected with each other, this idea is exploited through a new reading of the interior spatial conditions once present within the original building. Our program will be a new kind of art market, selling AI-generated artwork exclusively as investment items, offering partial ownership of art with storage and shipment service, while allowing the public to visit at a distance. There is a sequence of corridors with “baroque” like components wrapped around an introverted, theatrical space, presenting the intertwined relationship between the romanticized genius-created artworks with individual signature to the asset art, where the sugarcoating of the capitalism is removed and the monetary nature is revealed.
Instructor: Ferda Kolatan Partner: Jingyi Zhou Date: Fall 2020
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A.I.A.E.
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1. Hybrid Objects: Exploring precious and mundane elements from the building and daily life 2. Plan: A sequence of baroque like corridors wrapped around an introverted, theatrical space 3. Section Chunk: A performative whole where each space has its own unique condition 4. Section Chunk: Art is institutionalized by becoming asset, engaging human and non-human agencies
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1. West Corridor Section: Orthodox classical corridor with exotic ambience on top / 2. Ceiling Detail: Serves and artwork transfer well above the ceiling / 3.Broker’s Office Perspective: A.I. artworks sold as investment items, with shared ownership
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5. 4. West Wall Elevation: visitors become part of the melancholic glamorous theatrical performance 5. Wall Detail: Stained glass, french marble, red glass / 6. Theatrical Space Perspective: Packing and shipping feature
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1. East Corridor Section: Corridors are public space that keep people outside even in the building 2. East Corridor Perspective: Walking in a threshold between the monochrome facade and the contained theatrical space 3. East Wall Elevation: Old relics on the top, A.I. art shipping service at the bottom
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IV
AM•USE•MENT
We are faced with a unique design challenge which is to create space with minimal resources for humanities most curious and playful group: kindergarteners. Kindergarten is one of the first steps in the development of social and communication skills. Since at this stage in life, students are introduced to various forms of creativity, fundamental knowledge, and exercise, the kindergarten seeks to facilitate environments which are conducive to these learning objectives. Teachers are tasked with being highly adaptable based on the needs of each individual student, who, respectively, learn and behave in a variety of manners. Due to the vast size of the site and large quantity of children, it would be very hard for this school to operate in a functional manner as it stands. By striating the site, children are encouraged to transverse through a series of scales, adjacencies, and gathering formats. Each strip provides a unique sense of place with a different function. This is achieved very cheaply with subtle program and texture changes that flow alongside one another. By each strip having its own identity, this large site becomes much more manageable. An instance of this is seen in the furthest strip to the east. A series of wood posts are put into the ground to create an artificial forest. As the school accumulates more resources, these posts can be used to hold a variety of “play” functions, such as canopies, rope swings, or soccer nets. This strip has a much different character than the one immediately adjacent to it, which is used for more formal gatherings. Our proposed extension is an additional pavilion which further divides the space while providing another opportunity for informal seating on its front steps. Overall, our proposal uses material as an architectural tool to deploy space making. Our site strategy is meant to be explored and interacted with, while our building solves interior needs while facilitating gathering. Ultimately, a dynamic kindergarten is presented which allows the children of La Arboleda de Fatima to be safe, explore, create, and play.
Partner: Yangwei Gao/Tyler Krebs Date: Spring 2019
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AM•USE•MENT
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AM•USE•MENT
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REVIT Work Sample: HERE Apartment, Champaign, IL
1. Site Plan 2. Foundation Plan 3. First Floor Plan
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Other Works
7. Typical Units A&B 8. Wall Type Schedule 9. Enlarged Elevation Plan
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Case Study: Japan Pavilion at the Brussels World’s Fair The Japan Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair was designed by Kunio Maekawa (1905-1986), a modernist architect. After WWII, Japan went through a rapid reconstruction and economic expansion. For Japan, the Brussels World’s Fair was the first world’s fair after WWII, an important opportunity to show the world its recovery from the war and thus promote trade abroad. Maekawa received the mission from JETRO in 1956. His main goal was to fit the Japanese value accumulated in the long past into a modern framework of steel, glass, and concrete. The pavilion was a demonstration of the value of abstracting, reinterpreting and integrating traditional Japanese elements in contemporary architecture. The elements of the architecture subtly and carefully designed with traditional aesthetics and modern technology, which elucidated the theme “La main Nippone et la machine” with profundity and sophistication. This kind of reinterpretation using old forms and new technology may be understood as an architectural Defamiliarization, where the architect takes common things and reshaped them in an uncommon way so the mind of the audiences is tricked and intrigued. Since the mid-1950s, it has been used by Maekawa’s disciple Kenzo Tange and later became a common trope among architects of the 1960s in public commissions.
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Other Works
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Graphic Design
Work Samples
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Other Works
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Xinyi Chen Master of Architecture | University of Pennsylvania B.S. in Architectural Studies | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign chenxinyi107@gmail.com | (217)418-7297