Yan Jiang_Portfolio 2024

Bachelor of Architecture, 2025

Cornell University AAP

Contact: zj49@cornell.edu

Index

2 The Carousel Elective Studio | ARCH4509

8 Wynwood Flaneur Core Studio | ARCH3102

18 Mise-en-scenes Core Studio | ARCH2101

28 Symphony of Stone Core Studio | ARCH1102

36 Softened Walls Core Studio | ARCH2102

48 Threshold Core Studio | ARCH3101

THE CAROUSEL

A film about an office, a playground, or a never-ending machine.

Film access: https://vimeo. com/799380331

ARCH 4509 | Fall 2022

Instructor: Christopher Battaglia

The Carousel is an independent film about mundane activities in an office. Like a never-ending machine, the office operates like a gigantic elevator, where a series of plates runs up and down, as all utilities are summarized in a single vertical bundle based on the stream of the movement. The project is inspired by Bernard Halfner’s Linear City, in which a network of traffic and communication infrastructure is located in a linear urban structure to maximize efficiency. In my project, the human becomes the infrastructure where one’s individuality is merged into the architectural machine. The mechanism of the office also operates with dynamic movements as of those carnival rides, through spinning, lifting, and diving, portraying the office as an amusement park, or a playground. The uncanny juxtaposition of playground and office sets the satire of production operation and human labor.

The film has two sound channels. The Carousel music rhymes with the carnivalesque movement of the lifting and revolving office mechanism, romanticizing the

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Channel 1: Carousel Music by Tom Meijer

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Channel 2:

Data.Matrix by Ryoji Ikeda

office space into a playground. Ikeda’s electronic micro sound sampling resembles the robotic keyboard sound relating to the act of labor. The eerie juxtaposition of office and play achieves a strong, accumulation effect, connoting a sense of sullness and tediousness, a characteristic element of the modern industrial world.

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physical model for shooting

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Mood board for the film

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Screen shots from the film, full lengeth 1':04'', single channel with sound.

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Two major scheme of the machanism: a revolving stage and elevating plates.

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Back drop of the office, as the machine elevates between land, ocean, sky, and the outer universe.

reference of carnivals. Image source: (fig.11) Kid's carousel A.M., Margolies, John, Seaside Heights, NJ, 1978 (fig.12) Luna Park Amusement Scene, W.A.Horan, Johnstown, PA

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overal assets of the digital site

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Behind the scene of the physical scenes

WYNWOOD FLANEUR

What does it mean to get lost in your neighborhood?

ARCH3102 | Spring 2023

Instructor: Andrea Simitch

Situated in the residential zone in Wynwood Norte, Miami, FL, this housing project is aims to construct acollective living with various happenings.

The project features a translucent housing grid interconnected by irregular meandering passageways. These passageways serve as dynamic arteries, facilitating the flow of people and activities throughout the residential complex.

The design of irregular meandering passageways echoes the spirit of the flaneur by encouraging residents to explore their surroundings and interact with one another in a spontaneous and organic manner. These passageways serve as inviting pathways for residents to meander through the complex, discovering new vistas, encountering neighbors, and participating in various communal activities.

fig.1 Adjacent program sampling and meandering passage way (Orange).

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Diagram showing the site as a node as part of the meandering passage way network (Orange arrows), connecting to a broader public and various happenings.

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Model photo

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Collages that challenge the radical juxtaposition of programs

Gallery + Swiming Pool

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Housing Grid appropriating the dimensions of the adjacent neighborhood

(Bakehouse)

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Meandering passageway challenging public and private space

MISE EN SCENES

A House, a stair, a stage, projecting the street in while projecting out multiple performances to the public.

Video access: https://vimeo. com/799382979

ARCH2101 | Fall 2021

Instructor: Andrea Simitch

The project “Mise-en-scenes” is a house designed for two couples on Cascadelia avenue in Ithaca. NY. The concept of the scheme is a continuous stair capped by a translucent polycarbonate envelope, where the stair turns into a shelf, a seat, a kitchen counter, a bed, a bar, and a chamber room.

While the structure of the stair spirals up as a continuation of the street, a series of chamber rooms protrudes out, acting as stages that visually connect to the public space. Acting as a stage, the protruding chambers are being seen from the exterior, yet they could also act as spectator seats seeing the outside: the performance of sunrise, the dance of the falling leaves, or the ensemble of the canal...Thus the house is a performance, sometimes private, sometimes public, or a mixture in between.

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fig.5 site model: cascadelia avenue with a canal running east-west direction.

fig.1-2 concept model featuring the protruding chambers and the continuous stair.

fig.3 - 4 concept sketch/model: The concept of the scheme is a continuous stair capped by an envelope, while sometimes the stairs extrude, backs off, and touches the envelope.

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Mise en scenes, 1':06'', Single channel

Video access: https://vimeo. com/799382979

A one minute film featuring the everchanging chambers in the house. As the scenery on the street projects in, the performances inside the house project out to the street.

SYMPHONY OF S TONE

ARCH1102 | Spring 2021

Instructor:

Sasa Zivkovic and Felix Heisel

Teaching Assitance: Oonagh Davis

Located right above the waterfall of the Nature Trail in Lansing, New York, the bus stop is a threshold of nature. Inspired by the overlying rock bed and waterfall down in the gorge, the project appears as a composition of colorful interlocking marble pieces stacked and interlaced together. The marble pieces come in four modules, where three horizontal modules form the roofs and walls, and one vertical module acts as a column that stitches the whole project together.

What does marble, or a bus stop sound?

0.25mi

Elizabeth Candy Stanton 9mins walk

0.3mi

1.0mi

LAKE

CAYUGA

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Site analysis of the bus stop and its peripheral views of the gorge.

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Sound calendar diagram showing the difference in height of the gorge in section.

The bottom score represents the loudness of the

waterfall throughout the 12 months, starting from the silent light lines (as the water is frozen) in winter to loud, bold lines in the summer. The interpreted sound of the bus stop is the range of the dashed lines.

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Site model showing the bus route

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Video access: https://vimeo. com/799383190

Featuring the angle and trace of the tile saw, a facade system is applied to the horizontal modules, which forms a water tunnel that allows rainwater

to cascade down, creating a hidden, intangible stitch that simulates the sound of the waterfall and weaves the sound of the bus stop into the peripheral site.

When the water flows over the marble, the stone surface is temporarily polished, where water activates the color and texture of the marble, triggering a transitory yet intimate moment that could only be seen in the rain.

Scrap pieces produced during the production become mosaic flooring, acting as a visual cue that leads visitors to the gorge. As visitors trample on the floor, the marbles rub against each other and make a rattling sound.

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SOFTENED WALLS

How to construct a living archive on the land that has a painful history of Gayogohó:n ’ (the Cayuga Nation) dispossession?

Notes on archive:

"The activity of archiving is an engagement, an interruption in a settled field, which is to enter critically into existing configurations to re-open the closed structures into which they have ossified." -- Stuart Hall, Constituting An Archive

ARCH 2102 | Spring 2022

Instructor: Tom Carruthers

Situated in the historical district of Seneca Falls, NY, the library is a community hub that aims to construct a living archive. Achieved through bridging, the concept of the project is a series of fenestrated walls linked by transparent volumes. Thickened walls appropriate the dimension of the historical site. Moments of the program are understood to be both physical and metaphorical bridges that engage and critique the past to generate provocative spaces.

Site analysis of the town Seneca Falls showing the historical district in its relationship to the town and our site (Labeled in A zoomed out map showing the locations of our site in relation to the six sovereign

fig.4 correlating to the red lines (A) in fig.3, this concept diagram shows 2 systems in the design scheme: a series of walls and trangressing glass volumns.

fig.5 correlating to the arrowed major entry ciculation (B) in fig.3: the visual percpetion of the wall changes as one approximates the archive.

The spacing of the walls appropriates dimensions from Seneca Falls’ Main Street, and the program’s relational bridges foster blurred indoor and outdoor activities, generating a soft space within the hardened territories.

CAYUGA LAKE

SENECA CAYUGA ONODAGA ONEIDA

MOHAWK

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+9.5m

double glazing: 8 mm toughened glass

+ 12 mm cavity with perforated ST. STL. Interlayer

Operable aluminum louvers

150/50cm steel RHS

Gutter metal sheething

solar control alum. louver

laminated safty glass with reflective film on inner surface

adjustale 18mm steel rod

Light-diffusing soffit in lam. safety glass

+5m

Triple pane glass

Structural glass floor construction: IGU

structural sealant air space

perforated ST. STL. interlayer

IGU setting block

ST.steel channel

maintainance catwalk

Operable aluminum louvers

THRESHOLD

Two months observation/research in six fourtune teller, six events, mixed realities.

Exhibited in the "Percieving the Nearby 500m" section of 2022 Hongkong Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture

ARCH 3101 | Fall 2022

Instructor: Hanna Tulis

The project "Threshold" is about the events I encountered, and captured near my home. All arranged in the form of the origami “fortune teller”, these series of collage explore multiple dimensions of reality through the operation of the folding and unfolding process. The operation of the origami “fortune teller” explores space and events as a process with an open outcome, multiple possibilities, and temporally open-ended results. Within the fixed combination of the fortune teller, what kind of fabulation would you conjure?

[A] clean

[B] small objects

[C] midium objects

[D] large objects

[E] barely can walk

[F] door opened

Exit Somewhere

Featuring a well-recorded personal research about the exit staircase in my apartment in Shenzhen, China, This is the research behind one of the fortune tellers.

The exit staircase in my apartment building is occupied by my neighbors' personal belongings, in which the "exit '' is less a public escape route, but rather a private extension of the domestic realm. Yet those objects are arranged in a restrained position to leave space for escape. Thus the landing becomes a threshold between the private and the public --- it is the neighbor's extended home, the public corridor, the storage room, the escape route, the connection between me and the neighbors I have never known, an entrance, an exhibition.

On exit sign:

"My own lure was the surreal and subversive potential of the signs -- in other words, a flipping upside down of the reality around me. We had in common a desire for an altered reality, whether latently hostile to the signs or drawn toward the possibilities of what else might take their place."

-- Exit, Laura Waddell

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Diagram showing the threshold, private and public realm in the egress staircase

fig.1

Snapshots of exit staircase in my apartment building: Christmas trees, two-meter-large oil paintings, giant chess pieces that only appear in sports playgrounds, and the most popular occupants, bicycles and shoe racks.

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Examination charts of objects' occupancy status of each floor in the egress staircase. Public

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These series of fortune teller explore multiple dimensions of reality through the operation of the folding/unfolding process:

1.Reality (an image I took)

2.Manipulated reality ( my dissection of elements relating to the event )

3.Fantasy (my fabulation based on the reality)

The fortune teller starts with an image of the exit staircase (fig.4 reality), then as one unfolds, a series of doors taken in the exit staircase is revealed (fig.5 manipulated reality). As one continues to unfold, a fantasy layer shows my imagination based on the objects outside my neighbors' doors(fig.7). Fully unrolled, the fortune teller exhibits a mixed reality.

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Logic of unfolding the "Exit Somewhere"

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Installation in 2022 UABB Bi-City Biennale: (photo credit: Jason Ho)

Like the delivery lockers in almost all the neighborhoods in China, the installation, a magenta delivery locker contains 30 works with the prompt "perceiving the nearby 500m" including my

fortune tellers.

Delivery locker is a daily device that is ubiquitous in our lives and represents the order of the government's grid management.

The installation features packages waiting to be unpacked by viewers - since the artists were restrained by COVID traveling policy, instead they just shipped their work to the location. Also, the installation encourages the viewers to pick up any packages and play around with them, or they can even become participants and add their work to the delivery locker. Later on, the locker becomes a graffiti wall, where viewers leave comments and respond to each other. Thus the installation becomes a dialogue

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Some passers-by didn't know that the courier cabinet was an exhibited work, and thought it was a storage cabinet used by the organizers of the Biennale for exhibition visitors. We can often see that the audience will put their personal belongings into the empty boxes of the express cabinet, and unconsciously, these personal belongings become exhibits in the express cabinet.

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Yan

Jiang